No. A legion of edtech companies have been born and died who solve the underlying pedagogical issues but die.
Some of the reasons they die are:
- students don’t control the budget for their spending, so their voice/progress has almost no impact on budgets
- parents in the US spend a tiny fraction of their deposable income on education (and also have almost no say in budgets)
- teachers have almost no say in budgets. In public schools, it’s none. In others, it’s performative if at all most of the time.
- administrators get promoted by doing a very specific set of small things, none of which include improving outcomes through addressing pedagogical innovation
This all adds up to: you can create an edtech startup that radically improves student outcomes and still run out of cash
Some of the reasons they die are:
- students don’t control the budget for their spending, so their voice/progress has almost no impact on budgets
- parents in the US spend a tiny fraction of their deposable income on education (and also have almost no say in budgets)
- teachers have almost no say in budgets. In public schools, it’s none. In others, it’s performative if at all most of the time.
- administrators get promoted by doing a very specific set of small things, none of which include improving outcomes through addressing pedagogical innovation
This all adds up to: you can create an edtech startup that radically improves student outcomes and still run out of cash