Mr. Hastings, who taught high- school math in Swaziland from 1983 to 1986, found a vehicle for innovation in charter schools. Naturally, Mr. Hastings brought an entrepreneur's sensibility to the endeavor. "We're finding out more and more that competitive forces can provide great improvement in services -- telephones and airlines being obvious examples," he said. "Now, those are for-profit sectors, but you can obviously see this in the nonprofit sector as well. There's not one environmental nonprofit. There are dozens, and they all compete for impact and prestige and donor dollars. And they have different approaches to the problems and that's healthy." Mr. Hastings said K-12 education is "the last big government monopoly in America" and that "charter schools are about breaking up the public monopoly, with all its rules and bureaucracy." In California, "the rule book for schools is this big," he said, spreading his hand as wide as a phone book. Charter schools "give teachers a way to form their own public schools, more freedom to express their craft, and make schools voluntary for students. No one is assigned. This sets up a very healthy model that provides for innovation because the innovators, the innovative teachers, are drawn to these schools." Businessman and Internet Visionary Reed Hastings of California, the founder of Netflix, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Swaziland.
An Interview with Reed Hastings
Movie Man
By JASON RILEY
February 9, 2008; Page A9
Los Gatos, Calif.
The marriage of the Internet and the television has had more false starts than those guys in Cialis commercials. Back in 1997, Bill Gates threw Microsoft's muscle behind WebTV. But that was pre-YouTube, when the Internet was little more than a sea of text pages with motionless GIFs and JPEGs sprinkled hither and yon. Fascinating TV viewing it did not make, and the model was abandoned.
[Excerpt]
Of course, Reed Hastings is already very rich, and has been since his first company, Pure Software, went public in 1995 and was acquired by Rational Software for $750 million two years later. His personal wealth has allowed him to pursue another passion: school reform.
"After Pure Software, I had a bunch of money, and I didn't really want to buy yachts and such things," he said. "I wanted to find something important to do. And I started looking at education, trying to figure out why our education is lagging when our technology is increasing at great rates and there's great innovation in so many other areas -- health care, biotech, information technology, movie-making. Why not education?"
Mr. Hastings, who taught high- school math in Swaziland from 1983 to 1986, found a vehicle for innovation in charter schools. Naturally, Mr. Hastings brought an entrepreneur's sensibility to the endeavor.
"We're finding out more and more that competitive forces can provide great improvement in services -- telephones and airlines being obvious examples," he said. "Now, those are for-profit sectors, but you can obviously see this in the nonprofit sector as well. There's not one environmental nonprofit. There are dozens, and they all compete for impact and prestige and donor dollars. And they have different approaches to the problems and that's healthy."
Mr. Hastings said K-12 education is "the last big government monopoly in America" and that "charter schools are about breaking up the public monopoly, with all its rules and bureaucracy." In California, "the rule book for schools is this big," he said, spreading his hand as wide as a phone book. Charter schools "give teachers a way to form their own public schools, more freedom to express their craft, and make schools voluntary for students. No one is assigned. This sets up a very healthy model that provides for innovation because the innovators, the innovative teachers, are drawn to these schools."
Mr. Hastings has funded ballot initiatives designed to increase school choice. He's headed California's board of education. And he led a successful effort to lift the cap on charters in the state. At the grass-roots level, he has funded several networks of charter schools that are now serving thousands of children, and he currently sits on the board of KIPP Academy, one of the nation's most successful charter school networks.
Such efforts are by no means limited to Silicon Valley. The Walton (Wal-Mart) and Fischer (Gap) families, to cite two prominent examples, are longtime backers of school choice. Still, a disproportionate number of business leaders who regularly speak out in favor of fundamental education reform do seem to hail from the high tech community. I asked why he and others, like John Doerr, Gordon Moore, Scott McNealy, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, John Chambers, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Tim Draper are so focused on fundamental education reform.
"I think it's because everyone succeeded for the most part, not because of inherited wealth -- they're not old dynasties -- but because of their education," Mr. Hastings said. "It's a group that's extremely aware of the enormous impact a great education makes in terms of opportunity."
Mr. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
