Public Education is Suffering while Private Education is Getting By

What Was New
in Previous Updates


These items are presented in reverse chronological order with the most recent shown first.


Our June 2008 Update:


Asora Looks At Protestant And Other Sectarian Schools
We have now added some information that might be of interest to Protestants and other sects regarding their interests and responsibilities in the education of their children. Asora's Stellar Schools, or the non-profit version, can help. Please check Asora & Protestant Etc. Education for more information.

Asora Looks At The World's Schools
Recently reported research from the American Institutes for Research now allows us to estimate levels of proficiency in other developed countries with respect to math and science achievement levels they would have obtained on the United States' Nation's Report Card. While not all countries are covered, enough European, Anglophone, and Asian states are included to tell us that roughly 40%, 30% and 50% of 13 year old students are proficient in these subject areas, respectively. This means that social promotion is a world wide educational problem because, at best, only about half of the world's students (of those tested) are found to be proficient (at or above grade level).

Asora In Switzerland
CEO David Anderson was invited to make a presentation (June 16th) at a symposium organized at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne where he spoke about "Self-Paced, Online Physics Instruction." Given the fact that social promotion appears to be a world-wide problem, we announced that we have decided to look beyond the United States for potential partners in the development of Asora's Stellar Schools. You can view/hear the speech from our physics page.

Asora At The Vatican
As a part of our European visit we made some efforts to meet with Catholic education authorities at the Vatican when we visited there in late June. Although we were unable to secure an appointment for such a meeting on this visit, we plan to continue our efforts to offer our ideas that would potentially benefit Catholic schools around the world.

Prototypical Physics Course Example
Until now, the Asora website provided only one example of how a Stellar Schools course might operate. That is the Algebra 1 segment found elsewhere on this website. We have now begun the development of an AP level high school Physics With Calculus course. In it we have made further improvements to the Stellar Schools instructional model. By viewing the introductory Lecturette #1, site visitors can glean much about the twelve instructional modes being planned for this course (and similar ones for most of the other subjects in the core curriculum). Please visit our page on Asora Physics to learn more.

Asora Analyses Of The NECAP States
Continuing its work for stakeholders around the United States, Asora partnered with the Ocean State Policy Research Institute (where CEO Anderson also plays a role as Education Fellow) to examine the achievement test proficiencies reported in the states of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont- all of which use the NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program). Consistent with its previous studies in the states of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma as well as with its work for individual counties in California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, a similar picture emerges: Social promotion affects every school and even the best public schools have very large fractions of their students below grade level. Of the six tests administered by the NECAP, we were pleased to learn that one of them, its high school mathematics test, has proficiencies that are no longer inflated relative to our NAEP estimates. The worst NECAP/NAEP school in the NECAP states is Hope IT High School in Providence where less than 2% of its 11th grade children were found to be proficient. Despite that statistic, nearly all of those tested will receive high school diplomas next year. Go figure!

Asora Extends Its Work For Oklahoma
In addition to our achievement test analysis service in which we predict what proficiency percentages individual schools and districts would have obtained on the NAEP, we have been working with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs to disseminate relevant estimates of local schools and districts to media outlets in the various Oklahoma localities. Written as op-ed articles, we have used mail-merge to provide locality specific information as to the best and worst schools at the various grade levels within the state's counties and districts.

Asora Announces Appointment of CMO
Susan Anderson has accepted our offer to manage Asora's marketing operation. As Chief Marketing Officer, Susan will be responsible for the relations with and the development of investors, suppliers, collaborators, and customers.

Asora CEO Will Run For State Assembly
David Anderson recently announced his candidacy to run for the Rhode Island General Assembly where he would represent its 4th district (located on Providence's East Side). Given the severely dysfunctional status of the state's public education system, about half of his political effort will focus on it. Given the part-time nature of this body, he will be able to continue the Asora developments after his election. To avoid conflicts of interest he will propose Stellar School "like" solutions for public schools, but will suggest the use of other vendors such as K12, Inc. to provide the courseware.

Asora Speakers Bureau
Asora Education Enterprises will offer public speakers to venues interested in K-12 education reform. Please use our contact page to request further information about having one of us make a presentation at your location.


Our March 2008 Update:

Registration of Asora® Trademark Complete:
Asora Education Enterprises received its Certificate of Registration for its trademark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in late February.

Demolishing Inflation In Oklahoma & New Jersey:
Asora's primary revenue producing activity has been consulting in the specific area of analyzing state administered achievement tests. Typically, states report markedly higher numbers of children as proficient as compared to the Nation's Report Card. Our analysis converts these inflated proficiencies to ones consistent with the Nation's Report Card (NAEP) on a school-by-school basis.

During the winter, Asora Consulting added Oklahoma and New Jersey to the states where it has analyzed reported achievement test proficiencies of public schools and public school districts. All schools and districts were evaluated in Oklahoma while only those in Hudson County were studied in New Jersey. While we see some quantitative differences among the jurisdictions we've studied, the picture of pervasive social promotion is a constant characteristic. Our earlier studies evaluated schools in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Bristol County in Massachusetts, and Ventura County in California. Click here for more information.

Currently discussions are underway with various patron organizations about adding another eight states to our "portfolio."

Asora® Business Plan Revised:
The Asora business plan revision is now complete and available here on Asora's website (in the files ExSum2008.doc and FullBP2008.doc). Our previous plan was undercapitalized and required nearly ten years to reach a profitable status. This plan requires significant investment capital, of at least $40 million, but it foresees profits in the fourth year. There is quite a lot of detail in our plan and it takes 150 pages to describe it!

We are well aware that there are other paths to Stellar Schools, including the marriage of existing businesses. For example, joining an online provider, with a content provider, to an existing school network would be one avenue of development.

Starting these schools in the non-profit world is another alternative and is one we are encouraging through our plans for a non-profit Stellar Schools Development Corporation. More information on that can be found on its website.

Reform Ideas Presented to Rhode Island Regents
In his role as Education Fellow of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, Asora CEO David Anderson made a presentation to the Rhode Island Board of Regents, who direct its K-12 public education system. He reviewed the evidence suggesting social promotion is a primary cause of our dysfunctional systems. He advocated a three-phase reform strategy that would convert the state's schools into ones resembling Stellar Schools. His presentation, RI_Regents_01.doc, is available in our report download area.

Stellar Schools Go To Switzerland
As a part of a physics symposium to be held in June at the Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne, in honor of retiring Swiss physicist Ralf Gruber, David Anderson will speak on "Self Paced, Online Physics Instruction." European education systems, though often more efficient than their American counterparts, also suffer from the ills of social promotion. Thus, the remedy of Stellar Schools may have application outside of the United States.

Asora Adds New Management Officers:
We are pleased to announce two new players to our team. They are:

Jon Scott of Providence, Rhode Island: COO
Jon is serving as our Chief Operating Officer. He has devoted his life to helping children. He's done that in a number of ways, as a lobbyist in Washington advocating for financial aid, as a consultant to group home providers, as an athletic coach in children's sports, and as a politician- who most recently ran for the U.S. Congress. Jon also chairs the Board of Trustees of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute.

Jay Jacot of Newport, Rhode Island: CFO
Jay brings to his position of Chief Financial Officer a background in business management and forensic accounting, among others. Jay also serves as a Director of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute where he is the treasurer.

Asora Supports the Ocean State Policy Research Institute
Asora Education Enterprises have provided various services to this newly established Providence based "center-right" think tank, mostly on a pro bono basis. CEO David Anderson is also an Education Fellow of the Institute.

Stanford Report on Education and Economic Growth:
Their relationship is discussed in a current article in Education Next, authored by Eric Hanushek, Dean Jamison, Eliot Jamieson and Ludger Woessmann.

Our review of it:

Duh! "It's not just going to school but learning that matters," say the authors. They quantify this by showing that if, measured by student cognitive skills, the US K-12 system (24th place out of 50 countries) were as good as Canada's (9th place out of 50) then our GDP would be significantly higher than it is- enough so to pay for all US K-12 public education costs out of the difference (about $500 billion dollars).

Stellar Schools are designed to be signficantly better than Candaian schools so their widespread adoption and imitation should have robust economic benefits.


Our December 2007 Update:

Asora Trademark To Be Registered:
Asora Education Enterprises was notified in December that we will have our Trademark AsoraTM registered in January 2008 if no one successfully appeals its issue.


Asora Consulting Work In Pennsylvania:
Asora Consulting added Pennsylvania to the regions where it has analyzed all public schools and public school districts. As in its earlier studies of schools in Rhode Island and Ventura County in California, there is considerable evidence of massive social promotion taking place. Click here for more information.


Currently discussions are underway with various research organizations about adding Arizona, Connecticut, Kansas and Tennessee to our list of states we have analyzed.


Asora®

Business Plan Revisions:

We are currently in the middle of revising our business plan. Our analysis of the demand for private school services has been thoroughly revamped to show that private schools have been doing a poor job of attracting students compared to past performance. As public schools lose market share, home schools seem to be capturing nearly all of it. Private schools seem to lack the incentives to grow and expand. The stagnation of private schools is inconsistent with rising standards of living wherein many more parents can afford private education and yet are not pursuing it. We think that this is understandable in the non-profit world. We believe that appropriately designed for-profit private schools will be able to gain market share and we intend Asora's Stellar Schools to be part of that expansion.
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Our September 2007 Update:


Bifurcation of Effort: The Three Websites
The Stellar Schools effort, as mentioned elsewhere, is now being pursued in two separate efforts: one is the for-profit effort supported by this website, AsoraEducation.Com, and the other is its "sister" non-profit effort supported by the website StellarSchools.Org. A third website, StellarSchools.Com, is the original website of the Stellar Schools effort and is now simply a conduit or "fork in the road" website allowing access to the other two just mentioned.

We Think Social Promotion Is The Culprit
The low student proficiencies we have observed in our studies of K-12 achievement tests in several geographic locations within the United States are, almost by definition, the result of lax social promotion policies in public and private schools. Given that Stellar Schools are designed without age based grade levels and will require mastery of each subject for students to advance, these schools will elliminate the phenomenon of social promotion and thereby help cure its associated ills.

Business Plan Revisions Underway
Our former business plan for Asora's Stellar Schools, while plausible and even conservative in its projections, was not viable in the sense that the time horizon to profitability was far too long into the future (9 years). This long ramp-up period was due, in part, to our minimalist approach to our initial capital requirements. Our new plan, still being formulated, will achieve profitability in approximately three years, based on a significantly larger initial capital investment.

Report Card for Ventura County, California
Asora Consulting was recently engaged to map all public schools operating in Ventura County, California. This region's schools perform at about the national average. Social promotion, is rampant, and we estimate that only 33% of the graduates (from a median high school) actually earned their diplomas.
We currently have a draft report available (VenturaProfNums.doc) which can be downloaded from our website. The complete report awaits our analysis of Ventura's private high schools, which we expect to undertake shortly.

Completed Rhode Island's Report Card
We have made NAEP scale estimates for every public school and district in Rhode Island. Given our interest in Rhode Island public and private K-12 education, we have undertaken this project on a pro bono basis. Two reports, RIProfNumsBasic.doc and RIProfNumsTech.doc, provide the details and are available from our Reform Reports page.

Asora Consulting Offers Mapping Service
Our consulting service, which performed the just mentioned work in Ventura County and which is now finishing the Rhode Island analysis, is available to provide similar analyses for other jurisdictions within the United States. Please contact us if you are interested.

Our June 2007 Update:

Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC)
Arguably our most important current task in the development of Stellar Schools is the creation of the non-profit collaborating organization that will likely work with Asora to develop schools and services. We have three or four individuals who have expressed interest in becoming trustees of the board but no one has been interested in being the President of the board. The principals of Asora are prohibited by federal law from board participation if the relationship between them and the non-profit is less than "arms length." Thus David Anderson cannot play that role. He can, however, work for the SSDC either as an employee or as a consultant.

During this period we have also produced a list of tasks that need to be completed before SSDC can commence its operations as a 501(c)(3) organization.

Getting Catholic Educators on Board is Like Herding Cats
Our hope has been to find a person influential in Catholic education for the position of President of SSDC. We say this because we think Catholic school systems might play an important role in Stellar School development and could become important customers who would benefit greatly from the more cost effective Stellar School operating format. But our attempts to interest Catholics have produced no significant interest to date. In response to over 400 queries sent to influential Catholics, we found no interest and, in fact, had only 5 responses in the form of acknowledgments. We sense apathy that goes beyond normal response rates to such missives.

Meeting With Charles Lavaroni & Donald Leisey
We met with Charles Lavaroni and Donald Leisey in California in early April to discuss issues that confront entrepreneurs working in the education field. Lavaroni and Leisey are pioneers in the field of for-profit education who together coauthored a book on the subject. They and others present at the meeting cautioned that our current business plan may be attempting to do too many new things at once. A common thread of the response I received from them was to "keep it simple." When we think about how one can simplify the Stellar Schools development process we are often concluding that we should start from an existing business that already performs some of the component operations. K12, Inc. comes to mind.

School Reform News Article
In the April edition of School Reform News, David Anderson authored a guest article, "Integrity Is Remedy for Harms Caused by Social Promotion," in which he discusses the question as to whether these "harms" constitute child abuse and if so what to do about them.

Education Industry Days Meeting in Washington
At the annual Education Industry Association meeting in Washington there was much discussion about the status and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation. We learned that Senator Kennedy has introduced legislation aimed at making state administered achievement tests align better with the well respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A staffer from the relevant Senate Committee told us that the legislation would encourage interim measures such as mapping the often inflated state achievement test scores onto a scale consistent with the NAEP. We had already been working in this area and as a result took encouragement to focus more in this area. The story of our expanded work thereby inspired now follows:

Removing the Inflation from State Tests
One way to build market demand for Asora's Stellar Schools is to publicize the failures of our competition. Achievement tests are a means of measuring the successes of schools but only if their scoring criteria adhere to accepted national standards. As it is most states publish achievement test results for their public schools that inflate the results to make their schools look far better than they really are. In terms of the percentages of students claimed to be proficient (at or above grade level) the states typically announce far more students proficient than what is published by the NAEP- and in many cases double the number! Since the NAEP cannot report results at the district or school level, stakeholders are left in the dark to wonder how students are performing locally.

To remedy that problem we have developed a method to predict what the NAEP score would have been at a school or in a district. We have used the statistical properties of idealized achievement test scores to create a simulated examination environment in which a pair of testing regimes can be related. From our understanding of these relationships we have devised a mapping procedure to convert the inflated state reported student proficiencies to ones aligned with the NAEP. The theory told us that our errors would be comparable to the sampling errors of the original NAEP results, but at first saw no means to confirm that prediction. Our report on this, MapToNAEP.doc, is available to download from our Reports on Reform section.

Applying the NAEP Mapping to Rhode Island
We have used our mapping technique to report the NAEP consistent proficiencies for all school districts and all high schools in Rhode Island. This is a state which reports student proficiency percentages very nearly double what the NAEP measured in the state. We have made an attempt to publicize our results but the media and the schools are reluctant to acknowledge our work. The results for urban high schools in Providence were far worse than our original pessimistic estimate: The percent proficient (at or above grade level) has been only 2 to 4 percent in its four general high schools. We believe there are several dozens of states with similar situations crying out for redress. If we can publicize these failures, we think it will help us develop interest and support for our efforts to improve K-12 education. The details are in our report, GrtrPvdProfNums.doc, downloadable from our Reports on Reform section.

NAEP Performance of Ethnic Groups
Later we realized that we could use NAEP published statewide proficiency results for ethnic groups and compare them with the predictions of our mapping. Doing so verified our conjecture that the errors were about the same size as the original sampling errors, lending credence to our results. In doing this we were shocked by the very low proficiencies for blacks and hispanic students and were reminded of President Bush's well known quote about "the soft bigotry of low expectations." These children are simply pushed through the system by the social promotion policy and then handed a diploma. Little effort seems to have been made to help them acquire grade level skills.

Asora Consulting to Offer Mapping Service
Based on our seemingly reliable results from our mapping formulas we have begun to offer consulting services in this area to other organizations and individuals. Please contact us if you are interested.

Our March 2007 Update:
Establishing Our Non-Profit Affiliate
As foreseen in our business plan for the Stellar Schools Company (now renamed Asora Education Enterprises) we are now seeking "founders" for our non-profit organization, The Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC). Please contact us if you'd consider helping this effort. We plan to incorporate SSDC in Rhode Island and seek 501(c)(3) status. The latter, if awarded, will give us tax exempt status and will provide donors with deductions for their contributions. As required by the federal statutes, the non-profit affiliate cannot be under the control of the for-profit Asora company. Rather the relationship is required to be "arms length." To accomplish this, Asora will help launch the non-profit organization but will separate itself from the governance of SSDC. We contemplate various kinds of contractual relationships between SSDC and the for-profit Asora company- but within the concept of "arms length" independence.


Exploring Catholic Education
We continue to focus on Catholic parochial schools as prospective partners in Stellar Schools. Their systems are of interest for two principal reasons:

1. They could benefit from the high quality instructional content and from the low costs of providing it. We share the concern that some Catholic schools are forced to close when they become insolvent. We think the Stellar Schools format could help rescue them.

2. Given that the Catholic systems already have networks of schools, they could be an invaluable partner in developing various aspects of Stellar Schools.

We believe that our recent decision to have parallel non-profit and for-profit organizations focusing on Stellar Schools provides a non-profit environment in which the Catholic systems can more comfortably participate. We think it removes concerns over possible negative aspects of involvement with for-profit enterprises. So, for example, rather than developing a franchising network, we believe that a licensing network would be the more appropriate organizational arrangement.

In keeping with our expanded focus on Catholic education, we have added to our list of correspondents a number of leaders and experts from the Catholic school systems and from their institutions of higher learning.

Please also see our page on Catholic Education.

Roles of The Stellar Schools Development Corporation
We see three important roles that the non-profit Stellar Schools Development Corporation can play:

1. It can act as a research and development organization to test and develop the various components of the Stellar Schools instructional systems. This is the role foreseen in the business plan (available on this website.)

2. It can operate schools- both in developmental as well as in operational modes.

3. It can provide scholarships to students needing financial support to attend its schools.

Unlike the presumption in the business plan that the non-profit entity would transition into the for-profit company, we avoid the difficulties implicit in such an approach by having both organizations live on indefinitely. Since the non-profit SSDC will provide most of its technologies and methodologies on an "open source" basis, there need not be any formal arrangement to allow the for-profit Asora Company to benefit from them. However, we do intend to protect the intellectual property of courseware developers who can therefore expect some compensation for their efforts.

More details about the Stellar Schools Development Corporation are included in its Strategic Plan available on this website.


Roles of Asora Education Enterprises:
The for-profit business effort intends to operate in a number of areas in which it has competence. While its main and longterm goal is the operation of one or more franchising networks of schools based on the Stellar Schools instructional system, in the short run it is begining to operate in other areas. Taken together, Asora is now or will be providing the following kinds of services:

1. Consulting. This is currently limited to providing advice to others who are seeking to apply Stellar Schools concepts.

2. Tutoring. We now offer tutoring in mathematics and physics and will extend our coverage as the staff enlarges and acquires competency in other subjects. Since the Stellar Schools instructional format entails a tutoring component we shall also train and manage personnel to perform these tasks in school settings.

3. Substitute teaching. In our early years we will supplement our revenues by offering substitute teachers to a variety of private schools. This activity will probably be phased out as we mature.

4. Productions/Publishing. The courseware we will use to deliver our K-12 instructional content will be created by our productions/publishing arm. Video and other online content will be generated in production facilties- either in-house or under contract with others. Content purchased or leased from other suppliers will be modified and extended by our productions unit. Since the Stellar Schools format requires content in both digital and hardcopy versions we shall also operate as publishers of such material- including textbooks when "trade" books do not meet our specifications.

5. Testing. Asora will generate the appropriate software and data bases to conduct its assessment regime for each of its courses. While this will be integrated into its own courseware, Asora will offer testing services to other schools outside of its networks as appropriate.

6. Franchisor. When Asora or others, such as the Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC), have perfected the model schools employing the Stellar Schools instructional systems, then Asora will build one or more franchising networks of local schools. In its franchising operation, Asora, will subsume several of the other aforementioned roles just listed.


Establishing a Brand and a Trademark
You may wonder the provenance of Asora as our new name? We recently benefited from some good advice on branding and trademarks. (Thank you, Dick!) Given that it is easier to obtain a registered United States Trademark if the name is not already in use, we have chosen the name Asora which is not in my dictionary and has never been a registered trademark.

Asora was formulated from an acronym based on the Stellar Schools defining features:

A. Academic emphasis
S. Self-paced learning
O. On-line instruction
R. Rigorous content
A. Assessment curriculum

The latter expression "assessment curriculum" needs elaboration: It refers to our definition of the curriculum as being the universe of examination questions applicable to any given course.

Once we have met the prerequisite requirements for requesting a registered trademark, we shall proceed with the application. In the meantime we shall use the less formal trademark designation- as in Asora(TM).

Our January 2007 Update:

Milton Friedman, RIP:
We were recently saddened to learn of economist Milton Friedman's passing. As an ardent supporter of school choice and arguably the inventor of government provided school vouchers, he inspired many to work alongside him for greater parental choices in education. The Stellar Schools project was conceived, in part, as a way to provide effective parental choice by developing more efficient and cost effective schools within the private sector. Stellar Schools also benefited from his constructive commentary- particularly with regard to the problems of wholly owned networks (Edison Schools) in the development of private school networks. This strengthened our resolve to use the franchising format. He will be missed.

Developing Schools of the Future:
It is becoming more and more apparent that schools of the future will depend on Internet based technologies. This will be true regardless of the venue of learning- whether at home or in brick and mortar buildings. Stellar Schools, as elaborated elsewhere on this website, are designed to exploit the best instructional methods, the best technologies for delivering content, and the best organizational structures for managing the operations required for success in schools of the future.

Seeking Participants:
We have continued our efforts to make our ideas and plans available to an increasingly wider circle of prospective collaborators and other interested parties. Thus, if this is your first update it is likely that you've been recently added to our list of Stellar School correspondents.

What School Reform News Said About Us:
In the September 2006 issue of School Reform News, published by the Heartland Institute, an article about Stellar Schools was featured. Included were some comments on our effort from education experts. Ken Calvert, Headmaster of the Hillsdale Academy, said, "The potential is there for a great educational model, so I hope [Anderson] can get it up and running." Education professor Guibert Hentschke, of the University of Southern California, also said regarding Stellar Schools, "This type of model would definitely force [existing] schools to improve their standards in the wake of competition."

The Search for a Model School in Rhode Island
For reasons of convenience and because of the large number of private schools in Rhode Island (about 125) we conducted a survey in hopes of finding a school with an advanced curriculum with which we might collaborate. My survey had another purpose: to find suitable schools that my three-year old granddaughter might attend in the future. So far, I've not found one that would be appropriate for a collaboration but the search will continue. In the meantime the Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) in nearby Massachusetts is of great interest, particularly in regard to their curriculum, and I hope to visit it soon.

SchoolsTrademark Application Denied:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has refused our application to have "Stellar Schools" granted a trademark. We appealed their initial ruling but were unsuccessful. Another enterprise, Stellar International Institute, has an existing trademark which was deemed too close to our proposed trademark. The examiners were concerned that there is not room for two educational enterprises to have the name "stellar" in their marks. Our appeal was based on the fact that the Stellar International Institute was a post-secondary institution while in comparison ours is K-12. In rejecting our appeal they noted that either organization may wish to offer services in the market niches of the other and thus the trademarks, if ours was granted, would lead to confusion in the marketplace.

We accept their decision and will be searching for a more unique label for our enterprise. One possibility is "Sirius Schools." Given that the star Sirius is the brightest in the night sky it has a similar connotation to our current appelation of Stellar. If you have any ideas on this, "send them in."

Singapore Math Copyright Issues:
For some time, Stellar Schools had been planning to implement a curriculum similar to that used by the Hillsdale Academy. However, in the mathematics area we explored whether Hillsdale's use of the Saxon Math series was best. We have tentatively concluded that Singapore Math may be superior and as a result have been considering its use.

We requested the publishers of Singapore Math to give us permission to make digital copies of their texts with the understanding that we'd compensate them for any "dilution" of their intellectual property. We were refused.

Subsequently, we have begun to review the so-called Fair Use Doctrine in patent law and some court decisions in that area. It appears that under certain circumstances it is probably legal to make digital copies without the publisher's permission. However, we intend to work with the publisher on this and have advised them of our thinking on this matter.

As an alternative we would consider authoring our own texts in both formats: hardcopy and digital.


Seeking Catholic Partners:
We sent email communications to a number of Schools of Education at Catholic post-secondary institutions soliciting the interest of Catholic educators in the prospect that Stellar Schools (or something similar) would benefit their systems of parochial schools.

Of several dozen such communications we received expressions of interest from a handful of educators with whom we hope to have further discussions.

Given the likelihood that the Stellar Schools operational format would be less expensive than that of existing Catholic school systems there is the possibility that marginally solvent schools could be saved from bankruptcy. An added benefit for their systems is the higher quality of the content and instruction implicit in the Stellar Schools model.

We also seek Catholic participation for reasons beyond its benefit to them: we believe that their parochial systems provide a good environment for developing the prototypical schools and networks. We shall seek to involve them in Stellar Schools R&D. To the extent they participate in the development of Stellar Schools we intend to offer them an ownership stake in the enterprise that would allow them to receive income from the business that would subsequently be developed.

Seeking Mergers
We are open to joining with other enterprises that are developing similar kinds of schools. The possible relationships can be of many different types. We could be bought. We could purchase. We could merge. We could be a consultant. This could be done in the for-profit or non-profit environments.

Stellar School Consulting
Given our current status as an enterprise with a vanishingly small staff together with our scant level of capital we are also making ourselves available to consult. We are eager to help new schools and others develop, test, operate, and maintain instructional formats and other features consistent with our ideas for Stellar Schools. One of the beauties of our approach is that it can be implemented on a small scale- basically one course and one student at a time.


Our August 2006 update:

The Big Time:
The outlook for Stellar Schools (or something similar) is very bright. There is a confluence of wonderful new and inexpensive technologies and the great unmet need for a better system of K-12 education that should translate into a very large marketplace for new kinds of schools. Revenues in this industry within the United States will be well in excess of $200 billion annually.

Our Stellar Schools will rely on distance education, which historically used television before it exploited web-based systems. Anyone who has bought an HD capable LCD television recently already sees the merging of television with the Internet as these monitors can display in either format. Broadcast networks are now putting content on the Internet and as the on-demand component of television services grow, more and more of the Internet will infuse what we view on television. When we think about the production of online lessons we need no longer think in terms of web page productions alone- rather we can imagine using the vast production capabilities of existing television networks to produce our lessons, lectures, and supplementary audio/visual materials. Thus distance education will come full circle back into the television industry by the virtue of this "merging" of technologies.

When we say "Big Time" we mean that big players, as just mentioned, will be involved given their expertise and the large revenue rich marketplace to be served. It is much more likely that the content taught in Stellar Schools will be produced by such media professionals than by Anderson in a back room.

If you are as optimistic as we are, then find a way to join us in this effort. Or you take the lead, and we'll help. With the future of Stellar Schools in mind let's now consider how to develop them.

Ways Forward:
A good way to think of the existing Stellar Schools “organization” is that it is a potential broker of educational services and supplies to individuals, families and schools seeking those services and supplies. Unlike so many other business/organizational formats, that of the broker requires little to no financial capital. It is also instructive to realize that even in its fully developed state, our plan envisages a continuing “broker” role for the organization.

The question we face is how can we grow from something that exists only on "paper" to a successful system of schools? We need help answering this question.

We believe that building Stellar Schools from “scratch” would be wasteful when there are already so many suppliers of related services that could be involved in the efforts. Elsewhere on our Website we present Stellar Schools Opportunities wherein we describe some of the collaborations that might bear fruit. Further elaboration of that can be found in our new report: The Way Forward, which is accessible from our New Reports Page, where you can learn more details about these possibilities.

A Recent Speech:

Profitable Education in Stellar Schools: Franchising Robust, Self-Paced, Web-Enabled K-12 Schools, with Applications to Non-Profit and Public Schools

You can download its text VideoOverviewText or if you can view the Video. Or you can download the Video File itself.

Continuing Outreach:
Given our limited budget for marketing to potential collaborators (whether investors or players) we have worked to extend the group of correspondents who receive our seasonal updates. Since April of this year we have added approximately 300 new contacts to our list. Since our prototypical schools (as currently planned) will be non-profit we have been adding a number philanthropic foundations to our list. A large number of new contacts, who are members of the Education Industry Association (EIA), were added as well. I conversed with many of them at their EDVentures 2006 Annual Conference in Denver this July. Finally, the Stellar Schools Company, itself, is now a member enterprise of EIA.

Further publicity for us is anticipated in the publication, School Reform News, where two articles in the September 2006 issue are relevant. One will concern Stellar Schools and the other discusses external reforms of public education (that also peripherally involve Stellar Schools). One of the articles, on External Reforms, is available on this Website.

Reforms “Beyond” Stellar Schools:
Prompted by the Better Government Competition of Boston’s Pioneer Institute we spent some time developing proposals how Massachusetts should reform its systems of public education. Knowing the likely futility of accomplishing such reforms by bureaucratic/legislative means, we also developed proposals that private individuals and groups can pursue that would also encourage public school reforms- we call these external reforms. As we just mentioned above, an article on External Reforms is on the Website.

EDVentures Conference of the
Education Industry Association:
We went to Denver in July to meet with many other educational entrepreneurs and to learn about many recent developments- some relevant to Stellar Schools. There is more happening in the industry of interest to our project than we had known about. From the many ideas and individuals we met we realize that there are many unexplored avenues to investigate as we go forward.

Possible School Collaborations:
To develop the curriculum and all the associated courseware for a K-12 school is a major undertaking so we have been seeking to find existing schools that already have courses of instruction similar to what we seek.


The Meaning of Stellar:
On more than one occasion we've been asked about the origin of our enterprise's name: Stellar Schools. The "schools" part should be obvious, but the Stellar part was born out of two thoughts. First, we seek excellent schools- as in "stellar." But we also intend to hire star teachers to produce our online content and thus in a second sense our teachers will be "stellar."





Our April 2006 Update:

Local Publicizing of Our Efforts:
Most of our present efforts now are focused on finding players and investors in our business. To that end we have been out in public forums giving speeches. Whenever I meet someone new, I generally tell them about Stellar Schools. You'll never know who might be interested. For example, when I met Mikhail Gorbachev in early April, I told him about our effort. He was interested. During the ensuing conversation several photographs were taken allowing us to depict a portion of it in our Gorby Toon.

Alternatives to a Hillsdale Collaboration:
Our hopes of developing a collaborative relationship with Hillsdale Academy, in which we'd jointly develop an Online version of their curriculum, have been diminished by a lack of interest on their part. This has led us to seek other possible partners for collaboration. To this end we have been conducting a survey of private K-12 schools in the Providence, Rhode Island area. Several have curricula approximating the rigor of Hillsdale and a few go beyond it. None of them have a widely distributed published version such as the one put out by Hillsdale and thus none of them is as well known for its curriculum.

Developing Intangible Assets:
We have filed to have "Stellar Schools" registered as a U.S. Trademark. It is not yet taken by any other enterprise so it seemed prudent to take it now. We hope to protect some of our business methods with patents. Additionally, our Web domain StellarSchools.com is a current intangible asset that we hope to maintain indefinitely.

The Gang of Socialists Yet Persist in Bush's Department of Education:
In the U.S. Department of Education are numerous offices and directorates that might have been expected to take a friendly view towards Stellar Schools. And indeed the Office of Educational Technology allowed us to provide commentary about its National Education Technology Plan on its Website. However, such was not the case for the EROD (Education Resource Organizations Directory) maintained within the Office of the Chief Information Officer. When I attempted to list my information about Stellar Schools in EROD, I was told that the for-profit nature of my enterprise would preclude participation. I appealed this decision to the CIO himself who subsequently sided with the forces antagonistic to for-profit enterprises. I intend to pursue this dispute with Secretary Spellings' office when I have time to do so.

Perhaps a small benefit of this disagreement is that it reminds us of the entrenched Washington bureaucracy that is unresponsive to administration policies and of its fairly well-known left-leaning, anti-business tendencies.

Problems in Public Education:
As we have been out on the lecture circuit speaking about Stellar Schools, we've had feedback to the effect that people want to know more about the problems we are trying to remedy. They seem very interested about dropout rates and other public school pathologies. To learn more about this check out What's Wrong With K-12 Education, elsewhere on this Website.