00:01.52

Olivia 
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us here on Tech in EdTech. I'm Olivia, and I am delighted to introduce our guest today, Morgan Camu, who is the head of programs at Outschool.org. And without further ado, I'd love to just get started with our conversation. So Morgan, ah if you could just tell us a little bit about your background. I think you know we uncovered that we're both coming from the science teaching world, which is, I mean, I definitely, to your point, one of the best experiences I had. But I'd love to just hear about your background and how you kind of got into that education space and then a little bit more about Outschool.

00:34.47

Morgan Camu

Yeah, great to be here, Olivia. Thanks for having me. How did I get into education? It kind of is just a big swerve and a big bet that I took on when I graduated from college. I was sitting front row maybe by accident at a Teach for America recruitment presentation, and I just thought it was fantastic that I could be a change agent right out of undergrad and be able to take a content area in my case chemistry that I loved so much and get to teach real-life humans. So it wasn't just um something that I thought was going to be hard and challenging in all the right ways but it was also going to allow me to stay in my community. So I went to do an undergrad that is located in Durham and there is a pretty robust Teach for America Network right there. And they said, just stick around and we're going to put you a little further north in some of the more rural parts of the state. And we've got a high school science teaching gig that you can just jump into right away. And that just sounded so wide open. It felt like I could really exercise some self-determination and some creativity and I just jumped in with both feet. And before I knew it, we were you know doing roller coasters and dropping eggs off of buildings and learning all about the physical principles with my students who in many cases were you know really below grade level. And I think that's the perfect invitation to make science come alive. And we put the books away. Maybe we use them to hike up our ramps for the cars that we were building. And we were essentially sort of off to the races. And from then, I really never looked back and have always been maybe not in the classroom, but in the work of educating kids, supporting the systems that you know oversee their learning journeys, and always focused on those students and families that are furthest from opportunity. So it's been a terrific career thus far. I'm absolutely crazy about kids. I think they're just pure magic and it's been a delight to be able to continue to serve them and their families in various different ways throughout these past couple of decades.

02:45.07

Olivia 

Yeah, and I mean, I have to say you're braver than I am because going straight from college to teaching high school when you're probably about the same height as many of your students was a little bit um overwhelming for me. I was in the middle school space, but it's very cool to hear about how you got to stay connected with the North Carolina community in that way. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how that role in whichever kind of myriad of ways led you to your role and your work at OutSchool.org.

03:12.81

Morgan Camu

Yeah, just another score of this one I think was impacted by COVID. So maybe there are some listeners who are like, I was doing a thing and then COVID happened and then I'm doing something a little bit different or really different. I have always been pretty close to schools historically. So schools, school districts, running programs that are in traditional brick-and-mortar school systems. So before I joined Outschool.org, I was the chief academic officer for a program of dual language immersion and global education, but we were in school. So I worked day to day with teachers and principals and superintendents, people who were formerly in the traditional learning space. And then COVID happened and it just sort of opened my eyes to the opportunity that we have this this sort of inflection point in how we need to educate learners differently. Like that is just the hard reality of all of these kids overnight all over the country essentially becoming homeschoolers, right? So they became under the care of their closest grown up they were learning in their living rooms and I was just so curious about how that was going to affect not just the quality of learning but the engagement of learning, how learning was gonna be talked about at the, you know the dining room table each and every night. And this opportunity came up with Outschool.org. And I thought, let me see if there's something here where I can be on the ground level of a startup that is sort of starting in these existential times. 

So Outschool.org is not where we started four years ago. Where we started back in March of 2020 was essentially a response to the pandemic. So the founders of Outschool.com had the foresight to know that, yes, all of these kids all over the United States are becoming homeschoolers, and many of these kids do not have the means to be able to pay for the supplemental education. And so they stood up this nonprofit, henceforth called Outschool.org, essentially to give emergency scholarships to any family who raised their hands. No questions asked. If you had kids who were between the ages of three and 18, and you just needed a little extra cushion, whether it was working from home, making dinner, having all your kids at home, and you just needed some high-quality learning programming for your kids to take advantage of, but you couldn't afford it. That's what this scholarship was for. And so the first role that Outschool.org played was essentially monitoring tens of millions of dollars of free classes that were given to families during the sort of year during which COVID started and schools hadn't regained their sort of footing. And then over the course of three years, as, you know, I'm sure many people who work in startups and the world sort of resets back to an in-person schema, the baby nonprofit at outschool dot.org has morphed significantly. We have undergone, you know, different strategic plans. We have different strategic priorities, many of which take us pretty far from where Outschool.com is these days. So yes, we still share with Outschool.com the need and desire for every kid to love learning. I think we have a similar value set around non-traditional learning and extracurriculars and enrichment and what that means for the overall learning journey of kids. But we just operate as a separate nonprofit in our own right. And we have stood up different programming than perhaps just being what we were originally, which was the scholarship arm of Outschool.com.

06:46.87

Olivia 

Yeah, I just something about what you said at the beginning, you know, a lot of us out here had some swerves happening when COVID hit and it's interesting to just hear about how, you know, your work, both your role and in the work that you all are doing, definitely, you know, was an interesting response to some of what was happening and I'm curious if you can just help our listeners to understand a little bit more about the ESA landscape because I know that, you know, with a lot of our our our listeners are likely looking to unpack some of the opportunities that they might be able to tap into here. And so I'm curious, how significant the ESA market is and in where it's growing, and the potential there. And if you're seeing states or regions with um greater adoption levels in that sense any other trends you've noticed.

07:35.06

Morgan Camu

Sure. So I will give you, Olivia, my two cents as it is right now. I think we're in late August of 2024. It's going to change dramatically this fall as more states push through legislation. So I feel like this is an ever-changing, fluid you know strategy that some states are employing with a lot more alacrity than others. But as of right now, it is something that is still pretty new. I think it's on that sort of innovation curve, and we are learning in real-time alongside the practitioners and the families who are living it. So I will do my best to sort of give you where we are up until this moment in time. Education savings accounts, which are ESAs, is the generic name of this idea that state funding should be returned back to parents who decide not to enroll their kid in, most often, their neighborhood district school. And so for some of your listeners who remember the idea of education choice is not brand new. It has been around for a while. It has most notably been in the flavors of charter schools when those sort of came up you know two decades ago, and then also vouchers for private schools. So it's kind of in that same soup, but it now has like a proper movement behind it. Of which, charters and vouchers sort of fold underneath it. So education savings accounts, ESAs, are decisions that states make for their sort of state constituents about whether and to what extent they want to give families the financial resources to make choices for their kids that are in contrast to the traditional feeder pattern public school zone school default that many kids and families are sort of relegated to as like their first choice. So it has become a pretty large groundswell. 

There are some states that have been doing this for you know a while. Arizona and Florida sort of come to mind. They've been doing this for a number of years. But it has been, I would say in the past two to three years, that the number of states getting colored in as ESAs has grown exponentially. So much so that I would say, and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it's roughly a third of states have some type of choice option written into statute that different groups of families can take advantage of. Now, each state, of course, has those criteria spelled out differently. Some are more expansive. Some are less expansive. Some have more money. Some have less money. So the different shades of what it means to be an ESA family or parent looks different state to state but essentially it's the promise that instead of the state keeping that state-allocated portion of the overall pupil funding that state portion not the federal portion but the state portion is given back to the parent it's roughly you know somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars per kid that those parents can then use to purchase, enroll, secure other types of learning experiences that they think are a better fit for their you know perfect and precious child.

11:03.63

Olivia

Yeah, and I mean, it's it's a really interesting way to consider how, um you know, empowering parents in that way, which I think is really um it's a cool program. And I think um it's interesting to watch how it's unfolding and do you have any thoughts on, you know, and maybe this is just, again, your two cents, but where you see and any trends on how that growth is happening, and you mentioned maybe it's about a third of states that currently have that, but is there like legislation that folks should be following or, or things of that nature that might be indicating where additional states might be looking to jump into this?

11:38.31

Morgan Camu

Yeah, I would say, you know, it started in, I think, traditionally red states. I don't think that is true anymore. I think it really has taken hold of lots of families' imaginations and lots of different places around the country. But I do think there was originally this desire of families who wanted to be able to take sort of more ownership over their kids' education.

And so you already had those families, even before ESAs properly came on the scenes, you had families who had vouchers, you had families who homeschooled. But I think COVID kind of knocked everything open, where now there were more um there were more like sort of colors to add to the rainbow. You had micro-schools, you had pod schools, you had words like unschooling and nomadic schooling and we're world schooling. I think parents during COVID were given a lot more insight into the quality, rigor, affirming nature, and alignment of their kids' education. And I think parents also in many ways benefited from a more flexible work environment. And so I think those values, those principles may have you know largely affected parents and being like, okay, you know COVID opened up this sense of possibility. We can work and live and play in new and hybrid and virtual and smaller and non-traditional ways. I'm going to you know raise my hand, raise my voice, and see if my city council, my state's representatives can also bring those policies here so that I can not just have the choice but also the financial resources to make those choices because maybe I now have a work or a work life you know environment that affords me more flexibility and I really want to bring that all the way down to the way my kids experience schooling and learning so I think COVID absolutely accelerated it. I think once the genie sort of left the bottle and there was a dozen states, I think it only was a matter of time before other you know governors were looking left and right at their neighbors and saying, you know maybe we should do a little bit of that. The last thing I will say, I think a lot of these family-funded programs, while they're not necessarily always ESAs, they did come in the form of these little micro-grants because of COVID relief dollars. So those ESSER dollars that were given from the feds to the states, I think oftentimes could be packaged into tutoring scholarships for kids or enrichment scholarships for kids. So I think the infrastructure of a lot of these bureaucracies just got better at distributing funds directly to families. And so I think ESAs piggybacked off of that as well. And so now, you know, the ESSER dollars have been sunsetted and we're sort of shutting down a lot of those like micro-grant programs, but I think the ESAs are here to stay because many of these states have policies where they're working on three, four-year time horizons. And over those three or four years, they're opening it up more and more and more to higher numbers of families, higher numbers of providers. And so the overall denominator of kids being served by ESAs will go up in the next couple of years because many of these states are looking for a more universal approach and they're still trying to like work through the recruitment of what that looks like for a much larger impact in in the years to come.

15:03.82

Olivia

Actually, you were touching on this a little bit, but what types of EdTech products or services are you seeing most in demand for the families using these funds?

15:15.73

Morgan Camu

It's so dependent on how the rules were written. I think families for the most part are like, give me all the options. I would like this to be every flavor, every shade. I would I would love to be able to finely slice this so that I can you know, piece and assemble my kid's education at like the smallest grain size. We can talk about the challenges of that. I think be careful what you wish for because reassembling, you know, a six-hour learning day for nine months out of the year using tiny building blocks is really hard to do. But I think parents want usually the most amount of choice. And I think states sometimes want the same thing and sometimes they're like, but wait a second, how do we feel about family spending it on technology or how do we feel it about them spending it on um transportation? Right. So like how wide open do we want this thing? And do we want them to spend the money first on like tuition, for example, and then everything that is left over gets to be sprinkled in these other categories? Do we have priority categories? 

So I will say that every state, depending on their own you know legislative agenda, um has different rules about what you can spend it on. And we work in different states right now that have very different sorts of operating systems. But I will say, because all of our work deals with families, it's pretty clear that families are looking for more than just you know the equivalent of private school tuition. like I think there are some families that will take the funds and just want to finally be able to afford that school that was out of their reach economically. But there are a lot of families who, if they have leftover tuition money or they actually don't want to do, you know, another institutional learning situation and want to do more of a micro-school or a part-time school or a hybrid school, they're really trying to use their funds, I would say, for technology. So like to have the technological infrastructure so that their kids can participate actively in online hybrid learning. So I think they do need the tools to do it. and families do need the transportation. And like I said at the top of our conversation, Olivia, we for the most part serve low-income families, families of color, families who are non-native English speakers. So families for the most part that are working ah you know to two household working jobs or single parent working jobs. And so just like the logistics of being able to get the kid to a two o'clock karate class or a three o'clock tutoring session is just almost prohibitive. And so they're looking for things like transportation, technology, um support with extra electives in Richmond.

So many of these families have kids with special needs. And if you, in some states, pull your kid out of the traditional system, you have to recreate the suite of services perhaps that they were receiving. So where are they going to find an occupational therapist or a speech and language therapist for their kid that meets on you know their their timetable? So I would say it's like stuff that helps kids learn more dynamically, more flexibly, the good old you know ah transportation system, whether it's gas or paying for a taxi system or paying for some type of bus system that ah you know a city or a school system might provide that you can opt into or sort of related special service providers are generally at the top of the list for parents when we introduce ourselves and try to get on paper what it is that they're looking for. And then we sort of dig in to help them find the best fits for their needs.

18:58.82

Olivia

Yeah, and I mean, you know a lot of what you're describing is just so necessary. And you know especially with thinking about transportation, for example, that that's just you know an enablement something that's enabling them to meet the other um tools or experiences, whatever it is that they're trying to provide for their child. And I'm curious, you know when we think about you know education technology products, like tutoring platforms and those sorts of systems that might be competing with these, competing with those interests, are there any um kind of levels of customization or personalization in these EdTech products that you think that ESA families would be looking for that would help kind of EdTech providers effectively compete with, you know, just straight up transportation and those types of experiences that they could offer also be using those funds for?

19:50.82

Morgan Camu

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, the old wise wisdom of others who've said, you know, EdTech products who design with the user in mind probably get the furthest. I don't, this is not my bowling analogy, but I heard it once. And I think it's just so, so smart. And that's how we design our services. And I think it could be applied to EdTech products, it’s like the best bowlers in the world. If you think about the way bowling pins are set up. They don't go for the pins down the middle like that's not what good bowlers do. Every good bowler, professional bowler, which I am not, but stick with me on the analogy, every good bowler who is competitive knows that it is the seven-pin and the 10-pin. So the pins that are furthest from the middle that are the hardest to knock down when you're going for a strike. If you find a way to knock down the seven and 10 pins, the rest of them will fall. 

And we use that as our sort of learner-centered design approach. If you design strategies, in this case, edtech products for those kids who are in the seven and 10 pins, the ones who are furthest from you know the middle of the bell curve, if you can come up with something that truly solves a problem, a skill, a gap that they need, everybody else will be positively affected.

And so I think a lot of these ESA programs are written at such a 30,000-foot level that they don't have the nuance to be able to serve these families who are at the margins. And so as I think about EdTech products, I think you do need to remind yourself that there are kids who have accessibility issues. And I'm not even talking about just tech accessibility, which 100% is a real thing. 

Can a kid who doesn't have a laptop use your thing? Can a kid who doesn't have an iPad use your thing? Can a kid who has to share mom's iPhone with their four other siblings use your thing? Because that is the reality of the families that we are talking about here. Can a kid who you know is in second grade and maybe doesn't have digital fluency but also doesn't have a grown-up at home with them or a grown-up who has no digital literacy or no English fluency use your thing? So I do think that customizing more thoughtful accessibility from the jump will allow these edtech products to foster stronger adoption because the reality is while these policies maybe at some point in most of these states be for any kid, right? They will be universal.

The families that get invited first to these ESAs are the ones furthest from opportunity. So if you look at you know state statutes in many of these states, it is families who are X percent of the federal poverty line. They are families who are already attending the state's lowest-performing schools. It is families who have a kid with an IEP. So these policies are starting with the most marginalized families, the families who have most been most underserved and they are looking for EdTech products that meet them where they are. So I think if any, you know, sort of EdTech founder, EdTech, you know, software design team is listening, start thinking about how your product, which may have been customized for upper middle class paying, you know, paying family might need to be adapted rewritten for the user that is coming with these ESAs. And you may and that I think that would be a good place to start.

23:22.71

Olivia 

Yeah, that's that's really helpful. And I've never heard the yeah bowling analogy, but I definitely also need to maybe start try bowling again because I'm not very good. But I now feel like you've unlocked the secret there. So that's really cool. And I definitely, I think that, yeah, those are the kids that are hardest to reach. And I think there's a lot of products yeah that are you know touting really great success rates for students that are already performing highly. And so it's really thinking about getting all the all of the kids to really be improving their academic achievement and academic confidence and in all those pieces. And on that note, you know, how do you feel that edtech companies can really ethically market their products to these kinds of families that are using the ESA funds really so that they can ensure that they're adding real value and not just kind of capitalizing on this growing market?

24:14.80

Morgan Camu

It's such a great question. And I think there are some safeguards in place. um So the way a lot of these ESAs are set up, so our team at Outschool.org offers the navigation services to the families, right? So you come to us and you say, I'm looking for a sort of all sorts of things. I'm looking for a tutor for my kid. I'm looking for the best private school for my kid. I'm trying to figure out how to get them the services that they need, and we provide the coaching, the support, the intervention so that you, family member, who have a million other things going on and have the information so that you can confidently assemble your kid's new sort of learning reality. So we are sort of family facing in that way.

There is another key stakeholder in the way the ESAs work, and they are called the digital wallet providers. They're essentially the bank that holds all of the family's ESA dollars. And so, you know, these folks are the ones that make sure that the vendors are approved, that payment is going through, that parents are, you know, spending the funds on things that have been vetted so that if you are in edtech, you know, vendor on the marketplace that you have gone through some type of screening system to make sure that you fit the spirit and the rules of what this ESA is all about. So there is an entire sort of back-end supply marketplace that is overseen and managed by these digital wallet providers and they do, I mean, that is like, that is hero's work. Think about how many tens of thousands of families buying how many hundreds of thousands of things at any given moment and they just have to make sure that and there is, everything is safe and secure, there's no fraud, everything's sort of on the up and up. But I think as you're talking about ethical marketing, in these products. So I do think there is like a gate in which these ad-type products are invited to these marketplaces. And then I think that so many of them are run on like bundled packages or they're run on like automatic subscription renewal cadences um that, you know, just being able to have a real honest plain spoken disclaimer conversation, something not buried in 30 pages of terms and service tiny font letting families know like if you don't like this if it isn't for you, there are sort of a no hassle easy way to unsubscribe that you don't sort of get overwhelmed and frustrated by how in the world do I find the link to unsubscribe from this like a weekly payment that I have to pay for something that's no longer serving my kid. So I do think that you know, the technology of unsubscribing should almost be as easy as subscribing.

So I think that could be something that, again, a lot of these families struggle with because this may be the first time their kid has ever signed up for an edtech product, right? Like most of the products their kid uses are sort of at the um the management level of the school or the classroom. And so the parents are unfamiliar with how many of these things work. um And then just to also talk honestly about how your product has served kids across all lines of difference, right? I think that is an honest accounting of who your product is for. I think many of these products require um you know some independent learning. But if your kid is on the younger side, like does that require a parent to oversee that mute button or mouse control or whatever it may be that makes your product work as best as possible? So when you have something that is in the hands of a tiny human, be honest about the level of supervision and you know, oversight that is required from a parent so that they feel that they're set up for success because the worst thing any parent knows that your kid is so excited about this thing using this app or tool or game or whatever it is on their computer. And the learning curve for the parent is so high that everyone ends up in tears, right? It's just, it's a miserable experience. So just to have the experience of that parent hunching over their overexcited eight-year-old and there's fingers flying and there's clicks happening and everyone is like so wound up about to get this thing started that a user manual or an onboarding guide or a quick tip sheet for a parent that actually, you know, have a huge return on investment and make sure that that first experience for the parent and for the kid is just downright delightful.

28:54.74

Olivia 

No, I think that's great and just touching on the unsubscribe feature, I wish that all products were like that. But right in the other piece you were mentioning that just being upfront with what the parent involvement is a really great idea because parents you know might want to be mindful of what they’re, are they choosing their product because they don't have time to sit with their kid for that specific subject or because they don't have a lot of expertise? Is it that they are happy to sit with their child, but they don't know that subject matter? It's just a lot of different pieces. And I know a lot of products these days are intended for students to use on their own, but might require a little bit of onboarding essentially. And so I think that that's a really great point to be have upfront, explanations there and you know benefits can outweigh the slow onboarding time and so it can be worth it but just being upfront about that is a great idea. So I think that you know we've really have appreciated the insights you've provided and it's super clear that I think that something all of our clients are always trying to better understand is their clients and their customers and so I do think that your information you've been able to give really speaks to the customer voice which is really helpful and just on that note any additional advice you give out to edtech creators out there who are looking to support families that you're working with or any maybe untapped areas and gaps that you're seeing in the market that people should be addressing.

30:19.73

Morgan Camu

I think that you know there is there was a time in the sun, I think, for a lot of this online learning. I think what we have seen from families is that what had what was a necessity because of COVID and all of the virtual experiences that just had to be because the world just felt a little bit too unsafe for many families has slowly lightened up. And so you if you think about a family who is using their ESA funds and their homeschooling, they may not want necessarily to have all of their electives enrichment on these EdTech products and there is a real desire for families to be out in the world and for their kids to be in community, in place-based community centers, libraries, parking lots, gymnasiums, you name it, where they are in the learning experience with kids of their own sort of affinity or age or you know what brings kids together around a common love of something. So I would say that you know if you are purely an online provider and you're like, but we don't have a thing, you know, we don't run in-person basketball like that's what the YMCA does and I'm an edtech product like how am I gonna teach a kid how to swim? Like yes, of course, like don't be don't feel like that is what I'm saying but I do think that if you could structure your ed tech products around kids enjoying the experience together online I think there is value in that and so we've had families who are certainly could sign their kid up for Duolingo or sign their kid up for a coding class, but there's something just a little bit more wonderful when those kids are in those classes together. Right? So week after week, those kids are building relationships. They're talking to each other, they're working on critical thinking, they're working on collaboration, communication, all those really important SEL skills, and but they're not doing it with strangers, they're building community online. And maybe it's these kids are logging on from their different living rooms, and their different homes, or maybe there is a private-public partnership where these kids could come together in a community center and do that online learning while they're sitting next to each other. We were getting that feedback from families, which is like, yeah, sure. like I have the infrastructure now where my kid could you know log on and take a coding class or you know have a tutoring session. But if we could also integrate some play space learning, that would be awesome, right? Why not have them all sit at the same table and zoom in that content-level expert for that class or that club or whatever, and let those kids be able to have the social benefits of learning while also the wonderful subject matter expertise that online learning and tech products afford? So, you know, I would challenge people to say just because we've always done it directly to families on a one-to-one ratio doesn't mean that it couldn't look in different permutations. And I think that it would allow both the experience of online learning, which is so flexible and personalized with also the social benefits of having kids, you know, rub elbows together and be able to look each other in the eye and work on something collaboratively even if that project is an online project.

33:42.14

Olivia 

Yeah, and that's a great point. I think that there are even platforms out there that I think are you know providing students with, you know let's say, project-based learning where they actually can step off the platform and and work with their their peers or even turning and talking about what they're doing on the platform.

For individual projects just to go back into and go back into them with that experience, having shared it and eventually even, let's say, sharing their work in front of a class that they've done on their computers I think is a great way to reinforce the social aspect while also allowing for either personalized channels or even just, um you know, as you mentioned, the great learning pathways and in front of our experts at Tech Products and Brain. So I definitely really appreciate your thoughts there and I look forward to seeing more ah kind of how the space grows in additional states that are signing up for these funding opportunities.

34:33.59

Morgan Camu

Yeah, me too. I’m I feel like it's, I've got so many Google alerts happening and states are passing legislation now that they're in session. So, you know, this time next year, there'll probably be a few more states colored in on the map. um And we're just excited to see where this movement takes us and, you know, optimistic that at the end of the day, families are getting what they want. And we just really want to play a supporting role in making sure that they have the tools and the knowledge to make those decisions confidently for their kids.

35:03.76

Olivia 

Yeah, it's an interesting space, so we'll definitely be following along and hopefully we'll be able to follow up with OutSchool where we can continue to see this space growing. But thank you so much, Morgan, for joining us today.

35:17.59

Morgan Camu

You bet. It was a pleasure to be with you, Olivia. Thanks again.

35:19.44

Olivia

Thank you.