ETCH Weekend Reading 5/12
ETCH Weekend Reading 5/12
New non-profit funding models, the financial impact of Sold a Story, zombie colleges, and AI helps scientists learn to speak whale(ish)
Hello!
Happy Mother’s Day! I woke up this morning feeling lucky. I have a wonderful mom and wife. And so many other amazing female mentors, former bosses and colleagues, and mom-like figures who have helped me navigate life. I am grateful for all of you and hope you took a moment today to celebrate a little.
Speaking of people and organizations who have gone out of their way to help me in life, the team at Penn GSE is hosting their annual in-person workshop in Philly on Friday, June 21. The agenda is stacked and I hope many of you will be able to attend.
With that, on to the news!
Funding / M&A
Futura raises €14M / Italy, Tutoring / Eurazeo, United Ventures, Axon Partners Group
Prep raises $7M / Vietnam, Test Prep (Language Learning) / Northstar Ventures, Cercano Asset Management, Touchstone Partners, East Ventures, Saison Capital
UBIQ Education raises $5M from Blackbaud / US, LMS / Blackbaud
Birdwingo raises €1.2M / US (Czech Republic), Financial Literacy / Bienville Capital
95 Percent Group acquires Sortegories / US, Content Provider
Echo360 acquires Inkling / US, Content Platform
Rise Up acquires Domoscio / France, Corporate Training
To be a verified funding in this newsletter, a company must raise $1M+ from named, searchable 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
K12 Techno Partners raises $27M / via Financial Express
Note: this funding is in Other Transactions because it appears that this round is mostly/entirely secondary, so the company itself will not have new capital to deploy
Peeplcoach raises $1.3M / via Smart Company
Classplus invests in Gyan Live / via Hindu Businessline
Dexude raises undisclosed amount / via Arctic Startup
ETCH Funding Database
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People Moves
Chad Stevens joins TinkRworks as CEO / via K12 Dive
Danielle Press joins EverDriven Technologies as Chief Growth Officer / via K12 Dive
Laura Thompson Love and Craig Robinson join Strada Education Foundation as SVPs of work-based learning and coaching, respectively / via Strada Education Foundation
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Links
Early Childhood
As private equity’s role in child care increases, concerns arise. I have been critical of the fearmongering of private equity’s impact on the Early Childhood market because virtually all PE-owned Early Childhood businesses target high-income parents (and, thus, do not consume public resources). I still generally believe that, but want to give credit where it is due - this article lays out a compelling counter-argument. / via New America
Schools start offering on-site daycare to keep teachers in the workforce. / via Associate Press
K12
A plan to get excited about. The Harlem Children’s Zone, a non-profit group that manages to positively surprise me with almost every new detail I learn about them, plans to give each student at their Promise Academy schools (and 5,000 other students around the country) $10,000 to put towards “wealth-building” activities like buying a house, continuing education, and/or investing in a business. This money will accrue interest during their time in school, vesting to as much as $26,000 by the time the students are 25, when the money becomes available to them (if they reach agreed upon milestones like graduating high school and college + take financial literacy courses). / via New York Times
Related to interesting moves in education philanthropy, Bowling Green receives $121M donation, with strings attached. The strings? Student recipients will still pay some costs of attendance, attend mentoring sessions, and volunteer 20 hours a year. In a twist that I hope catches on, the school will have to pay for the continuance of each student’s scholarship for every semester they are enrolled after 4 years of studies. / via Bloomberg
The financial impact of Sold a Story and the Science of Reading wave. American Public Media writes the story we’ve all been waiting for, charting the $176M decline in revenue at Heinemann, one of the more notable publishers of cue-based literacy materials, from 2019 to 2023. / via American Public Media
Teacher pay is on the rise! Average teacher pay passes $70K. / via Education Week
Rumors that Bain Capital might buy PowerSchool. I don’t like commenting on rumors like this one because they are, usually, leaked as a negotiation tactic from one side or the other. But this one made the rounds in a lot of group chats this week! / via Reuters
America has too many schools. I started writing about the literal and metaphorical splintering of America’s public school infrastructure in 2021. Unfortunately, I expect to see more stories like this as systems come to grips with the effect of 850,000 students leaving urban schools over the past 3 years. / via Wall Street Journal
Federal spending has helped cover for these losses over the past couple of years, but the bill is coming due quickly. In Texas, Austin faces a $30M budget shortfall, which sounds large until you consider the $250M deficit Houston is staring at. / via K12 Dive and Axios
Related, Charter schools might not have a chair when the music stops. As I’ve written about before, school vouchers/education savings accounts are a winning political issue in 2024. It remains to be seen how charters will fare in a world where education funding follows the student in many/most states. / via Eduwonk
Higher Ed
No one knows what universities are for. A concept I started writing about last summer. I would change this headline to “no one agrees what universities are for” and highlight one of the core points of the article “The modern university now has so many different jobs to do that it can be hard to tell what its priorities are.” However, anytime I read an article built around tenured professors complaining about administrators, I can’t help but think of George Carlin: Their stuff is sh*t, but our sh*t is stuff. / via The Atlantic
Speaking of tenured professors frustrated that their specific worldview is not perfectly mirrored by those around them, is this the end of reading? I am tired of the argument that “students can’t focus anymore.” That students choose not to focus is a reflection of the disconnect between what is being taught and what students need to succeed after school. / via Chronicle of Higher Education
To be more direct about it, students have implicitly (sometimes explicitly) internalized that the value of a college degree is the piece of paper they get at the end. Departing SNHU president Paul Leblanc said, “There will be those [colleges] who continue because they are not really about education. So Harvard, for example, is as much about the value of its network, of being a Harvard graduate and who you know, being in the club.” (this quote was in the context of how AI will change Higher ed, but it seems applicable here as well.) / via Times Higher Education
Zombie colleges, run by scammers, taking “admissions applications” to steal identities. This is why we can’t have nice things (and why this space will always need some regulation). / via USA Today
Liberal Arts microcredentials are on the rise. My only quibble is that these credentials do not have grand enough ambitions. I don’t want a Theoretical Humanities badge, I want a VR bootcamp on Cosmic Sociology!1 / via Inside Higher Ed
Workforce
Was the 401K a mistake? / via New York Times
The newest rookie in pro soccer? the 45 year-old finance bro who covered payroll. Turns out there are truly no meritocratic professions. / via Wall Street Journal
EdTech
Emeritus launches new courses in partnership with Bloomberg. As Axios notes, course partnerships with media companies have not worked particularly well in the past. But media outlets like Bloomberg have a more consistent relationship with the (lucrative) professional class of prospective learners than schools. It stands to reason that one of these media-led course offerings will break through eventually. / via Axios
Machine Learning aids in discovery of sperm whale alphabet. If anyone at Duolingo or Masterclass is reading this, I will be personally insulted if you do not call Ellen Degeneres and pitch a “Learn to speak whale” class. / via Techcrunch
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
This is an extremely niche reference to the second book in the 3-Body Problem series. Who says kids don’t read these days!?