Lucia, a six-year old, hides from Zoom calls and has rejected every edtech tool from Seesaw to Khan Academy. She will spend all of first grade in quarantine.
Her mother, Claire Díaz-Ortiz, says her daughter fits squarely into the “distance learning death zone.” The idea is that younger children are too young to do distance learning solo, even with tools meant to make it easier. Here’s one kindergartner’s remote fall class schedule:
Just got this schedule for my kindergartner’s “distance learning” in the fall and would just like to say LOL FOREVER TIMES A THOUSAND pic.twitter.com/CXXzdbwUWa
— Aubrey Hirsch (@aubreyhirsch) July 31, 2020
“And unfortunately for my daughter, I’m a VC, not a Zoom mom,” Díaz-Ortiz said.
The impact of the distance learning death zone, as Díaz-Ortiz calls it, is one of the reasons why many wealthy families with young children are considering a new solution: learning pods.
Learning pods are small clusters of children within the same age range who are paired with a private instructor. Depending on a parent’s preferences, learning pods could be an in-home or virtual experience and be either a full-time school replacement or supplemental learning.
In recent weeks, the concept has taken off all across the country, from suburbs to cities. There’s a Facebook group for Boulder, Colorado school districts; organizers launched Pandemic Pod San Diego to “connect families looking for in-home, teacher-led learning groups.” Some households are offering teachers a retainer. Among working mom groupchats, pods are taking off as a sanity lifesaver, especially as childcare responsibilities fall disproportionately on women.
Looking for the best 4-6th grade teacher in Bay Area who wants a 1-year contract, that will beat whatever they are getting paid, to teach 2-7 students in my back yard#microschool
If you know this teacher, refer them & we hire them, I will give you a $2k UberEats gift card
— @jason (@Jason) August 2, 2020
Startups are pivoting to keep up with the demand for private teachers. But because of high costs, only affluent families are able to form or join learning pods, which may limit the model’s ability to reach scale while extending the existing digital divide.
The remote learning boom came with a rush of free access and discounted prices to learning platforms. Big tech behemoths donated thousands of laptops, lowered prices and offered free trials to bridge the digital divide. By comparison, pods will cost participating families thousands of dollars on a monthly basis.
In Díaz-Ortiz’s case, she and her husband tried to fight with Lucia’s private school on providing 1:1 instruction since they are both working full time. Eventually, the family hired a teacher to come twice a week for a few hours.
“It’s a ridiculous story of privilege,” she acknowledged.
The clear argument in favor of pods is that parents — largely mothers — need childcare support and kids need in-person support. It’s why Owl Ventures, one of the largest edtech-focused funds to date, is interested in the trend. The firm told TechCrunch that the model is an opportunity to balance some of the uncertainty around the upcoming school year, especially taking the load off of working parents.
One of Owl Ventures’ portfolio companies is Swing Education, which pivoted from a substitute teacher hiring platform to creating learning pods. Company founder Mike Teng said he doesn’t think learning pods are a long-term solution, but he’s betting on them for the short term.
Before COVID-19, Swing Education helped schools hire substitute teachers. “Around March, with the shelter in place, we saw our revenue from our existing core business drop off a cliff,” Teng told TechCrunch.
The company knew there were teachers looking for work, and families started coming to them in search of instructors; now, Teng says learning pods have the potential to be much bigger than substitute teaching.
The business potential of a private teaching business contrasts with Teng’s personal mantra on education: About 85%-90% of students in the United States are enrolled in public education, and he wants to support to those masses. It’s precisely why he founded Swing Education five years ago to help substitute teachers get placed into schools.
One way startups are addressing inequity is by giving parents an option to sponsor other kids’ learning pod bills. The vast majority of the pods are filled with kids who are still enrolled in public schools, he says, with the pod teachers there to provide in-person curriculum and social mentorship after school.
“I think that pods are actually a thing that have cropped up all of a sudden because of inequity,” he said. “And they definitely don’t make inequity go away, but we are hoping to be able to close some gap given that pods are a reality right now.”
Swing Education is seeking partnerships with foundations to get bigger sponsorship checks and eventually support more kids.
Prisma, a hybrid school for rising 4th through 8th graders, is also chatting with organizations to grow its scholarship fund and support more kids. Kids are grouped by age and participate in both virtual co-learning, mixed with in-person experiences.
Each cohort includes 12 to 20 students who are somewhat near each other. Right now, anyone in the United States can participate but there are local hubs in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tampa and Salt Lake City. The socialization aspect will look like in-person hangouts, family events and service learning activities with a focus on projects and high school prep.
Prisma’s pricing model is designed so that 40% of families participating can be subsidized. Founder Victoria Ransom said she’s aware that their model will “never attract the majority of families” and that most will return to traditional school as soon as possible. Instead, Ransom is hoping to approach people who wanted to homeschool even before COVID-19, which she estimates is 10% of families with school-aged children.
“We believe that after COVID, this number will be larger because some percentage of families who have been forced to try distance learning are finding that it works well,” she said. Ransom said that they are in a position to self-fund and have no plans to raise money anytime soon.
Jomayra Hererra of Cowboy Ventures says temporary trends don’t become billion-dollar businesses. “I’m sure some percentage of parents will want to stay in a microschool environment, but the question is whether or not that portion is big enough to support a venture-backable business,” she said. Other edtech investors similarly expressed neutrality on the trend, albeit on background.
Amit Patel of Owl Ventures said he understands the perspective of limited market size, noting that microschools are in the early adopter phase of the market.
However Patel added that not all pods are created equal. Some are working in conjunction with public charter schools, private schools, homeschools, district partnerships and more. If any of those models succeed, accessibility could increase the value.
The true efficacy of learning pods as a steadfast future or makeshift fix will depend on how accessible they are to all, not just some.
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