John Doerr and Herb Kohl prove that career capitalists and pedagogues can still throw eggs. Plus: The quest for the perfect test.
Hire education's key players.
__Within six minutes the conversation exploded. John Doerr, small, tanned, teetering on the line between ruffled and starched, shoved his seat out from the table. On the speakerphone, Herb Kohl, who has the accent of a chestnut vendor and the temperate spirit of a rector, continued to yammer. Doerr was on his feet, practically out the door. He was livid. You might say Doerr is always practically out the door - the consummate multitasker, he's about as keyed up as Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man. But this time he wasn't multitasking. Abruptly returning to his seat, he went for the mute button. Hapless Herb went silent, and Doerr pronounced the situation impossible, the interview done. Would they agree to a cease-fire?
Outside the realm of public officials, John Doerr and Herb Kohl represent two of the most important forces influencing US education. Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist, is the unofficial leader of a growing number of high-powered entrepreneurs crusading to wreak change upon California's public schools. Working with Silicon Valley's young political organization TechNet, he's hammered together a platform that includes national standards, more choice, and a fierce "no, this is not good enough" passion that is hugely popular in a state where quantifiable performance is abysmal (in 1994, a test of fourth-grade reading skills ranked California last among 39 states, tied with Louisiana). When Wired met up with Doerr for this conversation, he and TechNet had just seen their first education victory (and a clear one - swift, elegant, straight to the hoop). These high tech pols had slammed through legislation that lifted the cap on the number of charter schools permitted in the state, simultaneously avoiding a costly ballot initiative. The old guard from Sacramento came down to the Valley to celebrate. Children gathered for the bill signing. It was win-win.
Herb Kohl represents a different force in American education, in some ways starkly opposite. Above all else he is a creature of the classroom. He began his career as a Harlem sixth-grade teacher in 1962 and has taught every grade level from kindergarten to graduate school in the 36 years since. While Doerr was spinning the ingenuity of the growing computer industry into new technologies and cash, Kohl was reading kids' writing assignments on subjects like police brutality and fresh tortillas, alcoholism and Artemis. In the '60s and '70s Kohl was influenced by the theories of open education, rooted, he says, "in ideas of equity and justice emanating from the civil rights movement." In the '80s, his discourse shifted to multiculturalism and diversity. But throughout these years, Kohl's basic principles have remained immune to shifting sociopolitical fetishism. His recent book, The Discipline of Hope, charts decades of struggle to do, over and over, the same difficult thing: to teach kids to read, write, and think - and to create, as he puts it, "a community of learning."
It took a good deal of coaxing to get these two men back in quasi harmony. By the time Doerr agreed to try again, Kohl was lost in phone land. But amid the treacherous issues - educational hot buttons like national testing and vouchers - the brilliant capitalist and the gritty Samaritan discovered some surprisingly concordant beliefs. Kohl, who has served on the board of Atari, developed software, and now works for George Soros at the Open Society Institute, was quite capable of lauding the Net and disparaging Microsoft with the best of them. Doerr, with the same awesome vigor that yielded him the smartest financing deals in the business, has learned more about the subject of education than most of us ever will.
Eventually, the financier and the teacher put their heads together.__
Wired: The classroom, the corporation - in the US, one is seen as the site of desperation and failure, the other as the site of enthusiasm and success. What's the truth?
Doerr: I've met teachers in both rich and poor schools who are incredibly passionate and energized by their mission despite the bureaucracy that comes with large systems. California has a huge system: 8,000 schools with a 1,700-page code of laws that every teacher, every principal must obey while trying to infuse the joy of life-long learning in our kids. The spirit and commitment of teachers is one of the best things our schools have going for them. At the same time, we've all seen large companies where work is mind-numbing and the people aren't energized, and we've seen entrepreneurial ventures where everyone goes all out. What's similar about the great schools and the great companies is the first pronoun referring to the institution. Is it "I" and "me"? Or is it "we"? Do "we" the teachers and parents own "our" school? Do the workers own the company, or does it belong to management and shareholders? Does the school belong to state authorities in Sacramento or does it belong to the community of San Carlos? Kohl: I've done some work with Microsoft. It burns out workers the way schools burn out students and teachers. It's a successful company that's unsuccessful on the human level.
Doerr: Unsustainable.
Wired: Are there schools, Herb, where the pronoun is "we"?
Kohl: Absolutely. I can name you dozens of schools in New York that have been started from scratch within the public school system and are succeeding academically, that have begun to produce kids who meet the Regents exam qualifications for graduation, and that are based on very humane principles. One of the criteria for effective education that people use a lot now is whether all of the adults in a school can know the names of all the kids; if not, the school is too big to learn. There is a real attempt to identify the human scale for schools, and the number seems to be 350 to 400 kids in a high school.
Wired: Shouldn't we be able to scale up a good thing?
Doerr: Scaling up costs real money. Last year in California we enacted a law that said in grades K-3 class sizes would be 20, a substantial reduction from what had been the statewide average of about 30. We scrambled to hire teachers who were not credentialed. We crammed thousands of portable classrooms into crowded schoolyards. Research is showing that smaller schools and smaller class size means better educational outcomes. To lower class size in California beyond grade 3, say, through grade 8, will cost an additional US$4 billion each year. If 40 percent of our 8-year-olds can't read, if the pronoun isn't "we," if the parents, teachers, administrators don't own that school, if we won't invest in smaller schools and class sizes then ... we're going nowhere.
Wired: If the solutions are so clear, then why can't we get there?
Kohl: One of the reasons that a lot of people don't know how to get out of the binds they're in is that they have never seen a good school. They haven't gone to one, their parents haven't gone to one, they haven't seen one. We have to begin to communicate to people images of schools that work - schools like the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, a public high school in Brooklyn, or The Fratney School in Milwaukee, also public. It's not so much a matter of scaling up, it's more like providing yeast for each community. Doerr: Herb is right. First, every community should have at least one model public school that works really well. That's why Reed Hastings, Don Shalvey, Floyd Kvamme, and TechNet worked so hard to raise California's limits on charter public schools: so every community could have just one, at least one, charter public school close by. Charter schools can be models. We'll never have - and we don't want - all charter public schools. What we want is more parents saying, "I want that for my kid."
Second, once we've got model schools, then to scale up we engage the media. Consider how much ink our newspapers devote to restaurant and movie reviews. Shouldn't local papers review our schools? Both successes and failures?
Kohl: Does your law allow charter schools to break union contracts, set their own salary scales, and hire teachers for $7 an hour?
Doerr: No. In point of fact, this law says that charter public schools going forward can collectively bargain on a site-by-site basis, which is a really important compromise. I'll defend forever anybody's right to collective bargaining. The real thing that the California bill did was take the caps off charter public schools. Until now the state was limited to 100, though the board of education had routinely waived the limit; we'd gotten to 250 charter public schools in a state with 8,000 schools.
Wired: What's your position on charter schools, Herb?
Kohl: I have extreme anxiety over charter schools being a way to downgrade rather than upgrade the teaching profession. In the state of Mississippi, for example, charter schools basically mean white-citizenship schools. To have a charter school you have to have some capital in order to build a facility, in order to afford insurance. Any charter-school movement that doesn't provide for capital investment for the poor in charter schools of their own is in a sense another force for inequity. Doerr: Right. And our bill spoke directly to that by mandating that if there were buildings available, a school district had to make them available at no charge to a charter that was being formed -
Kohl: But if there are none available?
Doerr: And if there are none available, the bill does not provide -
Kohl: - that's what I'm saying.
Doerr: Bear with me for a moment: In California, to pass a local school bond right now requires a two-thirds vote. We're one of only six states in the country with that high a threshold. And we have a lot more work to do to be sure.
Kohl: Well, you have to consider the unintended consequences of passing a charter bill. When you say we have a lot more work to do, it's like saying, "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." The whole question comes down to whether people who've been able to afford their buildings and have gotten charter schools for their communities will be passionately interested in whether East Los Angeles can afford 10 charter schools or whether the Fillmore District in San Francisco can afford them.
Wired: OK, another question that might be inflammatory: national standards. John, your position is testing at 8 years old and 12 years old - math and reading.
Doerr: That is a proposal TechNet members think works - national standards in reading and math that are adopted on a voluntary basis, state by state. We don't want the federal government dictating this. Already we have testing and comparisons on a sampling basis. Honestly, we're not testing experts. Many technology executives would be happy if we just adopted the Iowa basic skills test across the country. Today America's testing for reading and math is a hodgepodge, a patchwork quilt. Kohl: I think those priorities are all wrong. Without having a kind of diversification of learning, without respecting the student as opposed to the standards imposed by an industry that wants to produce workers - that's like saying you're educating children for the benefit of the government or for the benefit of the corporate structure.
Wired: If you don't impose standards, how do you measure competence?
Kohl: Oh, I'm not against standards. I think there are many different ways to measure competence. I can measure your competence by finding out what kind of books you read, whether you can read them or not. Are they simple books? Are they complicated? Any teacher who's been with a kid all year and doesn't know what books the kid was able to read isn't worth being in their job. If I came from Brownsville and went to Sunnyvale and my teacher was told that I read at the 6.2 grade level - what does that tell you? I am opposed to the kind of competitive testing that in some shallow way pits kids against each other, and often pits kids against themselves. I'm opposed to schools being driven by tests and being driven by standards rather than by the quality and nature of learning and the quality and nature of thinking.
Doerr: Both Jim Barksdale and Andy Grove have said, "If you don't measure it, if you are not willing to measure it, it is either not real or it doesn't matter." I agree. In California, until last year, we didn't have the political will to administer even a single statewide test on reading and on math.
Already as a country, we've agreed to statistically sample every state every year to see how we compare state by state. If we care at the state level, shouldn't we care at the kid level? And at the teacher level? And at the classroom level? I care, as a parent and as a taxpayer, even more than I do as a potential employer. Every kid and every parent has the right to know how they are doing against high national standards in reading and math. We don't need to get into the dangerous political territory of geography or social studies. Let's just tackle being able to read and being able to do math. Those tests ought to be available for high national standards. Then every state, state by state, ought to decide if they want to adopt them.
Kohl: If you think that's going to lead to literacy, you have to be crazy. What you get from that are kids who can take tests, and even when they succeed, they're not literate. What you're doing is driving what should be a qualitative system and forcing quantitative standards on it. Internationally, by the way - and I've traveled a bit and worked with a lot of people across the world - other countries think we are totally crazy with this. They think that testing of the sort that is done in the United States is inimical to quality education. Germany, Japan - testing doesn't begin until the sixth or seventh grade. They assume that if you read to kids, provide them with books, and give them the opportunities to read, they'll learn.
Doerr: Well, Herb, this is not a question of either/or, but of and/also. We can have an incredibly customized, caring, quality involvement in the day-in and day-out education of our kids, yet also have a high-stakes test of how third- or fourth-graders are reading. If they are not reading, let's provide remediation or summer school so that they are not socially promoted for years without having learned to read. Similarly, when they are 12 years old let us test their math skills. We can agree on what it means to be able to read at grade level, to do algebra at grade level. Failure to do that - the failure to have accountability to high standards - is the worst kind of failure we could condemn our kids to.
Kohl: I think the imposition of standards on all schools is the worst kind of arrogance that we can possibly have.
Doerr: I didn't say imposed. Voluntarily adopted.
Kohl: No, no, if the state voluntarily adopts tests, then they are imposed on everybody in the state. I'm sorry, they are imposed on communities.
Let me ask you this: Would you agree that no standards legislation should be passed until the average daily expenditure per student in every single state is exactly the same as the richest public school expenditure in that state?
Doerr: No.
Kohl: Well, that is all then. What you have done is created a situation of inequity. If in Indiana I am spending $11,500 a year to educate children in the public schools and in north Minneapolis I am spending $6,000 and you impose the same standards there, you are supporting the notion that any equal opportunity to learn should be ignored; we should force those with less opportunity to do the same things that those who have the occasion, the riches, and the support do. That is discriminatory.
Doerr: You're looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Money matters, but you're focused on inputs like money, instead of the outputs, namely quality of education and results. This issue is crystal clear for technology executives. A big, broad bipartisan coalition of 300 executives - including the CEOs of Cisco and 3Com, Compaq and Dell, Microsoft and Netscape, IBM and Sun, Intel and AMD - have called for uniform, high national standards in reading and math, to be voluntarily adopted state by state. Without adding Herb's equal-spending mandate. Let's leave the "how" of funding equality to the states and agree on "what" results matter.
Wired: All through the rhetoric of education you hear the promise that if business and education work together they can do great things. But what if they have trouble even talking to each other? What does business want to say to educators, John?
Doerr: While I'm one of many technology executives who cares deeply about public education, I know that businessmen don't have the answers. We can and should work with parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians to find solutions to the problems plaguing public schools. It's our civic duty and deeply in our self-interest. So, what I want from schools is simply all parents working more with teachers. Since I've started learning about public education, I've tried to visit a public school every three weeks. I've seen poor schools that work and rich schools - with lots of PCs and networking - that don't work; the kids don't learn. Whether or not a school works depends on whether the on-site teachers, administrators, kids, and parents feel a sense of ownership; when they're all involved, then the school works. It's an old saw, but the child's first and foremost teacher is the parent.
While there's no single silver bullet, this isn't rocket science. We know what makes schools work: Smaller class size. Smaller schools. Longer school days. More time on task. More accountability. More parental involvement. Teachers with both the incentive and the time to be prepared. And the leadership of passionate principals.
We need choice and competition within the public school system - as I learn about public education I've found "competition" is a loaded word. The idea of charter public schools isn't merely to get 100 more charter public schools in California every year. Instead, the success of charter public schools - and they won't all succeed - should cause the parents, kids, and teachers in regular public schools to demand, "Yes, we want that for our kids, too."
Wired: And Herb, what is it you want from the John Doerrs and the -
Doerr: - John Chamberses and Kim Poleses - Kohl: - or, more recently, we've been working with John Gage, for example. What I think the educational community would like is to have the expertise, the knowledge, the technical smarts, the sense of innovation, the sense of creativity that has emerged from the business sector to be really vastly available to the least-served children.
Doerr: And I agree entirely with Herb that we've got to pay attention not to the 20 percent of our public schools that are working really, really well or the other 20 percent that are working OK, but to the remainder of our public schools that are not working. I think the neediest are left behind.
Wired: I assume we agree that just putting computers in the schools is not a panacea, but has either of you seen a brilliant teacher or program that actually uses computers to help kids learn?
Doerr: Not to read.
Wired: So you'd teach kids to read without computers?
Doerr: I've seen several programs - not computer programs - but research-based, whole school reform programs that help all kids learn to read. My favorite was developed by two nonprofit education entrepreneurs, Bob Slavin and Nancy Madden, at Johns Hopkins. They aptly call it Success For All (www.successforall.com/). It costs only $50,000 to introduce to a school of 500 kids. They'll deploy it if 80 percent of a school's teachers vote to adopt it. For 90 minutes every day, they turn the whole school day upside down, grouping kids by ability, not grade, and focus on the most important goal: reading. It is working today in more than 1,150 schools across the country. It's not for every school, but I estimate we need it in 10,000 to 15,000 schools.
Wired: One last question. Summer vacation is an anachronism, based on an agrarian view of the calendar. It is not exactly forward-looking. Should we abolish it? Is it still relevant?
Kohl: It is to the kids. Doerr: The agrarian view of the calendar is outdated, but that doesn't mean summer vacations are a waste. For lucky families, summer is a precious time of play, exploration, bonding, and growing together.
Kohl: If we want to really change the schools, we should make summer vacation into summer camp and put money into programs where kids can have fun doing music and art and computers. We should say, OK, here's a time to learn, free of adult evaluation; no tests allowed; no outcomes - we're not even going to look at what you've learned - the only thing you have to do is have a civil, loving community for the summer.
Doerr: I wouldn't mandate camp or any program other than remediation - optionally in summer school - for the kids who aren't learning to read or do math.
Kohl: I grew up in the Bronx and went to summer camp; all I did was musical theater and athletics, arts and crafts, singing, dance, math, biology - that was the real learning of my year. August 30, we came home - so how did Herbert do? He was a good boy. Period. Did you enjoy yourself? Yes. Period.
Doerr: Herb blossomed at summer camp. I learned a lot at my first summer job serving hamburgers at Burger Chef. Yes, there's more to life than reading and math.
The quest for the perfect test
Final Exam
"The central problem of test theory," the Psychometric Society noted in 1961, is "the relation between the ability of the individual and his score on the test." Like alchemists in search of the philosophers' stone, researchers have tried to close the gap between the report-card grade and "true knowledge." History has broken test theorists into two camps: left brainers, who try to quantify students' analytical skills, and right brainers, who hope to assess creativity and unique real-world abilities. In the near future, though, right-brain/left-brain dichotomies may be transcended by exams that measure the cognitive processes and give rise to all kinds of thinking.
1905 Alfred Binet, the father of assessment, begins creating intelligence quotient (IQ) tests to determine "mental age." Math, memory, and vocabulary problems are tailored for specific age groups.
1917 The first standardized mental tests, which emphasize math and language skills, are developed for the military by academics Ben Wood and Carl Brigham.
1926 Eight thousand high school students take the first edition of the multiple-choice Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is hand-scored by clerks.
1930s Ben Wood and IBM founder Thomas Watson try to develop a machine that can score thousands of standardized tests. Wood envisions an education system in which students advance solely on the basis of demonstrable skills.
1933 Reynold Johnson builds a machine to score standardized tests with an electrical conductor that detects pencil markings. He soon sells the technology to IBM.
1948 The Educational Testing Service is founded in Princeton, New Jersey. Company president Henry Chauncey believes ETS's tests will be used to develop "a census of the population" that can come in handy to fulfill workforce staffing needs.
1968 Frederic Lord and Melvin Novick publish Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores, steering a generation of test developers toward "probability-based inferences." Based on students' driving patterns, the system can calculate how likely they are to cause accidents.
1983 Harvard cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner introduces the theory of "multiple intelligences," adding five categories of intelligence - musical, bodily kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal - to the linguistic and mathematical skills measured by traditional exams. Gardner's method assesses, for instance, a child's ability to interpret music or recognize a familiar face.
1984 Computerized adaptive-testing technology arrives with the commercial release of MicroCAT - test-development software created for the US Marine Corps. Tailoring itself to a student's abilities, a CAT test evaluates reading, grammar, and math skills with fewer questions than traditional exams.
1991 Grant Wiggins, cofounder of the Center on Learning Assessment and School Structure, develops "authentic testing," which asks subjects to tackle relatively long-term projects. Instead of taking a standardized test, for example, a student might be asked to write a newspaper article.
1992 Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg introduces the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test. Using methods that put creative and street-smart intelligence on a par with analytical skills, teachers measure a student's reasoning in real-world situations, such as following a train schedule.
1995 ETS and the US Air Force report on their collaboration to create HyDrive, a probability-based multimedia testing system that monitors students as they troubleshoot an aircraft hydraulic system. Tests allow students to deduce the effectiveness of their work, decisions, and reasoning.
1998 Compass, an adaptive-testing program, is linked with Addison Wesley Longman textbooks to create individual study plans for students. Test results are used to recommend specific problems to solve or chapters to read.
1999 ETS expects testing groups to begin using e-rater, an automated essay-scoring system. Basing scores on a training set of manually graded essays, e-rater focuses on syntax, vocabulary, and organization.
2000 Self-assessment may come to the classroom if states employ task-oriented curricula like ThinkerTools, under review by the US Department of Education. Students deconstruct their own thought processes - considering, for example, whether their models of Newtonian force were developed through careful reasoning or through creative insight.
2005 UCLA immunologist Ron Stevens believes that schools nationwide may adopt neural-net-based exams like his Immex system, which can be used to compare students' problem-solving skills against a model of expert research techniques.
2010 Lockheed Martin suggests that schools could adapt military technology, like the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer, for classroom use. Interactive software will simulate work environments, geographical locations, or artistic settings like the symphony for real-time evaluation.
2070 The ultimate cheatsheet: Testing is abolished altogether as visionaries on both sides of the fence turn to the "brain chip," uploading information on the fly. Fused with tissue in the brain at birth, the chip eliminates the need to measure what you know. Instead, the fundamental assessment becomes, What can you do with the knowledge you own?
Key players in the changing business of education.
Cash Course
The business of education is booming. With more than US$600 billion in public and private money up for grabs each year, the education market is crowded with innovators trying to cash in. While K-12 remains the biggest sector - worth $310 billion this year - the recent emphasis on lifelong learning is creating new niches and expanding old ones. These are some of the more interesting and significant players in the evolving education marketplace.
SATELLITE $151.4 million Source: Simba Information
TUTORING $37.5 billion Source: Salomon Smith Barney
BOOKS $7.4 billion Source: Simba Information
ADMIN $1 billion Source: Salomon Smith Barney
SOFTWARE $683.1 million Source: Simba Information
INTERNET $63.8 million Source: Simba Information
- MaMaMedia
- DigitalThink
- PensarÉ
- MindQ Publishing
- Knowledge Universe
TRAINING $59 billion Source: Montgomery Securities
- DigitalThink
- PensarÉ
- [Productivity Point International 2. MindQ Publishing3. Knowledge University
4. TEC Worldwide](https://more-deals.info/wired/archive/6.09/#ppi)%3C/li%3E%3C/ul%3E%3Cp class="paywall">TOYS Less than $1 billion Source: Salomon Smith Barney
TELEVISION Not available
MindQ Publishing
Java academy
Used in 223 corporations
MindQ must be doing something right - its corporate clients have included Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Asymetrix, and Borland. Its highly interactive Developer Training for Java modules teach Java programming skills and let developers learn at their own pace. Knowledge UniverseChannel One
Commercials in class
8.1 million students
For the privilege of showing ads to kids, Channel One provides satellite links, TVs, and 12-minute newscasts. A recent study found that Channel One students were more likely than most to agree that they want what they see advertised and that designer labels are important.
Computer Curriculum Corporation
Software leviathan
2 million students
The largest K-12 software provider, CCC's 50 titles allow teachers to monitor individual needs and track class progress. The company's latest offering, EdMAP, is a collaborative system for managing school lesson plans.
Addison Wesley Longman/Simon & Schuster
Pearson
Publishing powerhouse
$3.8 billion in 1997 sales
If bigger is better, Pearson is as good as it gets. The British company, which also owns the Financial Times and Penguin Books, acquired Simon & Schuster's education divisions from Viacom for $3.6 billion. That acquisition, in combination with its own Addison Wesley Longman, makes Pearson the world's biggest educational publisher.
Addison Wesley Longman/Simon & Schuster
Big bucks from books
$1.8 billion combined 1997 revenues
Although Pearson has not yet announced a name for its combined educational publishing businesses, the new company's imprints include Silver Burdett Ginn, Prentice Hall School, and Scott Foresman.
Pearson
Knowledge Universe
Branding blitz
Private company; annual revenues exceed $1 billion
Knowledge Universe wants to become a cradle-to-grave educational brand. Cofounded by Oracle bossLarry Ellison and former junk-bond king Michael Milken, KU views the education market - from preschool to retirees - as a continuum. On an acquisition rampage, Knowledge Universe has picked up a range of companies estimated to be worth $4 to $6 billion.
Children's Discovery Centers of America
Wholesome kiddie care
20,000 students
Children's Discovery Centers focus on "whole child" development, emphasizing cognitive, social, physical, and creative development. They also teach language skills and logical thinking. Knowledge Universe
Knowledge University
Virtual vo-tech
Not yet launched
The exact launch date is still hush-hush, but Knowledge University will be an online post-secondary school offering "degree, certificate, and continuing-education programs to corporations and individuals." Distance learning will be an essential part of the company's strategy. Knowledge Universe
TEC Worldwide
Schooling the boss
5,000 member CEOs
TEC (The Executive Committee) helps CEOs work more effectively by making it less lonely at the top. The company organizes 340 peer advisory groups nationwide, through which members can exchange ideas, war stories, and management strategies. Knowledge Universe
LeapFrog
Phonics fun
$50 million projected
1998 retail sales
Designed with help from Stanford education professor Robert Calfee, LeapFrog's toys show children the shapes, sounds, and pronunciation of letters and words. LeapFrog's newest toy, Hug & Learn Little Leap, teaches reading, phonics, and manners. Knowledge Universe
Blue's clues
Kermit crusher
5 million weekly viewers
Despite cable's limited reach, Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues out-Nielsens both Barney and Sesame Street. The show teaches cooperation, cause and effect, and problem solving. Best of all, Blue's Clues kids outperform nonviewers in standardized tests.
PensarÉ
MUDs for management
16,000 users
Pensaré's most innovative courses co-opt an addictive gaming genre - MUDs - for corporate role-playing. Employees are trained while they create usable work, and Pensaré catalogs the knowledge they acquire in an "institutional memory" database.
Productivity Point International
Teaching infotech
1 million students
PPI recommends the software needed to bring a company into the information age, then teaches employees how to use it. Training happens at one of PPI's 133 centers, or through distance-learning programs.
MaMaMedia
Portal for pupils
90,000 registered users
MaMaMedia aims to be the portal of choice for children under 12. To that end it focuses on the three Xs: eXploration, eXpression, and eXchange. Started by MIT Media Lab grads, MaMaMedia's site features parent-approved content and links.
DigitalThink
Cyber school
30,000 students
More focused on corporate training than continuing-ed programs like the University of Phoenix, DigitalThink's Web-based courses range from computer programming to wine appreciation. The company offers interactive quizzes, live chat sessions, and personal tutoring via email.
Lucas Learning
Yoda for young minds
Launching fall 1998
Shamelessly leveraging the Star Wars brand to reach 10- to 14-year-olds, Lucas Learning's first title, Star Wars DroidWorks, puts students on the floor of a robot factory to teach them the principles of energy, light, magnetism, motion, and, of course, force.
The Learning Company & Brøderbund
Myst meets MayaQuest
20 million registered users
The education sector is not immune to mergermania, as this summer marriage proved. Brøderbund's edutainment line - including Carmen San Diego, Riven, and Myst - combined with TLC learning products such as MayaQuest make this a duo to watch.
The Edison Project
Chain of controversy
23,000 students
Founded by Chris Whittle - creator of Channel One - the Edison Project hopes to make a profit running K-12 public schools. Progress has lagged behind ambitious goals, but Edison offers a Technology as a Second Language curriculum, longer school days, and customized assessment.
Score!
Personal coaching
20,000 students
Owned by test-prep guru Kaplan Educational Centers, Score! is based on a sports model that includes academic coaches, computer-based tutoring, and learning through positive experiences. Los Angeles selected Score! to run programs at 25 public schools.
Educational Management Group
Virtual voyages
Used in 4,200 schools
EMG feasts on K-12 tech budgets: For about $30,000, it sets schools up with a live, televised satellite link to globe-trotting camera crews. Students interact with the crews through classroom speakerphones.
Addison Wesley Longman/Simon & Schuster
