“Go small or go home,” is the message that Matt Candler has for educators trying new methods of teaching. Some education reformers are so frustrated with the system that they want to scrap it altogether and start anew. Candler’s more pragmatic approach is to change the system with small risks, or “little bets,” as he calls them.
Candler is the founder and CEO of 4.0 Schools, an incubator for education ideas. The nonprofit helps launch education startups, develops new school models, trains teachers and connects entrepreneurs. 4.0 Schools has trained 50,000 students through November 2014, according to its website.
Candler says many interesting companies start with small ideas, such as Khan Academy. “Sal Khan was still a banker and he was just helping his niece,” Candler said Wednesday at an American Enterprise Institute’s research conference on the state of entrepreneurship in education. “That beautiful human interaction, ‘I’m going to solve her problem with some really crappy videos,’ turned into Khan Academy.” Now millions of students across the world learn using Khan Academy every day.
4.0 Schools isn’t trying to find education projects that will rival Khan Academy’s impact at their launch. Candler wants to find projects that help a few students. If a project works then it can be scaled to help a few more students, and so on.
“It’s a missed opportunity that we haven’t started more interesting school models,” Candler said.
To test those models, 4.0 Schools created the Tiny Schools Project. The goal is to reduce risk in school startups by testing their innovative models in small environments before expanding them to stand-alone schools. 4.0 Schools provides guidance and financial support for concept development, then tests promising concepts in pilot programs that last no more than 12 months and include no more than 14 students and two teachers.
Some tiny schools test their methods in traditional district-run buildings, while others test out in charter schools or homeschool collectives.
“We can actually create a very elegant, very walkable path for the next generation of education entrepreneurs, and that’s really what we try to do at 4.0,” Candler said.
In July, education reformers will turn their eyes to Congress as it debates federal solutions to education issues. But perhaps the best education solutions are to be found in tiny schools, where new ideas can be tested before they’re expanded to include more students.
