Speakers propose innovations for public schooling

The USC Alumni Education Network hosted “The Business of Education,” featuring two speakers who discussed the challenges and innovations possible in public schooling.

The event, which took place last week at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, featured Don Brann and Matthew Wunder. Brann holds degrees from both the Marshall School of Business and the Rossier School of Education.  He has a 40-year career in education, which includes creating Da Vinci Schools, a chain of charter schools in the U.S. that promotes real world experience and project-based learning, and leading various school districts.  Wunder is the CEO and one of the founders of Da Vinci Schools, with 25 years of experience in the education industry.

Wunder and Brann started the event with an exercise that was meant to teach the audience how difficult it is to deal with a school budget.  Brann spoke of how people often think of budget cuts as an obligation to cut costs, but he sees it as an opportunity to recruit more students.

“When I see there is some kind of discrepancy between what resources I have … and what I want to do. What I do is, I do not think of cutting things, I think of raising the revenue,” he said. “And, the main way to raise revenue is to raise the number of students that you serve.”

Having been successful in raising student enrollment at the Wiseburn Unified School District in California, Brann suggested ideas for increasing enrollment rates.  He told the audience that customer service was one of the most important things to focus on.

“I view America as a place that does not have sufficient customer service, and Americans are very hungry for people to work with and to serve them that care,” he said. “To me, the way to connect people and to hook them was to give them great customer service, so that is what we based the transformation of Wiseburn School District.”

He noticed that many of the students in the district came from homes where their parents were working full time, and they often found themselves coming back from school to an empty house.  Brann addressed this problem by implementing a before- and after-school program, in which he helped build a bridge between the parents’ schedules and the kids’ schedules in school.  By making parents’ lives work logistically, he helped increase the amount of students enrolled.

Additionally, Brann made changes in the school to account for what parents’ valued in a school.  Brann implemented lower class sizes and easier access to the principal, among other details that parents’ were interested in.  He also achieved higher test scores. Then, the program was marketed through offices of big employers throughout the district, ones that would attract busy parents who wanted their children in good schools.

In the 15 years that Brann worked in the Wiseburn School District, he never made budget cuts. Instead of layoffs and slashing the budget, he implemented things that would attract more students to enroll and, therefore, increase revenue.

Brann’s new project is working with the Inglewood School District, where he said he has found many problems with corruption and bad management.  When he arrived, Brann found that people were stealing food and textbooks and then reselling them for a profit. In the last seven years, Brann said Inglewood has lost 28 percent of its students. Brann’s new project is to save Inglewood from debt and plummeting enrollment rates.

Wunder closed the event with information on the difficulties students are facing on the path from education to employment. He discussed how he and Brann are trying to improve this process for students through the Da Vinci Schools.

Instead of being focused on test scores, Da Vinci Schools focus on habits of mind — such as character and perseverance — 21st century skills, presentational learning and public speaking skills.

The speakers said that though there are 30 million Americans looking for work, there are also 5 million unfilled jobs across the country because applicants don’t have the skills employers are looking for.  There is a big discrepancy between what employees offer and what employers are looking for, and this has caused a huge employment crisis in America.

This is one of the main reasons why Wunder and Brann helped found the Da Vinci Schools.  They aim to graduate students with the skills that employers are looking for in potential candidates.

“Our education to employment pipeline doesn’t line up well with jobs,” Wunder said, “And so the transformation that we think needs to happen is that we connect the pipeline and we start with the end user, those employers.”