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ADVANCING
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
EDUCATION
A Report of the
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
ADVANCING
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
A Report of the
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
Conference Report 5
CONTENTS
About the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group ........................................................... 6
YESG Panel Members ........................................................................................................8
FOREWORD .................................................................................................................... 11
ADVANCING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
Proceedings: An Introduction ..........................................................................................15
Entrepreneurship Education: A Critical Need .................................................................17
Developing a Strategy:
Prioritizing Actions, Roles, and Responsibilities ............................................................25
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................29
AFTERWORD ..................................................................................................................35
APPENDIX
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................39
Perspectives: Entrepreneurship Training
Can Empower Students Being Left Behind ......................................................................40
Endnotes ...........................................................................................................................42
This report has been funded by grants from E*TRADE Financial, in partnership with the
Aspen Institute and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and
through the support of the panel member institutions of the Youth Entrepreneurship Strat-
egy Group. The opinions and analyses presented in this paper are solely those of the Youth
Entrepreneurship Strategy Group. Unless attributed to a particular individual, none of the
comments or ideas contained in this report should be taken as embodying the views or car-
rying the endorsement of any particular participant at the conference.
Copyright ©2008 by The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute
One Dupont Circle, NW
Washington, DC 20036-1133
Published in the United States of America
in 2008 by the Aspen Institute
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 0-89843-485-8
Pub: 08/004
About the
Youth Entrepreneurship
Strategy Group
Our vision is to ensure that each graduate from a high school serving a
low-income community has educational opportunities to explore his or her
entrepreneurial potential.
Our mission to recruit, convene, and mobilize the Youth Entrepreneurship
Strategy Group to develop a comprehensive strategy and tactical plan by May
2009 to fulfll our vision.
Through a series of convenings and ongoing rigorous dialogues, YESG will:
• explore the promise of, and obstacles to, implementing youth entrepreneurship educa-
tion nationwide, with special attention to the 9th and 10th grade levels—a time when
many students are at highest risk for disengaging from school and dropping out;
• develop and implement a concrete, targeted strategy to advance the teaching of
entrepreneurship in the nation’s schools;
• prompt public discussion and action on teaching entrepreneurship in the
nation’s schools.
Outcome
We seek to develop a systemic initiative to:
• engage young people in school and provide an experiential context to
develop strong academic, entrepreneurial, fnancial and work skills;
• motivate students to be productive and engaged in their communities and the
economy, and develop success-oriented attitudes of innovation, initiative,
intelligent creativity, risk-taking, collaboration, opportunity recognition,
and pursuit.
Overall, we are committed to creating new policies and recommendations to
infuse public education with entrepreneurial energy and proven practice—
transforming the system itself and preparing the next generation of entrepreneur-
ial leaders for America.
Our efforts will have an important and sustainable impact on public education
in the 21st century, as we continue to pursue a social impact strategy via strategic
learning, advocacy, demonstration and evaluation.
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
STEPHANIE BELL-ROSE
(Chairperson)
Managing Director
Goldman, Sachs, and Co.
and
Founding President
Goldman Sachs Foundation
THOMAS PAYZANT
(Vice-Chairperson)
Professor of Practice
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
and
Former Superintendent
Boston Public Schools
CATHY ASHMORE
Executive Director
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
TIM BRADY
CEO
QuestBridge
MAYNARD BROWN
Lead Faculty Member
Business Management and Entrepreneurship Academy
Crenshaw High School, Los Angeles
GASTON CAPERTON *
Former Governor, West Virginia
and
President
College Board
MITCHELL H. CAPLAN*
CEO and Director
E*TRADE Financial
DANIEL CARDINALI
President
Communities in Schools
GENE CARTER*
Executive Director and CEO
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development
RUDOLPH F. CREW*
Superintendent
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
EDWARD L. DAVIS
Executive Director
DECA, Inc.
WILLIAM H. DONALDSON*
Former Chair
Securities Exchange Commission
and
Chair
Donaldson Enterprises
MICHAEL FEINBERG
Co-Founder
KIPP: Knowledge is Power Program
ANDREW B. HAHN
Professor
The Heller School
Brandeis University
MICHAEL W. HENNESSY
President and CEO
The Coleman Foundation
KELVIN JAMES
Director
Community Investment
E*TRADE Bank
VALORIE J. JOHNSON
Program Director
Youth and Education
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
IRV KATZ
President and CEO
National Collaboration for Youth
and
National Human Services Assembly
MARGUERITE KONDRACKE
President and CEO
America’s Promise: The Alliance for Youth
JACK E. KOSAKOWSKI
Executive Vice President and COO
JA Worldwide®
and
President
Junior Achievement USA
DANE LINN
Director
Education Division
National Governor’s Association
STEVE J. MARIOTTI
Founder and President
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
KIM PATE
Vice President for Strategic Partnerships
and Business Development Administration
CFED
KAREN PITTMAN*
Executive Director
Forum for Youth Investment
JOANNA REES
Founder
Venture Strategy Partners
and
Board Member
National Venture Capital Association
PETER REILING
Executive Vice President
The Aspen Institute
MANUEL J. RIVERA*
Deputy Secretary of Education
State of New York
ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM
Co-Founder and Co-Director
Education Sector
and
Editor
Eduwonk.com
CHARLES ROUSSEL
Director
Disadvantaged Children and Youth Program
The Atlantic Philanthropies
DIANA DAVIS SPENCER
Chair of Grants
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation
MARC SPENCER
Executive Director
Juma Ventures
STEPHEN SPINELLI, JR
President
Philadelphia University
LEIGH TONEY
Executive Director
Carrie P. Meek Entrepreneurial
Education Center
Miami Dade College
JOHN ZITZNER
President and Founder
E CITY
and
Co-Founder
Entrepreneurship Preparatory School
Presenters:
DAN HEATH
Consultant
Duke Corporate Education
MICHELLE MOLLOY
Senior Vice President
Spitfre Strategies
Facilitators:
MICHAEL J. CASLIN, III
Executive Vice President
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
GLORIA SANDIFORD
Program Manager
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
SUNNY SUMTER
Consultant
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
The Aspen Institute
Note: Titles and affliations are as of the date of
the conference
*not in attendance at inaugural meeting
10 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
Advancing Entrepreneurship Education 11
FOREWORD
For most of the 20th century, Americans could take pride in having the best-educated
workforce in the world, but now that is no longer true. In Tough Choices, Tough Times,
the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce reports that over the past
30 years one country after another has surpassed the United States in the percentage
of its population entering the workforce with the equivalent of a high school diploma,
and many more countries are on the verge of doing so. Thirty years ago, the U.S. could
lay claim to having 30 percent of the world’s population of college students. Today that
proportion has fallen substantially, to 14 percent, and continues to decline. American
students place anywhere from the middle of the pack to the bottom in all three continuing
comparative studies of achievement in mathematics, science, and general literacy among
advanced industrial nations.
1
Fifteen years ago, a new standards-based framework for improving K-12 education in
America began to emerge. It was a radical idea. In hopes of addressing the dilemma of
large numbers of students not completing high school, and even those with high school
diplomas fnding themselves challenged to fnd employment that would enable them to
reach a middle-class standard of living, the goal was to have all children reach high levels
of learning that traditionally had been the expectation only for a select group.
In 1994 Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
which was initially passed by Congress and signed by President Johnson in 1965. Since
then, it has become the major legislation incorporating federal policy and funding for
K-12 public education in America. The 1994 legislation, the Improving America’s
Schools Act (IASA), incorporated the standards-based framework that set a new direc-
tion, with a policy focus on subject content standards.
The next reauthorization of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), was passed
with bipartisan support and signed by President Bush in 2002. It has led to a major shift
in the federal government’s expectations for states, school districts and schools, from
compliance for setting standards for curriculum content to accountability for achieving
specifc performance outcomes, based on the achievement of all students regardless of
family income, race, frst language, or disability. NCLB was slated for reauthorization in
2007 but was stalled by the inability of Congress to reach consensus on how to respond to
the widespread public outcry for changes in the legislation—or confront the possibility of
its abolition. It is possible that reauthorization will not occur before a new president takes
offce in 2009, (if then).
In the past decade, state, district, and individual school efforts to improve public edu-
cation for all students have intensifed. Charter schools, intra-district student assignment
plans providing for more parental choice, and more systemic approaches to improving all
schools in school districts have gained more traction. Public interest and support remain
high despite the calls for the improvement of achievement and closing the achievement
gaps. Yet why does the U.S. still lag behind other countries in key knowledge domains
and industries? Why aren’t American children doing better? Why are so many young
people not even completing high school?
12 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Advancing Entrepreneurship Education 13
One in four Hispanic and one in ten African-American students drop out of school,
according to the latest fgures from the National Center for Education Statistics. Students
from low-income families are six times more likely not to fnish high school than those
from high-income families.
2
Dropouts face severe obstacles to employment, livable
wages, and civic participation; instead, many drift into crime and are incarcerated. This
situation means a loss of opportunities for the individuals, substantial cost to the govern-
ment and taxpayers, and a tremendous defcit in productivity for businesses and other
organizations.
Even those students who do graduate may not be well prepared. According to the
National Reading Panel, American companies lose nearly $40 billion annually due to il-
literacy. Further, a survey by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Com-
mittee and the National Career Development Association found that a majority of youths
themselves report feeling unprepared in skills, knowledge, and attitudes upon entering the
workforce. According to the Manhattan Institute, only about 20% of African-American
and Hispanic students graduate college-ready. This skills crisis is becoming more critical
because the American economy is shifting. Not only will the traditional skills of reading,
writing and math be needed to thrive in this economy, but also technological know-how
and profciency in self-direction. With the pace of innovation, many of the jobs our
children will hold don’t even yet exist. More than ever, we need to educate students to be
continual learners.
Economic leaders and education scholars are calling for an increased need for ini-
tiative, self-regulation, critical thinking, and life-long learning skills in the growing
“knowledge economy.” If we want to be competitive in the world economic arena and
to maintain our high standard of living, we must rise to the challenge. As leaders, how
can we develop a systemic initiative to keep young people in school, effectively learning
academic and work skills, motivated to be productive and engaged in their communities
and the larger economy, and developing success-oriented attitudes of initiative, intelligent
risk-taking, collaboration, and opportunity recognition?
The School to Work Opportunities Act and other educational policies suggest that stu-
dents learn more and perform better when tasks and skills demonstrate relevance to their
current and future lives. The question then becomes: what kind of context will provide
such relevance and fulfll our objectives? Evaluation studies of high-school-level youth
entrepreneurship curricula report that students increase their occupational aspirations,
interest in college, reading, and leadership behavior after participation. Six months later,
70 percent of the alumni of a recent evaluation cohort were in college, 63 percent had
jobs, and one in three ran a small business.
Perhaps most critically, the experience of a sense of ownership in their lives was four
times higher for alumni of youth entrepreneurship programs than for students who did not
take such courses. “Ownership” is a powerful concept. The American economy and way
of life are based on it. We own our homes and our cars. We strive to own our jobs, even
if we work for someone else. Thus, we value both fnancial ownership and psychological
ownership—being in control of resources and lives that are of our own choosing. High-
school-level youth entrepreneurship education provides the experience of ownership early
in life.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group believes that preparing today’s students
for success and eventual leadership in the new global marketplace is the most important
responsibility in education today. Providing students with guidance and opportunity at the
most critical junctures along their educational journey can have a most profound impact.
We have assembled top CEOs, non-proft leaders, policy experts, and the foremost
thinkers in the feld of entrepreneurial education to explore the promise and challenge
of implementing youth entrepreneurship education in underserved communities around
the country. Through a series of convenings and rigorous dialogue, we will develop and
implement a concrete, targeted strategy and prompt greater public discussion and action
on teaching entrepreneurship in the nation’s schools.
Thomas Payzant
Vice Chair
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
and
Professor or Practice
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
and
Former Superintendent
Boston Public Schools
Stephanie Bell-Rose
Chair
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy
Group
and
Managing Director
Goldman, Sachs, and Co.
and
Founding President
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Conference Report 15
ADVANCING ENTREPRENEURSHIP
EDUCATION
PROCEEDINGS: AN INTRODUCTION
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group convened its inaugural meeting from
September 26-28, 2007 at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado. A group of dynamic
national leaders from the felds of education, entrepreneurship and business, public policy,
media, and philanthropy met over three days to explore the promise of, and obstacles to,
implementing youth entrepreneurship education in low-income communities nationwide.
In partnership with E*TRADE Financial, the Aspen Institute and the National Foundation
for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) created this educational public policy initiative
to develop a concrete, viable strategy to advance the teaching of entrepreneurship—spe-
cifcally in Title I high schools—and to prompt public discussion and action on teaching
entrepreneurship to increased numbers of high school students from low-income commu-
nities. The conference was moderated by Dr. Jonathan Ortmans, President of the Public
Forum Institute, who has over 15 years of experience and decision making in the public
policy feld.
In her opening remarks, YESG chairperson Stephanie Bell-Rose stated, “In our new,
increasingly global economy, entrepreneurial education will provide the youth of our
country with the skills necessary to prosper in the 21st century. When we offer young
people entrepreneurship education, what we’re really offering them are keys to success,
now and in the future and not just in business—in all felds.” Bell-Rose is Managing
Director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and founding President of The Goldman Sachs Foun-
dation, a $300 million international foundation
whose mission is to promote excellence and in-
novation in education and to improve academic
performance and lifelong productivity for young
people around the world.
Bell-Rose thanked E*TRADE Financial for
its leadership in funding the Youth Entrepreneur-
ship Strategy Group and expressed that it was
an honor for Goldman Sachs Foundation to be a
part of this initiative. Bell-Rose encouraged each
YESG member to be an active force over the coming
months. “We have the potential to make changes that can improve the lives of millions
of young people. During this meeting, it will be our task to begin to create a strategic,
straightforward, and focused effort toward accomplishing that goal.”
The keynote address was delivered by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Since tak-
ing offce, Napolitano’s top priorities have focused on education, the economy, and the
environment. She describes herself as a ferce protector of children and, thus, an ideal
candidate to set the tone for the proceedings. Under her leadership, the state’s 2004 budget
“In our new, increasingly
global economy, entrepreneur-
ial education will provide the
youth of our country with the
skills necessary to prosper in
the 21st century.”
16 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 17
passed without cuts to education, and she continues to focus on early-childhood literacy
programs to prevent high school dropouts. Napolitano is the brains behind the National
Governors Association’s Innovation America program, which is focused on strengthening
the nation’s competitive position in the global economy by improving our capacity to inno-
vate. Innovation America’s goal is to give governors the tools they need to improve math
and science education, better align postsecondary education systems with state economies,
and develop regional innovation strategies.
3
“The Innovation America initiative was cre-
ated because the “United States’ economic growth in the 21st century will be driven by our
nation’s ability to innovate,” said Napolitano. Understanding fully that innovation is a key
skill set of entrepreneurship education, she applauded YESG for its vision and mission.
Napolitano touched on a number of critical topics that impact the American educa-
tion system and her keynote remarks conveyed a sense of urgency concerning the larger
economic and competitive challenges facing our country. She urged the group to give
policymakers a tool kit, similar to Innovation America’s, and to include a specifc plan and
timetable for implimentation.
Student and Teacher Perspectives
The frst YESG session kicked off with testimony by NFTE alumni, Jabious Williams
and Kathryn Morrissey, as well as Maynard Brown, NFTE Certifed Entrepreneurship
Teacher/Junior Achievement Los Angeles Board Member, and Los Angeles Unifed School
District Business Department Head for Crenshaw High School. They each spoke about
how entrepreneurship education had changed their lives. Brown, a nationally recognized
inspirational teacher, opened the morning session on the importance of teaching fnancial
and business literacy. Brown was also a successful entrepreneur and left his business to
dedicate his life to teaching economics at Crenshaw, which had no business course offer-
ings at the time. He spoke of the tireless efforts of Junior Achievement and NFTE volun-
teers in their ongoing commitment to entrepreneurship education. While little institutional
support exists for fnancial and entrepreneurial literacy activities, encouragement from
parents and the community has helped to increase the availability of the programs. Brown
expressed his commitment to changing national education policy to include more fnan-
cial and entrepreneurship literacy courses in the City of Los Angeles, synonymous with
YESG’s vision of nationwide entrepreneurial education.
Jabious Williams launched a clothing design business, SAJA Originals, while still in
high school, and used the profts to surprise his mother with the down payment on their
frst home. Williams spoke with confdence about the business concepts he learned from
a NFTE course offered at Suitland High School, in Maryland. He added that the course
helped him to be more goal-oriented and to form standards applicable to his daily life. His
mentors, Patty Alper and Phil McNeil, “made all the difference for [him] and his family.”
Kathryn Morrissey echoed Williams’ remarks on how the NFTE curriculum taught her
business concepts and helped her to understand math for the frst time. Morrissey has had
learning disabilities through most of her formal-education years. An entrepreneurial edu-
cation course at her local Boys and Girls Club changed how she contextualized learning.
She gained more confdence in her abilities and started succeeding in high school, earning
her place on the honor roll for the remainder of her high school years. From there, she
launched her frst business and is now a junior at Fashion Institute of Technology, in New
York, while working three jobs, including as a Public Policy Development Intern at NFTE.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: A CRITICAL NEED
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which turns six years old this year, was
enacted to ensure that American students learn the math and reading skills the modern
economy requires. But math and reading are not the only abilities today’s students need.
A 2006 Junior Achievement survey found that 71% of middle and high school students
would like to be self-employed at some point, up from 64% in 2004.
In December 2006, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE)
released a critical report calling for a major overhaul of the country’s education system.
Entitled Tough Choices, Tough Times, the report highlights the link between education and
the economy and provides policy recommendations for America’s schools. Thomas Payz-
ant, former superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and vice-chairperson of YESG,
played a signifcant role in the development of the report. Tough Choices, Tough Times
cites that the future of the American economy will hinge largely on our ability to develop
and encourage the creative talents of our workforce. U.S. economic strength in the world
will continue to be the development and innovation of new ideas. Tough Choices, Tough
Times changed my way of thinking about 5, 10, 15, 20 years out,” said Payzant, “and it is
compatible to entrepreneurial education thinking and the globalized world.”
The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent,
most creative and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will
be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not
just for the top professionals and managers, but up and down the length
and breadth of the workforce. Those countries that produce the most im-
portant new products and services can capture a premium in world mar-
kets that will enable them to pay high wages to their citizens.
4
“The standard of living for Americans is at risk unless we prepare students to compete
for jobs which demand high skills to receive high wages,” Payzant continued. “America’s
competitive edge has been creativity and innovation. America will have serious problems
down the road unless our education system prepares students to compete globally with
21st-century skills.”
18 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 19
Cathy Ashmore, Executive Director of the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
cited the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization working state by state, advo-
cating that new skills are necessary for a 21st century education, including:
• global awareness;
• fnancial, economic and business literacy;
• developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace
productivity and career options;
• civic literacy; and
• health and wellness awareness.
5
Ashmore said that entrepreneurs are not born, but rather they “become” through the
experience of their lives. She asked all to consider, “How do we get the elephant of edu-
cation to absorb entrepreneurship as a critical part of what is being delivered to our young
people?” The Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education was formed in 1982 to provide
state-level leadership for entrepreneurship education in ten states, as part of the U.S.
Department of Education’s policy for entrepreneurship education in vocational education
and to build a consortium to help feed “the elephant.” The Consortium currently has 96
member organizations, which operate with a common thought: “That entrepreneurship
education is a life-long learning process”—a whole series of experiences that enable
you to see the opportunities and develop the skills to make yourself responsible for your
future.” In 2004, the Consortium developed the National Content Standards for Entre-
preneurship Education Toolkit,
6
which offers a performance-indicator framework for
developing curriculum for entrepreneurship programs.
Ashmore emphasized that entrepreneurship education is more than writing a busi-
ness plan; it includes fnancial literacy, economics, communications skills, a great many
behaviors that become a process of discovery, and the trying out of business ideas. “In
cross-walking to curriculum standards, we should be talking educational language so that
entrepreneurship education becomes possible in a classroom and more than just a fun
thing to do on Friday,” said Ashmore.
She said that, according to a
2006 Gates Foundation Report,
30% of high school students drop
out before graduation: “The
decision to drop out is linked
closely to the lack of challenge
and connection to real-life expe-
rience faced by students in the
public school system. Eighty-
one percent of students stated that
if school provided opportunities for real-world learning, it would have improved their
chances for graduating from high school.”
“In cross-walking to curriculum stan-
dards, we should be talking educational
language so that entrepreneurship education
becomes possible in a classroom and more
than just a fun thing to do on Friday.”
In 2006, the Perkins Act—the U.S. Department of Education-administered federal
legislation for career and technical education—authorized Entrepreneurship as a fundable
program, encouraging program growth and membership (vocational education is now
called Career Technical Education [CTE]). Also in 2006, the House of Representatives
passed Resolution 699, which states that entrepreneurship education is important to our
schools. The Resolution was the foundation for the frst National Entrepreneurship Week,
in 2007. The Week will be repeated in 2008 and will consist of a nationwide celebration
to build support for the growth of entrepreneurship at all educational levels.
One of the leading organizations engaged in a comprehensive, scalable, proven, and
cost-effective entrepreneurship education model is the National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which is principally engaged in educating young people from
low-income communities. NFTE founder Steve Mariotti, a former business executive and
entrepreneur, started the organization offcially in 1987, after fve years as a public school
teacher in New York City school system, as a drop-out prevention program in the South
Bronx. Mariotti found that his students responded to math and reading when they were
embedded in the “real-life” scenarios of business. He quickly discovered that when low-
income youth were given the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, their innate
“street smarts” could easily develop into business and academic smarts.
In his opening presentation to YESG
members, Mariotti remarked that this care-
fully selected group of infuential leaders had
the potential to take relatively small programs
engaged in very important work to one great
collective effort that would make it possible for
every child born into a low-income community
to have an opportunity to learn the principles
of entrepreneurship and ownership. “NFTE is
committed to a 100% team involvement and we will do whatever it takes to achieve the
goal. NFTE is privileged to help spearhead this mission. We have spent a tremendous
amount of time working towards assembling a world-class group of top leaders to build
and implement an effective strategy,” said Mariotti. He praised his partners in the feld
and highlighted the major contributions of DECA, Inc., Junior Achievement, and Com-
munities in Schools, and the great strides each has made to help young people achieve
success in their future careers and in life.
NFTE has worked with over 220,000 young people from low-income communities
over the last 20 years, in programs across the U.S. in 31 states and in 13 other countries.
The organization has trained more than 4,700 Certifed Entrepreneurship Teachers (who
deliver NFTE’s specialized curriculum), and is continually improving its innovative pro-
gram models.
..when low-income youth
were given the opportunity to
learn about entrepreneurship,
their innate “street smarts”
could easily develop into busi-
ness and academic smarts..
20 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 21
Mariotti noted that there are many excellent entrepreneurship curriculums with various
lesson plans and approaches. “I have read many youth entrepreneurial curricula and I have
found, basically, 12 key points, or concepts, that children should know by age 17:
1. The importance of Mental
and Physical Health,
2. The Joy of Business and the Power of Opportunity Recognition,
3. The Economics of One Unit,
4. The Law of Supply and Demand,
5. The attitude of: Don’t compete, create a Comparative Advantage,
6. The Wealth Creation Process: innovation, opportunity recognition
and pursuit, personal savings and investment, home ownership,
and small business ownership,
7. Marketing: putting yourself in the customer’s shoes,
8. Leadership, Teamwork, Ethics, Philanthropy,
9. Understanding fnancial statements (Balance Sheet/Income State-
ments) and where you ft as an employee and/or owner, and
critical concepts such as Return
On Investment, Break-Even, and Positive Cash Flow,
10. The Basic Sales Call,
11. How to write a Business Plan, and
12. The Rule of 72: the power of compounding interest.”
In addition, Mariotti highlighted four key reasons to teach entrepreneurship:
1. It is a great way to teach
basic academic and life skills,
2. It provides better understanding of “direct labor” and “net
proft”—where you ft in on the income statement; direct labor
payroll, and/or owner’s equity,
3. Street smarts transform into business smarts, and
4. Greater access to entrepreneurship education is the major civil
rights issue of our time.
“Opening up the world of ownership to people who historically have been left out is
something that we can do and we will do,” continued Mariotti, “And, by doing that, I
think we will have a better society.”
Mariotti proposed some preliminary ideas to get the group thinking about strategy.
“I think we should continue to align with NCLB and its state standards and approaches;
work more closely with textbook publishers to expand the reach of the entrepreneurial
education feld, fnd ways to expose and ’credential’ more educators—teachers and youth
workers—on the basic principles of talking to children about ownership through entre-
preneurship, and increase and improve information dissemination—get positive, real-life
entrepreneurial stories out to the media.”
There are many elements that make up the entrepreneurship education feld and Dr.
Andrew B. Hahn, professor of Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and
Management, thinks getting to a certain level of homogeneity represents a real challenge.
Key players in the feld see
entrepreneurial education through different lenses:
• youth development
• school engagement
• equity strategy
• community building, experiential education
• economic growth
• other strategies
A leading thinker in the feld, Hahn posed to the group: “How do we organize a
strategy for this very heterogeneous feld?” Hahn stated that the Heller School has been
a learning partner for entrepreneurship education since the early 80s. “Every growth
movement confronts the issue of what constitutes evidence and whether philanthropy and
public policy, and educational policy makers, should proceed with an initiative if the re-
search base is not compelling enough. In other words, we have to have talking points that
include social experiments with control and comparison groups that today’s philanthropy
and education policy makers require.”
Another issue to address is “shelf space,” or the crowded feld of add-on programs that
we like to see in the public schools and the limited NCLB parameters. “It’s a compli-
cated issue,” said Hahn. “We can look at comparable movements like career education
and diversity training, and determine why they remained pilots or, if they grew in scale,
what were the reasons, and how have other education movements succeeded or failed
in becoming ubiquitous?” The quality of
intermediaries—those in the business of
improving teacher effectiveness, promot-
ing standardized curriculum, promoting
research-based practices—will be critical to
sustainability and growth with school-based
entrepreneurial programs as well as commu-
nity-based programs.”
“The quality of intermediaries
will be critical to sustainability
and growth with school-based
entrepreneurial programs as well
as community-based programs.”
22 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 23
Michael Feinberg, Co-Founder of KIPP: Knowledge Is Power Program, noted: “In the
era of NCLB, educators lean more towards squeezing out time for more reading and math
time, especially with remedial kids. We need to convince teachers that entrepreneurship
education will—in the long run—help kids do better in school, so I’m thinking it really is
about how we win that marketing war.”
One clear consensus is that a key goal of entrepreneurship education is preparing
high school students for further education. Tom Payzant commented: “Standards-based
education isn’t going anywhere. Assessments need to give educators the opportunity to
genuinely evaluate whether their education is working, in order to make any needed mid-
course corrections.” There is a great deal of systemic thinking taking place at the mo-
ment, but, as Payzant and others addressed, the challenge is how to go to scale. “There
are examples out there, but are they scalable? Extended-day is a real opportunity with
groups in lots of states working on extended-school-day opportunities,” said Payzant.
Charles Roussel, Director of Disadvantaged Children and Youth Program for Atlantic
Philanthropies, informed the group: “Atlantic Philanthropies has put several hundred mil-
lion dollars into extended-day learning programs so kids can engage more of their lives in
educational settings. Entrepreneurial education has to extend seamlessly from the school
day into the extended-learning period because of the ’dosage’ issue. And there are many
examples of this happening already from KIPP to Citizen Schools—for all are making
waves by keeping children engaged in youth development and academic enrichment for a
longer period of the day.”
“Think of local-based programs, and how to align entrepreneurial education in some
way, and then let’s determine what is scalable,” added Payzant. He then cited a few mod-
els, including Citizen Schools, Bell Foundation’s after-school program, and science fairs.
“Such programs include entrepreneurial skills such as critical thinking, problem solving,
and innovation.”
Ed Davis, Executive Director of DECA, Inc., agreed: “The issue of scale is where we
need to focus our time. There are real opportunities at the state level in terms of making a
difference.” DECA, like the Consortium for Entrepreneurial Education, was involved in
the Perkins legislation. “Most career and technical-education programs look at entrepre-
neurship as a capstone program,” said Davis, “where you teach the skills necessary to do
a particular function and you teach the students how to turn those skills into a career or
into their own business. That’s a very viable model and very different from a 9th grade
model solely looking at students as they enter the system and trying to impact things like
the drop-out rate.”
Another issue of effectiveness is not just tied to the issue of entrepreneurship but to the
support system; that is, the nurturing of the teacher, student recognition and the leader-
ship component. “These are diffcult to maintain when taking the system to scale,” said
Davis. “Junior Achievement, DECA, and NFTE all have this measure of success in com-
mon of creating an environment where the student and the teacher can be recognized.”
The Coleman Foundation, a leading supporter of entrepreneurial education, has in-
vested over $37 million in entrepreneurial education over the last thirty years.
Michael Hennessey, President and CEO of the Coleman Foundation, asked how we were
to measure the impact of entrepreneurship education and how to develop support struc-
tures around it.
“The Coleman Foundation has maintained that entrepreneurial education is venture
creation,” said Hennessey. “The process and all the educational objectives impacted
along the way are benefcial, but if we cannot at least say that we are about the creation of
the next generation of entrepreneurs, then legislation could get scattered without focus on
the entrepreneurial education feld.” Hennessey also cited a keen interest in community
colleges and how an articulation of entrepreneurship is a central issue. “We must explore
how to reach out to the community college network and community-based organiza-
tions for meaningful impact. We need entrepreneurs to come in and evaluate what we
are doing,” Hennessey continued. “If they are successful, we want them looking at our
[entrepreneurial] educational programs and say that, if you would have had this at age 16,
would you be better [off] today than you are now.”
Ongoing dialogue within the group led to an emerging theme that clarifed the defni-
tion of entrepreneurship education; that is, its broad defnition, how to measure it, and its
delivery.
Stephen Spinelli, President of Philadelphia University, addressed the issue from a
standpoint of measurement. Spinelli explained, “‘Give a person a fsh, teach them how
to fsh’ is an industrial-era mentality and autocratic from a management era. The en-
trepreneurial era is ‘I want to own the pond,’ and is a much more chaotic and diffcult
paradigm. When it’s autocratic, it’s pretty measurable. When it’s hierarchical, it’s really
easy to measure. And when it’s chaotic, it’s nearly impossible. The key is to measure it
collaboratively and as a national movement. As we make a decision on the defnition of
entrepreneurship education, is it about starting a business or it is about opportunity recog-
nition or problem solving?
24 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 25
“These are very different approaches as to how we enter the educational realm. If en-
trepreneurship education is about venture creation, is it about small business-versus-high-
impact venture? We have to get common language on the defnition. Teaching a man to
fsh is an industrial-age solution. Today it is about owning the pond. In owning the pond,
it is a much more diffcult paradigm, which leads to more measurement issues. Measure-
ment is a huge issue and maybe the key to getting national change. If entrepreneurship
education is about venture creation, it is very different path from teaching opportunity
recognition, problem solving and creativity, and each offers challenging approaches to
how we enter the educational realm.”
The overriding assumption is that the group’s mission is predominantly focused on the
9th and 10th grades and on the low-income community. But there is a great deal of effort
on bringing entrepreneurship education to other demographic segments, on other various
academic levels, as well as on a whole world of organizations focusing on the advance-
ment of the feld. Discussion continued and the importance of Title 1 and how it may
be brought into supporting entrepreneurship was brought up. “While we have a worthy
mission here [within YESG], what happens after that?” asked Ashmore. “Not that 9th and
10th grade is the only place kids get entrepreneurship but if, in fact, it is the focus of this
group, how do we understand what others are doing and make those linkages?”
Some offered entrepreneurship education as the unifying theory—uniting work skills,
economics, fnancial literacy and business, ownership attitudes and entrepreneurship
skills. Others suggested that “Entrepreneurship is a subset of fnancial literacy.” Maynard
Brown asked, “Should we look at kids over a longer period of time—say 6, 7, 8 years—
so by the time they are in 9th grade they have a base of consciousness?”
Along the line of consciousness-building, Leigh Toney of Miami Dade College said,
“Messaging is very powerful in urban communities. The more places young people hear
the same message about entrepreneurship education, the more likely we are to pierce
their consciousness. So it’s important to target not only 9th and 10th grade classrooms,
but all the other ages and agencies that touch kids—such as football games.” While there
is particular emphasis here at YESG on the 9th and 10th grades, it will require a more
encompassing look, and a strategic focus on efforts at different points of the educational
continuum will be an opportunity for greater impact.
The frst session concluded with three recurring thematic questions:
1) What are the challenges
that the feld has in reaching more students and how to take en-
trepreneurial education to scale?
2)What are the best ways to defne and deliver entrepreneurship
education?
3)What are the most effective paths to systematic growth?
DEVELOPING A STRATEGY:
PRIORITIZING ACTIONS, ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
During subsequent meeting time, participants moved the dialogue from an inspir-
ing set of individual ideas to a more collaborative strategy. Challenges that emerged in
reaching a shared value or consensus included:
1) Academic Shelf-Space:
How to make room for entrepreneurial education for in-school
and extended-school programs.
2) Heterogeneity of Models: Various feld players and the strategic
implications.
3) Measurement or Accountability: How does entrepreneurship
education best ft in NCLB? How do we balance measurement
and enable the feld to achieve higher levels of accountability
with the need for funding and other critical resources? What other
constituencies do we have to convince of the value of entrepre-
neurship education?
4) Distribution and Alliances: The question of how to ensure there are
more players
delivering more content to take to scale.
5) Resources: Capacity issues.
6) Messaging/Value Proposition, or contours of demand.
In bringing the broader world into the entrepreneurial education community, the group
looked at possible tactics. Much attention focused on extended learning in the context of
shelf space. Some participants advocated for a longer school day. KIPP and other charter
schools are already doing this. KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national
network of public schools in under-resourced communities across the United States.
With over 50 locally run KIPP schools in 17 states and Washington, D.C., and serving
over 14,000 students, KIPP schools have been widely recognized for putting underserved
students on the path to college. More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income
and more than 90 percent are African-American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly
80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college. But how do you achieve this in
traditional public schools?
Junior Achievement (JA) is another model that is also working. For over thirty years,
JA has broadened its scope to include in-school and after-school programs, reaching ap-
proximately eight million students worldwide. “JA programs work through middle grades
and high school, focusing on the key content areas of entrepreneurship, work readiness,
and fnancial literacy,” said Jack Kosakowski, Executive Vice President and Chief Op-
erating Offcer of JA Worldwide, and President of Junior Achievement. Junior Achieve-
ment was founded in 1919 by three entrepreneurs: Theodore Vail, president of American
Telephone & Telegraph; Horace Moses, president of Strathmore Paper Co.; and Senator
26 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 27
Murray Crane, of Massachusetts. Its frst course, JA Company Program, was offered to
high school students on an after-school basis. In 1975, the organization entered the class-
room with the introduction of a project business/applied economic theory model designed
for the middle grades and presented with the assistance of volunteers.
Charles Roussel cited the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) as a potential re-
source area for entrepreneurial education to fnd possible linkage. As part of NCLB, SES
includes academic assistance such as tutoring, remediation, and other educational inter-
ventions (provided outside of the regular school day) designed to increase the academic
achievement of students in low-performing schools. Students from low-income families
who attend Title I schools in their second year of school improvement (i.e., which have
not made adequate yearly progress [AYP] for three or more years), are in corrective ac-
tion, or in restructuring status, are eligible to receive these services.
“Leaning towards extended learning, 19% of the SES money has been allocated and it
is the role of the state to decide who gets on the list,” said Roussel. “So there is wide-
open space for entrepreneurial education.”
Cathy Ashmore noted that, in a very crowded shelf space, there should be consider-
ation given to existing courses that students take in the 9th and 10th grades, (i.e., general
business or computer-skill courses), where entrepreneurial education can be an enhance-
ment, as opposed to building a new program.
Marc Spencer, Executive Director of
Juma Ventures, cited the fnancial literacy
movement and the adoption of standards
into the curriculum. Juma Ventures devel-
ops and operates businesses as “social
enterprises,” for the purpose of provid-
ing job opportunities to economically
disadvantaged teens. Juma, which means
work in Swahili, empowers young people with fnancial education and savings programs,
college and career exploration, and essential life skills. In thinking more about shelf
space and scalable models, Spencer posed the question, “How do we complement the
public-school learning experience in such a way so we are adding value to what students
need to transition into positive adulthood?” And “Could we align with the same approach
around entrepreneurship education which determines the shelf space issue?”
Kelvin James, Director of Community Investment for E*TRADE Bank, also addressed
the strategy issue of alignment, “It is important to align with fnancial literacy movements
and to fnd those linkages. There is promise for this group to implement strategies for
entrepreneurship education in schools nationwide that can have an overall positive impact
on low-income communities.” Part of E*TRADE Financial’s commitment is to invest
in communities through non-proft partnerships to improve neighborhoods and increase
fnancial literacy. As a leader in on-line fnancial services, E*TRADE is expanding to
low- and moderate-income communities.
...entrepreneurial education can
be an enhancement, as opposed to
building a new program...
Leigh Toney added: “Another way of looking at alignment is the convening authority
that an institution has.” Toney is Executive Director of Miami Dade College’s Carrie P.
Meek Entrepreneurial Education Center (MEEC), an outreach facility focused on entre-
preneurship, economic, and community development. MEEC offers a program to high
school students called the Institute for Youth Entrepreneurship (IYE), which is a compre-
hensive business-skills-development project aimed at educating inner-city high school
students on the craft of entrepreneurship.
Kim Pate, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships for CFED, suggested align-
ment with existing fnancial education institutions that may not have entrepreneurship
education as part of their mission but are
involved in enterprise development, such
as CFED and the work it is doing with the
Native community. “CFED offers asset-
building tools that are compatible with
entrepreneurial education,” said Pate. “We
focus on communities that have tradition-
ally been excluded from or limited by the
mainstream economy, such as the Native population.”
Alignment became a central theme as the direction shifted to considering more con-
crete strategies. The group outlined several goals:
1) Increase the Supply of Entrepreneurship Education:
• Scale likely to be achieved through the public education
system. Train more entrepreneurship teachers. Integrate into
teacher education and certifcation schools of education and
professional development. Create an “Entrepreneurship Edu-
cation Teacher-of-the-Year” award program for organizations.
• Engage community-based organizations in supporting growth
within public education system.
• Strengthen existing entrepreneurship education programs.
• Establish “best practices” and assist feld in growing to scale.
• Raise more funds for entrepreneurship education.
2) Increase Demand for Entrepreneurship Education:
• Partner with other advocates. YESG members must expand
leadership network. Partner with other education policy experts
and advocates for education reform (i.e., extended-day, expe-
riential education) to create a unifed and powerful message.
• Increase links to higher education. Advocate for an Ad-
vanced Placement test in business. Include Entrepreneurship
Club as an option in the extracurricular activities lists on the
College Entrance Common Application.
...alignment with existing fnan-
cial education institutions involved in
enterprise development...
28 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 29
3) Develop the Connection Between Supply and Demand:
• Determine how to measure outcomes of entrepreneurship
education.
• Create a network to broker supply and demand.
4) Prompt Public Discussion and Action:
• Defne our most impactful audience.
• Develop consistent messaging platform to support YESG action
plan.
• Use YESG members as key major media spokespeople.
• Activities could include op-eds and article placement.
Events:
• Small roundtable convenings with local leaders to inspire action.
• Events in February 2008 to be coordinated with National Entre-
preneurship Week.
5) Advocate for Policy Change
• Develop a YESG Policy Action Guide.
• Work to include Entrepreneurship Education in NCLB, Perkins
Act, Workforce Improvement Act, or any other relevant legis-
lation.
• Pursue legislative changes in bellwether states.
• Communicate message to Presidential campaign issues’ direc-
tors, asking all major candidates to include a statement in fa-
vor of entrepreneurship education in their education platforms.
• Implement demonstration program. Use a school, district,
city or state as a research site to prove that system-wide
implementation is possible and worthwhile; could potentially
achieve the same goals with an entrepreneurship school.
Timeline Roles and Responsibilities
• September 2007: Convene to commence work on developing concrete targeted
strategy at YESG 1.
• Oct 2007 – April 2008: two local public events:
example: Meeting of Deans of Schools of Education
example: Local meeting in NYC comparable to February 2007 DC and SF meetingsgs
Design and implement communications plan
• May 2008: YESG 2: Finalize Strategy – White Paper
• May 2009: YESG 3: Policy Action Guide
Measure of Success: Track and support annual progress towards mission. By the end
of May 2009, convene three additional YESG member meetings; conduct six regional
events, conduct media messaging effort; mobilize and support individual YESG member
action plans.
Messaging Entrepreneurship Education: Making Ideas Stick
Dan Heath, noted author and consultant to the Aspen Institute, addressed how to com-
municate new ideas around entrepreneurial education in a way that changes behaviors
and makes those changes stick. In Heath’s book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Stick
and Others Die, he distills lessons from ten years of research on why some ideas succeed
while others fade away. Heath offers six principles to move ideas into a successful com-
munications strategy:
1) Simplicity: the essential core of ideas;
2) Unexpectedness;
3) Concreteness;
4) Credibility;
5) Emotional; and
6) Story.
Getting clear on what the group was advocating in one voice still needed more refne-
ment. An underlying theme are the strategies, tactics, communication approaches, and
targeting who the audience will be, in order to accomplish the objectives.
CONCLUSION
As the proceedings came to its fnal session, much of the discussion focused on the vi-
sion and whether it was too narrow. Michael Caslin, Executive Vice President, Offce of
Public Policy, for NFTE, who is leading the YESG initiative, remarked that he had taken
into account the comments and concerns of the group and thought that additional work
was needed to better synthesize the vision, mission, and strategy. It is clear that a more
refned version of the vision could have a greater impact and be more inclusive.
With an expression of different opinions from around the room, Moderator Ortmans
gave the roundtable participants an opportunity to redact the draft vision statement and
suggest how it might be better shaped, given the YESG convening:
Each year 500,000 9th & 10th graders (14 to 16 year olds) in Title 1 High
Schools will have the opportunity to participate in entrepreneurship education.
The group agreed that the “vision” language needed reshaping so practitioners in the
feld could best crystallize a common ground to leverage most effectively each member’s
part in the overall feld. The initial question was: why 500,000 and if that number re-
ferred to new students, and why narrow the focus to 9th and 10th graders? Caslin pointed
out that there were at least 500,000 9th and 10th graders in Title 1 high schools, so the
number related to a target of 100% penetration. In the last few years, NFTE had made a
concerted effort to be more aware of the needs of those 500,000 students attending high
30 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 31
schools in low-income communities. One panel member argued that 100% penetration
was a daunting challenge and suggested that an impact analysis be conducted on the edu-
cation of 500,000 students relative to resources and capacity.
Participants considered whether the vision should be delivered to students beyond the
9th and 10th grades. “I would not target an age group, I would target high school, all
grades,” said Ed Davis. “When you target the 9th and 10th grades, does it mean that a 17
year old taking an entrepreneurship class sponsored by the state department of educa-
tion would not count? I understand the purpose of targeting 9th and 10th graders for the
purpose of keeping them in school, but many schools have entrepreneurial classes above
the 10th grade.”
In addition to the points raised about the 500,000 student target number issue, and the
limitations of focusing on 9th and 10th graders, there was also a discussion on whether
quality programming could be delivered effectively. In addition, the notion that 100%
penetration suggested a mandate was discussed. Payzant commented, “Keep in mind that
the concern of backing off from an ambitious goal is that there is tension present when
there is a big reach, but consider that perhaps a stretch goal may be beyond what we can
imagine, but reachable.”
Maynard Brown said, “To take this to scale, we should start small and scale up
quickly. A possible model could be to set pilots strategically across the country—perhaps
in ten different school districts—get superintendents to embrace it, and use our collective
assets.” Charles Roussel mentioned that it might make sense to think of the numbers
in terms of collective assets and collective “access” among YESG participants. “If you
consider partnership pathways and look at the different networks that the group repre-
sents, a lesser number might be a good baseline to build from,” said Roussel. He added
that the number of 500,000 will come under a lot of scrutiny and it would either speak
to the credibility of the initiative or would be a reason for people to ignore it. Someone
suggested that, in addition to scrutiny, the group might be driven towards outputs instead
of outcomes.
The fnalized vision statement was
then developed and agreed to by the
YESG members and reads as fol-
lows:
Each graduate from a high school
serving a low-income community
will have the opportunity to explore
their entrepreneurial potential.
In order to actualize the vision, the YESG group members then looked at a holistic
strategy and formed four subcommittees to develop a strategic approach and tactics, and
how each member could sign on to a particular group—specifcally how the vision would
ft around the following areas in a shared commitment:
Each graduate from a high school
serving a low-income community will
have the opportunity to explore their
entrepreneurial potential.
1) Partnership Pathways: for In-School/Out of School-CBO/Extended-Day/
Community College partners.
2) City/State Strategy: Three states, multi-states, or a focus on school districts
that have the largest Title 1 urban school districts.
3) Federal Alignment: to NCLB, Perkins, SES, and Competitiveness.
4) Field Development: Knowledge Management and Best Practice Promotion.
Alliances and networks will play a critical role in helping the education system imple-
ment sustainable models and achieve real successes. YESG is hopeful of recruiting more
associations to help in this effort.
“The Aspen Institute has partnered with the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepre-
neurship because there is tremendous opportunity to have an important and lasting impact
on public education through entrepreneurship education,” said Peter Reiling, Executive
Vice President of the Aspen Institute. “This inaugural meeting has launched a formal as-
sociation, and this dynamic group with
its collective assets can harness new
energy into the education reform move-
ment. We are looking to this network
of leaders to develop and implement
strategies that help educators, policy-
makers, and infuential leaders in the
education feld understand how teach-
ing entrepreneurship can make a differ-
ence in the lives of young people.”
Subcommittee Dialogue
(The following are notes to the sub-committee conversations.)
With regard to the state strategy, the highest concentration of Title 1 high schools are in
California, Texas, and Florida:
Texas: 3,674
California: 2,324
Florida: 1,028
7
There was consensus around “Making a difference in keeping kids in school.” Daniel
Cardinali, President of Communities in Schools, leads an organization dedicated to helping
children stay in school. Cardinali emphasized the importance of national networks with
superintendents, principals, students, parents, as well as community partners. Successful
school engagement strategies are clearly linked to partnerships with community-based
organizations. Roussel agreed: “For any partner, you are always looking for national net-
works as distribution channels for great programs. No national leader can push something
onto a network if the value proposition is not clear. If this is an anti-dropout strategy that
can augment other anti-dropout strategies, that’s great, but clarity is important.”
We are looking to this network of
leaders to develop and implement strate-
gies that help educators, policymakers,
and infuential leaders in the education
feld understand how teaching entrepre-
neurship can make a difference in the
lives of young people.”
32 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 33
Ed Davis of DECA, Inc. asked how the Partnerships Pathways and the City/State
Strategy sub-groups would interact. “Is one designed to create the broad scheme and the
other to create and implement it in a state-by-state strategy? What is the role of each of
these types of delivery systems and how does that role support the vision?”
Michael Caslin spoke of the Pathway map of the life cycle of a child, and how each
member can plug in somewhere on the pathway and work to replicate it in a state-by-state
strategy. “It’s an opportunity to align all of our energies,” said Caslin.
Added Roussel: “The best national organizations have very strong state organizations
and so many of the partners you may want to partner with are already very well grounded
programmatically in the states and on the policy level, so we should look for those orga-
nizations who are already doing entrepreneurial education initiatives. The ultimate goal
is to gain traction on a state-by-state basis. We lose our primacy as a group if we limit
ourselves to certain parts of the country.”
Irv Katz, President and CEO of the National Human Services Assembly, signed on to
the Partnership Pathway on behalf of the National Collaboration of Youth, whose mem-
bership includes national institutions such as 4-H, Girls and Boys Clubs of America, Girl
Scouts of USA, and the YMCA of the US. “I think there is a lot of translation needed
among different subsectors—the positive youth-development community, the entrepre-
neurship community, and the fnancial-literacy community,” Katz said. “It’s fnding the
leverage points for identifying common ground.”
The group explored vehicles for policy change and considered options at the federal,
state and local level. Considerable thought was given to current issues and how entrepre-
neurship education could be implemented nationwide. Federal alignment was considered
worth pursuing. “Watch the NCLB reauthorization process as it unfolds,” observed Payz-
ant. “There are opportunities with certain amendments, so we should keep the options
open, perhaps with the Competitive legislation or Stem, and how that connects to the
National Science Foundation. Other traditional legislation such as Perkins ought to be
reviewed in terms of where it is going and how that might ft in our overall work. Timing
is critical.”
Moderator Jonathan Ortmans highlighted legislation such as COMPETES
8
, which is
charging federal agencies with entrepreneurship missions under the auspices of global
attention on innovation. In April 2007, the U.S. Senate passed the America COMPETES
Act, to promote American innovation in the global economy. The legislation, which
was signed into law on August 9, 2007, will increase federal R&D funding, strengthen
science, technology, engineering, and math education, and create a Presidential Council
on Innovation and Competitiveness. “With innovation being the viable term these days,
every federal agency has funds allocated for fnancial literacy,” said Ortmans. The Public
Forum Institute is putting together a government website, www.entrepreneurship.gov, to
include all the federal funding sources.
Marc Spencer spoke on the future work of the fourth subcommittee, established to
address feld development through best practices. “Is there an evaluation approach to be
mindful of within these subcommittees? In certain evaluation exchanges, there is a menu
of outcomes for advocacy and policy work that we may want to look at,” said Spencer.
“For each area of activity—i.e., strengthening organizational capacity—there are exam-
ples of outcomes and strategies, so it would behoove us to look at an evaluation approach
that we feel comfortable with so that we have measurements aligned with a common
vision and goal.” More feld building and management of that knowledge would be a
critical component to legitimizing the goal.
It was agreed by the members that the formation of four subcommittees within YESG
will allow members specialized opportunities to develop tactics. Periodic meetings
highlighting actions, sharing insights, and forming linkages will help build momentum in
support of advancing entrepreneurship education, and will provide measurable ways to
evaluate progress. Once again, the subcommittees are:
1. Partnership Pathway:
for In-School/Out of School-CBO/Extended-Day/Community
College partners.
2. City/State Strategy: (e.g., CA, TX, FL, DC, NY) with largest number
of Title 1 urban school districts.
3. Federal Alignment: to NCLB, Perkins, SES, and Competitiveness
(tactics would address outcome-based custom messaging).
4. Field Development/Knowledge Management: through best prac-
tices dissemination based on research and evaluation fndings.
Participants recognized that there was much work ahead but could certainly sense that
a movement was indeed building in the feld and, through collective efforts, the goal of
each graduate from a high school serving a low-income community having educational
opportunities to explore their entrepreneurial potential is attainable. In building the move-
ment, clear instruction on best practices on how to measure success will be necessary.
Michelle Molloy, of Spitfre Strategies, offered ways that YESG could effectively mo-
bilize the group. She presented guidelines specifcally on strategies for supportive action
by identifying and leveraging their activation points. “An activation point occurs when
the right people at the right time are
persuaded to take an action that leads
to measurable changes for an impor-
tant social issue,” Molloy explained.
In 2003, on behalf of the Commu-
nications Leadership Institute (CLI),
Spitfre Strategies produced the Spit-
fre Strategies Smart Chart planning
tool, to help nonproft organizations
and the funders that support them plan
and execute communications efforts
that support social change.
9
By defning activation points more clearly, groups can create
the architecture for efforts that create tipping points. Molloy said that there has been
“An activation point occurs when
the right people at the right time are
persuaded to take an action that leads
to measurable changes for an important
social issue,”
34 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
Conference Report 35
much discussion about The Tipping Point, a best-selling book by Malcolm Gladwell. He
describes a “tipping point” as that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behav-
ior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfre. “The downside of this phenom-
enon is that the tipping point is something revealed in hindsight,” said Molloy. “We can
look back and analyze the confuence of events that made it possible.”
Currently, there are many organizations working to transform education for millions
of children. Such change agents have transformed the American education landscape
and are beacons to what is possible in our nation’s schools. Ventures such as Teach For
America, College Summit, The New Teacher Project, LA United, the New Leaders for
New Schools, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the organizations represented on
the YESG panel, are all prime examples. The entrepreneurship feld is indeed building
momentum and a real promise of opportunity for all children to reach their entrepreneur-
ial potential is possible.
With a sense or urgency, enthusiasm, and commitment, YESG I concluded and the
work of YESG was offcially launched, with the convening of YESG II scheduled to take
place in Spring, 2008 at the Aspen Retreat Center in Wye, Maryland.
AFTERWORD
The core mission of the Aspen Institute is to foster enlightened leadership and open-
minded dialogue, as refected throughout the pages of this conference report. The Aspen
Colorado campus is home to a wide range of policy work and an ambitious set of inita-
tives to help emerging leaders face critical decisions with creativity, wisdom, and the
spirit of service.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group (YESG) is engaged in an extremely im-
portant conversation about ways to increase accessibility to entrepreneurship education.
YESG’s successful efforts will in turn infuence hundreds of thousands of young lives in
America over the coming years. YESG members have chosen to participate in the explo-
ration of a critical human capital development issue—why we learn what we learn when
we learn it and we are very fortunate to have the leadership of 33+ national organizaitons
involved.
YESG has the urgent task of promoting Entrepreneurship Education as an effective
response for a number of converging issues now facing us both in the policy world and
in the classroom. From American competitiveness, workplace readiness, workforce
development, student and teacher engagement as measured by school performance, high
school graduation, drop-out prevention success via basic skill development and improved
teacher performance in the classoroom, we will seek to discern the best ways forward to
bring the promise of entrepreneurship education to greater numbers of students, espe-
cially deserving youth from low-income communities in Title 1 high schools having high
rates of free and reduced meals (minimum 40% or greater).
This is an effort in which we can and must prevail. To accept the status quo in policy
and practice of a currently limited access and patchworked state by state entrepreneur-
ship education system would be, in my opinion, a surrender of the economic and civic
leadership of our future. It is that serious. This is the next critical phase of the civil rights
movement–accessibility to entrepreneurship education. For some it will be a matter of
life or death.
YESG’s policy successes will enhance the ability of young people to enter into and
succeed in the world of work and more thoughtfully connect to the business and edu-
cation community. YESG success will result in an expanded capability of American
teachers and schools to inspire learning through proven, scalable, well-researched and
cost-effective experiential entrepreneurship education.
From my 20 years of leading NFTE’s program growth in the U.S.A. and into 13 coun-
tries on four continents, I know many positive results will be seen. For this is a common-
sense, pragmatic and just approach. And the time is now. There are powerful trends fac-
ing us that cannot be ignored. For example, David Rothkopf of The Washington Post has
written, “The Coming Battle of the Ages,” predicting, in my opinion, the rise of a human
36 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
tsunami created by economic and demographic fault lines. Rothkopf states, “Demography
is, in fact, destiny: Half the people in the world today are under 24 years of age. Of these,
nearly nine out of 10 live in the developing world. One billion of them will need jobs in
the next decade — 60 percent of them are in Asia, 15 percent are in Africa. For them, the
choices are simple: dignity or desperation, a job or starvation.”
It is our frm belief that entrepreneurial thinking and behaviors, skills and attitudes
positively focus a young person’s energy and provides a powerful possibility for long-
term social change. Hence our urgent commitment to expanding the promise of entre-
preneurship education to youth from low-income communities right here in America’s
needy communities which are currently being threatened by massive high school drop-out
rates and growing under and unemployment.
Author Howard Means states in his book, Money and Power — The History of Busi-
ness, “Today, business drives the world, from all around the world. A global network of
corporations, stock markets, banks and industries (driven by entrepreneurs) churns out
more riches than humankind has ever known. Yet, poverty hasn’t been defeated. Miser-
ies — from war to disease and famine — spread themselves far too broadly. The envi-
ronment is threatened, in some cases by the very rapaciousness of the business spirit we
are describing. But today the access to this global wealth and the capacity to participate
in the machinery that produces is now available in ways that would have been almost
unthinkable even half a century ago. People have more freedom to be, to do, to go and
to know at the start of the new millennium than they ever have had in the history of time.
They have more means and capacity and opportunity to do all those things than the hu-
man race has ever known. And in no small measure the credit belongs to the business
leaders of the previous millennium who have set the table for us all.”
These provocative words challenge us to consider the possibility that our societies 20
to 100 years from now will also be built by new entrepreneurs in the decades to come but
only if they know how to “access the wealth” and “participate in the machinery” and are
truly able to use their “freedom to be, to do, to go and to know”.
Entrepreneurship Education, especially targeted for the most needy of communities,
will unleash a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders at all levels of society. And will
contribute to a more effective synergy among universities, governments, business leaders,
school systems, policymakers, youth development organizations, members of the media
and social infuencers.
The time for action has come: together we must and will make Entrepreneurship Edu-
cation more available to all young Americans, especially those most in need.
Michael J. Caslin, III
Executive Vice President, Public Policy, NFTE
Director of YESG
APPENDIX
Appendix 39
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This conference and initiative owes its origin and support to a partnership between
E*TRADE Financial, the Aspen Institute, and the National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE). In particular, we acknowledge Peter Reiling, Executive Vice
President of the Aspen Institute; Michael Caslin, Executive Vice President of NFTE; and
Michael Kaplan and Kelvin James of E*TRADE, as the guiding force; as well as mem-
bers of the YESG Steering Committee, headed by Chair Stephanie Bell-Rose and Vice-
Chair Tom Payzant; and our YESG member organizations and working group members.
We thank Sunny Sumter for ably constructing this report from the conference dialogue,
its background readings, and her own research. Also, many thanks to Gloria Sandiford,
YESG program manager, for the behind-the-scenes programmatic and event planning
aspects, which synthesizes all of our work efforts. Of course, the Conference gained its
energy and value from the willingness of the YESG participants to share their valuable
time, knowledge, and insights. Particularly, we thank Steve Mariotti, Andy Hahn, Cathy
Ashmore, Tom Payzant, Andy Rotherham, and Irv Katz for their lead-off presentations;
Maynard Brown, Jabious Williams, and Kathryn Morrissey for their perspectives on how
entrepreneurship education has changed their lives; and Governor Janet Napolitano for
her keynote address. Special thanks to YESG staff, Aspen Institute staff, NFTE staff,
consultants, and interns: Rachel Gross, Anna Markowitz, Kathryn Morrissey, Rachel
Schneider, Tony Towle, Tom Phillips, Terry Levine, Steve Johnson and Sogand Sepassi.
The support and leadership of Lisa Collandra, Charity Schumway and Jack Sabater of the
Goldman Sachs Foundation as well as members of the NFTE Executive Committee and
NFTE Board is deeply appreciated and has been instrumental in YESG’s success to date.
40 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Appendix 41
Perspectives: Entrepreneurship Training
Can Empower Students Being Left Behind
By Michael J. Caslin III, Porcher L. Taylor III, and Dr. Catherine S. Fisher
If Congress renews the controversial No Child
Left Behind Act, as it is expected to do, some
impoverished, low-performing students will in-
evitably lose the hypercompetitive race to get into
college.
Perception, tragically, often becomes reality.
Entrepreneurial self-employment, however,
would hold great promise for business-minded
students, if they learned entrepreneurship in high
school and could try out their innovative business
plans on consumers in their own neighborhoods
and beyond—especially Internet start-up ideas.
The social and community networking success of
MySpace has opened a wide door for anyone to
market a new idea or product to a myriad of poten-
tial customers instantly.
In a bold, dramatic move to address the lack of an entrepreneurship component in
NCLB, Congress should amend the law to fund the certifcation of high school educators
to teach entrepreneurship electives, especially to students most likely to be “left behind.”
Alternatively, Congress should pass separate legislation to this effect, or the federal
Department of Education should launch this as its own initiative without a Congressional
mandate. Unfortunately, there is no current push by lawmakers to include entrepreneurial
education in NCLB.
The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which has trained
and certifed over 4,700 entrepreneurship teachers since 1987, would be the ideal peda-
gogical vehicle to launch such an initiative. Since its founding, more than 220,000 young
people have gained the ability to take an individual pathway to prosperity—not be left
behind—by taking NFTE’s rigorous, proven, relevant and relationship-driven “mini-
MBA” course.
NFTE students have been taught by their teachers to conceptualize, design and
present their own business plans, guided by volunteer business plan coaches, learned
to open up bank accounts and conduct business operations, while tracking income and
costs. Drafting a personal business plan is an experiential and asset-based approach that
enables students to understand the importance of clear, concise writing, reading ability,
and accurate math calculations: personal profts and business growth provide context and
rewards for learning traditional subjects. Signifcantly, NFTE’s teaching programs have
been adopted in 600 mostly low-income middle and high school districts in 31 states and
13 other countries. This demand-side growth has come from the success of NFTE’s two
founding sites in 1988: the South Bronx and Newark, N.J.
Michael J. Caslin (above right, pictured with
Mayor Bloomberg of New York) is executive vice
president for public policy of the National Founda-
tion for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Such an experiential approach could prepare our future workforce to be innovative,
competitive and entrepreneurial. And it would complement the rote learning taking place
in classrooms across the country in order to meet minimum NCLB benchmarks—an
approach that leaves most students
bored and many teachers demoral-
ized. In today’s classrooms, the
lack of experiential and contextual
methods—which are at the heart of
entrepreneurship education—truly leaves the students needing the most help behind—
and turned off.
With America becoming ever more of an entrepreneurial nation, the timing is right
to amend NCLB. An amendment should promote the teaching of standardized academic
skills, including essential life skills such as entrepreneurial development, which would
help students prepare for success in the marketplace via success in the classroom.
Recently, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s research and policy guide, On
the Road to an Entrepreneurial Economy, stated that
“A central task for educators and policymakers is not
only to give students the key skills to thrive in any
work environment—reading, math, science, technolo-
gy and history—but also to nurture whatever creative
and entrepreneurial skills each of us has at birth. Pro-
grams that teach basic entrepreneurial skills to middle
and high school students could be especially valuable
for children from disadvantaged backgrounds as a
way to encourage their interest in academic achieve-
ment in general.”
A 2006 Junior Achievement survey revealed that
71 percent of middle and high school students wanted
to be self-employed at some point, up from 64 percent
in 2004. The phenomenal explosion in recent years
of business downsizings and overseas outsourcing of
U.S. service jobs only adds to the need for entrepreneurship skills.
Most important, NCLB mandates math and reading profciency. In order to help
deserving youth who are entrepreneurially inclined to avoid being left behind, Congress
needs to amend NCLB so those students can gain entrepreneurship literacy as an essen-
tial step towards participation in the world’s most dynamic entrepreneurial economy via
enhanced math and reading skills.
Michael J. Caslin is executive vice president for public policy of the National Founda-
tion for Teaching Entrepreneurship and adjunct professor at Babson College’s Arthur M.
Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.
Porcher L. Taylor is a professor at University of Richmond’s School of Continuing Stud-
ies who also teaches business ethics at the university’s Robins School of Business.
Dr. Catherine S. Fisher, a professor of education and director of Richmond’s Teacher
Licensure Program, is a retired high school principal with 15 years each of classroom
teaching and high school administrative experience.
...prepare our future workforce to be innovative,
competitive and entrepreneurial.
Porcher L. Taylor, professor at University of
Richmond’s School of Continuing Studies.
42 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
ENDNOTES
1
National Center on Education and the Economy. Tough Choices, Tough Times: The Report of the
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2006, p.4.
2
Anthony Lutkus and Andrew R. Weiss, The Nation’s Report Card: Civics 2006, May 2007,
National Center for Education Statistics, at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/
main2006/2007476.asp.
3
National Governor’s Association, Innovation America: A Final Report at
http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0707INNOVATIONFINAL.PDF (last accessed November 2, 2007).
4
Tough Choices, Tough Times, p.7.
5
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education at http://www.entre-ed.org/NFTE/1
(last accessed October 25, 2007).
6
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education, National Content Standards.for Entrepreneurship
Education, at http://www.entre-ed.org/Standards_Toolkit/.
7
For more information on Title 1 high school statitistics, visit:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/2002indicators/index.html.
8
See U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, The America Creat-
ing Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act
(COMPETES), http://science.house.gov/legislation/leg_highlights_detail.aspx?NewsID=1938. In
April, 2007, both the House and Senate passed comprehensive legislation (H.R. 2272, S. 761) to
ensure our nation’s competitive position in the world through improvements to math and science
education and a strong commitment to research. H.R. 2272 is the culmination of a year-and-a-half-
long, bipartisan effort led by Members of the House Science and Technology Committee to pass a
package of competitiveness bills in response to recommendations in the 2005 National Academies
report: Rising above the Gathering Storm. The Conference Agreement follows through on a com-
mitment to ensure that U.S. students, teachers, businesses and workers are prepared to continue
leading the world in innovation, research and technology — well into the future.
9
For more information on Spitfre Strategies, visit: http://www.spitfrestrategies.com/.
founded in 1950, is an international nonproft organization dedicated to fostering enlightened
leadership and open-minded dialogue. Through seminars, policy programs, conferences and leader-
ship development initiatives, the Institute and its international partners seek to promote nonpartisan
inquiry and an appreciation for timeless values. The Institute is headquartered in Washington, DC,
and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River near the shores of the Chesapeake
Bay in Maryland. Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon,
Tokyo, New Delhi, and Bucharest, and leadership initiatives in Africa, Central America, and India.
Pub: 08/004
doc_196787245.pdf
On this paper talk advancing entrepreneurship education.
ADVANCING
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
EDUCATION
A Report of the
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
ADVANCING
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
A Report of the
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
Conference Report 5
CONTENTS
About the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group ........................................................... 6
YESG Panel Members ........................................................................................................8
FOREWORD .................................................................................................................... 11
ADVANCING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
Proceedings: An Introduction ..........................................................................................15
Entrepreneurship Education: A Critical Need .................................................................17
Developing a Strategy:
Prioritizing Actions, Roles, and Responsibilities ............................................................25
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................29
AFTERWORD ..................................................................................................................35
APPENDIX
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................39
Perspectives: Entrepreneurship Training
Can Empower Students Being Left Behind ......................................................................40
Endnotes ...........................................................................................................................42
This report has been funded by grants from E*TRADE Financial, in partnership with the
Aspen Institute and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and
through the support of the panel member institutions of the Youth Entrepreneurship Strat-
egy Group. The opinions and analyses presented in this paper are solely those of the Youth
Entrepreneurship Strategy Group. Unless attributed to a particular individual, none of the
comments or ideas contained in this report should be taken as embodying the views or car-
rying the endorsement of any particular participant at the conference.
Copyright ©2008 by The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute
One Dupont Circle, NW
Washington, DC 20036-1133
Published in the United States of America
in 2008 by the Aspen Institute
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 0-89843-485-8
Pub: 08/004
About the
Youth Entrepreneurship
Strategy Group
Our vision is to ensure that each graduate from a high school serving a
low-income community has educational opportunities to explore his or her
entrepreneurial potential.
Our mission to recruit, convene, and mobilize the Youth Entrepreneurship
Strategy Group to develop a comprehensive strategy and tactical plan by May
2009 to fulfll our vision.
Through a series of convenings and ongoing rigorous dialogues, YESG will:
• explore the promise of, and obstacles to, implementing youth entrepreneurship educa-
tion nationwide, with special attention to the 9th and 10th grade levels—a time when
many students are at highest risk for disengaging from school and dropping out;
• develop and implement a concrete, targeted strategy to advance the teaching of
entrepreneurship in the nation’s schools;
• prompt public discussion and action on teaching entrepreneurship in the
nation’s schools.
Outcome
We seek to develop a systemic initiative to:
• engage young people in school and provide an experiential context to
develop strong academic, entrepreneurial, fnancial and work skills;
• motivate students to be productive and engaged in their communities and the
economy, and develop success-oriented attitudes of innovation, initiative,
intelligent creativity, risk-taking, collaboration, opportunity recognition,
and pursuit.
Overall, we are committed to creating new policies and recommendations to
infuse public education with entrepreneurial energy and proven practice—
transforming the system itself and preparing the next generation of entrepreneur-
ial leaders for America.
Our efforts will have an important and sustainable impact on public education
in the 21st century, as we continue to pursue a social impact strategy via strategic
learning, advocacy, demonstration and evaluation.
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
STEPHANIE BELL-ROSE
(Chairperson)
Managing Director
Goldman, Sachs, and Co.
and
Founding President
Goldman Sachs Foundation
THOMAS PAYZANT
(Vice-Chairperson)
Professor of Practice
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
and
Former Superintendent
Boston Public Schools
CATHY ASHMORE
Executive Director
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
TIM BRADY
CEO
QuestBridge
MAYNARD BROWN
Lead Faculty Member
Business Management and Entrepreneurship Academy
Crenshaw High School, Los Angeles
GASTON CAPERTON *
Former Governor, West Virginia
and
President
College Board
MITCHELL H. CAPLAN*
CEO and Director
E*TRADE Financial
DANIEL CARDINALI
President
Communities in Schools
GENE CARTER*
Executive Director and CEO
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development
RUDOLPH F. CREW*
Superintendent
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
EDWARD L. DAVIS
Executive Director
DECA, Inc.
WILLIAM H. DONALDSON*
Former Chair
Securities Exchange Commission
and
Chair
Donaldson Enterprises
MICHAEL FEINBERG
Co-Founder
KIPP: Knowledge is Power Program
ANDREW B. HAHN
Professor
The Heller School
Brandeis University
MICHAEL W. HENNESSY
President and CEO
The Coleman Foundation
KELVIN JAMES
Director
Community Investment
E*TRADE Bank
VALORIE J. JOHNSON
Program Director
Youth and Education
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
IRV KATZ
President and CEO
National Collaboration for Youth
and
National Human Services Assembly
MARGUERITE KONDRACKE
President and CEO
America’s Promise: The Alliance for Youth
JACK E. KOSAKOWSKI
Executive Vice President and COO
JA Worldwide®
and
President
Junior Achievement USA
DANE LINN
Director
Education Division
National Governor’s Association
STEVE J. MARIOTTI
Founder and President
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
KIM PATE
Vice President for Strategic Partnerships
and Business Development Administration
CFED
KAREN PITTMAN*
Executive Director
Forum for Youth Investment
JOANNA REES
Founder
Venture Strategy Partners
and
Board Member
National Venture Capital Association
PETER REILING
Executive Vice President
The Aspen Institute
MANUEL J. RIVERA*
Deputy Secretary of Education
State of New York
ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM
Co-Founder and Co-Director
Education Sector
and
Editor
Eduwonk.com
CHARLES ROUSSEL
Director
Disadvantaged Children and Youth Program
The Atlantic Philanthropies
DIANA DAVIS SPENCER
Chair of Grants
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation
MARC SPENCER
Executive Director
Juma Ventures
STEPHEN SPINELLI, JR
President
Philadelphia University
LEIGH TONEY
Executive Director
Carrie P. Meek Entrepreneurial
Education Center
Miami Dade College
JOHN ZITZNER
President and Founder
E CITY
and
Co-Founder
Entrepreneurship Preparatory School
Presenters:
DAN HEATH
Consultant
Duke Corporate Education
MICHELLE MOLLOY
Senior Vice President
Spitfre Strategies
Facilitators:
MICHAEL J. CASLIN, III
Executive Vice President
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
GLORIA SANDIFORD
Program Manager
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
SUNNY SUMTER
Consultant
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
The Aspen Institute
Note: Titles and affliations are as of the date of
the conference
*not in attendance at inaugural meeting
10 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
Advancing Entrepreneurship Education 11
FOREWORD
For most of the 20th century, Americans could take pride in having the best-educated
workforce in the world, but now that is no longer true. In Tough Choices, Tough Times,
the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce reports that over the past
30 years one country after another has surpassed the United States in the percentage
of its population entering the workforce with the equivalent of a high school diploma,
and many more countries are on the verge of doing so. Thirty years ago, the U.S. could
lay claim to having 30 percent of the world’s population of college students. Today that
proportion has fallen substantially, to 14 percent, and continues to decline. American
students place anywhere from the middle of the pack to the bottom in all three continuing
comparative studies of achievement in mathematics, science, and general literacy among
advanced industrial nations.
1
Fifteen years ago, a new standards-based framework for improving K-12 education in
America began to emerge. It was a radical idea. In hopes of addressing the dilemma of
large numbers of students not completing high school, and even those with high school
diplomas fnding themselves challenged to fnd employment that would enable them to
reach a middle-class standard of living, the goal was to have all children reach high levels
of learning that traditionally had been the expectation only for a select group.
In 1994 Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
which was initially passed by Congress and signed by President Johnson in 1965. Since
then, it has become the major legislation incorporating federal policy and funding for
K-12 public education in America. The 1994 legislation, the Improving America’s
Schools Act (IASA), incorporated the standards-based framework that set a new direc-
tion, with a policy focus on subject content standards.
The next reauthorization of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), was passed
with bipartisan support and signed by President Bush in 2002. It has led to a major shift
in the federal government’s expectations for states, school districts and schools, from
compliance for setting standards for curriculum content to accountability for achieving
specifc performance outcomes, based on the achievement of all students regardless of
family income, race, frst language, or disability. NCLB was slated for reauthorization in
2007 but was stalled by the inability of Congress to reach consensus on how to respond to
the widespread public outcry for changes in the legislation—or confront the possibility of
its abolition. It is possible that reauthorization will not occur before a new president takes
offce in 2009, (if then).
In the past decade, state, district, and individual school efforts to improve public edu-
cation for all students have intensifed. Charter schools, intra-district student assignment
plans providing for more parental choice, and more systemic approaches to improving all
schools in school districts have gained more traction. Public interest and support remain
high despite the calls for the improvement of achievement and closing the achievement
gaps. Yet why does the U.S. still lag behind other countries in key knowledge domains
and industries? Why aren’t American children doing better? Why are so many young
people not even completing high school?
12 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Advancing Entrepreneurship Education 13
One in four Hispanic and one in ten African-American students drop out of school,
according to the latest fgures from the National Center for Education Statistics. Students
from low-income families are six times more likely not to fnish high school than those
from high-income families.
2
Dropouts face severe obstacles to employment, livable
wages, and civic participation; instead, many drift into crime and are incarcerated. This
situation means a loss of opportunities for the individuals, substantial cost to the govern-
ment and taxpayers, and a tremendous defcit in productivity for businesses and other
organizations.
Even those students who do graduate may not be well prepared. According to the
National Reading Panel, American companies lose nearly $40 billion annually due to il-
literacy. Further, a survey by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Com-
mittee and the National Career Development Association found that a majority of youths
themselves report feeling unprepared in skills, knowledge, and attitudes upon entering the
workforce. According to the Manhattan Institute, only about 20% of African-American
and Hispanic students graduate college-ready. This skills crisis is becoming more critical
because the American economy is shifting. Not only will the traditional skills of reading,
writing and math be needed to thrive in this economy, but also technological know-how
and profciency in self-direction. With the pace of innovation, many of the jobs our
children will hold don’t even yet exist. More than ever, we need to educate students to be
continual learners.
Economic leaders and education scholars are calling for an increased need for ini-
tiative, self-regulation, critical thinking, and life-long learning skills in the growing
“knowledge economy.” If we want to be competitive in the world economic arena and
to maintain our high standard of living, we must rise to the challenge. As leaders, how
can we develop a systemic initiative to keep young people in school, effectively learning
academic and work skills, motivated to be productive and engaged in their communities
and the larger economy, and developing success-oriented attitudes of initiative, intelligent
risk-taking, collaboration, and opportunity recognition?
The School to Work Opportunities Act and other educational policies suggest that stu-
dents learn more and perform better when tasks and skills demonstrate relevance to their
current and future lives. The question then becomes: what kind of context will provide
such relevance and fulfll our objectives? Evaluation studies of high-school-level youth
entrepreneurship curricula report that students increase their occupational aspirations,
interest in college, reading, and leadership behavior after participation. Six months later,
70 percent of the alumni of a recent evaluation cohort were in college, 63 percent had
jobs, and one in three ran a small business.
Perhaps most critically, the experience of a sense of ownership in their lives was four
times higher for alumni of youth entrepreneurship programs than for students who did not
take such courses. “Ownership” is a powerful concept. The American economy and way
of life are based on it. We own our homes and our cars. We strive to own our jobs, even
if we work for someone else. Thus, we value both fnancial ownership and psychological
ownership—being in control of resources and lives that are of our own choosing. High-
school-level youth entrepreneurship education provides the experience of ownership early
in life.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group believes that preparing today’s students
for success and eventual leadership in the new global marketplace is the most important
responsibility in education today. Providing students with guidance and opportunity at the
most critical junctures along their educational journey can have a most profound impact.
We have assembled top CEOs, non-proft leaders, policy experts, and the foremost
thinkers in the feld of entrepreneurial education to explore the promise and challenge
of implementing youth entrepreneurship education in underserved communities around
the country. Through a series of convenings and rigorous dialogue, we will develop and
implement a concrete, targeted strategy and prompt greater public discussion and action
on teaching entrepreneurship in the nation’s schools.
Thomas Payzant
Vice Chair
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group
and
Professor or Practice
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
and
Former Superintendent
Boston Public Schools
Stephanie Bell-Rose
Chair
Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy
Group
and
Managing Director
Goldman, Sachs, and Co.
and
Founding President
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Conference Report 15
ADVANCING ENTREPRENEURSHIP
EDUCATION
PROCEEDINGS: AN INTRODUCTION
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group convened its inaugural meeting from
September 26-28, 2007 at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado. A group of dynamic
national leaders from the felds of education, entrepreneurship and business, public policy,
media, and philanthropy met over three days to explore the promise of, and obstacles to,
implementing youth entrepreneurship education in low-income communities nationwide.
In partnership with E*TRADE Financial, the Aspen Institute and the National Foundation
for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) created this educational public policy initiative
to develop a concrete, viable strategy to advance the teaching of entrepreneurship—spe-
cifcally in Title I high schools—and to prompt public discussion and action on teaching
entrepreneurship to increased numbers of high school students from low-income commu-
nities. The conference was moderated by Dr. Jonathan Ortmans, President of the Public
Forum Institute, who has over 15 years of experience and decision making in the public
policy feld.
In her opening remarks, YESG chairperson Stephanie Bell-Rose stated, “In our new,
increasingly global economy, entrepreneurial education will provide the youth of our
country with the skills necessary to prosper in the 21st century. When we offer young
people entrepreneurship education, what we’re really offering them are keys to success,
now and in the future and not just in business—in all felds.” Bell-Rose is Managing
Director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and founding President of The Goldman Sachs Foun-
dation, a $300 million international foundation
whose mission is to promote excellence and in-
novation in education and to improve academic
performance and lifelong productivity for young
people around the world.
Bell-Rose thanked E*TRADE Financial for
its leadership in funding the Youth Entrepreneur-
ship Strategy Group and expressed that it was
an honor for Goldman Sachs Foundation to be a
part of this initiative. Bell-Rose encouraged each
YESG member to be an active force over the coming
months. “We have the potential to make changes that can improve the lives of millions
of young people. During this meeting, it will be our task to begin to create a strategic,
straightforward, and focused effort toward accomplishing that goal.”
The keynote address was delivered by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Since tak-
ing offce, Napolitano’s top priorities have focused on education, the economy, and the
environment. She describes herself as a ferce protector of children and, thus, an ideal
candidate to set the tone for the proceedings. Under her leadership, the state’s 2004 budget
“In our new, increasingly
global economy, entrepreneur-
ial education will provide the
youth of our country with the
skills necessary to prosper in
the 21st century.”
16 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 17
passed without cuts to education, and she continues to focus on early-childhood literacy
programs to prevent high school dropouts. Napolitano is the brains behind the National
Governors Association’s Innovation America program, which is focused on strengthening
the nation’s competitive position in the global economy by improving our capacity to inno-
vate. Innovation America’s goal is to give governors the tools they need to improve math
and science education, better align postsecondary education systems with state economies,
and develop regional innovation strategies.
3
“The Innovation America initiative was cre-
ated because the “United States’ economic growth in the 21st century will be driven by our
nation’s ability to innovate,” said Napolitano. Understanding fully that innovation is a key
skill set of entrepreneurship education, she applauded YESG for its vision and mission.
Napolitano touched on a number of critical topics that impact the American educa-
tion system and her keynote remarks conveyed a sense of urgency concerning the larger
economic and competitive challenges facing our country. She urged the group to give
policymakers a tool kit, similar to Innovation America’s, and to include a specifc plan and
timetable for implimentation.
Student and Teacher Perspectives
The frst YESG session kicked off with testimony by NFTE alumni, Jabious Williams
and Kathryn Morrissey, as well as Maynard Brown, NFTE Certifed Entrepreneurship
Teacher/Junior Achievement Los Angeles Board Member, and Los Angeles Unifed School
District Business Department Head for Crenshaw High School. They each spoke about
how entrepreneurship education had changed their lives. Brown, a nationally recognized
inspirational teacher, opened the morning session on the importance of teaching fnancial
and business literacy. Brown was also a successful entrepreneur and left his business to
dedicate his life to teaching economics at Crenshaw, which had no business course offer-
ings at the time. He spoke of the tireless efforts of Junior Achievement and NFTE volun-
teers in their ongoing commitment to entrepreneurship education. While little institutional
support exists for fnancial and entrepreneurial literacy activities, encouragement from
parents and the community has helped to increase the availability of the programs. Brown
expressed his commitment to changing national education policy to include more fnan-
cial and entrepreneurship literacy courses in the City of Los Angeles, synonymous with
YESG’s vision of nationwide entrepreneurial education.
Jabious Williams launched a clothing design business, SAJA Originals, while still in
high school, and used the profts to surprise his mother with the down payment on their
frst home. Williams spoke with confdence about the business concepts he learned from
a NFTE course offered at Suitland High School, in Maryland. He added that the course
helped him to be more goal-oriented and to form standards applicable to his daily life. His
mentors, Patty Alper and Phil McNeil, “made all the difference for [him] and his family.”
Kathryn Morrissey echoed Williams’ remarks on how the NFTE curriculum taught her
business concepts and helped her to understand math for the frst time. Morrissey has had
learning disabilities through most of her formal-education years. An entrepreneurial edu-
cation course at her local Boys and Girls Club changed how she contextualized learning.
She gained more confdence in her abilities and started succeeding in high school, earning
her place on the honor roll for the remainder of her high school years. From there, she
launched her frst business and is now a junior at Fashion Institute of Technology, in New
York, while working three jobs, including as a Public Policy Development Intern at NFTE.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: A CRITICAL NEED
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which turns six years old this year, was
enacted to ensure that American students learn the math and reading skills the modern
economy requires. But math and reading are not the only abilities today’s students need.
A 2006 Junior Achievement survey found that 71% of middle and high school students
would like to be self-employed at some point, up from 64% in 2004.
In December 2006, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE)
released a critical report calling for a major overhaul of the country’s education system.
Entitled Tough Choices, Tough Times, the report highlights the link between education and
the economy and provides policy recommendations for America’s schools. Thomas Payz-
ant, former superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and vice-chairperson of YESG,
played a signifcant role in the development of the report. Tough Choices, Tough Times
cites that the future of the American economy will hinge largely on our ability to develop
and encourage the creative talents of our workforce. U.S. economic strength in the world
will continue to be the development and innovation of new ideas. Tough Choices, Tough
Times changed my way of thinking about 5, 10, 15, 20 years out,” said Payzant, “and it is
compatible to entrepreneurial education thinking and the globalized world.”
The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent,
most creative and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will
be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not
just for the top professionals and managers, but up and down the length
and breadth of the workforce. Those countries that produce the most im-
portant new products and services can capture a premium in world mar-
kets that will enable them to pay high wages to their citizens.
4
“The standard of living for Americans is at risk unless we prepare students to compete
for jobs which demand high skills to receive high wages,” Payzant continued. “America’s
competitive edge has been creativity and innovation. America will have serious problems
down the road unless our education system prepares students to compete globally with
21st-century skills.”
18 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 19
Cathy Ashmore, Executive Director of the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
cited the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization working state by state, advo-
cating that new skills are necessary for a 21st century education, including:
• global awareness;
• fnancial, economic and business literacy;
• developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace
productivity and career options;
• civic literacy; and
• health and wellness awareness.
5
Ashmore said that entrepreneurs are not born, but rather they “become” through the
experience of their lives. She asked all to consider, “How do we get the elephant of edu-
cation to absorb entrepreneurship as a critical part of what is being delivered to our young
people?” The Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education was formed in 1982 to provide
state-level leadership for entrepreneurship education in ten states, as part of the U.S.
Department of Education’s policy for entrepreneurship education in vocational education
and to build a consortium to help feed “the elephant.” The Consortium currently has 96
member organizations, which operate with a common thought: “That entrepreneurship
education is a life-long learning process”—a whole series of experiences that enable
you to see the opportunities and develop the skills to make yourself responsible for your
future.” In 2004, the Consortium developed the National Content Standards for Entre-
preneurship Education Toolkit,
6
which offers a performance-indicator framework for
developing curriculum for entrepreneurship programs.
Ashmore emphasized that entrepreneurship education is more than writing a busi-
ness plan; it includes fnancial literacy, economics, communications skills, a great many
behaviors that become a process of discovery, and the trying out of business ideas. “In
cross-walking to curriculum standards, we should be talking educational language so that
entrepreneurship education becomes possible in a classroom and more than just a fun
thing to do on Friday,” said Ashmore.
She said that, according to a
2006 Gates Foundation Report,
30% of high school students drop
out before graduation: “The
decision to drop out is linked
closely to the lack of challenge
and connection to real-life expe-
rience faced by students in the
public school system. Eighty-
one percent of students stated that
if school provided opportunities for real-world learning, it would have improved their
chances for graduating from high school.”
“In cross-walking to curriculum stan-
dards, we should be talking educational
language so that entrepreneurship education
becomes possible in a classroom and more
than just a fun thing to do on Friday.”
In 2006, the Perkins Act—the U.S. Department of Education-administered federal
legislation for career and technical education—authorized Entrepreneurship as a fundable
program, encouraging program growth and membership (vocational education is now
called Career Technical Education [CTE]). Also in 2006, the House of Representatives
passed Resolution 699, which states that entrepreneurship education is important to our
schools. The Resolution was the foundation for the frst National Entrepreneurship Week,
in 2007. The Week will be repeated in 2008 and will consist of a nationwide celebration
to build support for the growth of entrepreneurship at all educational levels.
One of the leading organizations engaged in a comprehensive, scalable, proven, and
cost-effective entrepreneurship education model is the National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which is principally engaged in educating young people from
low-income communities. NFTE founder Steve Mariotti, a former business executive and
entrepreneur, started the organization offcially in 1987, after fve years as a public school
teacher in New York City school system, as a drop-out prevention program in the South
Bronx. Mariotti found that his students responded to math and reading when they were
embedded in the “real-life” scenarios of business. He quickly discovered that when low-
income youth were given the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, their innate
“street smarts” could easily develop into business and academic smarts.
In his opening presentation to YESG
members, Mariotti remarked that this care-
fully selected group of infuential leaders had
the potential to take relatively small programs
engaged in very important work to one great
collective effort that would make it possible for
every child born into a low-income community
to have an opportunity to learn the principles
of entrepreneurship and ownership. “NFTE is
committed to a 100% team involvement and we will do whatever it takes to achieve the
goal. NFTE is privileged to help spearhead this mission. We have spent a tremendous
amount of time working towards assembling a world-class group of top leaders to build
and implement an effective strategy,” said Mariotti. He praised his partners in the feld
and highlighted the major contributions of DECA, Inc., Junior Achievement, and Com-
munities in Schools, and the great strides each has made to help young people achieve
success in their future careers and in life.
NFTE has worked with over 220,000 young people from low-income communities
over the last 20 years, in programs across the U.S. in 31 states and in 13 other countries.
The organization has trained more than 4,700 Certifed Entrepreneurship Teachers (who
deliver NFTE’s specialized curriculum), and is continually improving its innovative pro-
gram models.
..when low-income youth
were given the opportunity to
learn about entrepreneurship,
their innate “street smarts”
could easily develop into busi-
ness and academic smarts..
20 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 21
Mariotti noted that there are many excellent entrepreneurship curriculums with various
lesson plans and approaches. “I have read many youth entrepreneurial curricula and I have
found, basically, 12 key points, or concepts, that children should know by age 17:
1. The importance of Mental
and Physical Health,
2. The Joy of Business and the Power of Opportunity Recognition,
3. The Economics of One Unit,
4. The Law of Supply and Demand,
5. The attitude of: Don’t compete, create a Comparative Advantage,
6. The Wealth Creation Process: innovation, opportunity recognition
and pursuit, personal savings and investment, home ownership,
and small business ownership,
7. Marketing: putting yourself in the customer’s shoes,
8. Leadership, Teamwork, Ethics, Philanthropy,
9. Understanding fnancial statements (Balance Sheet/Income State-
ments) and where you ft as an employee and/or owner, and
critical concepts such as Return
On Investment, Break-Even, and Positive Cash Flow,
10. The Basic Sales Call,
11. How to write a Business Plan, and
12. The Rule of 72: the power of compounding interest.”
In addition, Mariotti highlighted four key reasons to teach entrepreneurship:
1. It is a great way to teach
basic academic and life skills,
2. It provides better understanding of “direct labor” and “net
proft”—where you ft in on the income statement; direct labor
payroll, and/or owner’s equity,
3. Street smarts transform into business smarts, and
4. Greater access to entrepreneurship education is the major civil
rights issue of our time.
“Opening up the world of ownership to people who historically have been left out is
something that we can do and we will do,” continued Mariotti, “And, by doing that, I
think we will have a better society.”
Mariotti proposed some preliminary ideas to get the group thinking about strategy.
“I think we should continue to align with NCLB and its state standards and approaches;
work more closely with textbook publishers to expand the reach of the entrepreneurial
education feld, fnd ways to expose and ’credential’ more educators—teachers and youth
workers—on the basic principles of talking to children about ownership through entre-
preneurship, and increase and improve information dissemination—get positive, real-life
entrepreneurial stories out to the media.”
There are many elements that make up the entrepreneurship education feld and Dr.
Andrew B. Hahn, professor of Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and
Management, thinks getting to a certain level of homogeneity represents a real challenge.
Key players in the feld see
entrepreneurial education through different lenses:
• youth development
• school engagement
• equity strategy
• community building, experiential education
• economic growth
• other strategies
A leading thinker in the feld, Hahn posed to the group: “How do we organize a
strategy for this very heterogeneous feld?” Hahn stated that the Heller School has been
a learning partner for entrepreneurship education since the early 80s. “Every growth
movement confronts the issue of what constitutes evidence and whether philanthropy and
public policy, and educational policy makers, should proceed with an initiative if the re-
search base is not compelling enough. In other words, we have to have talking points that
include social experiments with control and comparison groups that today’s philanthropy
and education policy makers require.”
Another issue to address is “shelf space,” or the crowded feld of add-on programs that
we like to see in the public schools and the limited NCLB parameters. “It’s a compli-
cated issue,” said Hahn. “We can look at comparable movements like career education
and diversity training, and determine why they remained pilots or, if they grew in scale,
what were the reasons, and how have other education movements succeeded or failed
in becoming ubiquitous?” The quality of
intermediaries—those in the business of
improving teacher effectiveness, promot-
ing standardized curriculum, promoting
research-based practices—will be critical to
sustainability and growth with school-based
entrepreneurial programs as well as commu-
nity-based programs.”
“The quality of intermediaries
will be critical to sustainability
and growth with school-based
entrepreneurial programs as well
as community-based programs.”
22 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 23
Michael Feinberg, Co-Founder of KIPP: Knowledge Is Power Program, noted: “In the
era of NCLB, educators lean more towards squeezing out time for more reading and math
time, especially with remedial kids. We need to convince teachers that entrepreneurship
education will—in the long run—help kids do better in school, so I’m thinking it really is
about how we win that marketing war.”
One clear consensus is that a key goal of entrepreneurship education is preparing
high school students for further education. Tom Payzant commented: “Standards-based
education isn’t going anywhere. Assessments need to give educators the opportunity to
genuinely evaluate whether their education is working, in order to make any needed mid-
course corrections.” There is a great deal of systemic thinking taking place at the mo-
ment, but, as Payzant and others addressed, the challenge is how to go to scale. “There
are examples out there, but are they scalable? Extended-day is a real opportunity with
groups in lots of states working on extended-school-day opportunities,” said Payzant.
Charles Roussel, Director of Disadvantaged Children and Youth Program for Atlantic
Philanthropies, informed the group: “Atlantic Philanthropies has put several hundred mil-
lion dollars into extended-day learning programs so kids can engage more of their lives in
educational settings. Entrepreneurial education has to extend seamlessly from the school
day into the extended-learning period because of the ’dosage’ issue. And there are many
examples of this happening already from KIPP to Citizen Schools—for all are making
waves by keeping children engaged in youth development and academic enrichment for a
longer period of the day.”
“Think of local-based programs, and how to align entrepreneurial education in some
way, and then let’s determine what is scalable,” added Payzant. He then cited a few mod-
els, including Citizen Schools, Bell Foundation’s after-school program, and science fairs.
“Such programs include entrepreneurial skills such as critical thinking, problem solving,
and innovation.”
Ed Davis, Executive Director of DECA, Inc., agreed: “The issue of scale is where we
need to focus our time. There are real opportunities at the state level in terms of making a
difference.” DECA, like the Consortium for Entrepreneurial Education, was involved in
the Perkins legislation. “Most career and technical-education programs look at entrepre-
neurship as a capstone program,” said Davis, “where you teach the skills necessary to do
a particular function and you teach the students how to turn those skills into a career or
into their own business. That’s a very viable model and very different from a 9th grade
model solely looking at students as they enter the system and trying to impact things like
the drop-out rate.”
Another issue of effectiveness is not just tied to the issue of entrepreneurship but to the
support system; that is, the nurturing of the teacher, student recognition and the leader-
ship component. “These are diffcult to maintain when taking the system to scale,” said
Davis. “Junior Achievement, DECA, and NFTE all have this measure of success in com-
mon of creating an environment where the student and the teacher can be recognized.”
The Coleman Foundation, a leading supporter of entrepreneurial education, has in-
vested over $37 million in entrepreneurial education over the last thirty years.
Michael Hennessey, President and CEO of the Coleman Foundation, asked how we were
to measure the impact of entrepreneurship education and how to develop support struc-
tures around it.
“The Coleman Foundation has maintained that entrepreneurial education is venture
creation,” said Hennessey. “The process and all the educational objectives impacted
along the way are benefcial, but if we cannot at least say that we are about the creation of
the next generation of entrepreneurs, then legislation could get scattered without focus on
the entrepreneurial education feld.” Hennessey also cited a keen interest in community
colleges and how an articulation of entrepreneurship is a central issue. “We must explore
how to reach out to the community college network and community-based organiza-
tions for meaningful impact. We need entrepreneurs to come in and evaluate what we
are doing,” Hennessey continued. “If they are successful, we want them looking at our
[entrepreneurial] educational programs and say that, if you would have had this at age 16,
would you be better [off] today than you are now.”
Ongoing dialogue within the group led to an emerging theme that clarifed the defni-
tion of entrepreneurship education; that is, its broad defnition, how to measure it, and its
delivery.
Stephen Spinelli, President of Philadelphia University, addressed the issue from a
standpoint of measurement. Spinelli explained, “‘Give a person a fsh, teach them how
to fsh’ is an industrial-era mentality and autocratic from a management era. The en-
trepreneurial era is ‘I want to own the pond,’ and is a much more chaotic and diffcult
paradigm. When it’s autocratic, it’s pretty measurable. When it’s hierarchical, it’s really
easy to measure. And when it’s chaotic, it’s nearly impossible. The key is to measure it
collaboratively and as a national movement. As we make a decision on the defnition of
entrepreneurship education, is it about starting a business or it is about opportunity recog-
nition or problem solving?
24 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 25
“These are very different approaches as to how we enter the educational realm. If en-
trepreneurship education is about venture creation, is it about small business-versus-high-
impact venture? We have to get common language on the defnition. Teaching a man to
fsh is an industrial-age solution. Today it is about owning the pond. In owning the pond,
it is a much more diffcult paradigm, which leads to more measurement issues. Measure-
ment is a huge issue and maybe the key to getting national change. If entrepreneurship
education is about venture creation, it is very different path from teaching opportunity
recognition, problem solving and creativity, and each offers challenging approaches to
how we enter the educational realm.”
The overriding assumption is that the group’s mission is predominantly focused on the
9th and 10th grades and on the low-income community. But there is a great deal of effort
on bringing entrepreneurship education to other demographic segments, on other various
academic levels, as well as on a whole world of organizations focusing on the advance-
ment of the feld. Discussion continued and the importance of Title 1 and how it may
be brought into supporting entrepreneurship was brought up. “While we have a worthy
mission here [within YESG], what happens after that?” asked Ashmore. “Not that 9th and
10th grade is the only place kids get entrepreneurship but if, in fact, it is the focus of this
group, how do we understand what others are doing and make those linkages?”
Some offered entrepreneurship education as the unifying theory—uniting work skills,
economics, fnancial literacy and business, ownership attitudes and entrepreneurship
skills. Others suggested that “Entrepreneurship is a subset of fnancial literacy.” Maynard
Brown asked, “Should we look at kids over a longer period of time—say 6, 7, 8 years—
so by the time they are in 9th grade they have a base of consciousness?”
Along the line of consciousness-building, Leigh Toney of Miami Dade College said,
“Messaging is very powerful in urban communities. The more places young people hear
the same message about entrepreneurship education, the more likely we are to pierce
their consciousness. So it’s important to target not only 9th and 10th grade classrooms,
but all the other ages and agencies that touch kids—such as football games.” While there
is particular emphasis here at YESG on the 9th and 10th grades, it will require a more
encompassing look, and a strategic focus on efforts at different points of the educational
continuum will be an opportunity for greater impact.
The frst session concluded with three recurring thematic questions:
1) What are the challenges
that the feld has in reaching more students and how to take en-
trepreneurial education to scale?
2)What are the best ways to defne and deliver entrepreneurship
education?
3)What are the most effective paths to systematic growth?
DEVELOPING A STRATEGY:
PRIORITIZING ACTIONS, ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
During subsequent meeting time, participants moved the dialogue from an inspir-
ing set of individual ideas to a more collaborative strategy. Challenges that emerged in
reaching a shared value or consensus included:
1) Academic Shelf-Space:
How to make room for entrepreneurial education for in-school
and extended-school programs.
2) Heterogeneity of Models: Various feld players and the strategic
implications.
3) Measurement or Accountability: How does entrepreneurship
education best ft in NCLB? How do we balance measurement
and enable the feld to achieve higher levels of accountability
with the need for funding and other critical resources? What other
constituencies do we have to convince of the value of entrepre-
neurship education?
4) Distribution and Alliances: The question of how to ensure there are
more players
delivering more content to take to scale.
5) Resources: Capacity issues.
6) Messaging/Value Proposition, or contours of demand.
In bringing the broader world into the entrepreneurial education community, the group
looked at possible tactics. Much attention focused on extended learning in the context of
shelf space. Some participants advocated for a longer school day. KIPP and other charter
schools are already doing this. KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national
network of public schools in under-resourced communities across the United States.
With over 50 locally run KIPP schools in 17 states and Washington, D.C., and serving
over 14,000 students, KIPP schools have been widely recognized for putting underserved
students on the path to college. More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income
and more than 90 percent are African-American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly
80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college. But how do you achieve this in
traditional public schools?
Junior Achievement (JA) is another model that is also working. For over thirty years,
JA has broadened its scope to include in-school and after-school programs, reaching ap-
proximately eight million students worldwide. “JA programs work through middle grades
and high school, focusing on the key content areas of entrepreneurship, work readiness,
and fnancial literacy,” said Jack Kosakowski, Executive Vice President and Chief Op-
erating Offcer of JA Worldwide, and President of Junior Achievement. Junior Achieve-
ment was founded in 1919 by three entrepreneurs: Theodore Vail, president of American
Telephone & Telegraph; Horace Moses, president of Strathmore Paper Co.; and Senator
26 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 27
Murray Crane, of Massachusetts. Its frst course, JA Company Program, was offered to
high school students on an after-school basis. In 1975, the organization entered the class-
room with the introduction of a project business/applied economic theory model designed
for the middle grades and presented with the assistance of volunteers.
Charles Roussel cited the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) as a potential re-
source area for entrepreneurial education to fnd possible linkage. As part of NCLB, SES
includes academic assistance such as tutoring, remediation, and other educational inter-
ventions (provided outside of the regular school day) designed to increase the academic
achievement of students in low-performing schools. Students from low-income families
who attend Title I schools in their second year of school improvement (i.e., which have
not made adequate yearly progress [AYP] for three or more years), are in corrective ac-
tion, or in restructuring status, are eligible to receive these services.
“Leaning towards extended learning, 19% of the SES money has been allocated and it
is the role of the state to decide who gets on the list,” said Roussel. “So there is wide-
open space for entrepreneurial education.”
Cathy Ashmore noted that, in a very crowded shelf space, there should be consider-
ation given to existing courses that students take in the 9th and 10th grades, (i.e., general
business or computer-skill courses), where entrepreneurial education can be an enhance-
ment, as opposed to building a new program.
Marc Spencer, Executive Director of
Juma Ventures, cited the fnancial literacy
movement and the adoption of standards
into the curriculum. Juma Ventures devel-
ops and operates businesses as “social
enterprises,” for the purpose of provid-
ing job opportunities to economically
disadvantaged teens. Juma, which means
work in Swahili, empowers young people with fnancial education and savings programs,
college and career exploration, and essential life skills. In thinking more about shelf
space and scalable models, Spencer posed the question, “How do we complement the
public-school learning experience in such a way so we are adding value to what students
need to transition into positive adulthood?” And “Could we align with the same approach
around entrepreneurship education which determines the shelf space issue?”
Kelvin James, Director of Community Investment for E*TRADE Bank, also addressed
the strategy issue of alignment, “It is important to align with fnancial literacy movements
and to fnd those linkages. There is promise for this group to implement strategies for
entrepreneurship education in schools nationwide that can have an overall positive impact
on low-income communities.” Part of E*TRADE Financial’s commitment is to invest
in communities through non-proft partnerships to improve neighborhoods and increase
fnancial literacy. As a leader in on-line fnancial services, E*TRADE is expanding to
low- and moderate-income communities.
...entrepreneurial education can
be an enhancement, as opposed to
building a new program...
Leigh Toney added: “Another way of looking at alignment is the convening authority
that an institution has.” Toney is Executive Director of Miami Dade College’s Carrie P.
Meek Entrepreneurial Education Center (MEEC), an outreach facility focused on entre-
preneurship, economic, and community development. MEEC offers a program to high
school students called the Institute for Youth Entrepreneurship (IYE), which is a compre-
hensive business-skills-development project aimed at educating inner-city high school
students on the craft of entrepreneurship.
Kim Pate, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships for CFED, suggested align-
ment with existing fnancial education institutions that may not have entrepreneurship
education as part of their mission but are
involved in enterprise development, such
as CFED and the work it is doing with the
Native community. “CFED offers asset-
building tools that are compatible with
entrepreneurial education,” said Pate. “We
focus on communities that have tradition-
ally been excluded from or limited by the
mainstream economy, such as the Native population.”
Alignment became a central theme as the direction shifted to considering more con-
crete strategies. The group outlined several goals:
1) Increase the Supply of Entrepreneurship Education:
• Scale likely to be achieved through the public education
system. Train more entrepreneurship teachers. Integrate into
teacher education and certifcation schools of education and
professional development. Create an “Entrepreneurship Edu-
cation Teacher-of-the-Year” award program for organizations.
• Engage community-based organizations in supporting growth
within public education system.
• Strengthen existing entrepreneurship education programs.
• Establish “best practices” and assist feld in growing to scale.
• Raise more funds for entrepreneurship education.
2) Increase Demand for Entrepreneurship Education:
• Partner with other advocates. YESG members must expand
leadership network. Partner with other education policy experts
and advocates for education reform (i.e., extended-day, expe-
riential education) to create a unifed and powerful message.
• Increase links to higher education. Advocate for an Ad-
vanced Placement test in business. Include Entrepreneurship
Club as an option in the extracurricular activities lists on the
College Entrance Common Application.
...alignment with existing fnan-
cial education institutions involved in
enterprise development...
28 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 29
3) Develop the Connection Between Supply and Demand:
• Determine how to measure outcomes of entrepreneurship
education.
• Create a network to broker supply and demand.
4) Prompt Public Discussion and Action:
• Defne our most impactful audience.
• Develop consistent messaging platform to support YESG action
plan.
• Use YESG members as key major media spokespeople.
• Activities could include op-eds and article placement.
Events:
• Small roundtable convenings with local leaders to inspire action.
• Events in February 2008 to be coordinated with National Entre-
preneurship Week.
5) Advocate for Policy Change
• Develop a YESG Policy Action Guide.
• Work to include Entrepreneurship Education in NCLB, Perkins
Act, Workforce Improvement Act, or any other relevant legis-
lation.
• Pursue legislative changes in bellwether states.
• Communicate message to Presidential campaign issues’ direc-
tors, asking all major candidates to include a statement in fa-
vor of entrepreneurship education in their education platforms.
• Implement demonstration program. Use a school, district,
city or state as a research site to prove that system-wide
implementation is possible and worthwhile; could potentially
achieve the same goals with an entrepreneurship school.
Timeline Roles and Responsibilities
• September 2007: Convene to commence work on developing concrete targeted
strategy at YESG 1.
• Oct 2007 – April 2008: two local public events:
example: Meeting of Deans of Schools of Education
example: Local meeting in NYC comparable to February 2007 DC and SF meetingsgs
Design and implement communications plan
• May 2008: YESG 2: Finalize Strategy – White Paper
• May 2009: YESG 3: Policy Action Guide
Measure of Success: Track and support annual progress towards mission. By the end
of May 2009, convene three additional YESG member meetings; conduct six regional
events, conduct media messaging effort; mobilize and support individual YESG member
action plans.
Messaging Entrepreneurship Education: Making Ideas Stick
Dan Heath, noted author and consultant to the Aspen Institute, addressed how to com-
municate new ideas around entrepreneurial education in a way that changes behaviors
and makes those changes stick. In Heath’s book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Stick
and Others Die, he distills lessons from ten years of research on why some ideas succeed
while others fade away. Heath offers six principles to move ideas into a successful com-
munications strategy:
1) Simplicity: the essential core of ideas;
2) Unexpectedness;
3) Concreteness;
4) Credibility;
5) Emotional; and
6) Story.
Getting clear on what the group was advocating in one voice still needed more refne-
ment. An underlying theme are the strategies, tactics, communication approaches, and
targeting who the audience will be, in order to accomplish the objectives.
CONCLUSION
As the proceedings came to its fnal session, much of the discussion focused on the vi-
sion and whether it was too narrow. Michael Caslin, Executive Vice President, Offce of
Public Policy, for NFTE, who is leading the YESG initiative, remarked that he had taken
into account the comments and concerns of the group and thought that additional work
was needed to better synthesize the vision, mission, and strategy. It is clear that a more
refned version of the vision could have a greater impact and be more inclusive.
With an expression of different opinions from around the room, Moderator Ortmans
gave the roundtable participants an opportunity to redact the draft vision statement and
suggest how it might be better shaped, given the YESG convening:
Each year 500,000 9th & 10th graders (14 to 16 year olds) in Title 1 High
Schools will have the opportunity to participate in entrepreneurship education.
The group agreed that the “vision” language needed reshaping so practitioners in the
feld could best crystallize a common ground to leverage most effectively each member’s
part in the overall feld. The initial question was: why 500,000 and if that number re-
ferred to new students, and why narrow the focus to 9th and 10th graders? Caslin pointed
out that there were at least 500,000 9th and 10th graders in Title 1 high schools, so the
number related to a target of 100% penetration. In the last few years, NFTE had made a
concerted effort to be more aware of the needs of those 500,000 students attending high
30 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 31
schools in low-income communities. One panel member argued that 100% penetration
was a daunting challenge and suggested that an impact analysis be conducted on the edu-
cation of 500,000 students relative to resources and capacity.
Participants considered whether the vision should be delivered to students beyond the
9th and 10th grades. “I would not target an age group, I would target high school, all
grades,” said Ed Davis. “When you target the 9th and 10th grades, does it mean that a 17
year old taking an entrepreneurship class sponsored by the state department of educa-
tion would not count? I understand the purpose of targeting 9th and 10th graders for the
purpose of keeping them in school, but many schools have entrepreneurial classes above
the 10th grade.”
In addition to the points raised about the 500,000 student target number issue, and the
limitations of focusing on 9th and 10th graders, there was also a discussion on whether
quality programming could be delivered effectively. In addition, the notion that 100%
penetration suggested a mandate was discussed. Payzant commented, “Keep in mind that
the concern of backing off from an ambitious goal is that there is tension present when
there is a big reach, but consider that perhaps a stretch goal may be beyond what we can
imagine, but reachable.”
Maynard Brown said, “To take this to scale, we should start small and scale up
quickly. A possible model could be to set pilots strategically across the country—perhaps
in ten different school districts—get superintendents to embrace it, and use our collective
assets.” Charles Roussel mentioned that it might make sense to think of the numbers
in terms of collective assets and collective “access” among YESG participants. “If you
consider partnership pathways and look at the different networks that the group repre-
sents, a lesser number might be a good baseline to build from,” said Roussel. He added
that the number of 500,000 will come under a lot of scrutiny and it would either speak
to the credibility of the initiative or would be a reason for people to ignore it. Someone
suggested that, in addition to scrutiny, the group might be driven towards outputs instead
of outcomes.
The fnalized vision statement was
then developed and agreed to by the
YESG members and reads as fol-
lows:
Each graduate from a high school
serving a low-income community
will have the opportunity to explore
their entrepreneurial potential.
In order to actualize the vision, the YESG group members then looked at a holistic
strategy and formed four subcommittees to develop a strategic approach and tactics, and
how each member could sign on to a particular group—specifcally how the vision would
ft around the following areas in a shared commitment:
Each graduate from a high school
serving a low-income community will
have the opportunity to explore their
entrepreneurial potential.
1) Partnership Pathways: for In-School/Out of School-CBO/Extended-Day/
Community College partners.
2) City/State Strategy: Three states, multi-states, or a focus on school districts
that have the largest Title 1 urban school districts.
3) Federal Alignment: to NCLB, Perkins, SES, and Competitiveness.
4) Field Development: Knowledge Management and Best Practice Promotion.
Alliances and networks will play a critical role in helping the education system imple-
ment sustainable models and achieve real successes. YESG is hopeful of recruiting more
associations to help in this effort.
“The Aspen Institute has partnered with the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepre-
neurship because there is tremendous opportunity to have an important and lasting impact
on public education through entrepreneurship education,” said Peter Reiling, Executive
Vice President of the Aspen Institute. “This inaugural meeting has launched a formal as-
sociation, and this dynamic group with
its collective assets can harness new
energy into the education reform move-
ment. We are looking to this network
of leaders to develop and implement
strategies that help educators, policy-
makers, and infuential leaders in the
education feld understand how teach-
ing entrepreneurship can make a differ-
ence in the lives of young people.”
Subcommittee Dialogue
(The following are notes to the sub-committee conversations.)
With regard to the state strategy, the highest concentration of Title 1 high schools are in
California, Texas, and Florida:
Texas: 3,674
California: 2,324
Florida: 1,028
7
There was consensus around “Making a difference in keeping kids in school.” Daniel
Cardinali, President of Communities in Schools, leads an organization dedicated to helping
children stay in school. Cardinali emphasized the importance of national networks with
superintendents, principals, students, parents, as well as community partners. Successful
school engagement strategies are clearly linked to partnerships with community-based
organizations. Roussel agreed: “For any partner, you are always looking for national net-
works as distribution channels for great programs. No national leader can push something
onto a network if the value proposition is not clear. If this is an anti-dropout strategy that
can augment other anti-dropout strategies, that’s great, but clarity is important.”
We are looking to this network of
leaders to develop and implement strate-
gies that help educators, policymakers,
and infuential leaders in the education
feld understand how teaching entrepre-
neurship can make a difference in the
lives of young people.”
32 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Conference Report 33
Ed Davis of DECA, Inc. asked how the Partnerships Pathways and the City/State
Strategy sub-groups would interact. “Is one designed to create the broad scheme and the
other to create and implement it in a state-by-state strategy? What is the role of each of
these types of delivery systems and how does that role support the vision?”
Michael Caslin spoke of the Pathway map of the life cycle of a child, and how each
member can plug in somewhere on the pathway and work to replicate it in a state-by-state
strategy. “It’s an opportunity to align all of our energies,” said Caslin.
Added Roussel: “The best national organizations have very strong state organizations
and so many of the partners you may want to partner with are already very well grounded
programmatically in the states and on the policy level, so we should look for those orga-
nizations who are already doing entrepreneurial education initiatives. The ultimate goal
is to gain traction on a state-by-state basis. We lose our primacy as a group if we limit
ourselves to certain parts of the country.”
Irv Katz, President and CEO of the National Human Services Assembly, signed on to
the Partnership Pathway on behalf of the National Collaboration of Youth, whose mem-
bership includes national institutions such as 4-H, Girls and Boys Clubs of America, Girl
Scouts of USA, and the YMCA of the US. “I think there is a lot of translation needed
among different subsectors—the positive youth-development community, the entrepre-
neurship community, and the fnancial-literacy community,” Katz said. “It’s fnding the
leverage points for identifying common ground.”
The group explored vehicles for policy change and considered options at the federal,
state and local level. Considerable thought was given to current issues and how entrepre-
neurship education could be implemented nationwide. Federal alignment was considered
worth pursuing. “Watch the NCLB reauthorization process as it unfolds,” observed Payz-
ant. “There are opportunities with certain amendments, so we should keep the options
open, perhaps with the Competitive legislation or Stem, and how that connects to the
National Science Foundation. Other traditional legislation such as Perkins ought to be
reviewed in terms of where it is going and how that might ft in our overall work. Timing
is critical.”
Moderator Jonathan Ortmans highlighted legislation such as COMPETES
8
, which is
charging federal agencies with entrepreneurship missions under the auspices of global
attention on innovation. In April 2007, the U.S. Senate passed the America COMPETES
Act, to promote American innovation in the global economy. The legislation, which
was signed into law on August 9, 2007, will increase federal R&D funding, strengthen
science, technology, engineering, and math education, and create a Presidential Council
on Innovation and Competitiveness. “With innovation being the viable term these days,
every federal agency has funds allocated for fnancial literacy,” said Ortmans. The Public
Forum Institute is putting together a government website, www.entrepreneurship.gov, to
include all the federal funding sources.
Marc Spencer spoke on the future work of the fourth subcommittee, established to
address feld development through best practices. “Is there an evaluation approach to be
mindful of within these subcommittees? In certain evaluation exchanges, there is a menu
of outcomes for advocacy and policy work that we may want to look at,” said Spencer.
“For each area of activity—i.e., strengthening organizational capacity—there are exam-
ples of outcomes and strategies, so it would behoove us to look at an evaluation approach
that we feel comfortable with so that we have measurements aligned with a common
vision and goal.” More feld building and management of that knowledge would be a
critical component to legitimizing the goal.
It was agreed by the members that the formation of four subcommittees within YESG
will allow members specialized opportunities to develop tactics. Periodic meetings
highlighting actions, sharing insights, and forming linkages will help build momentum in
support of advancing entrepreneurship education, and will provide measurable ways to
evaluate progress. Once again, the subcommittees are:
1. Partnership Pathway:
for In-School/Out of School-CBO/Extended-Day/Community
College partners.
2. City/State Strategy: (e.g., CA, TX, FL, DC, NY) with largest number
of Title 1 urban school districts.
3. Federal Alignment: to NCLB, Perkins, SES, and Competitiveness
(tactics would address outcome-based custom messaging).
4. Field Development/Knowledge Management: through best prac-
tices dissemination based on research and evaluation fndings.
Participants recognized that there was much work ahead but could certainly sense that
a movement was indeed building in the feld and, through collective efforts, the goal of
each graduate from a high school serving a low-income community having educational
opportunities to explore their entrepreneurial potential is attainable. In building the move-
ment, clear instruction on best practices on how to measure success will be necessary.
Michelle Molloy, of Spitfre Strategies, offered ways that YESG could effectively mo-
bilize the group. She presented guidelines specifcally on strategies for supportive action
by identifying and leveraging their activation points. “An activation point occurs when
the right people at the right time are
persuaded to take an action that leads
to measurable changes for an impor-
tant social issue,” Molloy explained.
In 2003, on behalf of the Commu-
nications Leadership Institute (CLI),
Spitfre Strategies produced the Spit-
fre Strategies Smart Chart planning
tool, to help nonproft organizations
and the funders that support them plan
and execute communications efforts
that support social change.
9
By defning activation points more clearly, groups can create
the architecture for efforts that create tipping points. Molloy said that there has been
“An activation point occurs when
the right people at the right time are
persuaded to take an action that leads
to measurable changes for an important
social issue,”
34 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
Conference Report 35
much discussion about The Tipping Point, a best-selling book by Malcolm Gladwell. He
describes a “tipping point” as that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behav-
ior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfre. “The downside of this phenom-
enon is that the tipping point is something revealed in hindsight,” said Molloy. “We can
look back and analyze the confuence of events that made it possible.”
Currently, there are many organizations working to transform education for millions
of children. Such change agents have transformed the American education landscape
and are beacons to what is possible in our nation’s schools. Ventures such as Teach For
America, College Summit, The New Teacher Project, LA United, the New Leaders for
New Schools, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the organizations represented on
the YESG panel, are all prime examples. The entrepreneurship feld is indeed building
momentum and a real promise of opportunity for all children to reach their entrepreneur-
ial potential is possible.
With a sense or urgency, enthusiasm, and commitment, YESG I concluded and the
work of YESG was offcially launched, with the convening of YESG II scheduled to take
place in Spring, 2008 at the Aspen Retreat Center in Wye, Maryland.
AFTERWORD
The core mission of the Aspen Institute is to foster enlightened leadership and open-
minded dialogue, as refected throughout the pages of this conference report. The Aspen
Colorado campus is home to a wide range of policy work and an ambitious set of inita-
tives to help emerging leaders face critical decisions with creativity, wisdom, and the
spirit of service.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group (YESG) is engaged in an extremely im-
portant conversation about ways to increase accessibility to entrepreneurship education.
YESG’s successful efforts will in turn infuence hundreds of thousands of young lives in
America over the coming years. YESG members have chosen to participate in the explo-
ration of a critical human capital development issue—why we learn what we learn when
we learn it and we are very fortunate to have the leadership of 33+ national organizaitons
involved.
YESG has the urgent task of promoting Entrepreneurship Education as an effective
response for a number of converging issues now facing us both in the policy world and
in the classroom. From American competitiveness, workplace readiness, workforce
development, student and teacher engagement as measured by school performance, high
school graduation, drop-out prevention success via basic skill development and improved
teacher performance in the classoroom, we will seek to discern the best ways forward to
bring the promise of entrepreneurship education to greater numbers of students, espe-
cially deserving youth from low-income communities in Title 1 high schools having high
rates of free and reduced meals (minimum 40% or greater).
This is an effort in which we can and must prevail. To accept the status quo in policy
and practice of a currently limited access and patchworked state by state entrepreneur-
ship education system would be, in my opinion, a surrender of the economic and civic
leadership of our future. It is that serious. This is the next critical phase of the civil rights
movement–accessibility to entrepreneurship education. For some it will be a matter of
life or death.
YESG’s policy successes will enhance the ability of young people to enter into and
succeed in the world of work and more thoughtfully connect to the business and edu-
cation community. YESG success will result in an expanded capability of American
teachers and schools to inspire learning through proven, scalable, well-researched and
cost-effective experiential entrepreneurship education.
From my 20 years of leading NFTE’s program growth in the U.S.A. and into 13 coun-
tries on four continents, I know many positive results will be seen. For this is a common-
sense, pragmatic and just approach. And the time is now. There are powerful trends fac-
ing us that cannot be ignored. For example, David Rothkopf of The Washington Post has
written, “The Coming Battle of the Ages,” predicting, in my opinion, the rise of a human
36 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
tsunami created by economic and demographic fault lines. Rothkopf states, “Demography
is, in fact, destiny: Half the people in the world today are under 24 years of age. Of these,
nearly nine out of 10 live in the developing world. One billion of them will need jobs in
the next decade — 60 percent of them are in Asia, 15 percent are in Africa. For them, the
choices are simple: dignity or desperation, a job or starvation.”
It is our frm belief that entrepreneurial thinking and behaviors, skills and attitudes
positively focus a young person’s energy and provides a powerful possibility for long-
term social change. Hence our urgent commitment to expanding the promise of entre-
preneurship education to youth from low-income communities right here in America’s
needy communities which are currently being threatened by massive high school drop-out
rates and growing under and unemployment.
Author Howard Means states in his book, Money and Power — The History of Busi-
ness, “Today, business drives the world, from all around the world. A global network of
corporations, stock markets, banks and industries (driven by entrepreneurs) churns out
more riches than humankind has ever known. Yet, poverty hasn’t been defeated. Miser-
ies — from war to disease and famine — spread themselves far too broadly. The envi-
ronment is threatened, in some cases by the very rapaciousness of the business spirit we
are describing. But today the access to this global wealth and the capacity to participate
in the machinery that produces is now available in ways that would have been almost
unthinkable even half a century ago. People have more freedom to be, to do, to go and
to know at the start of the new millennium than they ever have had in the history of time.
They have more means and capacity and opportunity to do all those things than the hu-
man race has ever known. And in no small measure the credit belongs to the business
leaders of the previous millennium who have set the table for us all.”
These provocative words challenge us to consider the possibility that our societies 20
to 100 years from now will also be built by new entrepreneurs in the decades to come but
only if they know how to “access the wealth” and “participate in the machinery” and are
truly able to use their “freedom to be, to do, to go and to know”.
Entrepreneurship Education, especially targeted for the most needy of communities,
will unleash a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders at all levels of society. And will
contribute to a more effective synergy among universities, governments, business leaders,
school systems, policymakers, youth development organizations, members of the media
and social infuencers.
The time for action has come: together we must and will make Entrepreneurship Edu-
cation more available to all young Americans, especially those most in need.
Michael J. Caslin, III
Executive Vice President, Public Policy, NFTE
Director of YESG
APPENDIX
Appendix 39
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This conference and initiative owes its origin and support to a partnership between
E*TRADE Financial, the Aspen Institute, and the National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE). In particular, we acknowledge Peter Reiling, Executive Vice
President of the Aspen Institute; Michael Caslin, Executive Vice President of NFTE; and
Michael Kaplan and Kelvin James of E*TRADE, as the guiding force; as well as mem-
bers of the YESG Steering Committee, headed by Chair Stephanie Bell-Rose and Vice-
Chair Tom Payzant; and our YESG member organizations and working group members.
We thank Sunny Sumter for ably constructing this report from the conference dialogue,
its background readings, and her own research. Also, many thanks to Gloria Sandiford,
YESG program manager, for the behind-the-scenes programmatic and event planning
aspects, which synthesizes all of our work efforts. Of course, the Conference gained its
energy and value from the willingness of the YESG participants to share their valuable
time, knowledge, and insights. Particularly, we thank Steve Mariotti, Andy Hahn, Cathy
Ashmore, Tom Payzant, Andy Rotherham, and Irv Katz for their lead-off presentations;
Maynard Brown, Jabious Williams, and Kathryn Morrissey for their perspectives on how
entrepreneurship education has changed their lives; and Governor Janet Napolitano for
her keynote address. Special thanks to YESG staff, Aspen Institute staff, NFTE staff,
consultants, and interns: Rachel Gross, Anna Markowitz, Kathryn Morrissey, Rachel
Schneider, Tony Towle, Tom Phillips, Terry Levine, Steve Johnson and Sogand Sepassi.
The support and leadership of Lisa Collandra, Charity Schumway and Jack Sabater of the
Goldman Sachs Foundation as well as members of the NFTE Executive Committee and
NFTE Board is deeply appreciated and has been instrumental in YESG’s success to date.
40 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education Appendix 41
Perspectives: Entrepreneurship Training
Can Empower Students Being Left Behind
By Michael J. Caslin III, Porcher L. Taylor III, and Dr. Catherine S. Fisher
If Congress renews the controversial No Child
Left Behind Act, as it is expected to do, some
impoverished, low-performing students will in-
evitably lose the hypercompetitive race to get into
college.
Perception, tragically, often becomes reality.
Entrepreneurial self-employment, however,
would hold great promise for business-minded
students, if they learned entrepreneurship in high
school and could try out their innovative business
plans on consumers in their own neighborhoods
and beyond—especially Internet start-up ideas.
The social and community networking success of
MySpace has opened a wide door for anyone to
market a new idea or product to a myriad of poten-
tial customers instantly.
In a bold, dramatic move to address the lack of an entrepreneurship component in
NCLB, Congress should amend the law to fund the certifcation of high school educators
to teach entrepreneurship electives, especially to students most likely to be “left behind.”
Alternatively, Congress should pass separate legislation to this effect, or the federal
Department of Education should launch this as its own initiative without a Congressional
mandate. Unfortunately, there is no current push by lawmakers to include entrepreneurial
education in NCLB.
The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which has trained
and certifed over 4,700 entrepreneurship teachers since 1987, would be the ideal peda-
gogical vehicle to launch such an initiative. Since its founding, more than 220,000 young
people have gained the ability to take an individual pathway to prosperity—not be left
behind—by taking NFTE’s rigorous, proven, relevant and relationship-driven “mini-
MBA” course.
NFTE students have been taught by their teachers to conceptualize, design and
present their own business plans, guided by volunteer business plan coaches, learned
to open up bank accounts and conduct business operations, while tracking income and
costs. Drafting a personal business plan is an experiential and asset-based approach that
enables students to understand the importance of clear, concise writing, reading ability,
and accurate math calculations: personal profts and business growth provide context and
rewards for learning traditional subjects. Signifcantly, NFTE’s teaching programs have
been adopted in 600 mostly low-income middle and high school districts in 31 states and
13 other countries. This demand-side growth has come from the success of NFTE’s two
founding sites in 1988: the South Bronx and Newark, N.J.
Michael J. Caslin (above right, pictured with
Mayor Bloomberg of New York) is executive vice
president for public policy of the National Founda-
tion for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Such an experiential approach could prepare our future workforce to be innovative,
competitive and entrepreneurial. And it would complement the rote learning taking place
in classrooms across the country in order to meet minimum NCLB benchmarks—an
approach that leaves most students
bored and many teachers demoral-
ized. In today’s classrooms, the
lack of experiential and contextual
methods—which are at the heart of
entrepreneurship education—truly leaves the students needing the most help behind—
and turned off.
With America becoming ever more of an entrepreneurial nation, the timing is right
to amend NCLB. An amendment should promote the teaching of standardized academic
skills, including essential life skills such as entrepreneurial development, which would
help students prepare for success in the marketplace via success in the classroom.
Recently, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s research and policy guide, On
the Road to an Entrepreneurial Economy, stated that
“A central task for educators and policymakers is not
only to give students the key skills to thrive in any
work environment—reading, math, science, technolo-
gy and history—but also to nurture whatever creative
and entrepreneurial skills each of us has at birth. Pro-
grams that teach basic entrepreneurial skills to middle
and high school students could be especially valuable
for children from disadvantaged backgrounds as a
way to encourage their interest in academic achieve-
ment in general.”
A 2006 Junior Achievement survey revealed that
71 percent of middle and high school students wanted
to be self-employed at some point, up from 64 percent
in 2004. The phenomenal explosion in recent years
of business downsizings and overseas outsourcing of
U.S. service jobs only adds to the need for entrepreneurship skills.
Most important, NCLB mandates math and reading profciency. In order to help
deserving youth who are entrepreneurially inclined to avoid being left behind, Congress
needs to amend NCLB so those students can gain entrepreneurship literacy as an essen-
tial step towards participation in the world’s most dynamic entrepreneurial economy via
enhanced math and reading skills.
Michael J. Caslin is executive vice president for public policy of the National Founda-
tion for Teaching Entrepreneurship and adjunct professor at Babson College’s Arthur M.
Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.
Porcher L. Taylor is a professor at University of Richmond’s School of Continuing Stud-
ies who also teaches business ethics at the university’s Robins School of Business.
Dr. Catherine S. Fisher, a professor of education and director of Richmond’s Teacher
Licensure Program, is a retired high school principal with 15 years each of classroom
teaching and high school administrative experience.
...prepare our future workforce to be innovative,
competitive and entrepreneurial.
Porcher L. Taylor, professor at University of
Richmond’s School of Continuing Studies.
42 Advancing Entrepreneurship Education
ENDNOTES
1
National Center on Education and the Economy. Tough Choices, Tough Times: The Report of the
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2006, p.4.
2
Anthony Lutkus and Andrew R. Weiss, The Nation’s Report Card: Civics 2006, May 2007,
National Center for Education Statistics, at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/
main2006/2007476.asp.
3
National Governor’s Association, Innovation America: A Final Report at
http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0707INNOVATIONFINAL.PDF (last accessed November 2, 2007).
4
Tough Choices, Tough Times, p.7.
5
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education at http://www.entre-ed.org/NFTE/1
(last accessed October 25, 2007).
6
Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education, National Content Standards.for Entrepreneurship
Education, at http://www.entre-ed.org/Standards_Toolkit/.
7
For more information on Title 1 high school statitistics, visit:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/2002indicators/index.html.
8
See U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, The America Creat-
ing Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act
(COMPETES), http://science.house.gov/legislation/leg_highlights_detail.aspx?NewsID=1938. In
April, 2007, both the House and Senate passed comprehensive legislation (H.R. 2272, S. 761) to
ensure our nation’s competitive position in the world through improvements to math and science
education and a strong commitment to research. H.R. 2272 is the culmination of a year-and-a-half-
long, bipartisan effort led by Members of the House Science and Technology Committee to pass a
package of competitiveness bills in response to recommendations in the 2005 National Academies
report: Rising above the Gathering Storm. The Conference Agreement follows through on a com-
mitment to ensure that U.S. students, teachers, businesses and workers are prepared to continue
leading the world in innovation, research and technology — well into the future.
9
For more information on Spitfre Strategies, visit: http://www.spitfrestrategies.com/.
founded in 1950, is an international nonproft organization dedicated to fostering enlightened
leadership and open-minded dialogue. Through seminars, policy programs, conferences and leader-
ship development initiatives, the Institute and its international partners seek to promote nonpartisan
inquiry and an appreciation for timeless values. The Institute is headquartered in Washington, DC,
and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River near the shores of the Chesapeake
Bay in Maryland. Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon,
Tokyo, New Delhi, and Bucharest, and leadership initiatives in Africa, Central America, and India.
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