John Arnold: belief

Transcript context

…There’s a common impression — both for start-ups and for philanthropy — that doing much with K–12 education or preschool just hasn’t mattered that much or hasn’t succeeded that much. Do you agree or disagree? I agree. I think the ed reform movement has been, as a whole, a significant disappointment. I think there have been isolated pockets of excellence. It’s been very difficult to learn how to scale that. I think that’s largely true of many social programs or many programs that are delivered by people to people, that you can find a single site that works extraordinarily well because they have a fantastic leader, and that leader might be able to open up a few more sites. But then, when you start to scale it to 50 sites, and start to go across the nation, it all mean reverts back to what the whole system is providing. That said, I do think there’s a lot of value in changing the incentives of the system and having the rewards and natural growth cycles and evolutionary components that are so strong and have been beneficial in the business world also go to the K–12 world. What I mean is that the service providers that are good and are delivering good results — both for parents and for kids — should grow faster than ones that aren’t. Right now, it’s kind of the same. I think there’s a real question about whether government can be both the regulator and the service provider of the same program, which is what essentially independent school districts are today. I think the natural role of government is to be the regulator, and that they should be regulating third-party nonprofit providers. That model is what we support and has been rolling out across the nation. I think that the evidence is clear that it’s a better system, but it’s not delivering transformational results. When it comes to philanthropy, what’s something important you’ve learned from your wife, Laura?…

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