Today on his blog, Fred Wilson defined a venture capital firm as follows:

A venture capital firm, at least our venture capital firm, is at its core, a group of like-minded investors who come together around a shared investment thesis to work collaboratively to help entrepreneurs build companies.

When I was reading the definition, I found myself replacing certain words to see if the definition would apply equally well to schools.

A school is, at its core, a group of like-minded educators who come together around a shared educational thesis to work collaboratively to help students build skills and knowledge.

I think this definition does apply to schools — but only those schools that have really done a lot of work to articulate their educational thesis.  So maybe it doesn’t apply to that many schools after all.