Happy MLK Day and Cranking on Summer Enrollment

I hope everyone enjoyed a long weekend and is feeling renewed. We finally have some cold in the Northeast but, like Utah (at least as of last week) only minimal snow.

As we continue to lay the groundwork with systems, leadership and new initiatives to drive explosive growth in FY 2013 I am already seeing the tangible results of building metrics and measurements. Last year a ton of energy and inspiration went into efforts to substantially increase growth at our acclaimed summer academies. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, facing a very tough economy and relying on some assumptions that did not pan out resulted in frustrating financial results for MMLA. However, I hope everyone also knows (or they will after reading this post!) that the learning results which were recorded and validated last summer were superior. That commitment to offering a consistent curriculum and measuring student achievement were the stepping stones for Summer 2012 success. Layered on to that was the arrival of Heidi Rose who realized on her first day that the learning magic needed to be captured on videos in order to enable future potential students and their parents to fully appreciate the value of our summer academy. Those are embedded in our new website.

This year, the leadership of MIL is very clear on the risks to enrollment: Continued weakness in the economy, Launch of enrollment season without availability of financial aid, and a program which does not drive high re-enrollments from former students and a new program -- the middle school day academy. Our entire enrollment process has been designed with a clear understanding of the risks (these and others) and the measurements that allow us to tie spending and other critical financial decisions (like hiring!) to enrollment trends. Each week we watch these metrics and I am very encouraged by the progress we are seeing.

I spent a lot of time last week in Provo making sure our leadership is equally conscious of the risks and assumptions we are making in the software business. Many folks are chasing down additional information and building (or soon will be building) monitoring, reporting and analytic systems so we can have similar visibility and confidence in our equally ambitious aspirations for the on-line courses. It is clear to me that we want to lead the market with our products -- using the best techonology, converting proven pedagogy to an on-line environment and describing to innovative education leaders new ways to insure more students get the world language skills needed to be successful in a global economy.

But being first (as I know from some of my time in politics!) carries risk. That is why we also need to be really good at understanding the leaps of faith we are making, the trends we are trying to exploit and the metrics and measurements which will help us to understand if we are on track.

I know that oftentimes the work of measuring and analyzing isn't the most glamorous thing we do, but it will drive our success. And I don't need to just believe that -- I am seeing it every week with the success of summer enrollment and cost controls at MMLA.