12 Days of Christmas Wishes — Part 8 — Private Schools

I wish charter schools were the best place to innovate, but I can say from my time at Rocketship that the public system puts far too many constraints on charters for them to innovate as radically as they should. Instead, I think we are moving to far more personalized private schools, often for small populations of children, sometimes with completely different goals than the public system. Acton Academies, for example, is radically student-driven, using ‘guides’ instead of teachers to support student learning.

So the question is how to build schools at the 50–70% growth rates needed to make a large impact. I think food trucks were one of the great innovations in the restaurant industry because they dramatically lowered the starting cost for a chef to try a new idea. I think single classroom schools may deliver something similar in education. There may be other ways to create very fast growing private school systems. If you are thinking about this and have ideas, send me an email: john@danners.org