Week in EdTech 8/20/25: GPT-5 Fallout & GPT-6 Memory, Blackstone Exits $6B Cognita Deal, Pearson AI Study Prep & More! Feat. Brittany Miller of Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting, Jahque Bryan-Gooden of My CRE Buddy & Jim Marggraff of Kibeam Learning

Join hosts Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell as they dive into the biggest headlines shaping the future of education technology, from AI breakthroughs to new models of learning challenges.

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:03:23] GPT-5 fallout and Altman’s vision for GPT-6
[00:08:14] AI risks: AGI fears, scams, misinformation
[00:14:37] Post-COVID learning gaps and inequities
[00:18:33] Students solving problems with AI
[00:21:42] AI updates from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Grammarly
[00:25:29] Higher ed: Minerva’s rise, enrollment, dropouts
[00:27:45] Micro-innovations from Stanford and student startups
[00:29:14] Funding shifts: early-stage gains, PE stress, Nintendo schools
[00:33:19] Cutting through AI hype cycles
[00:39:20] Schools banning phones for student wellness
[00:43:04] Big tech vs. local edtech visibility
[00:45:07] Blackstone exits $6B Cognita deal
[00:46:33] Pearson launches AI Study Prep 

Plus, special guests:
[00:47:43] Brittany Miller, CIO and Executive Director at the Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting, on edtech-school partnerships
[01:10:31] Jahque Bryan-Gooden, Founder of My CRE Buddy on culturally responsive teaching with AI
[01:20:00] Jim Marggraff, CEO and Founder  of Kibeam Learning on screen-free AI reading and learning tools

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Chapters

• 3:56 GPT-5 fallout and Altman’s vision for GPT-6
• 8:47 AI risks: AGI fears, scams, misinformation
• 15:10 Post-COVID learning gaps and inequities
• 19:06 Students solving problems with AI
• 22:15 AI updates from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Grammarly
• 26:02 Higher ed: Minerva’s rise, enrollment, dropouts
• 28:18 Micro-innovations from Stanford and student startups
• 29:47 Funding shifts: early-stage gains, PE stress, Nintendo schools
• 34:34 Cutting through AI hype cycles
• 40:35 Schools banning phones for student wellness
• 44:19 Big tech vs. local edtech visibility
• 46:22 Blackstone exits $6B Cognita deal
• 47:48 Pearson launches AI Study Prep
• 48:58 Brittany Miller, CIO and Executive Director at the Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting, on edtech-school partnerships
• 1:11:46 Jahque Bryan-Gooden, Founder of My CRE Buddy on culturally responsive teaching with AI
• 1:21:15 Jim Marggraff, CEO and Founder of Kibeam Learning on screen-free AI reading and learning tools

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben Kornell: It does seem to me that the opportunity in our space is much more from a funding standpoint, and this could be a philanthropic funder or from a venture capital funder earlier stage. It still seems like the middle stage companies are struggling because now you've got these big tech giants who have distribution and scale.

You've got the legacy players who have channel and distribution advantages, and there's a fast follower opportunity for most of those larger companies where if whatever you're doing is great, they can just. Copy it. And so it does seem to me that total volume of dollars might go down, but the volume of deals might go up and the impact might go up.

[00:00:42] Alex Sarlin: There's a lot of mental change we're gonna all have to go through to cope with the world in which we don't know what's real and what's not. I, I interviewed somebody yesterday who had a great way of putting it. He's somebody who does sort of documentary filmmaking for EdTech and he said, we're getting to a place where we're not gonna be able to trust our eyes and ears, so we'll have to trust our hearts and minds.

And I was like, that is a really good line and a very interesting way to look at this era. So I am afraid of that piece of like, and that could be said in both the sort of taste realm. It's like what's good? We have to think about what's good outside of just what's flashy or what's really animated. Well.

But we also have to think about what's real through a much more sort of humanistic lens that we're used to, and that's pretty scary. I agree with that.

Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact AI development across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech 

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.

[00:02:08] Ben Kornell: Hello, EdTech Insider listeners, it's Ben and Alex again with another weekend EdTech. We hope that you're all having a great start to the school year. Diving in diving, we at EdTech Insiders have been busy. As busy can be. Alex, what's going on in the pod? 

[00:02:24] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Well, we had a really great conversation with Drew Bent, who is an education lead at Anthropic about what they're doing for their study modes and their learning projects and how they're thinking about education.

We published a little bit about that in a recent newsletter, but that is going to come out as a full interview this week. We also had an awesome conversation with a whole slate of common sense privacy seal awardees that included. Magic school that included ClassDojo, that included Prodigy learning, some really, really interesting conversations about privacy and ai.

And then after that, talked to Arun Saigal from Thunkable, which does mobile app development for kids in school. So interesting. So constantly, so many fun conversations. And there's some great interviews this week as well on this week at EdTech. So it's been a blast. I just learned so much. We also have a webinar coming up at the end of this month, actually just about a week or so about disability and Neurodivergence in AI and in the next wave of EdTech.

It's gonna be really interesting. How about you, Ben? What is top of mind for you? 

[00:03:23] Ben Kornell: Well, we've got our Bay Area back to school, happy hour coming up in September. We're gonna be September 16th, Salesforce Tower. You know the spot. Last time we had people, not just from the Bay Area, but from all over the country, in fact, all over the world.

It was a great time, and thank you. Shout out to our co-hosts, Al Ventures, who are going to be putting that on with us. And then coming up, we have the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. They are doing an AI and education symposium that is coming November 4th and fifth. The fifth is the main day, so hold your calendars for November 5th.

Lots going on in the news. I will say Accelerator for Learning has been in the news. They've been doing deep dives on AI and neurodivergent students and students with disabilities. Lots of exciting things there, but I think what's really grabbed the headlines is Sam Altman and Microsoft's latest pronouncements about the future of ai.

I think it's probably a commonly held view that the GPT five rollout wasn't very good. And one of the big takeaways that Sam has been talking about is how attached people were to their prior models. We mentioned this in our last episode, and so now he's talking about GPT. Being more about longitudinal memory, remember user habits and so on.

I've also heard another theory, which is the GT five launch was also not so good because it reflected a big shift in the unit economic model of open AI where they're trying to save some money 'cause they're burning incredible sums of cash on a monthly basis. And they're actually, the GPT five rollout was a ratchet down of AI capability for most users.

What's your read on what Sam Altman was saying, where this is heading, and also the intersection with AI and learning? 

[00:05:18] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, OpenAI is finding itself in a very strange, I mean, probably unbelievably thrilling, but also a kind of a strange business position in that they're a new company.

They've only been around a few years. They were created by this sort of elite set of Silicon Valley rainmakers in ai, of course, but they're suddenly a massive, massive global business, massive, and they're making a huge amount of money as well as burning a huge amount of money. And I'm sure that they are starting to think about the business piece of it more than they might have at the very beginning, because I'm sure they were as surprised as anyone how quickly this took off as a era defining technology.

So it makes sense to me, I think with the sort of triaging, or they call it routing, the idea that. You can ask a question and it will not necessarily waste, quote unquote, the highest level tokens or the highest level model. API calls on a silly question, right? If you're like, what time is it? And it's like, I'm gonna ask an incredibly smart model and spend all this money and, and have an environmental impact, just to give you that answer.

That is a pretty silly thing that was sort of built into the GPT model as is. So I'm sure they probably thought carefully about this idea of how do we change the models around so that it's sort of more unified and it sends the right type of question. If you're asking something really complex that's very, that needs a huge amount of reasoning, a huge amount of thought, it should go to a more complicated and deeper model.

That said, they're also running right up against user expectations and the idea of shifting versions from one to another. Things that companies like. Apple and Google and IBM and Dell have dealt with for many, many years because as they sort of roll out new versions of the same product. So it's a little bit of sort of this pie in the sky meets the ground.

The thing that is really exciting to me from a learning perspective is this memory piece is so, came out this week that Sam Altman revealed that GPT six is going to focus more on memory capabilities, like you said, longitudinal user preferences, routines, personality quirks, and try to create more of a personalized interaction that actually changes based on the user.

I think that's very exciting from a learning perspective because that is where we start to get to that concept of. Precision learning where you don't just go to this thing and it just answers questions for you. You go to it and it knows you. It knows what you like, it knows what you care about. It knows what you're learning and how well you're learning it and what you're struggling with.

That is absolutely key. And we've published in the newsletter about basically you can't have personalized learning without good memory, and all these EdTech companies have been trying to figure it out on their own. But this idea of more long-term, deeper, more thoughtful memory framework about how it understands you, I think is gonna unlock a lot of different learning capabilities.

So I'm excited about that. I know you've been thinking about a GI and some of the cliffs that we might roll right off, off blindly. As a humanity, do you see this memory stuff as a pure positive or is it also a step in the path to problems? 

[00:08:14] Ben Kornell: Well, I mean, I think you and I are both techno optimists and we often look on the bright side of what technology can do to especially positively impact.

Students, educators of system leaders and so on. And so many of the podcast episodes we've done are really about the hope that technology can finally break through and realize the gains that it's realized in other industries. But in the past week, I've kind of gone down a wormhole around a GI and I think three kind of components of it.

One is our tech companies in the US are racing towards a GI, which is a research intensive process, and it is in conflict sometimes with the commercial aspirations. So while Sam is busy figuring out pricing and memory and user experience using a startup model around let's give the users what they want, the truth is to like achieve a GI.

They don't necessarily need all of that. They need deep, deep researchers who are building cognitive models and building off of large language models, which use inference. And the idea is eventually to get to a computer intelligence that essentially is self training. So that's a really interesting thing.

Whereas in China, the kind of commercial need is relatively low, and yet they're not that focused on a GI. They're focused on infusing the AI into practical use cases that save time, energy, and labor. And so there's a big contrast because the uptake of ai, the view of AI is much more positive in China.

And the uptake here is a huge amount of excitement in Silicon Valley. But outside of that, there's still limited practical use cases. So the second prong that I've been following on is like, what happens if a GI goes bad? And this idea of 2027, now being the year when we achieve a GI, what can it do? What will the robotic infrastructure be?

How does it move from digital to physical and so on. And I think this personalization question is really important because data privacy and its ability to know you and potentially manipulate you is just so high. And whether it's a GI or whether it's some group of people pulling the strings, I think that there's a lot of real dangers that people are uncovering now.

And then the third one is probably the number one use case right now is like scam and porn. And I think that vulnerable populations, I'm thinking about my parents and folks who don't have a high education, they are incredibly vulnerable to AI scanning and misinformation. And so just making me feel like we've not done a great job of educating the public or talking about the safeguards and so on.

And part of this is Common Sense just released their full curriculum on AI literacy. And I'm reviewing it and I'm like, gosh, this is something every kid should learn, but it's gonna take them five years just to get it out into school districts. 'cause school districts are so slow to adopt it and 2027 is right around the corner.

I don't know. How do you rationalize this? I mean, you've got young kids. What kind of world do you think they're gonna grow up in and do you feel like we're on a positive path here right now? 

[00:11:48] Alex Sarlin: I mean, I do still feel like we're on a net positive path, but I think part of why I feel that way is that I agree with you, that I think the more salient and sort of.

Proximal threat that comes through AI is the threat of bad actors using ai. I think various types of scamming are going to get supercharged in some very scary ways. We've talked on the podcast about the idea of having a safe words with your loved ones so that they know it's you on the phone, so that if somebody calls using your voice, they can know.

And I mean, as soon as you start to go down the path of, oh my gosh, what is actually possible if you're truly trying to. Scam people using incredibly sophisticated ai, it becomes very scary. I agree with that completely. I am much less concerned about a GI and some of the, sort of the truly speculative stuff about what if the AI decided to take over all of our water systems and charge us for water to buy more tokens and replicate it, I mean, or buy more technology to replicate itself.

Like I get why those things are interesting to think about and meaningful to think about. They're not totally silly, but at the same time, I think we have a while between then and now and between then and now, there's gonna be a whole lot more of the sort of human level scamming. So I am afraid of that and I think from an education standpoint, and we had somebody on last week.

Talking about deep fakes in schools and how schools are starting to have to start thinking about cyber threats in a very different way than they have in the past. Right? It's not just about, I mean, it's already ransomware. Some of the things that schools have to face are pretty scary already, but AI puts the ability to do pretty high level scams into the hands of many more people, including students or, you know, deep fakes in the hands of students and educators.

And I think there's a lot of mental change we're gonna all have to go through to cope with the world in which. We don't know what's real and what's not. I, I interviewed somebody yesterday who had a great way of putting it. He's somebody who does sort of documentary filmmaking for EdTech and he said, we're getting to a place where we're not gonna be able to trust our eyes and ears, so we'll have to trust our hearts and minds.

And I was like, that is a really good line and a very interesting way to look at this era. So I am afraid of that piece of like, and that could be said in both the sort of taste realm. It's like what's good? We have to think about what's good outside of just what's flashy or what's really animated well, but we also have to think about what's real through a much more sort of humanistic lens that we're used to.

And that's pretty scary. I agree with that. But you know, I'm still optimistic. I don't think that especially this particular moment in AI has sort of pushed us past the Rubicon where suddenly humanity is doomed. I just don't feel like that at all. But I do feel like it gives a lot of power to almost everybody.

And I don't think we have our head around what yeah can happen when everybody has that kind of power. 

[00:14:37] Ben Kornell: Yeah, and maybe that's the scary thing is it's less about HEI and it's more about human beings and what they may or may not, may not do with that power. I think as I'm thinking about what does AI education, meaning like training people on what AI can do, should do, and so on.

I think we also have to reconcile ourselves with the fact that education overall is struggling in this country. A recent report from EdWeek talked about, you know, the math and reading levels still lagging well behind 2020 levels pre COVID levels, and that's for kids that weren't even in school during the pandemic, so you can't really call it pandemic learning loss if you're talking about kids that were two year olds or three year olds.

The kind of state results from California just came out too, and basically tells a bifurcated story. Kids that are in higher income areas, kids that are in more affluent, you know, basically by zip code they had meaningful achievement improvements, whereas those in the lowest performing areas had none to negative.

So I mean, that's just the state of California, but it does feel like the technology has really progressed in a five-year period. It feels like a leap forward, and yet the learning outcomes have lagged behind. And now we can't totally blame COVID as the cause. What's your take on that? 

[00:16:07] Alex Sarlin: We can't blame COVID, but I also think we can't blame Ed Tech's failure to meet the moment the way that we were when we were blaming COVID, right?

I mean, when COVID hit and schools had to sort of go remote and change all of their policies and change their delivery models almost overnight, there was a reckoning. We went through it. This is right as we were starting the podcast, we were saying, well, EdTech didn't really help that much. This is a moment where maybe in a perfect world, EdTech could have came in and saved the day and shown the world that you don't need physical schools.

You don't need to rely on all traditional methods to make learning outcomes happen. And that didn't happen. But the fact that we are now years. Later and things are still struggling to get back to normal. I think it speaks more to a sort of human malaise. I think it has more to do with the fact that we just as a society in America, have been in sort of constant state of trauma since COVID, frankly.

And part of that is political. I mean, we saw this week now this funding big threats to poll special education funding. You know, if you are a teacher in a school right now or in a higher education and you are been sort of constantly under threat of getting funding polls, you're not, is feeling that excited about doing your best work and caring as much about your students as you were seven years ago?

So I think the education system's been traumatized. I think the entire country has been traumatized. I don't think the US has done a very good job of sort of responding to this once in a century, pandemic in a very mature way and sort of saying, what can we learn from it? How do we move forward instead?

It's just been a lot of. Reactive and frankly sort of solipsistic like I think people are pulling into their shells, pulling into their particular lifestyles. Like when you talk about the bifurcated results in California, I would attribute that partially to just that like the commons, the common good are getting defunded and people are just not caring as much about education as a public good.

But that doesn't mean that private schools or micro schools or parents at home who have the resources are not investing in learning and technology. We know they are. So it's, I don't know, it's an ugly moment, but I think in some ways, maybe this is a little bit of a self-justifying logic, but in some ways I think it vindicates a little bit the ed tech sector a bit in that it wasn't just that EdTech didn't succeed during COVID, it's that something happened to us as a nation.

I think during COVID and maybe even as a species during COVID, that we are still struggling to get our heads around. 

[00:18:33] Ben Kornell: I mean, you just recently shared. In our ed Tech Insider WhatsApp chat about these student stories of what do kids actually think about ai? Yeah. And I think there's this systemic story that we just told and then there's these bright shining lights.

Exactly. Of kids. When you were reading that, just to give some color, Alex pulled some quotes. One of the quotes was from a 16-year-old in Georgia. I feel like in a lot of schools, teachers tell students not to use ai, but my generation is very resourceful. If we have the slightest access to something, we're going to figure out how to use it.

Teachers should treat it like anything else. Before you give a kid a bike or a phone or internet access, it's best to just teach them how to use it first. And then there was this great example of somebody in Colorado, Colorado creating an AI animal detector so that there aren't collisions on the road. I mean.

That stuff gets me fired up. Of course. 

[00:19:30] Alex Sarlin: Me too. And I mean, we've been interviewing people from all over the world. There's really exciting stuff happening all over the world with AI and other ed tech tools. There's a lot of bright spots. And by the way, wired Magazine put out an article about both teachers making AI working for them and about students and how what they think about ai.

And I definitely recommend looking at them 'cause they're interested. And that's where those articles are pulled from. They're from Wired magazine. I'm still amazed, and we've talked about this for years now, but I'm still amazed that there aren't more. Obvious bright spots. Stories that we're not saying.

Did you hear about the kid in Colorado who made an AI detection so that every car can avoid hitting deers by using thousands of hours of video data? Like these are incredibly sophisticated projects. And there were a few different ones in that article and I think we are seeing bright spots, but we're seeing the system, the school system, still really aching.

I mean, I give credit to the A FT and the teacher's unions for sort of trying to embrace some AI literacy approaches and I think there is a lot of. Goodwill. There a lot, a lot of goodwill there. But these are big, big bureaucratic systems. They just are, and they have been for a long time and now they're under attack by both federal and state governments that are supposed to support them.

And I think you're really seeing the sort of creaking joints at the institutional level. And meanwhile, at the individual level or the individual teacher, individual classroom, individual family, there's never been more possibilities. There's never been more available technology. There's, you can do unbelievable things and it's a pretty weird moment.

[00:21:01] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Meanwhile, New York Times, they released a podcast today and a article about why so many people are opting out of public schools. And maybe this is the story, it's the systematic issues seem intractable and the individual level, it seems full of possibility. So why would families with any sort of means.

Suffer through this kind of systemic challenge. And I think the real concern is that just as we saw with the EdWeek scores, the bifurcated outcomes not only will persist, but accelerate in terms of those who have access to AI supports and so on, and those who don't. 

[00:21:42] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. And some of these, you mentioned how China is sort of leaning into these practical applications of ai.

We're seeing that here too. I think it doesn't get as much press. I mean just this week we saw Google Translate, add Duolingo, like game elements. They're basically trying to turn Google Translate into a language learning app, which is so interesting, gamifying it. Adding AI integration. We saw. You can take this as a positive or negative, but I think it's interesting that Meta is using AI to dub Instagram videos, which is basically leading to these huge engagement increases for people who are now able to communicate with audiences across language barriers.

Now that's in English and Spanish. Now you can have your social media sterman ring your hands about social media, but the fact that you can now have instant translation of content across languages and it's getting integrated into our consumer platforms is pretty exciting. We saw Excel. Good old Microsoft Excel.

When I was at Coursera, it was the number one thing that people would search for on the Coursera. When you go to Coursera and search for what do you wanna learn, Microsoft Excel was constantly right at the top and it took a really long time to convince any university to be able to do any Microsoft Excel content 'cause they thought it was so unsexy and branded and problematic.

But Excel is one of the number one most used tools in the world still now, and they just added all this copilot AI into it so that you can do all sorts of expanded, enhanced AI stuff in Excel. These are very practical applications of ai. Grammarly launched a whole set of specialist AI agents for students, for grading feedback, for citation finding, for plagiarism detection.

I think this is where the rubber is really meeting the road. And this is to your point, Ben, this. Is really giving every individual who leans into these tools, incredible powers. I mean, if you're a student right now learning Excel, let's say you're a freshman in college and you're an accounting major, so you're learning Excel, you suddenly just got an unbelievable set of tools baked into the platform.

[00:23:39] Ben Kornell: Yeah. This is, I think, the theme of our podcast today, which is really the duality. Yeah. Of like individual unleash and systemic like struggle. Yeah. The threats at the big level and the opportunities at the micro and empowerment and individual level. You know, as I'm looking at our higher ed space, we often follow some of the leading thinkers in that space, and Jeff Slingo is kind of, he and Michael Horn have a great podcast and they're often critics of higher education.

They just came out with a, we've never been more optimistic. About higher education than we are now. Not because they believe the institutions that we have today are going to adapt, but they believe that we are in a moment of incredible potential in unleash. Minerva University was named the most innovative university in the world for like the fifth time, but numbers two through five are all Minerva partners.

Oh, yeah. Whether they're using the Minerva platform. So I thought that was interesting to see. Okay. That's been a, at least a decades long, Ben Nelson has been working on Minerva probably for 15 years. Yep. They're really starting to see some traction, and then we got news today that freshman enrollment is actually at an all time high.

Kids are graduating. They are looking for higher ed opportunities. The downside of that story was also dropout rates and degree completion rates are at an all time low, but there is something around the enduring. Value of learning and education, especially in a time of such great change and that old systems that aren't able to adapt are.

Eventually replaced by new systems that can, it feels like we're just in the middle of it. 

[00:25:29] Alex Sarlin: It does. I think, you know, universities, especially universities that are trying very actively to be innovative like Minerva and Minerva partners are at the front edge of innovation and especially at the higher education level.

There are a whole suite of universities that are trying very hard to adapt. They see the writing on the wall, they have seen the, all sorts of challenges from funding challenges to enrollment, challenges to, you know, ROI questions. We've talked about this forever, but there's been a lot of different types of adaptation and I think we're now also starting to see it in, in a big way in the K 12 space.

You know, the WhatsApp channel. We talked a lot about the alpha schools stuff that has been covered over the last month or so. How. They're starting to, you know that Mackenzie Price and Alpha School's model, and we've talked about on the podcast, you and I Ben as well, about how it's trying to at least paint this alternative vision of what schooling could be.

And I think both at higher education and the K 12 level people are, they realize that this is a time of great disruption and change and chaos, frankly. I mean, there's real chaos in the systems and that there could be an opportunity there. You mentioned the Stanford Accelerator for learning. Piece before, and I think that's worth mentioning in this context as well, because what, this is a friend of the podcast, Isabel Howe, who runs the Stanford Accelerator for learning, and they did some really interesting work taking some of the Stanford tooling and they did a hackathon with students and technologists and education researchers and said, what can we do to take some of these tools and make really great AI applications to help students?

With disabilities and the fact that it's a hackathon is very interesting to me because they're literally going saying, everybody has powers now. If you have all of these really amazing AI powers and the power of these Stanford tooling, like the ROAR assessment behind you, what could you do? I think we're gonna see more and more of that kind of individual level innovation.

You've coined the term these sort of micro companies on this podcast two years ago now, but I think we're gonna see these micro innovations, right? These really big, innovative models coming from a very small number of companies with very small numbers of people. I've been starting to get LinkedIn messages on a weekly basis from students all over the world saying, I just started a new AI company.

I just created a new AI platform. They're just jumping in. They don't need permission, they don't need structure, they don't need funding. No, it's really wild. 

[00:27:45] Ben Kornell: And also we've got a new generation that actually is really excited about education space. 

[00:27:51] Alex Sarlin: Yes. 

[00:27:51] Ben Kornell: Whereas I feel like we. Had that focus. And then environmental climate change was a big theme.

Now, I think an average graduate of a leading school in any state, the average graduate is thinking, man, my education experience could have been so much better. Yes, there's a lot of problems to solve there. Maybe I wanna solve some of those problems. 

[00:28:15] Alex Sarlin: I agree. And they're feeling empowered to solve them because they said, that's right.

These incredible tools. 

[00:28:20] Ben Kornell: I mean, as we move on in the, in the news, I wonder about the kind of ed tech angle on this. From a funder perspective and from a system perspective. It does seem to me that the opportunity in our space is much more from a funding standpoint. And this could be a philanthropic funder or from a venture capital funder.

Earlier stage, it still seems like the middle stage companies are struggling because now you've got these big tech giants who have distribution and scale. You've got the legacy players who have channel and distribution advantages, and there's a fast follower opportunity for most of those larger companies where if whatever you're doing is great, they can just copy it.

And so it does seem to me that total volume of dollars might go down, but the volume of deals might go up and the impact might go up. 

[00:29:14] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I wonder if there's a world in which we've talked about the philanthropic sector. We've talked about sort of big tech companies becoming funders, like what we see with Google AI Accelerator and Ed Tropic has done investing in ed tech companies as well.

Like it's feeling like the landscape of what it means to be an ed tech innovator right now is shifting very rapidly and we know a lot of the VCs in the space and I think they're very aware of that. It may be more so than anyone about, you know, how a lot of the sort of underlying assumptions about what school is going to be, how much money they will have to spend on technology, who the core audience would be for any given ed tech product.

A lot of these questions are becoming questions. They're going from knowns to unknowns like very quickly, and you're seeing really interesting and unusual models just spring up. And frankly, I think you're also starting to see some of this traditional. Guard rails, or I would even say like the sort of walled garden aspect of schooling is really starting to come down.

I mean, one thing that jumped out to me this week that I think is just like a canary in the coal mine moment for this is we saw Nintendo, good old Nintendo, Japanese gaming giant, start to do a initiative with over 80,000 schools in the US across 23 states to basically create competitive gaming tournaments with some of their top games like Smash Brothers and Mario Kart.

Now, I studied gamification and gaming and education in graduate school, and that was so far beyond anything I would've ever dreamt of happening. The Nintendo, I mean, it's a weird headline. You think like what is it for? Is it for education? Is it for entertainment? Is it for, I don't even know what it's for, but it's happening and it's free and it's something that you're gonna see, you know, schools all over the country start doing, and I just think some of the things.

The sort of traditional interpretation of what school is, and again, this is a pandemic legacy. It's really being questioned and then the fact that the funding is so disrupted at the school level and at the, at the state level is just making it feel even more so. Like I think people are just saying, what is this even for?

And what should we really be doing in school? That it gets to outcomes, but also maybe embraces other pieces of what kids care about. 

[00:31:25] Ben Kornell: Yeah, this is one of those moments that we may look back on. Like four or five years from now and say, oh, it all makes sense. 

[00:31:34] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:31:34] Ben Kornell: But right now it's still very hard to make sense of it all.

[00:31:38] Alex Sarlin: You know, there's this sort of like discipline of futurism and they talk about finding these, these certain signals and trying to figure out particular things that are happening that may be the beginnings of long trajectories. And I mean, we collect the news every week on ed tech and on ai, and my God, it is very hard to try to find meaningful patterns here when you have people announcing.

That, you know, AI is gonna take over the world, or you, we saw this week Microsoft announcement that SaaS is gonna be killed because AI based agents are going to kill the entire software as a service industry in 10 years. Or you know, you mentioned that by 2027 maybe we'll have a GI, or there was, there was a prediction this week that said some tech executives said you shouldn't bother doing medical or law degrees because they take too long and by the time you get there, AI will have already surpassed you because five years from now there won't be a need for human doctors and lawyers anymore.

It's like when you see signals like that, there's a great article in the Atlantic from Charlie Warlow about basically how like. AI is driving everybody crazy. They just like don't know how to make sense of it, and I feel that a lot right now. It just feels like it's so hard to make sense of the signals, whether you're in education or just in tech generally.

But I agree with you. We will look back. This was all to say, I agree with you. I think we will look back in a couple of years and say, this was the moment when this was starting to happen and the signals do make sense. Then I, I think a lot of the predictions are gonna be wrong. I think things are gonna change more slowly in terms of the big, big systems than people expect, but I do think they're gonna change in big ways.

I think we may see some really strange interpretations of school. I think they're gonna be schools or universities in the next few years that are almost unrecognizable as schools or universities, you know, from five, 10 years ago. 

[00:33:19] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Do you feel like, going back to your comment about futurism and the signal, do you feel like the signal is getting lost because of all of the noise?

And the announcements here and there, or do you actually think that the signal is getting over amplified and that the, I mean, things like a GI, that AI is gonna change everything, that our jobs are gonna go look different. That feels like very strong signal, but we don't have a lot of evidence yet. Right.

To prove it. So I, I think that's where it's like, which signal do you pay attention to? That's a really critical piece. And, you know, which for educators who maybe I'm a university president or I'm a a school superintendent, how do I take that signal and actually make the changes in my organization that are thinking future forward?

'cause of course, like our education organizations should be preparing kids for 50 years from now, not 50 years ago. And unfortunately. We've got a hundred year gap right now. 

[00:34:24] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. I mean, this is, is a little bit of a dodge of your question. I think it's the key question, but I think that there's too much air time being taken up by this sort of false.

Debate about whether AI is good or bad. Like I think you have all these tech companies saying AI is great and it's gonna change absolutely everything. And there's nothing in the economy or in the future workforce or in education or in any field that is not gonna, or medicine that's not gonna be completely changed very soon by ai.

It's like, it's good, it's huge, and it's about to change everything in. We hope a good way. And then you have all these journalists saying, we don't believe these guys anymore. We all of these Silicon Valley prognosticators have said X, Y, Z. And then we come back to Earth and realize social media creates anxiety, or we come back to Earth and we realize that, you know.

Google Glass didn't work or that Meta's focus on the Metaverse is not actually changing how we work. They're over it. They're spilling a lot of ink and spending a lot of time saying this AI stuff is not what it's cracked up to be, and you should not get buy into it. And I think between those two things, a lot of really important signals are being buried because that is so much back and forth.

In that way, I think we'll look back in a few years and the things that will truly be signals in education. I think we've been on this path of this sort of idea of, you know, pod schools, micro schools, schools that are based on really unusual or different types of pedagogies. Alpha schools model is interesting and there are other schools that are now, you know, popping up to try to do that.

I think that is going to be a meaningful signal. I don't know what it will mean, but I do think that's one. But in general, I think we all do better by sort of getting out of the, you know, either waving the, the green or the red flag for ai. I think that just makes it very hard to do the kind of like strategizing that you're saying if you're the head of a university right now, it shouldn't be, am I pro or anti ai?

It doesn't make sense. It should be. AI along with other technologies are advancing rapidly. Let's think about what people actually want for their education. Let's think about what we know about where education, where the workforce might go, and what our best guesses are. Given the high level of uncertainty, I think you gotta go deeper and it's hard to do.

It's hard to do when there's so much noise right now, but I, I don't know if that, I think that's a dodge to your question. I don't think I truly answered it, but I, I think there is a way to get to meaningful strategic planning. It just involves not buying all the way into any of these sort of camps. 

[00:36:53] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I think maybe like any good CEO you've gotta live with 80% of here's the base plan and then 20% is, here's all the upside and downside scenarios that could happen, and are we prepared to accelerate or pivot in those.

Modes, and I think that the capacity right now for, I can speak mainly for K 12 superintendents, with everything going on with funding uncertainty, with all of those social needs beyond academic needs, it's very hard to retain that 20% capacity for the kind of what if scenarios. 

[00:37:35] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, maybe a useful heuristic for anybody right now, I'm, I'm just floating this as an idea, would be to be like, there's lots of predictions about where all these things might go if you sort of expand out the trajectory.

But some of the signals are happening right now, like the levels of, when you mentioned the sort of wellness, the high levels of stress and anxiety and depression, and this has been true at both the higher ed and K 12 level basically since the pandemic. And I think it's still up there. I don't think the numbers have come down in any meaningful way.

And we now, I think, agree as a society that social media and technology had some negative impact on that. If not, you know, a huge negative impact on that. So it's like that's news. That's still news to us that we're all dealing with this malaise and that this is one of the causes, and I think school's responses right now where they're starting to start to do, you know, ban phones is actually a very logical response as a technology person.

I'm torn on it, but that's a logical response. It's a very specific, it's actionable, it's clear, it's in most cases in line with what parents are looking for in their schools. They're looking for protection and thoughtful policy. I think that's one of these things where it's like, if you look at what's actually.

Really hurting people right now and try to adjust that right now. There may be some positive aspects to it that maybe isn't how you would normally wanna do you. Maybe in the past you'd wanna be more future oriented, but given the high level of uncertainty and the high level of the problems that educational institutions are facing at any moment right now, maybe it does make sense to be sort of more present oriented and sort of let the future sort itself out a little bit more than it will and, and not try to necessarily carve and envision what AI literacy is gonna look like in five years.

It's pretty much impossible. 

[00:39:20] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Or maybe the things that make AI literacy work are actually good critical thinking, which is what we could be teaching already. Yeah. There may be like an old school back to basics element here. You know, come what may, but like if you have solid fundamentals as an educator or as a business, like you'll find a way.

[00:39:40] Alex Sarlin: But back to basics doesn't mean returning to the fifties, right? And it can mean, Hey, we realize that we had to teach media literacy because kids are on media and screens seven plus hours a day. That's still true. Now we know it's more important than ever, and it's gonna be more important than ever when AI comes in.

And it's gonna be even harder to tell truth from fiction. So let's lean in on our digital and media literacy curriculum. Like that's a very logical choice, right? 

[00:40:07] Ben Kornell: It is. It is. And those who jumped in early with big, big contracts, I don't know that they're meaningfully ahead of others. So this wait and see approach, or go with the flow approach has worked.

I'm just looking at the other headlines we have. There's. It's one of those things where if you look at the AI and tech open ai, Google, Microsoft, Andro, meta Apple, they're like number of big press releases that have hundreds of millions of dollars of impact. AI change or impact or policy impact? Our list is so long in the ed tech space.

I do feel like we're getting some crowded out. Uh, normally this would be our back to school time where we would just get a ton of. Back to school stories and back to university stories and there's just not that much. 

[00:41:03] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's a really good point. And maybe it's an example of exactly what we've been talking about.

You know, it's like Baidu's revenue dips ahead of intensifying Chinese AI contest. There's all of this stuff happening with Nvidia and Baidu in China and the US government and cybersecurity and like, you know, is this related to EdTech? Yes, in some ways it is, but it's hard to ignore things when they're coming so fast and furious and they seem to have such major potential impact on our lives as like the AI race and the big tech and international competition.

But, but yeah, there's a case to be made that some of the things that are happening on the ground or getting crowded out, you know, I, I remember when people started talking about politics getting al always national. It used to be that, you know, there was national politics and there was lots and lots of local politics and it was, it was real.

And there were local newspapers that did endorsements and there were local politicians who had sort of allied themselves with each other and people cared about that. And then suddenly it sort of became national. And the only stories that were people talked about for politics were national stories about the president or the Senate or big, the midterm elections or sort of these big things and endorsements from celebrities.

And I feel like something similar is happening in education here, at least in our world with ai, where it's like. It's starting to be like EdTech companies are doing all sorts of incredibly interesting things. We talked to the founder of KB this week. He was the, the person who invented the Leapfrog LeapPad has a new device that's doing screen free AI has really great results.

It's really like, it's a really cool product and very exciting, but it's like how can that compete with, you know, the world is about to end because AI agents are gonna take over all of this and that. Like how do you break through in that news environment? I feel like, um, you know, all tech news is all ed tech is tech and all tech is ai.

So we end up going up and up and up to what is Apple doing? What is Google doing? What is meta doing? But that might be partially us, but it also might be partially just the media environment we're in. I think fewer people covering local or smaller education technology stories. 

[00:43:04] Ben Kornell: Yeah. The only, just given that we're running low on time.

The only story that I found, we had some funding rounds. We had a couple new product launches. I think the. Per your comment, a bunch of EdTech companies are announcing product launches. They're not really getting a lot of pickup. And because we've moved to this constant release mode where basically everyone is dynamically releasing these big.

Fall back to school. Releases are, don't seem as huge, but Cota, one of the largest private school operators in the world has been on the block for sale and they had a $6 billion sale deal with, uh, Blackstone on the table. One of the things about the education spaces, ed tech has gone up and down, but private schools and private school networks have continued to be a darling of private equity because you get tuition in the fall, that means cash upfront, and then over the course of the year, you know, the students get the services.

So it's this front loaded cash business where if you can borrow a bunch of money, get parents to prepay, and then use that money to pay off your debt, you make a lot of money. But this deal has fallen through, and there's been a number of closures in the Kognito network over this last year, and I think it's making people concerned that the overall macroeconomic and microeconomic environment is putting pressure on parents and making them opt for lower cost options.

So that's something to watch, you know, a big deal like that. And the second is, you know, private equity is just stressed in the education space, and so this may be a sign of things to come for those who are hoping for an exit to a PE for. If Blackstone is backing out, you know that there's real concerns in the private equity space around what has generally been a pretty reliable cash on cash return business.

That's interesting. 

[00:45:07] Alex Sarlin: Two headlines that stood out to me that I think are worth noting, we haven't covered them that much. One is that short-term Pell Grants are now really an actual thing. Pell Grants for short term workforce aligned programs. We've talked about it a little bit, but if you were an ed tech investor or if you were a private equity firm and you're thinking about what's next, that is a, something that I think is very potentially interesting.

We've sort of seen the downfall of the bootcamp model, but at the same time, this idea of shorter, more industry aligned education options that can, that now tap into the Pell Grants, which is a giant amount of money, but that actually have. Meaningful educational outcomes that actually really move the needle.

There's some really interesting potential businesses there. So I could see potentially some of that equity shifting to there. And then we also saw Pearson launch something really interesting this week, which is AI funded video platform that they call Study Plus. This traditionally would be a, a relatively big announcement, study prep, it's called, sorry, the AI Powered Video Learning Tool Study Prep was launched in many countries with 25 subjects.

It combines AI powered tools with human expertise to do personalized study plans. It's basically a big AI launch for higher ed. And we hardly even mention it until the end of the podcast, but it's the, it's the kind of thing where Pearson is, you know, relatively darling public ed tech companies and they're moving.

So it's an interesting time. I think your private equity call out is an interesting one. I gotta think more about that deal. I didn't see that come through. 

[00:46:33] Ben Kornell: Yeah, well it didn't come through. That's the story. 

[00:46:36] Alex Sarlin: The news come through that the deal fell through. Financial Times. Who are we going to next on our interview?

So we have amazing interviews this week. We talked to Brittany Miller, who runs the Outcomes Based Contracting Network. That is a whole bunch of procurement policies that are basically tied to, uh, outcomes. And they're doing really interesting work, especially with tutoring companies. We talked to Jack K Brian Goodin, who's doing culturally responsive teaching through ai.

Basically the ability to adapt any lesson to be culturally responsive using an AI scorecard. And Jim Marggraff I mentioned, who does Kid Beam Learning? That is a. Physical device, screen free physical device that allows kids to read any book using ai. And it can identify words, it can do translation, it could play games.

It is a really cool device from the, uh, founder of the Leapfrog Leap Pad. So, three guests today and future weeks. We're talking to Handshake, we're talking to school ai, we're talking to code.org, Edmentum, imagine Learning. Really, really, really amazing companies. So stay tuned here. Even though there's a lot of signals and a lot of noise, this is where you're gonna hear about everything, right?

But Ben, 

[00:47:43] Ben Kornell: right, if it happens in EdTech, or really AI and EdTech, you'll hear about it here on EdTech Insiders, thanks so much for joining us. 

[00:47:51] Alex Sarlin: For our deep dive in Week in EdTech this week, we're here with Brittany Miller. She is the CIO and Executive Director at the Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting at SEF, the Southern Education Foundation.

With more than 15 years of experience in policy, strategy, and innovation, she has tripled the center's size in the last year and has helped over 60 agencies across 25 states to impact over 29,000 students by tying contracts to student outcomes. Brittany Miller, welcome to EdTech Insiders. 

[00:48:23] Brittany Miller: Thanks, Alex.

Happy to be here. 

[00:48:24] Alex Sarlin: I'm so happy to speak to you. This is a subject I've really wanted to dive into and I don't feel like I don't know enough about it myself. So first off, tell us what is outcomes-based contracting and why is it different from traditional education funding models? 

[00:48:38] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to.

So I didn't know a lot about outcomes-based contracting either when I was in my district role and towards the, until toward the end of my tenure. But essentially, outcomes-based contracting is a newer concept to K 12 education, specifically for instructional services. And what the model is, is that districts contract directly with educational service providers, including a lot of EdTech companies, of course, to have the agreement structured in a way where a minimum of 40% of the payment to the provider is contingent on meeting agreed upon.

Student outcomes, right? So outcomes-based contracting, but it's more than just a model of procurement. What we've really learned about outcomes-based contracting over time is that by centering what we care most about happening for students in the classroom, which I assume is why we're all in education, right?

If you're not, I always joke, maybe you should seek a different field, right? By really centering that and getting clear about how you're gonna measure whether or not that thing was successful for kids, you're able to cut away from all of the other nonsense that can get in the way of actually doing that thing and have really clear accountability language in the contract that identifies what the provider is in charge of, what the district is in charge of, and then how they will come together and partner in a way that really drives towards those outcomes in the classroom.

[00:50:03] Alex Sarlin: It makes so much sense to base the business decisions and the procurement decisions on student outcomes and learning that is, as you say, why we are all in education and it's too often not part of the discussion. People contract with tutoring companies or ed tech providers of various types, and it's just not even relevant to the business part of the decision whether or not the students are truly learning and that clearly shouldn't be how it is.

So tell us what this means for EdTech companies. If EdTech company is considering adopting outcome-based contracting, what are the key benefits for them and what are the key risks? 

[00:50:39] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with the risk. 'cause I'm a pretty positive person, so I wanna spend more time talking about the benefits get distracted, but for the risks associated with it, of course it's riskier to take on an agreement where you aren't guaranteed full payment.

Right. We all know that. The other risk that we've heard from providers is that their concern, well what if kids don't actually use it? Right. So the way that I would answer that risk in particular is that when I was talking about what the responsibilities are for the district and for the provider, we have written into our contract templates.

It's a part of our standards of excellence, and it's a part of the contracts that we coach our district partners to procure with their ed tech partners, is that the district is required to ensure that students reach a certain dosage threshold that's aligned with what the research and evidence base is for that product in order for them to be able to hold the provider accountable to achieving the agreed upon outcomes.

Right? So those contingent payments have mutual accountability mechanisms that will trigger payment even if the outcomes aren't met, if the district doesn't hold up their side of the bargain. So I'll get into a little bit more of the benefit on that, but that's the first question we always get from providers is.

How do we know that they're actually gonna use it? We can't get outcomes if they don't use their product. And then the other piece that we've been exploring more, because we really have been working to understand how we partner more effectively with providers and enable our districts to do that work, is around the revenue model, right?

So in your typical ed tech company, the licenses are activated and then the dollars are exchanged hands. And in an outcomes-based contracting model, you have for at least a portion of the overall contract value, a delay in when the revenue will be realized. And so we're working right now actually on a thought leadership piece with some of our partners to understand how should we really be thinking about this revenue model and enabling ed tech companies to adjust to this framework where it's not just the sales team that is making the sales, it's also the implementation team and the product development team and other folks across the ed tech organization that are actually really critical in continuing the sales and earning the full revenue from the contract.

Because it won't work unless everybody has. Skin in the game and really understands how to make sure that they're getting better and better at the implementation. And also identifying product improvements that will lead to improved student outcomes. So I'd say that those are some of the risks. In terms of the benefits, I would say first and foremost, it provides, uh, really use case for whether or not the product works that then you can build on in the future.

And so, quick story about that. We've been having our end of year data meetings for our pilot cohort for ed tech companies. And one of the provider and district pairs or really, really large district was meeting to talk about their end of year outcomes. And they had really, really strong dosage data. 94% of students met the dosage threshold for the product.

So very different than your typical 5% problem. And that's not just a single district case, that's the highest that we saw. But we also saw districts that like 75% of the kids met the dosage throughout the entire year. Right. And that's not. Just any sort of alternative metric from what the provider really counts as dosage.

Like students were actually engaged in the product for that time and then the outcomes follow. Right. And so when they were having their end of year meeting, what the provider said to the district team and to our staff was, this was a really hard thing to implement. That's another challenge. It is hard, but education is hard, so let's not get ourselves.

But they were really saying that they are working internally to understand how they adapt their business model to be outcomes-based, contracting friendly, and really sell on OBC because they had the best dosage that they've ever had. It was the best implementation they ever had. There was a district leader who was championing the project that left midyear, but the implementation got stronger.

It didn't fall apart midyear, which they said, you know, that never happens with a district. If the person you're working with leaves then call it quits for the year. That did not happen, and they were able to get the outcomes for kids, right? What they said was, we didn't build this product just for it to sit on a shelf.

We built it so that kids could use it and improve. And so it was a real game changer for them in understanding like, not only can they tout the outcomes now, but they can also use all of that data and all of that learning they did throughout the year. To make the product improvements that will really enable better implementation across all of their clients.

So that was a really powerful finding from this year's ed tech work. 

[00:55:10] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it is really powerful. It's funny when I hear you talk about the risks and benefits, all of this sort of businessy jargon keeps coming through my mind, but I do think it's actually relevant here. First is, as you mentioned, it's implementation fidelity, right?

I mean, this is core for EdTech companies. As you say, nobody wants their product to sit on a shelf. They all want it to be used and to have the impact that they designed it to have. Mm-hmm. And so this benefit that you're mentioning of higher dosage, and this is the second business term, aligned incentives, right?

If both the provider and the school and the district and the educational institution are both saying, okay. If we get as many students to use this, to use it as much as it's recommended that we know there's evidence for, and then to see the outcomes, everybody wins in this case. And that's an interesting model.

And I think what makes outcomes-based contracting so powerful is that both sides want the students to do better and they want the usage and the dosage, but sometimes it sort of closes this gap that sometimes happens in ed tech where people buy seats and then they just sit there unused and nobody wants to do the hard work to get teacher buy-in or to find time in the day to do additional work or to find all the passwords and the logins and all the things that it takes to make implementation happen.

Sometimes nobody's incentivized to do that, and now that they are, which I think is really, really powerful. And then the piece about the recognized revenue I think is really interesting and I'd love to actually double click on that even though it's sort of one of the wonkier pieces there. Mm-hmm. But I know that EdTech companies that are listening to this probably very quickly honed in on that exact point as well.

They said, well. If you're selling 10,000 licenses, but 40% or more is contingent on the outcomes, it might be quite a while before we are able to recognize that revenue, and it's sort of held in almost like some limbo. Can you tell us more? But you said you've been working on a thought leadership piece about it, and you're trying to think about that.

Can you just tell us more about how the outcome-based contracting world is starting to address that sort of gap in time? Because ed tech companies are businesses, sometimes they're run on a shoestring, they really need that revenue. How are you thinking about it? 

[00:57:07] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So I think a couple of things.

One is when you talk to folks that are more like boots on the ground and they see the next six months, they're very concerned about the delay in revenue and they're very concerned about what that means for their bosses, right? And so then when you talk to the bosses, they say, well, we're concerned about our bosses, which are the VC bosses, right?

So then we went and we talked with the VC bosses to say like, okay, well we've heard this from lots of people in the system. Like this revenue generation thing is a problem. This is never gonna work because you're gonna hold them accountable to the revenue coming in the door and it's not gonna come. And you're gonna be upset about that.

Like, what's your answer to that? 'cause I come from an instructional background. I wanna make sure that we're understanding all the different perspectives. Partnership is a really important part of our work. And so in talking with the VC leaders and with our more visionary leaders at ed tech organizations that are sitting in a senior seat and have more of a grounded understanding in the long-term vision of the work they said.

This is stickier. This is making the contract more enforceable, and it's also making it so that we can realize better total available market share for the organizations that are actually making a difference in the classroom. And so we were having these conversations during our feasibility work several years ago when folks were saying, the writing's on the wall, SER funding is coming to an end and content funding is getting tighter.

Well, I don't think any of us imagined a world that we're living in now where our funding streams are. It's quite frankly, like a lot harder than we even thought it was going to be. And so now more than ever is that opportunity to really realize that there is a short term need to figure out the revenue model.

And quite frankly, we don't have it all figured out. We're really trying to think through that in partnership with VC firms, with funders, with providers, with revenue leaders in this space to understand what that looks like. And you know, of course we'll share that with you and we, when we have something released and.

In the long term, which is why we felt really confident in continuing to do the ed tech work. What we were hearing from leadership in the field on the business side is when the contract is that much stickier and when things get really challenging, it provides a renewal opportunity that is not necessarily available when superintendents are saying you have to cut.

Our EdTech budget by, you know, 75, 80, 90%. Right. And so we're seeing that with these districts, like despite really challenging financial times, they're renewing and expanding their contracts with these providers because they've seen the proof in the pudding. They've seen how their students are improving academically from it, and so they can't pull it from the school.

'cause it's not like the one teacher that's complaining, right? It's the whole community that's saying, I'm sorry, like my kid made massive growth last year. You can't just pull this out from under, right? Us. So that's what I would say is like the big picture. Thinking around it, and there's work to do in terms of what that revenue model looks like, and also activating different parts of the field, right?

So if we're hearing from investors like, oh, this is something we really care about, then our next question is, great. So how do we partner with investors, with providers, with folks like you to understand what that looks like for us to all shift our thinking in terms of how we get to the outcomes. 'cause ultimately, like that's what everybody wants, you know?

And so we need to get the adult problems figured out in order to really make sure that kids are getting what they need in the classroom. 

[01:00:32] Alex Sarlin: You're making such an interesting, invaluable point, which is that sometimes the, you said the boots on the ground are worried about the recognized revenue and the timing.

They say, I have quotas and I'm worried about my bosses. And as you sort of go up the corporate ladder, so to speak, in the, in the different areas, whether it's the districts or the vendors, people care more and more about the long-term vision, about the outcomes, about the stickiness, and basically creating an entire ed tech ecosystem that works for students.

And they're less, you know, worried about that sort of quarterly revenue as you might expect. And I think that's. Incredibly exciting. It makes me wonder, I, this is just a passing thought, but I'm curious if it resonates with you at all. You know, in terms of the recognized revenue and in terms of sort of the money that, you know, the, the cash flows here.

I think there's obviously so much excitement when something really does work and it's proven to work when a school or district builds that muscle of, Hey, we actually made sure that implementation dosage was, was high enough. We got away from that 5%, you know, very few people using it, and only the advanced students using it.

Everybody was using it and we saw real results, and we can actually tie those results to the use of the tech. That's the dream coming true. I wonder if at that moment there is an opportunity for the VCs or for even for philanthropies or for celebrities or for, you know, anybody with, you know, high net worth individuals to say, oh wow, this district used this tool and it really worked.

It made a huge difference. The kids are learning, they're growing. Is there a way to sort of have almost be like a bonus, like a reward for the tools that are working rather than having, you know, it be part of the contract that's held back, even though I think that's really powerful too. Could there be a sort of top up bonus for either the district or the vendor when something really works that comes from an outside source?

[01:02:08] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So it's a great question. It's part of the pricing model. And so the way that we work to develop that pricing model is with the 40% contingent, we recommend that the district include between 10 and 20% as like additional upside payment. That is a, a part of the overall contract value, right?

The other thing that's interesting about the way that we do this in our work, which is it's very different from your traditional buy licenses for every kid across the system. We're not doing that anymore. We all know that, you know, districts are getting a lot tighter with what they're spending on, right?

We do a per pupil price, and that per pupil price does have about a 10 to 20% bump on what they would typically be paying per pupil. And it is an all-in instead of an a la carte pricing model, right? So what that means is that when you look at procurement documents from school districts, and when you look at sales teams in the ed tech world, they're selling licenses as like a, you know.

Every kid in the district gets one. Right. And that's a purchase order. And then there's the professional learning that needs to come with the ed tech in order for teachers to know how to use it. Well, that's a separate purchase order, or maybe it's part of a bundled in contract somewhere else. Right. And then there's the on-demand support, and even like coaching for somebody to come to the district and help teachers know how to use the product.

Well that's somewhere else, right? Or maybe it's a throw in somewhere along the way. Well, all of that chaos in the actual financial way of doing the work leads to this system where the actual delivery of that product into classrooms is also chaotic because it's coming from all over the place. Right?

Makes 

[01:03:45] Alex Sarlin: sense. Yeah.

[01:03:45] Brittany Miller: And so what we do under an outcomes based contracting model is instead of having an a la carte pricing model where you're choosing how many days of PD you want, et cetera, it's a flat per pupil. Right? Slightly higher than what you would be paying for the all in price for not just buying the licenses, but the implementation of the tech Otherwise.

And then you are having an individual amount per pupil contingent on the outcomes, right? And so at the end of the day, there is this opportunity for the provider to earn more than they would otherwise. That's not guaranteed, it's part of the contingent payment, but that provides them with that incentive in order to take on the additional risk.

And that 10 to 20% bump, you know, is still might be challenging from a revenue model. And so it's, I think that while that's valuable for folks to know that there is that additional potential for additional earned revenue, it's also the additional business that you're able to get in the door and the additional customers you're able to get.

'cause as district leaders, we talk to each other. And so when they see something that works well, they'll share that with their friends. And then of course, the provider is also able to leverage those stories and leverage that real data that they have about, you know, we achieved X outcomes with this system as a result of them actually using it this much.

And guess what? Now we know a lot more about how you do that effectively. So we're much better suited to be in partnership with you and get to that dosage that we know is important for students. 

[01:05:10] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, incredibly interesting, very systemic view of how all of these pieces play together and rethinking some of the core assumptions in the system to change the way the models work and get everybody more aligned to the outcomes that we all want.

And I think those case studies are really vital as well. I mean that even the ability for any EdTech vendor, EdTech vendors are always, you know, want these amazing case studies and proof points of where it's really, really working. So the idea that outcome outcomes based contracting sort of bakes in all of the work that to create the case studies you have, all the data, you have the stories, you have the 94% usage rate, you know, statistic that you can bandee about.

Those are incredible. So you have a conference coming up, which I'm very excited about. I'm gonna be there myself. I'm very, very intrigued by this model and how we can help expand it and improve the outcomes for students. Tell us about the convening that is happening later this year. 

[01:06:02] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So we're looking forward to it.

It's our annual outcomes-based contracting convening. It's in Orlando, Florida from September 17th to 19th, and it's a really good opportunity for districts and providers to learn alongside one another. This year's convening is all one event, so providers, districts. You know, funders, partners, everybody will be in the room together for the whole time.

Last year I was, I told our providers, I was like, I'm dipping my toes in this work. So we have a provider summit and there's some overlap with districts, but not as much as everybody wanted. We got that feedback loud and clear, and so we listened. And so it'll be a really good opportunity to really hear about these partnerships that have been really transforming the way that districts and providers work together.

And it's at the re royale in Orlando, so it should be also just a beautiful venue and real opportunity for folks to take a step back and learn alongside one another about how this work is really impacting the overall marketplace and how we can all partner in order to, you know, achieve better student outcomes and better business models on behalf of our district schools.

And of course, students. 

[01:07:04] Alex Sarlin: There's just not enough opportunities for cures and vendors to get together in a way that isn't just a pure sales call or a demo or something. So the idea of coming together and getting to know one another, you know, one of the things I always find interesting about the education technology world is that every, like you mentioned earlier, everybody has incredibly good high aspirations.

They're all trying to help. Students and young people and teachers, and then there's all this bureaucracy and then people end up sort of sniping at each other or having to, having these misaligned incentives and feeling overburdened and all these things start to happen. I feel like this movement and this convening are great examples of sort of bringing together people from across the different areas to in a, just a purely positive way, let's think about how we can make this system better.

And it doesn't have to feel like such a struggle all the time, even though there's a lot of work to be done. So I really admire what you're doing with the convening and with the work. Just to close out, can you give us some of the statistics? There have been some really great implementation fidelity findings, some really positive outcomes.

You mentioned a couple of them, but just do a little bit of the highlights of some of the big, you know, star standout stories of outcome-based contracting in 2025. 

[01:08:10] Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for asking the question. We're excited to be able to share some of our preliminary data, so we're continuing in our end of year conversations, but we do have full data sets back from three of our systems.

And so Hillsborough, which is one of the 10 largest districts in the country in Florida, they were able to achieve 75% dosage for 2,800 students with their ed tech product that they implemented. So not a small group of students here. Right? And they achieve nearly 50% of the achievement and growth outcomes.

Again, those are based on state assessment results, and those are also based on the interim assessments that they give from nationally normed growth assessment. And so those are really powerful outcomes that they achieved. And then they did pay out quite a bit of the contingent payment, almost 90. 8% percent.

And the reason for that is because, you know, some of the kids didn't meet the dosage. And so the proof is in the pudding. When, when they don't meet the dosage, they might have to pay out the outcomes. And then of course, they were more than happy to pay out the majority of the payment because you know, the outcomes were actually achieved for students.

Yeah. And then in Duval we had 2,600 students served. 94% of students met the recommended dosage. So high 65% of the outcomes payments were paid and 50% of the contingent dollars were paid to date. So you can see like huge, huge progress there. And then at Uplift Education, which is a CMO in Texas, we had.

1,500 students served. That was for English language learners in particular, and they achieved 55% of the contracted growth outcomes and nearly a hundred percent of the high growth outcomes targeted were achieved. So seeing some really, really promising results across the country, which is really what we want, you know, our technology that is so much a part of our world to be able to do for kids in the classroom.

So we're excited to see this work and, and see what's possible in the future. 

[01:10:01] Alex Sarlin: That's really exciting results, and I'm, I'm really, I'm excited about the convening and just seeing the continued growth of this movement, of this outcome-based contracting movement, because I feel like it's good for everybody.

There's lots of details, but it's good for everybody if we can all align around what really matters, which is student success. Thanks so much for being here with us. Brittany Miller, who is the Executive Director of the Center for Outcome-Based Contracting at the Southern Education Foundation. Thanks for being here on Edtech insiders.

[01:10:28] Brittany Miller: Thanks so much, Alex. Have a good one. 

[01:10:31] Alex Sarlin: For our deep dive this week in EdTech, we're talking to Jahque Bryan Goodin, who's the founder of My CRE Buddy, which is an EdTech tool, which transforms lessons to be culturally responsive. Jahque's work spans educator training, research, curriculum design, and teaching students in settings ranging from incarcerated youth to pre-college programs.

She has years of experience advocating for culturally responsive education and is the author of the responsive ELA Curriculum Scorecard, which has been used over 50,000 times worldwide to evaluate culturally responsive curriculum. Jahque, welcome to EdTech Insiders. 

[01:11:09] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Thank you for having me. 

[01:11:10] Alex Sarlin: So first off, for people who don't know about the culturally responsive curricula movement, you've spent years doing it and including this rubric, this scorecard that has been used a lot.

Tell us about what culturally responsive curriculum is and why there's this gap that teachers don't actually really know how to use it or to make it. 

[01:11:28] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Yes, for sure. So typically there's this misconception that teachers need to be both content experts and cultural anthropologists in order to be culturally responsive.

And so that with all the other weights of the things that teachers have to do often feels quite cumbersome. But there are teachers who want to make sure that their students are seen in the classroom, that their lived experiences are affirmed. And so if I had to just use two words to sum up what it would be, it is making sure that students have real life applications in the classroom, right?

Mm-hmm. And I think that's something, aside from the terminology that we could all agree we want, education should be relevant and connected and should continue to inspire learners. And so oftentimes educators would continue to use the scorecard. I would do PDs on the scorecard, on coly responsive education, and they'd often say the same thing, which is outside of heroes and holiday.

How do I ensure that every lesson reflects the students that I serve while still making sure that I'm teaching the essential skills, while still making sure that I'm adhering to the standards? And so really it was teacher voice that inspired the creation of My CRE Buddy. 

[01:12:43] Alex Sarlin: Outside of heroes and holidays, I love that.

It definitely resonates and AI tools do lots of different things in the EdTech landscape and sometimes they're about content creation or image generation or tutoring. One of the things that's I think is really intriguing about My CRE Buddy is it comes with a real pedagogical perspective. It's really about embedding pedagogy into curricula and taking these different elements, the curriculum, the required curriculum, the culturally responsive needs, particular to any individual group of students and the teacher capabilities and what the teacher wants to be doing, and sort of puts them all together to create a curriculum.

Tell us how it does it, you know, how does the tool ensure that the lessons meet both the curricular standards and that meet students where they are? 

[01:13:26] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Yes. Great question. So first I wanna start off by saying, in this huge movement to use AI to save time, I committed to building something that actually makes teachers more effective.

Saving time is a byproduct, right? Like, yes, that's great, but I wanna make really good teachers. Great. And I wanna ensure that I'm giving them the resources that they need to bridge the content with the real life applications. And so what that looks like is it looks like taking culturally responsive pedagogy and layering that on with research-based practices.

I do come from a research background, right? And so I had to make really good decisions that resonated with teachers, that resonated with students. And what that looks like is using instructional frameworks with culturally responsive education so that way teachers are not building a lesson and just hoping, okay, this is how students learn, right?

And this is what best practices say. It's already baked in. So they don't have to go add on another prompt to say, okay, well now transform it to be this. And an example is with math, there's an option for educators to build out the lesson and select Bob Moses or the Algebra projects five step process.

That organization has been around for years and they've done a lot of work ensuring that when students learn math, they learn math in a way where the language and the application is rooted in their everyday experience, right? And that is the heart of culturally responsive education. And so I had to make a judgment call, and that is one of the frameworks that I've decided to use for science.

It looks like ensuring that all lessons either reflect project-based learning in the gold standard or reflects the five E model. And so teachers don't have to worry about just getting a lesson that seems great, but it's just a list of activities. I think the other piece is. I also baked in teacher guidance.

And so that looks like before the lesson, during the lesson and after. And one example of after is that every lesson comes with teacher reflection questions. I think it's really essential for educators who want to become better to reflect on their teaching practices, right? Sometimes that's done in evaluation required by the district or the school, but what does it look like for teachers to be responsible for their own self-paced development?

Right? And that's where those reflection questions are embedded. 

[01:15:49] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I love that approach of sort of the embedded professional development, especially because I'm sure many educators don't have a lot of experience or training in culturally responsive teaching or potentially some of the pedagogical frameworks that you're embedding into the platform, like the five E model.

So the idea of being able to adapt your curriculum, set it up, so meet the needs of your students and meet them in their lived experiences, but also as a teacher, learn while you're doing it, is really an exciting prospect, a value proposition. One thing I wanted to ask you about is teachers come to their curriculum planning work from lots of different standpoints.

Some are like, I've had the same curriculum I've used for many years. It's very fixed. I know it inside out, but I could see it being more culturally responsive for this particular group. Others say, I was handed this curriculum, it came down for me from a publisher or from a my district or from my charter management organization, whatever it is, and now I have to use it, and others are sort of making some of it up as they go along.

They're putting pieces together. How does My CRE. Adapt to the different starting points of different educators no matter where they are in their curriculum planning journey. 

[01:16:52] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Yeah, I love that. I think what's essential is for me to meet teachers where they are. Right? And so there are teachers who have said, I have a lesson script, right?

This was, I have to follow this, but I also use teachers, pay teachers or also find other resources to supplement, right? The reality, Alex, as you know, is that there are some really great curriculum companies who again, are research based, who've been around for years. It works great. However, we also know that there's not one single curriculum that will land well with every single student.

Right. Learning in New York or the cultural and environmental situations there is different than Georgia. It's different than Nevada. And so there's not one single curriculum that can just be cookie cutter enough to meet the needs of all learners. And so I built it in a way and recognize a lot of teachers already supplement.

Why not make it easier for them, right? And embed culturally responsive practices. And so what it does is I want educators who have to use the script or the curriculum that was handed down for them, or the one that the district purchased. I want them to really understand that you can still keep the same content, the same standard, the same rigor, while making it relevant to the students you serve.

And so right now, My CRE Buddy is built in a way where educators can just upload what they have to the platform and then it'll create an output for them that guides them to say, here's the pieces that you could fix to be more responsive to the specific students you serve. Or, here is something to think about.

Here's the piece where you can use this text while also supplementing it to pair it with another text that your students might resonate with. And so that's one example. And then there are some teachers that might come with an idea, right? They might say, well, I've done this lesson before. It worked kind of well last year, but the students weren't as engaged as I thought.

So then they can use that and they can just come with their idea, their topic, the key things that need to be in that lesson, and then still receive a full lesson that's ready for them to go and implement. And so it was just really important for me to meet them where they are and make it seem less intimidating to be culturally responsive, right?

While still really showing people that when we talk about culturally responsive education, academic excellence and rigor is one of the tenets. I feel like sometimes there's different schools of thought or misconceptions around what does it mean to be responsive, right? Like, oh, we're just gonna change a few words in the word problem, but then we're gonna lose the rigor.

And that's not true. We want to raise the floor, right? And so when raising the floor, then they're able to see like, oh, I can keep all of these things while still making sure that I really lands well with my students. 

[01:19:43] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and I think this is a strength of what AI can do. It can take disparate goals and sets of instructions, like, I need to keep the rigor at this particular level.

I need to keep this particular pedagogy, but I also need to keep this topic, but I also wanna make it match the demographics of this particular student group. And they care about this. And their culture is that, and this is the things that are gonna really allow this particular lesson to stay with them, for them to engage, take it with them, to use it in their real life.

And it can take all these different things that sometimes for a person putting all those pieces together is like a big puzzle. Yeah. I can really support that. One of the things that's interesting about My CRE buddy is it adapts to different student demographics. You can actually tell the tool, this is the demographic of my classroom.

And you can imagine that obviously will change the outcome because with cultural responsiveness, that's sort of the whole point, is that, well, you know who people are determines in some ways what they're actually gonna be. Learning and how, why is it important to tailor that my theory buddy can actually tailor outputs to different student demographics?

[01:20:44] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Yeah, so this is a critical feature. It's because it is really data-driven, right? It's saying, tell me about the students that you serve in terms of demographics, and then I'm gonna create relevant learning experiences. And so once the teacher shares their classroom demographic, my CIE Buddy creates lessons from an asset based approach.

And so one example is like it does that by providing community connections. And so if you are, where are you located right now, Alex, if you don't mind me 

[01:21:15] Alex Sarlin: asking. Greenville, South Carolina. 

[01:21:16] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Okay. So if teacher is teaching at Greenville, South Carolina and that's demographic is input, it is going to create community connections or community problems or community opportunities for young people to see how the content of what is need to be taught in the classroom connects to their community experiences.

And I'm sure you can imagine, right? All the wow and aha moments that comes out when you are referencing something that the students connect to, whether it's an experience they have every day, or whether it's a story that they've heard. It creates honestly, a more joyous learning environment and inspires learners.

And so the other piece of why it's connected to asset-based learning is that we want students to be able to see that their local expertise and wisdom is valued in the classroom, right? And so it gives an opportunity for young people to say, oh, wow, I know about that. And that level of genius of mine is not something that belongs outside of this space, like it's connected here.

And then I think another piece that's really important to mention is when we think about historically, how schools, specifically public schools have operated. Typically teachers teach in the environment that the school is in, right? They live in the same environment, and so because of that, teachers often had local expertise and they created, you know, good rapport with the family and level of understanding in terms of what students value.

Whereas now as things have shifted, that's not to say it's neither good nor bad, it just kind of is what it is. We're seeing more educators teach in places where they do not live, right? Teach in communities where they are not native to, and so when they go into the classroom and they are told, you need to build a deep relationship with students because that's the foundation to a good learning environment, right?

Socially and academically, teachers sometimes struggle. They struggle doing that because they don't have that same community knowledge that they would if they lived in the community they taught in. And so the hope is that My CRE buddy serves as a sounding board as a springboard, if you will, right? To inspire teachers to say, look, here are some connections that you can make, whether it's to community issues that occurred in the past, whether it's to present community things, so that way they can begin to contextualize learning for their students.

[01:23:37] Alex Sarlin: It strikes me as I hear you describe all the different ways that My CRE buddy can adapt a curriculum to the particular local needs or interests or economic situation in a particular area. One of the big promises of, of AI and education writ large is that it's going to, you know, personalize is gonna make education more precise for any individual learner or group of learners.

And, you know, cultural responsiveness is one lens in which it. Does that, but even within your tool, you're doing, you know, authenticity, relevance, you know, local relevance to what's actually happening on the ground in any particular place. There's lots of different ways to bridge the gap between a curriculum that might feel like it's sort of, or, or a teacher who is not from the area.

Something that feels like an other coming towards you and something that feels much more like students have much more ownership and sort of buy-in and feels more relevant and authentic to them. This is exactly where education should be going, especially in the AI era. It's a way to reengage students and make them really feel like what's happening matters to their lives.

You have experience with a lot of different types of students. You've worked with, incarcerated youth, you've worked with pre-college. How do you see the a tool like My CRE Buddy leveling the playing field a little bit or, or as you say, raising the floor so that there's more equitable and responsive learning for any population and you don't have this wild inequity that we have in this country?

[01:24:59] Jahque Bryan Gooden: So I would say one thing is important to note, which is what I've learned is that students, regardless of where I've taught them, regardless of their circumstance, of their socioeconomic status, of their racial identity, gender identity, all students wanna learn, right? And they also are very aware that how they're being taught is not working for them.

And so when we think about AI and the opportunity that it can bring, as you just mentioned, it's important for us, everyone that creates AI tools, but especially here at My CRE Buddy, for us not to continuously recreate systems that we know do not work. Right. We wanna take the best things and we also wanna transform education to say, you know what?

We have this technology, let's leverage it to create new experiences, right? To really be more student centered. And so that is one way that I, I think about what does it mean to somewhat raise the floor attempt to eradicate some of these inequities. It's by ensuring that students also have agency and a voice.

And so I think something that I've seen that has worked really well, like an educator has used it and she said, Hey, My CRE buddy provides me with lesson options. I actually asked the students, which one would you like to see? And then went to teach that the next day. And so like, just imagine that about 

[01:26:18] Alex Sarlin: being student centered.

Yeah. Creating, yeah. Agency for students in the classroom. That's amazing. 

[01:26:22] Jahque Bryan Gooden: Yes. Yes. And so the goal is to veer more in that, on that pathway. I think the other piece is, again, to recognize that all students wanna learn and are capable of learning. And so when I think about what My CRE Buddy can do now and what I hope it will become, I wanna make sure that we are developing lifelong learners.

And one of the best ways to develop lifelong learners is to get them to see that everything you're learning will be used in the classroom, in the community. In the real world, right? I don't know if you've, I mean, so many times students have said, well, when will I ever use this? Yes, exactly right. And so I want a teacher and a student to use my CIE buddy and say, oh, I know when I'll use this, right?

Because I'm using it now. And here's ways that I can use what I'm learning to actually improve society and to contribute to society by being a global citizen. I think this provides a really good way to allow young people to see themselves as well as to learn about the world around them. And so I want us to be able to understand that some of our experiences are a lot more connected than we realized, right?

And the way that education has been provided to us, there hasn't always been the opportunity to center multiple perspectives, especially multiple diverse perspectives. And so with My CRE Buddy, that's how they're able to learn about both themselves as well as others. And then when you have multiple perspectives, that's how we lead to pluralism, right?

Like, and when we think about. What does it mean to create an equitable society for everyone and to make sure that every single child, again, regardless of background and experience, feels seen in the classroom and sees how education is connected to improving society. Like that is the goal. 

[01:28:04] Alex Sarlin: A hundred percent.

I think that's a, a grand vision for education and, and someone that I think we really could get closer to achieving, hopefully with the use of technologies, can help sort of bridge the gap between standardized curriculum that is in a classroom and educators in a classroom who may not be as attuned to the cultural needs of the students and tools that can help sort of bridge that gap and make it work.

Like My CRE buddy, there's been a really interesting conversation. I wish we had more time, but we are out now. Jahque. Brian Goodin is the founder of My CRE Buddy, which transforms lessons to be culturally responsive as well as more authentic student centered and relevant for any student population. Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.

Thank you. For our deep dive this week. On this week in EdTech, we're speaking with Jim Marggraff. He's the CEO and founder of Kibeam and the inventor of the Leapfrog Leap Pad, legendary EdTech device. He's a lifelong innovator in education, technology, and dedicated to transforming how children learn to read through screen free AI powered tools grounded in the science of reading.

Jim Marggraff, welcome to EdTech Insiders.

[01:29:12] Jim Marggraff: Thank you, Alex. Good to be here.

[01:29:13] Alex Sarlin: So let's start with the screen free. Tell us what Kibeam is and how you are using AI to help students learn, but without any screens.

[01:29:24] Jim Marggraff: Well, if you look at the history of toys, it's interesting because 25 years ago when I created the Leapfrog Leap pad, parents at that point in time were concerned about screen time.

At that point, it was televisions and computers. And today here we are just over rock with screens in hand and kids two inches from the screen all the time, kids two and three years old taking their fingers on paper and pinching it or swiping it, expecting it to change. So I looked at this and as, as COVID hit and our educational system was challenged and we emerged and we saw the results of this said, how can we address two issues?

How can we look at learning at developing literacy? We have plunging literacy scores the lowest in 20 years with NAP scores. Parents want less screen time. They want more time with their kids reading or reading with them, and they're looking for interactive toys that are learning more than that are just play, but they want purposeful toys.

So said, what if we could make the world a child's screen, make the war everything, but without a screen? So no screen in your hand, but bring to life the things that a child interacts with. So literally anything in your environment. So the natural place to start, 'cause I know this from Leapfrog, help kids with books.

So I said, let's, instead of taking books as we did with Leapfrog and Leap Pad and putting 'em in a frame and then I invented the tag pen, which was allowed you to put dots on books with paper and put a camera and a pen and have a special book. Said We need anything in your world to just become interactive, starting with any book.

So that's the idea. And beyond that, couple things, very important said. If you're going to interact with this book, let's allow you to do this in a way that is this century and let's let you interact with motion. So think now of the original leap pad. You'd take a little wand and you touch the page. Now imagine a Nintendo we crossed with a leap pad.

Mm-hmm. So you can interact with the book point at words, pictures, paragraphs, play games. But now there's motion involved. So now you hold in your handed device that there is a small wand like device. Here it is, I'm holding it up, but it's about four inches. It has some interesting black orbs on it, and a couple buttons, a green and a red button.

And you can see a speaker grill on it. But it fits into child's hand from 18 months up. And with this, they can point a beam of light, a very small beam of light, tiny, small than pinky nail at a book or at a page and interact with it. So the one will see that and begin talking and reading, and allow the child to play and explore.

[01:31:43] Alex Sarlin: It's amazing. So we are pretty early in this sort of AI world, but there have already been a few interesting innovations. Like we saw Sam Altman work with Johnny, ive from Apple, to create a sort of wearable AI device that has no screen on it. And I think there's beginning to be a little bit of a appreciation that the moment we're in of not only everybody using screens for videos and gaming and all of that, but using screens for AI is already starting to be like, Hey, maybe this is a transient moment and maybe we can actually start using powerful technology outside of screens.

I'm curious how you react to that movement. It feels like that is like you are right there, three steps ahead of the current interfaces. How do you explain the benefits of the screen-Free approach? I mean, obviously parents wanna get away from screens, but how do you explain this idea to people who don't yet understand it, of moving past a screen interface to the world is your screen.

[01:32:36] Jim Marggraff: It's interesting because you look at ar. And augmented reality. So now we have glasses, but AR began on a screen and it was a very kind of a gratuitous approach towards improving and augmenting your world. You here, you're looking at the world with your eyes and you block it with a little device in your hand.

And now you look at the device and now you're looking at a picture of the world beyond it. But you're looking at the device and then you look at the world, then you look back at the device and you see an augmentation and you look at the world. It's just, it didn't make much sense. So now you can strap it onto your head, you can do that.

But if you do that for a young child, that's taboo at this point. It's just, it's a lot of reasons. And I created wearable eye tracking. I looked at this, sold the company to Google. So I know a lot about how this can and can't work. But if you say, let's start with something physical and hold it up in your hand and bring it to life, what does that mean?

Well, right now we bring it to life with audio. Watch out for the future. 'cause other things will come. But let's just say you hold it up and it's real. So as we look at this trend of physical devices. We see instantiation of AI into physical devices. I think it's unstoppable. I mean, they'll become, obviously we're looking at robots and different form factors, but let's look at tools that one could have.

And I think in terms of bits and atoms. So how can we make the lowest possible configuration of atoms that can allow bits digital technology to enhance and experience when you're using this smaller and smaller and lower cost set of atoms? And right now that takes the form of a child's wand, it's not uncommon to see new technology enter in toys that then becomes pervasive and is picked up in other areas.

And the challenge there is making it low cost enough to achieve. And I think all of those things combine to allow us to offer in classrooms and homes a means to be able to bring all those learning elements to life for a child.

[01:34:22] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. One clear benefit from the Kibeam approach is that it allows you to use your existing library of paper books, which is both preexisting and amazing, but also has a lot of emotional and sort of cognitive benefits, is actually research about handwriting and paper being more beneficial than screens in some cases.

And I'm curious how you approach that piece of the story of the idea that there's a sort of an emotional connection that people have with paper, both parents and kids that is maintained. You're not putting a screen between you and your paper books.

[01:34:55] Jim Marggraff: It's natural. First of all, for parents, as you look at a child developing at the earliest age, look in the first 12 months.

They're manipulating things physically. They develop cause and effect. There's a lot of physics and statistics going on. If you look at some research by a French researcher named Stanislaus Han Brilliant work, it's, uh, wrote a book called How We Learn. He and his wife did studies with FMRI and young children.

So those studies have been done. So we know kids do well when they can manipulate physical items, and they're very excited to do so. A little tangent. So we have a library of books that's expanding to all books. That's where we're going with this. And when a child receives a book in the mail. It's pretty astounding because they don't receive that many things addressed to them.

And when that happens, the excitement is incredible. They take it out. They own something, they own something physical. So that's exciting. So I look at that, but also I look at the research on the brain science because there was a study done in 2018 that looked at three methods of exposing children. Uh, four, five, and six to different forms of media.

And the media was one audio, plain audio, like an Alexa, just a speaker, Tony box. And the second was video and audio. So a screen with audio and visual. And the third was static art. Audio. So like a book, static art, you hear audio over it. So they looked at the brain, FMRI studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging.

So you looked at the activity in the brain when it was audio alone, and what happened is the left side of your brain, your primary auditory complex lit up a lot of blood flow there and a lot of activity. And they looked at it with a video, with audio. Well now your primary auditory complex and the occipital region of your brain, which is in the back of your head, that lit up those two areas as you're watching a movie, an animation.

Then they tried a static piece of art and audio. The whole brain lit up. Why? If you think about it, what happens if you look at a book and your eyes are moving around? My last company did eye interaction, eye tracking. So I looked at the brain activity. Your eyes move from point to point in what's called a secod, and they move around and you make an image, a mental image.

When you're watching a video, the director has trained your eyes to look at a certain place and you follow it and you just passively consume it. When you look at a book, you have to be active, but if you look at a book with audio, you're connecting the audio with the imagery that you see and your eyes are taking it in, and you're making a model of the imagery that you see as it's unfolding.

So there's a lot more brain activity, so it's actually much better. And to see that I was delighted, it felt that way. And then you add to that now a means of pointing and guiding a child's attention. So let them explore on their own with the audio if the audio is streaming, but give them control. Let them now decide what they want to point at.

There's a word they don't understand. A noodle a wrinkle. They can't sound it out, or there's a picture and they're curious about it, and they point a beam of light at it. They hold in their hand like a, you know, tiny little flashlight comes out and now it comes to life. And then ask them to scratch it or ask them to paint it or slurp it or throw a ball or hammer on a piece of the paper on the page.

And now you've added that fourth element, which is embodied learning, which now lights up the brain in a whole nother way. And we're about to do some major studies there, looking at actual brain activity simultaneous to that form of interaction.

[01:38:06] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I love Stanislau Han's work as well, and I'm flashing back to my instructional design days and trying to dual coding theory, right?

It's like you have the different types of working memory and the audio spatial I can remember, but yes. But what you're saying makes a lot of sense. You're basically trying to take different channels of information, the audio and the visual, and connect them through meaning. And that does, I'm sure, just take a completely different level than watching a video.

And even though we know that watching videos is such a huge part of young children's life right now, and this really takes it to a very different level. And then as you mentioned, the embodiment, the kinesthetic, the idea that you're actually moving and making choices to make those connections is really exciting as well.

I'm excited for my own kids. So as you go in, you've been in education technology for a long time and you're thinking about this project, it's a really exciting vision of what learning might look like in the AI era. I'm really curious what reactions you're getting from various stakeholders, from parents, from educators, and I'm curious what reactions you're getting from those in the EdTech community.

Do they think they hear screen free and say, wow, that's a novel approach. Are they excited by it? Are they excited by the brain science that you're talking about? Or are they like, but what's the delivery device? You have to own the whole channel. You can't put it on the app store in the same way that you might with dual lingo.

I'm curious what reactions you're getting.

[01:39:24] Jim Marggraff: It's been astoundingly off the charts positive. I wasn't sure because again, 25 years ago when I proposed the idea originally of bringing books to life, the reaction then was Kids don't want books, they want screens. Right, right. That was really the reaction. And it took me a while.

Two years I talked to people and the retailer said, looks good. Put it on a screen. Why do you want this book? So that was the reaction. And you know, we helped a hundred million kids in about five years. So now the reaction is astounding. Like, this is the seventh company I founded or co-founded. I have never seen a reaction as rapid and as positive because we hit a nerve.

The first nerve is you've given me something that my kids will engage with and it's not a screen. Right. Bring it on, bring it on. You know, let, they'll interact with books great. And we haven't even shown them what's coming next when they can interact with other physical objects sitting there in a child's life in a whole different way.

So that's still coming. So books, the starting point and the educators. The reaction is because of the shift in a return to the science of phonics and the science of reading decoding and everything that comes with that comprehension, vocabulary, fluency and more is incredible because we're giving the kids direct access in the classroom and reducing the amount again, of screen time for young children.

So that's the primary response we get. We did a uh, project called Measures for Early Success with the Gates Foundation For almost two years, we took our wand with books into pre-K classrooms to help determine if there was a new means of assessing children at that age. 'cause traditional assessments are very bias prone and they're observational, and they can lead to misrepresentation, particularly for black and Latino communities.

And then you have a problem because once that stain is on a child's record, the next teacher sees it. And they teach to it and it's subconscious, but its, studies have shown that the child had becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the Gates Foundation was looking for a solution and we entered with an approach that said we can bring divert books of diversity and different cultures with environments where children see themselves and their environment in, as opposed to a a single approach where they're all doing the the same.

It has to, you've gotta find something. So we brought the diversity of the library, a much more eclectic approach with different authors perspectives on into this. And their reaction there was incredible. So we'd been looking at where we would launch our wand into classrooms. We thought initially it would probably be K one and two and we decided to move into into pre-K.

And there it's instant because you approach any pre-K, any pre-K school in the country, and there are limiting screen time. The a A P has said you're limited and they are really trying to find solutions. And further, they all have books. You know, they're books, book cut cubbies, and there's solo play, there's group time, circle time, and suddenly that child can sit down on their own, not just look at a few pictures, but actually engage in the book.

We just did a study with preschools in New York City and Southern California. We had 23 classrooms and one was a new teacher. And the 24, the other 23 all remained participating in this at huge numbers of minutes. And our instructional designers who set up the study typically will retain maybe 30, maybe 50% of schools.

They all were just taken with this. And so we've seen a reaction to rolling out very shortly into New York City pre-Ks, as well as around the country. And that begins, shipments begin just in a couple months. And so at a recent show at Isti, the response was. Incredible. We want a a best of show at aafsa.

The apps A FSE we're recognized as one of the hottest AI products that actually made sense at A-S-U-G-S-V 'cause there's a lot of AI that's layered on top of existing LLMs. And so we did something unique.

[01:43:06] Alex Sarlin: Yes. I wanna ask a couple of quick fire questions. 'cause I'm just curious, does Kibeam think about translation?

[01:43:13] Jim Marggraff: Absolutely. Oh yeah. In fact, so here's our wand. I couldn't get away without at least turning it on. So here I'm holding it up again. I'm gonna plug in a speaker to make it a little louder. I'll push a little button on the side and you'll hear it start. There. It's ka beam wand reading system. Turn it down just a little bit.

Okay. Hold 

your wands 

happy. And I'm holding up a book. It's, it's a plain paper book. If you had it at home. There's a beam of light there. Dinosaurs. It announces the title to book. Press Your Big Green Now. I'll hold up a book. Um, called right there, Celia. My name is Celia, the life of Celia Cruz

Cruz. And if to read this book, press your big green button. Push a button. Very good To read English. Press the big green button once. Mm-hmm. Read Spanish. Press the big green button twice. Okay. I'll push a couple times. I'll turn to a page, turn to the first page of the story. I can point at any page. This book is bilingual, so it has both English and Spanish.

When I point at the page starts reading Spanish, if I push the button, it stops. And it allows me to push and play. So wherever I point now, I can point at the English open your eyes, or down here or up here. My costumes are as colorful as if you speak Spanish down here. Ruffles. There we go. Amazing. And I didn't take time to show you the play.

You can. Tap drums, pretend you're playing the piano and the lights on it. There are three orbs on this that light up, which reinforce this with visual support and the colors are used in different ways. So there's a whole nother language we have layered on top of it as well. 

[01:45:04] Alex Sarlin: That's amazing. You also mentioned assessment in passing and how assessment is, it feels like there's a natural potential extension here of using the Kibeam as an embedded assessment tool where you're somebody's reading and they can answer questions with the button or by pointing to the word on the page.

[01:45:20] Jim Marggraff: Absolutely. So I didn't show you the cue question. The game, so we have beat the clock games, treasure hunt games, simple question and answers in addition to pointing to hearing sound effects and further, very important. Again, something we didn't do with the LEAP Pad, this device, first of all, everything I've shown you operates standalone.

So I'm pointing at books. It's reading standalone. It's not connected to the internet right now. However, wow, it's wireless and Bluetooth and it will automatically connect and upload data on everything with permission on everything a child does. So every word they recover, they point at the book, they launch the page, they play what's read to them, how long they spend reading, what question they answer.

Did they get it right or wrong? The pause, they took the gesture, they made the button, they pushed everything. So we have a profile. We've just hit a hundred million data points on kids interacting with ordinary paper books and answering questions, making gestures, and we're gleaning insights from this.

That are unprecedented.

[01:46:18] Alex Sarlin: Well, it's a data set that nobody's ever had. Nobody knows how many times a kid has read the same page of a book, you know, that they have in their library. I mean, this is literally a new data set for publishers. It's a new data set for you. It's a new data set for families, parents don't know, which is their kid's favorite book that they're reading the most on their own.

Exactly. Really, really interesting. Wow. But I am literally going to, as soon as this call ends, I'm ordering this for my kids right now I have a, a 3-year-old and he would love it. And you know, we obviously try a lot of EdTech tools, but this is like a no brainer right here.

[01:46:50] Jim Marggraff: As much as I'd love to. It's not yet on the market for consumers.

[01:46:53] Alex Sarlin: Oh no, really?

[01:46:55] Jim Marggraff: Yeah, it's available for schools. Oh, okay. We have the school kit available next year, but thank you so much.

[01:47:01] Alex Sarlin: I'm sure I'm not the first person who has said that to you.

[01:47:03] Jim Marggraff: Yeah, it is. People say, where can I get this? I have this, this for my grandchild, for my son. My daughter. And the reaction that comes back, 'cause we are doing pilots at homes, tens of thousands of kids, and we see parents coming back.

My child is reading, they like books, they have new words, they talk about vocabulary. They come to me with their book, they show me. I mean, we're seeing this reaction in a world where, you know, one would not necessarily expect it. The one thing early on, like my other inventions, the reaction was, are you sure?

Are you, are you going the wrong way? You know, really you're using AI and you're going with using paper books.

[01:47:35] Alex Sarlin: Why would you do that?

[01:47:37] Jim Marggraff: And it's not about the book. You know, marsh McLuhan, the medium is the message and the medium now is, is a combination of what AI can do. For a teacher to assist them in a classroom, give them that extra hand when they don't have it, give that child direct access to the words they don't understand.

And at home when the parent says, gee, my child wants to do something, I don't want them to using a screen. So that's what's happening.

[01:48:01] Alex Sarlin: So final question for you. I'm definitely gonna look out for the consumer version, but final question for you. When you mentioned that this is a tool that kids can use across books, across grade levels, at school and at home, and it's gathering data in a, you know, in a safe, controlled way, but actually understanding them feels like you're on also potentially on the path to a learning companion.

I could imagine a world where Kibeam could recommend a book for you, or Kibeam could say, oh you, it's just like that other book you read last week and a member of that dinosaur. It's the same dinosaur in this book. I'm sure you're thinking about this. I'd love to hear you talk about it.

[01:48:32] Jim Marggraff: Thank you. We're all over it.

It's happening. In fact, by next spring we will have not only our analytics available in dashboard form for classrooms, but we'll also have a recommendation engine. And the recommendation engine in the classroom is what skills they need to learn because we'll crosswalk to the other assessment tools that are out there.

And then recommend that the specific books they should play with. And these begin with books that are part of a supplementary curriculum, may be core curriculum, but they reach outside into other books that they may be available. 'cause now if you introduce, the child has to use the books in the curriculum, but they love dinosaurs, they love animals, they love trucks, they love a mystery.

And now you can direct them to a book that they love passionately that they might use at home as well. Exactly. So this homeschool linkage potential, which is again not been done before. The potential for us to connect these two with a platform that is prescriptive in the classroom and is optional and vocational or vocational in the home,

[01:49:30] Alex Sarlin: yes, is very exciting.

And even on an any given page, it can say, check out this particular word because this is a skill that you're working on. You know, it can adapt the content to this skill level and the needs of any real child, keyword, adapt. And we,

[01:49:43] Jim Marggraff: that's coming as well. But let me tell you here, I'm holding up a book, dinosaurs.

Yep. Okay. We've got all these books, this one new La Cavoodle, this delightful book, little Dog case the week. But if you give a child who is 5, 6, 7 years old, a book, give them a 36 page, 32 page book. Let them sit down with it, watch how long they use it. Now there's studies on this. It's really hard to collect because it's usually, uh, being managed and overseen by a parent.

But if a child uses the book by themselves, they'll typically spend, we find in anecdotally, in data that we can obtain five to seven minutes with a book. Some parents say two or three, they'll look at it, they'll flip through it, and they're done. They'll move on on their own. Struggling. Kids just won't even stay with it.

The data we have on tens of thousands of views is the average amount of time a child spends interacting with our want with a book is 28 minutes. Wow. That's not 28 minutes of looking at a few pages and words. That's 28 minutes of playing games, listening, hearing new words, being challenged and thinking while they're doing it, and getting exposure.

So that's, you know, if we put a multiplier on that, I'd love to come up with a way to translate that into the equivalent of just simply passively taking a look at the book. 'cause it would be a, a multiple of the 28 minutes.

[01:50:53] Alex Sarlin: Oh, absolutely. You know, I think one way to look at it, and obviously this is where you start, is it takes paper, books and makes them as engaging and interactive and adaptive as.

The most technologically, you know, enhanced experiences that we get on screens, like adaptive video platforms or gaming platforms or EdTech platforms that have assessment built in or games. And those tools obviously have very high engagement as well, but they don't have the education lab. But that we want, although obviously we all working on that within EdTech.

This is a fascinating, fascinating product. I'm really excited to see it in action. I want it for my own family. I'm, I, I'm very serious about that. But I would love to follow up, up on the studies that you're doing as well. Your 10,000 person pilot, what you've been doing in reading schools around the country.

It is really exciting. Jim Marggraff is the CEO and founder of Kibeam and the inventor of the Leapfrog Leap Pet. Kibeam is transforming how children learn to read. Through screen free AI power tools, and as you can hear from this interview, they are just getting started. So many ideas yet to explore. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.

[01:51:59] Jim Marggraff: Thank you, Alex. Be well.

[01:52:01] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. 

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