EdTech Changemakers: Striving for Equity

August 31, 2021

This post was written by Ben Biagiotti. Ben is an intern with Alhambra-US Chamber.

The Future Series is a monthly online interactive town hall style Q&A discussion event sponsored by Alhambra-US Chamber. Individuals who specialize in Education Technology (also known as EdTech) discuss the scope and impact of EdTech. Dr. Duleep Deosthale, Senior Consultant at the New York City based The Thinkubator and himself a serial ed-tech entrepreneur, is the host and moderator. As the primary sponsor of the The Future Series, Alhambra-US Chamber hopes to advance its mission of strengthening education around the world.

Michelle Brown, Founder and CEO of CommonLit, joined Dr. Deosthale in a conversation on August 22, 2021. CommonLit was created in 2009 to address adolescent development, especially students’ ability to read and develop their language skills in a social setting. Today, CommonLit is used by over 22 million students, and has shared reading materials at a variety of reading levels. It has the same structure as Khan Academy, focusing on access and equity rather than sales, marketing, and profit.

Ms. Brown was a teacher in a high poverty and underserved community, who realized that her seventh graders had different reading levels. To make things worse, she could not find any good online reading resources to help her teach; those she could find were either irrelevant or poorly designed. After moving to Boston and teaching at a high performance school, she wanted to give all schools access to the same tools she had been given in Boston.

During the Q&A, Brown was asked how CommonLit would address vulnerable students and equity issues. She said that CommonLit has attempted to solve inequity by offering translation services and improving access to technology. Brown also wants educators to design the structure of CommonLit, and makes an effort to personally talk to at least 5 teachers a week to improve it. She even looks at other Edtech companies for inspiration and ways to improve.

When asked about challenges CommonLit faces, Brown pointed out that many schools overreport how much tech they use. This is a problem, as without access to laptops and the internet in the first place, schools cannot use CommonLit and other EdTech resources. Brown started the company to increase equity in education, but lack of online resources is not the only obstacle standing in the way.

Equity has faced another challenge in the COVID pandemic. Brown said she saw two major impacts from COVID: first is the social isolation, which prevents kids from making friends and developing their social skills, and second is the new classroom structure, with Zoom calls having “fried” kids’ attention spans. Polling has found that loss of learning due to student disengagement was the largest concern for teachers, and Brown shares this sentiment. Students doing work at home may also not absorb the material as readily as they would in person. Some teachers may rely solely on CommonLit to teach their students during the pandemic, rather than using it as a supplemental tool as intended. Brown said a solution to the problem of engagement must follow the science on what keeps kids motivated, and it must be specific to age. To address the problem, CommonLit takes a different approach for each subject and uses technology to measure student engagement with the system to see what works.

The final questions focused on whether Brown was planning to incorporate AI into CommonLit, and although she said they were looking into the possibility, she said that often AI does not always make things better. It might be a fun buzzword, and useful for non-EdTech businesses, but the human component of education is much more important than AI. Brown believes that technology is not inherently good or bad, but a tool that has potential to close reading gaps; it is up to us to achieve this reality.

Brown is motivated to achieve equity in the United States, having experienced firsthand the problems that arise when schools do not have equal resources. CommonLit is designed to address the issue by increasing access to reading materials at all levels, and Brown hopes to expand the platform to also provide History and Social Science materials. Although the obstacles are great, Brown is hopeful about what could be achieved through working with those who are passionate about the issue.  

The Alhambra US Chamber greatly appreciates the contributions of Michelle Brown and CommonLit, and their insight into the future of Edtech! Keep an eye out for our next installment in the Future Series: The EdTech Changemakers. Make sure to register here and follow our social media:

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