Giving Compass' Take:

• Rogers shares some core principals that will make an impact in education outcomes, such as finding great management teams and focusing on value propositions. 

• In the k-12 space, what are other key components or principals that should be considered? What about community involvement? Making partnerships?

• The 'business of education' can work in many different ways. For instance, the Stanford Social Innovation Review highlighted a newer impact investing model for education in India. 

There is no more powerful lever one can pull to transform a person’s life than to provide access to quality education. But for education entrepreneurs to reach students at scale, they need access to people, systems and capital.

The strongest businesses are those where strong educational outcomes are co-linear with strong financial performance. In other words, as the business reaches more students, the company generates higher revenue and more value—financially and with social impact. So how do we do this?

Find a growing market-First, find a growing market in which a fundamental shift creates unmet demand and an opportunity for investment. In recent years, however, a confluence of policy and technology shifts—assessment and accountability for individual student achievement, national standards and increasing broadband penetration—have enabled new entrants to disrupt that market with adaptive digital solutions at the school and district level and taking share from the incumbents.

Align with a great management team-When the Rise Fund made its first investment in Latin America, we were fortunate to partner with a team at Digital House with a deep knowledge of the enterprise space. The best management teams also find creative way to expand their market with unique funding vehicles and new approaches.

Develop a value creation plan-It is vital to put educational strategy and outcomes first—strong outcomes which create a fundamental value for customers drive strong results, both financially and in terms of social impact.

Focus on the core value proposition for the customer- How do you know you are creating value for your customers? Impact investors typically start the underwriting process by reviewing research for evidence that the interventions provided by the company will generate strong outcomes for students.

Read the full article about scaling education impact by John Rogers at EdSurge.