Category Archives: Education and Economy

What to Expect in 2012

With 2012 well underway, predictions for what the year will bring – whether politically, economically or culturally – are already being put to the test. Before too many more weeks pass us by, we wanted to find out what predictions our colleagues and friends in the education business are making for 2012. Comment below with […]

January Government Relations Update

Making It Easier to Do Business in America Entrepreneurs who want to do business with the government are often all too familiar with competing bureaucracies, overlapping agencies and other red tape. On January 13, President Obama announced a plan to streamline business in America by merging six departments: the U.S. Department of Commerce’s core business […]

December Government Relations Update

Impact of the American Jobs Act on Education The Department of Education released two interactive maps that display the American Jobs Act’s estimated impact on every state and school district in the nation. These maps and the downloadable dataset behind them can be found here, while the full report, which includes a state-by-state appendix that […]

Reinventing American Education

Last year’s documentary “Waiting for Superman” helped to refocus attention on our country’s education system, which, for too long, has been widely (and often correctly) perceived as falling behind the rest of the world.  But instead of focusing on just “catching up,” we should turn our attention to once again being a leader – leadership […]

Funding Growth with Equity: Raising Capital and Your Company Valuation

In this session we showed how to maximize your valuation to secure outside investment at each stage of the company life-cycle, from development/pre-revenue and early revenue, to cash flow positive and rapid growth. For each stage, people learned which investors to target, the key benchmarks they want to see and the valuation criteria they will use.  Click here to download […]

November Government Relations Update

Broadband Access in Schools The government recently released a report on broadband access in schools. View the data map here and find more information here. Early Learning Thirty-five states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico submitted applications in October for $500 million in competitive grants under the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge. […]

October Government Relations Update

Administration Overrides No Child Left Behind On September 23, President Obama announced that the administration would allow states to request waivers on No Child Left Behind regulations. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that the administration was acting because of Congress’s failure to rewrite the law. The administration will waive the law’s proficiency requirements for […]

The Silver Lining for Our Educational Economic Downturn

Last year, Rita and I attended SIIA’s Ed Tech business forum in New York at the end of November, where I moderated an extremely interesting panel on “Post-Stimulus Funding Sources for Schools.” Though the economy has fluctuated somewhat in the months since, I think a lot of the take-home points from the panel are still […]

September Government Relations Update

American Jobs Act President Obama’s September 8 address to Congress laying out the details of his American Jobs Act proposal included information on $60 billion in funding for teachers and schools. Under the proposal, $30 billion would be allocated to prevent layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers. Under the legislation, another $30 billion would be […]