Creating Edtech Partnerships for Social Impact with Dana Bryson of Study.com

social [email protected]. Also known as study, Dana leads the company's social impact and double bottom line strategy, working to build new mission aligned partnerships, and she also manages the company's policy and strategic positioning. In the past, Dana has served as chief of staff to Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Chief of Staff for city operations for DC Mayor Anthony Williams, and as a senior appointee for Denver

Mayor John Hickenlooper. More recently, Dana designed and implemented a national leadership program for a 45,000 member organization committed to equity in education leadership. Dinner, Bryson holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a bachelor's in both foreign affairs and French literature from UVA. Dana Bryson. Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

advocacy. And I think that and I don't think that I know that that is the foundation for why I went on to really work in public policy, pursue graduate work in public policy, not only because I wanted to understand how you build this system, but I really wanted to be able to take it apart and reconstruct it. And for me, studying policy was just that intersection of law, of community of business and all of the ways you need to compromise and work in coalition to get to

a great outcome. So that's so for 25 years, I've been working at the intersection of technology, and policy and urban government, and it's been wonderful, same issues, different lens.

nitty gritty, practical way. And so I was really exposed to local government through the role of mayor Brown's Chief of Staff, which was a thrill, probably maybe more of a story for another time. But it was very exciting and then went on to work for John Hickenlooper. When he was he's now a senator. But when he was first mayor of Denver, Colorado, that's my hometown. I was very proud to

work there. And then went on to Washington, DC to be chief of staff over city operations, so about 32,000 employees, and, you know, DC is a city, a county and a state. So that was complex and exciting. And I loved that work. I really enjoyed it.

blended value, right. So that I was introduced to study really, I wanted to work at study because of our founder Adriaan Rittner. I don't know if you've met him or talked to him yet. But he's really exceptional story. visionary leader, he came to this country in high school, he emigrated from South America

didn't speak the language. And he talks a lot about trying to fit in and trying to not only socially, but also academically, he's an engineer and trying to learn trying to learn an English trying to use the same thing for his family. He has a sibling with special needs, who had was trying to get access to education. So he found a partner Ben Wilson founded a study in college with the goal of making education accessible. And I can tell you to this day, that's

still our Northstar. We think about it when we develop products we think about it when we work in coalition's and so it was really Adriaan in the conversations I had with he and Ben about the work they'd already done, which was pretty phenomenal around an affordable college pathway, but really what they had in mind for the future. And so I came on board onto the executive team and said, Let's do this. And that was I don't know, three or four years ago,

it's been exciting. So you know, studied, it's been around two decades, it's still you know, we're privately held bootstrapped no outside investors doing extremely well, high growth trajectory. And we've learned a lot in those two decades. You know, we have a full academic curriculum for fourth through 12th grade. We've got learners and educators and 10,000 school districts around

the country. You know, we've got a couple 100 college level courses in 10, or 12 different degree pathways, and we are very proud that we saved save learners almost $300 million in college tuition through our college transfer, business and working Scholars Program. terms of test prep, which I know we're going to talk more about today we're gonna talk about teacher test prep, but we have over 1500 courses in test prep from everything from nursing to teaching to sa t AC T. And we

also offer tutoring. So we have learned a lot in two decades about what works and how to build viable lines of business as it were,

month. And it's sort of wide range of different types of teaching and product, which is interesting, I didn't fully understand the how many different things were happening on study. So I wanted to get in you've you've mentioned a couple of them. But I want to just ask you about to do a little like whirlwind tour of you mentioned fourth through 12th grade curriculum, you know, and college classes and teaching. But there's a personalized

learning platform. There's tutoring which you just mentioned, two materials, certification. And recently, a whole set of different scholarships, right, like there were Scholars program dedicated to this sort of access to college. That's a lot of different products, a lot of different purchasers, a lot of different types of learning. Just give us a little overview of what study is about it's an unusual products.

platform. We build everything ourselves, we control our Creator, network and studio we have, you know, masters and PhDs and various subjects who create the content. It's highly rigorous, and state standards aligned, you know, in terms of what school districts needs. So, I guess I would say, Alex, that because it's built on a common platform, and is stackable in some way we are able to really provide that personalized piece for learners. and educators across the country and we get

great feedback. You know, we're in lots of discussions, a theme of my work is around coalition building. And we just have a lot of strong partners who give us feedback about what's working, and what isn't working. And we listen.

There's a lot going on in edtech, including teacher shortages, student mental health issues, artificial intelligence, of course, college enrollment issues, from your perspective at the helm of social impact at studied that touches many different areas of education. What do you think are the biggest challenges in education right now that Ed Tech can help to solve?

things, right. So you know, with respect to transparency, I'll say, we spent a lot of time really looking at the pedagogy and the learning science behind our platform, our courses and the way that we provide information and testing and quizzing and worksheets and all of that, because we know, that's what our partners need. As I mentioned, we have learners and educators in 10,000 districts around the country. And they're using public funds to buy our

products. And as a former public servant, who was responsible for stewarding those funds, you know, I take it in our leadership takes it very seriously that those school administrators, many of whom, you know, are our friends or our partners, you know, their school administrators, curriculum heads need to know, hey, is this state standards align? Is this going to meet the requirements that I have in my district? And how do I know what is the pedagogy?

What is the learning science? To that end, we recently underwent and got our level four ESA certification, the Every Student Succeeds Act. And we're working our way through level three right now, to really make sure that we're translating the rigor that we're bringing to our curriculum development into what public servants really need, as they are working to make decisions about investments.

outcomes. It's about making sure that this works, right, and that it works for all students. That's the equity piece.

are. And so we're really proud to have that level four certification, and I hope to be announcing level three soon.

all learners. Before we think about anything else that might be a nice to have and so we ensure that our K 12 curriculum in 10,000 districts you know that our college Learner Program in our test prep courses are grounded in rigor that have multiple points of entry for different types of learners, like English language learners,

like special needs. As learners like highly gifted learners, so that you can translate our material, you can speed it up, you can slow it down, you can ask for a quiz, right, you can really check for understanding in different ways. And we hear from our various teaching communities like our English language learner, coalition's or those around social emotional learning, that it really is helpful to have different points of entry, because we know that not all students learn the same

way. So that's the first thing I'll say is that our product is the impact in some ways, or it's the first piece that needs to fit that's got to be a fit, because that's the main right, then we look at, and I'll give the example of our working

Scholars Program. This is an example of where we have a college transfer, credit college credit transfer business where we said mentioned, we have about 300, college level courses that 10s of 1000s of people use every day, and they transfer to graduating, you know, like 2000 different universities. And we have articulation agreements. So we know that our course is going to equal their course. So students don't get smashed in the middle of that doesn't

count. Right? So this is prior to me to my knee coming in our founders and other leaders of the company identified, you know, the comeback errs right, the 37 million folks with some college credit and no degree and said, let's use the backbone of this college credit transfer program. And create, we actually created a nonprofit, and it's called the working Scholars Fund. And it has, you know, it's a debt free, no cost college

degree. And we, we actually raised money, we donate the software, and we raised money from other tech companies to pay for the fourth year. And the way it works is that you take your first up to 90 credits on study.com. And we cover that cost. And we cover the cost of counselors and success coaches, and we've got great data about what works and very high

efficacy in the program. And then we raise money to pay for the fourth year at a regionally accredited nonprofit university like Thomas Edison State, many folks graduate from there, just had our fourth graduation, we graduated our 100 and 50th graduate, there are 68% of the folks in the program are women identify as women 77%, identify as a person of color, and 74% of the graduates are the first in their family to go to college.

And that is, you know, just for the team at study for all of us at study, we're just so proud it really is, we're so proud to have this program that continues. And to know that the work that we're doing can make a difference, especially in for first generation college graduates. So that's an example of where we're using the products we have, and turning them into something that really can serve others.

the higher education system. And it's, it's exciting to hear that, you know, I hear sort of embedded in what you're saying that study.com has a tutoring arm, but much of its business is really content driven. But this particular product or this particular nonprofit, marries the content to this sort of higher touch coaching and mentoring, to really, really

drive outcomes. And that's something we've sort of seen over and over again, in the in the university space is that content is necessary, but not sufficient to get people over the line.

network works. And so, yeah, feels good to have that program and to know that that in our college transfer business has contributed to $280 million in savings. You know, that's,

I tell you, I don't know if I've ever talked to anyone from a company that's more than you know, 10 or 15 years old, and it's really exciting because I think You know, we're in a moment where there are so many people coming into the EdTech industry, there's so many people founding new companies or, you know, pivoting their companies or figuring out how to break into this, this field that's been growing very quickly, you know, triple the funding last year as the year before, I'd

love to ask you, you know, you've mentioned a lot of really great things from study. But what would you say to somebody who's sort of entering the EdTech world? Now, what are the some of the takeaways that you've learned from your career in educational equity? And from study about how new ed tech founders might, you know, do as they say, do well, by doing good,

education, technology, right. We need to work in coalition to make sure that we are solving the right problem, I think, in ed tech, and in my year in my fourth tech company, I can say, we can become very impressed with our business models, and our product suites and our bells and whistles. And they are important, the business model

matters. But for long term success in something as important as educating the folks around the world and also in this country, and we do both, we really need to look at a longer term, longer term relationships with those who have the same vested interest. And so that means for us, I'm and I'll talk about our keys to the Classroom program in a minute, but I am I think you might have had a question about that around our teacher pipeline. But that means slowing down. And we don't like

to go slow, right? We want to go fast. We want to scale we want to get it out there. And what I'll say is that, yes, we want to scale scaling is excellent scaling is one of the reasons I want to do this work in technology versus someplace else. Because we can get big and we can go fast. We have to be very precise, that it's the right thing. And the right thing can only really be arrived at through those coalition's where you hear the perspective of the problem from multiple sources.

And you know this from your work and instructional design, right? Well, your design and is only as good as the ideas and the mindset of the people in the room imagining what the problem

is, right? So that's what I would say is look out, look across to partners, to nonprofits, to state agency leaders, to, to principals, to parent advocates, and ask the same questions you'd ask of your team of those folks, and build a relationship so that you can get honest feedback, and you'll you'll build a better you'll build a stronger product that really helps, you know, achieve outcomes. That's been my experience. That's what we're

seeing happen here at study. And that's would be my challenge to other of my colleagues and education technology.

like you. Absolutely. And I think a really, really nice message. I've haven't heard people talk about that before. So you know, you mentioned the keys to the Classroom program. I definitely do want to ask you about it. As we go into that idea. One of the things that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, when it comes to K 12 Is that we're in a time of enormous teacher shortages, especially for special needs, and particular subjects and math

and science subjects. And you mentioned something earlier that stuck with me, which is that, you know, our problems are the educators problems, or I think you said it the other way around the what the educators need to deal with is what we need to deal with. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about the teacher shortage, what has it felt like from studies perspective, and what are you starting to do to try to address it?

California. There's the core, which is math and science and the things that like that and then there's your sub Check the area, and you need to pass them both 50% of the people who take this national exam fail the first time, and 25% never pass.

So when you think about a young person coming up and seeing teachers and, and really holding them in this position of value and deciding that you want to, you know, they wanted to be a teacher, going to get a bachelor's degree and studying education, or whatever the subject might be sometimes going to get a master's degree, you've gone through all of that you go to take your certification exam,

and you don't pass. And I want to tell you some alarming national pass rates, like African American teacher candidates pass the national exam at 38%, post bachelor, sometimes post master's degree, Hispanic Latinx, identified 57%. And for white Anglo, it's in the low 70s, around 72. So those are the pass rates after your Bachelor's sometimes after your masters. And so there is this discrepancy in the pass rates is

really alarming. And I will say the reason we as an executive team really started coalescing and talking about these issues was because we were, you know, we're focused on student success. And we know and there's great new data out of UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard that connects teacher diversity to student

success. And we know that there's higher achievement gains, higher expectations of graduation, and higher self esteem self reported by students when you have a same race, ethnicity teacher, just to name a few. And so we really believe we need to support more diverse educators in the classroom with both getting into the classroom. And also with retention, which

is a problem. You know, I think I've seen a checked again this morning, some of the recent in the last 12 months recent studies around teachers, current teachers and their plan to leave in the next two years. Alex, it's not good. It's higher than 50% of teachers are very likely or somewhat likely to leave in the next two years. And I think about what if that were airline pilots, what if cardiothoracic surgeons, we would be doing

something very different? If we saw that data and said, half of our airline pilots plan to leave in the next two years, right? So we take it really seriously. So I think that work on both recruitment, and also retention. And there are a lot of great, great organizations working on these issues.

this whole system works. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what inspired this particular approach of being able to provide preparation for the certification to make it easier for teachers to enter the profession, in light of that 50% people leaving and not enough diversification and all of those big problems,

what we see is a problem. And we looked at across our, you know, we know that we have, you know, 92 really high pass rates for people who self report and taking our using our test prep materials for the teacher Test Prep. And so we really gotten to design lab as a leadership team and designed an initiative that where we could donate our licenses, our test prep materials, to help future educators prepare for and pass their exams. And we you know, we didn't know if it would work

right. But it was a design charrette. It was some policy and some business and some community and we started talking to partners, and there was really a lot of interest and a lot of interest. So now Alex, we have 25 partners in 20 states. So the new teacher project is the newest partner, and we love them. I've been following their

work for years. And I love that we're in five sites with them across 400 teacher candidates, but we have donated 6000 licenses to date through our keys to the Classroom program, which is about $4 million of in kind donation. 60% of the teacher cadets in our partners programs inside of our programs are first generation college students, and 50%. And this I have to say it twice. 50%

identify as people of color. So right now, I believe that 7% of teachers nationally, it's hard to the number, people disagree on the number but 7% identify as black African American, in our keys to the classroom national program, 35% of the participants identify as black, African American. And so we know and we're just a year into this. So we're thrilled about where we

can take this. And what we're finding back to the piece on coalition building is that there's so much excitement and energy inside of our 25 partners, that that we're coming together to look at sharing of success, sharing of models, sharing of surveys and pull data about what's working. And so that's a lot of fun. And I've got, if we've got time, I can tell you about some of the various partners. But

one thing and ask you. So you've mentioned this coalition building and this idea of partnering with people outside of your particular ecosystem, people with different viewpoints. And I feel like what you're doing with this scholarship program is sort of exactly that, you know, say is is an edtech company, but it's partnering with 25 different, you know, nonprofits and teacher, you know, education partners to bring its materials to exactly the people who need

the most. And I'd love to hear you sort of translate, if possible, that kind of thinking that when you say our leadership team got together to figure out how we could help it. You know, we have a lot of listeners to this to this podcast, who come from, you know, big ad tech companies from various new and small and tech companies. But this is a really inspiring program, because it sort of uses the best of what each side

brings to the table. You mentioned, we have test prep materials that have very high pass rates. And there's this huge problem where teachers have very low plot pass rates. So we put it together and find partners. And we've seen that with Coursera, and Google and all the nonprofit partners they go with, we've seen it a few times, but not that many. So I'd love to hear you talk about some of your partners and how to get a program like this off the ground, how to sort of conceive.

that are in development now. So maybe I'll be back next year, as I mentioned, so we partner with and donate licenses to state agencies, educator prep programs, alternative licensure programs, so where people are coming up through a non traditional pathway to Teacher Cadet programs, programs that are working on high school students to try to get them excited about being teachers, and to some residents, very

small residency programs. And what I'll say is that him we believe strongly in collecting information about what's working. And when we start our discussions on a partnership, we we align on that, that we want to know that this is this is for the good of the whole that we want to share information about what's working, and we want them to share it with our coalition of partners, which is exactly what's happening in South Carolina where some very kind

people live. We're partnering with Sarah center for Educator retention recruitment and development. It's a nonprofit, that quasi state agency. It has a charter from the state to do the educator prep program in the state. We've donated 600 licenses there. And they have

incredible leadership. They have a Teacher Cadet Program that's focused on high school students, as I mentioned, where they expose the high school students to the test prep material in high school, and particularly high school students that are interested in attending historically black colleges and universities or an HBCU in South Carolina. In a in Clark County, Nevada, fifth largest school district in the country, Las Vegas, Nevada, through a partnership they have with the

Public Education Foundation. So it's a Education Foundation raising money for schools in Nevada, they identified 2000 paraprofessionals, or teachers aides is basically a Teacher Aid type of role inside of Clark County, who are interested in becoming teachers. So they work to partner with UNLV, University

of Nevada, Las Vegas. And we're part of that partnership to have an accelerated bachelors program one year bachelors and credential in a year for the current paraprofessionals who are working in Clark County financial support, academic

support, test prep support. And they know their data collection has been is the model as far as I'm concerned, what they created, they know down to the individual who's interested if they've taken the test what the issue has been when they've retaken it for every buddy who's interested in that system. And what is so compelling for me about this is one that it's so data driven that you can't argue with it, and you can share the the dataset and the survey tool, and which other partners are

interested in. But because Clark County, Nevada has an 80% identified persons of color student body, and para perros in Clark County exactly mirror that racial ethnic identity. So 80% of the paraprofessionals, the teacher's aide working in Clark County, you know, identify as a person of color there, it's a grow your own program, they're already living there, they have experience in the district there they own homes or families are

there. This is what we want in terms of bringing in teachers who are going to stay in the community. I'm excited about the stuff I could talk about more in Vermont, we have a Union led program, which has been really exciting to be working with the Vermont NEA and the agency of education in Vermont. They're really forward thinking there. And so that is I know, you asked me a question about what I would say to other edtech folks

looking to do this. But when I just said Vermont, and I thought of a quick story, if we have time, I just love to say because this is a recipient of our, you know, test prep materials in Vermont who wrote to us. So this woman was a came to the States a decade ago with her husband, who was a dentist in Syria. They came here seeking political asylum, her husband's dental credential didn't transfer here, a big problem that we know

about, right? So he started working one or two jobs, while she decided I'll be a teacher, because that's a good job, we can afford to raise our family on that. Went back to school, finished her Bachelor's twice, she tried to take her teacher certification exam, she was close, she was six points away.

She through other interventions, including study, you know, the donation of this license, she passed her exam, she's a teacher in the classroom, making a very good salary in Northern Virginia, her husband's back finishing his dental credential and going on to be a dentist. And we we think about the macro, you know, what are the big numbers? What are the trends, but that's where it really

matters. You know, when you hear an individual story like that, you know, and hopefully, you know, 6000 of them in the next couple of years, right?

core business. It's certainly not, you know, relevant to a lot of the current product lines, but it's so mission aligned, it's about access, it's made so much sense. And a few people within the company said, you know, let's just make this happen. Let's make it work. And they had, and they did it through partnerships. They did it by talking to all of these amazing agencies that were

helping refugees. So the point here, combined with these amazing stories, you're telling us about Las Vegas and Vermont is, you know, you can really get a lot done if you go together, as they say, right? If you find people with complementary skill sets, complementary sets of reach, you know, you can do amazing things. But I don't think a lot of big tech companies sort of instinctively go there. I think they think we

do this. So we're looking for people who who want to, you know, buy this versus we do this, what could we do as part of a coalition to do something amazing. And I'd love to hear you just I know, it's a very abstract topic. But how do you think about it as somebody coming from from policy? And what would you recommend? I mean, do they should they hire a social impact? Vice President? Should they be talking to nonprofits about what they need?

What what would be some first steps to get this kind of initiative off the ground?

coalition. And that I guess that would be my advice is that it doesn't have to be complicated. And I think there's a sense that it's got to cost a lot of money. No. On the contrary, in fact, you know, 20, something, I'm dating myself, but 20 something years ago, I was in graduate school, and I took a class called business leadership as a Harvard business school to go to I went to the Kennedy School.

But I took many classes at the business school, because I was interested in the cutting edge of so what was what is now called Social Impact wasn't then. And in this class called business leadership in the social sector, my primary takeaway, my primary takeaway is

play to your strength. Think about your core competencies, what you know, to be true, what you're really good at, and then figure out who needs that, who knows about it, who could give feedback, and it can be the scale is really not important. It's that you believe it's important enough to make it a priority? And you will, I mean, our team at study, you know, it's, we have a lot of interest in folks working at study because of our values, you know. And so I would say, it's not

about study here. It's really about, I think, if you were to say, what is the model, and I've done this as a funder, as a nonprofit leader, and I've sat in all kinds of roles, looking at this, play to your strengths. What is it that you really know about, you've just be a little slice, we need all the little slices together. And so I'd love to see this kind of work around English language learners, I'd love to see this type of innovation around mental health.

I'd love to see AI take a look at is there bias in testing that we could, you know, solve for I'd love to challenge. And a lot of great people are also doing this work. I mean, studies, a lot of other organizations are working on this. We just, it's at the Center for us. And I think because of you know, how we're led and who's leading our culture,

time. And I have to ask about something this feels like such a pivot going from these deep, meaningful, you know, coalition's, to something very buzzy, but you know, study.com just put out a survey where they surveyed, I think it's 100 teachers and 1000 students about chat GPT, which is on everybody's mind in January of 2023. And some of the findings were super interesting. So I just wanted to highlight a few of the findings that he got, you know, found and hear your

thoughts on them. Can we do a little bit of that just as we

using it for homework. So that is you know, out of 100 out of 1000 students 89% are already using it for homework. I think it's been out for about two months. And then meanwhile 82% of college professors know about it, which is higher than I would have expected, certainly, but only 55% In a K 12 grade school teachers know about it. So you have 90% of kids using it. And only half of the teachers even knowing what it is, what should we?

And all of a sudden, this is like, boom, chat, GPT. Boom, there it is. It's like it's here. I say, you know, I think we need to be very, very curious. I think there's a instinct to be afraid and think it's bad and think it's different, and it's wrong and cheating. And I actually think we need to be very curious about

what this could be. Because I think that our tendency, myself included, to react and think, Oh, my God, 90% of students are using this and but really, you know, if we had an open mind about what it could be, what could it be? Right? I am very

curious degree. And we are at steady, very curious to continue learning, especially with some of the data that came out of this first survey to dig deeper, especially with college students, where 72% of college students believe that chat btw GPT should be banned from their colleges network. I don't know what conclusion to form on that. The first one I have is, you know, integrity, right? Students, you know, know what's fair, and they don't, they want to feel like they've earned

something. But I don't know that. And that's where we're curious. And many of our, you know, of many university partners, and obviously, a lot of folks we're working with, and so we're continuing to get curious with them about it. I do think we need to listen to the educators on this one. I do think student perspectives are important. But I think continuing to probe educators, I think, as you mentioned, Alex, this is so new, that it's like it's washed ashore. And you

know, it's washed ashore. And it's here. And so there will be a new normal. And I spoke with, you know, some teachers recently about this, you know, we do various focus groups, etc. In and I spoke with some teachers about this, they had it now they were younger, right? Yeah, they taught younger students. So they were high school. But they had an interesting take on it. They said, Well, now we will really be able, maybe there's a way that we check for understanding

in a different way. Maybe there's more interaction that is required, or there's more small group interaction. And maybe, you know, this was a small group, this is not it. This is not the sample that we that we did for the what you're talking about in The Wall Street Journal. But I guess, I think many of us are working at the intersection of education and technology are really looking for something's broken, right in the system. And so let's see what this can bring. I don't

know what it means. But we're going to continue to be curious and find out.

concern about integrity. And it's it's really interesting with some of the other findings in this were that about 48% of the students have admitted to using chat GPT for an at home test or quiz, which you could kind of read as a as a cheat 53% have used it to write an essay, about 22% of or is it to write a paper that said that point you made about, you know, the educators who are saying, okay, new tool is here, we've got to up our game, we've got to think about how to do things

differently. I think that's incredibly true. And I've been so I've been personally disappointed saying that, you know, New York and LA and all these large school districts have sort of done this knee jerk ban, right? Because this think that they're really missing the forest for the trees thinking that this is a cheating issue and not a, you know, change in the capacity for human intelligence issue.

And she said, Well, all the information that we need, not that we need, we can get all the information, other places, long pause, and I said, Okay, talk to me about the role of the teacher. And I said, What would you say is the role of the teacher and I wrote it down, I wish I had it at my fingertips, it was so beautiful. It was like, you know, a trusted guide to support students academically. And mentally. That's what it was a trusted guide to support students academically and mentally. Boom,

right? And she got it. And so I said, Okay, great. And I said, Well, what would it mean, if we, if we didn't have teachers, and her response, 10 years old was, well, there'd be a lot of students who wouldn't have a trusted adult. And I just thought that was so profound, because, you know, we're thinking of the content knowledge and the academic rigor and all of these things when I had a 10 year old talking about academic and mental support and

a trusted adult. And really, I think, if we think of teachers that way, educators that way, you know, maybe we don't worry so much about chat GPT, because they can show a lot in, maybe we do, right, but maybe we don't, because maybe educators can have more time to be trusted.

all day. So this will be my last comment. But it feels like, you know, when the when the internet when search engines first came out a lot of hand wringing about the same thing. They said, Wait, you can't send a kid home, asking them to find you know, the state bird of all 50 states anymore, because they could just Google it. And it's like, yeah, that was a terrible assignment like that. And I think this

thing is happening here. It's like, you can now send kids home asking them to solve major problems, and they can use artificial intelligence to help them solve it. That is incredible. I just as educators, we can, you know, this is an exponential, you know, moment for what education could be. So I hope that your daughter's vision of teachers becoming that trusted guide, and information becoming just the cloud, you know, we all live in live in a world of easy information.

So here's you know, take our tests come to the website, look at our our quizzes and skills, support, etc. And what we're really knowing is that it's we need it to be personalized and we need we need a human touch to what we're doing and So what I'm really seeing as a trend and I know that we're focused on is this combination of scale, and fast and access for lots of folks if that's what they need and want, and tutoring support, personalized support, coaching support, academic coach, you

know, academic, and like through the working Scholars Program, you know, so that there is something for all kinds of learners. And I think what I really experienced in edtech, five years ago was that it was all about the volume and the just get it out into the ether. And I think we're becoming a bit more thoughtful to really look at how do you also provide just because it's technology doesn't mean there can't be a human?

Right? So that's what I would say, evidence and then sort of the technology with the, you know, with the human, the human interaction, so that you can so that learners can kind of achieve their goals.

talked about today? That's, you know, teacher certification, that's AI, that's huge content libraries and call it alternative credentialing. Where would you send our listeners,

Success. Why racial representation matters in the classroom, by a couple PhDs out of Harvard, and Dr. Constance Lindsay out of North Carolina, that really draws the empirical, the historical context and the empirical data around the connection between teacher diversity and student outcomes. And I think that every ed tech leader in this country ought to have a copy of this book, or at least the Cliff Notes and understand what it says. So that's what I would say pod save the people and this book.

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