As we look to opening up schools, I’ve spent an increasing amount of time thinking about the future of education. Within 5-10 years, I believe parents will be able to move anywhere in the world and provide world-class education for their kids at any age. We’ll start below with startups supporting more traditional schooling, and then move onto more disruptive solutions.
Roughly 56M kids in the US go to school K-12 (50M public, 6M private). Tools like ClassDojo and Clever have been helping these schools digitize and it will be important for them to understand how to leverage these as they try to manage virtual learning. Schools should also look at tools like Panorama that help collect and analyze data to understand what’s working vs not. As we adjust to remote, we’re suddenly in need of tools like ProctorU for remote proctoring. High school students are finding ways to study for AP courses online with friends new and old on Fiveable. Parents are supplementing their kids education with Outschool, that provides live in-person classes for kids – and also supplemental income for teachers.
Personally, I’m more intrigued by solutions turning education on its head, allowing families to move anywhere in the world while (hopefully) receiving equal or better education. On the homeschooling side of things (~2M kids today in the US), you have exciting communities and solutions like Prisma (4th-8th grade), Primer (age 7-12), and Galileo (age 8-18). For parent’s who want a more intimate school setting for their children, maybe even in their backyard with a few friends, there’s a growing trend of micro-schools like Prenda (k-8th), Wonderschool, and a new comer called SchoolHouse. You also have fully virtual schools like Sora (high school). Combine these with Winnie that helps parents find day care and activities or the increasing number of coworking spaces that also offer childcare.
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