A teacher would never dream of giving students 10 months of assignments and then offer feedback two to three times during the year. But when many U.S. educators first take up their position in front of the blackboard, that’s the scenario they face.
“Imagine if you’re a district and literally 75 percent of your teachers aren’t getting feedback on a regular basis,” said Richmond edtech entrepreneur Will Morris. “That’s the lynchpin for success in so many of the mission-critical outcomes you have.”
For the past five years, Morris’ startup, EdConnective, has been striving to fill the feedback gap experienced by teachers who don’t know what to change or how.
“It’s not that teachers aren’t working hard; they’re working their butts off,” said Morris. Instead, “it’s a feedback problem.”
EdConnective, co-founded by Morris and Erik Skantze, looks to technology as a solution.
Using a smartphone or other recording device, teachers videotape themselves teaching and share the clips with a coach – a vetted “master educator” with experience in the classroom and a track record of success. The coach then offers feedback, including observations of strategies that aren’t working and suggestions for those that might be adopted.
But the connection between the struggling teacher and the coach, said Morris, is only part of the process. EdConnective is based on the idea that feedback is necessary for teacher growth and needs to be sustained, practice-based and tactical. Through the software, teachers and coaches interact on a regular basis, using video to let the novice practice skills over time.
“It’s the difference between going through CrossFit versus a gym membership,” Morris said.
“Teachers like helping teachers. There’s a camaraderie in the profession.”
The EdConnective methodology grew out of Morris’ own experiences in the classroom. As a young teacher working at a Chicago charter school after his graduation from the College of William and Mary, Morris was the recipient of “your classic one, maybe two walk-throughs or check-ins” from administrators.
For him, as for many others, it wasn’t enough. He started looking for other places to grow – at StartingBloc, a social entrepreneurship nonprofit that holds leadership institutes around the country, and eventually in graduate school for education at the University of Pennsylvania.
It was at UPenn that he embarked on what he called “a deep dive … into how I could leverage one variable to make the most impact for low-income communities within education.”
Eventually, he came to a conclusion: “The single most important factor that relates to student achievement is the effectiveness of the teacher in the class.”
In 2013, Morris launched EdConnective. But it took three “really, really tough” years before the company took off in terms of revenue and client growth.
“I was in startup wilderness for quite some time,” he said.
Today, EdConnective maintains a presence in 45 schools across 36 districts in seven states, including Virginia, where districts such as Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Chesterfield have jumped onboard.
Coaches — today there are 70 — are drawn from a 4,000-strong application pool (“It’s currently harder to get into EdConnective than Harvard,” Morris quipped) and are paid based on their level of experience. Morris attributed the high demand to not only the chance EdConnective offers educators for advancement and some extra padding to their income, but also the altruistic nature of the field.
“Teachers like helping teachers,” he said. “There’s a camaraderie in the profession.”
While earlier EdConnective focused on selling its services to schools, today it takes a district-wide focus, working with administrators to identify the most pressing needs throughout the system and where best to target resources.
Morris pointed to one example of the payoffs from school districts' use of EdConnective: After undergoing coaching for classroom management skills, a teacher who previously was thinking of quitting the profession saw her students achieve the highest scores on standardized tests within the whole school — so high that they allowed it to gain accreditation.
Honed through participation in accelerators including Richmond’s Lighthouse Labs, Village Capital in D.C., Education Design Studio at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Venture Initiation Program, the business continued its success by recently winning the Startup Arlington competition. It will be traveling north for at least a few months to undergo further refinement in Arlington.
After all, Morris said, “the more feedback you get, the better you become."
