People, personalization, and technology: What matters most in education innovation?
The Lean Lab team flew to New York City in November to see what one of the most diverse and creative cities in the United States was doing to innovate in education. Technology was definitely prominent in the learning environment there, but successful schools relied more on talented teachers, community engagement, and personalization.
With 1.1 million students attending over 1,800 schools in New York City, there are a plethora of school experiences to choose from: traditional, dual-language, private, large class sizes, small class sizes, student-led, specialized, and more. So what sets successful schools apart?
ALT SCHOOL
One of the schools we visited in our three-day trip was Alt School. Alt School was founded by one of Google’s former product managers, Max Ventilla, who helped create a “unity of experience” across Google products. Prior to working for Google, Ventilla founded a startup called Aardvark, which he sold to Google for around $50 million.
Given Ventilla’s tech background, we assumed Alt School would be very reliant upon technology. And there is no mistaking that technology is fully integrated into Alt School’s framework. Alt School relies on its own platform to record student outcomes (my.altschool). Each student has a profile that they utilize to record goals, projects, and progress. Think of it as an online, interactive portfolio, accessible by parents, students, and teachers alike.
However, the technology at Alt School is just an infrastructure that supports students’ academic, social, and emotional learning journeys. Alt School’s Head of School, Alex Ragone, stressed that middle schoolers only spend about 30% of the day with technology, and elementary students spend even less (closer to 10% of the time).
What Alt School relies upon more — and what a large portion of the $30,000 tuition cost covers — is the talent of its teaching staff.
AVENUES
Technology-as-infrastructure is something that Chris Whittle utilized when he founded Avenues, a private, dual-language school in the arts district of New York City. We listened to Whittle speak about his experiences as a world-wide entrepreneur and educator at a speaker series at New York University’s education accelerator StartEd Accelerator.
At Avenues, Whittle explained, “We did in the school what good companies do all the time.” Best practices involved 1:1 technology, professional development opportunities for teachers, infrastructures in place to support outcomes and, specific to Avenues, total dual-language immersion and specialization, leading to “global readiness”, “excellence”, and a competitive edge for Avenues graduates when (not if) they apply to colleges and universities. As a whole, Avenues’ core educational objectives include academic skills, global readiness, an area of depth and excellence, values, life skills, fitness, and entry into great higher education.
Two seniors readily exemplified these objectives through founding a design thinking workshop called Design 4 Impact, which brought together students from near and far boroughs across NYC to learn design thinking and solve real-world problems from actual startups in the area (referred to as “pro-partners”).
Getting an education from Alt School and Avenues costs a hefty premium for the technology and the curriculum that prepares students for the 21st century, but it is important to note that high student outcomes and lifelong learners are fostered by talented teachers and engaged communities, not the latest tech.
MANHATTAN NEW SCHOOL, PS 290
Take Manhattan New School, for example. MNS is a public school on the Upper East Side and relied upon technology the least out of all the schools we visited. Assistant Principal Amy O’Brien proclaimed that students growing up in a city as diverse and dynamic as New York City really shouldn’t be on screens at all. She described the city as a “canvas.” The opportunities to take ownership of one’s learning and get involved are seemingly endless in NYC.
Kindergarten teacher Paula Rogovin always strives to take advantage of those opportunities. In fact, for almost the last decade, she takes her kindergarteners to visit the nearby construction site of the 2nd Avenue Subway Station, currently the largest infrastructure project in the United States. It’s a unique opportunity for her students to witness the elaborate process of building the underground train system and interact with the men and women who make it happen.
As a facilitator, Rogovin creates research projects around her students’ interests, keeping them engaged and invested in their learning. “I really want the kids in my classes to think, to do research, to do inquiry, to search for answers to their questions. My whole curriculum is based on their questions,” Rogovin says.
What makes Manhattan New School thrive and attract new families to its zone each year is its engaged and supportive surrounding community. Rather than relying heavily on online research to enhance research projects, Rogovin partners and collaborates with her students’ families and utilizes their knowledge and expertise, grounding her students’ research projects in the real world. The PTA generously supplements PS 290’s yearly budget to provide ample resources for the student body.
The school has a long history of a home-grown community. Family members who start off as volunteers while their children are in school usually end up staying and working full-time, even after their children have graduated. Several teachers were themselves students at the school. When the school first opened 2 decades ago, many local parents helped haul in furniture.
It seems safe to assert that in successful schools, talented teachers utilize technology and work with engaged community members in order to facilitate personalization, allowing students taking ownership of their learning and becoming intellectually, emotionally, and socially ready for the 21st century.
So how do we ensure ALL students have access to these kinds of educational experiences? How do we ensure that EVERY student is prepared for life that exists beyond classrooms?
We at the Lean Lab believe that the answer lies in service providers: for profit and nonprofit organizations started by entrepreneurs who are dedicated to solving problems that exist in education. These ventures can be edtech companies, new school models, after-school programs, nonprofits, or something we have never seen before. But more important than the type of venture is the commitment that venture has to the impacted community. That means parents, teachers, and students are heavily involved at every step of the way, so that the finished product will be relevant and effective for real students in real classrooms.
SCHOOLS THAT CAN
Schools That Can is a nonprofit in NYC with a clear, community-specific focus. Its mission is to unite leaders to expand quality urban education and close opportunity and skills gaps.
The team works tirelessly to dismantle the silos by creating a network of schools that come together to advance school improvement. It is through partnerships between urban educators, school leaders, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders that problems are identified, solutions are built, and student outcomes are improved.
Schools That Can currently works with 152 schools and serves over 60,000 students nationwide. Read more about Schools That Can here.
#NYCEDU
A second organization with a community focus is #NYCEDU, founded by Deborah Chang. #NYCEDU does not provide services, necessarily, but rather is a community of connected entrepreneurs, educators, business leaders, administrators, creatives, artists, and more who want to discuss education and share resources in New York City. #NYCEDU hosts many events and works to connect grasstops with each other, and maintains a huge online community through its Slack channel. Follow the #NYCEDU movement on Twitter.
BRANCHING MINDS
Seeping into the technology space, one NYC edtech company called Branching Minds aims to personalize intervention and equip teachers with scientific research and resources to help them identify why their students are struggling, almost like WebMD but for classroom interventions. The interactive platform provides educators a process to record the challenges their students are facing and learn the cognitive reasons for those challenges and how to intervene.
Through various accelerators and forms of feedback from their users, the Branching Minds team has gone through several iterations of their platform to ensure the most effective and user-friendly experience possible. The goal is ultimately to give teachers more time to teach and decrease the number of special ed referrals each year. Read more about Branching Minds here.
QUILL
Quill, another edtech company based out of NYC, provides writing, grammar, and vocabulary activities to middle and high school students to help them become better writers. The interactive platform not only automatically checks students’ writing for grammatical errors, but comes with 200+ free activities based upon the Common Core that teachers can utilize in the classroom.
Executive Director and founder of Quill, Peter Gault, created this technology because he realized the importance of good writing skills for successful students. Importantly, Quill is a nonprofit and follows a “freemium” business model so that public schools with very limited budgets can take advantage of the platform. Learn more about Quill here.
What does this all mean for Kansas City?
At The Lean Lab, we have been in the midst of a strategic planning period, where we have been collecting narratives and feedback to inform the nature of The Lean Lab for the next 3–5 years. And while our city is nowhere near the size and scope of New York City, we share some commonalities in the challenges we face. Parents, teachers, and students we have engaged with share concerns about public schools and charter schools operating in silos, unclear communication between schools and homes, low levels of parent engagement among different schools, severely limited funding, shaky or nonexistent partnerships, drop-out rates, student engagement, too much and / or inefficient testing, risk-averse behavior…
The best way we can close achievement gaps is through cultivating intentional, genuine, and meaningful partnerships between the community (parents, teachers, and students), decision makers (school leaders, funders, philanthropists), and entrepreneurs. By bringing all the stakeholders in education together, entrepreneurs will build effective, sustainable, innovative ventures that will impact the life and learning outcomes of every student in Kansas City.
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Education entrepreneurs, parents, teachers, students — we want to hear from you! What challenges are you experiencing? What solutions do you want to see implemented? Your perspective and feedback will radically influence the programming structure of and amount of funding available for The Lean Lab’s Incubator Fellowship in 2017. Contact us at hello@theleanlab.org.
