Rethinking Access

PASADENA, CA – OCTOBER 10: School buses drive down teh road to pick up children before classes … [+] begin on October 10, 2008 in Pasadena, California. California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer has warned that California cash revenues will run out by the end of the month. If that happens, 5,000 California cities, counties, and school districts will face job layoffs and payments for law enforcement agencies, nursing homes, teachers, and other services and government entities could be suspended. A worldwide credit crunch threatens to derail state plans for a routine 7 billion dollar loan to even out the tax flow into the state treasury. Just two weeks after state lawmakers came to agreement, after months of haggling on a record-overdue state budget, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is warning of future cuts to the state budget to deal with skyrocketing financial problems. A frozen credit market and revenues for the first quarter of the fiscal year that fell more than a billion dollars short of previous projections are causing the governor and state legislative leaders scrabbling to deal with a new budget mess. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

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Here is a little experiment. Go to any kind of educational convening; a conference, a professional development seminar, a research presentation, whatever, and say that you believe we should “increase access” in our education system. Then ask whomever you are taking to, “When you heard me say ‘increase access’ who did you think I was talking about? That is, who would be getting access to something new?”

I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of times when we hear the phrase “increase access” in education, we think about students. Increasing student access to good teachers. Increasing student access to high quality instructional materials. Increasing student access to better schools. Sometimes we might think about teachers, as in increasing teacher access to technology or better preparation. But it is almost always one of those two groups.

To be fair, that is how I would have answered until I recently heard Beth Seling of the Vela Education Fund reframe the question when she was sitting on a panel at the International School Choice and Reform Conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

She offered a new group of people that we should think about when we use the term “access” in education: entrepreneurs.

Students will only have access to new and better schools if entrepreneurial educators have the opportunity to start them. Teachers will only have access to better instructional materials if those who create those resources have the opportunity to get their products in front of whomever purchases them for schools, districts, or charter school networks. If we care about the first kind of access, we really need to care about the second.

We have become accustomed to thinking about the barriers that students and teachers face when trying to access better educational opportunities. Students are stuck zoned to low quality district schools so implementing policies that allow them to choose somewhere else increases access. Creating all of the infrastructure around choice, like transportation, information, and the like, increases access too.

Teachers are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of instructional materials out there and can struggle to separate the wheat from the chaff in any kind of efficient way. Efforts by states or districts or professional organizations to help vet, rate, and disseminate better materials can increase access for teachers.

But what barriers do entrepreneurs face when trying to access the education system?

Let’s start with the big one: funding. Right now, our education system chooses to fund some kinds of schools and not others. If a district wants to open a new school, it has mechanisms to do that. It can use existing funds or levy bonds or millage increases to build buildings and pave parking lots. It has spigots of local, state, and federal dollars that it can open to fund its operations.

Charter schools have a slightly more complicated mechanism, with educators looking to start a school applying to a board (the exact location and composition of which varies by state) for permission to access public funding to open and operate. There are also a range of grants (both public and private) that aim to help new charter schools start and grow.

Depending on the state, some private schools are able to access funds as well through voucher, tuition tax credit, or education savings account programs.

While private school choice programs are helpful in expanding access for students, they do not have the same startup capital available that traditional schools are able to tap into. For other, non-traditional school models like microschools, homeschool co-ops, and hybrid homeschools, educators are almost entirely on their own to get their ventures off the ground. Groups like Vela are hard at work on this problem but compared to the billions of dollars made available to traditional school models, they are a single candle lit in a dark forest.

Regulations are a challenge as well. Charter schools are authorized by charter boards that have established applications that can stretch into the hundreds of pages. Applying to become a charter school can take years and require the signoff of any number of gatekeepers, some of whom have a vested interest in limiting competition for existing providers.

Starting a private school (be that of the micro- or macro- variety) can involve interacting with multiple levels of state and local government that can offer confusing and contradicting dictates. Zoning and land regulations are a minefield. Schools, tutoring centers, and childcare facilities are all subject to different regulations and ventures that blur the boundaries between them can find themselves struggling to get the necessary sign offs to get started.

And that is just starting a school. If, for example, you have a great idea to help prepare teachers to teach in new and exciting school models, you have an almost insurmountable challenge to get recognized by the state to license and certify teachers. There are more hoops to jump through and gatekeepers to pass than a 1980s Nintendo game.

The list goes on and on, but the point is worth repeating. If we want to increase access for students to new schools, new tools, or new talent in education we need to think about how to increase access to students for those starting new schools, building new tools, and opening new talent pipelines. You can’t have one without the other.

(Personal disclosure: The Vela Fund has supported my research in the past.)