Educational Consulting · Asset Management · Strategic Planning
Capture and maintain your enrollment in the Free Market Educational Marketplace
Go on offense in a market that favors private, microschool and homeschooling choices over community-based schools.
Pathway MC² helps school districts and charter schools protect and sustain their state, local, and federal revenue. Our strategic and timely understanding of competition is built on forensic analysis of more than 33 years of Arizona school-choice data, and strategy built on 52 years inside public, charter, and private schools.
- 52years in public, charter and private schools
- 33years of Arizona school-choice hard data analyzed
- 3books written on market education
- 600+hours of postgraduate work in school law, school finance and business economics
The innovator’s dilemma
Public school districts and “public” charter schools have been thrown into a real-time experiment in market education. We provide resources that strengthen, not replace, your efforts to compete and innovate in that marketplace.
Arizona’s ongoing market-share strategies and consolidation make data-driven decision-making more critical than ever. Every enrollment a school loses is revenue it loses. Our reports show you where your students are going, why, and what you can do about it, with hard forensically evaluated data behind every recommendation.
Arizona’s choice era
Five decades of school choice, and we track every one of them.
Each program on this timeline moved students, and the dollars that follow them, away from someone. Our standard reporting covers all of it for your district or charter.
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1973
The original charter idea
Dr. Ray Budde proposes charters at the University of Massachusetts. The AFT supported that model. Mr. Cardine attended those sessions.1
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1994
Free-market charters and open enrollment
Arizona introduces free-market charter schools and open enrollment in the same year.
We report full charter metrics and your open-enrollment losses and gains.
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1998
School Tuition Organizations
Created in 1997, STO tax-credit scholarships make their first awards in 1998.
We report how the STO program is affecting the public-school sector.
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FY2011
Empowerment Scholarship Accounts
The ESA program begins, letting families take state funding to private options.
We report the ADM you have lost to ESAs and where those students went.
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2022
ESAs go universal
The Legislature expands ESAs to every Arizona student. Who is choosing, and who is losing?
We report ZIP-code and demographic analysis of the families leaving.
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Today
Closures and consolidation
Private schools and charter sites are opening and closing across the state.
We report closures annually and with every quarterly ESA report.
Background: the empty classroom from the cover of Schooling Alone.
Services
What your board and leadership receive
Standard reporting for every client, prepared for your district or charter. Each report ends with real-time, data-driven solutions and the data that informs those reports. Each report series includes real-time updates after each quarter on ESAs, STOs and Open Enrollment.
Enrollment and market analytics
Where your students came from, where they went, and why.
Where every school-aged child is
Complete data on where every school-aged child is in and around your operational areas, where they currently attend, and how to bring them back to their neighborhood public schools.
Charter school analysis
Complete analysis of the metrics and results of Arizona’s 1994 introduction of free-market charter schools.1
Open enrollment analytics
Complete open-enrollment analytics for your district or charter, including your losses to open enrollment and your gains from it.
School Tuition Organizations
The full spectrum of STO school choice, with a detailed report on how the program is affecting the public-school sector.
STO and ESA program analysis
The number of your district or charter ADM that left public schools for an ESA program or services, and where those children went, using ZIP code data and the demographic factors in those ZIP codes.
ADM: Average Daily Membership, the student count Arizona’s school funding is built on.
Closures and asset management
Transform public properties rather than close them and sell them off.
Closure reporting
Detailed reporting on private school closures and charter site closures, updated annually and with each quarterly ESA report. Who’s choosing and who’s losing since ESAs went universal in 2022.
Strategic asset management
Strategic insight for your board’s decisions to open or close district school assets, designed to make the case for transforming those properties instead of closing them and selling off public property.
Strategy and communication
Make your schools the community’s first choice.
Collaborative strategic planning
We work alongside your school leadership, CEO and CFO, and your communications team to inform the public and make your schools the community’s first choice.
Revenue and legislation
Protect and sustain your primary revenue sources.
Legislative impact analysis
What federal and state legislative changes will mean to your revenue streams and programs.
Revenue and retention strategy
Sources of increased revenue and student-retention strategies, delivered as real-time, data-driven solutions on every report we provide.
About
A research practitioner, not a spectator
Not a spectator, and not the political analyst so common in the research on school choice.
Curtis Cardine has spent 52 years in public, charter and private schools, and has accumulated and performed forensic and factor analysis on more than 33 years of school-choice hard data.
His professional training spans school law, school finance, leadership and change, and organizational management, with more than 600 hours of postgraduate work in School Law, School Finance and Business Economics.
Mr. Cardine has taught across all grade levels in elementary and high school settings. He has served as an adjunct and guest lecturer at several colleges at the undergraduate and graduate level.
He is the author of three books on market education and is versed in the theory of market education dating back to the country’s colonial period.
His charter experience dates to the introduction of this term into school-choice literature. Mr. Cardine attended Dr. Ray Budde’s original charter sessions at the University of Massachusetts in 1973. In 1999, as Superintendent of Schools in New Hampshire SAU 38, he led a team that enlisted community members to write and win a $12.5 million, five-year grant to create charters based on Dr. Budde’s model. His district was one of ten public school districts funded.1
- Title
- President and Lead Researcher
- Degree
- MS, Organization and Management
- Experience
- 52 years in public, charter and private schools
- Teaching
- All grade levels in elementary and high school; adjunct and guest lecturer at several colleges
- Publications
- Three books on market education, Rowman & Littlefield
- Based in
- Gilbert, Arizona
In partnership with
Dr. David Wells and Beyond Numbers Analytics. An educational consulting, asset management and strategic planning partnership.
1Free market, as opposed to the original model for charters postulated by Dr. Ray Budde at the University of Massachusetts in 1973. The AFT supported that original model. Mr. Cardine and a team of community members wrote and obtained a $12.5 million five-year grant to create charters using Dr. Budde’s model; at that time his district was one of ten public schools that received this funding. Tucson schools and Beyond Textbooks, and their innovations, were part of this grant program.
Books
The research behind the reports
Three books by Curtis J. Cardine on market education and what privatization costs public schools and the communities they serve.
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Carpetbagging America’s Public Schools
The Radical Reconstruction of Public Education
Reviewed in Education Review, published at Arizona State University.
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Schooling Alone
The Costs of Privatizing Public Education
What communities give up when public education is privatized.
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Horace’s Hope, Friedman’s Folly
The Purpose and Promise of Public Common Schools in a Democratic Republic
Horace Mann’s common-school ideal, weighed against Milton Friedman’s market model.
Contact
Find out who’s choosing, and who’s losing, in your enrollment.
Protect and expand your enrollment by becoming the choice in your operational area. Stop the decline in State revenues as they shift from publicly owned district assets to privately held, overleveraged private placements.
Curtis CardineMS Organization and Management · President and Lead Researcher
Client referrals available upon request.