Scaling Educational Impact with Ben Kornell of Cambiar Education

cambiar education. He was most recently the president and chief executive officer for old school and altitude learning, which were acquired by higher ground education in 2021. He has a long career in education, having worked in charters and districts all the way back to his time as a classroom teacher in San Jose, California. Ben lives in San Carlos, California, where he is a proud dad soccer coach, and also a public school board member. For now, Welcome to EdTech. Insiders. It's great to

be here. So Ben, you've been a leader at a number of education companies. Tell us a little bit about your background, your trajectory, and what drew you into education in the first place? Sure, well, my career has been defined by scaling what works in education, and that really took root when I was a classroom teacher. In San Jose, California, I taught for five years Middle School, such a great age, kids are going from children to adults and finding

out who they are. And our school was a vibrant learning community with veteran teachers, new teachers, but you know, history arts, band, math, English, social studies, leadership, class clubs, and lots of great after school activities. And this thing called No Child Left Behind came to town, and just obliterated our entire schedule and curriculum with drill and kill math and drill and kill English. All my learners had two periods of math and three periods of English and I got the

far below basic kids. So that was really an inflection point for my education experience. One because being in San Jose, at that time, many of the tech companies that are ubiquitous today, like Google, were at the time, eBay, we're just growing across highway 101. And yet my kids were being drilled on dates in history or drilled on math, memorization. And I could see that we were not preparing them for success for the not only the 21st century, but they existing

times. And then second, it helped me realize that education can change, transformation, only, you can scale, new systems of education, it just so happened that No Child Left Behind was not a great system to scale. But it showed the power of policy, the power of assessment, and ultimately, the power of technology to scale and

reinforce systemic change. And so with that question in mind, I ended up going to not education school or policy school or law school or something, I ended up going to business school, because I wanted to understand how other systems scale transformational change. And you know, a big theory at the time was that the Turner movement was going to transform education. And the early days of charter were that these charter schools would be the r&d Lab for

education. But what it turned out to be was through competition, charters are going to change districts. And I had a lot of evidence that showed that districts weren't changing, teaching and learning practice at all, they were actually doubling down on their competitive advantage of we own the buildings, and we've got unionized teachers, and we're going to make it very hard for the charters. Meanwhile, the charters weren't as innovative.

So I went to business school to understand how do we scale transformational change, but also to understand the charter movement? what's working, what's not, how might we catalyze this shift. And while I was in business school, I kind of learned the theory of from startup to IPO, how teams systems and ultimately entire ecosystems transform and I was fascinated in particular, about

healthcare. But if you think about the average school 100 years ago, and the average school today, they're not that different in terms of instruction, outcomes, pedagogy. If you think about the average hospital 100 years ago, it wouldn't be allowed to operate today. And that's because every decade or so there are leaps forward in a number of health related fields that have has to do with technological innovation, but also have to do with pretty massive adaptive

change or behavioral change. And so I was fascinated by that. Because in education, we know that changing the behavior alongside of the methods is really the critical formula. So after business school, I worked for four years at all things

kidney dialysis company. But it was incredibly analogous to education, I think we'll get into that a little bit later, kind of got the p&l and management experience, but also got to see a system that while it does have inequity, and while there are definitely rooms for improvement, just my time, my four years there, we doubled life expectancy for patients whose kidneys don't work. So it was really incredible. And at the same time, we outperformed

apple on the stock market. So it felt like a incredible learning lab. And then from there, I came back to education space, you know, I had my calling to work with kids. And so I was CEO, and then executive director at Envision education, a charter school that believes in the original promise, and had created a portfolio defense process that we grew to 500 public school districts that adopted our kind of learning

model. And in that process of scaling, what works from a single charter network, to hundreds of schools, is that without technology, not only can you not scale something, but you can also not sustain it, schools are really, really challenging to change. They're often people talk about school as the unit of change, but they don't realize is that the average lead school leader is turning over every two

to three years. And so it creates this incredible turn, that only when you get the technical practices to a place that they are almost cemented into the identity of teaching and learning for the school, can you really feel like your job has been done, and that that innovation has truly scaled. And so I went to work for a tech company called Old School. They were known for micro schools at

the time. But what I saw in old school was a learning platform that they had built just for their micro network that felt like it checked all the boxes of what I was looking for, as we were scaling innovation at the charter. And the main things that I noticed one is it was a comprehensive learning system, meaning that it's not death by 1000 point solutions, it really had an elegant way to go from planning, learning experience to engaging students to assessing to understanding that learning

and repeating that cycle. But second, it was incredibly flexible so that a Montessori school, a project based learning school, and IB school could all find ways to utilize the tools. And so it felt like a framework, a flexible hat rack, a set of tools that were adaptive to the unique circumstances of each individual school. And we had a saying while we were there, it's

no one washes a rental car. And it was this idea that for us to really achieve our vision, we had to become enveloped in the vision of the schools that were owning and implementing us. And so that was part of that plan flexibility. We never could have foreseen this. And this is where like education and business often are about timing. When COVID hit, we were still just working with the most progressive schools and

districts. They were largely affluent districts, a lot of private schools really saw value in our platform. But as soon as COVID had and the teacher was no longer able to be in front of that classroom, the utility of our platform, and our product just skyrocketed for, you know, typical district schools. And with that uptick, as well as some really great work from our team. We rode that wave and by October altitude had a million active users. And we were you know, our platform crashed four

times. And we had a lot of like insane moments, but it felt like we were finally reaching our potential. And then on the backside of that, and you know, we'll talk more about the lessons learned from old school, but we were trying to raise money for our next round. And because so much had been raised already. It was really, really hard to find investors, even though we were finally finding that transformational product

market fit. And so one of our school partners, a higher ground education approached us and said, Hey, let's join forces we can raise money together. And so we closed the acquisition in January of this year 2021 And subsequently raised $70 million. And the great news is that the tech team has doubled in size, all of our existing partners We're able to not only continue, but grow their use of the platform, and now has a strong pedagogic backbone driven by

Montessori at higher ground. So that's my journey really from being the recipient of scale as a classroom educator, to scaling things from a healthcare standpoint, to boots on the ground scaling at a charter, all the way to leverage technology to scale learner centered

models. And today, I'm an entrepreneur in residence at Combi our education where I'm trying to figure out what that next leap forward might be for our space, as basically every education organization now has to consider, how do we create a product that pairs with our adaptive support to scale our impact.

So as somebody who's been, as you say, on both sides of scale in education, as a classroom teacher having to work within the No Child Left Behind paradigm, and then as a education leader, trying to help organizations have new paradigms of learning and learner centered models. I'm curious how you see the role of technology, specifically, serving in that larger strategy of helping

transform education. You mentioned policy, you mentioned behavioral change, teacher turnover, there are so many factors that make education work and not work. What does technology do to enhance change? Yeah, and this is one where, you know, I think humility tells me that there's a lot of ways in which technology can or cannot transform or change learning models. But I will say from my experience, a couple takeaways. One is, it's called ed tech for reason education is first, the

technology is second. And now I was actually watching something from Steve Jobs where he was talking about, you know, building a great product starts with understanding a transformational user experience. And as cliche as it is to use a Steve Jobs, quote, I think he's onto something where really understanding the use case, is critical to anyone hoping to scale whether it's technology related or not, or

analog. And what people don't understand is that in isolation, a lot of the right things to do for education, every educator will agree with you, I'd love to do competency based assessment, or project based learning. But in practice, there's so many demands on their time attention, that you actually have to understand, first and foremost, like the constraints and the pain points that the user is

facing before you unlock it. So one is anchor on the education first, and then the product and how it solves those challenges. Second, yeah, beyond that, I'd say education is supremely complex, because you have a multi layered system, your user, the learner, is then directed by the educator, who is then directed by the administrator, who is often the buyer. So you have often have a buyer who's actually two jumps away from the user. And you have this influencer in the middle, who is

an educator. And I've mentioned this to you before, Alex. But I think understanding that educator, whether that's a barrier to success, or a lever for success is critical for any edtech product. From my perspective, I feel like every educator wakes up every day, trying to do the best thing for kids. And so finding leverage with that educator, is mission critical for everything that

I've worked on. And also, you've got to understand that when you build a product that is serving the need of the user and creating, like learner delight, you also have to create educator delight. And you also have to create administrator delight. And sometimes administrative delight is checking a box. But I think, especially today, they're more sophisticated consumers. And they really are looking for things that solve high value pain points for them, and they're not really looking for

the nice to haves. And then the last thing I'd say is asked every technologist just to say, how have people done this thing in an analog world? And, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day, they're creating a learner profile tool. And I asked like, how did educators do this kind of thing without

technology? And you know, we talked about a poster in the classroom that has a picture of the child and his or her family and things they enjoy and all the activities that they like doing hanging on the classroom wall. That's really hard for technology to be to be honest Is there it's visual, it's created by the learner. It communicates a bunch of values to the educator. So like really understanding where can technology step in and add

value? And where should it step back and create space for authentic connection between educators and students. So those are three thoughts that, you know, guided our work and also give credit to, you know, the product managers and engineers that I've worked with. I feel like a lot of those insights were hard one.

Yeah, so some of the things I'm hearing are, you know, keeping educators at the core of the experience making tools that empower educators rather than, you know, seek to replace them or seek to, you know, sort of go over their heads and work directly with administrators or

with students. And I love that idea of the sort of three tears of user that any edtech entrepreneur would have to think about, if they're thinking about K 12 systems, you have learners, educators, and administrators, and you sort of have to delight all of them to truly make a transformational edtech product. I think that's why it's so difficult. But it's also why it's so transformational if you can knock it out of the park, because you get buy in on multiple levels. And two

thoughts on that one. That's why it can be a great business. Because if you figure it out that trifecta, you're not going anywhere for a long time, the renewals in this space are incredible. So on the business side, I feel like education is defined by high customer acquisition cost for this very reason. But it is also defined by high lifetime value, because renewal rates, once your installed can be really high, where it gets tricky is on

pricing of technology. And, you know, I generally feel like, you know, if your total addressable market is only, you know, 10 million users, and you're only charging $1 a user, that's really gonna cap the potential for your company or your organization. But from an Arr, kind of SaaS business model standpoint, education has a lot of elements that are attractive.

And then the second thing that your comment prompted for me is, I think another challenge for product leaders is that in education, our Rogers adoption curve looks different than other

spaces. So the Rogers adoption curve starts with innovators on the left, then goes to early adopters, early majority, late majority, late adopters and laggards in education, the early majority, just imagine that your race, all of that, and you basically have this group of innovators and early adopters that always are signed up for those projects to test the latest curriculum, the latest tools, all that kind of stuff.

And very rarely is there a group that follows on that has the exact same user needs as that group, you almost have to think of Okay, now that I've got that early innovator group, how do I bridge over to the late majority and some products, and I think there's some business models that basically you aggregate all of the innovators and early adopters, they're, like, 20% of all the teachers in every school, let's just create a teacher community Nearpod would be like a really good example of

a company that had that adoption strategy. So they were never like 100% penetrated in school, but you know, 20 to 30% penetrated was great. And then others really have to understand, okay, how do we launch over to that late majority. And this is where, like, in edtech, understanding, you've got this technical change, but what is the behavior change or adaptive change?

That's the real trick. And a lot of people will throw services at the behavior change, and really finding a way to productize your behavior change is the key to unlocking that late majority and ultimately, your total addressable market. We actually talked to Adam Franklin, who is a Senior Product Manager at Nearpod, on the podcast, and he mentioned that part of the thinking to jump that gap. He

didn't use the same phrase. But part of that thinking was that the early adopters were using Nearpod to create their own

interactive lessons. But as you needed to scale and get it to be useful for the majority of teachers, they realized they had to create a really large, high quality content library, that teachers could take things right off the shelf or adapt them or use them as lesson plans in a variety of different ways because they couldn't rely on the teachers who are going to put in, you know, all of the learning curve and all of the work to make their own and I think that speaks for closely to

what you're saying about that adoption curve. Yeah. And we also found that if we bake the cake at 100%, and it was a compliance exercise, very low adoption, but if we bake the cake at 80%, let's say we had a unit or a lesson with like, some core quizzes and core activities, but a lot, you know, even prompts to, like, hey, educator fill in this part. If they own that 20%, the implementation just skyrocketed. And so, you know, getting to that sweet spot of how much do

we want to bake the cake? versus how much does the educator actually need to bake the cake so that they feel that sense of ownership, that's like a key product strategy and insight that you're going to be looking

for. The other thing that that comment prompted for me is, ultimately, content still matters in education, it seemed like open education resources we are was going to change the game and like content would essentially the value of content would approach zero, because it's all free and universally available. And it's actually been quite the opposite. Its

content is king. And we're seeing this in media, you know, with Netflix and other streaming services, where it's like, wow, there's powerful business models to monetize content, even though there's so much free content available out there. I think the same is true for education, packaging, great content within your platform, is really critical. And it's a skillful art. Like you can't just plug in, you know, random OER stuff and have it create an amazing

user experience. So some companies that I'm watching in that space Desmos, I think does an amazing job with math curriculum, the animations, the tutorials, you know, they started with a graphing calculator, but now they've built this entire curriculum library. I think that's an example. And then, of course, you know, you have folks like Newsela, who've created a billion dollar business had of social studies and news content

for kids. So it's a high cash Highborne business model when you're building your own content. But ultimately, I feel like that's a strategy that has proven out to win with high CAC high LTV being the formula. And when teachers really love your content, and start integrating it deeply into their own curriculum, then it becomes really unpleasant to even consider the idea of losing access to that content and losing the ability to wrap

lessons around it. Totally. Yep. I wanted to dig into something you mentioned in your trajectory. That was very interesting. So most of your career has been directly in education in one way or another. You're a Teach for America, core member you've worked in, you know, in education leadership, but you mentioned that you spent a few years at health care company, the Vita that led kidney dialysis. And you know, that's an unusual tangent, I think for somebody in edtech. It's certainly one that I

haven't heard a lot about. I'm curious, you know, what you learned from to Vita and healthcare you mentioned, you know, you learned a lot that would be relevant to education or educational technology. Yeah, I think a lot of people did not understand why I was making that move. And even while I was at DaVita, I had to keep it on the lowdown, that my ultimate goal was to go back to education. Because you know, of course, everybody who was there is thinking of building a career

in healthcare. Sure. Well, first, let's start with the parallels between education and healthcare. Education inequity exists disproportionately bad outcomes for low income families and families of color. health inequity exists disproportionately negative outcomes for low income and people of color. And in health care. Chronic Disease is especially rampant in African

American Latino communities. And kidney dialysis is one of the kind of core areas it's a product of either a long life of poor health care access, or diabetes, high blood pressure, and so on. And so many of the constituents that we were working with were actually like parents or grandparents of the kids I served when I was an educator. Second from the labor force nurses and educators are quite similar. They got into it because they wanted to make a

difference. They're incredibly frustrated by the reams of regulations and hoops you have to jump through. And ultimately, in health care and in education, you deal sometimes with like negative outcomes for your patients or your kids. In dialysis. There's effectively 100% mortality rate unless someone gets a kidney transplant. And so in health care, each of your patients has a life expense. NC have eight years under dialysis. And so it's it can be a really tough grind. And there's incredible

shortage of good nurses. So I found like, okay, the constituents are similar, the like, the workers are similar. And then from a regulatory and payment standpoint, dialysis disproportionately Medicare Medicaid funded, so government pay will margin like tight budgets highly regulated in that, you know, schools and health clinics have pretty aggressive licensing processes.

And then from a management standpoint, kidney dialysis companies are decentralized services businesses where you have almost like a regional superintendent who oversees 20 clinics, each of whom has a facility administrator, much like a district has a superintendent and principals at the site, what I think made DaVita different. And what made

it truly innovative. One was, it had incredible culture, in education, you can't micromanage educators, you can't watch what they're doing every second of every day, the power of an educator often is to close the door, and teach their class the way they want to teach it. And in dialysis, it's the similar thing in that you're ultimately trusting your nurses and patient care technicians to treat those patients and respond to the patient's needs in a

personalized way. And so, divvied up bill, these core values that drove every aspect of clinic operations, and empowered frontline people to save lives. And ultimately, patient care technicians, you know, often were GED holders, these are not advanced degree, folks. But they often have to step in and save the lives of the patients on the kidney dialysis floor as they're

getting their blood cleaned. And so it made me realize a system that actually creates frameworks to trust and empower your frontline workers work so much better than one that is compliance focused. Insight number two was in that system, you can give a directive, but unless you pair it with the coaching, professional development, and training to make the adaptive change, it won't stick. Because you're, you know, essentially creating an

unfunded or unabled mandate. And so there was just quite thoughtful and robust ways to spread best practices. And I'll never forget, like one of the doctors who oversaw the clinic said, you know, the greatest innovation in healthcare was handwashing, it's a behavior, it helps both the nurse and the doctor and the patient. But it took 40 years for it to become universally adopted. And the reason why is there weren't enough sinks, and people are

busy. And so now if you look at how any clinic, if you're ever by a doctor, ever seen a doctor or by a nurse or a doctor, you're going to see that they pass by like four or five sinks every 20 minutes. And it's this symbiosis between technical change and adaptive change. That is enabled handwashing to save

millions of lives. And then the last thing that I would say is, at DaVita, what I learned is that there was a sense of continuous innovation, because there was in healthcare, there's the sense of possibility that we can always do better, that we can always extend life that next innovation is around the corner. And so, in education, I feel like in schools and districts, we've lost a lot of that sense

of possibility. And so the right framework, the right support for technological change, and adaptive change, and then the right belief that every decade, we're going to get a step change improvement that has made healthcare, something to be so proud of compared with our parents generation, or grandparents generation and beyond. And that's what has really failed us in imagining and reimagining education on those same generational timelines.

That's fascinating. So there are so many parallels between the two systems, yet, the outcomes end up very different. As you mentioned, you know, hospitals have continually gotten better had better outcomes, over time have had enormous incentive structures and technological advances that have actually seen real results, including things as simple as hand washing. And you know, us idealists in education, and that includes

many classroom teachers. It includes people you know, all over the space are always hoping that you know, as you mentioned, around the next corner, is the next big change. that really improves the lives of our students and our educators. But it sounds like you're saying the system itself, and the sort of attitude of sort of losing a little bit of that sense of possibility in the classroom is really holding back the big innovations in education that would make it more like

healthcare. Do I have that? Right? Yeah, yeah. And then and look at self reinforcing when you are given frameworks to be empowered decision makers, and then you're supported with technical and adaptive change. Of course, you believe that like, things can change, because you see evidence of it in your career. And, you know, basically, the biggest fear of medical professionals is that they're going to become irrelevant. So they to keep you know, their jobs and continue to

grow professionally. They're always learning, always improving, keeping up with where things are headed. I'll also say, you know, to be fair, a couple other points of contrast are worth calling out 10% of all healthcare spending is on r&d, and education, it's less than 1%. Wow, in terms of systems and scaling. In healthcare, one of the things that drives innovation is consolidation. And in education, were super

fragmented. And then the last thing I would say, and this is really worth thinking about in education, there's been a bunch of innovation around payment in healthcare. So if you imagine in the most cynical world, that really payment is what drives every decision in healthcare. And the past payment in health care was based on the number of things you did to a patient. So of course you come in, you're gonna get five or 6x rays and screens and everything like

that. And they quickly discovered that like, a lot of this utilization was overreach. And so there's been a big move in the last 15 years to do what's called capitated payment. And that is basically actuarially, they have a predicted amount that you would spend on a patient given certain conditions, indicators and demographics. And basically, the idea is that you the health care provider, get that payment for

that patient. Now, it's up to you to determine their best course of treatment to keep them healthy. And your payment is that whether you do lots of treatments or fewer treatments, but ultimately, you get to keep the difference. And if they end up not going to a hospital, you get incentive bonuses, basically. So in dialysis is one of the first industries to do this. They got something like $300 per patient per visit. And that patient is coming three

days a week. So you can imagine that if I'm keeping that patient coming to my clinic, they're getting their treatment, so they're healthier, they're not going to the hospital, which is bad for the patient, but also bad for me, because I'm not getting any payments, why they're there. And I'm keeping their costs down. And I'm getting a share of the savings that incentivizes a ton of really thoughtful or healthcare oriented, not sick care oriented

behaviors. Now imagine an education were in California for many years, the prison construction was based on third grade reading levels. Imagine if we had a capitated way of rewarding schools based on high school graduation rates, or college graduation rates or income are some way of connecting the success outcomes to kids to a payment back to that district, where there's

incentives. But there's also infrastructure to support those who are struggling, you could imagine a system that creates much more aligned outcomes with the interest of the student, rather than, you know, more compliance based outcomes, which are in the interest of the state or the factory model or so on. So I really, I've thought a lot about payment reform as a driver

in education. And I feel like the only place that we've seen this is in high essays and you know, boot camps where there's some sort of share and future earnings. But if we could find a way to capitate learners average revenue per year and give schools a benefit, if they're essentially creating a step change outcome, based on demographics. I think that could be an incredible way to incentivize innovation in our system.

Yeah, that's a really fascinating parallel to draw, to sort of align incentives and in the education system so that the success of students reflect on the success of the educator and the administrator and the district and everybody is pulling in the same direction, which unfortunately, is not always how the money flows. Yeah, I wanted to dive a little deeper into one other aspect of what you mentioned earlier, which was about, you know, empowering your frontline

workers. You know, in health care, that means that patient care specialists who are running, dialysis machines are granted, you know, freedom to make decisions on the behalf of their patience. And in education. Of course, that means, as you mentioned, you know, educators can close the door, and really focus on what they think is right, rather than having to be highly compliant.

And you know, one of the through lines of your career, as I see, it is about sort of scaling the expertise of some of these most, you know, very dedicated and experienced educators, or, you know, the 20, or 30%, as you mentioned, who are always the early adopters on the frontlines trying to find the new thing for

their students. And a number of modern ed tech companies, places like outschool, or outlier, or a variety of different companies focus on sort of expanding the reach of amazing educators, taking these really top teachers and allowing them to broadcast or, you know, run very large

classes. I'm curious how you, from your very unique perspective, sort of see the role of edtech platforms in helping teachers sort of expand their reach and helping teachers share practices with other teachers and directly with students to improve outcomes. I mean, it's an incredibly exciting time. Because I think that the door open during COVID, for many of these new models to get to a minimum viable scale, that creates some flywheel for their models to find success and

grow. Yeah, what we learned during COVID Is that actually, school serves many purposes. And those purposes might be disaggregated. Yeah, purpose. One is childcare. And for students of a certain age, we realize all of a sudden that actually, that's a pretty urgent and primary need. I don't know about you, Alex. But I had my little guys in the back of a lot of zoom calls during COVID days. And there's nothing wrong with

that. In fact, that is an incredible public benefit, that our workforce can trust our children to be in a safe, communal, collaborative and loving environment during the day while we're being productive workers, for our families and for our communities. And so I think that's very hard to disaggregate To be honest, I feel like of a certain age, that childcare component will always be a need. Second, there's instructional expertise. And that is highly scalable, and

highly this aggregate level. And I think what we're learning is whether that's through content and curriculum, or whether that's actually through synchronous, interactive instruction, we should be thinking about our top five or 10% of educators across the country instructionally, how might we broadcast them to reach as many learners as possible, and where I get most excited about this is in high school, where that childcare part of the value proposition goes down a little bit, and the

instructional capability value proposition goes up. And what we know is we're facing the teacher shortage, particularly in STEM, and particularly in communities of color, where access to an AP chemistry course, might be limited to 20 kids or no kids based on availability locally. And so I think the companies that are thinking about how do we amplify those expert educators, especially in those subjects where there's inequitable access, that is

really exciting. And then the third thing that we do in schools is really social emotional learning, communication, community, all of the kinds of things that we know are critical to human beings collaborating and working together. And I also think that that is one that it's kind of in the middle. It doesn't have to happen at school. It doesn't have to happen in person. But it's nice when it happens in school. And it's nice when it

happens in person. And so I think there will be continued to be online and asynchronous as well as virtual ways that kids connect in community. And there will be in person ways and synchronous and asynchronous ways for that to happen locally. And I think that that's okay.

The biggest challenge that I see is that the kind of current explosion caused by this disaggregation is really hard for a parent to navigate and it is actually is creating that key shape recovery that people are talking about where those parents with means or who understand how to navigate these systems are actually getting a meaningfully better learning experience for their children.

And those without means or capability of navigating that system are actually experiencing a meaningfully worse experience. And so we've got to figure out ways to scaffold the supports for parents who are disproportionately facing

inequitable access. But I also think it's incumbent on those companies that are helping, you know, the out schools that you mentioned, helping parents get more reliable signals of quality, and essentially curate learning plans for their their kids, you know, harkening back to our earlier conversation, you know, the early adopters and innovators. They're in the creative space have like patching together their own schedules and systems and

processes. But when you get to, you know, the average family, they're really busy doing the things they do day to day, giving them scaffolds to structure, learning experiences, both in school, out of school and online, that are customized to their learners needs. That's a service that needs to exist in some way, shape, or form.

I love that concept of disaggregation, that the pandemic and I think just the last decade has sort of helped us start to understand for I think, for many for the first time, what the real role of education is that it does a lot of different things, at the same time that teachers do a lot of different things that schools do a lot of different things. And I think, you know, it's really shaping the EdTech landscape.

You said it very well, that each aspect of what school is and does is now being examined and sort of turned over. And people are saying, how would we do this in an online environment? How might we do this in a different way than we've done in the past to have better outcomes, I even think of something like you know, the cyber bullying movement and how schools have had to take on this very new role for them, which is helping students navigate this really fraught world of social media.

That's not something you know, the schools had to do 20 years ago, but it is something that every school has to think about

now. And what you mentioned about the case, shape recovery is particularly interesting, it was exacerbated, I think, by the fact that many of the low income adults are also, you know, are essential workers, so many of the parents who had time to be home and sort of learn about homeschooling and learn how to set up Google Classroom and zoom and, and is Ella and all of these tools, you know, had the time and the bandwidth to do it.

And we're working from home. And many of the less privileged families who were used to trusting the school to sort of connect all the dots, suddenly, were thrust into this completely different role, with very little time and support. So I hope this is all getting us into a better place. It's a sort of wake up moment, I think, for a lot of people about what school was, well, an ultimate. So I'm on a school board to myself. And I will say one thing that I'm thinking about this is not a new

concept. But the idea of teacher as sage on the stage versus right guide on the side school should also be thinking about that to look like yeah, the sage on the stage thing is not it's not worthwhile. There's infinite information available on the internet more than has ever existed in human history is available in like a few keystrokes. And on video, the best lecture you can ever watch about any topic is there for you

to find. And so, as schools, if we're charged with creating an equitable education for our learners, are we actually instructional experts? Or are we actually vehicles of curation, where we're curating for kids, the right set of learning experiences, some of which we deliver, and some of which we don't deliver, to help them meet their full potential as learners. And I'd love you know, I know some schools are buying tutoring now with Esser funds.

And some of them are trying to really reimagine what after school learning is like, and I almost wish we would flip and say, what if in school learning could be more like after school or more like summer camps, or could be more like, you know, if we imagine the instructional core actually being open for this disaggregation schools could be incredible aggregators for kids in a way that would

actually help with equity. If it becomes a consumer based curation, then what we know is that it's going to disproportionately lean towards those with all of the pre existing advantages. Yeah, I

really agree. And it's a fascinating vision, it would also free our educators up to think more about the role of social emotional learning, because if more of the instructional lift was disaggregated, or was delivered through technology or through skilled learning in various ways, then when students are actually in the classroom with each other, you can do things that actually benefit from people being in person in a class with each other, which tend to be in my personal

opinion, often the collaborative Yes, and social aspects of schooling. Yes. And also, I mean, I think that COVID has helped us value in person interactivity in a different way and understand its power. So this chapter that we're in right now, has not been finished yet. And those who think we're on that last page of the chapter, I think there's a few more pages left to be written about this era. And I think this is where, in the most optimistic way, I think this is where it should head.

Yeah. I had one final question that I feel like I have to ask just because your career has been so fascinating in education, and you've sort of gone headlong into some of the really most interesting but also polarizing movements in

education. You've been involved in the charter school movement, you've been involved with education platforms that are connected to technology platforms, technology companies, who've worked in Montessori classrooms, which you know, are beloved, but also a little bit of, you know, not everybody

feels the same way. I'd love to hear you just talk a little bit about your experience being on the front lines of all of these educational movements that have a lot of champions and a lot of critics and how you've stayed grounded as an education leader? Hmm, it's such a good question. And I wish I would say stay grounded at all points along the line. But there's definitely been times where the like criticism has been crushing, or the optimism has been unfounded.

So I will say there's a degree of naivete that is required for anyone who wants to transform education. And with that naivete can sometimes come. Hubris. And I think that when I was a Teach for America, teacher, I thought I was gonna come in and transform the lives of my kids. And what ended up happening is

they transformed my life. So as I thought about each of these movements, and understood the kind of edges of controversy and opportunity, I've decided to lean in and participate, to try to steer those movements to their best possible outcome for all kids, knowing that if I was not there, that it's possible that they steer in a way that actually exacerbates inequity, and personalization.

Personalized learning, was one of those movements that I feel got a lot of interest and excitement from Silicon Valley, because it was what was happening in tech at the time. And so this idea of well, it can happen in tech, of course, we can fix education. For me, I felt excited, but also an obligation to participate. Because I was grounded in the reality of schools and grounded in the reality of how hard it can be to be a teacher or run a school system, or scale change.

I also will say, like the learning for anyone out there who's considering a career in education, educators tend to be a pretty risk averse bunch. And what I've discovered over time, is that actually, the more risk you take in education, the more secure your future opportunities are, not only for yourself, but

to make impact. And I find myself sitting at different tables because I have this diversity of healthcare technology, business and education experience, where I can provide a unique contribution to conversations that fundamentally impact learners in my community, for example, on the school board, or learners across the country, you know, on deck or in national forums. And so I would just encourage people to take that leap and don't be fearful of the

criticism. At the same time, I think it's important to really listen to the actual like content of critics. And I think a lot of it is founded and a lot of it is worth addressing and thinking about because if you don't think about it, when you're in the the formation stage of your venture or company, you end up creating momentum that in you know, two years or four years time you have some unintended consequences or effects.

rallies. So that's why I'm very excited about a movement around inclusive engineering and learning engineering that can really ground us in more people more voices around the table to build the products that scale what works in education. And the last thing I'll say on all of this is, What's guided me in my work is the idea that if I weren't doing what I was doing, and someone else stepped in, and could do a better job and make a bigger impact than I need, it's

time for me to move on. And my bar is that I know my classroom that Oh, call room D six, it's still there. And I know that there's still a shortage of good teachers in that school district, and that I could always step into that door, and make as big of an impact as I would ever make in any of these ventures are companies. And so I try to hold myself to that

teacher standard. And, you know, I hope that others who are, you know, doing this work and you know, committed to this mission, can also hold themselves to that bar, because at the end of the day, we could all just quit our jobs and all become teachers. And that could be a good outcome for education. That's my final thought. Yeah, that's fascinating. So, you know, we end the podcast, always with two

questions. One is, are there any notable news items that have caught your eye recently, that our listeners who are interested in edtech should particularly pay attention to any major signals? Well, one thing that I'm really interested in is international education. Do we operate in the US with our system of constraints. And so a couple companies that I'm following that are encouraged people to follow what is called Crimson

education. And they essentially started by doing admissions counseling for international students, but they built a global online learning High School, that you can do your whole high school, or you can make it supplemental, but it is bringing together learners from countries all around the world, where in some of the countries, you know, the alternative option is a class with 60 kids, you

know, learning rote lessons. And so the ability of the technology to connect this international community in small group classes that are discussion based, and oriented towards empowering the brightest minds to achieve their full potential, it's just a really exciting company. And I think it's gone under the radar in the US because it's based in New Zealand, but I check them

out. And the second I check out is third space learning, which is a tutoring platform that connects Sri Lanka educators, who are many cases, PhDs in education and educational instruction, with students doing real time tutoring. And it's delivering on the idea of high dosage tutoring, but in a way that's creating, like, huge market benefit for those working in Sri Lanka, and addressing labor shortage that exists in the UK. And I feel like no one has quite cracked that nut in

the US. And these are like shining lights that we should look at. And the last thing I'll say, because wouldn't be a tech podcast without talking about crypto, I think there's a lot of potential for crypto to be a part of that value added education chain. And I'm seeing companies that are one training people in crypto careers, which just seems like the logical next iteration of boot camps is that we create non tech boot camps but for these other industries, where it's clearly going to

grow. Second, they're creating NF T's for teachers, where they can buy an entire house for 20% of the value of the house. Well fundraising through crypto, the other 80%. And then they're creating income share agreements that are actually not realistically taking cold hard cash out of anyone's pocket, but actually creating you know, lifetime value that can be traded and is liquid. So I just think there's a lot to think about on that blockchain has not been particularly powerful for

education thus far. But I do think that the idea of crypto greasing the skids for some of these innovations to happen. I'm excited and I'm watching those or facet I've never heard of either of those companies and definitely have been waiting to see what impact cryptocurrency and blockchain has on education but I think Those are very reasonable and intelligent predictions about where it might

go. And then very last question is, you know, is there one book or blog or newsletter you would recommend for somebody who's just breaking into the field of education technology? And is there one that you would recommend for somebody who's deeper in the field and has spent a few years I'm curious, what do you read? Or what book would you recommend to our

listeners? Well, first, I would recommend anything written by tick, not Han, which he's a Buddhist philosopher, and he has a book called work, which is really about how to be present, and enjoy and live with the work that you're doing. And in education, there's so many of us that are so passionate about this end goal of educational

opportunity and equity. And it can be hard to really enjoy the journey with the incredible people who are around us, the incredible learners, we get to work with the technology products that we launched. And I feel like it's a book that anyone should the book work by tick, not Han, is incredible book. For those getting into technology, Ad Tech, I would say class clowns is a great book, because it is a horror story of all the, like companies that have been pitched and have

failed. And I think it's just important to understand, like to come into this space with humility, and understand that what transformation might look like for you, ultimately, is less important than what is actually practically a reality for our learners. And then for those who are more advanced, I would recommend anything by Larry Cuban. He's a professor out of Stanford, who writes about what great schools look

like. And I mentioned at the outset that understanding the behaviors and user experience is critical to building great product. And I feel like he is one of the most astute authors about all the variety of ways in which a great school can exist, and the user behaviors they're in. And he thinks about it from a structural level all the way down to an instructional level. So depending on where you should look at his library of articles and books, his blog, I would highly recommend checking out.

It's just a very close to the field view of innovative and highly effective school models. That's terrific suggestions, then Cornell, it has been a fascinating, we covered a huge amount of ground, and very philosophical conversation. I love the takeaway of you know, take risks, but have humility, and realize that this system is so complex that you know, we move one step forward and two steps back, but we can still keep moving and keep our eyes on on the big change we all want to

achieve. Thank you so much for being here with Ed Tech insiders. Thanks for having me, Alex. Thank you and those who want to reach out feel free to reach out on Twitter. I'm at Ben Cornell. And they can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Terrific, and we will put all the contact info in the show notes. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders podcast. Subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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