In Customized Schooling (Harvard Education Press, 2011), editors Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Bruno V. Manno, senior adviser, K-12 Education Reform Initiative at the Walton Family Foundation, lead a group of education experts to look at “how providers might use new tools to deliver or customize services that do not conform to conventional [school] policies or structures.”
The authors discuss ways to allow students to benefit from these private tools, technologies, and talent, and to find ways around the long-standing policies and practices that lock reformers into a whole-school mindset. Hess and Manno stress the importance of paying more attention to the individual needs of consumers–in this case, parents, students, teachers, and entire communities. They survey the current landscape of customized entrepreneurial activity in education, look closely at particular customized innovations by schools and education entrepreneurs, and address persistent concerns that arise with customized reforms. Overall, the editors and contributors spur fresh thought about the scope and nature of promising education reforms, as well as raise new possibilities for entrepreneurial activity in today’s schools.
Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen notes that “Customized Schooling dares the reader to look at what schooling could be like if we end our reliance on the one-stop-shop schoolhouse. Alongside a score of policy leaders, esteemed researchers, and on-the-ground practitioners, Hess and Manno lay out the case for individualizing education so that student, teacher, and district demands are heard and followed.”
To order the book, visit www.hepg.org/hep/book/133/CustomizedSchooling.
