Surveying Educational Entrepreneurs: The Headwinds and Tailwinds to Building New Educational Enterprises

Crises have a way of shaking up the status quo and creating space for new thinking. When shocked out of their familiarity, people start to ask questions as to why things are the way that they are and brainstorm ways to make them better. Enter entrepreneurs. They are the people who take those ideas that are lying around and attempt to create solutions to the problems blasted open by crises. The pandemic was a crisis for American education. From 2019 to 2022 the average fourth grade math score dropped 5 scale score points, falling to the lowest level since 2005. In eighth grade, the average math score dropped 8 points, the lowest they have been since 2003. Entrepreneurs responded to the pandemic with gusto. The Prenda microschool network started in 2013 but tripled in size during the pandemic. Parents looking for smaller, more responsive education environments met a platform that was ready for them. The Art of Problem Solving, a content provider known originally for its high-level math courses, leaned into the pandemic, flooding their website with resources for parents and building out the functionality of their products. Now emerging from the pandemic, it is an opportune time to take stock of exactly where the world of educational entrepreneurship stands. What are the headwinds and what are the tailwinds? Where is entrepreneurship succeeding and where it is struggling? To answer these questions, EdChoice partnered with Hanover Research to survey 59 educational entrepreneurs working today to find out about their experiences. This paper shares the results of that survey.