The a16z Show - Fixing Education in America: What's Stopping Us?

Starting point is 00:00:00 51% of Americans live in child care deserts. It's a tragedy to deny a child access to high quality early childhood education. A human's brain, 90% of it develops in the first five years of their life. There are a few sectors in the economy that have proven to be very, very resistant to technological change. Education is high on that list. We tried to solve the achievement problem in the U.S. before we solve the engagement problem. School districts and state leaders operate in a highly political environment where taking risks is not rewarded. It's really no one's job to fix it,

Starting point is 00:00:37 and so it's not really getting fixed. I've never seen this kind of apathy. I think it's going to be catastrophic for the United States if we don't find a way to end it. What we're seeing is that the best way to make inroads is partnerships with the private sector and the public sector to be able to fill in those gaps. We can get outcomes. We can get them fast. We can all take advantage of the American dream. There's been a lot of talk about the government recently. But wherever you sit along the aisle, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is the desire to set up the next generation for success, often through high-quality education or child care.

Starting point is 00:01:14 But despite increased funding toward these sectors, we're not really getting the results that we're paying for. We have now spent hundreds of billions of dollars and those funds are gone. And now what? But this is something that we need to figure out. Because, as one of our guests says, We are graduating generations of children who have no idea what they can do with their education. So in today's episode, we'll explore the history of education and where technology fits into that equation.

Starting point is 00:01:43 I mean, why is it that 35 years into the modern internet, we've gained access to 5G networks, 3D printing, and augmented reality, yet so little has changed in the way we teach. Every year, we have the chance to rewrite how things are done. and change the trajectory of millions. But it's a complex calculus involving federal, states, and local government, school districts, teachers, parents, and more. So how do you make enroads with the government and get a new product into a school or district? And what's working or broken about the incentive system and whose job is it to fix? Plus, is risk ever rewarded? We'll explore all this and more with founders and policy advisors who have navigated this complex system. That includes

Starting point is 00:02:27 Ana Rupa Ganguly and Chris Bennett, two founders currently trying to disrupt the status quo. Anorupa is the founder of Prisms, a spatial learning platform that uses augmented and virtual reality to teach math and science through physical human experiences. Chris, on the other hand, is the co-founder of Wonder School, a platform designed to help educators build child care programs while supporting families in locating that child care. Joining this conversation as well is A16Z general partner Jeff Jordan, who led the investments in both Prisms and Wonder School. Plus, Anna Edwards, co-founder of Whiteboard Advisors, a strategy consulting firm focused on, yep, you guessed it. Education. All right, let's get started.

Starting point is 00:03:07 As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16C.com slash disposures. As an outsider, it feels like education and childcare in particular has stayed pretty consistent, despite a lot of the remainder of our world changing with technology.

Starting point is 00:03:52 And so why is it that so much of our world has changed, but maybe the classroom has not? I think about the inconsistency that lies in just what is the purpose of an education. if you ask the teacher over here versus a superintendent over here versus a chief academic officer over here versus a chief technology officer here, you will get a different answer from everybody. So there isn't a consistent narrative around

Starting point is 00:04:16 is a purpose to expose kids to the jobs of today and tomorrow's workforce is the purpose to teach them the canon of all the discoveries in math and science thus far is the purpose global citizenry such that people can make educated choices and vote on issues pertaining to AI, the future of different advanced technologies. What is the purpose?

Starting point is 00:04:36 And because that purpose is not clear across constituencies, you don't have a comprehensive set of state nor national standards. So what everyone does is we just fall back on the lowest common denominator, which are the state assessments. I was a math director in one of the largest systems, and all we did was drive kit outcomes towards these state tests, because that's the thing that we could agree on. Thinking back, there have been a lot of efforts to create new standards,

Starting point is 00:05:01 and the NGSS, which are the new science standards, the Common Core, which was a step towards the math standards. But they didn't go far enough. It was an incremental change. Instead of learning ABC, they should kind of also learn X, Y, Z. But that's not what I'm talking about when I say the redefinition of purpose. It's saying 80% of the current jobs in the economy will be fundamentally reimagined by 2030. If that truly is the case, then we need to take a real scalpel to going back to the purpose and the delivery

Starting point is 00:05:29 of our educational methods, and I think that's exciting, but a daunting task. Chris, as we address that question of where we are today, are things working? I know Anoripa just talked about maybe there's not even alignment on what that means, but are children thriving, faltering, and how should we be thinking about that? It's probably working for like a small percentage of the American population, but for the majority of folks, it's not. And when I think about early childhood education, one of the things I'm coming to terms with is that it's really no one's job to fix it.

Starting point is 00:05:59 and so it's not really getting fixed. If you look at the agencies involved in early childhood education, HHS serves low-income families. And what we find is that a lot of states aren't able to generate enough funding from the federal government to be able to serve all the families that need it. For working class families and just all children in general, there's actually no agency and there's no one's responsibility to actually fix the child care problem.

Starting point is 00:06:27 And so it's left to sort of the private sector to fix it. But what we're seeing is that the best way to make inroads as partnerships with the private sector and a public sector to be able to fill in those gaps. Anna, you work across both of those sectors. And so maybe at a high level, are there any other data points or trends that really grasp you, whether it's data points that garner promise or maybe also concern. It could be a shortage. It could be test scores going down. What are you paying attention to here that kind of signals what we should be focusing on? I actually see so much hope at a moment where you could be really discouraged because we have

Starting point is 00:07:03 massive declines in student achievement that are still pervasive coming out of the pandemic. 51% of Americans live in child care deserts. And we had this massive investment in federal funds during the pandemic that actually resulted in a 20% increase in purchasing power over four years for the K-12 school districts and states and then additional investments that went into our. childhood, we have now spent hundreds of billions of dollars and those funds are gone and now what. But I think we're at an interesting point where because those funds really did help to infuse a lot of innovation, I think we'll start to see a real close look at what's actually now producing results.

Starting point is 00:07:46 And then that evaluation will help to inform the new federal education law that we hope to see in the future and alignment in what new standards should look like. And I think we are at an interesting moment. It's hard to say exactly what the outcome is going to be. But I think states and districts and child care providers are going to have to be a little bit more discerning in what they decide to scale. That's where I think we start to see some of the promise. There are a few sectors in the economy that have proven to be very, very resistant to technological change. Education is high on that list. But there's nothing in my structural that should keep that from happening. So the bets on what is working in other parts of the economy can have a large impact in education,

Starting point is 00:08:29 which is at a point in time where they really need impact. Yeah, I think another thing that we've witnessed over the last few years is a shift. COVID was part of that. But technology is being more integrated. We're seeing different remote, hybrid learning environments. And so as that has changed over the last few years, what have we learned? Yeah. I think that the question of technology in classrooms is an interesting one to me because there's the technology, but then they're the methods and the principles and the teaching practices that they allow.

Starting point is 00:09:01 And most technology that's introduced, there's no real discipline around what are we trying to achieve here. What's the problem statement that tech is trying to solve? So I'm taking VR, AR into schools. I'm not really interested in the VR and AR. What I'm interested is in first person embodied real-world problem solving. It happens that I have to use the modality of VR because that's the fastest way to scale it democratized access to high quality experiences for all kids.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So I think that what's really fun about at Tech 3.0, which is what we all kind of in the field call it fondly, is that best practice pedagogy is going to win. It's how do we scale student-centered learning, so learning assets in Baltimore where you go to neutralize it chemically contaminated water, not off of a word problem on a piece of paper. So I think that what's going to be really exciting

Starting point is 00:09:46 about this wave of educational technology, is we're moving away from the idea of like Chromebooks, computers, that's not really the object of affection. The object of affection is a teaching principle in my presentation. I don't have VR anywhere because it's kind of irrelevant, right? It's just a secret saw that, oh, by the way, you need devices because your kids have to be embodied in these real world problems. So I think that's where it's going, is the more and more entrepreneurs, leaders,

Starting point is 00:10:10 teachers, and educators focus on method. There will be no resistance because the focus is on a relationship between teachers and kids versus a forcing function of a particular technology. The other piece is that school districts and state leaders operate in a highly political environment where taking risks is not rewarded. And so I think having the data and the research to show the impact of the technology and changes in instructional modality has been a missing piece that hasn't been there. The entrepreneurs that are really going to succeed are the ones that also

Starting point is 00:10:47 are doing massive efficacy studies or even real-time evaluation of the efficacy of their solutions, that gives the comfort and peace of mind for risk-averse decision makers to actually say, okay, let's bring this technology in. The other thing, parents, one is if something is working somewhere else, I would like my child to experience it. And so our dream is the world flips in that there's a new modality, it's working. We need it, bring it in the kind of thing. Why isn't that at my kid's school?

Starting point is 00:11:17 completely. What's been really fascinating for me has been student voice. In one of our districts, it's a very large urban system. We were in credit recovery for algebra one. And these kids took to Instagram and they started to post. I've learned this five or six times already. I never got it. This is the first time I understood it. And it turns out the board chair read that Instagram post. And we went from 120 kids immediately to 5,000 students two weeks later. Right. So I say this because I think now you have so many more voices and efficacy is not just achievement on standard. undersline assessments because we tried to solve the achievement problem in the U.S. before we solve the engagement problem.

Starting point is 00:11:53 We have to get our kids engaged again in their education because I'm often putting teeth in the way that we are right now. So I just wanted to kind of add into that idea of measurement. There is so much more anecdotal and this very strong student presence that I was not as privy to when I was an administrator. You've got so many stakeholders. You've got parents. You've got districts.

Starting point is 00:12:14 You've got other legislators. And then as you mentioned just now, you've got the children. and of course, in lieu of just being able to put a headset on every single person and have them experience that, I'm curious what you have learned about the methodology to convince. Is it just getting the right study out there or are there other learnings? Yeah. For the last four years, I've been pitching and pitching. And I have this VR headset in my backpack and it never comes out. And I'm like, why am I taking this dead weight on these trips with me all the time?

Starting point is 00:12:45 And it turns out, Steph, that what people are drawn to is the thinking. It's an aspiration. It's this movement away from passivity that's coming to our education system versus the active, the kinesthetic, the constant movement. Our kids are most engaged in PE, right? Let's be clear here. And so what they're actually really excited about is the learning methodology. It's the problem-based learning.

Starting point is 00:13:10 And so our entire conversation is about the hope and the aspiration and what's possible. Most of the people put a headset on after the deal is closed, everything has been signed at Teacher Institute, which is typically four months after those first conversations. And I think that's relevant. What is K-12 really starved for? It's not start for technology. You walk in, there's computers everywhere, laptops everywhere, robotic arms everywhere, Raspberry Pi everywhere.

Starting point is 00:13:33 There's tech everywhere. What there isn't is innovative thinking and really doing something differently because digitization is fundamentally different from innovation. I probably spend the majority of my time talking to legislators, staff of governors, and a lot of agency leaders. And what I'm noticing is folks are just looking for results. There's been a lot of money spent, but a lot of the systems just haven't delivered results. And that's what's led to a lot of our adoption. We started working with governments in 2020 during the pandemic because states were scrambling to get people back to work. And they were noticing that they couldn't get people back to work because of child care.

Starting point is 00:14:13 And so we started working with states and we've seen them partner with these like huge multinational services companies that charge them in Arminaleg are late on delivering the technology. And then the price of the technology to modernize a state system can sometimes 4x, 5x. So what we started to do is build technology to help a lot of child care administrators get data on what's going on in respective child care. programs to understand what parents need when they're searching for child care. And what we're finding as agency leaders are starting to use our technology to figure out where to start child care programs. And what this is leading to is we're starting child care programs all over the country.

Starting point is 00:14:53 In Mississippi, we were able to start 37 programs in a week. And this is like mind blowing for a lot of state administrators because it's just not something that has really been done before at the speed at which we're doing it. We're focused on delivering outcomes and getting these. programs up and running instead of just what's happening right now is teaching people how they could potentially start a child care program. This was super interesting to me because the target market was not governments as conduits into child care. It was families and individuals. And the pull from governments was so substantial that it led Chris to, you know, changes go to market emphasis.

Starting point is 00:15:33 It was so counterintuitive to me, especially running a consumer company at the time. Steph, I'd love to come back to your question about convincing. Ultimately, workforce and economic development are the main drivers of governors and state legislators and what they're thinking about and the investments that they're making. So Anirupa can contextualize what she's doing in creating future employees that have the STEM skills to fill high-tech jobs that the governors are trying to recruit in their states. Similarly, Chris is able to talk about the reason. and state leaders might not be able to recruit employers is because there aren't enough

Starting point is 00:16:12 child care slots to help their workers actually go to work. And so this is a way to tap into an untapped workforce by providing enough child care slots. And so I think that is a really compelling part of the narrative that's driving a lot of state interest. Something we're kind of meandering our way into is this idea of selling to the government. I think, Chris, what you just shared there is so interesting that a lot of people do kind of stay away from selling to the government because they think it's unintuitive, long contract cycles, really hard to penetrate. How does a product actually make its way into a district? Like, what do you need to do to get a product like Wonder School or Prisms into a classroom

Starting point is 00:16:53 or to set up one of these child care programs? Yeah. And I think it's a misnomer that sales cycles in K-12 or long. That's actually not true. The way that typically our motions run is unless you get the executive, i.e. the superintendent, you will have a fracturing of the implementation. So I always start with the CEO, who's a superintendent of, let's say, Broward County and Miami-Dade, West Palm Beach. Once that executive is in line with your vision, you then have to go to their academics leaders, right? So you have the chief academic officer, math director, science, that's the next level of cabinet that sits underneath a superintendent. But then you have your instructional coaches that will actually oversee the operation implementation. You've got to get them on board. But last but not least, you have your principals and your teachers. So we will not close a deal unless we've gotten full buy-in of all teachers. They put their hand up and said, we opt in. Because if you don't get that, you will not get the expansion. You will not get the renewal. You're going to get a lot of pushback and implementation. Now, you might say, oh my gosh, those are a lot of presentations. No, they move really, really quickly because our problem statement is aligned to their problem statement.

Starting point is 00:17:54 That's a very important part of this. The tech reviews takes about a week. The biggest question is around the RFP process. If there is an executive champion and they want it, they're going to make sure it closes. So that's just kind of a high level emotion. I wanted to talk a little bit about the state, for example, in a state like Florida, is we launch across all the large urbans, tons of rurals, the panhandle, we're in so many districts in just about a year and a half. So then we were then able to go to the Senate president and then the House Speaker and say, hey, Senate President, you have a real focus in rural counties. You're from Miami. You care deeply about urban education. So then you're able to take the successes

Starting point is 00:18:28 and the outcomes and the results that you've been collecting at the district level and you take that up to the state. And now we're doing a pretty significant statewide deployment across Florida, but it was completely grassroots. It started at the district level. We delivered outcomes. We had to pick those right senators who were the right voice, what we were trying to do and then push an appropriation through it. And I think what's really interesting also. I thought I was going to the DOE. I'm not going to the Department of Education. Everything is through either the workforce development infrastructure channel. In the case of Oklahoma, it's directly with the governor. In Rhode Island, it's directly with the governor. And it's all around regional workforce

Starting point is 00:19:01 development strategies in light of both fear and anticipation of what AI is going to do. to their local economies. This is classic bottoms up because you're starting at a few schools in the district. And if you produce results at those districts, you know, it's the classic land and expand, riding it all the way up.

Starting point is 00:19:18 I remember once when I was at Salesforce, the first big bottoms up company of the internet era, Mark Benioff met with my boss, Meg Whitman, and said, I just wanted to thank my largest client in person. And Meg's very gracious with Mr. Benioff, walks back to my cube and goes,

Starting point is 00:19:34 we're Salesforce's largest client. I'm like, I didn't know. And we were a very large client because it was solving individuals work needs. So the hope in the case of Prisms is if we can do a great job at a subset of schools, it becomes super compelling to expand into more schools in the district. We're doing a great job at a district. It becomes more compelling to evolve to the state level. So it is a classic sales strategy done in the VR-A-R world.

Starting point is 00:20:04 And Chris, how do you think about that and making your way, whether it's into the district or the state? And then how do you think about building a product that in some sense needs to be scalable, but then also needs to fit these unique needs? There are a couple of agencies that we can sell into. So Department of Education, Department of Early Childhood Education, Department of Labor, sometimes work directly with the governor. And what we found is we have a number of products. And our land and expand motion is usually we start with one or two of these products. And then we show success. We show outcomes with the state.

Starting point is 00:20:39 And that ends up leading to states wanting to essentially adopt more of our products so that they can help solve the child care crisis. Your customer is typically the state. And then it's just how much they're buying. Whereas Anorupo often we'll start with a subsets of the states, district, schools. Exactly, Jeff. For Wonder School, child care is actually managed by health and human services. And so a lot of our go-to-market doesn't really have a district model. And child care is regulated by the state.

Starting point is 00:21:07 So we end up spending the vast majority of our time working with states. Anna, I'd love to get your take here because I know you work with not just these two companies but others. And so how would a company trying to participate in this world start and think about who they should be relationship building with or is there in at the DOE or is it not? It's such a good question. and have been doing this for 20 years. So it's kind of all I've focused on and worked on for a long time. We love data and companies that love data. And so first identifying ideal customer, just like an indie industry,

Starting point is 00:21:43 and then thinking about the characteristics and the market environment in which those customers are going to be able to make purchases is really key. So we like to do 50 state analysis looking at what makes for a favorable market environment and start to work with entrepreneurs. to figure out we want a solid budget situation. Maybe we don't. Maybe if there's a budget crisis, it's easier to go in and sell. I do think that there's at the state level an X factor that is really important to know that is particularly as a company is getting started with the first set of one to five states to really launch a state level program, which is really strong and innovative

Starting point is 00:22:22 leadership. There are state leaders willing to take a risk that know that they have a problem that they need to solve. They don't want to wait around and pass it to the next governor that comes after them. And so really figuring out who those innovative leaders are, building relationships with them, understanding their challenges and articulating the solutions in the context of those challenges is really important. And then to Jeff's point about kind of land and expand, once you have the first five states going, it starts to become a trend. And then the neighboring governors are all watching their PRC success, and the governor of Alabama is looking at Mississippi and saying, he launched 37 programs in a week, and we haven't launched 37 programs in a year of

Starting point is 00:23:09 our current investments, what is Mississippi doing? And so that's when it starts to really take off. And some of those state leaders that might be a little less reluctant to innovate will start to catch on. We spend a lot of time looking at org charts and the timelines of appropriations and legislative sessions, but ultimately there is this X-factor of innovative state leadership and tapping into those leaders is really critical for getting going. You talked about how finding perhaps the right legislators is important. Are there any frameworks, things to pay attention to there? Is it just really like being on the ground and studying what these people are saying? Or how do you identify who's really willing to stick their neck out and try some of these programs? There are

Starting point is 00:23:52 certainly networks of state leaders. So you've got the National Governors Association, and you can look at who's really leading on education and workforce and child care issues within that organization. There's the National Conference of State Legislatures, and so you can start to see the leaders that are rising among their peers nationally and outspoken on certain issues. So that would be a way to start to identify where there might be a state based on leadership that would be good to focus. on, a lot of it is having conversations because the number of that bats you have increases the likelihood that you meet with a state leader that immediately catches the vision and says, let's go and let's move fast. It's a combination of paying attention to what's happening

Starting point is 00:24:37 nationally, who is outspoken in terms of state legislators or governors on the issues that you're working on and getting in front of them because they're the influencers. And in the last pieces. There are local consultants that are great that can help with understanding dynamics locally. And so knowing where there are states that you can tap into local consultants that really know the players and know the process can also help to accelerate things. How much does the pricing model matter here when you're talking about government and reshaping these things? How do you think about framing your product as you're trying to break into these new districts or states? Do they really care? if this is going to be more expensive or less expensive, or are they really focused on the outcomes?

Starting point is 00:25:23 The reason why I was convicted to start a company around this versus a nonprofit or another entity is, unbeknownst to many, there's a lot of money in education. It goes to all kinds of tools. If you go to an average district, there's somewhere between 3,000, 4,000 ed tech tools being used. So the money's there. The big question is, how do you redirect it towards a strategy and really bring a cohesive vision? And that's what great entrepreneurs do. The K-12 operating budget, are typically what we use for the software, the services. There are other, like plush funds and other CAPEX budget sources, Title I through four that can be used for the hardware.

Starting point is 00:25:57 But at the state level, I have not seen much price sensitivity at all, frankly. But going back to the question of outcomes, if we can deliver what we are endeavoring to deliver, which I'm going to close your achievement gap in Algebra 1, the number one predictor of future life wages. The Brookings Institute founded, it's a big problem the U.S. has been trying to solve. They will pay for that problem. We already put billions into this problem.

Starting point is 00:26:17 So I don't think it's a money issue. I think it's an implementation issue. It's getting the right person to drive fidelity of implementation and get those outcomes. But you can get all those players in their roles and situated. I just have not seen price sensitivity at the state level that I have seen a bit at the district level, which again, we're able to now supplement the funds that you don't have at the K-12 level with state funds. So it's a shared revenue model. Distries are paying for a part of it.

Starting point is 00:26:42 States are paying for a part of it. Education is a state mandate. but Title I through four is all federal funds, though that's the money that all of our districts currently use. So the feds also have a big role in supporting innovative solutions. The way Wonder School has approached these state partnerships is truly as a piece of the puzzle of solving this crisis of child care, the fact that a number of the slots that you open up for child care, parents that receive subsidies, then access the child care. And when the subsidies run out, then they're like, well, maybe we don't need to open more slots. And so Chris not only has to go in

Starting point is 00:27:18 and advocate for a state partnership and help increase supply, but then in many cases, also to advocate for increased subsidies so that then families can continue to have the demand and take the slots. And so I think you're really smart to think about the solution also amongst other solutions that helped to solve a crisis. And then that comes off as very authentic to state leaders. And then And Anorupa, I loved your point, the idea of reprogramming budgets. There are longstanding investments, whether it's districts or states, in certain programs. And it can be hard because there are entrenched staff members inside of the agencies operating the programs that have always worked with these programs.

Starting point is 00:28:05 And so there's a lot of infrastructure that's been built around the status quo. And then what's happening at the state level in reprogramming budgets. ultimately helps to inform what we see at the federal level as well. So we're hoping that all of the state innovation and what we saw, for example, in the shift from No Child Left Behind in terms of accountability to ESA, was that what states were doing actually helped to inform what the new version of the federal law looked like. The hope would be in what Governor Polis as chair of the National Governors Association would tell you with his big education initiative, which focuses on early childhood and K-12, is that

Starting point is 00:28:42 what states are doing and leading on then helps to inform the next iteration of the federal law and ultimately federal spending. It just takes a little bit of time, but states really are leading the way. And by the way, I have yet to see a governor's webpage that didn't emphasize early education as one of the priorities. It does solve a whole lot of their long-term problems. Both these companies are selling into an eager audience. If we are able to shift this, I know we're early and you're expanding and hopefully we do this again in three years and you're in many more districts or states, but what would change? Yeah, a big reason why I started this company is I had a couple of key moments leading up to starting it. One of them is I met a woman, Laura Jonna, met her at the TED

Starting point is 00:29:25 conference and she's a Harvard educated pediatrician and she decided to leave her career and start a child care program in her community because she came to the conclusion that she could have a bigger impact running a child care program than being a pediatrician. Another thing I saw is this guy named Harris Rosen. He runs the Rosen hotels in Orlando, has made a good amount of money in real estate. And he noticed that a lot of the service workers in his hotel weren't putting their kids in early childhood education programs. And the K-12 system wasn't great. And they just had all these pretty poor outcomes. And there was a lot of crime and a lot of folks like selling drugs. He ended up going into the community and giving all of the children free access

Starting point is 00:30:06 to child care out of people's homes and supported a lot of the teachers in the area to support the children. And over a 30-year period, the crime rate essentially like went to zero. A lot of those children offered to give them scholarships to college. And he found that I don't think any of the kids actually needed them because they did so well in the K-12 system and they were able to get their own scholarships. And so I went to go visit him. And he said, Chris, there's all of these nonprofits that come here and visit us. And no one actually ever does anything. They just come and visit. And you guys are actually doing something about it. And what I've come away with is that If we could give access to high quality early childhood education to all children, a human's brain, 90% of it develops in the first five years of their life.

Starting point is 00:30:48 If everyone gets access to it, then so many more of these children will be able to go to the K-12 system and get better use of it and then essentially go on to be a productive American citizens, a productive folks in the workforce, and frankly just live better lives. There's so much research that supports this. And so what we found is that the best way to actually achieve this in a capitalist society is to empower business owners to start these businesses to create wealth for themselves, but also give back to the community. We work with probably about 30,000 child care providers right now. And some of our child care providers are earning over $2 million a year. We have child care providers that are making $100,000, $200,000, we have child care providers buying homes in the Bay Area, on everything that they'd done starting their own child care programs. And when I talk to parents, they're just so happy for these child care providers

Starting point is 00:31:45 because they're getting so much of a benefit by putting their kid in these programs. So it's such a clear win for everyone. That's amazing. Shear value creation all around. Yeah, I think asking what is the value or impact of a good education, it's like a vast ocean. I'll hone in on a couple things that Chris talked about. I ran and supported the college process in Boston and New York. And when I would help kids with their personal statements, I would ask them, what do you want to contribute to?

Starting point is 00:32:11 What do you want to build? And kids could say musician, athlete, doctor, lawyer, they could name five jobs in the most sophisticated economy in the world, the U.S. economy. So we are graduating generations of children who have no idea what they can do with their education. So I'll share a few different disparate thoughts and then bring it together. In terms of my origin story, it started at MIT where I saw huge drop-offs of women, students of color, students who experienced poverty. And by the time I got to grad school, I was literally only woman in my classes. And what I began to find is a very homogenous conversation about the direction of technology. If you look at artificial intelligence, VR, AR, there are very few women in these top roles directing how these technologies ought to be modulated and how they're,

Starting point is 00:33:00 can be utilized to build the next generation of our infrastructure. Third thought is when I walk into public schools today, I'll never forget, I walk into Anurundle. It's a school district in Maryland, lovely district, lovely leadership, beautiful children. And you walk into classes and the kids, they're just heads are on the table, headphones in, scrolling on Netflix. I've never seen this kind of apathy. And I was a public school teacher in Title I districts in the Northeast. So that level of I just don't care. I don't have a passion. I don't really have curiosity. I don't want to build. I think it's going to be catastrophic for the United States if we don't find a way to end it. So all of that really brings together what I'm

Starting point is 00:33:37 trying to achieve, which is building an education system where we are building builders. The purpose of school is to build, is to create. You talk about value creation, is to figure out how you're going to create value. And for that, you have to help kids fall in love with the problems that they're going to dedicate their lives to. Me and Chris are sitting here on planes all the time. And not sleeping wide because we fell in love with what we do. And there aren't enough moments where children get to fall in love in their K-12 schooling. And just to kind of bring back to why math and science, it's just the backbone of any advanced economy. Full stop. That was a great overview and a picture, quite frankly, painted by both of you of what can change. Coming back to the very beginning around

Starting point is 00:34:17 why this matters, I'd love to just roundtable go through each one of you to share maybe an idea that you want people to walk away with. There are definitely some legislators who listen to this podcast, but there are a lot of parents, right? A lot of people who have kids, maybe will have kids, any parting thoughts that you want them to take away.

Starting point is 00:34:36 Gosh, I think that there's such an opportunity to bridge connections, and a lot of it is semantic, right? There are challenges that parents see for their children. They want to see more engaged students prepared for future jobs and have economic mobility. you see education district leaders and state leaders that want to address math and ELA achievement

Starting point is 00:35:00 gaps, and you see policymakers that want to use policy to do that. And then on the other hand, you have entrepreneurs that have these incredible visions and solutions. Oftentimes, the biggest gap in actually getting those solutions into the hands of those stakeholders that need them is just the way we talk about the solutions. And so that's really what I would urge is thinking about stepping out of the rhetoric that sometimes exists and really clearly defining problems that are trying to be solved. And then from the provider side, stepping into the shoes of all of those stakeholders and thinking about how their

Starting point is 00:35:32 solutions actually solve those challenges. And so much of it, it really is just communication. The technology is there. We can do better. The tools are there. Frank Chen and Andreessen Horowitz often describes what we do in Metro Capital as the smartest minds give their view of the future and what it will look like. I hope the future of education looks a whole lot different than it now and has a lot more impact. And two of the areas that I think have enormous potential, one is better preparing students for school with the child care issue. And the other is we got to get better at STEM. It does happen to be where the world is going and the opportunity to continue to be a world leader in government and business and tech and everything else is going to be

Starting point is 00:36:17 predicated on getting better at both of these. And we love supporting the efforts of these dynamics of these dynamic entrepreneurs to do that? Yeah, I'd say it's a tragedy to deny a child access to high quality early childhood education, whether that's from a parent, a nanny, an au pair, a teacher. It's just a tragedy because we can't get those five years back and the child's brains just develop. And then we're essentially exposing ourselves to a sizable amount of catch-up that you just really can't do. And so what I'm seeing is it's really important for government leaders, for parents, anyone listening to this podcast to make sure that we're all committed to not only our children, but the children in our communities and making sure that they're getting the right access so that we can all take

Starting point is 00:37:01 advantage of the American dream. I'll have a really hopeful note. I remember it was in a grad school class once, and the professor made a comment that social justice is like a barge. You're not going to really see it move much in your generation. We just got to keep working. You've got to keep working in your grandchildren and their grandchildren. And I was like, no, we can get outcomes.

Starting point is 00:37:21 we can get them fast. So after two years of presenting and sharing this vision, the schools, we're in hundreds of districts in 38 U.S. states. We have tens of thousands of teachers we train every single day. So this belief that education can't change quickly. Chris, I forget the number. I think you said it was like 30-something child care. 37 child care programs, yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:40 Right, 37 child care programs. Like this belief that teachers are against the system or the system is slow. It's not true. You have to go in there with a clear vision, get everybody invested, train, upscale coach, be maniacically get every single end user inspired because if teachers are inspired, their kids are going to be inspired.

Starting point is 00:38:00 The future is not over there. It's happening. We're right now, I have teens of classroom coaches and classrooms every single day making this reality happen. And social justice doesn't have to be like a barge. We can all see it in our lifetime.

Starting point is 00:38:16 All right, that is all for today. If you did make it this far, first of all, thank you. We put a lot of thought into each of these episodes, whether it's guests, calendar Tetris, the cycles with our amazing editor Tommy until the music is just right. So if you like what we put together, consider dropping us a line at rate thispodcast.com slash A16C.

Starting point is 00:38:35 And let us know what your favorite episode is. It'll make my day and I'm sure Tommy's too. We'll catch you on the flip side.

The a16z Show - Fixing Education in America: What's Stopping Us?

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