Guilbert C. Hentschke

Incentives for Charter Schools: Building School Capacity Through Cross-Sectoral Alliances

In this exploratory study, the authors examine the recent emergence of cross-sectoral alliances—organizations voluntarily working together to solve issues of mutual concern—in kindergarten through 12th-grade education. The article utilizes an economic approach to interagency collaboration and focuses on alliances in charter schools. The authors seek to (a) analyze the extent to which charter school legislation encourages or discourages alliances, (b) examine the types of organizations that form alliances with charter schools and the range of contributions they provide, and (c) assess the various incentives that lead charter schools and other organizations to form alliances. Implications of the findings for educational practice and policy as well as future research are discussed.

Public–private partnerships in education: insights from the field

Despite extensive attention (positive and negative) devoted to the philosophical, public policy and political dimensions of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in education, little attention has been devoted to their managerial implications as well as the broader organizational context (strategic alliances) within which they are a special case. In this paper we seek first to identify what they are and then examine PPPs in education that have been recently created and are operating in England. It is worth noting that PPPs appear to be indistinguishable from the larger set of strategic alliances in fields other than education, and their recent arrival in education reflects its evolution towards a multi-sector, alliance-oriented field.

Philanthropic Strategies for School Reform: An Analysis of Foundation Choices

Although support for K-12 education has long been a priority for philanthropic organizations, foundations are increasingly choosing to play a leading role in fostering the development and implementation of new policies designed to reform K-12 education. This article is an effort to understand the strategies and tactics employed by foundations currently engaged in K-12 education policy. In-depth interviews conducted with senior staff members of 20 foundations identified as substantially engaged in education policy and school reform were conducted to examine three fundamental strategic choices: the foundations decision to engage in education policy, including the specific policy domain within education; the foundations choice on where to intervene in the policy process and at what level of government; and the foundations tactics to leverage additional resources. Findings suggest that foundations consciously seek to engage in education policy as an integral ingredient of their philanthropic initiatives and are led by staff and board leadership in these decisions. Most foundation activities in this arena aim to create individual niches of activity within the school reform agenda based on the foundations informed theory of change. As a group, however, foundation engagement in education policy is collectively cautious and ultimately incremental as foundations attempt to make change at the state and district level primarily through demonstration projects and funding research and development activities.

Theoretical Concepts in the Economics of Education

This article reviews several of the most important theoretical concepts in the economics of education. Three of the most commonly used ideas – human capital, markets, and education production – are outlined in a nontechnical manner for a general reader. These concepts are useful in understanding why individuals choose to acquire schooling, how societies organize educational systems, and how schools use resources. Empirical studies dealing with each of these issues are reviewed elsewhere in the encyclopedia.

Conclusion: K-12 Education in a Broader Privatization Context.

Privatization generates battles among ideologues, but in the field of education the concept is not often studied. One consequence of this is that we know little about its concrete significance. Economists have long debated the impact of privatization on entire countries. Some believe that privatization has been “beneficial to many countries” and has “increased average incomes”; others assert that privatization has “increased income differentials,” “resulted in social and political chaos,” and “frequently produced private monopolies that are fully as inefficient as the government they replaced and more corrupt” (Hentschke, 2006). Similar debates exist in the field of education as the ideas and instances of privatization have entered the K-12 realm. Both advocates and opponents of privatization in education tend to approach the issue through an ideological lens. In general, pro-privatization advocates tout its benefits for improving the cost-effectiveness, responsiveness, and innovation of public education services, while anti-privatization advocates lament the probable degradation, unequalizing effects, and even loss of those same public services with the advent of privatization. The debate over privatization benefits from the analytical, empirically guided appraisals presented in this volume and is especially timely. Private education businesses constitute a small but growing part of the education industry in the United States. They account for about 10% of the operating income of the nearly

Developing Entrepreneurial Leaders

1 trillion education industry. The growth in number and size of these private education businesses, as well as in the kinds of goods and services they produce, is fanning interest—both support and opposition—in privatization by households, educators who provide education services, and public officials who seek more, better, and more Educational Policy Volume 21 Number 1 January and March 2007 297-307

Using State-Wide Multiple Measures for School Leadership and Management: Costs Incurred vs. Benefits Gained.

The value and importance of entrepreneurial leadership in education, unlike other facets of educational leadership, is very context-dependent and is also closely associated with individual personality attributes. As a consequence, development of entrepreneurial leadership requires at least as much attention to the current context of schooling systems and to the aptitudes of educators as to the curricula of entrepreneurial leadership development. Those two entrepreneur-relevant features are examined here and their implications for leadership development discussed.

Journal of School Choice Forum on the Global Phenomenon of Publicly Financed, Privately Operated Schools: Common Policy Issues Among Differing Nation States?

In this article, we examine the utility and value of multiple measures of school performance for school leaders and managers. The research was conducted within the context of the state of California through an investigation of how operators, managers and authorisers of autonomous ‘charter’ (publicly financed but privately operated) schools use data to inform decision-making. Users valued data that were transparent in derivation, included an array of schooling dimensions, were longitudinal, and allowed for benchmarking with other schools.

Improving Service Delivery in Education Through Collaboration: An Exploratory Study of the Role of Cross‐Sectoral Alliances in the Development and Support of Charter Schools*

Much of compulsory education in the world is characterized as either public or private, the former implying that the government pays for and provides schooling services (usually for free), and the latter implying that private individuals (parents) pay for the schooling services of private providers. Although this dichotomy still characterizes much of compulsory schooling, it does not comprise all of it. A third category of schooling is emerging in which government bodies provide oversight and partial funding, and private parties create, operate, and market schooling services. Known by various names around the world—charter schools, contract schools, foundation schools, independent schools, and so forth—this form of schooling is increasingly important globally, educating millions of children and being increasingly considered as a systematic solution to the reform of public education. We refer to them here as independent schools partly for convenience and partly as a description of their relative autonomy vis-à-vis traditional public schools. Although some analysis of the scope, scale, and variations in the form of these schools has been described elsewhere in the literature (e.g., see Brewer & Hentschke, 2009), the precise dimensions and rate of growth of these schools is still unclear. What is becoming more clear, however, is a set of general questions that grow from experience in and analysis of these schools—many of which are addressed in one more of the articles that comprise this special issue: