Edtech Insiders joined the first Common Sense Summit on America's Kids and Families hosted by Common Sense Media at Pier 27 in San Francisco on January 28–30.
The conference brought together advocates, researchers, youth leaders, policymakers, and other experts to take stock of America's kids and families and explore solutions to the most pressing issues across four core topic areas: kids and technology, youth mental health, early childhood education, and K–12 education.
In this special episode (Part 2), Alex and Ben interviews:
Special Episode: Postcards from Common Sense Summit on America's Kids and Families (Part 1) here:
Edtech Insiders joined the first Common Sense Summit on America's Kids and Families hosted by Common Sense Media at Pier 27 in San Francisco on January 28–30.
The conference brought together advocates, researchers, youth leaders, policymakers, and other experts to take stock of America's kids and families and explore solutions to the most pressing issues across four core topic areas: kids and technology, youth mental health, early childhood education, and K–12 education.
In this special episode (Part 2), Alex and Ben interviews:
Special Episode: Postcards from Common Sense Summit on America's Kids and Families (Part 1) here:
Welcome to Season Eight of Edtech Insiders where we speak to educators, founders, investors, thought leaders and the industry experts who are shaping the global education technology industry. Every week we bring you the week in edtech. important updates from the Edtech field, including news about core technologies and issues we know will influence the sector like artificial intelligence, extended reality, education, politics, and more. We also conduct in depth interviews with a wide variety of Edtech thought leaders, and bring you insights and conversations from ed tech conferences all around the world. Remember to subscribe, follow and tell your edtech friends about the podcast and to check out the Edtech Insiders substack newsletter. Thanks for being part of the Edtech Insiders community enjoy the show.
Ben Kornell:Hello, Edtech Insiders listeners. It's Ben and Alex here. And we've got a special episode coming straight from the Common Sense Summit in San Francisco. It really was an incredible gathering of advocates and allies for kids, families, education and Edtech. And we're gonna bring some voices in our postcards from the common sense summit episode.
Alexander Sarlin:We talked to incredible leaders in the field, people who care about kids privacy, who care about kids mental health who care about education from all sorts of lenses. This episode is a montage of some of the highlights and the postcards from everybody. We're also put out some single episodes with extended conversations with some of our most illustrative guests. Enjoy.
Ben Kornell:Just a quick note to listeners, we record this live and in person at the Common Sense Summit. So you will hear some background noise here, our apologies. But we were really there in the middle of it all meaning with everyone. Please go to Edtech Insider substack, where we will include all of our transcripts from the conversations with each guest. On day two, we had the chance to talk to Margaret Spellings, the very first Secretary of Education in the history of the United States. And she had some really compelling messages around the bipartisan public education impact agenda. Enjoy. Hi, everyone, it is a true delight to have Margaret Spellings, who was Secretary of Education when I was in the classroom, it is amazing to see our journeys connecting here at this Common Sense Summit for kids and families in America. Thanks so much for joining us.
Margaret Spellings:Thank you, Ben. It's terrific to be here.
Ben Kornell:All right, I'm going to start with the first question. You know, many of our listeners only know you and your current role in terms of running bipartisan advocacy, and really working on kids issues across the aisle. But many don't know your true journey as you kind of rose through the ranks and ended up becoming our nation's first Secretary of Education. Tell us a little bit about that.
Margaret Spellings:Well, thanks for the question. And thanks for this fantastic gathering of people who have been on the battlefield for a long time, including me, I started in state government in Texas and got to know George W. Bush. And when he was elected president United States, one of his top priorities was no child left behind. I worked at the White House for four years, because before joining the cabinet, working to pass that legislation, which passed the Senate by a vote of 87 to 10, because of Ted Kennedy, strong support, and obviously President Bush, and then went to the Department of Education to work on implementing it now whether you love or hate No Child Left Behind. That's an awesome achievement. And it's stuck. I mean, the guts of No Child Left Behind are still there. Now, many of you know 20 years later, because of that strong bipartisan support. I've sought my some colleagues from the Obama administration recently, and you know, we really did have a lot of stability for the eight years of Bush administration, eight years of the Obama administration, in particular, around this core principles of closing the achievement gap.
Ben Kornell:So, I was teaching sixth grade and eighth grade right at that time. And it really opened my eyes to how policy can scale what works in education. And there's a way in which when you have policy, and then on the ground practices, and you're really sharing best practices, it really aligns to better outcomes for kids. That seems like a quaint time compared to today's politics and where schools and families and kids are today. What's your sense of today's environment and today's political will to make real change for kids?
Margaret Spellings:Gosh, man, how long do you have? I mean, I guess one of the things that was important about No Child Left Behind is it really made education, a federal imperative, you know, kind of Republican orthodoxy prior to President Bush's election, and frankly, you know, even now is get rid of the federal on education and whatnot. And our thesis was, if we're going to spend money on education, and if we're going to believe in those principles of The Great Society and opportunity for all and title one and iba and all those sorts of things that we ought to make sure that our kids are being served adequately, and not just, you know, kids in advantaged places. But every single kid that is, that is the commitment of the federal role and civil rights in the news, if you will. And so you know, the guts of No Child Left Behind are pretty simple. It says, we're going to test every kid and two subjects every year in reading and math, grades three through right, one time in high school, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable for their progress. And you're right, I mean, it did drive kind of a simple notion all the way down to the classroom level for the first time and said, we care about progress for both minority kids. And now, that's where we're now we're in what I call the era of local control, which is more of a Do your thing, a lot of state authority and responsibility on these things, much less federal impetus around it. And you know, that's the has some good and some bad, that's where we are now.
Ben Kornell:So we've gotten to this moment where there's a fragmentation, and I'm a local school board member, I was elected in 2020. I know, my wife was always like, I really don't understand why you would sign up for this. But I will tell you, there's a way in which no child left behind gave us a common language as well as a framework. And it wasn't limited. It wasn't saying these are the only things that matter. It was more of here's this baseline, where now we can start looking at Apples to Apples across everything. Do you think there's an appetite going forward for a blend of federal standards and accountability mixed with local? Or are we going to go all the way to totally locally fragmented? And, you know, I could see it being a little bit of a fork in the road. So if you looked into your crystal ball, where do you think it's going? And what are the scenarios?
Margaret Spellings:Well, I certainly hope that we'll continue to have those simple but powerful, you know, priorities, every single kid, and the achievement gap, the performance gap, whatever you want to call it, that's gotten worse by post COVID, as you well know. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that that will continue to be the case, I do think there's a risk on the right, in particular that, you know, let's get out of this game. And let's stop spending money on education too. So if we're going to make our thesis is is, you know, Republicans are going to spend money, let's get something for it. And let's commit more kids that we can do better by, particularly in reading, reading and math as fundamental subjects. The other kind of unheralded, but super important reform with No Child Left Behind and you made reference to it is, you know, we every state had to participate in the Main Post No Child Left Behind. Prior to that it wasn't true. It was 30 states this year, different 30 States next year. So we didn't have the ability to say, who has high standards, who's making progress, who's killing it, reading and math, and so forth. And now we know that we see stories about Mississippi and the work they've done on reading. That's because we have this common language. And we have data that informs the enterprise, and that's good for parents, it's good for educators and policy.
Ben Kornell:Okay, so now we get to go to the hypothetical. So you're back in the chair as Secretary of Education again, and you have a magic wand, and can really do anything that you want going forward for education. What are the top two or three things you'd like to see, especially in areas where there's agreement across the aisle?
Margaret Spellings:Yeah, I think we have to up the urgency and triage around reading math and mental health, those kind of period, paragraph full stop. There isn't the urgency, oddly, that we would expect the city I mean, our kids are going in the wrong direction, and they're going pretty fast. So that's the, you know, what the thesis would be? I guess the other thing I would say is we can't let and clearly it's a huge, you know, table stakes issue mental health of kids. But we can't let that be a substitute for teaching kids how to read and do that. And so how do we really up the urgency? Do what we know works, and resource those priorities? You know, it is complicated, because there's so many different decision makers and layers of politics, dollars at hand and whatnot. But that has to be our call,
Ben Kornell:Just to build on that. So you mentioned reading and math, but you also commented on mental health. And that feels like a real theme of the summit. The nation's children are not doing well, in terms of mental health. What are you looking at? And what's giving you hope and optimism, and what do you think we need to do from a policy perspective?
Margaret Spellings:Well, because common sense is so integral to this debate and the connectedness with social media. What gets me on all of that? I mean, that was, you know, front and center here at this conference of wildlife So kids are also telling us that school was boring or not stimulating It is that the learning, they embrace evil. And so that's a call to all of us to ask more of our kids, honestly, I think it's not like we're asking to mark is that we're asking to nibble. We need to ask our kids to rise to the occasion, and give them the help they need and respect them for, you know, those voices that we are that are so broadly people here at this conference. And I have high hopes and high expectations for each and every one of us, not kind of the low down, you know, attitudes about you know, as we think you can succeed, and you think you can fail, you're gonna be you're wrong. And so just to ask more than aspirational aspects that really recording your childhood.
Ben Kornell:Well, it is truly an honor. I remember thinking, there's a voice for us teachers in the White House and in the cabinet. And it's so great to have your voice coming to all of our community here at ed tech insiders. Thanks so much Margaret Spellings. Next up, we have Rajen Sheth, the CEO of Kyron learning. Rajen started at Google, where he led the Google Apps team, and eventually became the VP of AI for Google Cloud. He now leads Kyron learning, which does video AI tutoring, and supports learners trying to figure out how to master math across the country. He joined us for this great conversation. All right, everyone, we have a special episode today with Rajen Sheth, a guest who I've known for what is it like two, two and a half years now? And it feels like a lifetime. In startup life. It's like you multiply everything by seven. It's like gears. So I've known you for like 14 to 20 years, something like that. But Rajan is the CEO of Kyron learning, and we're so excited to have you on the show today.
Rajen Sheth:Oh, thank you for having me. I have so much respect for Edtech Insiders, and great to be on the show.
Ben Kornell:So we're gonna just start off with tell us the journey of how you even came up with Kyron Learning and how it's kind of manifested itself.
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, absolutely. So previous to Kryon Learning I was at Google, and really wanted to focus in on education and wanted to focus in on something that had an impact on equitable access to education. And I was working on AI. And I think you could see even at that point that AI could have a massive impact, if done well. And if you can engage the student in the right way. So really, then just decided to leave Google to try to explore this. And then that's when we met as well, we worked together to try to figure out how AI and how the various technologies that are out there could impact education. Ultimately, I came up with this idea of, can we use this technology to scale really great teachers, and what happens to empower teachers with AI. And that's where Kyron learning, we're building a platform by which teachers can build videos that feel like a one on one conversation, even though the teacher is not actually physically them. And so we're hoping to scale some of the best teachers out there to really have an outsized impact.
Alexander Sarlin:Someone who's been in the AI field before it was everywhere. I'd love to hear your talk about the generative AI revolution from your perspective and how you've been incorporating generative AI into Kyron. Yeah.
Rajen Sheth:So I first started working on AI in 2017, at Google and was leading the AI team for Google Cloud. And what's interesting is exactly what you said, you said, back then, you kind of had to be a PhD in AI to really know how to use AI to build your own models do these kinds of things. And it was not easy. And we always used to have this chart of there, there are 200 million knowledge workers out there only 20 million developers only 2 million data scientists and like 200,000 ai scientists. Now what's amazing with what's happening now is AI is now accessible to everybody. And not even just knowledge workers, really anyone can build on top of AI. And the power of that there's the power of the models, which have got more and more and more powerful. But there's the power of the people building on top of those pockets, which anyone now, which is just extraordinary.
Ben Kornell:So one thing that you started with was aI teaching math and reinforcing Math and Math Practice, an educator might record a video of himself or herself teaching a few math lessons, and then you're able to scale and extended. Now Kyron is actually able to extend so many different other subject areas. How does AI more across these different pedagogic types and how you think about what to focus on when really AI could do anything?
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, it's interesting, because there's a lot of commonality across different areas. And where this started was we originally built content for fourth grade, and we now that's being used in a lot of different schools. But back last year, Western Governors University approached us and they said, like, hey, you know what you're doing. There's really interesting, we'd love to try that for our university. And so we built a demo for them at ASU GSV showing how a professor in data science could actually use this and start to realize it's to actually have a lot of different applications. Generative AI takes itself Whole other stuff because you can now train models to do things in a variety of different spaces. And you don't have to have a lot of training data to make it strong. However, one of the things that is interesting is that AI is still in a very nascent state, particularly generative AI out there things, it's good at things that it's not good at. And so that's one of the things we're navigating a lot, which is, where should we apply it right now that can actually have an impact, a positive impact on students and employers? And not very yet? And what are the things that we can do to get it?
Alexander Sarlin:We're here at the Common Sense Summit on kids and families. And one of the themes of the whole day is sort of what's going well in the world and what we're concerned about this optimism, but also some very scary statistics being shared. I'd love to hear you talk about what you're optimistic about and what concerns you might have about the sort of state of education over the next few years.
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, maybe let's start with the concerns. Because, you know, this is part of what drove me into wanting to dedicate my time on education is that if you look at where kids are, right now, it's a very tough state. You look at achievement scores after COVID, you look at really, like, for example, how many students are able to get college degrees, and what that means in their life. It's a very tough state right now. And so there's a lot that needs to be done. But I do think that the things that I'm optimistic about are really, that technology can actually have a big impact here, if we apply it correctly. And you can start to make it such the things that could we're only reserved for the few now can be extended to the men. And that's really what is excites me the most is there's a dream of equitable access to high quality education. And I think we're on the cusp of at least helping that dream start to come true.
Ben Kornell:In terms of the business model behind Kyron, you've actually had success with some direct to schools, you've had some success with b2b partnerships. Do you see that the business models, whether it's b2c b2b, E to G, are they converging now? Because it seems like the use cases are also relevant to both administrators, direct educators and parents? And how do you see that playing out?
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, I think it is converging to a certain extent, and also not converging. In other words, it is converging in that the same base technology can be applied to a lot of different things. And so whether it's an educator as part of a university and educator as part of a K through 12, school educator that is a curriculum developer curriculum company, for a tutor, for example, all of them have very similar needs, which is that they want to have very engaging, interactive teaching available to many, many students. And so we're seeing that kind of convergence. However, all of those are very different in terms of how you reach them, and how we engage with with the technology. So that's part of what we're trying to navigate here. And we're starting by focusing in on organizations that we can partner with, that can utilize this, to extend their practice. And I think what's great there is, the technology is one teacher, and the pedagogy is the other part. And there are lots of great organizations out there that can add that on top of the technology to create an awesome.
Alexander Sarlin:You mentioned this Western Governors University demo and use case, which is really interesting. And how Kyron is helping scale great teachers, which is an amazing use case of AI. You know, there have been a small set of teachers in the past, especially during the pandemic, who would, you know, record videos and try to flip their classroom, you know, do record videos to send home? And you're sort of looking at that and saying, How can we get almost any teacher to be able to do an amazing job at that, or professor, I would love to hear what it looks like, you know, for a teacher to use the product and what you sort of support them in being able to create great videos and how AI supports them.
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, absolutely. So kind of where we started with this is that a teacher could record kind of small snippets of video, and then we tie it together with AI. So for number one thing that we were finding with a lot of teachers is they told us, hey, when I asked this question, my students, I kind of know, here are the three or four misconceptions that that students is likely gonna have. So they can record kind of a mini lesson teaching about a particular problem. And then ask the student that problem, record a few videos for different misconceptions so that they can help the student with exactly the thing. We're now adding gender debate, and making it such that they don't have to be recording, they can actually ask this and then hands off to generative AI, and also help train the generative AI of how to answer that kind of question. And so it's making it easier for a teacher to be able to go and create these kinds of videos. And so what I'm hoping is that it's actually going to become easier than creating a whole life. By creating kind of small amounts of kind of lesson mini lessons. You can create something that is more responsive to every student,
Ben Kornell:Changing gears a little bit. You've been in technology for a long time. I'm, but you're actually a first time founder. And you know, it takes a lot of courage to leave a Google mothership and start a new startup. What has been surprising about the founders journey for you? And is there anything particularly unique about Edtech, and being an edtech founder?
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, it has been incredibly exhilarating. And I have to say, like, I've been wanting to go start a company for about 20 years now, and never quite had the guts to do it. And finally, honestly, one day just approved quick Google to go and try to try it. And I kind of realized, I don't do it now. I'm never going to do it. But I was still very nervous about jumping into this. It's been the most fun I've had in my career, for many reasons. One is that you're kind of part of every single part of the company, like I've been the first employee in engineering and product management, operations, and finance all of those things, very beginning, in addition to that, just that being able to drive towards your mission, it's been great. It's been surprising. It's seeing how many ups and downs and how many can happen. Like, in the morning, you may be thinking, in the afternoon, you're thinking, Oh, my God, we're not going to make. And so that's the kind of thing you don't really feel as viscerally within a big company. But I feel a lot right now, I think, in particular, is very tough. Because on one hand, what's great is you have that mission. And I feel like I wake up every morning, with a purpose, which feels extraordinary. On the other hand, it's very hard. It's hard to change education, because we not only have to Knology, you have to get adopted using the processes of how schools that complex or how students think of things, which is really, really hard to do. But I do think that it's remarkable to see over the last decade, what's happened with that tech, and I think it's only going to accelerate,
Alexander Sarlin:You have explored a couple of different business models, you've expanded over time. And I know that your original mission was for, you know, math for elementary school students. Now you have a product that you can that organizations of all types can use to teach many different subjects. I'm curious how you are sort of thinking about this expanded mission and how you're keeping it true to sort of your original goal of making sure you're really trying to change the true education system.
Rajen Sheth:Yeah, absolutely. And that's something I've thought a lot about. And what I'm finding is that in all phases of education, that concept of equitable access matters a lot. As an example, with Western Governors University, one story they were telling us is about their commencement where there are students that are young, 3540 years old, had never even thought they could get a college degree that are now getting one and it's changing the course of their lives. I think this idea of providing equitable access and impact in education extends all across the spectrum. And that's what drives me.
Ben Kornell:All right, Rajen. Thanks so much for joining us. Rajen. Where can people find more about Kyron learning?
Rajen Sheth:kyronlearning.com and you can try our lessons, you can actually even start to build lessons.
Ben Kornell:Great. That's KYRONlearning.com. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us here. It feels like it's been 15 years, it's only been a couple. And you're really off to an incredible start. So we're excited to follow your journey. Thanks for joining us.
Alexander Sarlin:Next up, we have Richard Buery, the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, which does incredible work in New York City, building out programs and education and social justice, and housing and all sorts of things, many of which have been copied by cities all across the country. Richard Buery from Robin Hood. All right, we're here with rich Berry, CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation does incredible work for schools and families. Welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to have you on. So we're here at the common sense Summit. This is all about kids and families and about the future. When you look around right now, what are you most optimistic about in terms of the you know, the state of families, the state of education and what concerns you?
Richard Buery:Well, I'll start with what concerns me, you know, something and families don't live in a vacuum. soldiers and families live in cities and counties and communities and states across America. And therefore, the pessimism that it's very easy to feel about the state of America our ability to come together as a nation to solve complex, ultimately solvable problems. The same pessimistic I'm sure many people listen to this podcast impacts children, families, whether it's immigration policy, tax policy or fundamentally civic life and that because the qualification, all those things, feel under deep threat. But what gives me optimism, I suppose I would say that so many ways, the history of the history of it being difficult. The history of The understanding of America that our children live and how we live, how we aspire. But also the fact that they continue to make progress. Undeniable, generation after generation. So we think about the way life is lived in 2004. And what it was like to be a black child in America and 18. To 24, it is it feels fearless. Because certainly terrorism, for us, it's bigger obstacles, or challenges and have freed the present, looks truly outside. I'm optimistic IR trackwork, which is not to be pollyannish. And perfect. I'm really optimistic. What happens when people of goodwill in this country get together and decide that we want to make a better future for our children, we're able to do that pretty much every time. And so I'm optimistic, as hard as we'd be able to make progress.
Alexander Sarlin:That's really interesting to hear I wait. You know, I think both education and technology have been vehicles by which some of that progress has been made over the last 100 200 300 years. And we're at this extremely odd and interesting moment in technology right now, where, you know, more and more people have access to cutting edge technology. And artificial intelligence is suddenly the sort of X Factor, how do you look at the future of how technology might help solve some of these problems?
Richard Buery:Think of it in the same way I would think about me individually. Obviously, the current technology. But it's not the first time massive technological shift will be lifted. The nature of a country reputation and personal cell phone, although things have, I feel like although things are ultimately value neutral technology has the ability to deliver massive improvements in the way that we live. That's always been true. But technology also brings always the risk of harm. Exacerbating, exacerbating inequality. So, you know, on the one hand, I'm, of course excited about the opportunity, AI, like any new technology, to transform the lives of children. We're seeing, especially education we're seeing for the really following use cases out, even like generative AI, how to learn and teach. But ultimately, like, how do we get the society driving? for that? To make sure to bring us back propels us forward, not to think about pessimism or optimism, really, like any other tool, how will we as a society organize for that the tremendous AI is realized, clearly, have a transformative and I really believe, to get there, it won't just happen, will happen. And so I'm maybe I really do early.
Alexander Sarlin:Well, for our listeners who might not be as familiar with the Robin Hood Foundation and your work, that idea of opportunity, and you know, just really working towards a better future has been part of the DNA of that organization for a long time. Can you give a little bit of an overview of what it is
Richard Buery:to the 35 year old organization, our mission is a pretty simple one to fight poverty in New York City. We invest in the highest impact, probably five. We invest in them, we make grants, we make investments and support their management. We help them build better organizations, all with the purpose of driving impact. Families, we invest, we invest across disciplines from early childhood, young adulthood, homelessness and housing, but really looking at interventions that we are having our children and families live their life in New York and more and more we also focused on advocating and investing in policy. We know aligned with bigger results. Family for 35 years, raising money every year, we invested when not an endowed foundation so every year
Alexander Sarlin:yeah, which is you know, one of the very biggest I think it's the biggest school district in the country. Is that right?
Richard Buery:Of us by the million kids in our school system, working only with children but with families as well and are really proud of some of the impact we've had The New York are proud of some of the investments we've made New York have had national, really by building models that can then be brought to other places and influence other communities across the country, build economic opportunity for families.
Alexander Sarlin:Are there any examples you'd like to give of things that started in New York that people are starting to adopt ever?
Richard Buery:I'm particularly excited about and proud of is one of our biggest grandkids at the City University of New York, is, I think one of the most important pieces in the country, from the maximum driving economic opportunity to a system that serves young people and adults every year. It's college colleges that most geared to the high school students go to serving other working class New Yorkers, and really living the American dream. That being said, young people in New York Time to struggle with the challenges. And humans, two year colleges that historically had really low graduation rates, often as little as 20%, from the students and start the program back to getting their two year degree. And that's not a success. So years ago, we invested in a small program called ASAP, which is a pretty straightforward intervention for things like giving Metro cards and simplifying the enrollment process, providing a call to use of counseling to help students live investment, more than doubled the graduation rate. And we DRC to do a study of the intervention. Now, not only intervention that New York City have invested hundreds of million dollars in bringing to scale. But the colleges across the country have adopted wholesale programs. It's really the wave with capital for society in this case.
Alexander Sarlin:I've been a fan of that ASA program for many years. And I think some of the genius of it is it's as you said, it's MetroCards. It's things that are seem maybe relatively small from the outside in terms of advising actually reaching students, but they make a huge difference, because they get right at the heart of so many so much of the dropout crisis cost effective interventions that work exactly. That's, that's a phenomenal example. So you are speaking at a summit later today, I think, can you give our listeners a little bit of a synopsis of what you're talking about,
Richard Buery:I'm really looking forward to the panel, we're really just talking about the investments that we have decided to eat to make them soldiers and families. And in some ways, I think it just builds on everything we've heard today, I just came out of a great session on child care, and the power and potential of early childhood. And so really talking about how we talk about where we started this conversation that we talked about South policy, which really talked about this public policy, that everything's our workforce development policy, or higher education, immigration, policy, all these things, ultimately about bringing a country where people have the ability to thrive, and really to their fullest. And so it's really about talking about how we talk about early childhood policy. We talked about education policy, we talked about children, families, we're really talking about mentally are the basic choices you make of a side. Trying. So I'm looking forward to the conversation. It's it's been a great day so far. I'm certainly looking forward to not so much talking, which I hate doing but but really, I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the day. really honored to be invited to be a part of it's really a tremendous.
Alexander Sarlin:I love your point about childhood policy being connected to housing policy to medical, I mean, every kind of public policy. Rich Buery, CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, really appreciate you being on the podcast fascinating and really lovely to meet you.
Ben Kornell:At the time. Alex Briscoe leads the California Children's Trust. And he joined us to talk about kids mental health, which was actually a huge theme and topic really cross cutting across the entire summit. Enjoy some clips from our conversation here. All right, everyone. We're so excited to have Alex Briscoe joining us today from the California Children's Trust. Thanks so much for being here.
Alex Briscoe:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Ben Kornell:So the common sense Summit is really a bringing together of advocates and allies who care about kids and families across the country. Your focus is California. Alex, tell us a little bit about the California Children's Trust, how it got started and where you are in your work.
Alex Briscoe:Thanks. We're a five year initiative. We're four years in, got one year left, we're gonna sprint to the finish line. We are an initiative designed to reimagine how our state supports the social and emotional health of children. We're initially very much focused on Medicaid policy and the role of schools and pediatric primary care and we basically have a handful of what we call a central practices that we think are key to reimagine Have we support the health and welfare of young people?
Ben Kornell:So the conference really dived into mental health, wellness overall state of kids and families. What would you say is the state of kids and families in America, what's giving you optimism? And what's giving you concern?
Alex Briscoe:Well, I want to preface my comments by saying, I've spent the vast majority of my career working directly in the lives of children and families from being a therapist in the Oakland public schools, to working in level one pediatric trauma center to working directly in clinical programs in juvenile justice and foster care settings. And then for almost a decade, I lead one of California's largest public health systems. So I've had a sort of up front, front row seat to some of the challenges facing poor communities. And what I would say is we are in a uniquely difficult time to be a child. And this all preceded COVID. But COVID gave us a way to talk about it in new ways. And very, very simply, we are living in a time when literally twice as many of our children tried to kill themselves. And I think that's like a kind of, it's not an existential question. It's a fundamental question for us as a culture, which is what will we do when we realize our most precious resource is experiencing an epidemic of despair. And very quickly, those data points are, we saw a doubling of inpatient admissions for self injury, we saw a 50% increase in pediatric mental health bed days, hit self reported to us through the California Healthy Kids survey, a 61% increase in mental health needs. And I think the clinical term in California is that we suck. Despite our progressive politics, we ranked 44th in the nation, and access to care for kids with mental health challenges. So you know, all of that together, the reality of the crisis, the struggle of our safety net systems, and the need to elevate this conversation to systems change activities is really what gave birth to the trust and what we've been working on.
Ben Kornell:I know that this is not easy to answer in a quick podcast format. But these numbers begs the question, Why? Why do we have this crisis that we have today?
Alex Briscoe:Yeah, and like most complex questions, it's tied to a number of factors. But first and foremost, it's tied to a culture that equates fame with merit, and wealth with value, a culture that has still coming to terms with 400 years of structural inequality. When you look at some of the data around who hurts themselves more, it's a direct reflection of how we value difference in our culture, meaning younger kids hurt themselves more girls for themselves more than boys, black kids for themselves more than white kids. LGBTQ children face, significantly higher rates of self injury. And the reason I'm focusing on self injury is suicide is a very rough metric, that number has also dramatically increased. But in a weird way, successful, quote, unquote, suicide is largely a function of isolation and access to a gun. And so rural boys really struggle in that data. But when you look at Acts of despair, types of self injury, and these are, I think, a more accurate description of what's going on with young people. And they're horrifying, literally horrifying. And there's no way you have to look at what has happened with the advent of social media on mobile platforms, like 2009 is when that happened. And that is certainly comorbid, so to speak, with some of these increases in, in self injury and other youth mental health indicators. So clearly, what's happening with young people these fun intermediated interaction with messages of violence and sexuality, and racism, and misogyny, those are all impacting young people's health and wellness. But I would argue those messages are not new. They've been part of our culture for 400 years, we are just now putting them in the eyeballs of children 24/7 on intermediated by adults. So one way I tried to describe it is when you and I saw images of sexual violence or school shootings as children, we almost always saw that with an adult present, you know, at the breakfast table with the newspaper, or in class where a teacher would talk about it. Now young people see it themselves with no contextualization, like, on their phone all day long. I mean, imagine if you have brown kid in California, the President of the United States is saying your father's a rapist, and that your people are criminals, and they're coming for your mama. Like those messages to a young person who has no way to modulate or understand or differentiate those messages from their personal reality are truly horrifying. And I think we have to sort of contextualize the role of social media and digital technology in that way, in that it is new in terms of the experience of children, but the messages aren't. Those messages are the same corrosive messages that have been part of, unfortunately, our culture's history and we must come to terms with them. So maybe what I like to say is that we have created a toxic culture for children. We must I'll teach them how to navigate it. And I say that in the context of mental health, and I would just invite listeners to think, how different is that from the language of diagnosis and medical model treatment. Like we simply have to accept and understand that this is a socially constructed challenge. The tools of mental health are really important. But if we use them in the context of the medical model, we were actually pathologizing difference, and that can be deeply harmful. So I am a therapist, I've literally built hundreds of hours of Medicaid mental health services. But what I would invite all of us to think as we must think more broadly, about mental health, less and less as a response to pathology, and more as a response to healthy development in an increasingly toxic culture.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, it really resonates both as the kind of current crisis being a mirror to our culture and civilization. And our members of our society that are most sensitive to it, are really showing us a deep down symptom we've had for a long time, or a pervasive toxicity, as you called it, I'd say the second is, for an individual parent or an individual family. These trends seem so large and so big, that it almost creates a sense of what can we do or helplessness. So I guess I would love to hear you talk a little bit about on the micro level, up to the macro level, what should we be doing? And for California Children's Trust? What policies are you promoting at the micro all the way up to the macro level?
Alex Briscoe:Yeah, and you know what I would say too, and it's important to frame this, I have seen a lot of human suffering, and without romanticizing it or trivializing it, young people absolutely extraordinary. Like, their ability to hold and understand and thrive and survive despite is the real story of the youth mental health crisis. And, you know, I used to talk about LGBTQ kids and sort of their disproportionate rates of self injury and mood and anxiety disorders. But what I also want to say is having worked in hundreds of peer to peer mental health programs, LGBTQ kids are always over represented. And the reason I named that is, to your question, we have to teach young people how to resist how to listen to the messages of this culture and know that many of them are not true, and are not right. And that's why activism, and engaged civic engagement. And affinity is such an essential strategy to the social and emotional health of children. So let me give you our five strategies, just so we can get right into the details. Because actually, there's so much to do. And despite all the doom and gloom of the data, I said, and if you're not depressed, you weren't listening. Okay? I know, there's a lot of heavy stuff right now, for kids. Everybody knows if you ever were a kid, or you know, a kid, you know, it's a particularly tough time to be young. But what I would say is that young people are awesome. And we actually have the tools at our disposal, because we need this problem, we cannot make it. So first, we have to remove diagnosis as a prerequisite for care. Almost all healthcare systems require a qualifying DSM five diagnosis. And that is both, and misappropriation of the medical model, but also deeply damaging, particularly to children of color. So what I would suggest is, there are mentally ill children, I'm not suggesting we don't need beds and beds. So that is real. But that is not the solution for the vast majority of children. So change access criteria in both your Medicaid and managed care systems. By replacing diagnosis with other access measures, things like adversity, or housing instability, or food insecurity. Those are good ways to indicate need, rather than pathology. So one removed diagnosis, to expand the eligible provider class. Even if you wanted to give every kid a therapist, they don't exist. So dump that idea. And the fact is, many kids don't want 50 minute sessions, or it's not relevant for them. So there's a massive opportunity. It's happening in health systems across the nation to expand the eligible provider class and add things like wellness coaches, like community health workers, like peers like even doulas. These are new types of providers who can build health insurance for mental health support that isn't just a master's level therapist. So the way to think of that is democratize mental health service delivery, and expand the people eligible to do it. Second strategy. third strategy is to create specific programs for caregivers when they bring their babies to the doctor's. We call this the dyadic benefit. So basically, think about when you're a low income person, you interact with the healthcare system the most frequently when you take your children to the doctor. Any of us who've had kids know that you bring your kid to the doctor 12 times in the first three years of their life. We call this the well child visits. But in those visits, we've never provided a chance for caregivers to get mental health support. So you can create a new benefit in Calif Morning, we call it the dyadic benefit. It includes things like healthy steps or child parent psychotherapy or parent child interaction therapy. But it distills to this idea that you do caregiver mental health when they come to the doctor with their kid. Number four, center schools, kids eight to 24 go to the doctor the least. So schools have to become just as important to healthcare payer networks as doctors offices and ambulances and hospitals. And so in California, we just created something called the Universal fee schedule, which makes all schools automatically in network for all managed care plans. Super big one, you guys, all schools automatically in network for all managed care plans, Medicaid and commercial. And then finally, we have to expand care coordination in case management benefits in our health plans, so that unlicensed people can help each other. And that's a basically a fancy way to say, figure out a way to reimburse mutual aid, and community capacity building through Medicaid. So those are our five, doing one more time, just because I know I talked fast, remove diagnosis, expand the provider class, create a dedicated benefit for caregivers to get mental health during the wild child isn't center schools funded mutual aid.
Ben Kornell:I love how you're focused on some of the payment mechanisms here. It does feel like in education, we've very rarely been able to align payment incentives reimbursement incentives, with the best student outcomes, it's almost always either activity based you do x, you get y, or it is punitive. If you don't do this, you will be charged this or if you don't meet our threshold, we will shut you down. And what I love about many of the policies you're talking about, there's both a practical deployment element. And then there's also a how do we pay for this in your strategy?
Alex Briscoe:Man, thank you for recognizing that I feel seen. Thank you. What I would also say is, if you're not paying for it, you're playing with it. Meaning, the American social justice endeavor is filled with really pretty Christmas tree ornaments on a dead tree. If you want to change behavior, you pay for it different. And anybody who says different, you know, who says it's not about the money has never done the work. Like, I've run hospital systems and 911 systems, and especially education systems. And, you know, and the number one truth of all of them is that they were under resourced. And a secondary truth of all of them is that we couldn't pay for the things the way we wanted to pay for them. So absolutely, thank you for seeing that, like reimbursement policy and practice is the essential path, we have to walk to change how we do things for kids.
Ben Kornell:Just to add on to that, you know, I think everybody wakes up every morning that does this, we're wanting to do the best for the kids. These are areas where the structures of payment starts misaligning our intention and our outcomes. And really a lot of what you're talking about here is just creating coherence in our system to get the results that we're really looking for, which is healthy, thriving kids who have access to support. Yeah,
Alex Briscoe:I would agree. So again, I feel seen Thank you. But I would offer a little bit more subversion to that reflection, we have to a reimagine who qualifies for care, who does the work and who gets paid to do it, and where it happens. So this means decolonizing our minds around the kind of medical practice of mental health, like it's not going to happen, because you have a diagnosis, it's going to happen, because bad stuff happened in your lives that you didn't choose, that isn't your fault. It's going to happen from someone who looks like you who shares your life experience, where you can access in non clinical settings, like your school. And not because you're pathological. But because life is hard. And the message this culture tells you is actually toxic to your health. So when I can say maybe the reason I mean subversive to your comment is we have to shift agency and power. By agency, I mean, who does the work and by power, I mean, who gets paid to do it. And we aren't going to solve the Youth Mental Health Crisis. With existing medical model interventions. It's true that seriously, mentally ill kids aren't getting what they need to. So we need to improve that system as well. Tons of stuff we need to do to improve discharge planning to improve medication adherence, to improve so much stuff that the kids who have really high needs need, we need to do that too. But for the vast majority of children, we have to arm them with the skills to understand this culture and reject many of the messages that they hear.
Ben Kornell:So let's talk a little bit about that. Obviously, we have Senate hearings with leaders of major tech platforms. And then on top of that we have an entrepreneurial community that's trying to build new systems. Use of technology to expand access to care and create delivery systems that reach rural or urban or understaffed locations. What do you think the role is for technology in the most positive way? And what is the way that we should be supporting limiting technology to do as little damage as possible?
Alex Briscoe:Yeah, so I'm not really a technology hater. I think it has incredible applications. But I think as in almost all endeavors, one of the most important questions to ask is whose needs are being served. And unfortunately, in this culture, we see innovation, private equity and technology as sort of the good guys. And I would argue, they are not the good guys. They are a mechanism, not a strategy. So what I would say to almost to folks looking at asking that question, in almost all cases, the place to do mental health is where there is already a natural trust and alliance between marginalized communities and caregivers. So by this, I mean, we almost always start with the clinical skill, and then try to reverse engineer trusted alliances. And I would argue that the future for us has to go the other way. And I'll give you an example in a second, meaning go wherever there is already natural, trusted alliances, and then integrate behavioral health and clinical supports there. There is an extraordinary provider in Humboldt County, California, called to feathers counseling, and I would like invite anybody here to Google and look them up. They're run by an amazing man, Virgil Morehead. Virgil is a Native American. He's actually a clinical psychologist he's trained to feathers has 25 licensed clinicians master's level or above. But each one works with a team of six to 10, a pod of six to 10 youth, adult mental health leaders. And those youth mental health leaders work with other young people in their community. And that model of team based care with the clinician working with extenders, impacting a broad community of folks where culture, youth development, recreation, and connection and relationship are the essential practices, there are clinical supports available, but they're tied into a much broader view of how we are connected to each other. That is the future of youth mental health, team based hods of support, that include hundreds of young people articulated through other young people who have relevant lived experience, connected to a clinical support, but not led by clinical support. right with me, totally. We say let's drop like therapists in a school. And that's not a bad thing, okay. But the way we're going to get it done is when we drop a therapist and five community health workers, and each of those five community health workers is going to have a caseload of 25. And they're gonna say, What's up to that kid every day? Yo, yo, Steph was amazing. Last night, did you see that shot, and they're gonna know what's going on with that young person every day, all day long. And when that young person needs help, they can escalate up and elevate to the needs the therapist, it's kind of this idea of working at the top of your licensed like master's degree therapists are so scarce in this world, we can't have them doing 50 minute sessions individually, like we'll never get there. But also from a cost perspective, we need to deliver a lot more a lot faster, a lot cheaper. And I think this team based model is really kind of the key to the future of us telehealth.
Ben Kornell:I love it. And thank you for giving us a vision of where we could go. Alex Briscoe was on one of our panels at the common sense summit to talk about the youth mental health crisis. where can folks go if they want to find out more about your work?
Alex Briscoe:Sure, you can go to the California Children's trust.org. See a children's trust.org. You'll see tons of papers and probably more Medicaid speak than is good for you. Yeah, welcome, anybody. So you can reach us by email there and watch our videos and read our papers and join us in coming up with a solution.
Ben Kornell:Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thanks so much for joining us Alex Briscoe from the California Children's Trust.
Alex Briscoe:Thanks for having me.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Edtech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Edtech Insider subscribe to the free Edtech Insiders newsletter on substack.