.png)
Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
How Schools Can Use Data and AI to Improve Teaching at Scale with Matt Kennard of BetterLesson
Matt Kennard is the CEO of BetterLesson (which offers High-quality K-12 professional development for educators and administrators, ensuring successful districtwide implementation of HQIM.) and former CFO & Head of Operations for LearnZillion, a K-12 digital core curriculum provider. At LearnZillion, he oversaw the expansion of curricular offerings through partnerships with leading OER curriculum providers and led the company's sale to Weld North Education. Previously, Matt led strategic M&A activity for iHeartMedia as the Director of Liquidity and Corporate Development. With a background in finance, strategy, and technology, Matt has held roles at Banc of America Securities, Investcorp Technology Partners, Rackspace, and TJX Companies. He holds a B.A. from Yale University in History and Political Science. Matt found his way into edtech in 2017 based on his desire to utilize his hard-earned expertise to build incredible businesses that make a difference in the lives of students and educators.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The impact of High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) on K-12 education.
- How structured professional learning improves teacher retention and student success.
- The role of AI and data-driven decision-making in optimizing education systems.
- Why schools must embrace Career and Technical Education (CTE) and skills-based learning.
- How educators are regaining control in shaping the future of EdTech.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:28] Matt’s journey from finance to leading Better Lesson in professional learning.
[00:05:47] How Better Lesson helps schools implement effective teacher development.
[00:09:03] The HQIM movement and its role in improving curriculum quality.
[00:11:42] The shift towards skills-based learning and Career and Technical Education.
[00:16:36] Better Lesson’s acquisition of ABLE to enhance scheduling and resource use.
[00:24:21] Why data-driven decision-making is critical for education leaders.
[00:30:01] How AI and machine learning can improve education without increasing workload.
[00:36:52] The growing influence of educators in shaping the future of EdTech.
😎 Stay updated with Edtech Insiders!
- Follow our Podcast on:
- Sign up for the Edtech Insiders newsletter.
- Follow Edtech Insiders on LinkedIn!
🎉 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.
[00:00:00] Matt Kennard: You know, at BL, we think a lot about how do we support every level of that transition because you can't just give someone three days of in person workshops and hope that they're going to be ready to implement a new, more difficult curriculum. And that can be for a variety of reasons. Maybe I have a number of new teachers, right?
Those are. Vulnerable populations when you're going through that type of shift, perhaps I have a number of new principles, right? Well, principles are the instructional leader of a building. If we're not thinking about sustained support for them, you'll have trouble with implementation. So we've really done our work to focus on how do you implement with fidelity across every layer of adoption that's required from the superintendent to the classroom.
[00:00:51] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. Funding rounds to impact AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech
[00:01:06] Ben Kornell: Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar. And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel.
Early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
[00:01:30] Alex Sarlin: Matt Kennard is the CEO of Better Lesson, which offers high quality K 12 professional development for educators and administrators, ensuring successful district wide implementation. Of high quality instructional materials HQ. I am he's also the former CFO and head of operations for learn zillion, a K 12 digital core curriculum provider at learn zillion.
He oversaw the expansion of curricular offerings through partnerships with leading curriculum providers and led the company's sale to weld north education. Previously, Matt led strategic M and a activity for I hard media as the director of liquidity and corporate development. With a background in finance, strategy, and technology, Matt has held roles at Bank of America Securities, InvestCorp Technology Partners, Rackspace, and TJX Companies.
He holds a BA from Yale University in History and Political Science. Matt Kinnard, welcome to EdTech Insiders.
[00:02:28] Matt Kennard: Hey, Alex, it's great to be here. Really excited about the conversation. Future professional learning, that's an easy one to get up early for. The coffee is going. Ready for an exciting conversation.
[00:02:39] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, yeah, keep that coffee flowing. I'm really excited to have this conversation as well. You are a real EdTech veteran. All sorts of interesting things, you know, before we get into exactly what better lesson is all about, give us a little bit of your ed tech journey. What brought you into the field? You weren't originally in ed tech.
What brought you into the field? And what brought you to the CEO? Better lesson position?
[00:02:59] Matt Kennard: I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a T shirt made that says late in life ed tech here here as fast as I can. Yeah. You know, I spent a lot of my career in private equity and investment banking. I've been an investor and advisor and run M& A for some larger businesses along with strategic finance.
I think what really brought me into the ed tech world was a desire to think about how I could use my skillset, you know, for the greater good. How can we continue to build really effective businesses that are for profit that I think meet real commercial needs for school districts. Whether it's curriculum or human capital management scheduling on down the line.
And how do we really think about being true partners to educators? And it was a really exciting opportunity for me. And I'm going to be forever grateful to Eric Westendorf and Alex Garrier, along with Torrey Patterson and the OWL team who took a shot on me as a CFO and head of ops at LearnZillion and.
After spending a good amount of time in the digital core curriculum space, the one thing that was pretty clear to me was, if we don't spend time in what still feels like a very human endeavor, we are missing an opportunity, I think, to create the amazing classroom environment that not only works for students, improves their outcomes.
But it's also a place where people want to be, they want to teach, they want to spend time being an educator is incredibly difficult at any level from classroom teacher to superintendent to classroom assistant to co teacher doesn't really matter. We're asking a lot out of those folks. How do we think about real job embedded, professionalized support that exists throughout their career from induction to retirement?
And so it's been this fascinating eight year journey for me. It's a hard puzzle to solve, but one of those puzzles that if we can solve it. It's going to be pretty cool to see what the longterm outcomes are. A
[00:05:03] Alex Sarlin: hundred percent. We've been covering the teacher shortage and some of the malaise in the education industry over the last couple of years that various surveys have come out.
And I think, you know, a lot of people feel like professionalization and respect and sort of making the teaching profession, one that people really. Enjoy and embrace and can really bring their full selves to is key and professional development and sort of making sure educators have exactly what they need to succeed in the classroom is a big part of that.
One thing that strikes me about your answer is it combines the real human elements of teaching with what I know is a really data driven approach to education that you use at Better Lesson. So tell us about Better Lesson, what it does and how you sort of meet that vision you just laid out.
[00:05:47] Matt Kennard: I think the thing that's interesting is.
We are in a position today with digitized tools and data that we can really build strong data driven, repeatable, job embedded supports for educators. And at BetterLesson, our goal is to really think about what are the goals of a What are the goals of a school leader? What are the goals of a state education leader, a DOE, a legislature, an educational service center, a regional servicing center.
And what does that then mean for the adults in the building? Because at the end of the day, professional learning really is the catalyst for whatever initiative you're going to try. We can talk about digitizing curriculum. We talked about going one to one. All of those things only matter in the context of The individuals were entrusting to then turn that into an educational experience for students and so a better lesson.
We really think about how can we be that professional learning support for a district for a school across all of the various lenses of work, whether it is teacher recruitment and induction. Right. How do you do that at scale effectively? So folks feel like they have real deep supports in that first couple of years in the classroom.
And, you know, we do that through things like our partnership with TFA or working with school districts to help them build induction programs to what your academic approach and classroom approach are going to look like, because how you think about building inclusive classrooms and how you think about your student.
Centered academic approach then feeds into the hottest thing in the world. Right? Which is what's the HQ? I am. You're going to adopt. And how does that really have to work in your classroom? Right? And then we think a lot about things like differentiation assessment and pathways. Especially today, where I think we are smartly starting to realize that four year college is not the only place that a student can land and be a successful human.
How are we thinking about filling CTE pathways? How are we thinking about helping kids identify their areas of passion where they can be successful and utilize what can sometimes seem like. Random skills to actually equate to longer term careers, many of which we don't even know what they will look like today.
And that's, you know, it's worth this huge inflection point. So at BL, we really spend our time building repeatable, usable pathways and packages of professional learning that help folks really teach at the top of their license and for leaders orchestrate an environment of continuous improvement, not perfection, continuous improvement.
To help support their educators as they improve their practice.
[00:08:29] Alex Sarlin: I love that phrase, teach to the top of their license. That's a good one. So you mentioned two big areas in there that I'd love to double click on. The first is the HQIM. So for those who may not know that acronym, that's High Quality Instructional Materials.
And it refers to sets of curricula that are sort of evidence based, that are really comprehensive, that have all sorts of Powerful learning tools baked into them and that are made available. HQIM was actually core to both LearnZillion's model and BetterLessons model. Can you tell us about the HQIM movement and how a BetterLesson uses HQIM in professional learning?
[00:09:03] Matt Kennard: Absolutely. You know, I had the benefit of starting at LearnZillion where we were doing digital core curriculum. And actually our first set of distribution partnerships were with illustrative math. And you know, education, which were kind of 2 of the 1st gate Schusterman over deck funded open educational resources.
And the reality is open educational resources are wonderful. They still need to be commercialized for scale deployment at a district level. You still have to print the books. You still have to think about how you are managing that digital implementation product training and support for the lift and shift from curriculum a to.
A new curriculum, but the beauty of HQ, I am, and I think the beauty of the movement is we've really built some voice and choice for administrators to tailor a wide variety of highly rated curricula. And not just highly rated for their pedagogy, but also for their deployability and their usability and effectiveness in instruction.
And, you know, when I was at LearnZillion, Ed Reports was just getting going. We were kind of the first, like, you know, four to five green rated curricula. There are now dozens of green rated curricula. It's actually been a rising tide. Across all ships. And it means that like, you know, if I'm an instructional leader or a chief academic officer, I can think about what is the need of my district.
I can go back to thinking about my academic approach and my inclusive classroom approach and pick the green rated curricula that makes the most sense. For me, and I love that because it's kind of ended, you know, if we think about back to the tech world, right, there used to be the phrase never get fired for hiring IBM with a similar feeling with the big three.
Now, the nice thing is the big 3 of all stepped up to now create green rated curricula. And so I think that pressure has made sure that wherever you purchase, you're now purchasing much higher quality materials than maybe where you were 15 years ago.
[00:11:02] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's a great point that the HKIM movement was really intended to sort of raise the bar, not just for the curricula they were.
Making, but for the entire industry to sort of define and, you know, what quality curriculum really looks like and how it can be deployed and implemented effectively. And sort of everybody has tried to raise their standards accordingly. The other thing I wanted to dig into, because I think it was, it's such a huge topic is what you're mentioning about career technical education, about skills based training, about the sort of change around the college for all movement that we've been seeing over the last few years.
I know you have a lot of thinking about this. Tell us more about you, how you are thinking and how sort of you've seen the field evolve in relationship to that movement.
[00:11:42] Matt Kennard: Well, it's interesting because I believe that The second half of your previous question actually ties into the first of this, which is the hard part about HQIM.
It is a more pedagogically difficult experience to orchestrate properly. You know, at BL, we think a lot about how do we support every level of that transition, because you can't just give someone three days of in person workshops and hope that they're going to be ready to implement a new More difficult curriculum and that can be for a variety of reasons.
Maybe I have a number of new teachers, right? Those are vulnerable populations when you're going through that type of shift. Perhaps I have a number of new principles, right? Well, principles are the instructional leader of a building. If we're not thinking about sustained support for them. You'll have trouble with implementation.
So we've really done our work to focus on how do you implement with fidelity across every layer of adoption that's required from the superintendent to the classroom teacher that then ties into, I think, the longer term goals for that district. For instance, if you're looking at some sort of integrated pathway for math.
And you want to open up, you know, career and technical readiness type of programs around aeronautics or aerospace or engineering, right? Thinking about how you then tailor some of those specific choices to help kids effectively route into those areas based on choice becomes a part of that question. And so I think that we're really excited.
About where that takes us, and I think that that's something that we can do a lot to help support in the future.
[00:13:27] Alex Sarlin: I really like how you're thinking about, you know, curricular assets like math and English language arts curriculum and the skills based pathways to employment, because I think often those are in very different conversations.
And I love that you're sort of thinking about how they go together and how you can route students from traditional formal curriculum in. schools to the types of skills they're going to need for various types of outcomes in life. So tell us about how Better Lesson thinks about that kind of routing and how you put together the pieces.
[00:13:58] Matt Kennard: Well, I think that we have spent a lot of time building our professional learning thoughtfully to support educators to, you know, sometimes have what feels like 15 thoughts running around in their head around the different needs for the kids in their classroom. But one of the other things and, you know, we're pretty excited that we were able to do this is we have now acquired and joined forces with ABLE because we actually feel so strongly about this that we want to be able to include things like.
Scheduling analysis, not only for equity purposes and ensuring that you're getting kids into the right pathways for their own choices, but also to think about resource allocation, right? Because I think often you get carried from a scheduling perspective by the inertia of what was. As opposed to thinking about as we make these progressive changes, as we think about getting kids into these different pathways, what does that mean at a 6th grade level to be putting folks down a road where as they start to express preference, they can start thinking about different offerings and get the work done.
That they need the support and the classroom experiences that they need to be successful along the way. And so we're really excited to add able into the fold of what we do, because we believe that ability to do analytics around scheduling help you think about resource allocation goes hand in hand with then the work you're doing for professional learning to support those resources in the form of educators.
In achieving that vision, and when you think about implementation of a curricula, when you think about building time for professional learning, that is ultimately a scheduling question. And if you're looking around, you're saying, okay, hey, we want to do X, Y, and Z from CTE pathway perspective.
Understanding that you have, say, 10 half filled Algebra I classrooms, when maybe you need five, but there can be now resourcing for five additional roles elsewhere that makes sense, whether it's through job retraining or it is, you know, thinking about a different allocation of resources to meet those goals.
Those things together create a very powerful set of tools, and we love the idea that we can reduce some of the cognitive load for district leaders and state leaders who are trying to think about not only how do we build effective schedules to achieve our goals, but how do we then support the educators and achieving that?
How do we get the right curriculum in place but ensure they can actually be implemented properly? And, you know, we're trying to take a more holistic look. very much. At the work of a district to be successful,
[00:16:36] Alex Sarlin: that's exciting news, and I know that's that's sort of hot off the presses announcements. That's really, really exciting to hear.
And I think it does really complement your vision of education as a really sort of infrastructural data driven system scheduling. And the logistics of how education is actually delivered is such an important part of how the school system works, but it's one that I think a lot of people outside of the system, including a lot of EdTech entrepreneurs, don't always appreciate how complex it is to actually put together all the pieces of an educational journey, of an educational Institution like a school or especially a district or a state, you know, it strikes me as I listen to you talk about this, I feel like you have a different way of speaking about education than I think a lot of guests that I've had in the past.
And I'd love to sort of dive into it because I think it's really worthwhile. I think it brings a really different perspective than really often here. You know, a lot of people think of education a little bit of a gauzy lens of like, Oh, the inspiring teacher. And how do you sort of light the fire for students?
And I know you believe in all of that, but I think you also really think very deeply. Systematically about education, sort of as an industry, and that might come from your background in finance or in, you know, working in systems outside of education, but you're sort of very good at putting together the pieces of what does the system need and what infrastructure is needed to facilitate maximum outcome.
Effectiveness and efficiency in that system. I don't know if you see yourself that way, but I hear it and I've interviewed a lot of people and I feel like you have a very unusual and I think unique way to look at it. Tell us a little bit about how you come to that and how you think it affects the Better Lessons delivery and product.
[00:18:11] Matt Kennard: You know, it's interesting that you mentioned that. You know, I was a product of private school education in Massachusetts. I went to a very small all boys school called Roxbury Latin. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Roxbury Latin, it's been around, I think it's our 380th year, right? The school predates the American revolution.
And one thing that's been very true about RL's educational approach is it is transparently built around how do we monitor and systematize. A great educational experience. And I think that you spend six years there. And once you get past the Latin and the Greek and the French, and you get past being part of a class of 42 boys, you start to see that they leave it very apparent what they're trying to do, whether it is.
Marking period six times a year, whether it's advisor letters, six times a year. And by the way, you knew when those are coming out, you knew whether you hide from your parents or, or, you know, hold up good work here. But the idea was supporting boys and in the schools, supporting boys for a life of public service.
And when you see. Are around six years of a group that is so clear and transparent is always stuck in my head that one, there's a resourcing gap that allows RL to do that, that others can't do it, but there are ways to think about it as a system of learning as opposed to an individual experience that really do matter.
Right? And. I think my goal here in coming into education was to say, you know, 1, I've been a beneficiary of a great education, and I do deeply appreciate that. But 2, we can use data, right? And RL collected a ton of data on us, but we can clearly use data and we can use systems to help folks With stuff that's going to be 99 percent useful no matter what, right?
And when we think about things like systematizing professional learning, well, one of the lessons that we can draw is if you look at other industries, whether it's medicine or law or others, continuing education plus job embedded resources are really important because no one is actually expected to know everything about their profession the day that they join.
I think sometimes when we think about what we offer to teachers in terms of real professionalized support, we fall short. We also don't necessarily tie, and I think this is probably one of PD's cardinal sins, is like really tying the work you did from a professional development perspective to the ultimate, you know, outcome of Guski, which is Did you improve student performance and did you put in place the systems to ensure that you have sustained change?
We talked a lot about NPS scores. You talk a lot about satisfaction, but at the end of the day, what happens for your students has to actually be the number one measure of success, not. Was it satisfying by making it satisfying? I think you go a long way towards ensuring success, but it's like to that end, not an end unto itself.
And so I think that my viewpoint is probably a result of having had the benefit of being a professional in different places, but also being in such a transparently open educational practice where they told you exactly what they were going to do. And then they did it. And it worked and, you know, RL is an interesting place.
It's not a school that is just, you know, a prep school at 60, 000 a year. You know, it has a commitment to need blind admission. It recruits at least 50 percent of its boys from within the Boston area. You know, it is. Worked hard to use its endowment to keep its tuition lower than its peer schools like Exeter and Andover and others.
And literally when you walk into the hall, you got two things that you see. One is the dead teach the living, right? And two, to whom much has been given, much is expected. But I think for all of us who have been beneficiaries of great education, regardless of where we sit, whether you choose to volunteer at your local district, or you choose to make a complete career shift and come into education.
You can bring value to this place with your differing experiences. And I think that working to improve the educational practice of the United States is the work of everyone who's received a phenomenal education and can bring that perspective back in and be humble enough to listen to the folks who've also been in it their entire career while being confident enough to also offer suggestions around what, you know, maybe observations that exist outside of education.
That really can work. And I think particularly when we're talking about professional learning and the educator and the adults in the building, right? Like educators are professionals. Like you're not just born to do it. Like people are born to do lots and lots of things and we still train them. Why we think that educators are worthy of lower pay and less support than that.
Right? Like that's a criminal act, in my opinion, and one that, you know, if you hear. A lot of steel and determination. My voice. It's like we make no greater investment than in the next generation of students. And if you want to get political about it, a democracy only exists with a good education system.
So, you know, you got to take your pick on on what matters to you. But if what matters to you is a long term sustainment of this experiment and people being able to make great choices for themselves, their families and their communities. Start with your schools,
[00:23:55] Alex Sarlin: an amazing answer. And I think it's so meta that, you know, you attribute some of your public service, your commitment to education and your sort of way of seeing the world, your systematic thought process to your education system.
And you want to pass that on and pass on some of that inspirational mindset, changing education to others through educators and through lots of different techniques through better less than that. So that was a, that was really inspiring and a really beautiful answer.
[00:24:21] Matt Kennard: I'd be loathe to not conclude that answer with, my parents are also pretty good, you know, I think that is, it's funny when I told them I was moving into education, I think they've always been proud of me, but I think that was probably the first time they looked at me and said, okay, we're really glad to see that that's where you're going to spend your time.
Oh, that's so nice. Wow.
[00:24:39] Alex Sarlin: Oh, that's beautiful. Let me zoom out a little bit because I think this structured approach is so interesting and this idea of sort of. Routing and supporting students in all these transitions between their, you know, K 12 to dual enrollment, if needed to potentially college or career, you know, we see in edtech so many and education systems, so many sort of drop offs for students, places where they can sort of lose track of what they're trying to accomplish or where they suddenly.
Lose all the supports that were surrounding them and now are out sort of in the world, having to figure it on their own or with their families. I'd love to hear how you think about that aspect. You know, how can professional learning? How can scheduling? How can the edtech sector sort of? help create systems where the students are never sort of left to handle things on their own and sort of drop out of the system.
And we see that in so many ways.
[00:25:32] Matt Kennard: Yeah, I think the good news is we know a lot of those drop off points. A good example, right? Algebra 1 completion is like a very good tell as to whether or not you're going to complete high school. I think that we know the drop offs. Where I am really excited is thinking about how we can use data to track each individual student.
It's actually not, the numbers are actually not big enough to make it an uncountable thing. Like, this is not all the grains of sand on the beach that we're trying to track, right? We're trying to track millions of students for sure, but that is a trackable thing when you break it down to a district. To a school building level, I think one of the things that we are excited about certainly with the capacities of able plus better lesson is not only do we have access to student information systems, we can understand where people sit and how they're routing and what that looks like, and can build an effective picture for district administrator.
Look, look at, we can build really good professional learning around the goals of scheduling, and then we can support it with real data. Um, and I think that really, yeah. As we have talked to educators and we've, we've really gone deeper into this work, what folks are asking for is usable systems, not an onslaught of additional numbers.
And so this is where machine learning data science and AI and predictive models, right? Like, let's put the, like, sky net worry. To the side, right? And not worry about a T 1000, you know, bounding after me. What I am worried about is can we use these to reduce cognitive load for good decision making at a district level?
And I think we can use those tools and a really good understanding of students based on where they sit. To help them understand their own pathways and help them understand the choices that are available to them. I think that we have spent so much time, particularly on the everyone needs to go to 4 year college.
And if you are now kind of moving off of that pathway or expressing different preferences. You know, we're struggling to find the next place for you, rather than saying, Hey, that's interesting is you express those preferences. It actually lines up to this, this and this, or we can think about dual enrollment, or you are showing, you know, advanced expertise in these areas.
How do we build into them, but also support you having a well rounded education. Right. We can do all of this using data. I think the question is going to become this one. Can we get over our own fears of using machine learning and AI? And I think we get over our own fears on that by using them responsibly.
Right. And not thinking of them as like, you know, they're tools. They're not solutions themselves. Right. It's, it's tools toward a human effort. But I think as we then start to look at it, we can start to also be honest with ourselves. Around did we structure our day, our building, our schedule, our offerings.
Around the express needs of our students and how can we think about when we adopt a curriculum or we think about hiring needs, right? Really start building around that long term strategic goal. And can we get more specific with what those strategic goals are? Right? And I think that at the end of the day, this isn't rocket science and it's not a new set of things.
We do optimization like this in our everyday life. People do this when they're contemplating getting a new dishwasher, right? And I want to reduce water. I want to have cleaner dishes and I want to reduce my time spent. It's a poor analogy, you know, I can probably do better, but I would just say we make those types of optimization choices on a frequent basis, helping district leaders who have a flood of things that they have to account for helping school leaders who have a flood of things they have to account for helping classroom educators.
We're looking at 24 to 35 kids a day. In their classroom, right and multiple times a day, helping them break that down, I think, is really important. I think digital core curriculum has shown us an example of what that can look like, right? When we think about things like. Really good formative assessment, digitized curricula, things like the I ready assessments, which are really helpful for teachers understanding where people sat in the mastery curve, but we can start to use those as examples of how we can provide really good job embedded supports that solve problems for people.
[00:30:01] Alex Sarlin: I love the metaphor you're bringing up of optimization and the role that I'm, I'm hearing at least if I'm understanding correctly about AI as a tool and machine learning as a tool to make sense of, yes, not all the grains of the sand, but still some pretty sizable data sets when you're thinking of the whole district, all the students, all the instructors, all the specialists, all the schedules, all the hours of the day.
There's a lot of factors there, right? So I love it. The idea of machine learning to make sense of the complexities of the system and then give recommendations for optimization. And there could be many different, you know, recommendations for optimization. I love the example you gave previously of like, we have 10 half filled algebra classes.
Why, you know, maybe we can have five and then we take the five educators who are doing algebra and what would be the best use of their time, both for their own professional learning and for the students. And. It's the kind of thing where, you know, making a decision like that. If you had three weeks to sit and crunch the numbers, you could do it.
But school leaders and district leaders don't have three weeks to make decisions like that. The idea of using machine learning to put together the data and recommend different ways to optimize feels like a really new and very compelling vision of what education should look like and something we see in
[00:31:12] Matt Kennard: other fields, as you mentioned.
You know, add one more thing to it. The nice thing about data is it helps us see through what I think are often Very heartfelt and difficult conversations that we have about our educational practice, right? And like, I think that we are spending a lot of time persecuting the other, right? And like, I don't have a particular political approach to this, other than to say, I think we can be unified regardless of side of the aisle or professed beliefs that students leaving high school.
With the ability to self sustain with the promise of a career that feels fulfilling and exciting with the ability to be positive contributors to their communities to build a life for themselves, like, that is something I think we can all unite around being a pretty good thing. And I think that when we start using data and analytics to talk about how we make our systems better, as opposed to.
What are often very, like, strongly believed and heartfelt, but ultimately not data driven conversations, we start to find areas of commonality and need and I think about supporting educators. It's really important that if you're looking at a student in your classroom is expressing X, Y, and Z, I'd love to be able to see what the other 150, 000 students who are in that exact same position have been trying and doing and optimizing outcomes for that student.
That's a data question. So our ability to use real data science and the, like, cacophony of data that actually exists today already, and not just test scores, but attendance records, student satisfaction, discipline referrals, right? Like, we have a lot of ways to assess the health efficacy of our districts.
Let's start using those to cut through what I think can often be. A cloud of conversation that's not necessarily driving towards a long term outcome.
[00:33:15] Alex Sarlin: It's a really compelling vision of an education system, and I think it feels, I love the way you put, you know, it's a way to cut through some of the noise, some of the finger pointing that we see really every day in the education system.
And, you know, it strikes me, one of the things that whenever I talk to anybody who thinks about apprenticeships, The first thing they always say is it's one of the only things that is absolutely across the aisle agreed upon, but States with totally different political regimes all want apprenticeships, not that they can all do it, but they all want it.
They all believe in it. They all think that there's something there. And I think, you know, it's similar to what you're saying. The idea of trying to have the best outcomes for learners that make their lives successful, make them have successful careers that they want, and they feel they really like doing and sort of helping them on the path, making education, truly.
Meet the needs of students is something that everybody wants, even if we don't always agree how to get there. But if the data shows very clear patterns, then maybe you get out of some of the sort of political and ideological fights.
[00:34:16] Matt Kennard: You know, I think there's also a piece to that where. You know, you mentioned apprenticeship, and I really like that, right, as we are training teachers, giving them more practical experience in classrooms, helping them to spend time while earning their degrees in classrooms, you know, one of the things I applaud, you know, I mentioned our relationship with TFA, we're doing coaching for the TFA core.
I applaud TFA as an altered organization saying like, Hey, actually coaching needs to exist from day one. Of induction and be available to folks in their first 2 years as core members, because individual coaching is a way to ensure that practices become deeply embedded, right? And so I think there's a lot of realization that these tools and systems can be really helpful.
And so, you know, that apprenticeship. Thing really matters, right? Because you can actually have someone who's invested in you. But I don't think it's a shocker. You know, I came up in the finance world. Finance is really one of the last apprenticeship businesses that are left, right? You join after college and investment bank or a private equity fund.
No one expects you to be anything other than like a good attitude and a smart person, and they'll figure out the rest with you. But I think that, you know, and that's been a wildly successful industry. I think, you know, we can have our arguments, but it's created, you know, a number of really successful professionals.
I think that being able to build some more of those tenants into education and understanding that, like, a lot of it is not a classroom experience. It is a. Actual on the ground experience. And we can support that with great PL coaching and support and observation to help you better be better at your role, man, that opens up a world of possibility.
[00:36:01] Alex Sarlin: It really does. I'm feeling very inspired by this conversation about the potential for combining some of the techniques and nuances that we take from other fields and, you know, implementing them in education and really. Systematizing it in a way that I don't think we've really been able to do, frankly, in the past of really trying to put the pieces together to serve educators and students alike.
I know you think about a lot of different aspects of the education landscape, but one thing I ask guests who I think think very broadly is, do you see a trend in the ed tech world? You've been in it for almost a decade. That's coming right now that you feel like maybe isn't even quite in the zeitgeist.
It's coming. It's something that you're sort of hearing signals of, but you think that our listeners might want to keep an eye on when it comes to any aspect of the education system or professional learning and what we've talked about today.
[00:36:52] Matt Kennard: You know, I think the biggest thing for me is we are seeing a world in which we're letting educators lead again.
And I think that, you know, one of the things that I'm very cautious about, I have strong beliefs loosely held. I think that I spent a lot of my time talking to educators and researching because I understand that I also haven't spent 30 years in the field. I haven't seen all of the changes and some of these are cyclical things that happen all the time and some of them I think are.
Are real changes. And I think if there's one thing that I am really excited about is I think that we are opening more space for educators to lead again, express their choice and voice. But I also think those educators are also getting a really good grasp on the tools available. And as we continue to see generational shifting, as we continue to see new offerings and simplification, I think of what we're trying to do in the field, those things together will continue to allow that educator voice to shine.
And I think anyone who's leading an ed tech company that is not starting with the idea. That you need to talk to educators and understand their pain points, right? And be able to then use data to determine how you can more effectively address those pain points. You're missing an opportunity. And I think that sometimes in ed tech we've moved so fast we haven't asked what the educator needed.
[00:38:17] Alex Sarlin: That's a great point. And I think something I feel like I've been guilty of myself and some of my product roles. I just, you know, they always say, get out of the building, talk to the end user, you know, find those needs and those pain points and I try, but you know, things change so much, but I think that's a really powerful note to end on that idea of.
Educators getting back into the driver's seat and the tooling available, being able to sort of let them have more, as you call it, voice and choice. That's really exciting vision. So thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. This is Matt canard, who is the CEO of. Better lesson. Thanks for being with us here on the EdTech Insiders podcast.
Thanks, Alex. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more EdTech Insider, subscribe to the free EdTech Insiders newsletter on Substack.
