The public education sector is proving to be a highly sought-after career track for some top graduates of business, law, and technology programs, where they are more likely to take on high-level management responsibilities than if they’d gone to the private sector, a new report finds.
In a survey of 1,300 professionals who were selected through a highly competitive fellowship program to work on a high-profile assignment in the education field while they were in graduate school, more than 70 percent remained in the sector after completing their degrees. Compared with their peers who went to the private sector after their education fellowship experience, those who remained in the schooling sector in some fashion were twice as likely to have high-level management jobs.
The survey and related report was conducted by Education Pioneers, a national nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif., that selects fellows from top graduate programs in law, business, public policy, and education, and places them in high-profile summer assignments in school districts, CMOs, and education reform groups. I wrote about the work of this group many moons ago, when it placed about 400 fellows in summer fellowships. Now, the number has grown to 1,600.
The survey also found that Education Pioneers alums who are black and Latino are securing high-level management jobs in the education sector at promising rates. Roughly a quarter of all alumni are working in high-management positions, with just over 20 percent of black alumni doing so, and just under 20 percent of Latinos doing so.
Education Pioneers says that 40 percent of its alumni who have stayed in the education sector work either in a school district or a charter school organization.
