We are very excited about the quality of the submissions we have received so far on the Make My Education Matter contest.  We have received submissions from across the country that cover quite a range of ways in which your education matters to you and to society as a whole.  Some students focused on the moment when they realized their education impacted their lives in very real ways and others (even at such a young age) focused on how important their education is to their ability to support themselves in their old age.  ….Of course, I am thinking that old age may mean different things to each of us.  I am thinking of “old age” as after I retire.  Some of you may be thinking of “old age” as after you get your driver’s license!

So far, I am able to read every single entry.  ….Lets see if you can overwhelm me.

We do many things here at eScholar, but ultimately, our goal is the same for all of our services and solutions: to personalize education for every student. Students deserve better than the one-size-fits-all model, and personalizing education is essential to keeping all students engaged. However, it’s not easy.

In 2006, Civic Enterprises did a study in which they interviewed high school drop outs across twenty-five cities in the US, trying to understand what could have prevented them from dropping out. The responses varied, but there was one overarching issue that could have kept them in school: relevance. 81% of the respondents agreed that they needed to see how their education was relevant to their lives, and that they needed to see the connection between getting an education and getting a good job in the future. We see this as a crucial problem. In order to get students engaged in their education, we have to make sure their education matters to them. This is a challenge.

This is why we have launched a new initiative to gather students’ opinions about the relevance of their education. This month, eScholar will be sponsoring the Make My Education Matter contest, a contest that asks students if they think their education matters to them. If it doesn’t, we want to hear why. If it does, we want to know what’s working. Students are invited to submit a response online to give us their opinion.

After May 31^st, we’ll take a thorough read of all the responses. Based on the responses originality, clarity, thoughtfulness, and overall quality, we’ll be awarding a brand new iPad Mini to two students.

So if you have a child, or are looking for an end-of-the-year activity with your students this month, take a look at our contest. As we continue to do everything in the best interest of students, we have to make sure we’re listening to them as well.  

This week, I will be speaking at the Postsecondary Education Standards Council (PESC) Data Summit in San Diego.  The audience particularly wants to discuss how the MyData initiative can help drive personalization of education.  The MyData initiative is focused on giving students and parents the ability to control their own data and eScholar is on the forefront of helping students use their data to set educational and career goals and manage their progress toward achieving them.

The White House has taken the lead in making it possible for students and parents to directly download data from a centralized data center, and P-20 education agencies are onboard to provide the same service to enable teachers and parents to securely and quickly access information relevant to the students’ learning achievement. You might recall that last Fall, I spoke at the White House Datapalooza to emphasize the importance of using data to personalize education. Now at the PESC Data Summit, eScholar will be talking about the work some of our leading edge customers are doing in this area and the ways this will help students drive their own personalized education.

Are any of you attending PESC this week? If so, leave a comment to share some of your thoughts on the MyData initative.

We’re excited to announce that eScholar myTrack® won a “Cool Tool Award” for Best Student Academic Tracking Solution in the third annual EdTech Digest Awards! eScholar Complete Data Warehouse® was also named a finalist in the Best District Data Solution category, and I was a finalist in the “EdTech Leadership Award” for Best Leadership Founder/CEO category.

EdTech Digest Awards honor tools, trendsetters and leaders in the education and technology sector. The distinguished awards program recognizes outstanding solution and the best in education and technology. A panel of industry influencers evaluated more than 200 finalists from over 40 categories. The EdTech Cool Tool Awards recognize new, emerging and established technology solutions for education, and the EdTech Leadership Awards recognize outstanding forward-thinking contributions to learning and technology. We are honored to be recognized by EdTech Digest. Check out our awards below.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Education Week Leadership Forum, where eScholar was also one of the primary sponsors. This year’s theme was Road Maps to Common Core Success. Many of you probably know that the Common Core State Standards initiative is a major topic of discussion for educators across the US. As I mentioned in my post last week about SXSWedu, the Common Core is laying down important building blocks for personalized education.  Much of the discussion at the forum was focused on how to successfully transition to the College and Career ready standards of the Common Core.

One of the keynote speakers at the forum was New York State Education Commissioner John King. We work with New York on both their adoption of the Common Core and their deeply related focus on personalizing education for each student. Commissioner King shared an interesting story about one of his recent visits to an elementary classroom where he had a chance to sit with a group of students during an ELA reading session. During his visit, one of his questions for the students was, “What is different about reading lessons this year, compared to last year?” The students answered, “We like it better. It’s more fun. We get to know the story better.” He had similar stories about students liking the focus on the concepts of math and not just the mechanics.  That’s pretty compelling. By moving to the Common Core, students have the opportunity to explore a topic more deeply and they seem to like it better as a result.

Shifting to the Common Core is a significant challenge, but it seems to be beginning to have the intended effect in some of the pioneer schools.  We all still have a great deal of work ahead of us, but it appears to be worth it.

While we were at SXSWedu, I got the chance to meet Bill Gates and talk about personalizing education!

He was at the event promoting the idea of each student engaging in their own personalized learning.  This is an idea that we believe in very strongly and an initiative where we are working with Mr. Gates’ foundation and other key leaders in education.  Mr. Gates was interested in hearing about some of the work we are doing together in several states to help educators define and deliver a personalized pathway for each individual student.

Now is a very promising time for personalized education.  The development of a detailed understanding of the interrelationships and progression of skills through the Common Core is laying an important foundation.   At the same time, the expanding implementation of data communication standards through CEDS and supported by eScholar, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and the Ed-Fi Alliance, as well as Mr. Gates’ InBloom are making it possible to bring together the insights necessary for teachers to understand the individual needs and goals of students.   Now, the pieces are coming together to allow data driven applications such as eScholar myTrack help students achieve their education in a way that is focused on their individual goals.

We have been working for years to apply data toward helping each individual student achieve their own best potential.  We know that “best potential” is fundamentally personal to every one of us.  We have learned a lot and one of the things we have seen is the enormous energy that teachers put toward this same goal.  What we are beginning to see now is the emergence of several trends that will help educators deliver on this promise.  We know it will not be easy, but it’s good to have some powerful forces pushing in the same direction!

eScholar CEO Shawn Bay speaks with inBloom CEO Ivan Streichenberger and Bill Gates at SXSWedu.

This week I had the opportunity to spend an eye opening couple of days at the Education Growth Summit in New York City.  This is the fourth year of the EdGrowth Summit, but the first time I have attended.  I am glad I did.

This invitation-only event is unique in the education industry.  It is a gathering of many participants in the P-20 education industry, from educators, to education service providers to providers of funding, from both foundations and for-profit investors.   With the many viewpoints represented, all the ingredients were there for a lively discussion.

Education Growth Partners does more than just provide the ingredients; they combine them in ways that deliver insights.  There were excellent panels that represented different viewpoints and moderators that made sure the important (and controversial) debates were had.  The panelists were all experienced industry veterans with plenty of facts to back up their positions.  These were not the kind of discussions where everyone politely ignores the elephant in the room!

There were also a number of short sessions where entrepreneurs presented their most innovative ideas.  There were some exciting, thought provoking ideas.  It was great to see that despite some of the structural inhibitors to change in our industry, smart people continue to bet their careers on innovative ideas.  Some will certainly succeed.

There was a lot of discussion about the positive impact that personalizing the education experience to each individual can have on the overall performance of the system, from early childhood and throughout post-secondary.  There was broad agreement on the value and many examples were cited.  There was less agreement on how these approaches could scale.  The exciting thing for me was that most people agreed that leveraging clean student level data is essential to delivering personalization in a large scale.  A number of our most progressive customer partners have begun pursuing these strategies over the past few years.  It was gratifying to see industry participants beginning to see the same opportunities.  This should help us build the momentum to deliver the results on an even bigger scale.

It was also an eye-opener to see some startups aiming to unseat this entrenched industry player called eScholar!  I don’t think any of us here feel the least bit “entrenched.”  We bust our butts every day to make sure we are delivering value to our customers and see a long list of valuable things we still want to do, but it’s probably good to know folks are chasing us.  It will keep us running.  ….so much for the days of being “under the radar”….

I know a number of you are aware that we live very near Newtown, CT and I want to thank the folks that have reached out to me over the past few days. Newtown is only 15 miles from my house and we have a number of friends who live there. The impact here has been horrific. I know from talking to a number of you from across the country, physical distance is not a buffer. This tragedy has devastated us all.

Many of us have devoted a great deal of our lives to helping students. This horror brought upon the most vulnerable and innocent in a place where being and feeling safe is essential is simply beyond imagination. ….But it happened and we need to figure out the right things to do moving forward.

We all struggle to try to make sense of it, but I expect we never will. We admire the heroic actions of the teachers and staff that protected these children and likely saved many lives. I expect you all would be willing to do the same. None of us should have to. I hope that sensible actions come out of this that will help avoid something like this in the future.

I feel some obligation to clear up some of the portrayal of Newtown in the press. They have called Newtown an affluent place of “big houses and big yards”. I just want folks to know that it is a town with a lot of regular people. My friends are regular working people who live in Newtown and many of my wife’s co-workers live there as well. Newtown could truly be any one of our towns.

A lot of you have asked what you could do to help. Right now, I am not sure, but we are all thinking about how to help the children who survived. Though the Sandy Hook Elementary building will not re-open any time soon (if at all), the children will return to school at a building nearby. And we want them to feel as safe and welcome as possible when they do. As a neighbor of Newtown, I’d like to hear any of your ideas on how we can support the children as they transition back to school.

Meet Bobby, the newest member of the eScholar myTrack team. We think that educators have a lot of students like Bobby, students who have things that they want to do, but aren’t always sure how to get there. Check out the video to see how Bobby and his team of supporters use myTrack to help him reach his goals. What do you think? Do you have any students like Bobby?

Is anyone else going to NYSCATE next week? I will be there, and I’m looking forward to catching up with New York education techies in Rochester. I know some educators will have already spent the weekend in Penfield Schools doing hands-on workshops before the main conference sessions begin. If you’re one of them, or you arrive in Rochester by Sunday, November 18, I’d like to invite you to join us at the Hyatt Regency, from 5:00 to 6:30 PM. This will be taking place during the NYSCATE Round Robin Reception, so come by Ballroom B and have a glass of wine and while you catch up with your colleagues. This event is open to everyone, but click here to let us know ahead of time if you can make it.

In addition to hosting the Round Robin Reception, we will also have a booth in the exhibit hall. I, along with several other members of the eScholar team, will be there, talking about our newest educational technology tool, eScholar myTrack. Plus, we’ll be giving out some great swag at our booth, including myTrack pedometers. Have you ever wondered how much you walk while you’re at a conference? Now you can keep track with a myTrack pedometer! Stop by booth 1017 in the convention center to pick one up.

I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones at the conference. Are you going? Let me know!