Blog. The Impact of Better Teachers: $100 Trillion More in U.S. GDP. Forget the cliche of bringing an apple to your favorite teacher. You may want to send her your next bonus check instead -- because she's a big part of why you got it. That's the gist of a recent report by the Cambridge, Mass. -based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that attempted to measure the economic value of effective teachers compared to their less effective counterparts. The study found that during the course of a school year, a student may learn as much as three times more material from a top-performing teacher as a similar student does from a bottom-performing teacher.
And that extra learning translates to the bottom line once the student leaves school. In fact, in one year, a well-above-average teacher -- in this case, one that's in the 84th percentile of effectiveness -- may lead to as much as $400,000 in additional lifetime earnings for her class of 20 compared to an average teacher, the NBER study said. Social Impact Bonds: Lessons from the Field. In piloting social impact bonds, governments have already yielded some lessons from the field.
A year after the British Ministry of Justice piloted social impact bonds to reduce the 60 percent recidivism rate for the 3,000 criminal offenders who passed through the doors of a private prison in Peterborough, UK, the innovative funding mechanism captured the imagination of many social entrepreneurs. These bonds, also known as pay-for-success contracts, promise to transform the relationship between governments, nonprofits, and funders.
“Social impact bonds” became one of the top ten buzzwords of 2011. And local governments in England, Australia, Canada, and the US have started exploring these contracts. As state governments at home and abroad prepare to pilot these bonds next year, the processes have already yielded some lessons from the field. Social Finance, Inc., in Massachusetts is exploring a different approach to engage capital markets. How Schools' Poor Infrastructure Can Blunt EdTech Advances. Technology is often more of a spectator sport than anything else. In spite of elegant software like iOS5 and Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich, we are still at the mercy of the nearest cell-phone tower for a simple text message or phone call, or an open Wi-Fi signal to enjoy the latest streaming music app.
Then the battery dies. Score Team Software 1, Team Hardware 0. Next up pops Intel’s new matchbox-sized teraflop processor (50 cores in contrast with the four in today’s latest computers) for which software programs haven’t even been conceived. Corporate America has grown accustomed to these zigzags, but they can be crippling in schools where budgets are stick-thin. That makes them useless for schools stuck with mini-tower relics that lack processing power or with limited high-speed broadband. Budget-wrangling at local, state, and federal levels complicates the problem. But particularly in the second half of 2011, Team Hardware has been on the offensive with a couple of big first downs. The Corporation As You Know It Is Probably Obsolete.
There is a groundswell in new kinds of corporate forms that is gaining steam. Consider the rise of “for-benefit” corporations. They’re a new kind of corporate form, built from the ground up to create wealth, instead of being tiresomely legally bound to return maximum profit to shareholders. Imagine, for a moment, the new organizational possibilities that the novel legal and contractual design of these organizations opens up, where bonuses are tied to marginal wealth attained by people, communities, and society, roles are created to manage benefits (think “chief impact officer”), and transparent accounts demonstrate real, meaningful benefits, not earnings.
You’d have an organization geared to do explosively more than just buy and sell crap that’s slightly updated every year or so, on yesterday’s moldy old terms. In the twentieth century, rivalry was most often about a single kind of counterorganization: competitors. Hypercompetition is an increase of like-for-like competitive intensity. How Haiti's Earthquake Inspired LinkedIn's Skill-based Volunteer Marketplace. In 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake stuck west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, disrupting life for millions of residents and razing infrastructure across the impoverished country. The widespread destruction led to an outpouring of support, with donations flooding in from around the world. But the country needed more--more than just Sean Penn and Wyclef Jean, at least--and some turned to an unlikely source for help: LinkedIn. "When the Haiti disaster happened, they called us and said, 'We’re getting lots of money and physical goods, but what we need are electricians and plumbers and people who can help us rebuild homes,'" recalls Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of product.
"'How do we find them? '" LinkedIn is a network of 135 million users; it’s the backbone of the professional social graph. But while the service has endless access to talent, it didn’t yet offer the right tools to harness that talent in the event of a tragedy, such as the earthquake in Haiti. Blueseed: A Floating Startup Incubator Off The California Coast. You can lament retrograde American immigration laws that prevent highly skilled foreigners from coming here to work in the tech industry, or you can set up an office at sea.
Max Marty is trying the latter course. If all goes according to plan, his new company, Blueseed, will be the world’s first floating startup incubator, located on a ship off the coast of California. The idea is to provide a base of operations for foreign entrepreneurs who want to be close to Silicon Valley but can’t get a work visa. Marty and his cofounder Dario Mutabdzija plan to buy or lease a large ship, station it in international waters 12 nautical miles off the coast, and then rent out office space. Because Blueseed won’t technically be in the United States, foreign entrepreneurs aboard the ship will be able to skirt certain immigration laws. Instead of getting visas to work in the United States, they can get more easily attainable B-1 visas, which allow visits to the U.S. for business or tourism. Pay for Success: How a New Kind of Bond Could Save Taxpayer Money and Improve Social Services - Business.
Two federal agencies will steer tax money for social programs through a new for-profit investing tool tested in the United Kingdom and Australia, according to a report co-authored by the White House and the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Rather than providing social services directly, the bonds will allow the government to task a firm in the private sector to solve a public challenge, paying the company only if it achieves certain success metrics.
Using pay-for-success bonds could save taxpayer money, earn a profit for impact investors, and incentivize innovation to solve chronic social challenges. In the United States, this is all theoretical at this point, but 2012 may be the year that changes. The Department of Labor will make available $20 million for pay-for-success projects that help Americans find work through its Workforce Innovation Fund. That’s the basic idea behind the original pay-for-success bond—more commonly known as social impact bonds—in Peterborough, England. Former "Seasteaders" Come Ashore To Start Libertarian Utopias In Honduran Jungle. The seasteader-in-chief is headed ashore. Patri Friedman (that’s Milton Friedman's grandson to you), who stepped down as the chief executive of the Peter Thiel-backed Seasteading Institute in August, has resurfaced as the CEO of a new for-profit enterprise named Future Cities Development Inc., which aims to create new cities from scratch (on land this time) governed by "cutting-edge legal systems.
" The startup may have found its first taker in Honduras, whose government amended its constitution in January to permit the creation of special autonomous zones exempt from local and federal laws. Future Cities has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to build a city in one such zone starting next year. Seasteading, i.e. the creation of sovereign nations floating offshore, is enshrined in libertarian thought as an end-run around the constraints of stodgy nation-states.
Instead of seasteading, Future Cities is modeling itself on “charter cities.” Charles Leadbeater on innovation. Www.charlesleadbeater.net/cms/xstandard/social_enterprise_innovation.pdf. EdSurge. Philosophy of Education. 1. Problems in delineating the field There is a large—and ever expanding—number of works designed to give guidance to the novice setting out to explore the domain of philosophy of education; most if not all of the academic publishing houses have at least one representative of this genre on their list, and the titles are mostly variants of the following archetypes: The History and Philosophy of Education, The Philosophical Foundations of Education, Philosophers on Education, Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom, A Guide to the Philosophy of Education, and Readings in Philosophy of Education.
Part of the explanation for this diffuse state of affairs is that, quite reasonably, many philosophers of education have the goal (reinforced by their institutional affiliation with Schools of Education and their involvement in the initial training of teachers) of contributing not to philosophy but to educational policy and practice. 1.1 The open nature of philosophy and philosophy of education. Aestheticism. The Peacock Room, Aesthetic Movement designed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, one of the most famous examples of Aesthetic style interior design Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) is an art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts.[1][2] It was particularly prominent in Europe during the 19th century, but contemporary critics are also associated with the movement, such as Harold Bloom, who has recently argued against projecting social and political ideology onto literary works, which he believes has been a growing problem in humanities departments over the last century.
Aesthetic literature[edit] The British decadent writers were much influenced by the Oxford professor Walter Pater and his essays published during 1867–68, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, with an ideal of beauty. Aesthetic visual arts[edit] Aesthetic Movement decorative arts[edit] References[edit] Non-profit or for-profit? | microeducation. Microfinance, so why not Micro-Education? | Pole to Pole Consulting Blog. To begin, microfinance in its strictest sense does not propose to alleviate poverty nor is it the panacea for all developing country (and developed for that matter) woes. What it does do is provide access to formal financial services for hundreds of millions of people left out of the traditional formal financial sector. Microfinance provides steady credit lines, places to save (those that offer it), with the long-term goal/hope that those accessing these services will in turn graduate up-market to the previously mentioned formal financial sector.
Now, if a market exists, with profits to be gained by lending to the poor, why would this not work with education. It’s more complex, I recognize that. Lending money from a financial entity to a single person is direct and relatively cut and dry. Education involves multiple moving parts, long-term commitment, and it does after all, occupy the most formative years of a person’s life. Fast forward to the U.S. Like this: Like Loading... Microschools – Opportunity International’s Contribution for Achieving MDG 2 « International Affairs – Analysis and Reflections. Microschools of Opportunity™ The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), established at the Millennium Summit in 2000, consist of eight goals related to international development topics such as poverty eradication (#1), promotion of gender equality (#3), global health issues (#6), or environmental sustainability (#7), and to which all UN member states have agreed to accomplish by 2015. MDG #2—to achieve universal primary education—addresses the importance of literacy for advancing human development and tackling extreme poverty.
Nobel Peace Laureate and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in the foreword of UNICEF’s 1999 “The State of the World’s Children” report, refers to education as “a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.” But although considerable progress has been made with respect to MDG #2 since the year 2000, there’s still a long way to go. Share this post! International launches Microschools™ – new frontier in breaking the chain of poverty.
New research shows ‘schools for the poor’ outperform public schools in developing world Oak Brook, Ill. – July 31, 2007 – Opportunity International, a leading innovator in the microfinance industry, today announced the expansion of its microfinance school loans program to bring greater educational opportunity to poor children, especially girls. Microschools of Opportunity™ is a new initiative that provides loans to “edupreneurs” who open schools in poor neighborhoods where children cannot access public school for a variety of reasons. Groundbreaking research by James Tooley, a leading academic expert on schools for the poor, has shown that these schools outperform their public school counterparts across Africa, India and China. Tooley’s research provided inspiration for the development of Opportunity International’s new microschools™ program.
Microschools are now operating in 50 neighborhoods and towns in Ghana in a pilot program. “An education revolution is taking place,” Tooley said. Private Schools for the Poor. The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged; everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school. The poor, so this logic goes, need government assistance if they are to get a good education, which helps explain why, in the United States, many school choice enthusiasts believe that the only way the poor can get the education they deserve is through vouchers or charter schools, proxies for those better private or independent schools, paid for with public funds.
But if we reflect on these beliefs in a foreign context and observe low-income families in underprivileged and developing countries, we find these assumptions lacking: the poor have found remarkably innovative ways of helping themselves, educationally, and in some of the most destitute places on Earth have managed to nurture a large and growing industry of private schools for themselves.
For the past two years I have overseen research on such schools in India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa. Ga, Ghana. Microeducation | Education & Empowerment Technology Design. Creating the National Laboratory for Education Transformation, or NLET, has been a fascinating journey. The idea is simple enough. On the one hand, we know that education systems, learning strategies, and knowledge access have to change.
Change in education is a given that is buried in the thicket of education bureaucracy, outdated use of technologies, and policies that cannot keep up with rapid evolutions in other nations and in other segments of our economy. On the other hand, what a wonderful time in history to re-invent education, to invite the participation of young people, and others outside of education, to help architect new systems for learning! We created NLET to deliberately operate at the intersection of the old and the new and of the political and the possible. On the commercial side of the equation, I worked in the education technology industry and saw the mismatch between corporate product and institutional need.
Mon, 11/21/2011. Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation (9780470074282): Andrew Metrick. How to Break Into Venture Capital. What Do You Do as a Venture Capitalist? Www.mycapital.com/VenetureCapital101_MyCapital.pdf. Www.dblinvestors.com/portfolio-detail.php#livescribe. Impact investing: Happy returns. Social Finance | J.P. Morgan. Social Entrepreneurs 2011: Impact Investors. Www.jpmorgan.com/cm/BlobServer/impact_investments_nov2010.pdf?blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1158611333228&blobheader=application%2Fpdf. TEDxSydney - Andrew Kuper - Profit with Purpose: the impact investing revolution.
Www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP112.pdf. About Us. McKinsey on Society. How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better. Givology. Ed Tech Map: NewSchools Venture Fund. Venture Investing, The Socially Responsible Way - Venture Capital Dispatch. Teach For All: Network: Locations & Programs. School Choice | College Achievement | Public Schools. Study Shows School Choice Improves College Achievement Gap.