ETCH Weekend Reading 3/31

AI in the PISA, the rise of ESAs, Spotify tests online courses

Hello!

Two weeks until this year’s ASU < > GSV conference - if you’ll be in San Diego, send me a note. On to the news!

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Funding / M&A

• EdLight raises $4M / US, Instructor Tools / Southern Education Foundation, Charter School Growth Fund, Backstage Capital

• Sprints raises $3M / Egypt, Upskilling / Disruptech Ventures, EdVentures, CFYE

• Joinrs raises €1.7M / Italy, Recuritment Software / Innova Venture Fund, Doorway

• Cornerstone acquires Talespin / US, Upskilling

• Straighterline acquires ProSolutions / US, Content Provider (Early Childhood Education)

• Battery Ventures acquires Mobius Institute / US, Training Provider

• N2Y acquires Texthelp / US, Special Education

• Certus acquires Paulson Training / US, Upskilling

• Manutan acquires Findel / UK, School Infrastructure

To be a verified funding in this newsletter, a company must raise $1M+ from named, verifiable institutional investors (and disclose the amount raised), be part of an acquisition where the combined entity has > 50 employees, or raise a VC/PE fund of $10M+

Other Transactions

• PSG invests in Packback

• GG4L raises $18M

• Edura raises an undisclosed amount of funding

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ETCH Funding Database

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People Moves

• Rich Preece joins GoGuardian as CEO / via PRNewswire

• Jeff von Rosenberg, Kathryn Green, and Jeanette Wiseman join Unicon in senior roles / via PRWeb

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Links

K12

• PISA articulates path to using AI in future exams. What I appreciate most about PISA’s plan is that it is focused and logical - solving for a real, present-day problem rather than laying out a grand-but-vague AI vision. “Students would be able to use an AI-powered chatbot to complete their work. They could ask it basic questions about a topic, so that the test could focus on their thinking capability, not whether they possess background knowledge of a particular subject.” / via Education Week

• The rise of education savings accounts (ESAs), part 1. ESAs *could* be one of/the most significant structural change in US K12 education this century. Whether that is good or bad depends on who you ask - both sides have compelling arguments. What isn’t debatable is how quickly adoption of ESAs has grown, which Tyton captures effectively in a chart in this article, the first in a series about the topic. / via Tyton Partners

• Intensive tutoring at school is great for academics. Now there’s evidence it can boost attendance. I have not spent enough real estate covering the post-COVID chronic absenteeism problem in K12 schools. I’m glad to see solutions emerging to help mitigate this problem. / via Chalkbeat

• Teacher pay has been flat for close to 3 decades. More states now working to fix that. / via Wall Street Journal

• Success Academy charter school network plans Florida expansion. / via Chalkbeat

Higher Ed

• The colleges that pay for positive coverage. Further evidence that last week’s article about the University of Wisconsin’s marketing blitz aimed at state legislature was not an exception. I don’t love pay-to-play articles like those covered here, but everyone’s got to eat. The takeaway for you, the reader, is to question everything you read - is this written by humans or AI? Is it paid for explicitly or implicitly? How do the answers to these (and other) questions have the potential to impact the story? / via Chronicle of Higher Education

Workforce

• The global AI talent tracker. Come for the AI headline, stay for the charts on where and how AI talent has shifted from 2019 to today. / via MacroPolo

• Blackrock’s CEO thinks retirement age should be moved later than 65. This is a nascent and, frankly, not very fun topic, but it does sort of pass the sniff test. It led to a reckoning in France last year, and upskilling mid- and late-career professionals have been the subject of upskilling initiatives in Singapore, Australia, and the UK. In China, the Silver Wave also appears to be driving the revival of at least some Chineses EdTech companies’ hopes. / via CBS

EdTech

• Fate of Byju’s founder rests with Indian courts. Notably, the FT reports that Qatar’s soverign wealth fund has joined Prosus, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia’s Indian arm), and CZI in the bid to remove Byju (the founder) from the company. This is a big deal, as 1) this introduces (even more) geopolitical implications and 2) it means Byju alienated the investor that kept the company afloat in 2022. Byju continues to maintain that this year’s $200M rights issue is “fully subscribed,” but I’m not sure what investors are left on the his side of the table at this point. Who is funding this? / via Financial Times

  • In other EdTech unicorn news, Austria’s GoStudent swings from a €220M loss in 2022 to cashflow positive in 2023. That is a wild swing. / via Techcrunch

    • Apropros of questioning everything you read, you can probably guess the connection between this swing to cashflow positive and the number of sources willing to discuss the company’s lavish parties. / via Businessinsider

• Spotify tests video-based courses. I like the idea of this a lot; it helps me transition from thinking of Spotify as a music store to more of a digital library. And, as Spotify representatives point out in the article, many users already come to Spotify to learn via podcasts. Unfortunately, the UX (as described in the article, the feature is only available to users in the UK so I haven’t seen it live) sounds pretty janky right now due to the company’s ongoing battle with Apple over transaction fees. / via the Verge

• The age of average encore. The age of average was the most important article I read in 2023. It highlights how powerful incentives are in shaping even the most “creative” industries. It shapes my opinion on how markets will develop, especially with the rise of AI - which is *built* to optimize for “average.” The encore is shorter and focused on the music industry, but continues to reinforce the overall point. / via Alex Murrell

  • Related, the end of foreign-language education. A logical extension of the “average” argument is to say that at some point - TBD when - human language will converge into one common tongue. Or, maybe we end up with a Babel Fish scenario. / via The Atlantic

    • One more variable to consider in the future of languages: the impact of multi-planetary populations. Accents develop quickly in isolation, and seem likely to happen in any future missions to Mars. / via BBC and LiveScience

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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!

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