Educational Entrepreneurship

Book excerpt: This lively and provocative book introduces this burgeoning field for readers concerned with K-12 education in the United States--and with efforts to reform and improve it. Entrepreneurship has emerged in recent years as an unprecedented and influential force in U.S. K-12 education. Yet the topic has received surprisingly little serious or systematic attention. Educational Entrepreneurship aims to fill this gap. This timely volume addresses a number of central questions: What is educational entrepreneurship and what does it look like? Who are the educational entrepreneurs and what motivates them? What tools do entrepreneurs need to be successful? What policies or practices enable or impede entrepreneurship? What would it mean to open up the education sector to more entrepreneurial activity? An interesting and admirable range of contributors offers clusters of articles on the nature of educational entrepreneurship; the political, policy, and legal contexts that face educational entrepreneurs; various models of entrepreneurial activity; the role of for-profit organizations in K-12 education; and possible future directions for educational entrepreneurs.