It's well-known that it's really difficult to get your child into a pre-school program. With waitlists filling up years in advance, you might even struggle to find a school in the first year of your kid's life — and that's about four years before their first day of school would start.
But San Francisco-based Wonderschool thinks they have a solution for that problem, and they're bringing it to D.C. in early-to-mid 2018.
Wonderschool is an edtech platform, founded in 2016, that aims to help teachers and aspiring instructors launch a pre-school program from within their home.
They work with teachers who left their jobs launch their own school. They help people who might have a background as a nanny or au pair get teaching licenses. They offer a mentor program where someone on Wonderschool's staff comes out to your home and helps you set up a classroom within. And they provide loose guidelines of requirements — such as sticking to a daily schedule, providing a dedicated classroom space and following state education standards — to let instructors stick to their own teaching styles. This way a Montessori teacher and a Reggio instructor can both use the platform to launch their own facilities.
"What we’re looking for is people who are really committed to education and have some sort of combination of experience," said Mia Pritts, head of early care and education at Wonderschool, in an interview. "We really try to accelerate the individual's passion and how they approach early-care education and give them some guidelines to follow."
With a new $2 million seed round backing it up, the platform has its eyes set on expanding into 15 cities in the next 18 months, with D.C. on the list. CEO and co-founder Chris Bennett said based on interest, they're looking to focus on launching in Georgetown, Glover Park, Cleveland Park, Chevy Case, Md.; Vienna, Va.; and Arlington first.
Wonderschool provides teachers with the tools to set up their shops and brings in revenue by taking a 10 percent cut of the monthly tuition from instructors. So far, they have schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of California, and they also plan to launch in Miami, Dallas, Chicago, New York City, among others in the next year-and-a-half.
Wonderschool is entering D.C. at a time when, during the 2015-16 school year, 70 percent of the District's 3-year-olds and 84 percent of its 4-year-olds were enrolled in pre-K. The District passed the Pre-K Enhancement and Expansion Amendment Act in 2008, which put high-quality early education at the center of D.C.'s education reform agenda. Through it, D.C. had to make pre-K available to all 3- and 4-year-old children in D.C. by 2014 — a goal the District says it has met. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education also reports that D.C. spends the most on pre-K per child in the United States, at nearly $12,000 above the national average.
If anything, the District struggles to reach its goal for instructional support for pre-school students, according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education's 2016 State of Pre-K Report. Based on a grading index from classroom observations, D.C. teachers came in at 2.62 out of 3.0, the target goal. This ranking suggests that many D.C. teachers infrequently provide pre-K students with feedback that expands learning, understanding and participation in the classroom or opportunities for higher-order thinking skills, according to the report.
The same report shows that local teachers excel at providing emotional support to students and classroom organization. Understanding the way D.C. regulates its schools is what Bennett says will be Wonderschool's biggest obstacle.
"A lot of the time, you can read the main regulatory document, but there's all these hidden things that aren't really mentioned there but are rules that people follow," he said.
Nevertheless, Bennett said the team is excited to come to a city that traditionally has valued education in all aspects.
"It’s a city that really values education, and cities that value education are right up our alley," Bennett said.
Images courtesy of Wonderschool
