This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 3/18/22

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MacKenzie Scott is on a mission to not only impact lives, but also to transform philanthropy. And most recently, she hit the news, because she's giving new school venture fund $30 million as part of a general operating grant, which basically means that new school venture fund can do whatever it wants with that

money. It's an important development in our space, because he Scott is actually trying to keep a lower profile, because she feels like she's grabbing the headlines and not these amazing organizations that she's funding. But it's a new element on the education scene. And both Alex and I were thinking, what does this mean? You know, from my perspective, there's a degree to which general operating funding has always been a challenge for social impact ventures for

profit or nonprofit. And many times the tail wags the dog, the funder comes up with their priorities. And then organizations really lean into those priorities and almost shift their mission to fit. And so it's really powerful to see MacKenzie Scott leaning in in this way. But we also know that huge funding rounds can also create market distortions. One market distortion can be no other funder wants to give you any money, like Didn't you just get 30 million from McKinsey.

Scott, why should we write you a check? Or two, it can cause organizations to stop making the tough decision between Option A or Option B, it becomes the SN culture and it becomes really hard to narrow down into their theory of change or theory of action. So this orientation of trust based philanthropy, I'm a huge fan. What does an organization do with that general operating money? And how does it affect their overall

enterprise? It's something that I think a lot of VC backed startups that have had huge rounds have had to deal with and now it is also happening in education, philanthropy. Alex, what's your read on this?

meets that description. I love the idea that, you know, MacKenzie Scott is giving all this money away, but trying to stay out of the headlines, trying to highlight the work of the organizations and just sort of accelerate things that are happening in many different sectors that, you know, she feels like are important without making the you know, people jump through hoops and do presentations and do, you know, bend their whole roadmap towards you know, her particular angle.

So, I think it's a really exciting move and I wonder if it's going to change the way some other philanthropies do business. So bravo to her. Great.

And it's written by somebody who, you know, runs a company to connect good tech companies to learning science, so it makes sense, but he cites Justin Reich's recent book failure to disrupt which is a terrific book, but also a very skeptical take on whether ad tech can sort of meet its high flying goals.

There was also an interesting article in EdSurge, called who is the Theranos of education sort of building off, you know, the recent movie about Theranos founder, and it says, you know, maybe it was old school, maybe it was Newton, you know, it's talking about some very potentially overhyped, or, you know, very well publicized companies in edtech, over the last few years, which are both

close to 10, and my hearts. And then lastly, you know, one thing that caught my eye was ed tech companies, ovo was finally find after a long court case, this week, fined $22 million for false advertising on behalf of Ashford University, which has since been sold, and you know, put together I look at this as, hey, you know, some of the people even within the ad tech world are starting to sort of play morality cop a little bit and say, Hey, let's make sure we don't get ahead of our britches,

you know, or over our skis as the field grows. I thought it was an interesting trend. And I think we might see more of it. As you know, the industry continues to grow. I think there's inevitably a little bit of a backlash where people start to, you know, look for the holes in the stories. I'm curious what you thought about it, then.

I think the challenge here is that if you're asking edtech companies to lead with learning first, and business results, second, you have to have a market that really cares about education impact, first, and is willing to make investments, because there's a real challenge, especially in K 12.

and higher ed b2b, in that the buyer and the user are so far away from each other that often the buyer priorities around cost, and, you know, efficiency or return, create market dynamics that incentivize organizations, to deprioritize innovative learning models, and sometimes even educational impact for the more

administrative functionality. Of course, you know, if you're doing great things for learners, and if you're making a big systemic impact over the long run, you should win out over time, right, I will say I've seen hundreds of really, really great products or programs that have struggled to scale for this very reason. I also find it ironic to have EdSurge, calling people out for the Theranos of education, when EdSurge itself has now you know, sold to SD and is no longer a viable profitable

venture. And I'm a huge fan of that see, and the founding team who really brought a journalistic angle, which by the way, we had ed tech insiders fall far short of any of their high bar that they built, you know, they were putting out really quality journalism. And yet that was hard to sustain

given the market dynamics. And so, you know, it's just interesting to have somebody working at Google, trying to apply a Theranos, which was, you know, criminally liable to organizations that, in retrospect, were on two themes that we hear all about now, which is micro schools, and AI adaptive learning. So I find that to be a reach, but I also have, like, personal connections

to that story. So it may be a reaction on the zoafia one, I do think also, we need to ask like regulatorily what government programs or standards need to be said and I was particularly Interested in the State of the Union, Biden talking about, you know, social media policies for younger learners and data

privacy? And I do think that, you know, missing in these stories, there's this market element of, okay, how do you make it a good market to do right by learners first, and then the business will follow?

But also, how do you make a regulatory environment where the guardrails and the standards are universally applied across, and I've just seen consistently organizations with incredibly high data standards, still struggling to win RFPs from someone who's cheaper, partly because they don't have as high of a, you know, data privacy standard threshold. So for our ed tech universe, you know, when you get this kind of capital, people start shining light on

you. And I think this is a important moment to bounce the boat with both optimism and skepticism.

option. And I hope that you know, there, I know, there are other organizations, the evidence, education, evidence exchange, and others that are really working on this as well. One thing that stands out to me just my last comment about the skepticism, one thing I've found very interesting about the tech field is that there are actually a number of excellent books about why Ed Tech doesn't work.

Things like Justin writes failure to disrupt several books by Audrey waters, including her most recent one, teaching machines, Larry Cuban, we even have books like class clowns by Jonathan knee about how ad tech investment doesn't work. So I think there's like almost a backlash without a front lash, because there are not actually that many published books about, you know, why Ad Tech has worked and what it has changed, or, you know, they tend to be much smaller. So it's an interesting

moment. And I think, you know, we'll have to keep an eye going forward on that balance that you mentioned, been between staying skeptical, staying, you know, making sure we're all thinking on behalf of, of students and teachers and parents and the end users and you know, people in this space, but also not trying to throw out the companies and assume, you know, ill intent, I don't think that many people go into education and edtech, because they want to scam the world. That's just been my

experience. But you know, we'll see how it all plays out as more money comes in. Yeah, mine

or support from investors. And you know, this broader community, because when paired with technical tools, professional development, or even adaptive change at the student, or administrator level, can be really powerful. And in healthcare, most of the technical innovations that have transformed, you know, healthcare, don't necessarily appear on the headline news, you know, rarely is there a miracle drug, a lot of times it's new practices and patient care

enabled by technology. And it's about a hospital system, or it's about, you know, a set of doctors or set of nurses that are pioneering certain types of care. And I think that that's probably how our tech innovation ecosystem will play out, if it is in service of radically innovating education and outcomes for kids.

employees. And Amazon is the second largest employer in the country after Walmart, the ability to go to a huge suite of different colleges and even some edtech companies like outlier.org, funded fully funded by Amazon and they become eligible for the benefit after only 90 days of employment. One thing that stood out to me and I'm so curious about your thoughts on this, Ben was that Amazon is also setting up locations, what they call career choice classrooms located at

Amazon facilities. So they basically are making it easier for employees to actually attend classes and having to commute less to sort of put that all together, which I think is pretty considerate. What do you think about this, Ben, what is Amazon trying to accomplish with this massive program?

that labor organizing. The second is really around employers, you know, this has now become mainstream, full engagement in the upskilling ecosystem. And the upskilling has two core components, one being an employer of choice, so that people sign up, but then second, to fill new roles. And so what I'm particularly interested in is Amazon's program is incredibly broad, many of the employers that we've seen thus far tend to focus on a set of courses or skills that are particularly needed in their

business. And because of Amazon's massive scale, it may be that they just need so many, or it could be that from, you know, a retention and flow through standpoint, they really only need like, you know, 10 to 20% of these employees to convert into, you know, next level up jobs. But I do think, you know, Walmart, as far as I know, is still working closely with guilt. Yep. You know, Amazon doing this program, it's going to set the tone for

Fortune 500, for sure. And if a company is not providing frontline employee education programs, the immediate question is going to be what's wrong with that?

And I think, you know, it is a very, I don't want to say shotgun as in a bad way, but sort of, it's an approach where instead of funneling students to a handful of partner, universities, or chair, you have them, as you say, learn a particular skill to try to move into middle management, it's basically saying, we're going to

give you a lot of choices. And, you know, I've noticed that, you know, speaking of the labor piece, you know, Amazon commercials put this employment tuition, this full tuition benefit right next to $15 an hour and healthcare on day one. And they've been doing this massive PR push for a couple of years now to make Amazon, you know, quote, The best employer on Earth after that earned a really negative reputation a few years back. And I agree that this education benefit is part

of that. And it's also in response to trying to quiet down some of the unionization calls that have been happening in a few different Amazon facilities around the country.

guilt, which curates? So, you know, is there a guidance counseling company, for Amazon employees? Like is, are there adjacent companies to be made, much like when an auto plant opens in your town, you know, somebody starts making auto air conditioners down the road, this could actually feel its own micro ecosystem of companies and jobs. And then beyond that, you know, this is where I go a

little down the rabbit hole. So listeners bear with me, you know, there is a dystopian future where our allegiance to our country is displaced by our allegiance to a corporation or brand. And, you know, this has been in science fiction for a long, long time. But imagine a world where people are, like, affiliated with Google, or Apple or Amazon. And they're battling

for supremacy of their model. We just jumped the shark from like, employer to educator, I mean, like, it's happening, that people are now that you are able to be fully encapsulated by one of these large tech companies, where you get your groceries from there, you get your job, you get your learning from

there. And so I just think it's important to like mark the moment down, not that we're going to head that way but geopolitical power has been flexed by these companies through the Ukrainian Russian conflict. Imagine what the power of these companies could be if they control who's educated and how

really agree. And two last things on my part about this that stood out, you know, a Matthew tower in his coverage of the Amazon Career Choice Program, one stat that stood out to him, and I thought it was interesting to report here is that in just the first few weeks of the program, Southern New Hampshire University, one of the many colleges that Amazon has into their choice program, but one that's also you know, market driven, as you say, Ben, it's really trying to give learners

that fastest track to a degree reported getting over 2400 new students, and that's a mega university, but even a mega University, that's a lot of new students to get in weeks in one go through one company. So I think, you know, people are signing up for this. The other thing I just wonder about, and I'm sure this is out there somewhere is Amazon, in the past at least, was known for having

very high turnover rates. And not because the employees wanted to leave necessarily, but because they burned out in various ways, or, you know, it's just had a bad reputation for that. I wonder, you know, the idea of giving employees, a long term education benefit, like a college degree is usually associated with long term retention, you know, that somebody's going to stay working at the company, if they have four years of college do or even two years of college to do. I wonder if that's part of

Amazon's calculation here? Do they want their employees to stay longer? Or do they figure that the short turnover will make people have to change their model? It's just it's gonna be an interesting thing to keep our eye on. If you have any final thoughts on Amazon?

at an inflection point. And I think your point about all of the corporate interests that are sort of waiting in the wings and have already been, you know, sort of putting their fingerprints on public education. I think we may look back, I don't know, in a few years at this moment as an interesting turn in the road when it comes to you know, who is really controlling the education system. Anyway, let's move on on a breadboard to

funding and m&a. Ben, do you want to kick off some of our funding rounds?

at a 22 billion valuation. And then some bullet 400 million of that 800 million is coming from by Jews founders, by Jew himself in a personal loan, where he's buying back shares to increase his stake to 25% of the company. So bide you and his family own a quarter of this $22 billion company. They you know, all the reporting still expects an IPO likely vs BAC, coming sometime in the next 12 months. But it just you know, Baijiu continues to rewrite the like, record

books in ad tech space. And it is also just a bold, and I mean, I love the move 400 million of your own money to buy back shares at a $22 billion valuation. That takes a honus. so props to bide you, Mr. Baijiu. When I get to meet you, I am going to give you a high five for that one. You know, one thing I will say out there is sometimes when companies raise, you know 800 million and a very large valuation or you know,

hundreds of millions. They're providing liquidity to earlier investors and it's not new cash into the company. But the kind of reporting around this one suggests that it actually is on net new cash to the company to fuel their m&a activities. They're kind of creating almost like a private equity esque roll up strategy that we've seen over the last Last 12 to 18 months. And so it's just a very impressive set of events. And we'll be following it really, really closely. What else do you have? Alex?

really exciting. And it means that, you know, the tech world ecosystem in Europe has been continuing to grow. This is just a another record breaking moment where, obviously, people are looking to really find the next big European ad tech, breakout stars and find the early stage companies and really, really build that ecosystem. So good for them. And I'm really excited to see what comes out of Europe from this money.

have. And in Europe, as well as in Asia, you see a lot more deals being led by, you know, Tiger global, or other generalist firms. And so this will be a really interesting inflection point around, you know, specific ad tech verticals

in Europe versus generalist. And I think that that will actually shape how capital comes into the space over the next five to 10 years, as we think about these generalists developing expertise in ad tech, or seeding the ground to, you know, the owls, reaches, learns, and so on of the world. So the third headline we had was Medway, raising $15 million. It's a Brazilian study

app for medical exams. And one thing that we highlighted in our very first episode when we had normal on is the intersection between learning and many really attractive verticals like healthcare. So this development by Medway is really part of a larger segment that is really hot in the US, which is around online medical education. And that includes online med Ed, osmosis, which was recently acquired sketchy, and the

privately held you world. And it goes to show that in healthcare, the delta between pre medical certification versus post medical certification, that delta and salary is incredible. And the challenge of hiring qualified people is so real that from an employer segment and employer learning segment, it's almost got its own zip code for companies, funders and opportunities. Alex, take us to our fourth one, you have something about Course Hero,

or so. And it's a company with a big, big user base, and is now thinking about how to expand its set of offerings in an organic way that actually meets the needs of its learners, and really try to sort of take itself to the next level. It's interesting, because it feels like a lot of different companies are doing this sort of expand by acquisition strategy right now, it's something we anticipated a little bit as the cooling off of the smaller company funding starts to

happen. And the slow down after the pandemic starts to happen, that companies that might have gotten big bursts over the last couple of years, may be flattening a little and looking to sell themselves to bigger companies with big distribution networks, like Course Hero, so I think this is a great example of that inaction.

company like this. But there are a few other you know, as Ben mentioned, a lot of stuff happened in funding this week, we're just gonna do a sort of quick round the world about some of the other things. So UK based fourth rev, raised $11 million, and Mcode, raised $10 million. That's a career acceleration platform. Class plus is an Indian b2b education platform, got a series D round of $80

million. That's a big round, CFO expanded its series B rounded had already done I believe 40 million and got 20 million more this week, which is exciting to see. subtenant is a UK based firm that just raised about 700,000 pounds is early stage. And chipper is a portfolio company that works within the student loan industry. And it sort of helps people pay down their loans, it raised about

just under 6 million. This week, we also saw a couple of acquisitions, line wise, acquired K 12, web filter and firewall provider company SEPA filter, school status, acquired teach boost. And we saw a couple of other acquisitions in the school security space as well. So a lot of consolidation, a lot of stuff happening all over the world. And we're still just every week, there's a lot to report there. Well, it's

folks to play at home. First one, ad tech magazine, which I didn't even know that existed so great that there's an ad tech magazine quoted an industry expert regarding that the teaching shortage and that industry experts said, technology has become so integrated now into schools, that it being done properly can be the deciding factor when teachers are deciding where to

work. The article implies that if you use the EdTech tools that that teacher likes, that's going to be a top factor in whether they decide to come to your school district. What do you think Alex Fact or Fiction?

attention. And as teachers become experts in some things, and not others, I'd be very surprised if they didn't think about technology as one of the deciding factors. Is that true, Ben?

used before. It's like them bringing the binders, the physical binders of their, you know, units and lesson plans over, it could make a big deal. And I will say personally, when I find out that someone either uses Microsoft Teams, or they use you know, Slack and zoom, that has an impact on me, I won't say which side of the fence I lie on that one try to stay neutral here. But you know, when you've got work tools that you're accustomed to, and others that are harder to use, it makes a difference.

30% of all undergraduates. So you think that's fine. Fact, or fiction? What would you say to that then?

going away altogether? No. And, you know, and ultimately, I think there is a challenge around, you know, elite universities, losing further touch with the reality of most undergraduates. And also, I would just say, Paul LeBlanc, his leadership and vision, you know, 10 years ago, it just seemed really futuristic. And today, it feels like right on. So anything that he says I'm inclined to back.

to your instructor. Essentially, the test picking firms have created these dummy sites to capture would be cheaters in helping them essentially find the answer through Google search query, but ultimately, like reporting them to their educators. The article even describes people using Apple watches to give a notification to the professor that someone in their class, you know, an apple notification that someone's

cheating. So, you know, it's like Chegg, and others who have been in the headlines for helping people, you know, get the answers. And whether cheating or not, is the big debate. This feels like a salvo in the other direction. It's like the anti missile system. So the article ultimately posits that test givers have finally caught up with test takers. Do you think that's true? Do you think that's fact that test givers have finally caught up? Or do you think test takers still have the edge?

gonna bet on the kids. There's no way that the test givers are gonna catch on. Yeah. Should we do our last one, Ben?

But it is really, so far we've seen the federal government really struggling to keep up with student grants and student needs. So I'm going to go with fact on this one.

fact. And it just says exactly as you're saying, like, the government is just so far behind where the higher ed, you know, market has gone, that it's almost Yeah, it's a head shaker. I'm totally with you. Do you?

to do. I don't think that full four year college tuition is going down. I may be wrong about that. But I mean, you look at the charts, it has not gone down. It's been gone up like a firework for decades. I think it's going to stay up there. And it's going to be for the elite who want to do this traditional system like their parents did. And I think there's going to be more and more and more alternatives available. That's where I think it's going. What do you think, Ben?

ones replace. And if you're the federal government, you're far less interested in subsidizing the $63,000 school than you are the community college or the state university or whatever that has, you know, access as like a core priority. So I do think that we will see the kind of credit hour going down. I also think the fact that we even call it a credit hour is indicative of thinking about school as seat time, rather than

competencies. And so that gets to your point around the shift around, you know, shorter path to getting credentialing or a degree based on your competencies rather than the number of course hours that you, you know, sit for. So really interesting fact or fiction. Thank you, Alex, for playing. Finally, I got the win. I'm very excited to celebrate tonight. Champagne showers for everyone. All right, we are moving on to our deep dive. And today we have the great pleasure of

interviewing Ryan Stewart. Ryan was a Teach for America teacher with me back in oh three in the Bay Area. He's had an incredible career, including working at Philadelphia public schools. He was at Harvard doing their leadership program for superintendents and educators. And He most recently was Secretary of Education in New Mexico. Thanks so much for joining our show. Ryan, we're so excited to have you here today.

is now COVID. On top of all that other stuff. So around two years ago, this time, I was shutting down the state basketball tournament, which is huge in New Mexico, because NCAA had just cancelled March Madness, the NBA had just suspended their season. And we were restricting fans from being able to go to this huge, huge tournament in the

state. And so as somebody who's coming in from out of state, new to the role, instantly, I was taking on and my whole team was taking on this vast array of new learning new policymaking constantly having to shift and adjust as new science would come

in. So really, it was an entire two years of just constantly navigating uncertainty, constantly having to find resources that you don't have, that you've never had, and new responsibilities that you've never had, and be able to manage them, while still projecting calm, still letting people know that we were in the business of still educating kids and supporting kids and supporting staff members and communities

during that time. So it was a wild ride, unfortunately, became very political, as you can imagine. But the learning was incredible. The things I did that I never thought I do. And now I know how to do. It's remarkable when I think back on it. And as crazy as that time was I greatly appreciated the opportunity and the ability to lead during the biggest crisis that we've ever faced.

going on on the ground. And I'm curious, you know, what, that experience, how that sort of opened your eyes, what that made you think about, and particularly what you saw in terms of technology, our listeners are always really interested in how education technology is used in the classroom.

thing about COVID. And there's not a whole lot of silver linings, but one of them is it really spotlighting the huge disparities that we had when it comes to technology. And it lit a fire under people to say, we have to connect every single student, we can't live in a world anymore in which we have these vast disparities. And so the hard reality of it is, when it comes to getting people connected, a lot of times, you actually have to put fiber in the ground. And you can't just

do that overnight. And you can't do it on just a state education agency budget. It's a massive, massive investment, which now both at the federal and the state level people are making. So that's one thing I'm very happy about to see is we're going to bridge that digital divide, we're investing more in the technologies that are gonna let us do some leapfrogging of

the fiber issues. So in New Mexico, we're investing in some low orbit renewables that we're going to be able to spread signals we've been working with Starlink, trying to accelerate getting more satellite based connections, we actually had a very interesting partnership with the public broadcasting system in New Mexico to do something called data casting, which is kind of a stop gap between getting the high speed internet and where people are

now getting disconnected. But the PBS signal could basically do a one way push out of lessons or resources or their streaming video, that if you could get a PVS signal in your house, which even in our rural areas, most of them could you can access that content and sync it up with an elements. And so again, it's not two way internet, it's not the

full amount of what we need. But it is one way to push content out in a manner that is accessible and accessible on a relatively quick pace at a relatively low cost.

they don't want to continue. But some of that worked really well. And so I think they're going to keep doing that. So specifically, I think that there were a lot more connections that were made between teachers and families. And I heard that everywhere I went, all the teachers I talked to, who feel more connected than ever, because we're now beaming directly into people's living on

a daily basis. And so I think that because of that, there's a lot more utilization of technology to do that kind of update to a family about where their student is, and more expectations on the families and as to how to access them. On the in classroom side, I think that people have now learned to engage in new ways, with the accessibility through almost universal use now have a learning management system. And just about every, every school, every district that you go to.

So teachers are much more comfortable. Now with utilizing content in that way. You have more teachers who are at least dipping their toes in the water on things like Flipped Classroom models, and that kind of work.

And then I think you've got a lot more teachers who have been able to explore different kinds of technologies for engagement, whether it's your Ramiro boards, whether it's using their screencasts in different ways, whether it's identifying different online tools to use math manipulatives, or do collaborative art projects. So I think the kind of innovative spirit to find the technology that will meet the instructional need, has been seeded much more.

Now, certainly, it's not across the board, I think you still have your continuum of teachers who, you know, they've moved from absolute, no technology to now baseline technology, we know how to use Google Classroom and know how to login and post assignments, some will stay right there. But I think you're going to have more and more who shifts to the right on that continuum. And that is, let me go out and research more tools that fit the instructional experience that I want my kids to have,

get. That's only natural, I wanted to ask you about career and technical education, career and technical education is a theme we actually talk about a lot on the podcast, and specifically how both traditional education institutions and non traditional education institutions, often employers are sort of coming together to try to improve the school to work to pipeline create more career readiness, as well as more college readiness.

I'd love to hear a little bit I know you focused on CTE as one of your initiatives in New Mexico, I'd love to hear your take on career technical education and where it's headed.

prepared for food. And if we're not going to respond to that, we're going to lose kids, and we're going to lose them before they really truly reached the potential of career development that they could have in their K 12 experience. And so I think we have to be more integrated with employers. And one of the things I was proud of that we did is we set aside a chunk of our federal funds to actually fund 1000s of kids across New Mexico to have a summer work learning experience.

And we did it in consultation with our municipal governments or local governments or tribal governments and nonprofits across the state. And we connected them with their schools and these nonprofits who served as umbrella organizations to provide kids with that kind of a learning experience that they could then take back with them into the classroom and earn some money during the summer. And so I think that we have to be thinking more and more about breaking down those barriers.

There are some real policy challenges to this that I think people need to think about. So a few of them that we thought about. Were around

transportation. That's a huge accessibility issue when it comes to career technical education and work based experiences, even nuts and bolts, things like insurance and indemnifying employers and age limits and making sure that you have the right kind of funding mechanisms in place to be able to have financial intermediaries who can break down some of the bureaucratic barriers to being able to fund these types of programs. So there's a lot of policy in the weeds pieces to

making that ecosystem work. It was actually part of the strategic plan that we were putting together around convening more stakeholders across the state to come together and identify some of those policy barriers and work to change legislation, change rules, to try to make that work. And then the last thing I'll say, is connecting with the Labor Department, which in New Mexico is called our Workforce Solutions department, we found a really willing partner there.

Also with our higher education department, which in New Mexico was separate from the public education department, having a collaboration there to really look at the workforce needs connecting with WIOA, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, you can access some dollars there to try to build more of these pipelines. And so that's the kind of policy work that I think needs to be in place to help build out some of the CTE issues.

than an entire state. But time and time again, we see states like Kentucky, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, and granite, all of these places have some large urban cores, but thinking about things in a way that's innovative and different. And relatedly, though, too, we're also seeing huge staffing challenges across the board, but especially in rural states, and most notably in New Mexico, the governor called in the National Guard. So how does innovation in

rural states work? What are the biggest challenges that rural states might be tackling or largely preponderance rural states? How might they be tackling challenges differently? And how my ad tech companies partner or collaborate with them to scale impact? Yeah.

issues there. And then on the people side, it's how are we attracting people to come to this area where it can be hard to get young, exciting people to want to come and build their educational career. So on the access to people side, I think a few of the things that our rural areas we're talking about are really important for them. One is being able to grow their own talent. So they have to build the pipelines to invest in the kids who sit in their classrooms every day, who would be great

teachers for them. And one of the things that we were doing at the state level, and also using some of our federal dollars, is trying to help see and build those pipelines and those programs in collaboration with our institutions of higher

education. So I think that that's one and then looking at the policy side of that to make sure that we aren't putting barriers up that dissuade people who would otherwise want to stay in their community and become teachers from doing things like in our licensure or certification area, we can make changes to policies that we've heard, are really dissuading people from from entering the

profession. Another thing that was really important on the access to people side is the notion of being able to have affordable teacher housing in many areas. We call them teacher ages. I think that was just a New Mexico term. I haven't heard that in a lot of other places, but it might be a widespread term. But a teacher, it was basically a district owned housing plot of land or in a house that teachers could have either at a low cost or no cost.

And it was a major factor for attracting people to come and work in those areas in which finding the right kind of housing can be a potential barrier for folks. And then you mentioned earlier, Ben, and I'll circle back to this notion of a four day week. So we had a number of mostly rural districts in New Mexico that operated on a four day week. And what we were finding from a student achievement perspective was he was about a wash wasn't better wasn't necessarily worse than

the five day week. And of course, each day would go a little bit longer. So they still have the same number of hours. But we were finding that it was a major recruiting tool. For many of those those districts. They found that people really wanted to come and work there and it was a it was a hard sell for the five day school. district that was just next door to be able to pull people in when they knew they could go over here and get the slightly

longer day over four days. And I think one of the things that we're going to have to really, more so than ever focus on as leaders in education, is educators now have a lot more choices for where they're going to work. People love to grab teachers and pull them into all sorts of other industries. And we have to be competitive with the way in which we structure

the work environment. And so I think it's been a sacred cow for a long time to say, Nope, it's the five day week, it starts at 830 ends, and three, it looks exactly like this. And that might not be what makes people want to come in and work in a particular school system. And we have to be responsive to that if we're going to get great people to come in and say,

time, unfortunately. But this has been an incredibly interesting interview and just thinking about all the challenges in being a secretary of education in a really diverse and interesting state like New Mexico, I think you've shed a lot of light on that role.