Best Practices in Implementing
For-Profit Initiatives in Public Education

Many K-12 schools have sought different means for increasing accountability and performance. Similarly, many public state education institutions have a need to boost enrollments. To address these issues both types of institutions are looking to the for-profit sector.

K-12 education

In New York City, Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein have adopted a structure that mimics the “corporation” structure. According to the chancellor and the mayor, these measures have been taken because academic performance benchmarks are not being met.

Making Public Education More Public:
The Cost/Reward of providing
Education to the Underprivileged

Recent initiatives to promote transparency in the appropriation of public funds have gone a long way in generating voter-support for politicians like New York’s Elliot Spitzer. As the former attorney general for New York State, Spitzer is the poster-child for public advocacy. Although specific examples the new Governor’s public advocacy are too numerous to mention, Richard Pérez-Peña’s article Policing Medicaid Fraud Becomes a Campaign Issue serves to describe how Spitzer captivated public attention:

The Evolution of an Enrollment Management Consultant: How Innovation Ads Became Associated with Higher Education

Patrick Sutton

December 4, 2006

Forward

Innovation Ads is committed to maintaining integrity and best practice in the education marketing industry. We are committed to providing streamlined, performance based solutions to enrollment marketing that will cut cost, de-segment the marketing process, boost return-on-investment, and provide more accountability for the advertising spend universities incur.
History

Innovation Ads was founded in 2002 as an advertising agency. Iain Grae and Michael Lastoria (president, CEO) started the company with the idea to sell advertising space in the back seats of taxi-cabs in the New York area. After quickly learning that the TLC was not the easiest bureaucracy to navigate from the bottom up, they began thinking of other creative ways to advertise.
In October of 2006 Innovation Ads was acquired by Seaport Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in providing value-added partnerships to media and information companies. I mention this acquisition as a summary for the success of Innovation Ads. Iain and Michael are still active in the company on a daily basis.