Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Navigating ESAs with Odyssey: Joe Connor's Mission to Make Education Accessible
Joe Connor is the CEO & Founder of Odyssey, a company that partners with state agencies to administer school choice programs. Odyssey currently serves over 140,000 students by helping them access more than $400 million in state funding for education. Joe started his career as a teacher and school leader at the KIPP and Rocketship Education school networks. After working in schools for several years, Joe attended law school where he focused his research on private school choice and education policy. Joe practiced litigation while advocating for education choice, including working on Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, a landmark school choice case. Joe previously founded SchoolHouse, a private school network before founding Odyssey. He has also worked as legal counsel for Match Education, AltSchool, the Notre Dame Ace Academies, and Primer.
Recommended Resources:
💰 Odyssey resources on ESAs
🌐 Edchoice.org
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Joe Connor is the CEO and founder of Odyssey, a company that partners with state agencies to administer school choice programs. Odyssey currently serves over 140,000 students by helping them access more than $400 million in state funding for education. Joe started his career as a teacher and school leader at the KIPP and rocketship education school networks. And after working in schools for several years, Joe attended law school, where he focused his research on private school choice and education policy. Joe practise litigation while advocating for education choice, including working on Espinosa versus Montana Department of Revenue, a landmark school choice case that we'll talk about in this interview, Joe previously founded schoolhouse, a private school network, and he has worked as legal counsel for match education all school, the Notre Dame ace academies and primer. Joe Connor. Welcome to EdTech Insiders.
Joe Connor:Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.
Alexander Sarlin:You were one of the very first guests on tech insiders almost three years ago, we talked to you in your previous role. And you are always doing such interesting things you had previously founded schoolhouse, which is a private school network. And now you've been working with Odyssey, which has grown enormously. It's really exciting all the success you've seen so far. Tell us a little bit about your background in law and in teaching and what brought you into ed tech?
Joe Connor:Sure. So I've worn a lot of different hats. Over my career in K through 12 education, I've been a teacher, school leader started my own network of schools worked as an attorney in the education space got to do some interesting work for homeschooling nonprofits and startups and early micro schools, as well as some large school choice cases, one of which meant for this report, and kind of all of that background has led me to start policy, because that's kind of where I really see the problem in K through 12 education, which is that ultimately, there isn't enough choice in the system to enable parents to access high quality education.
Alexander Sarlin:There's a through line and a lot of these different roles, which is, as you say, sort of providing more choice and more high quality choices. For students. This is a very particular stance, it's actually a controversial stance, as you well know that a lot of people fight over this particular thing. But you've been deeply involved in it a long time. How did your work in KIPP and rocket ship or your work in in law, sort of bring you to this point of that realization that your personal philosophy on school
Joe Connor:choice? Yeah, it was two things. First, I think that over time, my thinking has progressed. You know, when I first started, I was in kind of the public school choice space working for charter school networks like KIPP and rocket ship. And what I saw there was that it was possible to achieve great academic results for urban low income, typically minority communities, but that the inputs required to do it were ultimately unsustainable. And so you know, for people who weren't around for education reform nearly a decade half ago, this is kind of the Teach For America model, the no excuses charter model, right. And basically, what they relied on was increasing the school year, increasing the school day, getting parents very involved, having a high standard of academic rigor for all students who are in it, and then relying really on high achieving young teachers and school leaders to come in And and to really work, you know, not your maybe typical teachers schedule of 40 to 50 hours a week, but 60 7080 hours a week. And so I actually left working for KIPP and rocketship in part, because I saw that, although this model did and does still work well, isn't necessarily a model that could go national, in terms of being able to serve a significant portion of students, one simply because there are constraints on how many teachers and school leaders are willing to do that, to the model is kind of a in a different way, a one size fits all model. You know, it's not the public school approach. But it is a very specific, hey, this is how we think education in America should be delivered. And I think ultimately, that that's not what K through 12 education in America is about. It's a more kind of diverse set of offerings. It's why parents will move across the country for great schools, they'll move into nearby cities, parents love different choices, everything from Christian to Catholic to Montessori to Reggio Emilia. And so really, it was kind of coming out of that scene, it wasn't sustainable, and also that it might not have been the exact school that I would send kind of my current son or daughter to, that really made me move on from that. And then the second thing was, and this is kind of into my legal background, a lot of the charter movement went into what I would argue is pretty much a dead end, which is the agreement, the implicit agreement for most charters, especially in blue states, Northeastern states, where they kind of started and became most prevalent was in return for autonomy, we will have outstanding academic results, not just good, not just great, but outstanding. Many of the models actually did that and continue to do that. I think Success Academy here in New York City is a great example, right? They regularly have some of the highest performing students based on standardized tests in the entire city. And the population, what you're looking at just from a statistical perspective, would not necessarily have that because they have high numbers of low income students. And typically, that wouldn't necessarily match up with high standardized test scores. The problem was that the schools mainly served low income, minority, urban students, they did not expand into rural communities. By and large, they didn't expand into suburban communities. And so when the charters kind of started to reach escape velocity with a certain amount of school children enrolled in places like New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, DC, the opposition came for them, it was primarily in the form of kind of teacher Union funded campaigns to limit or put a cap on the number of charters, there were kind of some epic fights in places like New York, and in Boston. And ultimately, charters pretty much lost all of those statewide fights, because their demographic that they were serving was not powerful enough to fight off the teachers, union, suburban voters, rural voters, etc. And so that's kind of the second point that's led me to education savings account, which is I think we made a mistake in the charter school movement, not trying to serve all types of families in all areas. And so I think one of the very exciting things about these private school choice programs is the fact that majority of them are universal. And that's a feature not a bug. Because I think for people who have been around long enough to remember charters, there was essentially kind of this dead end that they ran into. And now you are kind of in this terrible situation in places like Boston and New York, where you have these outstanding life altering schools that are sending kids to college and graduating from college and really record numbers, but they can't expand because there's a cap and then another school would need to shut down or they need to move the cap. And so an interesting thing that I've seen in my work has been, I'd say over the last five, six years is a migration of funding, as well as talent from the charter school sector into the private school sector into private school choice. And I think that's primarily because people are making a rational decision, which is if this type of policy, the charter school policy doesn't allow me to do what I want or it's too hard to do what I want. You know, a typical charter school application is now hundreds of pages when it first started right it was 10s of pages a cost hundreds of 1000s of dollars to submit on average will take two to three years. That's a really high barrier. for entrepreneurial school leaders or teachers who want to open up their new charter, and right next door, you have private school. And that is pretty much a much easier way for almost a one to open up a school depends on the state because all of the K through 12 is really run at the state level here. But that's, I think, an interesting change that I've seen, which is that increasingly more talent is actually migrating from public charters. I also think for public education to and funding, whether it's private money or philanthropic money is actually also following that, because I think that they're seeing that there is kind of more real white space for experimentation for interesting models to come up. And so that's kind of, I think, the reason and kind of the progression over my career of almost a decade and a half of kind of how I ended up in private school choice. So
Alexander Sarlin:interesting, very well told, and really interesting progression of different ideas that went together. Tell us about, you didn't mention it by name, but this Espinosa versus Montana Department of Revenue, which is a school choice case that you worked on in your law career. Can you tell us about that a little bit and why that was such a landmark case for this school choice. And then and then we should talk about ESA is because I think it's such a huge movement right
Joe Connor:now. Absolutely. So I think a really interesting thing for people to know is that the idea of charters and vouchers both roughly started around the same time vouchers kind of had an earlier philosophical view, you know, people were referencing them decades before, but they both really kind of started, I'd say leaders, early 90s, in terms of actually being implemented at the state level, charters, some of the earliest ones were in California and the earliest private school choice programs were in Ohio, they they kind of spread to a few different states, charters grew much quicker. And one of the major reasons for that was because at the state level, most state constitutions, a few dozen of them have what are called Blaine amendments, or no eight provisions. And basically, those are amendments. Typically, most of them were passed in the 1800s or early 1900s. And they were passed, really, when the US was going through a very nativist period. The Native Americans, as in the US citizens board here, were worried about foreign born immigrants coming to the US, and essentially opening up private Catholic schools primarily, and then getting state funding. And so most states actually then passed these Blaine amendments, and those prohibit aid to religious schools. And so that was one of the reasons why these two policies, although starting at the relatively at the same time, resulted in much different outcomes. By 2010, charters were much, much larger, there was a huge focus on them, all of the philanthropic dollars and attention and news media was on them. And yes, there was still some private school innovation going on with programs. But by and large, it was much less than the charter school sector. And so this case, Espinosa was very important, because it was a challenge in Montana, from a Montana family who wanted to use a state school choice program that Montana had passed to attend a religious school. Ultimately, the lower courts said, No, because of Montana's no aid provision, you can't use these funds to go to a religious school, they obviously challenged it and went all the way to the Supreme Court, we have to write an amicus brief for it, which was kind of one of the highlights of my legal career. And essentially, the court ruled in our favor, and said that if a if a state decides to support private education, then it cannot disqualify private schools solely because they're religious. So it says that you are not obligated to provide support to private education right now, the states are obligated to provide that however, once you do so, you cannot disqualify a family or a school just because they are religious. And so they said ultimately, that the no a provision, the application of it had violated the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause there. And so it was really important because it basically held that the federal constitution forbids states from excluding from excluding parents and schools on the basis of their religion. And so that was kind of a landmark case that did pave the way for a lot of the private school choice programs we see today, because in many states, it had been either a decided question in which the courts had decided against participation of religious schools or it was kind of an unknown legal issue in which, hey, if you come to me with an idea of a private school choice program, yeah, maybe we get get a pass the legislature maybe the governor's Did, we actually don't know if this is going to be a valid law or not. So this ruling along with a subsequent one did provide a lot more certainty to folks kind of pushing for private school choice. And led to, I would say, the kind of massive expansion of private school choice that we see today.
Alexander Sarlin:And with that change led to this expansion, maybe creation and expansion of the concept of these education savings accounts, known as ESA is in the industry. And my understanding, which is, I would love to hear your your unpack this, my understanding is pretty limited at this. But it really has to do with basically attaching the funding that goes with the student, the state funding that goes with the student, to the student to the family sort of giving the family more choice, obviously, in how to use the money that would be allocated to them in a public school, and then they can choose to use it in other ways. I hope that's even right. It's true. That's a small part of it. Tell us about ESA, as this is a huge part of what Odyssey is working with, and obviously part of your entire career.
Joe Connor:Right. So And honestly, we help states administer education savings account programs, or ESA s. E essays are financial accounts that states set aside for parents or residents of that state to be able to spend on eligible education expenses. And those expenses can include tuition, it can include tutoring, behavioral therapy, but it can also include products. So it can include a Chromebook, or a tablet, or a book or a textbook. And so the basic idea is this interesting combination, I would say of two policies. One is kind of on the voucher side, which I'm sure most people are familiar with. It obviously doesn't exist just in education. But the idea, just being that, you know, a citizen has access to private funds to purchase a service that the government perhaps would otherwise provide. And then the second part of it is, I would say, a combination with HSAs health savings accounts. And so the idea really is, let's empower parents by giving them access and control of this funding. And then they are actually the ones who are best equipped to decide what to do for their son or daughter. And it goes beyond the basic voucher concept, because we know right, that when parents utilize education, it's not strictly just tuition, I have a daughter, she just turned to, you know, we signed her up for classes, and we buy her educational materials. And so the ESA is also supposed to cover those expenses as well. And so in most states, what you have is a system where the state will fund a parent who meets the criteria for it, typically, you need to be a resident, there might be some income eligibility, although increasingly that's going away, because they're becoming what is known as universal, where they're open to any resident. So basically, that funding subject count, the parent can then direct that funding, however they see fit. And if there is any leftover, besides just paying for school tuition, you can also use it for other services as well. And so what you see is, interestingly, parents actually beginning to kind of customize their education where they can use, hey, I got $8,000 from the state government, I'm gonna use 6000, on the local private school tuition at the Montessori school down the street that I really love. And I'm gonna use maybe$1,000, to hire a tutor, because my son, Johnny, his reading is going to be behind grade level. And then I'm going to use 250, for some electronic hardware, and so on. And so it's this really interesting model that for the first time, I think, truly empowers parents, I think more so than as someone who was in the charter school sector, and it was kind of very top down reform where, hey, we've decided that this is kind of what the community or the parents need. This is actually given to the parents and then the parents can kind of vote with their money on where they want to attend to what they want to spend it on. And then the other thing is it is introducing competition as well into it because ultimately, successful schools and successful education providers will be the ones that parents are buying from and if they're providing a high quality service, then they'll continue to be able to do business with his parents.
Alexander Sarlin:It essentially puts public schools in a competitive landscape with Montessori schools, with private schools with religious schools, because parents can choose to allocate the money that goes with their student to any of them rather than just assuming they have to attend a local public school. How does it relate you mentioned, you know,$8,000, just as an example, right, in ESA, maybe $8,000 Is that $8,000 The same amount that the student would be allocated in there, the sort of per student amount for the student in a public school, or how is that amount determined?
Joe Connor:It depends, which is probably my best legal response to every state program. is different. And I think it's helpful to understand how we fund K through 12 education in the United States. So there's basically three sources of government funding and the compromise the per pupil funding in the United States. Its local, its state and its federal, every state is different. But generally across the country, about 45% of your funding will come from local municipality, 45% will come from the state, and the smallest portion will actually come from the federal government around 10%. So what we're talking about with E essays is essentially that state portion of funding being set aside into an account for that parent to use. Now, each state sets it up differently according to their law. In some states, the amount that you would receive for an ESA is tied to that state portion. And as that goes up annually, which it often does, then the funding for the ESA will go up. In other places, it might be a set amount, that doesn't increase, sometimes it's a percentage, say 8090 100%. Some states provide different amounts, depending upon how you qualify. So if you were to qualify as a student for special needs, you receive more money than if you were to qualify, just as a general population student. And so all of that to say that it is complicated, but it basically is the state funding that set aside, it's not the federal portion, it's not the local portion, either, based
Alexander Sarlin:on your 45% number, it would be almost like, if if a student had $8,000, in their ESA that would you probably be about half of what the per pupil funding would be otherwise, so the local community would get to keep the other half.
Joe Connor:That's correct. But local community would not be on the hook for paying any part of that ESA. And I think because this is all pretty abstract, it's helpful maybe to talk about an example for a program that we run. In Iowa, we run the students first education savings account program, it's the third largest education savings account program in the country, their parents received $7,635. And on average, private school tuition is around 5200. And so the state is funding that$7,635, the parent needs to spend it first on private school tuition, and then whatever the remainder is leftover, they can then spend on services or products or other things like that. And so I think that's a pretty good example of what it looks like. Now, there is actually an interesting dynamic, I would say, with most e essays, as you said earlier, they are controversial. Opponents of the program would say, Hey, you are defunding the public school system. Most education savings account programs actually do have hold harmless provisions, where if a student is transferring from public school to a private school, that the public school district will for what's often a limited period of time, a year, two years, three years continue to receive funding for the State to essentially backfill that funding that the student otherwise would have received. So there is I think, a recognition of that in these programs. And there are kind of provisions designed to help with that. Very helpful,
Alexander Sarlin:very, very interesting. So in this new world of PSAs, the parents have a lot of autonomy and responsibility to make educational choices for their students. And this is part of where Odyssey comes in, you know, what are some of the common challenges that families face when having to slash getting to decide the education for their student rather than just you know, the school down the street? And how does Odyssey help families manage these essays? Yeah,
Joe Connor:so obviously, our goal is to help families access high quality education, regardless of their income, or zip code. And the biggest barrier right now for parents accessing these programs, honestly, is that the signup and approval process in many states is very slow, and cumbersome. And so what I set out to do, and honestly, when we started three years ago, was to make a platform that allows parents to easily access these education savings accounts, in a matter of minutes. And so one thing that we've done is in the states that we're operating in, like Iowa, we have what's called Real Time identity verification. So a parent goes on to the Odyssey platform, they fill up basic demographic information, we then have a connection into existing state databases, as well as some private databases to verify all the information that the parent is giving us. And we're able to actually spit back an answer to the parent in a few seconds, are you eligible for the ESA or not? And that's kind of been a massive change and how these programs are administered. Typically what would happen is a parent would have to log on to a platform, the application would be 30 45 minutes an hour, it would request a bunch of documentation that you then need to go dig up like birth certificates and other things like that, you'd have to scan those, you'd have to upload those on the other end, there was a human who was manually reviewing all of that, there might be some back and forth if you upload the wrong documents, or they weren't clearly scanned in. And then you might find out in 30, to 60 days. And so all of that right was this very Byzantine process that led states to not actually sign up many people for them. And so one thing that we have been very clear about is that at Odyssey, our customer is the parent and we want to make sure that they can easily sign up and access them. And so in the states that we've been able to roll this out in, we can give parents access to an ESA really within seconds, once they submit, which parents have been, I think, very receptive of and in islands, the reason that we run such a large program, you know, I was at the third largest state in the country, but it is the third largest ESA and a lot of that is attributed to the kind of the technology that we built, that's been able to quickly process parents in the system. In the first 24 hours, when we launched the ESA in Iowa, we were approving one student, basically every few seconds. And there actually wasn't any need for human intervention, because we were doing all of it through the technology that we had set up to verify things like residency and income and other eligibility criteria. And so that type of technology is really needed across the country in order to unlock kind of the full promise of these ESS.
Alexander Sarlin:How many states have implemented yes is as of this recording.
Joe Connor:So including programs that would be supplemental essays or micro grants, we probably have around 12 states that have passed full universally essays with another handful of programs outside of that. So I'd say there's probably around 17 or 18. Altogether, they're in various stages of implementation, some have just been passed, like Louisiana actually was the most recent, the past one that will not be implemented and set up until 2025. And then others, like Arizona have been around for about a decade. And so there has been, I would say, a huge explosion of these programs. To give just one example, in 2020, there were four ESA programs in the past three were up and running, one wasn't running because it's under injunction, there was around 25,000 Students altogether on those ESA days. And today, with the number of students on it, we have more than a dozen education savings account programs that are up and running. And we're approaching 1 million students who are fully enrolled on these programs. That is quite a
Alexander Sarlin:growth trajectory. That's that's really very amazing. So just following on with this, this sequence. So a family can a parent can get approved or know their eligibility for an ESA within you know, minutes instead of months. That's a really exciting, then suddenly they have this access to this fund. And they then have to choose what to do with it which which school to enroll their student in and and then how to use the excess funds for other educational benefits. Does Odyssey currently or in the future plan on helping with those particular
Joe Connor:issues? Yes, so we actually run the program from beginning to end. And so we handle kind of the initial outreach and marketing to parents as well as the vendors on the program. We handle all the application processing, the verification. And just as we do that, for parents, we actually are also doing it for schools and for vendors or education service providers. And so one of the items that an agency is tasked with once the legislature passes an ESA is actually writing the rules and regulations for the program. And part of that is, okay, let's iron out what all of the categories are that you'll be able to spend these ESA funds on. Oftentimes the law will say kind of at a general level here are what we think the essay should be spent on. You know, you can use it for tutoring, you can use it for school tuition, etc. But the agency really has to kind of put in the fine details. And part of that includes for each category of expenses, such as a tutor, what's the criteria that the agency is going to require for someone to be an education provider on the Odyssey platform. And so we work closely with our state agencies on helping to write those rules, we kind of pine on best practices based on our experience, ultimately, they write that rule and then we go out, we implement it and enforce it within the platform. And so you know, one example using the tutor is some people will require a college degree right to be a tutor and so therefore, anyone who's a tutor on the plan form will need to actually upload a bachelor's certificate in order to actually meet that criteria. And so they do that for everything from behavioral therapists to schools, right schools might require certain types of accreditation. In some cases, they might require schools or providers to actually post a bond, the idea being right that we want a certain level of financial stability in these providers. And we also want essentially them to have skin in the game, so that if something does go wrong, that bond would essentially be able to be used to pay for that. And so what we are setting up in the states that we run is a two sided marketplace, that parents and students on one side with their funding which has been provided by the state, and on the other side, the schools, the education service providers, and all of their goods and services that the parents can search through. So And honestly, we actually do have a marketplace that can handle all those transactions. And we have vendors, everyone from you know, your local Catholic school or nearby Montessori school, to a large retail vendor like Amazon, to kind of local small businesses like tutoring centers, after school programs, and others. And so that essentially, is kind of what the state requires us in order to run the program, which is basically, can you set up a marketplace of eligible education expenses, make sure that they are providing the service or providing the product that they say they are and make sure that they meet the criteria of the program, make sure that there isn't any fraudulent transactions going on. And then, you know, provide access to the government to all of that in order to oversee an audit and make sure that the program is running as expected. So that is kind of the second part of what we do. And so we've set up kind of one of the best marketplaces in the country, we've designed it really just to follow a lot of kind of common e commerce, marketplaces, which you would think is table stakes, but typically hadn't been done. And so we have, you know, a shopping cart checkout feature, you can look at photos and videos of the different products that we have the information about the vendors, all of that happens directly on our site, including returns and refunds. And so that is able to give the parent essentially the ability to go and spend those funds. Because, you know, the utility of the funds is only as good as the options that they have. And so we work very hard, especially in some of the rural states, like Iowa, to make sure that there is kind of a large variety of offerings, offerings that are online, but also in person that are distributed throughout the state, so that parents do have good choices when they actually go to spend their funds. Fascinating.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, I was gonna mention that this feels like marketplace dynamics, you're bringing two sides of, of marketplace together. And this is a marketplace that I think people are really not used to thinking about that much in education, right? There's this in K 12, education in higher education, schools are in desperate competition, and there's huge amounts of money spent trying to recruit students. But for K 12. That's not always how we think about it. I'm curious about now that schools on the provider side schools and behavioral therapists and tutors and all of these education providers are sort of competing with each other on a marketplace that, as you say, looks like ecommerce looks like an Amazon. What are some of the things you've started to see them do to stand out and sort of get attention and attract notice? And have you seen the schools? What are they featuring? Are they featuring the quality of the education they you know, how nice the campus is that it's such an interesting set of dynamics that I don't think we're used to thinking about it all in education.
Joe Connor:So I think there's two really interesting things that we've seen in the marketplace today. One is that increasingly, we are seeing parents unbundle education. And so instead of just picking a single school tuition, spending all their funds there, and then calling it a day, you are seeing in especially some of the earliest ESA states parents begin to Okay, well, I'm gonna go to this school here. And then I'm also going to hire this tutor, and then we're going to take online classes. And then we're also going to go to this behavioral therapist. And increasingly, what we're seeing is that the vendors, including schools, are responding to that by offering more choice in terms of what parents are paying for. And so I think a good example of this is there are some private schools who are beginning to offer part time tuition, right with the idea that maybe parents don't want kind of our what was previous or only offering full time, five days a week, 180 days a year school tuition, but instead they might want two or three days the rest of the time they would be kind of at home, homeschooling doing other alternatives. So I think that that's one really interesting thing that we're beginning to see play out in the ESA space. And then the second one, and this is I think, just really fascinating is that the choices the parents make would If not the choices that policymakers would think that they would make. And what I mean by that is that parents often intimately know what their son or daughter needs because of how close they are. And so they are going to pick things that I think if you put 100 Education policymakers in a room for 10 years, you would never come up with a good example is, in many mountain west states, Arizona, as well as Idaho, Idaho is where we run a program, you see a lot of people using funds for something that's called equine therapy, which is approved and have certified therapy for students with mental health needs, and essentially involves kind of some behavioral interventions as well as kind of taking care of an actual horse. And so you know, this is essentially something that for the vast majority of parents, especially low income parents would be kind of completely out of reach for them. However, these government funds enable them to do that. And so there are an interesting things that are coming up like that, where parents are increasingly using their funds in ways that perhaps, you know, districts wouldn't actually imagine. That's really
Alexander Sarlin:interesting in, you know, you mentioned that the offerings can be either in person or virtual offerings. And we know, you know, this is an ed tech podcast that virtual offerings have it's a huge variety of different online offerings. Some are very local to particular regions or states, others are national, others are international. I'm curious what role if you have a national online high school there on your side, ostensibly, or they can be on on on odyssey for almost anybody in different states? Is that a dynamic you're seeing yet? Or is the compliance sort of keep them out of the race?
Joe Connor:That's right, I would say we're moving towards that. Each state when they pass their program, will then assign it to an agency, the agency writes the rules and regs because the policies are increasing in popularity, you are, I think, beginning to see best practices kind of shared amongst states. And so I would say that the differences between the states are becoming fewer. And the programs are beginning to resemble each other more on the point of vendor participation. Yes, we do have vendors who participate across all the markets that we're in. And so for them, that's kind of a very easy process where they're able to apply, they can get approved for any market, so long as they meet their criteria for it, and then they can kind of sell their their goods and services. And so yes, I think, increasingly for ad tech startups at tech companies, this is, you know, an additional source of potential revenue for those companies. And they can, you know, sign up for our platform, and then, you know, be able to actually provide those services. Right.
Alexander Sarlin:And, you know, we, in ad tech always wrestle with the sort of b2c versus b2b question. It feels like this is almost a new model where you're selling, you know, a product to parents to directly to consumers. But in the context of a full school solution, it's a it's a sort of a hybrid model. It's very, very interesting. Micro schools are another movement that's related to this that have been growing a lot in the post pandemic era. Can you talk to us a little bit about that movement and how that plays into the ESA ecosystem? Absolutely.
Joe Connor:So a micro school for your listeners is just, you know, a small school. What that is, depends on who you talk to, it could be anywhere from five to 50. I've heard people reference a school that's 100 as a micro school, but the basic concept is the same, which is that it is a smaller school that kind of focuses on really core academics or philosophy or curriculum doesn't often offer kind of the full wraparound services or bells and whistles that you might get a kind of a standalone private school campus with a 200 year history. And so increasingly, these micro schools and some people refer to them as learning pods. And you know, there's a little bit of overlap within the homeschool coops are increasing in number. I think that has been happening, regardless of whether ESA s are implemented in the state. The microscope has really existed before COVID During COVID, like a lot of sectors that kind of gotten very supercharged as parents and teachers kind of took matters into their own hands, set up their own schools, and even post COVID We are seeing them continue to grow nationwide. I would say in states that have you essays and microscopes can be providers on those ESA platforms, we're probably seeing more parents sign up for them because one of the biggest barriers to accessing a micro school would be the funding in a state like New York that doesn't offer private school choice. If it's a private school micro school, the parent would have to pay out of pocket in a place like Arizona, of which there are many micro schools. The ESA would actually be able to be used to pay for those micro schools. What's your wish and balance?
Alexander Sarlin:That's really interesting. You know, it feels like this opening up of a market in a space that we I'm not used to thinking about at all. And it's really interesting to hear the extent, you know, the how fast it's been moving. Do you anticipate a world in which entrepreneurial people can start a school that is designed specifically to be you know, compliant, maybe there's already happening probably is specifically to be compliant with the state's ESA regulation. So that can it can be part of the marketplace. And then using social media techniques, sales techniques, that same kinds of things you do to get attention on on Etsy or on, you know, to bring in families and sort of showcase that what's special and differentiated about the school? Do you? Do you envision that kind of market dynamics being part of the process? Absolutely.
Joe Connor:And I think it's one of the most exciting things about education savings account, which are, what are the good be the second order effects of empowering parents with funding and allowing them to spend it as they choose? The hope, and I think there's early evidence for this is that more high quality providers, whether those are new micro schools, or maybe new online software providers who come up with educational games, or educational software, will enter the market, because for the first time, they are able to sell directly to the consumer, they don't actually have to go through an intermediary like historically, they have had to go in the K through 12 sector, often through a district. And so I think that this will mean that there are better products and services because the buyer and the user are the same, right. And they're actually putting their funding behind games or books or schools that are delivering value for that parent, I think one of the hardest things for Ed Tech selling indicator itself has historically been that gives us another district and in the US, because we have a very decentralized system of education, you have, you know, I think it's more than 12,000 school districts. And that increasingly is very hard, because each of those school districts is making their own judgment decisions as to hey, you know, we want to use this software system rather than this one. And so that often leads to kind of, I think, a lot of inefficiencies, it often means that a lot of great ideas in terms of educational software actually die, because they have a great product, but they can't really sell it, there's this huge kind of gap that they go through. And so increasingly, I think, the PSAs Runwell, if they continue to grow, then you will actually see better products went out. And a sector where historically there have not been a lot of, I'd say great products that have been built, because you know, you're not selling to that teacher, or that parent or that student, you're selling to the central office district and what the central office district wants are drastically different. Right? And so that can often lead to a misalignment of what you're actually building. So yes, I think hopefully, this will lead to better products that achieve better outcomes for students kind of nationwide.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, one more question about this sort of marketplace dynamics. I'm just fascinated by it. So when we all at this point, everybody listening to this has has, you know, used ecommerce sites, two of the main mechanisms by which people make a choice are the user reviews, right, the sort of social proof of other people talking about any particular product and some kind of verification that it that it works, quote, unquote, that it's going to solve the problem you're trying to buy something for and in education, those things still, you know, are in play, right? There's lots of other people using these vendors or the schools that could potentially leave reviews. I'm curious how you work with that. And there's this concept of does this work? Is this school going to achieve the outcome I actually want for my students, which is a much more nebulous and tricky thing to measure. I'm curious how you handle those in Odyssey and where you think it'll go over time.
Joe Connor:So I think increasingly, the policies will allow for more experimentation in that sense. Right now, I would say if we're looking at this, like a baseball game, we're really in kind of the first inning still. So a lot of the programs have just been passed. They're just getting off the ground. From the point of view of the state. They're most concerned about limiting fraud, waste, and abuse, making sure that parents are aware of the programs that they're able to quickly sign up. And I think once a lot of that implementation and hard work has been done, there is a shift to more of a focus on what you're discussing, which is okay, well, how do we know that this is working? Right? And so there's a lot of, I think, interesting ideas. The laws themselves often actually kind of differ in this to some laws require parents to take standardized tests nationally norm referenced tests, some can submit a portfolio of work. So we will have to some data on some states in that. But I think increasingly, we will need more and better ways of kind of modeling the efficacy of these products and services. I think ratings or review are one of those. But I think we also need to look at are the assessments that we take once a year really the best way to assess an outcome? Or should we be kind of continually assessing progress in a way that we do in many other sectors where it's not just kind of a one time assessment on an annual basis? And so I think that that, increasingly is where the sector needs to kind of move towards of trying to figure out okay, how can you make sure that this is a high quality sector? And how do we define high quality essentially, in this case,
Alexander Sarlin:the definition is so key, I think of things like, you know, grade schools and niche and there are sort of pseudo marketplaces for schools, they're not marketplaces, but review sites for schools that use different characteristics and criteria. And then, of course, famously, there are a number of them for higher education, which go in and out of favor, but it is a tricky question. And it's one that I think is going to be really fascinating to watch as this as a movement continues to grow. So we're coming to the end of our time, this is I feel like I have just learned, like, throw, I've learned so much in this conversation about this entire world and what you're doing it honestly, we always end with two questions. One is what is the most exciting trend that you see in the EdTech landscape, that our listeners should keep an eye
Joe Connor:on? education savings accounts? Maybe that's my answer to that. I think, in many ways, we're really just at the beginning of this change. A number of states have passed them, they're in kind of the middle of implementation, we are continuing to see the programs typically grow year over year, often by large percentages. And so I think that that is kind of one of the biggest and most interesting trends happening now in K through 12. Education. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:you mentioned the term, you know, parents are increasingly unbundling their education and sort of piecing it together that feels like a related trend that I'm really fascinated by that, you know, people can actually piece together in education for their children rather than, you know, having to get one stop shop. And I hope my school has a good you know, arts program, you can actually buy that separately. Really interesting. And what is a resource that you would recommend for anyone who wants to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today, whether it's school choice, or essays, or the AI, you know, verification, you were talking about anything
Joe Connor:on the Odyssey website, WW dot with odyssey.com, we have some resources for parents who are trying to get up to speed on education savings accounts, as well as the programs that we run. So I'd encourage people to check that out. And then an absolutely fantastic site. Just to learn more about these programs, in general, would be Edie choice.org. You can go there, they have all of the programs listed by all of the states, you can look them up, see what the eligibility criteria is, what the funding is, what the legal status of it is the language of the bill. And so I think that that's a another fantastic resource. It's one that I typically using on a daily basis. Yeah. And
Alexander Sarlin:that seems like that would be useful for education technology founders as well to understand the status of ESA is where they are, where they're growing, if they wanted to get involved with that from the vendor side, right. Absolutely. Terrific. Well, thank you so much fascinating, really, really interesting conversation. I really appreciate it and I can I can hear your law background in the way you you express ideas. It's there. It's so thorough, it's so comprehensive, really, really, really impressed at how you explain these relatively complicated issues in a in a in a straightforward way. I certainly learned a lot and I hope our listeners did as well. Joe Connor is the CEO and founder of Odyssey, which partners with state agencies to administer school choice programs. Thank you for being here with us on a tech insiders.
Joe Connor:Thanks so much, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Edtech Insiders. If you liked 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.
