ETCH

Share this post

EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading 6/4

www.etch.club

Discover more from ETCH

5-minute, weekly updates on the EdTech ecosystem, with some opinion on the state of education attached
Over 5,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in
Weekend Reading

EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading 6/4

Week of 5/30 - 6/2

Matthew Tower
Jun 4, 2023
1
Share this post

EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading 6/4

www.etch.club
Share

Hello!

As a reminder, EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading is a Sunday roundup of what happened in the EdTech industry over the course of the week. It includes funding and M&A activities, people moves, and important news articles across early childhood, K12, Higher Ed, and Workforce.

Weekend Reading is the free sister publication to the Weekly Update, which comes out on Tuesdays and provides an analysis of why these events happened to paying subscribers. I’d love to have you subscribed to both!


Funding / M&A

K12

  • Swing Education raises $38M / US, K12 Staffing / Apax Partners, Reach Capital

  • Maximal Learning raises $5.7M / US, Student Services / Trilogy Ventures, Pioneer Square Labs, Honeystone Ventures, GSV Ventures, Owl Ventures

  • Antimatter raises $2M / US, K12 Curriculum / Version One

  • CleverBean raises $200K / Australia, K12 Teacher Training / Skalata Ventures

Higher Ed

  • Learneo acquires Barnes & Nobles Digital Student Solutions for ~$20M / US, Higher Ed Student Services

Workforce

  • Sana raises $28M / Sweden, Enterprise LMS / NEA (just one week after spending $15M on Kira Learning!)

  • Data Masters raises $700K / Italy, Technical Training Provider / Zanichelli Ventures

  • Scaler acquires Pepcoding / India, Bootcamp provider

  • Educate360 acquires Velopi / US, Professional Development Provider

  • Axcel Learning acquires Dion Training / US, Professional Development Provider

Looking for a full list of EdTech Funding + M&A from the past two years? Founding Members receive access to the EdTech Funding and M&A database


People Moves

  • Bitwise furloughs entire staff of 900. YIKES.

  • Arthur Giterman joins Promethean as Chief Financial Officer

  • Shannon Penrose and Sue Wiley join American College of Education in leadership roles

  • Jason Botel joins Age of Learning as VP of National Partnerships

  • Jaimie Moquin joins Element451 as SVP of Customer Success

  • Catherine LaCour joins the board of Panorama Education


Asks

  • Liam, Aditya, and the Edulab team would love for you to join them in El Paso Texas on June 16 for the LatinX EdTech Summit.

  • Alberto & the Transcend Network would love early-stage founders looking for PMF or fundraising support to join their latest Transcend Fellowship cohort.

If you have an Ask for a future EdTech Thoughts post, please fill out this form.


Links

Early Childhood

  • Rising bi-partisan support for more government support on childcare. Passing a law before 2024 still unlikely. / via Politico

  • The most expensive and most affordable cities for childcare in the US. / via Business Insider

K12

  • Blackrock cuts Byju’s valuation by ~2/3. / via Techcrunch

  • School voucher plan on the brink in Texas. / via Dallas Morning News

  • Why K12 schools must invest in teaching quantum computing. I feel like we should get consensus on algebra before we make the quantum leap? / via Edtechmagazine

  • Science of Reading gains ground in Illinois and California. / via K12 Dive

  • Do math drills help students learn? / via Hechinger Report

  • Virginia to invest $365M in school construction. / via K12 Dive

    • Related, Nevada’s school districts running out of options to finance school upgrades / via Las Vegas Sun

  • Supporting the mental health of K12 staff / via 74Million

  • Every US state now has at least a pilot of competency-based programs in K12 classrooms. First, Carnegie < > ETS, then Pearson < > CAE, now this. Competency-based education might be having it’s “gradually, then suddenly” moment. / via EdWeek

    • Related, CAE is on a hot streak. After partnering with Pearson, the assessment non-profit’s critical thinking test will be administered across Finnish universities. / via GlobeNewswire

Higher Ed

  • Xi wants to expand number of international students attending Chinese universities. / via Bloomberg

  • Connecticut law stops universities from withholding transcripts. / via Higher Ed Dive

  • The new predators in higher education. This article was important, shining new light on a less-understand part of the industry…when Kevin Carey wrote it in 2018. / via Business Insider

  • ETS cuts GRE test time to 2 hours. Joining the TOEFL in ETS’ rapid modernization strategy under (relatively) new CEO Amit Sevak / via Inside Higher Ed

    • Related, ACT to be piloted online starting in December / via Higher Ed Dive

  • Demand for Computer Science tests capacity of US universities to deliver. It remains far more lucrative to work in industry than to teach comp sci. / via Times Higher Education

Workforce

  • How AI will change the labor market. / shoutout

    Bryan Caplan
    and
    Bet On It

  • High School grads forgo college in hot labor market. / via Wall Street Journal

Policy

  • The top issues state lawmakers battled over this year. / via The Hill

  • Why are Trump and Desantis talking about accreditation? There are many problems with accreditation as it stands today. The answers to these problems should be technocratic, not political. / via Chronicle of Higher Education

    • (Desantis) related, Florida ends automatic payments to union workers. “That is gonna lead to more take-home pay for teachers.” / via Associated Press

  • Income-driven repayment often an unknown option among borrowers who would benefit the most from utilizing it. / via New America

EdTech

  • EdTech groups insist AI is friend not foe despite warnings. / via Financial Times

  • EdTech VC funding down more than 50% YoY. Consistent with overall VC funding. / via Business Insider

  • Class prepares to move beyond the, uh, class. / via Martechcube

  • Breaking into EdTech. / shoutout Jack McDermott

If you have a link you’d like to see in a future Weekend Reading post, please email matt@etch.club


Tweet of the Week

The original Tweet can be found here, Twitter no longer embeds well into Substack.

Chosen mostly for humor, but also worth contemplating how much thought goes into both creating and understanding an AI-extrapolated image like this. Critical thinking rises in importance as AI takes on more technical burden.


EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading is the free sister publication of the EdTech Thoughts Weekly Update. It provides links to the week’s EdTech Funding, M&A, People moves, and a curated list of Links to relevant industry news. If you enjoyed this edition, I hope you will subscribe and/or forward to your friends!


EdTech Thoughts
Disclosure - September 2022
Hello! I try to remain as neutral as possible when writing this newsletter, but some bias is inevitable when there is overlap with an area I care about. After all, I work for companies and invest in things I am excited about! Here is a full list of my employment history and investments…
Read more
a year ago · Matthew Tower
1
Share this post

EdTech Thoughts Weekend Reading 6/4

www.etch.club
Share
Comments
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Matthew Tower
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing