Entrepreneurship and American education
创业活动与美国教育
Key Points
要点
- While educational entrepreneurship’s influence has been muted by policy and circumstance, this has nevertheless been a time of great growth for the field.
- 尽管政策和政治氛围已经压制了教育业中创业活动的影响，这个领域还是有了一段时间的显著增长。
- Over the next two decades, educational entrepreneurs will encounter a funding community, policy environment, and changing educational landscape that will profoundly affect the types of ventures and the ability of those ventures to scale, grow, and meet children’s needs.
- 在接下来二十年里，教育业的创业者会受到融资界，政策环境，教育业整体面貌变化等因素的冲击。这些因素会深刻影响风险投资的类型以及这些风险投资发起，壮大和满足孩子需求的能力。
- Entrepreneurship does not guarantee success. If anything, it ensures that there will be failure. For all its imperfections though, it offers a degree of imagination and natural winnowing well-suited to our sprawling, diverse, and pluralistic nation, and it creates an opportunity for truly world-changing products to emerge.
- 创业并不一定会成功。如果要说什么是确定的话，那就是一定会有失败产生。虽然有各种不完美，它提供了一定程度的想象空间和自然筛选，很好的适应了我们这个参差多元，分权共治的国家，而且创造机会让真正改变世界的成果得以涌现。 I have two adorable dogs who I love like children. Georgie is a precocious, 10-pound fur ball Bichon Frise I bought from an Amish man in rural Maryland. Beau is a seven-pound Maltese and silky terrier mix who spent the first five years of his life in a meth den in Missouri before my wife and I rescued him. When we travel, we have to find a place to board them. For years, we used kennels or “open-play” dog boarding facilities. By and large, we were pleased with the care that the dogs received, but boy, was it expensive.
我有两条可爱的狗，我像爱孩子那样爱他们。Georgie是只早熟的，10磅重的圆滚滚毛茸茸的比熊犬。我把它从马里兰州农村的一位阿米绪人那里买来。Beau有七磅，是一只的玛尔济斯犬和澳洲丝毛梗的后代。它生命的前五年在密苏里州的一个毒窝里度过，直到被我和我太太救了出来。当我们旅行时，我们必须为它们找个寄宿的地方。许多年以来，我们使用狗窝或者是“敞开”式宠物狗寄存设施。总体来说，我们对狗狗们受到的照顾感到满意。但这种服务很贵。
That is why it was great when my wife discovered the app Rover. Rover is kind of like Airbnb for dog sitters. Prospective sitters (or walkers or groomers) create profiles, post their rates, and have a space for customers to review them. People can find options that are convenient, in their price range, and the kind of environment they want for their dogs. We use the app whenever we travel and get what I think is far superior care for substantially less than we paid a kennel. It has been a big win for us and our dogs.
因此当我太太发现手机应用Rover时，一切实在太棒了。Rover像是宠物狗看护领域的Airbnb。潜在的看护们（或是遛狗者，或狗美容师）创建了个人简介，贴上他们的要价，留下一个给客户写评论的地方。人们能够在自己满意的价格区间，选择合适的选项，给宠物狗他们觉得合宜的环境。我们每次旅行都要使用这个应用，用明显比狗窝更低的价钱，换来一个更好的服务。这对狗狗和人都大有好处。
Rover illustrates disruptive innovation at work. Its founders identified a practical problem, leveraged knowledge and technology to devise a better solution, and then provided that solution in a way that upends old routines and assumptions.
Rover体现了破坏性创新是如何工作的。它的创始人确定了一个实际问题，利用知识和技术来提供一个更好的解决方案，而后那个方案在某种意义上颠覆了旧的常规和假设。
I am of the opinion that it would be good for K–12 schooling if more teachers, school leaders, and entrepreneurs took a Rover-like approach to challenges that plague education. How can we better use school facilities? How can we help children find schools that are a good match for them? How can we help teachers identify the best strategies to address specific learning challenges? The list of vexing problems goes on and on. But what does it take for entrepreneurial problem solving to actually help students, and how do we think about the obstacles it faces and the problems it may create?
我有一种看法：如果更多教师、学校领导和企业家提供一个Rover式的解决方案来挑战如今重疾缠身的教育业，对基础教育将会产生积极影响。如何能更好的使用学校设施？如何能帮助孩子发现适合他们的学校？如何能帮助教师发现应对特定教学挑战的最优策略？令人头痛的问题的清单越拉越长。但是需要什么条件，才能用企业家解决问题的思维来帮助学生？这一途径面临的障碍是什么呢？这种方法又会带来什么问题呢？
Look, Rover is no panacea, but it is a great improvement. I would be the first to admit that in some cities it is probably impractical. There might not be enough supply for great potential dog sitters to want to get involved, or there might not be enough demand to keep prices attractive to sitters. For many dog owners, it is still too expensive. That said, Rover does help solve a particular problem for a lot of people, while opening the door to newer and better solutions. This is what entrepreneurial activity can do.
看，Rover不是一个万灵药，但却是一个巨大的改进。我可以爽快地承认，在某些城市，它很可能不现实。那里可能没有足够多的潜在宠物狗看护者想加入该平台，或是需求量不够大，价格也就无法吸引看护者加入。对很多狗主人来说，价格仍然太高。尽管如此，Rover的确帮很多人解决了一个特殊的问题，也给更新更好的方案留出了机会。这正是创活动所能作的。
In May 2016, Harvard Education Press is releasing a volume called Educational Entrepreneurship Today, which Frederick Hess and I edited.[1] Its content arose during a conference we hosted at AEI during the summer of 2015, where we brought together leading educational entrepreneurs, researchers in the field, and people with experience funding entrepreneurial ventures. What follows are a couple of big ideas that are circulating in the educational entrepreneurship world today and some of the tensions that will define educational entrepreneurship in the future. Will education be a place where Rover- (or Uber- or Airbnb-) like innovation takes place? Do we want it to be?
在2016年五月，哈佛教育出版社发布了一卷Frederick Hess和我编辑的文集，题为《今日教育行业创投》。[1]文集的内容形成于2015年夏季我们在美国企业研究所主持的一个讨论会。在这个会议上，我们把一流的教育业创业者，该领域的研究者和有创投经验的人士召集在了一起。随之而来的则是一些在今日教育业创业界流行的非凡创意，同时还有一些争论将在未来定义教育行业的创投活动。教育业会是一个产生类似Rover（或优步，或Airbnb）那样的创新的领域吗？我们希望如此吗？
Trends in Educational Entrepreneurship
教育业创业的趋势
The first and most important idea that those observing educational entrepreneurship should know is that while its influence over the past decade or so has been muted by policy and circumstance, this has nevertheless been a time of great growth for the field. Sure, it is true that school procurement systems (how schools and teachers shop for and purchase new materials) are stifling and outdated. Teachers and principals have limited flexibility to redesign schools or put new tools to work in ambitious ways.
教育行业创投的观察人士应该知道的第一个也是最重要的一个概念就是：教育行业创投在过去十多年一直在发挥作用，尽管目前已被政策和环境压制，该领域仍然有过一段显著增长期。当然，学校采购平台系统（学校和教师采购新材料的方式）是压抑创新且过时的。老师和校长们重新设计学校，或积极使用新的工作工具的灵活性是有限的。
But there have been many bright spots. Enrollment in charter schools doubled, and then doubled again. Venture capital investments grew from almost nothing to hundreds of millions’ worth. Companies such as Wireless Generation and SchoolNet thrived and then were sold at a handsome rate of return, emboldening more entrepreneurs and investors who seek to emulate those efforts.
但这一行业已然有很多闪光点。特许学校的录取数翻倍，又再翻倍。风险投资额从接近于零，变成几亿美元。如无线世代（Wireless Generation)或学校网（SchoolNet）这样的公司茁壮成长然后再以可观的回报率被收购，这鼓励了更多企业家和投资者去尝试复制上述成果。
The second thing worth noting is that what gets measured gets valued. The No Child Left Behind era heavily emphasized how students perform on state tests in reading and math. In the modern era, there has also been far less appetite or room for entrepreneurs who are not focused on closing reading and math “gaps” for low-income, African American, or Latino youth. Teachers are increasingly evaluated based on these metrics, district schools are at risk of being sanctioned if their students do not perform adequately, and charter schools know their existence depends largely on their test scores.
第二个值得注意的事情是，能被衡量比较的方面才是被认为有价值的。这个“不让一个孩子落后”的时代特别重视学生在州统考中的阅读和数学成绩。在如今这个时代，那些不重视为低收入群体、非裔和拉丁裔青少年缩小阅读和数学成绩差距的企业家很少受到青睐或者得到发展空间。教师评估越来越基于这些指标，如果学生表现不够好，学区的学校可能面临被制裁的风险。而特许学校也知道其生存很大程度上依赖于测试分数。
Test scores tend to define the ways in which schools are judged and compared, and they also mean that new providers can really only demonstrate their mettle in terms of reading and math. When policy and philanthropy treat reading and math tests as the coin of the realm, it creates problems for entrepreneurs who are not offering “whole school” models, focusing on tested grades or subjects, or tackling English Language Arts and math in ways that do not map onto tests. The metrics used to measure success shape the types of solutions that will be offered.
州统考测试分数倾向于被拿来作为评判和比较学校的标准。这也意味着新的教育供应者只能通过阅读和数学成绩来彰显他们的能力。政策和慈善业把分数当作教育业的法定货币，这给一些企业家带来了麻烦。比如有些企业家不提供“完整学校”的模式，他们只关注学校课堂成绩或科目而非州统考成绩或科目；还有些企业家用来促进英语文学和数学教育的方法，无法反映在考试分数上。衡量成功的指标影响了哪些类型的解决方案将被提供。
Finally, the field of educational entrepreneurship needs to take a hard look in the mirror and realize it has suffered from its insularity. As New Schools Venture Fund President Stacey Childress points out in her chapter in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, Teach For America (TFA) alumni were key founders of nearly one in five education ventures launched in the past 20 years.[2] That data point reflects the larger reality that educational entrepreneurs are likely to share common formative experiences and worldviews. This has produced a community that has tended to share certain assumptions (such as the importance of reading and math tests) and embrace a certain set of policies (such as test-based teacher evaluation and charter schooling).
最后，教育行业创投这一领域自身需要被仔细审视，并意识到该领域已经被其孤立性深深伤害。教育行业创投会议上，新学校风险基金的主席Stacey Childress在其专题演讲中指出，过去20年发起的教育业风险投资中，五分之一的创业公司由“为美国而教书”(TFA)组织的前成员作为关键创始人。[2]这数据反映出一个更广泛的现实：教育业创业者很可能有着共同的成长经历或世界观。这就创造了一个倾向于分享特定假设的共同体（例如阅读和数学的重要性），并且支持某特定的政策集（如基于统考测试的教师评估和特许学校教学）。
This insularity has contributed to a simmering tension in several cities with an abundance of entrepreneurial activity and new school formation, such as Detroit, Newark, and New Orleans. Activists, politicians, and community members charge that these ventures are being done to marginalized communities, not with them. Part of this tension is stoked by conflating entrepreneurship and “education reform” more generally (a phenomenon that we will tackle momentarily), but another comes from a genuine fear of snake-oil salesmen and carpetbaggers with agendas of their own.
这种偏狭性在几个创业活动和新式学校丰富的城市导致了沸腾的矛盾，如底特律，纽瓦克和新奥尔良。活动家、政客和社区成员指责这些创业公司让社区边缘化，而不是和社区相伴。更广泛的来说，把创业和“教育改革”结合起来的尝试，激化了部分矛盾（这现象我们很快会谈到）。而另外的激化则来自于对于兜售冒牌货的奸商和有着自己小盘算、想趁机渔利的外来政客的真实恐惧。
Two Dynamics That Will Shape the Next Two Decades of Educational Entrepreneurship
未来20年塑造教育行业创投的两个机制
The “what” of educational entrepreneurship is exciting. The “how” is a lot tougher. Over the next two decades, educational entrepreneurs will encounter a funding community, a policy environment, and a changing educational landscape that will profoundly affect the types of ventures they are able to create and the ability of those ventures to scale, grow, and meet children’s needs. How these dynamics will play out remains to be seen. In fact, there are several key dynamics in educational entrepreneurship that are worth exploring.
教育行业创投的概念是令人激动的。而其实现途径则要困难多了。在接下来二十年，教育业的创业者会受到融资界、政策环境、变化的教育界等因素的冲击。这些因素会深刻影响风险投资以及这些风险投资发起、壮大和满足孩子需求的能力。这些机制如何运作还有待观察。事实上，教育创业有几个关键机制值得探索。
The first dynamic is the tension between big bets and small bets. Because the outcomes of new ventures are uncertain, it makes sense to make a large number of small bets and winnow them over time. This reduces risk for everyone involved and accelerates the rate at which new models can be tried. But this approach flies in the face of much of the thinking that has characterized educational innovation and entrepreneurship during the past decade. Philanthropists and investors have been eager to find “what works” and invest in scaling it up. Proponents of the scale-up approach point to the need nationwide, the slow pace of change, and the messiness of a small-bet strategy.
第一个机制是大额投资和小额投资之间的张力。因为新的风险投资的结果不确定，下很多的小赌注然后再不断筛选它们是有道理的。这减少了每个人涉及的风险，加速了尝试新模式的速率。但是过去十年，教育行业创新、创业的特色思维很大程度上与这一思路相悖。慈善家和投资者渴望发现可行的方案，并加大投资。加大投资这一做法的支持者，提到了全国性的需求、变革的慢节奏以及小赌注方案无序混乱等理由。
Fundamentally, this tension highlights the competing visions of educational improvement in America today. Some see experimentation as eventually converging on a single or small number of “best” models, practices, or programs that should ultimately be adopted everywhere. Others see a far more fluid world, with “best” answers being highly contingent and context dependent. This is not a simple story of entrepreneurs versus bureaucrats, but of good-faith disagreements on the approaches most likely to serve the needs of schools and schooling.
基本上，这种张力突显了在今日的美国教育改进中的竞争理念。有些人把实验看作是最终会收敛的过程。他们认为最后发现的一个或少数几个最优模式、做法或项目应当被用于全国。另一些人则看到一个更加多变的世界，最优答案是高度机缘性且情境依赖的。这不是一个企业家和官僚相争的简单故事，而是一个关于最大可能有助于学校和教学的需要的方法上的善意争执。
The second dynamic—a tension that actually poses a serious risk to current and future entrepreneurial ventures—is the simultaneous desire for experimentation and uniformly positive results. In the world of educational entrepreneurship, there are calls for experimentation, the need to “think outside the box,” and a need to “fundamentally change” American schools. However, in the next breath, the same leaders and advocates who have preached the Innovation Gospel insist on “no excuses” accountability systems aiming for 100 percent proficiency and charter-authorizing systems that require all schools and offerings to prioritize performance on state tests. While it is hypothetically possible to square this circle, the reality is that educational entrepreneurs are whipsawed between an appetite for risk-taking and a strong aversion to it.
第二种机制——实际上给现在和未来的创业风投带来了严重风险——即同时渴望实验和始终如一的正面结果。在教育业创投的世界，有对实验的呼唤，有“跳出盒子思考”的需求，也有对美国学校进行“根本变革”的需求。但同时，同样这些鼓吹创新思维福音的领袖和支持者坚持毫不妥协的系统可靠性，一定要向100%的师资能力水平看齐，而特许学校系统的学校和方案都必须优先考虑州统考的表现。两者兼顾在假想中是可能的，但现实中，教育业创投者则卡在冒险冲动和强烈的风险厌恶之间左右为难。
The casual observer can easily imagine that all the expertise and money involved in venture capital and startups must deliver a high rate of success. The truth is quite different. Ninety percent of all new enterprises fail. Failure is most of what new ventures actually do. That Darwinian process of figuring things out or learning from others’ mistakes is essential to entrepreneurial success.
漫不经心的观察者很容易觉得：风险资本和创业公司配置了所有这些专家技能和资金，回报率一定很高。真相则十分不同。90%的创业公司会失败。失败是大多数新的创投公司实际所做的事。以达尔文过程找到解决方案，或是从别人的错误中学习，对创业公司的成功至关重要。
While the idea of “failure” is disquieting when it comes to children and schools, the value of failure has an important place in classrooms and learning. Students have to feel free to try something new and learn from the experience, whether or not it works out. In American education today, however, there is little tolerance for failure—in classrooms, schools, or the larger landscape.
也许一旦涉及到孩子或者学校，“失败”这个词就让人心神不宁。学生必须有尝试新东西和从经验中学习的自由，无论最后结果成功与否。然而在今日的美国教育领域，失败一点都不被容忍——在教室，学校，或者更大的范围。
This tension is particularly evident in the inclination to support large, established “entrepreneurial” ventures such as TFA or the KIPP Academies. These ventures show track records of success, have proven leaders, and constitute a well-known quantity. At the same time, these are the very things that tend to produce rigidity and routine in any organization.
这种矛盾在支持大型的、发展完备的所谓“创业”风投企业的倾向中显得特别明显，如对TFA或KIPP学院。这些企业有一系列成功的记录，有资质的领袖，规模也广为人知。与此同时，任何这样的组织都倾向产生僵化和陈规。
Organizations such as TFA and KIPP, with more than two decades of experience, records of accomplishment, alumni networks, and stakeholders, are no longer positioned to pioneer wholly new approaches. Rather, they become attractive to funders, policymakers, and education officials as they become less and less the entrepreneurial upstart and more and more a familiar piece of the new education establishment. Rather than think about new ways of preparing teachers, people keep supporting TFA. The consequence is that these organizations are asked to do more and more, stretching their ability to excel while potentially crowding out interest in unproven ventures.
TFA和KIPP这样的组织拥有20多年经验、一系列的成就、会友网络和利益相关者，它们不再站在新方法的先驱位置。因为当它们变得越来越不像创业新星而越来越像人们熟悉的新的教育既得利益集团时，它们对投资人、政策制定者和教育官员都变得具有吸引力。人们一直支持TFA，而不是思考培训教师的新方法。后果就是，这些机构被要求做得更多，拓展了其卓越能力的同时也潜在地挤出了那些尚未被认可的创业公司的利益。
Questions about the importance of entrepreneurship and our tolerance for uncertainty are also central to policy debates over entrepreneur-friendly reforms such as education savings accounts, online learning, and expanded school choice programs. After all, such programs are, by their very nature, unproven.
在就对创投友好的各种改革进行政策辩论，如教育储蓄账户、线上课程和范围更宽的择校程序时，创投的重要性和我们对不确定性的容忍度等问题也居于中心。无论如何，这些项目在其最根本性质上尚未证明自己。
So What Can We Do?
那么我们能做什么呢？
If you, like me, appreciate the entrepreneurial impulse and think that it has something to offer the nation’s education system, then there are steps that can be taken to try and advance the cause.
如果你像我一样欣赏创业精神的脉动并认为这可以给这个国家的教育系统带来些什么，那么有以下策略可以尝试和推进这项事业。
Funders can make small bets, as well as large ones. This can help address both the fear of “failing big” and the sense that so much of education reform today is imposed by outsiders on local communities. Insofar as the groups receiving the majority of funding are outsiders that come to town with their already-baked models, well-intentioned philanthropy can unwittingly exacerbate this divide.
投资者可以进行小额投资，就像大投资一样。这可以帮助处理对“大失败”的恐惧，也缓和了如下事实所带来的隔阂感：今日如此之多的教育改革是本地社区的外来者强制推行的。目前的情况是，当拿到大笔投资的团体是来到镇上的外来人，并带着他们已备好的模式时，好心的慈善可以无意中加剧这一隔阂。
An easy rule of thumb here is for funders to be sure they are devoting some modest percentage of their investment giving—whether that is 5 percent or 20 percent—to new ventures. Fortunately, the resources to support the developing, prototyping, and testing process tend to be only a fraction of what it costs to contribute meaningfully to an established operation.
在这里，对投资人来说一个易于施行的拇指规则是，保证他们把投资的一些小额部分，不管是5%还是20%，捐给新的创新公司。幸运的是，用来支持开发，原型制作，和测试过程的资源往往只是有效地捐助一个已建成项目的所需的一小部分。
Entrepreneurs can start with “tiny schools.” Given varying tolerance for risk and limited resources for experimentation, prospective entrepreneurs should take a good look at New Orleans’ 4.0 Schools and their idea of “tiny schools” (described by 4.0 CEO Matt Candler in his chapter).[3] Creating a new charter school typically entails a dozen or more employees, scores or even hundreds of students, and a budget north of $1 million—meaning that failure is slow, expensive, and enormously disruptive.
创业者可以从“小微学校”开始。给定不同的风险容忍度和有限的实验资源，潜在的企业家可以好好审视一下新奥尔良的4.0学校和他们的“小微学校”理念（引自4.0的首席执行官Matt Candler的专题讲座）[3]。创建一所新的特许学校通常需要十几个或者更多雇员，几十甚至几百个学生，一个一百万美元以上的预算——这意味着失败是缓慢、昂贵和极其麻烦的。
Tiny schools mean that educators with a promising idea can start with 5 to 10 kids on Saturday mornings in a public library or school cafeteria. Such a model allows entrepreneurs to experiment, fail, improve, and iterate over the course of several sessions at very low cost and next to zero risk to students. Just as evolutionary change accelerates when new generations are born more often, so entrepreneurial invention benefits from shortened time horizons and more rapid iteration.
小微学校意味着带着有潜质创意的教育者可以从周六上午在公共图书馆或学校食堂以五到十个孩子的规模开始。这种模式允许创业者以一个很低的费用和对学生来说几乎为零的风险，来对课程环节进行实验、失败、改进和试错。就如同新世代出生得更频繁时进化会加速一样。这样，创业型发明就从更短的周期和更快的试错中获益。
Tiny schools accomplish two central tasks. First, they lower the risk of starting a new school. If the idea bears fruit, it can be ramped up. If the teaching methods do not connect with students, at worst, students have lost a couple of Saturdays. Even if the transition cannot be made to a whole-year model, only a few students are affected.
小微学校完成了两个核心任务。第一，他们降低了创立一个新学校的风险。如果创业有成果，它就可以壮大。如果教学方法对学生不起作用，最差也不过就是学生损失几个星期六。即使这一过渡模式无法变为一个全年模式，也只有几个学生会受影响。
Second, they lower the cost of experimentation. In starting an entire charter school, substantial philanthropic and then public dollars are spent on an experiment. It might work out; it might not. While over time there is reason to believe that this will lead to better schools, it is an expensive way to get there. By bridging the gap between nothing and a whole school, tiny schools create space for rapid iteration and improvement.
第二，它们降低了实验成本。为了启动一个完备的特许学校，大笔慈善和财政资金会被用于一次实验。也许有好结果，也许不成功。虽然一直以来这方法被认为会产生好学校，这仍是一个昂贵的手段。通过跨越从一无所有到完备学校的鸿沟，小微学校为快速试错和改进提供了一个空间。
State leaders can complete a comprehensive regulatory review. Although mundane, rules regarding subjects such as procurement, teacher preparation, new school creation, reporting, facilities, special education, online provision, staff development, and charter school authorization can create huge, counterproductive hurdles to new providers and new models of provision. Although these regulations may have made sense at one time, many no longer do.
州政府的领袖可以完成一个综合性规制评议。虽然平凡庸常，但在采购、教师培训、新学校创设、报告、设施、特殊教育、在线授课、雇员培训和特许学校授权机构等诸方面，各种规制能够产生巨大的消极作用，阻碍新的提供者和新的模式投入使用。虽然这些规制过去可能有意义，但也许现在很多已并非如此了。
State leaders would do well to put together a blue-ribbon panel of experts to scour the state education code for outdated and ill-suited statutes and regulations that may be stymieing entrepreneurial solutions. They can also encourage districts, charter authorizers, and schools of education to conduct similar surveys of their own operations and publicly report on where and what they are streamlining.
州政府的领导们能做得更好的方面，也许是推动组成专家委员会来革新州的教育法规并去除那些过时和适应性差并可能阻碍创投方案的法律和规章。他们也可以鼓励学区、特许学校授权机构和学校对其自身的运作进行类似的调查，并公布它们在何处采取了何种加强效率的措施。
Don’t Go Gaga for Entrepreneurs; Foster Entrepreneurship
不要迷信企业家；要鼓励创业精神
The exciting source of dynamism that created everything from Rover to the next cool app to teach students to read is entrepreneurialism, not any particular entrepreneur or entrepreneurial venture. Exciting new entrants age, grow, and evolve. Some succeed and some fail. Those that succeed, with time and success, tend to become members in good standing of the stodgy old establishment. That is the cycle of entrepreneurial life.
企业家精神而不是某个企业家或者创投企业才是令人振奋的动力源。这动力可以创造从Rover到下一个很酷的手机应用，也可以教学生阅读。令人振奋的参与者变得成熟，成长，并且进化。一些成功了，一些失败了。那些成功者，随着它们的年岁和成功，变成了乏味沉闷的老既得利益集团的一部分。这就是创业生命体的周期。
Entrepreneurship does not guarantee success. If anything, it ensures that there will be failure. Of course, if a half century of school reform has taught us anything, it is that system reform is also sure to produce failure—except on a much larger scale and without the dynamism, inventiveness, and self-correction that characterizes vibrant entrepreneurial sectors.
创业不能保证成功。如果说能保证什么的话，它保证这里将会有失败。当然，如果半个世纪的学校改革教会了我们什么的话，那就是系统改革也当然会产生失败–只不过这失败的规模更大，而且没有活力、激励、自我修正等这些有生命力的创业部门所拥有的特征。
For all its imperfections though, educational entrepreneurship offers a degree of imagination and natural winnowing that seems especially well-suited to the sprawling, diverse, and pluralistic nation that we live in, and it creates an opportunity for truly world-changing products to emerge. Those who believe in the power of the entrepreneurial impulse would do well never to cling to any particular venture. The social good is best served by creating the conditions in which entrepreneurs can thrive if—and only if—they are serving the best interests of students.
虽然有种种不完美，教育行业创投活动提供着某种程度的想象力和自然筛选，这些看来对于我们所生活的这个分散，多元和分权共治的国家特别合适。并且创投创造了机会，使得真正改变世界的产品可能涌现。那些相信创业冲劲的人应该避免一成不变地支持某个特定的创投公司。创造条件，让并且只让那些最能为学生利益服务的企业茁壮成长，才是服务社会的最好途径。
Notes
注记
- Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane, Educational Entrepreneurship Today (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
- Stacy Childress, “From Generation to Generation: Fifteen Years of Education Entrepreneurship,” in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, ed. Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
- Matt Candler, “Go Small or Go Home: Innovation in Schooling,” in Educational Entrepreneurship Today, ed. Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
翻译：Tankman
校对：混乱阈值(@混乱阈值)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou