Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Week in Edtech 11/7/2024 Post-Election Special: GOP’s Education Department Shakeup Plans, ESSER Funds End, State Policy Shifts in K-12, and More! Feat. Anna Edwards & Ben Wallerstein of Whiteboard Advisors, Kavitta Ghai of Nectir & Lindsay Dworkin of HMH
Join hosts Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell for a post-election edition of "Week in Edtech," featuring insights from Anna Edwards and Ben Wallerstein of Whiteboard Advisors.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:16] 🇺🇸 New trends in education policy post-election
[00:04:42] 🏛️ Why state policies will shape the future of K-12 education
[00:08:10] 💸 The looming financial gap for districts as ESSER funds expire
[00:10:57] 🏢 Republicans’ potential plans to restructure or abolish the Education Department
[00:19:50] 📉 Navigating a shifting landscape and finding opportunities in state funding
[00:28:32] 🛠️ Rising focus on workforce readiness and career pathways
[00:33:55] 📈 A move toward flexible, formative assessment models in K-12
[00:36:08] 🤖 Anna Edwards on AI's expanding role in K-12 education
[00:42:04] 🚀 Federal policies open doors for flexibility and innovation in education
Plus Special Guests:
[00:55:33] 🎙️ Kavitta Ghai, CEO of Nectir, discusses how AI is transforming student support and boosting engagement in higher education
[01:18:41] 🎙️ Lindsay Dworkin, SVP of Policy and Government Affairs at HMH, shares insights on adapting edtech strategy amidst policy changes
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🎉 Presenting Sponsor:
This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
[00:00:22] Anna Edwards: I think with the states that have passed voucher and ESA programs, That's actually encouraging districts and school leaders in public schools to have conversations about how many career pathways they're offering, how many AP courses they're offering. Is there an IB program and how do we market to parents and have conversations with parents about what participation in those programs will actually lead to in their students future?
And so, I think it's easy to kind of lump parental concern into Moms for Liberty, like it's about book bans, but actually the parent's discontent has been, to Ben's point, I think about a lot more, and when you have those more sophisticated conversations and when you equip state and district and school leaders to actually put Have that conversation with parents.
I think, actually, there's some really productive conversations that will happen as a result.
[00:01:19] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds, to impact, to AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all here at
[00:01:33] Ben Kornell: EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.
And Check out ed tech insiders plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events, back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
Hi everyone. We are back with another episode of ed tech insiders and this week in ed tech is a special one. It is a post election. Deep dive with our friends at Whiteboard Advisors, Anna and Ben. So glad to have you both on the pod today.
[00:02:16] Anna Edwards: Awesome. Thanks for having us, Ben and Alex.
[00:02:19] Alex Sarlin: So let's just start with a little like round the world.
You know, we are sitting here recording just a couple of days after this election. It was sort of both a surprise and not a surprise how it all fell out. And, you know, we want to focus here on the downstream effects for the education world. For the most part, obviously this is going to affect a lot of things, Let me start with you, Anna.
I'm curious what your top line thinking is. What do you expect to see going forward? What may change based on the results of this election?
[00:02:46] Anna Edwards: Yeah. You know, we've been asked that question for the last few months as everyone was watching the polls and starting to think about could a Trump 2. 0 become a reality?
Will it be the project 2025 doomsday, like disband the department of education? And I think the best insight that we have right now is looking at what happened during the first Trump presidency, where there was a lot of concern that, you know, DeVos was going to come in and it was going to be a really pro voucher, pro choice, school choice administration, and waiting to see what would happen with that.
And largely. The career bureaucrats that are tasked with keeping Title I, Title II, IDEA, Title III, Title IV, the funding streams that your audience cares about, those all went forward in the same way that they have for previous administrations. There were some symbolic task forces that came together, 1776, and a few of those issue area convenings, but largely things remained unchanged other than a big deference to states.
And so what we're talking about right now. Is the role that governors and state chiefs are going to play in shaping what happens 400 Maryland Avenue. And we don't expect there to be major shifts because of the congressional approval that would be required in funding and structure. I'd be curious to get Ben's take.
I mean, the thing that I will say we've seen is like Ohio restructured recently their department of education to combine workforce in with the department of education. So is it crazy to think that like Department of Labor and Department of Education could actually become one agency? And could you argue that that could make sense and then keep the same funding streams and accountability requirements that are required by law running through those?
Like, you know, you could see a world and argue that that could make sense. But then I'd be curious to get your take and what you're thinking could happen in the next few months and years.
[00:04:42] Ben Wallerstein: Yeah, I'm not so sure that status quo is as likely this time around. I'm not so sure that not status quo is doomsday, right?
Like, I mean, I think that like every other federal agency department has an amalgamation of like, sort of like executive branch or like, you know, enforcement of the law functions and sort of like regulatory oversight. A lot of that's going to change anyway, regardless of who's in office, as a result of the shifts around Chevron and the Supreme Court's ruling within that context, which I think creates much more context, which all federal agencies will sort of like hue more closely, greater fidelity to the underlying sort of like statutory constructs in a lot of ways.
You have certainly, I think, states, as Anna said, that have, you know, places even like Colorado, where we've talked about like creating like a talent agency, right? Where the integration of this historically disparate functions, historically disparate meaning like, not really, right? But it's still like a relatively recent construct, right?
So you think about like, You know, do we have an administration of like student loan programs and where should those sit? We had big changes in 2010, you know, what should the role of the treasury be vis a vis the other Department of Ed? You think about like the Department of Justice and you have sort of overlapping areas of emphasis around civil rights protection within DOJ and within the U.
S. Department of Ed. And then you have this broader issue of sort of like pathways, right? Like this, this shift toward Like the intersection of education and employment, which is really where economic mobility happens. Like Anna didn't take her Yale bachelor's degree and like punch a card, you know, at the city hall and get money, you know, and I'll take my law degree and go down and get like, you know, money from the city hall, right?
Like we achieve economic mobility through the translation of our skills. In credentials and experiences into something of value. And I think everyone gets that there's a sort of like broken assembly line, conveyor belt, right? However you want to, whatever, pick your metaphor, right? Like, you know, where post secondary education feels sort of disconnected from K 12 education and the expectations of the workforce.
You know, which is changing, feel disconnected from sort of our post secondary infrastructure in a lot of ways. And so, so the idea of like more tightly coupling those functions by rethinking the way we organize ourselves to administer those funds and programs to provide that level of oversight at a federal level is in some ways like not that crazy,
[00:07:09] Ben Kornell: you know, to a degree, this reflects a growing trend.
And I think Trump 1. 0 was largely. Define in contrast to what came before, which was Arnie Duncan and John King really pushing common core and K 12 transformation reform. And so the Voss was really seen through the lens of, you know, choice and charters and so on in K 12. Today, we're seeing so much more activity at the workforce and pathways level.
Whereas most of the, it's certainly politically controversial, but most of the K 12 has been pushed into local and regional battles and at the federal level, a lot of the arguments have been around OPMs, around, you know, higher ed, around the loans, the FAFSA debacle. There's a lot of energy around higher ed.
Do you think that that foretells in how you're talking about this, that there's going to be more of a workforce learning focus for this federal administration?
[00:08:10] Ben Wallerstein: Yes, but like, if you just go back to a minute, though, I think sometimes we think a lot about, it's like point solutions versus the platform. You listed off a bunch of different things, right?
But if you think like, even in the K 12 context, like historically, right? Like, let's say that like the No Child Left Behind Act, you know, one ish was the high watermark of federal accountability and then the waivers, right? Like the, the whole process of sort of like, you know, we didn't reauthorize that federal law.
No one thought at the time that law was passed. That it wouldn't, you know, really be reauthorized. Certainly took a lot longer than most folks, I think, certainly would have thought at the time, right? But what's interesting is, you saw this relaxation of accountability, which became, like, maybe oddly, like, it used to be more so that, like, Conservatives were more so like accountability hawks, but then you kind of had this sort of like laissez faire attitude, it was sort of like became bipartisan.
And yeah, like a lot of decision making got pushed down to the states. If you look at like educational outcomes, like I was looking at this last night for Virginia, which did standards of learning like in the mid 90s, right? Like, Big improvements and CLB era, big improvement, like, you know, post NCLB era, like, you know, sort of relaxation of accountability.
Like we've lost a lot of those games, then that's not to sort of articulate like a firm point of view on that. Like that's just sort of a depiction of what happened. So I think there's. Sure, there's choice in charters and sort of incorporation of market based reforms in a context in which, like, ESAs have grown in prominence and things like that.
But then there's also these, like, sort of more foundational questions around, like, what is the federal role in sort of in ensuring, promoting accountability with respect to those federal investments? And those are sort of like, I think, bigger macro issues, at least in the K 12
[00:09:51] Anna Edwards: context. Yeah. One thing I'd add, Ben, just on your question about, like, will workforce be a focus?
Like, I still think, you know, agree with everything Ben said, but I would say yes. And it's largely because that's what governors care about. I think over 36 governors mentioned career and technical education in their state of the state speeches last year. We expect that number to continue. We've seen states put forward these like portraits and profiles of a graduate to look at a more comprehensive view of what learner competencies should be that are aligned with employer demands.
And so I think that that's like, on trend right now in conservative states, frankly, and like progressive states like New York. So I don't think we're going to see the Department of Education in this administration by any means like slow that down. I think there are just some tailwinds probably that they're coming in with.
Also, with this idea that voters, number one issue was the economy. And so when you couple those things together and national conversations about economic mobility, it seems like a logical place to focus on the connection and intersection between education and workforce.
[00:10:57] Alex Sarlin: There really wasn't very much talk about education in this campaigns on either side of the aisle.
And there hasn't been that much sort of emphasis on education, either higher ed or K 12 for quite a while at the national level and with the exception of some of these hot button, sort of wedgie type of issues, like all the curriculum fights or the student loan or the FAFSA issue that, you know, people are playing for.
And I think it speaks to something really interesting. And Ben, I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense, which is that. It used to be that the two parties had a little bit more sort of clear takes on what education, you know, was and should be. And they were a little more sort of separated. I think with the end of the No Child Left Behind era, we've entered obviously a new phase of the Republican party.
It just, it's a totally different party with a totally different sort of set of principles behind it. And I think that's, Pretty much generally agreed on. And I think one of those principles is basically the government has screwed everything up. And not that that wasn't part of the truth. You know, Reagan talked about what drowning the government in a bathtub, but I think that there really is this sense of like, how can you sort of be a bulwark against.
The institutions that people have lost faith in continuously over the last, you know, decade or two, and all these fights at the school board level, all of the mask fights that happened during the pandemic, all the fights between different states about when to open schools. I mean, very little of that was actually about outcomes.
Very little of that was actually about sort of the core of education. It was really. About sort of personal freedoms in a lot of ways. And I think we're still sort of reshuffling the two sides of the debate right now. That's how it strikes me. And just one more quick point, you know, one line that stood out to me in Masha Gessen, one of the New York times, you know, writers and columnists mentioned something that really stuck with me, which is that she said that, you know, Republicans are very much in touch with the sort of.
Primal fear in America that people are going to be detached from their children, that their children are going to grow up in a totally different environment than they are be sort of disappear from them, be unrecognizable to them. And a lot of these, the sort of really hot button fears about transgender, a lot of the hot button fears about a lot of the things about brainwashing, all of that language comes from that perspective.
And she basically said that Democrats don't really understand that fear. They don't understand this sort of intergenerational fear. Strife that change is happening so fast that parents are worried about what world the children will be in and whether they'll sort of share their values that just really stuck with me.
And it feels like it's very, you know, it's an interesting way to look at the school debates.
[00:13:28] Ben Wallerstein: I mean, you said a lot. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but I didn't write it all down either. Like, there's a big disconnect between the world as The sort of like coastal elites understand and view it and where the vast majority of people live in are right.
Like, and I think this, like the election wasn't won by winning over Republicans, right? This election reflects a broad based coalition of Americans who. Are increasingly distrustful of a range of institutions. I think where in the education world, we are sort of forced to embrace a fair amount of cognitive dissonance, right?
Like more than half of college graduates are employed in jobs that don't require a college degree. Like college debt is, and has been ballooning, right? Like our K 12 schools aren't fulfilling their aspirations of. Equity and improvement, and so we acknowledge that I think generally, but yet we are somehow surprised or frustrated if the individuals who are the beneficiaries ostensibly of that broken and ineffective infrastructure.
No longer choose to support incumbent ideology, right? Like, which is again, like to me, terribly unsurprising, but I think like you almost have to sort of embrace a degree of cognitive dissonance because that sentiment suggests, right? Like trust us, we'll fix it. Right. Like, and I'll be ready to probably read David Brooks's piece the other day.
Like no one's trusting you to fix it anymore. Right. Like, that's kind of where we've netted out, but then you get, you know, some of the things that you've touched on in terms of like the role of the family and the perception of parents, I don't know that those are really like, yeah,
[00:15:28] Ben Kornell: I just jump in on that point.
Cause I kind of disagree with your assertion on that one, but I actually think that Ben, your point about dissonance comes down. In our education space of the purpose of education is either a economic mobility or be like cultural citizenry. And the reality is it's both, and there's a battle for both. And that's where it gets complex.
And so the controversies. That you have seen with university presidents and the protests and all of that combined with the economic arguments of the poor performing ROI on higher education today to create a conclusion that higher ed is not serving the best interests of the vast majority of people in the U.
S. And by the way, it may be serving the interests of some in the U. S., but not maybe the majority. And so that's where I actually think there's some tremendous common ground that if we lean into the economic mobility side of things, there's actually quite a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle around creating more pathways and pathways tend to be less fraught with the ideology of.
And cultural and citizenry arguments that are loaded with value statements and much more around people's vision and ideology for the country. Whereas on the economic return, we could and should be doing so much better. And that's where I think the, I see a lot of hope for the fed and also at the state level.
That at a minimum, we can kind of agree to some of those baseline economic facts and go to work there.
[00:17:14] Ben Wallerstein: Yeah. And of course, like, just, you know, for what it's worth, it's extraordinarily important. We have like profoundly disparate outcomes. And that's really if you look at like Michael Collins work in writing at JFF.
I mean, it's really, you know, you can't paint this stuff with a broad brush, right? Because, you know, when you look at sort of the ways in which. You know, racial segregation is manifest in schools and in post secondary institutions and in the extent to which that plays out in terms of occupational segregation, these are like really complex and absolutely critical issues to when you sort of start to paint this stuff with a broad brush, right?
Like, you know, the distrust of institutions, the ROI, like, we're still generally talking averages. And if we care, and I do, and I know Anna does, about the role and aspirations of our educational infrastructure to lift people up, to redress systemic inequities in other areas, if you believe that that has a broad based economic and competitiveness rationale, then, you know, again, these things are, it's tough to sort of embrace the.
[00:18:17] Anna Edwards: And then just like quick take Alex on K 12 like parent concern. I think that actually you see far more parents that are concerned about whether their child can read, right? And if you look at the science of reading policy spread across the country, And the way that, like, you had conservative states, you had progressive states, you had low income parents, you had high income parents all saying, what is the curriculum that's being taught in my school?
I think with the states that have passed voucher and ESA programs. That's actually encouraging districts and school leaders in public schools to have conversations about how many career pathways they're offering, how many AP courses they're offering. Is there an IB program and how do we market to parents and have conversations with parents about what participation in those programs will actually lead to in their students future?
And so, I think it's easy to kind of lump parental concern into Moms for Liberty, like, it's about book bans, but actually the parent's discontent has been, to Ben's point, I think about a lot more, and when you have those more sophisticated conversations, and when you equip state and district and school leaders to actually have that conversation with parents, I think actually there's some really productive conversations that will happen as a result.
[00:19:37] Ben Kornell: Were there any governor races or propositions or local policies that you were watching that, you know, might move things in the landscape of a particular state or broadly?
[00:19:50] Anna Edwards: Ben, can I talk about my favorite? North Carolina. So North Carolina, you know, in the presidential did end up going with Trump, but it was amazing to see the split ticket voting that happened both with the governor's race.
And, you know, that was, Largely candidate driven on the governor's side, but the state superintendent Mo green had been pulling at about 50 percent against Moro homeschool parent that had, to your point, Alex, like really used a campaign focused on fear and teachers as groomers. And it was amazing to see voters actually show up and split the ticket in their boat and go ahead and say.
You know, I'm going to go with Trump, but I'm going to vote for Mo Greene for state superintendent, because I believe in what his vision is for a public school system in the state of North Carolina. So I think that we see a lot of hope in this state because the state superintendent, Catherine Truitt, that's been in place has actually done a lot.
She put. Some of the best AI policy guidance out in the country. They've put forward a ton of grants for ed tech. So for your listeners, I think everyone, when she lost her primary, it was like, Oh my gosh, is like the age of ed tech in North Carolina, dead. It's all going to be privatized. Mora wants to get rid of the Department of Public Instruction.
And in that case, Mo Green won. He was the superintendent in Guilford County, huge ed tech proponent. And so we're really excited to see what comes next in that state. And we're hearing that there might be some staff that even stay from one administration to the next. So that was my favorite. Ben, what have you been watching?
No, no, no. And by the way,
[00:21:29] Ben Wallerstein: Anna called that right in our newsletter last week, by the way, in whiteboard notes. So sign up and check that out. You know, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this and I looked at the ballot, right? Because I was very curious, like, what does the ballot look like? Did people just like vote?
Was it like, here's president and then you can sort of like vote, like straight ticket in North Carolina?
[00:21:46] Ben Kornell: And what's the order of the candidates and stuff like that? Yeah.
[00:21:48] Ben Wallerstein: Absolutely not. So state superintendent's bottom right corner. Right. Like the ag commissioner, I think the Republican ag commissioner won.
So like superintendent public instruction, North Carolina was like bottom right corner. There were loads of other statewide offices that people were sort of electing. So I think back to the point you were making earlier, Alex, I think it undermines a lot of like the progressive narrative around what people were thinking when they voted for Trump.
Because voters in North Carolina went into the booth and they voted for Trump. And then they, you know, they voted for a democratic governor and then they voted for a Republican ag commissioner and then they voted for a democratic, like, so a democratic superintendent. So when you get into these, like, Oh, well, it's like, you know, it's like parents rights in the classroom and this, that, and the other thing.
It doesn't make sense when you look at what happened in North Carolina and, you know, turns out maybe people are complicated, like, you know, or
[00:22:44] Ben Kornell: they're doing their homework and they're making decisions.
[00:22:47] Anna Edwards: Yeah, the other big one, Massachusetts and voters passing the proposition to eliminate the MCAS. You know, I can't remember a ballot that had standardized assessment on it.
So that one, the voters actually did vote to move forward with considering that being eliminated. And so that will be interesting. You know, Massachusetts, you think of it as being kind of at the forefront since No Child Left Behind days on accountability. So that was a really interesting to watch proposition.
[00:23:19] Alex Sarlin: I mean, I'm going to double down pretty hard on this because I'm feeling all of this really intense energy about one of my comments that I think is pretty deeply misunderstood. We very rarely talk about politics on this podcast. I mean, my whole family are political journalists. I know a lot about politics.
I've read a lot about it. So I think there's every reason to talk about the split ticket and that there is a lot of logic to it. And I am not trying to say that the only. Attitude that any parent has in a red state about schools is that they hate the school. They hate the teachers. They hate the administration.
They hate the curriculum. I'm not trying to say that at all. What I am trying to say is that there has been a, I mean, even the science of reading example, you just named. And I mean, the flip side of the science of reading example is that we've taught reading the wrong way for decades because of like. One person at Teachers College in Columbia.
And if you don't think that that's a problem with the sort of elite, the meritocratic technocratic class, like I think we probably want to rethink that. Right. I mean, we have the best universities in the world. In the U S and we've taught reading the wrong way for decades because of all of these little networks where everybody follows each other around, they paying very little attention to the outcomes.
To your point, Ben, to the assembly line. I mean, I'm totally in agreement with the broken assembly line metaphor. I think it's, we're at great risk as Democrats. If we go out of this thinking that. People are sort of taking these nuanced stances. I'm not sure. I think this is, you know, we've had about five change elections in a row and each one has become more and more extreme.
[00:24:49] Ben Wallerstein: Yeah. I think like, it's interesting when you bring that up about reading, this is not what we were expecting to talk about this morning, but like, you know, we don't argue very much. We've worked together for, I don't know, 20 plus years and it's one of my all time favorite people in the whole world.
Brilliant. But like, I mean, even just on the reading thing, like. There's a big recency bias with that. Like, so George W. Bush was elected 2000, did national reading panel. The national reading panel pushed like a reading agenda. Like reading first program is like a categorical, you know, like I think it was in the two billion dollars off of title one.
And there was a recoil, there was a recoil, like a push back against what was viewed as being a conservative agenda. And I was in the, you know, I sat in a lot of those meetings in my home state of Connecticut and in Colorado and, you know, and you had people from sort of like affluent, predominantly white school districts who were big fans of the, Whole language and like kids just magically learn to read and it's beautiful.
And this was their experience and it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily wrong
[00:25:56] Alex Sarlin: experience. Works for privileged families,
[00:26:00] Ben Wallerstein: you know? And so there wasn't like one person, right? Like it was a pushback that was in part grounded in really like. I don't know, like a sort of progressive, maybe arguably democratic response.
And lots of people talk about like program, you know, their issues with the reading first program, their allegations and things like that in conjunction with it. But at the end of the day, federal policy embraced an approach in the early aughts, right, that was rejected and is now coming back around to be reincorporated into.
So I think there's, For
[00:26:32] Alex Sarlin: so long, right? I mean, what kept the science from making its way into the classroom for so long, it was elite networks. And I mean, look, and I think people are actually smart enough to realize that as well as that other things in their life, like the rising tuition is run by elite network.
I mean, it's a fact, the fact that colleges spend less and less money on career services, even though more and more people say they want. That's all they want from college. It's all the university presidents following each other in a big circle. I think people are getting wise to it. I think change elections are an indictment of how we do a lot of things in society, including education.
[00:27:08] Ben Wallerstein: Great. Now we're saying the same thing.
[00:27:10] Alex Sarlin: Yeah,
[00:27:12] Ben Kornell: I think there's Alex. I think we're in violent agreement on that principle. And if one thing changed during covid, it was parents waking up to this is what my child is getting in school. And the vast majority said, I'm not satisfied. And then there's a variety of reasons.
I do think that I guess to get back on the policy side, though, those things that you talked about with George W. Bush, it doesn't seem to me like over the next four years, we're likely to have strong policy positions from the federal government that most of it is likely to play out in the States. Just mainly I'm inferring from Trump 1.
0, but also from the campaign. Am I wrong? Do you actually see that there might be some really high level or high profile pushes that come from. Either department of ed or from the Trump white house or from a combined labor department of ed future. Do you anticipate something? So we'll see what happens with the house.
That's a big dependency, right? Like if you have, that's mainly because they control budget. Is that why?
[00:28:14] Anna Edwards: Because the Senate flipped Republican, you have Trump coming in to the executive branch and if the House stays Republican, then you have a Republican trifecta and you can run with more things than if you have a Democratic House.
And then there are some checks and balances there and limitations on what can get passed and put into law. And
[00:28:32] Ben Kornell: the last time we had that was Obama, you know, first two years. Is that right? I don't know that off the top of my head.
[00:28:38] Anna Edwards: Yeah, I think that's right. It's been a long time.
[00:28:43] Ben Wallerstein: You know, do we see a federal tax credit scholarship program, you know, with the democratic house, do we see that I'm not, I may be less likely.
Did you see that, you know, that's something that can be done through budget reconciliation, for example, like, you know, maybe that's interesting. That's kind of like new in terms of, you know, a more expansive role in support of say like school choice or direct subsidies to support of K 12 education that we haven't really seen historically, maybe outside of like the district of Columbia where, you know, you do have that.
So like, I think there are some interesting things like that. I mean, Anna, I'd be interested to hear your take, too, because, like, there's always, there's an interplay between federal and state policy, right? You have standards of learning in places like Virginia. You have education reforms underway in states like Texas or Florida that then became sort of, like, incorporated to manifest in federal policy through the No Child Left Behind Act, right?
And so, so I'm curious, like, Anna, like, if, Does it, the reversion to state, to a more muscular state role really change things that way?
[00:29:39] Anna Edwards: Exactly. And I think it actually, to your point, Ben, like, I think that's what would lead to federal, a federal push in K 12 at least, would be states that are all pushing forward for new accountability systems through these, again, like portrait profile of a graduate.
Do you actually change to your accountability system to focus on more than just ELA and math achievement, but look at this whole other set of competencies as students graduate? And then does that shape what we see in the next reauthorization of ESEA? And so that's kind of what we're looking at.
Governor Polis of Colorado is chair of the National Governors Association right now, and he has made education and workforce a very comprehensive platform from early childhood all the way through workforce. His chairman's initiative. And his vice chair is Governor Stitt from Oklahoma. And the thing that they are actually really working very closely on is this idea of high school transformation and high school accountability and, you know, what the pathways to and through post secondary or directly into work look like.
And so that's the thing that will be interesting to watch is, does like, the, what is Governor Polis's and Governor Stitt's chair's initiative. And a rethinking of state accountability systems and what states would want to see in the next version of the S. E. A. actually helped to fuel the next version of the law.
But we're a few years out from that. So we haven't seen placeholder bills for No Child Left Behind and for ESSA. There were all of these smaller pieces of legislation that had been introduced. That then led to the bigger bills and we just haven't seen a lot happening on the Hill. So I think we're a little ways out from seeing anything big.
So it's going to be for the listeners of, you know, of your podcast. I think our advice would be to focus on states because they are going to be the ones that are setting the stage for federal policy and influential, but also because those are going to be The leaders that are working with school districts as ESSER funding expires and trying to figure out, can they increase per pupil spending, are there programmatic investments to offset the impact of this 20 percent increase in, you know, per student funding going away?
And so, regardless of what happened, if Harris had won, Or with this transition to Trump, we would say like states are, are the place to play. And we love working with states.
[00:31:57] Ben Wallerstein: Yeah. And I'll also say like, maybe even just like putting the prior point somewhat more succinctly. It used to be right. Like that, the Republican or conservative agenda.
Was grounded in like, it was like the standards and accountability movement going back to the risk, right? Like, I think we're like past the high watermark well, well past the high watermark of accountability. And I think the, the agenda is more toward flexibility, right? Which is not to say that you might not see increased accountability in certain contexts at the state level.
But that there will be greater flexibility. And again, like if you're a believer in the potential of education's commercial sector, that means increased flexibility to allocate dollars in ways that are That maybe even remove some of the redundancy. So if you look at things like in the assessment context, gosh, like, you know, we're using formative assessment on a broad basis to yield and generate data that's instructionally relevant that can inform our like pedagogical strategies like, you know, and you have had states going back to like 07, like Utah that have gone to the feds and said, Hey, wait a minute, like we've embraced formative assessment.
We're using it on a broad basis and with fidelity, surely federal government. The data byproduct, the data exhaust of those assessments is sufficient for you to hold us accountable, right? And the feds have said, Nope, sorry, like, you've got to do your high stakes, large scale summative assessment and good job, keep doing the formative stuff, right?
Like, and then we've had the assessment consortium to try to create tests and did both. And there's all sorts of really exciting things happening in the field of assessment right now. But like, I think you'll see much more flexibility. Right. Like on the part of states to utilize, say, for example, formative tools or interventions that generate data to satisfy those federal requirements in ways that maybe you haven't been able to quite as much in the past.
[00:33:55] Anna Edwards: Totally agree. And, you know, even on your like deal sheet, Alex and Ben that I was checking out, you know, I think some of the investments that you all are seeing. in like data infrastructure plays are a reflection of the opportunity at the state level because states are already starting to invest in, you know, the school links and how do we look at more data than just ELA and math assessment in one place and look at work based learning tracking and all of these other competencies.
And so, yeah, I think you're exactly right, Ben, that we also expect to see the federal government starting to look more and more at that. What that data infrastructure could look like and coming in to meet those requirements.
[00:34:35] Alex Sarlin: We'll be right back. This season of ed tech insiders is again, proudly sponsored by our M and a partners tuck advisors, thinking of selling your company as experts in mergers and acquisitions in education and ed tech tuck can help at tuck advisors. Their motto is Make hay while the sun shines. If you want to start planning the harvest contact Tuck advisors.
Now,
[00:35:05] Ben Wallerstein: if anybody says you're exactly right, Ben and Ben Cornell, and I both take credit for that. Definitely. So you couldn't be talking to anybody. Let's see your credit.
[00:35:15] Anna Edwards: Yeah, you got one. You're exactly right today. That's probably it.
[00:35:19] Alex Sarlin: I think these points about assessment are incredibly important. And, and as you say, the formative and the summative come together.
One thing that strikes me as I hear you talk about that, Ben, is that I think, you know, the high watermark, as you're mentioning, the sort of No Child Left Behind era was the high mark for standardized assessment. AI is coming in, and I think one thing we've talked about a lot at this moment is that AI has the potential, if done right, to actually remove a lot of the sort of assessment proxies we've used.
I mean, you can imagine a world where You're looking for students to be career ready when they graduate. That means they could pass the hiring exam, right? I mean, we've never had a world that that's possible, or they can do a simulation and actually do a job. So we're getting to an interesting moment. I know that the Department of Ed put out an AI plan this year, and I'm just curious how you see the future of AI unfolding.
We obviously talk about it a ton on the podcast.
[00:36:08] Anna Edwards: Yeah, I mean, I think we've also seen states you put out AI guidance, at least on the K 12 side, there's a lot of question over like permissibility and use of AI as it relates to how students can use AI, how teachers can use AI, what is appropriate use, what is inappropriate use, and there hasn't been as much discussion of, well, what would the ideal use of AI be?
B for the purpose of furthering K 12 instruction. And I think that probably is coming now as we're starting to see tools that actually can make teachers lives easier, that can assess student writing faster. So I think the quick like knee jerk from the feds and from states is like, we've got to put policy guidance together, but the policies came out before the use case.
And so I think hopefully what you're going to see is. The use case getting out there because most of the policy guidance doesn't prohibit AI in any way. It's like, here's some things to consider. And then we actually sit back and look at what was effective, what was ineffective, and then how do we use that to shape the next iteration of the, of the policy.
So I think it's still just so early. Yeah.
[00:37:12] Alex Sarlin: The future you mentioned, Ben, this sort of like non real version of today and what you're thinking about as well. And this, this sort of idea of like. Right now you can't, you know, take your GED and go get it stamped and get money for it. You can't take your degree and get it stamped to get money for it.
There's this sort of whole ecosystem around it. You've got to not only graduate, which is very hard for many people in this, in this country, but also sort of wrap yourself in skills and know how to present and all the soft skills. And, you know, there's just, the mix has been unknown for a long time. And.
It feels like AI in a perfect world has the potential to sort of, uh, break open that black box and actually get to a place where you, you truly could, you know, go with your, some certification that you've gotten from an educational institution and say, this truly makes me qualified for this. Like you don't even need to talk to me.
You don't even need to like, don't bother looking at my resume. You don't need to know what, what college I went to. This thing. Maybe that's just way speculative, but I'm really curious if a world like that starts to become more real, what is the role of the whole education? I mean, the education system takes on a kind of a different role.
I mean, to your point, Ben about it being employment and citizenship. But I think people have been turning their back from on citizenship as the point of education for a while. Students certainly have, they don't major in anything related to that anymore. I'm curious, Ben and Anna, what do you think about sort of that version of the future?
What could education look like?
[00:38:39] Ben Wallerstein: Yeah, if you set aside like the deeper role of like small e education in society, we all view this like deeply important to the kind of world that we want to live in. Then you look at the sort of like economic utility of educational experiences in programs that people and the government pays for.
And for what it's worth, like the intersection of those. Experiences Including an informal contacts with employment, self employment, entrepreneurship, you know, we have a growing nonstandard workforce in our country, the ways in which people self actualize through their work and jury income, not to get like too sort of abstract about it.
But there are people like Tim Knowles, you know, like if you look at the heart of what like, you know, even like at Carnegie, but if you think about the work that XQ is doing, some of the things are happening with and through ETS, the historic work of the assessment consortia, assessment plays a role in that.
But even if you look at a very granular level with like, Say like a company like Guild, right? Like, you know, you have part of what's exciting. I think it's about what they're doing and that's poorly understood is the intersection of work and formal learning. How are you getting credit for participating in a management training program at Chipotle?
How are you, you know, this, this whole notion of like transfer and articulation of experiential learning. You know, if you look at the work of Kale and you look at organizations like education at work, right? Like. How do we, if you think about opportunity at work and the really seminal, you know, National Bureau of Economic Research paper that, that Byron Aghese helped author, right?
Like experiences outside of a formal educational context have value. How do people translate those experiences and communicate them in ways that create, you know, labor market and earnings potential, right? Like, you know, do, do those. Opportunities for quicker, faster ways to acquire those skills. Maybe then we've historically enabled through the traditional educational infrastructure.
How do we measure and quantify those things? How do we think about something like critical thinking? And then not just how do we evaluate critical thinking, but how do we take our understanding of how we might evaluate critical thinking and translate that into, you know, content and pedagogical strategies allow us to improve out, you know, so All sorts of really exciting happening.
And again, like, you know, I'm not sure there's a party breakdown of like, you know, who, who's more willingness or not to support it, but it's a really exciting time to be a part of this ecosystem.
[00:41:15] Alex Sarlin: I want to hear your answer too, out of just one quick sentence. I think there might be a party breakdown because if you look at the difference between the parties on whether college is a good return on investment.
Versus apprenticeship versus a first job. They're huge. I think the Republican party has for now quite a while, sort of turned its back on a lot of traditional higher education for some of the reasons we've said here. And some reasons that maybe that we haven't said here, but. I think it's more likely that a Trump administration might lean harder into that because I think they have less sort of entrenched belief in the traditional higher ed system.
I think they feel like it's sort of gone. Or at least the contemporary education. Contemporary. Exactly. They have, yeah. So I think it could be intriguing in that way. And yeah, the competencies are fascinating. And I'm curious how you, how you would answer that.
[00:42:04] Anna Edwards: On that point, too, you look at states that have put in place, like, skills based hiring policies, and it's red states and it's blue states.
So I think it's both, you know, my time, like, 80 percent of it is spent in K 12. So when you ask the question of, you know, how does AI reshape the education system and experience, you know, I'm thinking more about, you know, how students are learning, what modalities they're learning in. And so I think in that case, it's not just.
AI. I think it's VR. I think it's experiential learning. I think it's like inside of the classroom, but also like going and having an internship at, you know, auto manufacturing plant down the road and then being able to use Data to infrastructure to be able to put all those experiences together and that we're closer to the point of being able to then make sense of that because of the data systems and the A.
I. To do it. So I think we are, we are there and there's a lot of interest. And again, that's something that I really don't think is red or blue. Like we're seeing. Urban districts that are moving like VR initiatives forward. And we're seeing red States that are saying, yeah, we've got to teach a new, new and different ways.
We had Trump like in his speech on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, you know, say we need to like praise Elon Musk and say, you know, we need to create an environment where we have these big thinkers because no one else in the world is able to, Put Starlink satellites in the sky in North Carolina to enable communication responses and able to deploy a space X rocket and have it land perfectly hugged, you know, by the booster.
And so that was an interesting point. You know, I know you all work with a lot of technology companies, but I think there's been some fear. That technology the trump administration was at odds, you know with some of big tech and so in talking to some of our tech folks the last couple of days and seeing the Outreach on x and and that sort of thing, you know, it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out but that symbolic kind of recognition of technological innovation and Ingenuity.
Like, I think that that's, that'll be an interesting thing to watch how that shapes the domestic policy council at the White House and the office of science and technology policy and, and all of that. And then what the ripple effects are for K 12 and higher ed.
[00:44:33] Alex Sarlin: I think our technology world has evolved to the point where there are very powerful technologists on both sides of the aisle, which wasn't actually always that true.
If
[00:44:43] Ben Wallerstein: I'm unpacking and thinking about just one of the more macro points that you just made, which I think is a really good one, Alex. Like if you sort of like accept the premise that is to a certain extent like incumbency and innovation are at odds, right? Like, which is not to say that incumbents can't evolve, whether those are K 12 school districts, whether that's the ways in which we fund and hold schools accountable.
Whether that's post secondary institutions and systems. We've say, okay, just broad based incumbency and innovation are at odds to the extent that a Trump administration in a Republican coalition will be more skeptical of and less supportive of incumbency. Like it arguably puts greater pressure. On incumbents to accelerate the pace of change and perhaps could create more explicit, you know, and you may see that in the context of school choice or other things.
And this is not, I'm not making a value judgment about that one way or the other, but like, if that's like, I think that's, uh, if that's part of what you're saying, like, I don't think that's a crazy way to view the world, which would mean that like the opportunity to innovate. And innovation always comes with challenges and people won't get it right.
And there will be costs and trade offs, but like the opportunity to innovate is potentially enhanced within the, within the current context.
[00:46:06] Alex Sarlin: I think that's a fantastic way to put it. And I mean, from my personal perspective, or I don't know if it's just my personal perspective, but a lot of the incumbency in education has for one reason or another sort of been married to the democratic party.
I mean, teachers unions have supported it for, for many generations. Higher education presidents, the faculty, there's a lot of data. I mean, part of the reason conservatives are so distrustful of higher education faculty is that the statistics show they're like eight to one Democrats or whatever it is very high.
So for whatever reason, I don't think it's out of malice or anything problematic, but I think the traditional education system has been sort of aligned with a lot of the democratic interests. And I think there's a lot of sort of. Interest in blowing it up. You know, you saw things that Jeb Bush did in Florida.
And, but you know, my personal politics are so far from that. I'm just really trying to make sense of it in a, a political way, but I'm excited because I do personally believe in change. I was talking to an ex student of mine just the other day, he's in Silicon Valley, he's an engineer and he's like questioning whether he's going to be doing the right thing.
He's like, what are their unintended consequences? And the thing that came up to me is like, you know, when autonomous cars first started coming out, people were so worried about, you know, a car hitting somebody. And it was like a hundred thousand people die every year in car crashes. So to defend the status quo that has these huge problems, just because you know it and find all these ways to sort of poke holes in the next, it's a human nature, but I think it's often very right as an ed tech person.
I always, you know, see people who are big ed tech skeptics and say, yes, but look at the test results this year. I mean, just like look at how things are going in a lot of schools and look at the graduation rates of community colleges. Like you're defending a status quo that has a lot of problems. So I think this incumbency versus a innovation narrative, I don't know, it might play out.
[00:47:56] Anna Edwards: I feel like that was your mic drop moment, Alex. That was
[00:47:59] Ben Kornell: a mic drop moment, Alex. I didn't know what to say after that. It was a great point. Just so that our listeners know. You know, whiteboard, you, you've been working with education and technology companies for the past 20 years, navigating this dynamic environment, both federal and state and policy level.
And so, you know, one thing that I am curious about, given how hard. Sales is right now and customer acquisition with Essar funding falling off, or also with, you know, the challenges in higher ed and contraction and enrollment, or even like corporate workforce development, there's been some pullback compared to 2021, you know, how should companies be thinking about a policy strategy in their portfolio in today's landscape?
And I'm not meaning, you know, how should they think about hiring white board advisors? This is an. Really, like, every CEO should be thinking about policy, but how, and how would you recommend they approach it?
[00:49:00] Ben Wallerstein: For us, like, Anna and I are like public school kids who care very deeply about improving educational outcomes.
Like, that's, like, how we come at the work. Right. And, and I think the, something we talk a lot about with our, our clients and have for like, you know, for 20 plus years is like, how do you deconstruct the product offering into sort of policy cognizable terms, right? Like, how do you talk about like what you're doing in the context of an intervention that might be.
Enabled or could be impeded through public policy through regulatory or statutory changes through funding, right? But at the end of the day, like, you know, and we were pretty choosy about the kinds of things that we get engaged with, because, like, if there's not sufficient evidence associated with the efficacy of an intervention, and there are all sorts of ways again in which public policy can impede intervention can impede the scalability and replicability of a model that might work.
But to me, the core question for an entrepreneur or for a business is how do we describe what we're doing in policy cognizable terms, right? Like, how do we describe the intervention? What's the potential impact of the intervention? How might it be scored, right? And then you get into the conversation of like, Does policy impede its potential?
Could policy accelerate that aspiration? And so those are the foundational questions. I know that's probably a much more abstract, probably, way to answer it than you might like, or, you know, Anna will give, but that's, that's the core for us.
[00:50:41] Anna Edwards: I agree. I think some of that's like 201, because I think the 101, like, that I would say is, Understanding policy and funding is like table stakes right now for an ed tech entrepreneur because the way that school districts, if you're selling into districts or higher ed institutions are experiencing this moment with funding changes with enrollment changes is very different, right?
15, 000 districts in some ESSER funding going away is catastrophic or drops in student enrollment have completely shifted the purchasing power. But in other districts, they actually have like are weathering the storm. Okay, because the state is increasing funding or because the way that they chose to spend those dollars made them less impacted by the dollars being removed.
And so I think having that map and understanding. Where there's there are challenges from a funding perspective, where there's opportunity once you understand which policies are helpful, being able to fine tune your go to market strategy is really important because it's just completely different across every single state.
So it's really important. And then I think also depends point about kind of the deconstruction and messaging piece of solutions. District leaders and state leaders and even principals and higher ed leaders are just getting bombarded with sales emails right now, and I think the only thing that cuts through the noise is a solution provider that really understands the challenge, the policy environment and the funding environment that they're operating in and can align to that and show how you meet the need and which funding is available and have a strategic conversation.
And so I think it's also an imperative from a marketing perspective. I
[00:52:23] Ben Wallerstein: think a lot of people approach the education market through a marketing lens, right? Like, and this is true, I think, more broadly of, of like public sector sales in general, but that, you know, what Anna says, like, so. The way she described those three legs of the stool, because you see this from time to time, like, you know, ed tech entrepreneur raises a bunch of money and they, from big name venture capital funds and the, and they, oh gosh, like, you know, there's this person who was the CRO at this like SAS company and it went public or we sold it for a billion dollars and now they're going to come into ed tech and health, you know, and it's like, Like, like literally never, it's never worked.
It won't work like, you know, this isn't an enterprise corporate market. This is, you know, like in Susanna said, like it's a multifaceted complex, highly fragmented, politically charged, mostly public funded system that is oriented around whether you're in post secondary or K 12 providing a public good. And so those, like the heuristics that people, I think like even bring to bear from those other contexts, just like almost never work.
[00:53:38] Alex Sarlin: Those are great points. Really, really,
[00:53:40] Ben Kornell: really interesting. Well, I think we've had just a number one, like a great conversation more generally around how policy is evolving in and shaping the education and technology landscape. But also, you know, it does seem like the federal election and many of the returns are an amplification of themes, not a total pivot of the themes we've been seeing over the past several years.
But you know, if things change and then please come on the podcast, cause we're always excited to tap into your deep knowledge and expertise and also your overall mission alignment around unlocking potential of all learners, which I think. Everyone in ed tech, we're all aligned on that. So thank you so much for joining us today.
If people want to find out more about whiteboard advisors, what's the best way for them to learn more?
[00:54:29] Ben Wallerstein: Whiteboard advisors. com or sign up for whiteboard notes. That's definitely great. And I should also just say, thanks to you both. I think what you're doing is so cool. I've followed it since its inception.
I think, you know, our colleague Matt tower is a huge fan of yours. And I think that this is a, just a community of people, you know, in our field. However you want to think about defining it. That's just like so fun and special and cool. And that are so important to both of us personally. And you all are giving your community building, you know, and you're helping to define field in ways that I think are so important.
So I'm just super grateful to both of you for what you're doing. Totally
[00:55:05] Anna Edwards: agree. Thank you so much for having us.
[00:55:07] Alex Sarlin: Right back at you. We read Kelly Branding and your newsletter all the time. I don't
[00:55:12] Anna Edwards: know.
[00:55:14] Alex Sarlin: Thanks
[00:55:14] Anna Edwards: guys.
[00:55:15] Alex Sarlin: Thank you so much. Have a great one.
[00:55:17] Anna Edwards: You too.
[00:55:18] Alex Sarlin: For our deep dive today. We are talking to Kavita Guy, CEO of Nectar, a friend of the pod and has some really exciting updates for what is happening at our company Nectar.
Welcome to the podcast Kavita.
[00:55:33] Kavitta Ghai: Hey, Alex. Thank you so much for having me back on.
[00:55:35] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So, you know, you have been doing some really interesting things with AI in the higher education space. Before we jump into what's happening right now, give our listeners who may not have heard you on previous episodes a little overview of what Nectar is and how you came to it as an entrepreneur.
[00:55:54] Kavitta Ghai: Absolutely. So Nectar AI, which we're focusing on today, you can think of it as AI infrastructure specifically built for education. So rather than creating a point solution, we anticipated that there's going to come a time really soon when schools are going to have a variety of needs for AI on campus.
Maybe that is putting AI course assistants in the classes. Maybe it's creating an onboarding assistant for all of their staff. Maybe it's creating an IT support assistant for the faculty. There are going to be so many, and there already are so many different use cases for AI across the campus, that what we know schools need is an affordable and scalable way to utilize these LLMs like GPT40 and CLAWD as they emerge on the market.
So what Nectar AI does is it allows you to use any LLM. By default, we'll use GPT 4. 0, since we know that is PhD level and works really well. And then you can create these AI assistants that are trained on your data in a FERPA and COPPA compliant platform. And then they integrate directly with the LMS and the campus website.
So you can provision them to any group of students, staff, faculty, even parents. And so it's a really incredible way for schools to get started with AI, but then be able to scale. The use cases over time as they learn more ways as they figure out the needs that they have, they should be able to still use that exact same platform and just keep expanding the use cases of the A.
I. And that's exactly what we do.
[00:57:27] Alex Sarlin: Phenomenal. So Nectar's core product before the A. I. Launch. Is sort of a slack like communication tool that works within university settings to be able to create, you know, message threads and groups and any kind of communication between any type of class or department or a set of instructors or all sorts of things like that.
But I'm hearing you say that Nectar AI integrates with LMS is or campus websites. It feels like these offerings can be probably done together or separately. Is that how you're thinking about it?
[00:57:58] Kavitta Ghai: Absolutely. So actually, the way that the idea came about was we had initially developed in 2023 an AI teaching assistant that sat inside of all of the Nectar class channels so a teacher could go and upload their syllabus, textbook assignments, and it would create this document only knowledge base so students in that class could ask the AI teaching assistant questions about the class material 24 7 and teachers loved it.
Students loved it. But in fall of 23, we had some really major schools approach us and say, we love this one AI teaching assistant technology. This feature is great. Can you make us an entire platform for us to be able to create our own custom assistance? Right? We want to be able to create as many of these as we need.
And actually, one of the very first use cases was for For a salary negotiation partner for their MBA courses, right? They wanted students to be able to say, this is the industry I'm going into. This is the specific job that I want. Can you then tailor this entire conversation to that industry in that job and help me simulate a salary negotiation conversation?
And we said, that makes so much sense. You should be able to have this platform where if in this one class you need that AI assistant, you can build it and let's say you decide you need 10 more after that. You should be able to build it and not have that cost be unbearable on the school, but also it should allow you to expand your creativity.
Because I think as we all have been using chat GPT and these AI tools, that is what we've all found, right? You start using it and then you continue to see more and more ways to get knowledge and use out of it. And we want schools to be able to have the same exact thing available to them.
[00:59:44] Alex Sarlin: What you're saying makes a lot of sense because, you know, in education in both K 12 and higher ed, we've all been thinking about, you know, what role can AI play in an educational setting?
And I think the sky is basically the limit. You know, you can be very, very creative about what role it can play because you can literally ask it to play virtually any role from a PhD level teaching assistant for any class, Go To a negotiating partner, to a career coach, to a mental health counselor.
There's just so many things that are out there. So the idea of a flexible infrastructure that allows schools to continue to be creative and add new capabilities to its AI makes a lot of sense. So you mentioned some big. Partners came to you and you just announced one of the biggest partners there is in higher education this week.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing in California?
[01:00:31] Kavitta Ghai: Yeah, absolutely. So when we started nectar AI and as we do with anything that we build, we make sure that it is actively being tested by schools by students by faculty. So before we release absolutely anything. We know it's been pressure tested, and so for about six months, we worked with Stanford, GSB, Boston University, Questrom School of Business and Los Angeles Pacific University to build Nectar AI in private beta and make sure that it did everything we promised that it would and that it was safe to use as well.
And from that six month testing period. Los Angeles Pacific University, specifically, we had such an incredible time working with them because they are this small, completely online college here in L. A. And their student population, I think, really reflects the world very well. It's a variety of younger students, students who are adults and have families and returning back to the classroom.
And so we needed to figure out how do we make An equal playing field for all of these students. So we started by putting these AI course assistants into all of their classes. They said, you know, our students aren't accessing the human tutors on campus after covid. They just sort of dropped off and they're not getting the support that they need.
And they're not really raising their hand or asking questions in class either. And so we said, okay, let's train these AI course assistants on all the class documents, put them in the LMS and let the students have access to them. Within the first term of using these course assistants in every class campus wide, LAPU saw a 20 percent increase in the GPA, a 13 percent rise in the average final scores.
And my most exciting one was a 36 percent boost in the intrinsic motivation to learn. So, You saw immediately the return on investment for students and like we said equalizing that playing field so that everybody had access to the support that they needed. 24 7. There were some students who would go in and just ask a question and be one and done and they'd get the answer they needed and walk away and some students who would sit there for hours.
hours and just keep asking questions and going deeper and saying, if I'm really good at this, what kinds of internships should I be applying for? Or how can I actually apply this in the real world? You know, what is a book that you recommend that I can go into? Or what course should I take next if I really like this one?
And it was fascinating to see and the results of that study. Was something that we started to highlight in a lot of the conversations and conferences and podcasts that we were going to, because we really wanted to replicate this on a larger scale. And the best partner that we could have found to do this was the California community college system.
One of the largest school systems in the entire world. It's 116 community colleges in California. And being a student who was born and raised in California and went through the system, we all know here in California that it is your path to success. The California Community College system is incredible specifically because if you don't get into a UC or a CSU or really big name school right out of high school, you have the opportunity to then go to these community colleges, which are honestly just as good, and then get on that track to Transfer in two years to one of these schools that you originally wanted to go to, and I've seen so many of my friends go through that process.
It's incredible. And so to be able to work with this very forward thinking system that has over two million students in it is absolutely a privilege. So we've been working with Craig Hayward for a long time. From the chancellor's office there, and he has spearheaded this pilot that we are now running from fall of 2024 through spring of 25, and we're going to onboard over 150 instructors through that time from all 116 schools and give them these nectar AI course assistance for the year.
And we're just gonna track and see how their progress is, how they're able to set these up and deploy it to their students via the LM s or however they choose to. We really want the teachers to one have that digital literacy. So the workshops that we host the training to get them really comfortable with AI technology and then get them creative about setting up these AI assistance in a way that works best for their curriculum.
So figure out how is your course design? How does it look? Don't try to change it for a I. Instead, make a I adapt to your existing course curriculum and structure. That is exactly how this technology should be used to take work off of the faculty and instructors plate. It should be giving them their time back while helping their students get more out of the classroom than they ever could have before.
And already in just the first term that we've launched this pilot, we have seen such incredible results and specifically in stem courses, which is really interesting, because I think that's something that has come up a lot in this A. I. Discussion of is it able to help with math? Is it able to help with these really complex stem topics?
And that is actually where students are getting the most use out of it. And it makes sense. Those are the students that often need to go outside and find it. You know, extra support and tutoring or make study groups with each other and being one of those students in college. I know how tough it was for me to find the time to do that.
It was really stressful to have to figure out how do I not only succeed in all of my other classes, but then go find the support that I need for the really tough ones. So now that these students have it built into every class that they're taking, they just know I'm gonna get that 24 7 learning partner in whatever course I take, it takes that stress and anxiety off of their mind from day one.
And I think that's really why we're seeing that 36 percent boost in the intrinsic motivation to learn. It's allowing them to go back to a place where. It's actually fun to be in the classroom because they get to adapt it to what they want to talk about. They get to personalize it to what they're actually interested in.
And in my eyes, that is exactly what a college education should be. That's why you're paying a five figure price tag. So you can learn exactly what you want and then go into the real world prepared with exactly the knowledge that you hoped that you would get.
[01:06:45] Alex Sarlin: I have so many thoughts, forgive me. Let me just rattle off a few things.
I'm thinking, as I hear you say these incredible results. So just tracking back. I mean, first off, you mentioned that you're piloting at Stanford GSB at Boston university, right? And then, and Los Angeles Pacific. These are three of the most different types of schools you can imagine. We know that in the U S we have a very stratified system, which was by the way, invented in California for exactly The three tier system that you're mentioning, the UCs and the community colleges and the, uh, CS, the California state schools, California raised idea, which spread all over the country.
So the fact that you piloted it in multiple different environments and an environment that clearly took to it, both from the student side and the instructor side, and I bet all of them did, but the community colleges have so much to gain. They have very low, uh, Completion rates. They have low transfer rates.
They are supposed to be the engine of mobility, right? The escalator for exactly, but too often they just can't meet the students where they are because students have all of these needs. One of the biggest needs, and you've mentioned this several times is that they're there often for career reasons. They have families, they have financial burdens, they have all sorts of things that they need, but often the, you know, The focus on, as you said, what kind of internship can I get with this?
What kind of job can I get? Can I practice negotiating salaries? All of those things are so practical and something that unfortunately many universities in the past have sort of outsourced a little bit or, or, or sort of, I won't even say outsource. They've, they haven't always leaned into that sort of hands on career service role that I think students often expect from their schools.
I know that's why they're there. So the combination of, you know, practical sales. Personalization, like you say, students can actually engage and this sort of California tears as well as the fact that you're doing two things from a product standpoint, I think are very smart. So forgive me. I'm just talking a lot here, but I'll be done.
So one is you mentioned that, you know, the assistants are trained on course documentation. The syllabus, the readings that, and that is one of the things that I think a lot of instructors in both K 12 and higher ed find the most sort of intimidating or confusing about, about AI is that it pulls from unknown sources.
It's trained on the internet. It's trained on all of these things. It may be correct or not. At the beginning, it used to make up references. So the idea of being a closed system trained on expert curated resources. Is a big win. And then the other that you, you mentioned that I think is, you know, I've talked to a lot of AI entrepreneurs on this, on this podcast, but this never even occurred to me is that the four professors, the model of your training assistants to do a number of different roles that can extend your reach and reach students where they are 24 seven.
You say it, and it seems so obvious, but I had never thought about this way. It is just a way to think about AI that I think is, I'm sure resonates so well with the faculty at all of these different schools, because it's something they are used to. They are used to being able to get support from assistants, PhDs, Post grads, you know, undergrads, you know, all sorts of people are sort of around to fill in the gaps.
And the idea that AI can serve that role is really incredible. Okay. That's the end of my little rant, but there's so many exciting things there and the results are obviously the big headline. So, I mean, what did you say when you saw those kinds of results? I mean, raises in GPA. Is really unexpected in a short time period like that
[01:10:16] Kavitta Ghai: exactly for us to see that huge jump in gpa really set into stone that we are building the right technology and that's very important to us because coming from building this company as students who experience this problem ourselves you know uc santa barbara.
And we just couldn't figure out why this classroom experience that we were paying five figures for was not this modern experience that you saw in the movies or you thought it was going to be. It honestly felt like I just couldn't understand why we were still using these chalkboards and there was. One TA for a 500 person class and you had to stand in line for hours to talk to an academic advisor.
It just wasn't making sense. It wasn't clicking for me. And finally, we said, what if we stopped complaining about it and actually decided to do something about it? And, you know, six years later, we've raised over 6 million in VC funding to build this classroom of the future. And it's finally here. And to see how quickly instructors are adopting it And understanding that this technology is here to stay, but that's a great thing for all of us.
It's going to allow us to deliver a side of the classroom and a value proposition in education that we could have never thought possible before. There was never a world in which we could have hired a personal learning assistant human being for every single student on campus and have that person exactly have them know everything about their classes, their textbooks, have them know about that student as well.
You know, I think that's something that is. Really exciting for us is the A. I. Actually learns who you are through the conversation, and it'll start to adapt the way that it's talking to you. It can translate that knowledge into over 90 different languages. So it is actually bridging those gaps. And that was something that was really interesting to find in the study is that not only did we see those significant boosts in the GPA and the final scores, but when you looked at the specific groups of students that it was helping most, Yeah.
It was the lower performing students who were typically getting C's and D's who are now getting A's and B's. That's where the biggest jump was happening. And so it really does go back to equalizing the playing field. And that's truly making an accessible classroom. So that if there is a student who is working a full time job and is also a single mom and is taking these classes somehow in the spare time she has, she actually can get the support that she needs, make sure that she gets the value for the money that she's paying for, and on top of all of that, I think the cherry on top in, and this is actually what the instructors and faculty have pointed out to us, it's the fact that their students are leaving the classroom Train on how a I actually works and how they can best utilize it because that is something they're going to need to know in any career that they go into any industry that they go into is going to either is already using a I heavily or will very, very soon.
And so the cherry on top of all of this is that you get to promote that digital literacy amidst all of the value that they're getting on top of it.
[01:13:37] Alex Sarlin: I totally agree that A. I. Literacy is such a foundational part of what the skill set of the future is going to look like. And I absolutely agree with you that just I'm sure that students recognize very quickly that they are doing something that feels, as you say, very modern.
It is not calcified. It is not stuck in a mid 20th century paradigm of what higher education is trying to do. It is future facing. The fact that you've Been able to work so closely with these different kinds of schools, these giant systems like the California community college system. It's, I think it is the biggest school system in the world.
I'm pretty sure maybe there's one in somewhere else, but not very many. So the fact that you're able to sort of work within these enormous You know, systems that, that happened around a long time that are, you know, do have potentially a lot of red tape that could have a lot of things, you know, keeping them back.
And they're being so innovative and so embracing this technology on behalf of their students. The other thing is, you know, in ed tech, the Holy grail is making something that benefits all the stakeholders. And it feels like you've really hit that with this Nectar AI product because the universities want retention.
They want graduation rates. They want the instructors to feel supported. There's a lot of things that they want. They want GPAs to go up. The students want not only the GPAs to go up in their final scores, but they want it to be relevant. They want their education to be relevant and transferable to their life and to finish it without any debt.
And this hits both sides of it. It's really exciting.
[01:15:07] Kavitta Ghai: Exactly. And I think The final piece of it that I'll say, and this is for, you know, anyone who's an educator or is in a school system that is not as large as California's, looks on the outside like this technology can be very daunting and potentially very expensive and difficult to implement and train your staff and faculty on how to use it.
And that is exactly why we want you to lean on us for that support. And when you are evaluating AI tools, Whatever tool you end up choosing, I really encourage you to make sure that the company that you're working with has a phenomenal training, onboarding, implementation plan that you can see beforehand, you understand, it's digestible, it makes sense, there's an appropriate timeline for it, because I'm not going to sit here and say that this technology, you turn it on overnight and magic, it happens.
It's pretty close to that. We got LAPU from their pilot to a campus wide implementation in under six weeks, so it is speedy, but This is a really exciting time for us to learn something that we never had access to before, all of us, and it is going to take that learning curve, and the right AI EdTech company is going to hold your hand and be right there with you when you implement this and scale it across your entire campus, and it is possible to be very successful in a large scale implementation.
for your attention. And I'm incredibly excited for this groundbreaking pilot with the California Community College system to set that precedent for the rest of the nation. But if the largest higher education system is able to pull this off and show these incredible results, then the rest of us can, too.
And it should give us a lot of hope for the fact that this classroom of the future is here and it's ready to go. And I think that this is what is going to make college exciting for students again.
[01:17:10] Alex Sarlin: You heard it here first. And I hope that listeners are hearing your message here and thinking, okay, I know a higher ed administrator, a university president, provost, dean, IT director who should really hear this message.
And I hope that all the entrepreneurs, especially those working in higher ed, but any of them are in, you know, really thinking about that idea of how can we be the best possible partners To our academic partners, our academic customers, make sure that they are comfortable, that they're onboarded, that they're trained, that they feel good about putting this technology in front of their students, not just neutral or not afraid, but like good about it.
Exactly. That's clearly what's happening with Nectar and that kind of buy in has Leads to serious results in the classroom. I am so excited to amplify this really exciting moment for Nectar. You know, you've been on the podcast a couple times before I think AI even came out. I believe the first time we talked, it was like the verge of it.
Oh, yeah.
[01:18:05] Alex Sarlin: I really admire how you as a, as an entrepreneur and product leader have continued to really Work with your customers to find meaningful product market fit. And there's, there's no better signal than this. Congratulations. This is Kavita Guy, CEO and co founder of Nectar and Nectar AI. Thanks for being here with us on Week at EdTech from EdTech Insiders.
[01:18:26] Kavitta Ghai: Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Alex. Appreciate you sharing this message with the world. Can't wait to see where we go from here.
[01:18:32] Alex Sarlin: Lindsey Dworkin, SVP of Policy and Government Affairs at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Welcome to Week in EdTech from EdTech Insiders.
[01:18:41] Lindsay Dworkin: Well, thank you so much, Alex. I'm delighted to be here.
[01:18:44] Alex Sarlin: I'm delighted to have you here. There's so much going on right now. We're at an election season. We're at a time of great change in the education space, and you guys just came out with a really interesting report about, you know, how teachers and educators are feeling about technology, about their careers.
So before we get into the details of the report, let's go sort of overall, tell us a little bit about what you've been seeing from Hoden Mifflin about teachers and how they're adapting to this moment in time with, you know, salaries still being stuck in many ways and AI tools coming down the pipe.
[01:19:18] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know, it's sort of the best of times and the worst of times in education right now, I think, particularly for educators. I mean, we are coming out of such a difficult five years in the education system, right? We had all of the disruptions of the pandemic. Recovery is an ongoing process. You know, the federal sort of funds to help support recovery have just run out.
And so we are asking teachers once again, to do more with less. On the other hand, we have, you know, actually an all. Talk about this more in a minute, like confidence is ticking up among educators, and we have things like generative AI that are coming on the scene, helping to make their lives easier. We also have organizations like ours, you know, at HMH trying to introduce ways to streamline the teacher experience, make it easier for them to be successful, reduce the workload so they aren't reinventing the wheel every single day in every classroom across the country.
So I think there's sort of it's a mixed picture, but I think generally on an upside. Swing and we're sort of optimistic that the trends continue. Technology will be a big part of what will help make teachers feel more successful, less burned out and more able to do their jobs. Well,
[01:20:23] Alex Sarlin: yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of really positive results around technology.
You know, we saw things in this report, like, you know, 81 percent of educators who have been teaching 10 years or more. Feel that technology has had a positive impact on the teaching profession over the past decade. So those are veteran teachers, but actually before we get into the positive, I just want to highlight some of the stress the teachers are under, because it is really real.
I mean, we saw that two in three educators still feel negatively about the profession and they're concerned about teacher salaries. They're concerned about the mental health of both the students and the teachers tell us a little bit about some of the issues in schools, and then we'll sort of flip it and talk about some of the brighter spots.
[01:21:03] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think you're sort of spot on. Only about a third of teachers in our report said they feel positive or somewhat positive about the teaching profession, which is sort of in absolute terms, even if it's up from previous years, is really pretty grim.
Yeah. And
[01:21:20] Lindsay Dworkin: I think everything you've mentioned, sort of a concern about their own mental health, concern about students, all of that got more acute during the pandemic.
I think staffing shortages and sort of the ongoing crunch on. Recruiting enough experienced teachers in classrooms across America has also put a lot of stress on teachers. And then we just continue to ask them to do, sort of, address all of those sort of social needs of their students, of communities, while also delivering sort of standards aligned, high quality, rigorous, and personalized experience for each kid in their classroom, as well as a coherent classroom experience overall.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, It is a lot. And, you know, I was actually just the statistic you mentioned about 80 percent of even veteran teachers feeling confident technology. I was blown away that we have that much confidence among, I mean, teachers never ceased to amaze me, but the fact that we have that much confidence in all of these technology tools we're throwing at teachers, because we actually like the average teacher and not our study, but a different study is dealing with something like 84 different technology tools
[01:22:22] Alex Sarlin: and
[01:22:22] Lindsay Dworkin: trying to piece those together.
I mean, So I think the fact that we ask that of teachers, like we as a system need to do better by teachers to get the more coherent aligned tools and resources, but I think all of that is contributing to teachers feeling what you said, sort of low levels of confidence and positivity overall and some real burnout.
[01:22:41] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I agree. I was surprised by some of that too. All of us in the ed tech profession, you know, want to support educators. We want our tools to be saving educators time and helping their stress and reducing burnout and improving their mental health and not adding, you know, one more thing for them to remember on top of those 84 other tools.
But it was really encouraging in this report to see that actually playing out. So let's talk about some of these positive statistics and positive findings around technology. We talked about the 80%, but there was also a huge majority of educators are actually feeling very confident in their ability to use technology in an instructionally effective way.
What do you attribute that to? I mean, that was an amazing finding.
[01:23:19] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, well, and it's an amazing finding given that the, you know, use of Gen AI in particular in classrooms across the country grew five fold last year. Well, the fact that we've seen such an acceleration of the use of tools and that at the same time educators are really confident in using them and that they will add value.
You know, I think it is a tribute to teachers being desperate for support, right? And help in making their lives easier and serving, you know, continuing to serve students better. But I think it's, you know, sort of the resilience of the educator force. I mean, like of teachers overall, 97%. So higher than the 80 percent of teachers over.
10 years, right? We've been teaching for over 10 years. Feel confident in their use of technology. If I were in the classroom today, I would be in the 3%.
[01:24:05] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. I mean, 97 percent year, almost every teacher surveyed that says that they feel like technology is supporting them and that they feel like they can use it in ways that are instructionally effective.
That was really exciting. To hear. And then let's double click on the generative AI findings, because, you know, we talk about this a lot on this podcast, generative AI has really changed the ed tech landscape. But I think there's an open question about whether schools and educators and policy creators in States and in districts are sort of ready to embrace it because it's a technology that's so new.
Tell us some of the findings. I mean, there was some really, again, surprisingly positive findings in this report about educators use and their sort of excitement about generative AI.
[01:24:44] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, as I was just mentioning, the use of generative AI has grown fivefold over the last year, which is just incredible.
So it feels like the use generative AI is sort of accelerating as something that is part of our education system. That is absolutely correct. And then almost three quarters of teachers. So by 76 percent of teachers say Gen AI has added at least some value to their work and about the same percentage say it is saving them time.
Um, So it is really incredible that such an emergent technology is already being seen by teachers as a real sort of net value add in their practice. So we're really optimistic about that. And I think particularly, you know, at at HMH, we are super focused on the like sacred student teacher relationship that is at the center of student learning.
And I think our perspective in the creation of gen AI tools, as we think about how we show up in the policy space in this issue is how generative AI empowers educators, supports educators and students, but keeps that relationship at the center. And so what I think is so exciting about The results in the report we have is that it's really sort of like consistent with the what I think the most powerful future for gender day.
I can be an education, which is about empowering teachers, extending teachers, saving them time, letting them do more of what they do. Absolutely. Best and their most essential role in education, which is Spending time with each and every child, making sure that they are learning and reaching their full potential.
[01:26:16] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, a hundred percent. I, you know, I want to unpack that stat about five times as many, because I think, you know, we're throwing a lot of numbers at the listeners and we'll obviously link to the report because it's really interesting to look at these numbers yourself, especially if you're an AI entrepreneur or an ed tech entrepreneur of any kind, but sometimes a five times statistic can sort of hide something like it was like, Oh, it used to be 3 percent and now it's 15%, but that's actually not what we're saying.
I mean, you basically found that. 50 percent of educators in your survey are saying they use generative AI. That's where you get to the five times half of educators are using it. And of the half that are using it, almost 40 percent say it's saving them a great deal of time. And 73 percent say it's saving them time.
So three out of four are saying that it's saving them time. 40 percent are saying that it's already saving them a lot of time, a great deal or very much time. That's amazing. And this is maybe even the most exciting stat. Yeah. Almost three quarters plan to use AI even more in the next school year. So what do you attribute that to that?
It really feels like this momentum here.
[01:27:15] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, I think educators who get a taste of what AI can do to sort of save them on the task that, you know, their special expertise is not necessary to do, are just sort of get hooked on that experience and, you know, educators are so hardwired to want to spend more time with their students, deliver an ever better instructional experience.
Experience teaching and learning environment. And so I think leaning into technologies that let them do that is a big part of what's happening. So I think that there are sort of two ways that Jedi is showing up for teachers. One is in the way it's showing up for all of us, which is like chat GPT and these sort of online open access things.
And I'm sure a lot of educators like All of us throw things in, you know, to chat GPT, like give me directions to, you know, give me some fun things to do with my kid today or whatever. But I think there's also then real work going on that is sort of in earlier stages in many places. Actually building Gen AI into the You know, curriculum programs, the assessment tools, et cetera, that are coming sort of through official channels for teachers.
So, you know, and I think all of those are valid. And, you know, teachers being able to marshal sort of across those two worlds is probably really important to their ability to use this successfully. But I, you know, happy to talk a little bit. We've got a couple of things that I think are good examples of how Gen AI can be Sort of extending and supportive of educators, but not disruptive to the teacher student relationship that I think are, you know, examples of use cases about how this can work.
So yeah,
[01:28:44] Alex Sarlin: we'd love to hear them.
[01:28:46] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah. So, you know, two things. I think we announced both of these in February. So one, we acquired an organization called writable, which has a tool. You probably you're nodding. You heard of this that uses Gen AI to help provide students. teachers with first round feedback on student writing.
And so we know like, boy, do we, do our students need more practice in writing? One of the big obstacles to practice in writing is the time it takes to grade writing. And so having Gen AI do the sort of hard work of reading out every essay, giving teachers feedback, but then ultimately back to the teacher student relationship must be at the center.
The teachers ultimately are in control of what goes to the students So I love that example because it's so It's so time saving. It's solving a real problem of policy and of practice. And it's in teacher's control. And then I think there's all, you know, we also have class craft, which is a tool that lets, which you may probably also heard about, which a bit, but I think there it's about Enhancing the teacher's ability to direct sort of how students are learning, understand, get feedback from their students, et cetera.
So in a classroom in a real time environment.
[01:29:51] Alex Sarlin: You saw me nodding. I'm nodding because we have interviewed Sean Young from Classcraft before the acquisition. And then we've actually interviewed Andrew Goldman from Writable after the HMH acquisition. And now he's working on HMH. Labs. And I've actually been very, very impressed at how Houghton Mifflin has sort of navigated this AI era.
I think it's been very, you and, and the team have been very smart about sort of making strategic acquisitions that feed into your current product line, sort of picking up, you know, proven solutions that are feel very comfortable. They're sort of already very class ready. I'm only nodding because we've interviewed both of them on this podcast and they were both terrific.
One of the findings in the report that I wanted to dig into and then let's talk policy for our last question. There are a couple of concerns that came up with educators about generative AI. You asked all sorts of things. The number one, maybe unsurprisingly still is plagiarism. That was the number one concern.
And, you know, it still manages to raise its head and we sort of understand why, you know, the types of assignments have not necessarily matched, you know, in tools like writable where you're writing inside a. An AI platform. That's not as true, but in other types of assignments, plagiarism still happens. But what struck me is actually the second one.
The second one on this report is basically student over dependence. This idea that students may become so dependent on AI that, you know, fill in the blank, what different teachers are thinking, but you can sort of imagine that maybe they aren't doing the thinking for themselves, they aren't doing the research, they aren't doing the work.
I'd love to hear how HMH and how you are sort of doing that. Thinking about that, because this is something that is so new. Nobody knows what's coming, but it's interesting to hear that so many educators are already saying, Hey, you know, how do we make sure that students work with this and don't just depend on it and outsource their thinking?
[01:31:29] Lindsay Dworkin: It is such a good question. It's something we have talked a lot about internally and actually Andrew and I have had some really rich conversations around, I think. It is such, I think, a productive, but a tension, between wanting to make sure that if Gen AI and Power Tools are the way of the future, that students are comfortable with them, that they know how to use them, that they can leverage them to be successful, and that we don't sort of shortcut the essential process of, say, writing and editing and getting feedback and improving that ultimately leads to, um, Students not only to be better writers, but better thinkers.
I
[01:32:04] Lindsay Dworkin: mean, in the end of the day, like Gen AI does not have sort of the judgment, the organizational savvy, the relationships, all of the things that continue at least for the moment to be uniquely human. And I think making sure that we don't. I think short change is a great word. Students on the value of their education and of the critical thinking and the sort of application that yes, AI can solve this problem for you, but it's not about, you know, the world knows the answer to this math problem.
That's not what this exercise is about. This exercise is about training students mind to think differently and similarly in writing. I think it is a huge issue. And I think actually that's one of the reasons why it is so important that teachers remain at the center and sort of are the marshallers of the AI tools, that they can be the judgment in classrooms day to day about how to navigate that relationship.
Because I think it's, I think that is one of the big questions before education system. And you know, I have two kids. My daughter is 12. She knows all about AI tools and, you know, we're navigating that in our own house, but I think that's happening in households and in classrooms all across the country.
So I think that is. It's a practical question. It's also a big policy question.
[01:33:15] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. I love the way you put it. You said, you know, the world knows the answer to this math question, but that's not really why you're doing it. You're doing it to improve your skills. That's a fantastic sort of litmus test for, for AI.
It's like, does the world know the answer? Because anything the world does the answer for. So does Claude, and so does Gemini. Right, but
[01:33:32] Lindsay Dworkin: think about like the number of generations of students we've had learn their multiplication tables. I mean, we don't have them do that because we have a shortage of people who know multiplication tables.
We do that because it's the experience of learning what multiplication is and means. And, and I think something, I mean, and with math in particular is the whole other topic about just how it sort of, you know, Refined your ability to think critically and logically in ways that improve your ability to learn and operate across lots of subjects.
So I think there's so much going on here and something we need to be really thoughtful.
[01:34:03] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and that focus on sort of the underlying skills the actual critical thinking skills the potentially, you know computational skills But some of the things that are not Yes, you could outsource some of this to AI, but having some certain foundational, at least level of understanding of how to write, of how to calculate, of how to think about math problems or science problems or formulate hypotheses, you know, there's some set of things that we're all trying to figure out exactly what it is, but you know, that is absolutely essential for students of all ages.
Of all times, no matter how good the technology is, you need, you need some foundational level of durable skills throughout. And I think, you know, we're all started really trying to focus on that. So let's talk policy. We are here in an election week. We are recording this before the election, but it's likely to come out either on election day or the day after.
So people listening to this may be in a very intense mood, depending on the results. Let's, you know, You are a senior vice president of policy. You pay a lot in government affairs. You pay a ton of attention to the policy landscape. What do you see, you know, without getting into super details or anything super partisan, but you know, what do you see as some of the differences between what might happen based on this election?
Do you see that, are there particular areas of education policy that people can expect to change based on who wins?
[01:35:19] Lindsay Dworkin: Oh my. Holy moly. That's a question. Well, I actually, you know, generative AI is so new. We are at the bleeding edge of particularly the federal policy involvement in this space. And so I think there is, I think the main differences in approach across the parties tend to be how much the federal government should be leaning in on regulation around, you know, particularly around student data privacy, you know, et cetera.
And also I think to what extent. There should be insistence on the role of educators and other sort of in school leaders in the A. I. Tools that develop. But but I think in good news, there is actually still unlike almost any other issue, a fair amount of agreement about where things sit and what would be useful to the field.
You know, we spent we talked to the administration. We talked to the leadership in sort of both parties in Congress and on the key committees all the time. And I just have been really impressed about how thoughtful the conversations have been. And I think the big themes that I actually think will continue regardless of who wins are, you know, one, sort of how do the current federal laws that govern like student data privacy and things apply in generative AI and like, you know, what would be Various, you know, are there additional regulations or guidance or things that need to be issued to make that clear?
I think there's a huge bipartisan effort around teacher support around like, you know, AI literacy for educators, providing teachers the right tools and training. I mean, it was great news to me that actually educators feel really confident in their use of technology. I think the pace is so fast that we need to stay on top of that as a system.
And then I think there's generally. You know, a real need for like, uh, highlighting of good, valuable use cases of Gen AI. I mean, I still do think we, and you know, particularly we have some audiences more than others, we get like a, Oh my gosh, the robots are going to take over the world.
As
[01:37:22] Lindsay Dworkin: somebody who sometimes worries the robots are going to take over the world.
I have deep sympathy for this, but I, but I think having the, I mean, this is why I like that from a, you know, Product perspective aside from a policy perspective why I love the writable and the class craft examples Yeah why I love examples from other organizations doing similar work because I think being able to tell a Tangible story for non ed tech bonks about here's what this could actually do Here's what it could mean because I think there's been a surge of concern for this administration.
I think about You know, we really don't want to be displacing teachers. We really need the teacher student relationship to remain at the center. I've actually heard no one disagree with that on either side of the aisle, which is great. Exactly how we would go, you know, whether we lean into regulation or showcasing best practice probably changes based on who wins.
But I do think that actually the more we as an industry for all, you know, little entrepreneurs, all the way up to big, you know, ed tech giants like HMH can do is actually say here, this, like, here's how this can really add value. Here are some stories, whether it's our products or someone else's, like there is a really powerful case to make for why this can be transformative.
And to the conversation we were just having. We need to be really thoughtful about, yes, the safety privacy issues for kids. Yes, about student data and what's happening to it. And also about protecting the student educational experience and the integrity of the educational journey so that AI is not displacing some of the, you know, critical thinking muscles that need to develop like all the way through a suit cage 12 education that I do think if we just, we can't outsource education to AI, it really needs to be there too.
Support teachers and helping students on that journey.
[01:39:03] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, fantastic answer. I thought that you covered a huge amount of ground about some of the areas in which people agree, which the two sort of polarized parties in the U. S. agree and a couple of ones where they don't and how some of the downstream effects of that, especially as you say, around federal, you know, the role of federal government in education versus state governments or local governments making policy in terms of curriculum in terms of, you know, what's allowed in terms of data privacy.
Yeah. Fantastic answer. And I think that was really edifying for me and our listeners. And yes, I also just want to say a big, you know, plus one to that idea of we need to be highlighting more positive use cases. This is something I've been beating the drum on for a long time on this podcast is that, you know, we're going to start seeing a drumbeat of some pretty scary stories just because this technology is so powerful, but we haven't yet begun the drumbeat of these amazing stories.
You know, the things, the students who finished college, Using AI when they were 15, the students who invented something new, the students who, you know, found people who found an interest group all over the world and did something amazing together, these things are happening, but I don't think as an industry, we've quite found where they are happening and been able to amplify them enough.
So I hope that's something who'd Mifflin might, you know, take the lead on.
[01:40:10] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, I could not agree with you more. And actually, I think on an encouraging note, we have been asked by, you know, congressional leaders, leaders in the administration to do just that to say, please bring us use cases because I think there without those positive stories, there will be a gravitational pull toward the robots are taking over.
This is scary. We need to clamp down and regulate. And while clearly we need Thank you. protections for all of the things we just talked about, letting there be some room to run with some of the innovation, I think is also really important. So I think that's sort of the, we need the positive side in addition to what are the, you know, ways we need to make sure everybody's protected.
And, and, you know, cause it's, I mean, it's just non determinative outcomes, which is what makes gender divide so exciting. You know, unknown for everyone.
[01:40:59] Alex Sarlin: Great. I really hope that that begins to happen. It's, it's a exciting time. And I know there are amazing things happening. I mean, as you mentioned, as you found in your report, 50 percent of educators are using generative AI, 75 percent say it's saving them time at least, and almost a hundred percent, 97 percent say that they're able to use technology for effective instruction.
If you put those numbers together, There are probably some pretty amazing things happening in the classrooms around generative AI, just getting those out of the classrooms and into the newspapers and into the public consciousness is, uh, I think an important thing to do right now.
[01:41:30] Lindsay Dworkin: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and we're looking to be helpful in that.
So certainly in, you know, forums like this one, but I think we are in so many classrooms across America that we are always looking for stories from our partners, from teachers and trying to sort of bring those to light on through all of the various channels we have. So we will do that and we will send good ones your way.
[01:41:48] Alex Sarlin: Thank you. Yeah, please do. I would absolutely love to see them and amplify them. Lindsay Dworkin is the SVP of Policy and Government Affairs at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the giants of both educational publishing and EdTech. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech. EdTech insiders.
[01:42:04] Lindsay Dworkin: My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
[01:42:06] Alex 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 EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on substack.
