ETCH Weekend Reading 3/10/24
ETCH Weekend Reading 3/10/24
The SAT goes digital, SF public schools' decline, the FAFSA FUBAR, and questioning Bloom's two-sigma effect
Hello!
Next week’s newsletter will come out on Monday instead of Sunday due to a (fun!) family commitment - see you all on the 18th.
On to the news.
Funding / M&A
Brains and Motion raises ~$18M / US, Extracurricular Activities / New Markets Venture Partners, LearnStart, Sand Hill Angels, Women’s Venture Capital Fund, JFF Ventures, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
MyCaptain raises $1.7M / India, Career Pathways / Inflection Point Ventures, MyNavi, Piper Serica, Super Capital, Ankur Capital
Accenture acquires Udacity / US, Content Platform
Ellucian acquires Edunav / US, School Software Infrastructure
B2W Group acquires ECTA / UK, Training Provider
Kido International acquires Amelio / UK (India), Early Childcare Providers
Cleverly acquires HeyTimi / Germany, Tutoring
To be a verified funding in this newsletter, a company must raise $1M+ from named institutional investors, be part of an acquisition where the combined entity has > 50 employees, or raise a VC/PE fund of $10M+.
Other Transactions
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People Moves
Amy Clark and Lee Potick join D2L as Chief People Officer and Chief Revenue Officer, respectively / via PRNewswire
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Links
Early Childhood
Free childcare exits in America - if you cross paths with the right philanthropist. / via Hechinger Report
One state working to make sure their free/inexpensive childcare programs are billionaire-agnostic? Massachusetts is investing big in early care and education. It’s paying off. / via EdSurge
K12
The SAT goes digital. Students will now take the test via an app, reminiscently named BlueBook. It’s curious to me why the College Board, the creators and administrators of the SAT, would not name the app eponymously. Taking the SAT is, obviously, a fraught experience, but I would think there would be some value to featuring the brand on the test. To speculate a little (a lot), does BlueBook become an ~assessment platform~ for use outside of the SAT? / via Inside Higher Ed
The key to better math education? Explaining money. I don’t love when opinion writers with no experience in math, learning science, or even the education sector publish curriculum ideas with anecdotal evidence and no mention of outcomes in prominent news outlets. That said, from a core principles standpoint, this actually sounds like a good idea. / via New York Times
Apropros of what is becoming an ongoing theme around school funding, the hardest job in education: convincing parents to send their kids to a San Francisco public school. / via Hechinger Report
Meanwhile, Alabama on track to pass $100M education savings account (ESA) bill. / via 1819 News
Related, School Choice, but with guard rails. Failed West Virginia microschool fuels state probe - and some soul searching. / via 74 Million
And/but Texas pushes back on school choice. / via Hechinger Report
Higher Ed
Untangling the bungled FAFSA launch.
Every stakeholder involved should be disappointed in themselves:
Republicans, for turning down requests for additional budget - anyone familiar with building software, especially government software, could have told you that a budget estimate from a lame-duck administration was highly likely to be off the mark.
Democrats, for their steadfast resolve to let haphazard student loan relief get in the way of making progress toward actually fixing the US higher ed funding system.
The insane person who argued that the new FAFSA could be delivered via an application written in COBOL, for arguing that it is acceptable to deliver literally anything written in COBOL in 2024.
We successfully turned a bipartisan agreement to update one of the great engines of social mobility into a partisan dumpster fire and 2 million students are now paying the price.
*Takes a deep breath* / via Inside Higher Ed
Phil Hill’s annual state of higher ed LMS market. Affectionately known as The Squid! / via PhilOnEdTech
Dartmouth men’s basketball team votes to unionize. This is important for college athletes from revenue-generating college sports (football and basketball), who will (hopefully) start earning commensurately to the revenue they bring in. This is probably…not a lot for the last place, 2-12 Dartmouth Men’s basketball team, but for other teams it will be substantial. / via ESPN
However, the knock-on effects of this decision loom large. The funding to pay revenue-generating players will likely come from non-revenue-generating teams. It will also change the dynamics of college sports as an enrollment (Alabama grew by 15,000 students during Nick Saban’s 17-year run as head coach) and alumni donation engine. / via The Ringer
Education Research
Bloom’s two-sigma is fake news(ish) Causing heart palpitations for EdTech entrepreneurs and investors worldwide as they prepare for the marathon of cocktail parties that surround GSV’s annual assemblage in April. / via Education Next
Because? Folks like to use two-sigma in the context of the potential of chatbots in the classroom. There is still potential in 1:1 tutoring (and AI chatbots), just maybe a lower effect size than Professor Bloom led us to believe. Among the experiments putting this to the test are Ann and Fry, Ferris State University’s two chatbots designed to be “data doppelgangers” or “synthetic students” whose outputs Ferris State can then use to improve its curriculum and student experience. / via EdSurge
Not a data doppelganger or synthetic student, just a chatbot with Holden Caulfield’s personality. Used to help students develop AI literacy, this is an excellent example of how to teach students to use AI as leverage to improve their thinking, not just to do the work. / via EdSurge
Also under fire? Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). America’s most popular autism therapy may not work - and may seriously harm patients’ mental health. / via 74Million
This email, ETCH Weekend Reading, is ETCH’s free newsletter providing 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!
Xeet of the Week
In honor of bitcoin’s new all-time high.