The Case for Entrepreneurship Education

By Stephanie Bell-Rose & Thomas W. Payzant

Economic leaders and education scholars are calling for an increase in initiative, self-regulation, critical thinking, and lifelong learning skills among young people to meet the needs of the growing knowledge economy. If we want to be competitive in the world economic arena and maintain our high standard of living, we must rise to the challenge.

As leaders, how can we develop a systemic initiative to keep young people in school, learning academic and work skills effectively, motivated to be productive and engaged in their communities and the larger economy, and developing success-oriented attitudes of initiative, intelligent risk-taking, collaboration, and opportunity recognition? Entrepreneurship education is one answer to this question, and an important tool to help every child explore and develop his or her academic, leadership, and life skills, as well as potential.

Fifteen years ago, a new, standards-based framework for improving American K-12 education began to emerge. It was a radical idea, driven by the goal of having all children reach high standards of learning, which traditionally had been the expectation set only for a select group. Since then, under the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (the two most recent versions of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act), state, district, and school efforts to improve public education for all students have intensified. Yet the United States still lags behind other countries in key knowledge domains and industries. Why aren’t American children doing better? Why are so many young people not...