Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Future-Proofing Education: AI, Quantum Tech, and Career Pathways with Digital Promise CEO, Jean-Claude Brizard
Jean-Claude Brizard is President and CEO of Digital Promise, a global, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on accelerating innovation in education. He is the former Chief Executive of Chicago Public Schools and Superintendent of Rochester, NY. Previously, he spent 21 years with the NYC Department of Education, serving as Regional Superintendent for 100+ schools and Executive Director for 400 secondary schools. He also served as Senior Advisor and Deputy Director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading strategies to close racial and economic achievement gaps and supporting charter school growth.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Digital Promise’s focus on blending learning sciences, technology, and practice
- Balancing national innovation with classroom realities
- The impact of AI, quantum computing, and emerging tech on education
- Preparing students for adaptable career pathways, not just jobs
- Collaboration between philanthropy, government, and nonprofits to drive change
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:20] Digital Promise’s mission: teaching, learning, pedagogy, and assessment
[00:05:39] Strategic agility: linking national strategy with classroom practice
[00:07:28] Using a logic model to guide initiatives and goals
[00:09:53] Preparing schools for AI, quantum computing, and future tech
[00:13:10] Career pathways that foster adaptability over specific jobs
[00:16:11] Philanthropy vs. government: roles in education funding
[00:19:05] Digital Promise certifications for edtech founders
[00:22:28] Back-to-school advice: building coherent instructional systems
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[00:00:00] Jean-Claude Brizard: So I'm a commercial pilot, and then when I was training, I was taught very clearly. The moment you think you have nothing to do, the sequence of events for crash starts. So nothing happens with a stab of a finger's, a process that gets you there.
[00:00:18] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood. K. 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at 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.
We have an exceedingly special guest this week for our week in EdTech segment. We are speaking with Jean-Claude Brizard, the President and CEO of Digital Promise, a global, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on accelerating innovation in education. He's the former senior advisor and deputy director in US programs At.
The Gates Foundation where he focused on pre-K through 16 education across five communities in four states. Jean-Claude also led several strategies to help close the racial and economic achievement gaps in Washington state's educational system, as well as support the growth and sustainability of the state's.
Public charter school sector. He's the former chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, and prior to his appointment in Chicago was superintendent of schools for the Rochester New York School district. His experience also includes a 21 year career as an educator and administrator with the New York City Department of Education.
He was a regional superintendent supervising more than a hundred schools in Brooklyn, and served as the systems executive director for its. 400 secondary schools an absolute education and EdTech legend, Jean-Claude Brizard. Welcome to EdTech Insiders,
[00:02:08] Jean-Claude Brizard: Alex. Ben, thanks for having me,
[00:02:10] Alex Sarlin: Jean-Claude, it's so great to have you here.
Before we dive into your personal background, can you just tell us a little bit about Digital Promise, what you're doing, and. Kind of the priorities of the organization.
[00:02:20] Jean-Claude Brizard: Sure. I mean, Ben, you know, we work at the intersection of learning sciences, research, technology, innovation, and practice. The last one is really critically important for me as a teacher, as a principal.
I mean, I'm an educator. When you look at the obsessions today around artificial intelligence and emerging tech, et cetera, for me and far it goes back to the foundations of the work that we need to do in teaching, learning, future of assessment. That work really is evolving because of learning sciences.
Technology is gonna be an amazing enabler and accelerator, and I'm excited about what AI will do. But the foundational challenges of redefining success in education, which is again, not just math, reading proficiency, those are critically important, but a lifelong success of young people and the work that we need to do in early learning post-secondary schools are part of the foundations of the work.
So the tech excitement, the AI excitement for us goes right back to curriculum instruction, pedagogy, and assessment.
[00:03:14] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I mean, it's such a spectacular background that you have. You've been in so many different seats within the education and ed tech ecosystem. You've led school systems in several places.
You've been an educator, you've been a system letter leader. You worked in philanthropy. You know, I'm curious, when you think about digital promise and the mission of the organization, how do you ensure that you're bringing all of this different experience to play and really trying to make sure that you're.
Addressing real problems in the education system that will actually change practice on the ground.
[00:03:45] Jean-Claude Brizard: I think perhaps one of the things that I bring that allows me to do the work I do at Digital Promise is maybe credibility. 'cause I've been, like, my first teaching job was at a prison in Queens, New York, right?
So I've been in all different parts of the system. I revolutionized my physics teaching because of technology when I was a young teacher in Brooklyn, New York. So that's credibility. A lot of what I've been trying to do for the last four and a half years here. Sort of creating these mutually reinforcing levers within the organization to solve top and huge challenges in education, right?
So we've got the power of the people. We've got the power of being a really good intermediary. We've got the power of our partners as an example. We're now partnering. With ist, with Anda Caste, you name them. Worded Tech to look at the EdTech marketplace, and what I bring to the conversation is a different orientation, meaning that we've been focusing a lot on supply, creating certified products, et cetera.
My focus has been on demand. How do we talk to school systems about. Being really smart consumers and buying tech products that are good products that really supports their instructional program. And that's my question to superintendents. What is your tech strategy as it relates to your academic work?
So that's the kind of effort we've been pushing here. Digital promise. How do we look at. Big issues. How do we leverage our internal capacity and that of our funders and our partners in solving big giant challenges? As I get older, I'm getting more and more impatient about solving big problems. You know, I, I don't have another 50 years to wait for things to change.
[00:05:19] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. As you're working on these big national partnerships, how do you balance these kind of national needs with the localized needs for innovation? So much of what we see is. The big thinking and the on the ground thinking can be disconnected. How do you navigate that kind of vertical system?
[00:05:39] Jean-Claude Brizard: It's a really important question, and I'll tell you, there's an expression that we use called strategic agility.
Do you have that meaning? Can you see the 30,000 foot level? Can you also see the ground level work? And that means, frankly, working with teachers and principals. And there were, although our entry tends to be the superintendent, we very much visit classrooms, work with teachers. I had a bunch here in my office here, I said last week, uh, looking at science, science assessment in California.
So the work being informed by ground level practitioners allows us to see what is happening in the classroom as it relates to the system, as it relates to even the federal system. State system that has been part of our continual push to really understand what that means. One asset we have that many orgs don't have is that many of my top tier researchers were teachers in the classroom.
Mm-hmm. There's one woman I talk about all of the time who was a math classroom teacher in Denver decade as a teacher, got a PhD in mathematics. Now does a lot of math research work, but her lens always is what would that look like for me in the classroom? That's the way in which we keep that sort of, um, key folks real.
Real work that teachers are facing in the.
[00:06:48] Alex Sarlin: One of the things that I find so interesting, digital Promise you, as you mentioned, you have so many partnerships like Cosin and Isti and Setta, and you have so many different programs that are doing really interesting work to sort of push the thinking of the field forward.
I think of the League of Innovative Schools or the learn variability work, but it's a little, frankly, as someone who follows the space, it's a little hard to keep track of all the initiatives just 'cause there's a lot of them. I'd love to just hear a little bit of some of the initiatives that Digital Promise has been.
You know, really spearheading that are particularly close to your heart or that you feel like this EdTech audience should be aware of. You do certifications. I mean, there's so much in your wheelhouse. Give us a little overview of the Digital Promise landscape circa 2025. So,
[00:07:28] Jean-Claude Brizard: Alex, it may be perhaps a bit technical at first.
I think your question is really an important question. When I came to Digital Promise, you know, my push was I do not want to be a jack of all trades in the master of all, which what we were doing early on in our development. We develop three, what we call population level goals. And like one for example, talks about 35 million young people getting access to a credential of market value, right?
75% of systems having the tools they need to create the conditions for success. So those are there. There is a full logic model behind that that talks about all of our work roll up into supporting these three population goals. That's what keeps us grounded piece.
This logic model, even our performance management system internally on goals of individuals, goals of team goals of the CEO, all sort of scaffold to that particular piece. So when you look at, for example, the three circles I mentioned, which is the overarching structure of learning sciences, research, tech, innovation in practice, we talk about faith, how we moving the needle.
Along these three big circles and how it's moving toward our 10 year population level goals. So internally, we try to keep a level of coherence, and if you watch the work now we have more and more cross teaching happening across the organization. I've merged, for example. Four or five different teams into two teams over the last few months.
The idea there is to make sure that we remain coherent, that we are forcing our effort toward adapt. Even the certification of a tech products leans back on this idea of powerful learning, which is our center goal, goes back to this coherent instructional system. How we providing the kinds of support teachers need to support the young people in front of them.
[00:09:07] Alex Sarlin: As you're thinking about the strategy for Digital Promise going ahead, it's not just about being agile for kids and learners today, but it's also helping schools and districts prepare for tomorrow, given the kind of shakeup on the technological front. Sometimes the most rational thing for a school to do is wait and see, because six months from now or a year from now, the technology or the products might get better or might get cheaper, but there's still also a need for them to build that muscle and to incorporate these new strategies.
How do you think about preparing schools? Be responsive or adaptive for the next 10 years. And what are the major trends that you're trying to help them wrap their heads around?
[00:09:53] Jean-Claude Brizard: Yeah, it's another great question, Ben. So I'm a commercial pilot and when I was training I was taught very clearly. The moment you think you have nothing to do.
Events for crash starts, happens a
way systems.
Of education and learning. We have to keep looking around the corner. Now what is in front of us, but what is around the corner? For example, we've been doing AI work for six, seven years here at Digital Promises. It's not new. Now we're thinking about how we actually influence open ai. We're talking to be working with Google, for example, in Notebook L and Gemini.
We look at the next iteration of the work. A year ago, I told my team that quantum computing is an obsession we should be having right now because it's coming. We don't wanna be caught by surprise. And last thing I'll push then to your question. I was doing a, a webinar recently and one educator on the line said, I'm gonna wait till AI becomes ethical before I use it.
Agitated. And I said, if you're gonna do that, it'll never be ethical, right? And I said, please be and not passengers in the effort. How will you make sure that AI is ethical? And she asked me, well, how do I do that? I said, procurement. Start by demanding sort of ethical ai and, and guess what? We have a certification, exactly a digital promise that will be part, part of the tech index at make sure in your procurement you ask this product use AI is ethically designed.
Transparent and is efficacious, right? So there are ways of creating that, and we're gonna create more of those kinds of, perhaps proxies for efficacy, et cetera. So you are buying quality stuff. Those are the ways in which we keep trying to get folks to remain grounded in the challenges in front of you, but do not stay in the solutions that are today.
There are new solutions being developed. We, for example, gosh, six, eight months ago, launched the U game, UGA N Reading Center. To institute a 10 million effort looking at a mirror, learning a bunch of technologists, a bunch of researchers in language. You think about linguists, right? Working with technologists, working with practitioners, and taking a science reading platform and making it available for multilingual learners.
I mean, that's how we keep looking on the corner. At the same time, focusing on today's challenges, but looking for new novel ways of solving the challenge. So we keep pushing people to keep thinking around the corner, what is coming? How can we. New novel ideas to an existing challenge in education.
[00:12:24] Alex Sarlin: That anecdote about, you know, waiting for AI to become ethical to use it is such a great one.
It's like saying I won't use the internet until it's safe or reliable. Yes, you're gonna be waiting a long time. One thing that has been really interesting trend over the last few years, it started I think in higher ed, but you're seeing it more and more in the K 12 space now, is sort of. Parental demand that education be tailored to actual, you know, career outcomes, sometimes college and career outcomes, but increasingly career outcomes.
And I'm curious how Digital Promise thinks about this trend. You know, the idea of knocking down some of the walls that it doesn't always feel like school is just, you know, its own little island and then you get out and the real world starts. But instead having experiences in school that are aligned to career trajectories, career exploration, career outcomes.
Curious how Digital Promise has thought about this over the last few years.
[00:13:10] Jean-Claude Brizard: So Alex, we just merged our Center for Inclusive Innovation and our Center for Learning Pathways. Do. Team team. But let me to your question. I wanna go back to my own personal experience. I was the principal of a old fashioned vocational high school in Brooklyn, New York was his nicknamed Hip Hop High.
Wow. So Jay-Z, bus Rhymes, little Kim Biggie Smalls. I went to that school before my time. Right. But you know, we redesigned the school to be a real sort of IT tech focused school. Again, looking around the corner, there are certain things I worry about in that push. One is that we know. Today's job is not tomorrow's job.
And jobs keep evolving very, very quickly, right? So want to prepare a young person for a job of, today I went to a school, I wanna name the district. One of the pathways was truck driving. Actually left with a heartburn, like, oh my God, that will disappear in five years. Right? So how do you make sure you're not preparing young people for esoteric jobs?
But one, they can grow with a job and grow with a career. You prepare them for a career. So I don't have a big issue preparing young people for careers, but not for jobs. Mm-hmm. But to make sure that the way they're being prepared, those two things. One, it teaches them how to grow with a particular sector.
Or how to change jobs if the job is changing. That requires a level of understanding on the doable skills like tenacity, understanding those are critical skills that we have not taught well in schools that have to be part of these kind of pathways. The second, frankly, is that you need to create.
Informed citizenry, and that requires amazing liberal arts education. Mm-hmm. Right. Uh, it requires a pedagogy that allows young people to question and see and explore to. If they decide at the end of high school they do not wanna go in this particular career track, but wanna do something different, they can do that.
Mm-hmm. So it's complex, it's challenging, but I'm always afraid that when you pigeonhole a child into a very specific career. If that changes, then you are in trouble. So there are ways of doing that and there are folks who are doing it. Link Learning Alliance, national Academy Foundation will do amazing work.
And what we're doing, frankly, in places like Alabama with cybersecurity and we very much have an eye toward that. AI will replace some of the entry jobs in cybersecurity. Right? So had to prepare someone to keep scaffolding their education. These are not new ideas, but one that require. Are really important to make sure that the doable skills and the work skills are combined in a way that really prepares a person for the future.
[00:15:37] Alex Sarlin: As you think about the nonprofit landscape, there's been a bunch of headlines around philanthropy backing new initiatives. We even see the tech companies starting to do partnerships. You mentioned your work that you've done with Google OpenAI has been very active, but we've also seen federal funds really pull back.
In the philanthropic space as you are getting funding for your initiatives and as you're thinking about the overall support for education, what are the priorities that philanthropists should be thinking about and how does that affect our space?
[00:16:11] Jean-Claude Brizard: One of the things I've been watching in some of our funders, and I'm really happy about it, which is that they're beginning to your point, partner to create these funded collaboratives that addresses big challenges.
They're also seeing long term, for example, this idea I've mentioned about the tech ecosystem. We've got two funders who are really committed, but they. Seeing a three to six year effort, not just a one year effort, and really shifting the market that is more gratifying. I'm seeing the Gates Foundation looking at bigger rocks.
But let's be clear, philanthropy cannot replace the US government's support. I mean. That is not possible. So with the questions being raised by the Secretary, by Lyndon McMahon are legitimate questions around why we've not moved the ball, why it's taking 25 years for the science of reading to actually make its way into the education system.
Those are really legitimate questions. At the same time, no one can fund research like IES and NSF and others within the federal government. Even I be President, be. I understand America's position in research in the world. We've been leading, uh, the world for decades. We cannot sort of slide back. That is an important push, an important piece to that.
Philanthropy exists as a catalyst, as maybe sometimes a bridge, right? Because we've worked. For example, with the NSF Walton Foundation, gates Foundation and others around ed tech, for example, right? That is an amazing partnership when you see philanthropy and government coming together, but no one can replace the US government in the kind of work.
So as nonprofits, what we try to do is two things. One is make sure we have a braided funding system, and two, sometimes work with our funders. To perhaps bring new ideas to them that tries to solve, again, existing challenges without asking them to replace the US government. That is not possible. So it is a balance that we try to, to strike, to make sure, again, that we have these collaboratives who are addressing big issues, but at the same time keep pushing on the secretary in the White House that the US is.
Prominent position in research should not be
[00:18:15] Alex Sarlin: backpedaled. Yeah. So that collaborative approach with philanthropy or with Big Tech is a lot of those initiatives right now are focusing on the future of ai. As you mentioned AT and Digital Promise, you know, has been doing AI for a long time. You know, we talked to Jeremy Rochelle from Digital Promise.
He's been doing AI for a very long time. An organization you have for a long time. You know, a lot of the listeners to this podcast are ed tech. Founders and funders as well. But for the founders out there, you know, digital Promise has built a lot of expertise in AI and has these certifications for, I believe it's responsible AI and some other sort of ways of looking at ai.
You've been doing some really interesting work to sort of affect the trajectory of how AI gets used in classrooms. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that and as well as give a little bit of an explanation for the EdTech founders in the audience about what Digital Promise certifications are and why they might be useful for it to stand out in a crowded
[00:19:05] Jean-Claude Brizard: field.
It's funny because one of my next calls is with a founder of a net tech company, so we provide a number of certifications, like research based design or competency based, which means that if you don't get a certification, you know exactly why you didn't make it. You can come back and we do it again, and we do everything from startups to McGraw Hill to mle.
We do it all. The idea is we try to inform the consumer. Of how good these products are. And to be clear, we're not the only ones. Isti is doing it. Coen does it ca for special needs kids, et cetera. We do it all collectively. Again, we're working on the demand side of the work. One thing that is not yet public, but it's not a secret, we are actually launching a venture, a digital power venture that will look to work with VCs and LPs.
Looking for more penetration in the market. The value that we bring to that conversation is we can de-risk capital for investors, right? Because we can put the product in front of superintendents and teachers and principles and say, does this thing work or not? What is wrong with it? We have a structure called the research practice Industry partnership.
So this thing with am Mirror learning sort of falls into that and we do others. Uh, course module is another one that we actually working with right now. With Deisha to or deisha with a bunch of educators are iterating on the product. So you think about, I mean, what value or high value can it be to be in front of, I dunno, 20 principles and your tech developers and you're iterating on the product.
That's the value we bring to the conversation. Does this venture will be launched as we raise money for investing, but we can do a ton of stuff to support.
Companies that we know of overseas wanna break into the US market. But the one thing we don't lose is our consumer report orientation, which is that we don't endorse, we certify, right? And we certify against what we believe and know, frankly, that is a challenge for teachers and principals in the current context.
Very interesting.
[00:21:01] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, super interesting. And I feel like also this idea of co-designing with educators and students is a really great fit for the technology now because with AI and with kind of agile development methodologies, you aren't talking about two year or three year development cycles. You can do a sprint.
You get in one of those sessions and really launch new features much, much more quickly. So that's a really great like service or infrastructure that you're providing there.
[00:21:34] Jean-Claude Brizard: We're doing something now with the Gates Foundation called Encore, and with a whole host of math products along their orientation.
They're funding it and we are supporting. We launched the vital prize a year, year and a half ago with the National Science Foundation, $6 million prize that we give out to EdTech founders. All again funded by Walton Gates, the Science Foundation.
[00:21:55] Alex Sarlin: So I think our conversation has really been around the strategy and the big picture future.
We have many listeners. Are waking up tomorrow to go to the first day of school, either as a classroom educator, a school principal, or a superintendent. You know, if you had to give practical advice around what to do in these first weeks of school, what concrete advice would you give to educators who you know are juggling all of these new innovative things and you know, a classroom full of 30 kids ready to learn?
[00:22:28] Jean-Claude Brizard: Yes, yes. But hopefully that happened before the kids actually show up to the door the first day. You know, I go back to this concept of coherent instructional system, and that is not necessarily the job of a teacher. It's the job of a school leader and system leader. What is your instructional program gonna be?
Math. It may be right. How are you thinking about. Lesson preparation, lesson design, pedagogical practice, assessing what is happening in reteaching and frankly, most important, what is the role of technology in enhancing that relationship. The second thing that we think about is, you know, we learned during the pandemic that the work of education, the most important relationship is a four-legged stool, is teachers.
Parents, right, students and content. And the question, frankly, how is technology helping you connect the home in the school? Because what you do within the four walls of a school is not sufficient to support the child or children in front of you. And, and extending the work to the home in the parent, frankly, can be done, can be facilitated by technology.
And I goes to AI as well, too. Every product will have ai. Do you know what it's doing? Can you turn it off if you wanted to, for example, right? All these things matter in terms of working the first day and teaching in a holistic way that gets you to the outcomes you're looking for. But again, it's that four-legged stool and the world technology and really enhancing and supporting that relationship.
[00:23:48] Alex Sarlin: You're a master of frameworks. I feel like I have learned so much in this call just about different ways of structuring. Very complex ecosystems and thoughts and complexities into frameworks that are memorable and you can actually, you know, logic models that you can make sense of really powerful work.
I wish we had more time. We are coming on the end of our time. Jean-Claude Brizard is President and CEO of Digital Promise, incredibly important organization in the education technology landscape obviously connects so many different types of organizations together. From EdTech founders to philanthropies to Seta and Cosin and Isti and other nonprofits.
It has been incredibly. Enlightening to have you with us on EdTech Insiders. We really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Alex and Ben, thank you for your time. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community.
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