EdTech Startup Showcase

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Scott Schuette: You're listening to the EdTech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the Be Podcast Network. Hi everyone. And thanks for joining us. My name is Scott Schuette, co host of the Fabulous Learning Nerds and your host for today. I'll be taking you through the stories of some of the wonderful emerging companies in EdTech.

In this episode, we're going to hear more about Scholar Education. We'll be taking you along a learning journey, how they got started, where they're going, and some of their greatest achievements and learnings. Back with us today, one of the visionaries behind Scholar Education, Marlee Strawn. Marlee, welcome back to the show!

Marlee Strawn: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Scott Schuette: Yeah, great. So listen in case people didn't have the opportunity to listen to your first episode, could you get our audience a little bit caught up on, you know, who you are how you got to where you're at and what value you're bringing [00:01:00] to the space?

Marlee Strawn: Yeah, absolutely. So I come with almost two decades of experience in education. I actually started as a classroom teacher, high school history teacher, to be exact. And I quickly, you know, decided that I wanted to move up into administration. So I got my master's. What really motivated me along the journey is that I was really passionate instructional practices, like different types of lessons that made those aha moments, you know, happen in your classroom.

So I wanted to make a greater impact and help other teachers have those moments as well. So worked my way through school administration, but I ultimately founded a high school here in Tampa Bay. So I was the founding principal of Dr. Kiran C. Patel High School that's located here in the Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough County is the seventh largest district in the nation. And we were a project based learning school. So [00:02:00] really unique of vision and mission. And essentially it is the number one performing Charter High School. It is the only school with a 100 percent graduation rate at this point and in Hillsborough County and 90 percent of them go to college.

So, I'm really proud about what we created. And just a little more background there is That school was centered around like feeder schools that were C's and D's. So for us to be able to accomplish that, it was really just the fact that we had a unique mission and that we focused on, you know, critical thinking with project based learning.

And then, you know, March, 2023 is when Scholar Education started. It started literally as a conversation with my co founder. We we're talking about all of the impacts of COVID. We were talking about how Florida had just approved the parent vouchers, and we were talking about [00:03:00] AI. And we basically came up with this, you know, what we saw as the future of education and how that looks different and how COVID basically had to force schools to evolve very quickly.

We thought it was like the best opportunity to start creating what we saw as the future of education. So it was a very tough decision because I love that school. You know, I created it, literally built it from the ground up, but I saw this as a really unique opportunity in time and I knew I needed to, you know, take advantage of that.

So, we so started as an idea in March, 2023, and then, you know, Since then, what we have done is last school year, so 2023, 23, 24 we launched our beta product basically. And our goal was to just to get a product that we saw as this vision in the hands of teachers and then [00:04:00] get them to guide the, you know, the development rather than creating a product and then hoping it works.

We wanted to get feedback as we were building. So we launched, honestly, with just BaxterBot. So our system is centered around two AI assistants. A student assistant and a teacher assistant. BaxterBot is the student assistant, and essentially he knows the context of that lesson. And then he provides, you know, on the spot support.

The conversation quickly evolved with this teacher saying, Can I use BaxterBot to support my English language learners? Yep, absolutely. We now have 179 different languages that BaxterBot does automatic translations for. Then the question evolved, Can I help use BaxterBot to support my special education and 504 students and help provide their accommodations?

Thanks again. Okay, tapped into my own experience as a principal and [00:05:00] said, you know what, that's one of the most challenging parts of a teacher is balancing that. So it really evolved very organically. And then as AI started to become a little bit more sophisticated, we were able to ask ourselves, okay what are some other ways outside of just that student support that we can provide support to the entire ecosystem.

So today, fast forwarding to this school year. So this past August, we launched a huge pilot. We have 2000 students in our platform now, all grade levels, all subject areas. And today we have an entire ecosystem that focuses on AI lesson planning and support for teachers. That lesson plan goes directly into a student portal where the students have access to an accommodation toolbox where all of their 504 and IEP accommodations are available to [00:06:00] them at their fingertips.

In addition to BaxterBot, who knows the context for the lesson. And then we take all the data tracking, and we provide data insights to the teacher. So they know, based on the conversations today with BaxterBot, this is, you know, the most common questions, this is how you can support these students, and we're tracking the use of all of the student accommodations.

So that's like a very quick overview of our journey, but We're only about 18 months old, essentially. We've done a lot in a very short time. But today as we stand, we are an entire ecosystem that work, that focuses on the entire workflow of the teaching, you know, planning, teaching and reflecting components of teaching.

Scott Schuette: That's amazing. If I may, I want to piggyback on one of the things that you brought up this whole idea of data, right? My experience with data is like data is kind of like the new gold. If you don't have data, you don't have [00:07:00] anything. Data is so important. How important is data? and new is the kind of data you're providing to educators in that system.

And what are some of the things that they can do with the data to make their learning more effective in their environment more effective?

Marlee Strawn: Yeah I agree 100%. I think that what is going to differentiate, you know, really great AI tools. And every industry and not so great AI tools is what we are doing with the data that we're capturing. So what we are doing at Scholar Education is, you know, every, one of the things we've identified through our pilot processes is that students feel more comfortable getting support from BaxterBot at times than they do with their teacher.

I think it says something about the generation and, you know, how they just are very much immersed in technology. So What we've been able to do is we are getting so many, you know, [00:08:00] insights about the types of questions and the types of supports that students need based on each, you know, lesson and activity that the teacher created.

So that's one. We, you know, it's almost like having a lens into their, you know, their thought process. And it's almost like mind reading to some degree, right? Because they feel comfortable asking this and they know their teacher can see it and they know, you know, it's all being tracked, but they feel so much more comfortable, you know, not waiting for that teacher to answer a question.

So that's one way. The other way is not only is it just like, Oh, amazing. We can see the types of questions You know, have, but then we're able to take those questions and provide actionable steps to the teacher. That's a very challenging part, right? We've been talking about data driven decisions for, you know, 20 years now.

And that's always been very challenging because there was no lack of data, right? You'd have test scores and you'd have, you know, conference notes you name it. But then it's like, what do we do with that [00:09:00] information? And that's the best use case for AI is helping. initiate the analysis of that data to create actionable steps.

So then if I see that this was a common question during the Bellwark activity. I know, well, I know as a teacher, but now we can use our system to provide, this is what you can do on your next lesson, right? Review this vocabulary word. There were a lot of questions about this. Review this formula. There was a lot of questions on this, and a lot of students got it wrong.

I think that providing those actionable steps with your data, so it's not just like a analysis, but then what can I do with it? is what makes us unique you know, in general, in the AI EdTech space.

Scott Schuette: And, you know, just speaking as someone who's recently discovered the value of data, the analytic part doesn't necessarily come naturally, especially for educators, right? [00:10:00] So I'm really good at facilitation. I'm really good at lesson planning. I'm really good at delivery. But if you gave me a bunch of this data, like, what am I supposed to do with it?

And so my experience with. Let's say an example that is not necessarily what you're doing, but an example, it might be copilot on Excel. Like here's all this data. What do I do with it? Analyze the data. Tell me what I don't see because I don't necessarily, you're right, like I don't necessarily see the trends because it may or may not be a competency for me.

And on the back end of that, talk a little bit about like empowering teachers then over time to be able to. Apply these learnings and take a look at data and go, Oh, I see this trend. You know, how important is that to your solution? What are you seeing from that in your pilot and as you move forward?

Marlee Strawn: Yeah, I, and again, I think this is another way that we're unique in the space. The fact, well, we're an enterprise solution, so we have a lot of [00:11:00] context for the teachers. So we know what subjects you're teaching. We know the grades. We, all of that is built in. We have all of your student rosters built into our system.

We have their, you know, if they have a 504 or an IEP, if they're an English language learner, all built in. So when we provide the, you know, any sort of AI insights, It's taking, it's driven by that context that is built into our system where a lot of the other solutions are, you know, direct to consumer. So if I want to create a rubric, for example, I have to say, I'm a ninth grade teacher every time, or I'm, you know, every, or I teach English every time.

And that brings a lot of value, but because our system has that context built in, I think that it. It helps over time the data that, you know, to your point, the data starts to build on top of each other and having over time [00:12:00] overview of your student learning outcomes and an overview of the conversations that your students are having with their, you know, their AI assistant.

That's where the true value comes in is because you're not just getting a snapshot in time. You're getting an overview of their interaction. And you know, that's one of the things that I really love about our product is that because we have like a rail system, you know, our rail system is the teacher creates the lesson plan.

The lesson plan goes directly into the student portal. The students interact with that lesson and then, you know, ask questions to BaxterBot and get their accommodations and all of that. And then that data component, and it's the cycle, this continual loop. That we can provide that I think is really the value add with embedding AI into all parts of the education process.

So that's something honestly with our pilot [00:13:00] that we're most excited about is seeing how the students, you know, Seeing what insights we get over time and seeing even the insights about how teachers are actually using AI over time, right? AI is, I mean, statistics show that like 30 to 40 percent is really using, you know, any AI tool right now.

It's a very low percentage. So even though it's like the topic of everybody's headlines, it's not being used by the majority of the population. So what we are doing at Scholar is kind of taking a slow methodical approach, putting, you know, testing it out, putting it in a pilot, getting user feedback, building a tool that we know has valuable outcomes, because we're building it with the educators and students in mind.

And I think that's that often sometimes doesn't happen just in general in the edtech space. Right? [00:14:00] As a principal, I saw that a lot, where it was just like, okay, there was a tool that solved a solution, but that solution didn't include all the other parts of the puzzle. So we found ourselves using so many different tools and so many different point solutions to just do, to just teach, just do our jobs.

So one of the things that is important to me is trying to eliminate that point solution fatigue, eliminate the need for so many different tools. And that's why that RAIL system that I described is so important to us at Scholar.

Scott Schuette: Yeah, that really great stuff. You mentioned how people are reluctant to step into the AI world. And I get it, especially, you know, in learning and development, my experience has been, you know, that there are people just like you talked about that are like, I'm in, and we're using it all the time and we're the advocates, [00:15:00] but we're a real small percentage of what's going on.

A lot of my peers are like, this is witchcraft. I don't want to touch it. I'm so used to what I'm doing. I'm just going to go ahead and do that until I'm forced to, right? So talk to me a little bit about, or talk to the audience a little bit about the things that you've done to help, especially in your pilot, to help both students and educators to go ahead and just kind of adopt and embrace and take advantage of what you have to offer in the AI space.

Marlee Strawn: Yeah. One of the things that I really advocate for when I'm talking to teachers about Scholar is that we've I, we've tried to tackle the most challenging parts of teaching. So for me, that comes when that, when I look at what takes up time for teachers, it's lesson planning, right? It's grading and it's providing individual support to students, right?

What ends up happening is we just teach. [00:16:00] One basic level, but this whole idea that we've been talking about for years about personalized learning is actually possible now with AI. So what we do at Scholar is that we take some of the most challenging things, and we try to automate those. So for example, special education, you know, there's so much compliance that's involved regarding, you know, the actual accommodations that teachers have to do.

And when I say special education, Yeah, there's students who have an IEP, but there's also 504 students that have very similar accommodations. And those numbers are growing immensely. The number of students who are getting, you know, you know, diagnosed with a disability and getting an IEP or a 504 is growing and growing.

So when you are a high school teacher, for example, which is, you know, my background, you could have 150 kids and 30 percent of those kids are going to need accommodations. [00:17:00] And that, what that looks like is providing individual support tied to this legal document, their 504, their IEP. And then I'm supposed to track data on that so that I can make suggestions on whether or not those accommodations work, right?

So as a principal, I sat in these meetings, an IEP meeting, an annual, you know, 504 meeting, and we would end up doing, we got ourselves in a cycle where it was like, Very subjective information, no data to support, you know, whether or not their plan was working. And this experience really drives one of the things that we focus on at Scholar, which is, we help, we create those, we create learning profiles for students that's tied to their IEP or their 504.

And then the student's experience is customized. So when they go in and experience the lesson plan, their [00:18:00] accommodation toolbox is tied to their plan. And now I'm helping the teachers implement an accommodation, but I'm also tracking. So they're going to get a daily report that says, you know, Marley used her accommodation or did not.

And over time, they'll know this accommodations used 25%. This accommodation is used, you know, 85%. And when I go to that annual meeting, I actually have data that I can pull. Of course, that doesn't replace all of the anecdotal, you know, things that we see in the classroom. It will never replace that. But having that as even a tool that I can help make decisions about these students who, you know, from my experience, it's oftentimes these students who have the most difficult time meeting graduation requirements.

It's the most, you know, passing their classes, like, these are the challenges that they are facing, and we can support them through their plan, their IEP or their 504, that's the intention behind those [00:19:00] plans. But what ends up happening is we just keep the same accommodations and we keep going through the same pattern because we don't know what to do.

Well, that's one of the things that we do is we saw, you know, special education in general is one of the areas that a lot of ed tech tools don't support. And I think it's because there's a lot of nuances involved. There's a lot of compliance involved and, It's just kind of a touchy area, but we saw this opportunity to automate a lot of that process for the teacher as much as possible, and also truly support the students where they are.

When I talk to parents, I am a parent, but he's five, so I haven't gone to the high school route. But when I talk to parents about. having their student having access to their accommodations and them not have to wonder that they get them. Did they not get them? And then having data to support that [00:20:00] they're like, Oh my goodness, I wish my student had this, you know, and then from a teacher perspective too.

So not to get a little ahead of myself, but this covered these conversations that I have about data and ways that scholar education supports their students. We see there being a huge opportunity for us to provide actionable steps to parents as well. And I think that when you're looking at the triad of, you know, stakeholders in education, you think about the students and you think about the teachers always.

But there's a big puzzle piece, which is parents. And we all know, anybody in education knows that parental involvement is I think that's huge when it comes to student success, right?

Scott Schuette: right.

Marlee Strawn: But a lot of times, parents don't even know what to do. They don't know the questions to ask. They don't know what to do.

They go on, they see their student failing on their grade book, and then what, [00:21:00] right? It's very reactionary. So we see an opportunity at Scholar to kind of allow the parents, in the same way that we're supporting teachers, and the same way we're supporting students, We can support parents too. We can provide them with actionable steps of what they could do at home.

We can provide them with data about their kids that they've never had, whether it's about the types of questions they're asking in class or, you know, how often they're using their accommodations. We can do this for parents as well. And imagine being a parent, And getting a 60 second summary every single day about what they learned, how they performed, and what tape, what dinner talk you can have at home about that's tied directly to what they learned that day.

That's kind of the vision I have for the future at Scholar is trying to focus on one of the other parts of the puzzle that's, [00:22:00] AI space.

Scott Schuette: That's pretty incredible. As a parent, like one of the things that always frustrated me is like, how is my child doing and really having no idea other than what they're going to tell me and do I trust what they're going to tell me? Probably not. Right. And so, you know, I got to wait till conferences to have that conversation or if something happens and then you have that conversation in between to get real time feedback Really empowers.

It's a really empowering place to put parents that have a vested interest in, you know, how their child grows and learns and moves ahead in society. I think that's a wonderful thing. And you should feel really good about that. That's game changing stuff. That's society changing stuff if it all works out, right?

So that, that's an awesome thing to be doing. Talk to me a little bit about some of your learnings, right? So you've been doing this for 18 months. Like what are some of the things that you've learned in the process? Both good and bad,

Marlee Strawn: Yeah, so Just like when I became a principal for [00:23:00] the first time, you don't know what you don't know, right? That's part of the reason why when I became a principal and I realized I was solely responsible for, you know, everything in the school but special education I found was something I just didn't feel like 100 percent comfortable with, and that's why I became special education certified.

I sat in every IEP meeting. I thought to myself, I'm not going to let anything happen in this school where like, I'm not aware of it because I'm solely responsible. I mean, that's how I learned so much about the special education process. But. The similarly with Scholar, you know, I'm an EdTech founder for the very first time.

I am not technical. I don't have an engineering background. I will say something that is pretty intuitive to me is just I'm really relentless and learning. So I am a firm believer of never relying on anybody else to do your, you know, your teaching for you. Like I can find anything I want to, because of the internet and I can learn essentially anything [00:24:00] because of the internet.

So. One of the things that I did when I first started this journey is I wanted to immerse myself as much as I could in just like the AI space. You know, I didn't know what LLM was. I didn't know how the tokens worked. I didn't know a lot, right? But I knew that it was going to be changing the world and I needed to understand how it works so that I could ask my engineering team the right questions.

So that's how I approach, like, how I lead as a visionary is I try to immerse myself enough in the space. And that involves podcasts. It involves Following the experts on LinkedIn, it involves keeping up to date with all the latest blog posts, you know, that are released. I use that knowledge and to help generate the appropriate questions for [00:25:00] how I like vision, how we can leverage this technology.

So that was a huge learning experience for me because I have to be honest, as a principal, I felt really confident that I could do any job in the building, right? If a teacher left, I could hop right in there. If my data processor left, I could hop right in there. Well, this is the first time where I just couldn't hop right in there.

And I, I'll be honest, I still struggle with that. I'm very much a problem solver. So when I see a problem, I want to just do it and solve it myself. So not being able to. You know, code the product and not being able to just go in there and fix something immediately. Because I, you know, I just don't have that technical background has been a huge learning experience, but what I will say about it, I think it's really important, especially in education for educators to be involved in the building process.

[00:26:00] And that's because. You can be the best engineer in the world, but if you don't have the context of all the nuances that happen in a school or in a classroom, you could build something that really doesn't bring value to, you know, to education or not having the experience just I also feel like there's a little bit more buy in from educators, right?

If they know that I have sat in their seat, I have done what they've done. And I think coming from a lens of being on the other side of the table. And I think that's one of the things that really helps me when I'm like asking those questions to my engineers. So I would say my, in general, it's, I'm still learning so much.

I still, and AI is evolving so quickly that I'm constantly having to make sure that I stay on top of the latest and greatest because at the end of the day, my job is to [00:27:00] be able to ask the right questions. So that we could build something that's really unique.

Scott Schuette: I think that's wonderful. I mean, especially when you talk about relevancy and relevancy from any solution perspective is super important. So your background there is great. Making sure that you're pulling from, you know, the people that you serve to ensure that you've got relevancy is really great. The one challenge I would say, like, don't beat yourself up on the, I'm still learning, right?

Like we're all still learning. We're all new to this space. It's great. The thing that I have found in our space is that the, Yeah. The newness of the things that I discover that can help me last about a week before they're replaced with something even more spectacular. So we're in this constant state of exploring and learning, and if you're a learning nerd like we are, that's great.

That's fantastic. Like, bring it. I want to learn. But if you're not and this is new to you, then it's like, holy cow. Very scary place to be. [00:28:00] So I applaud you for doing what you need to do and learning and growing and all that other good stuff. You want to kind of wrap things up. You talked a little bit about the parental involvement in your vision for the future.

Is there anything else that you're super excited about moving forward that you would like to share with our audience or was that it?

Marlee Strawn: No, in general, I can talk about this from like an AI perspective, like something that I am really excited about is the, you know, moving from where we are right now with AI is really just chat based centered, right? It's, you know, very sophisticated prompts, you know, that help with this communication that comes from a chatbot experience, right?

We've evolved from like the old school chatbot where you'd go onto a website and be like very robotic and how can I help you today, to a more like personalized experience that's guided by the questions being asked. But it's still very reactive, right? [00:29:00] It, for example, in the education space for a student to get support on math right now, The student has to ask, right?

It's going to say, you know, if I need help on this math problem, I have to ask for that. And this is still game changing for education, don't get me wrong. Still very exciting stuff. But what's happening in the future is AI agents, where we are now going to be able to predict that the student is going to ask that question.

So it's going to recognize You know the journey of that student along the way, and then it's going to make recommendations to that child before relying on them to say, I need help with this math problem. And I think that's something I'm excited about in the AI space in general. And I am really excited about leveraging that in our teacher assistant and our student assistant.

So imagine being a teacher and recognizing that. Recognizing your standards mapping and then making [00:30:00] recommendations on what lesson plans to create because it's that time of the calendar, like that's the future of AI and lesson planning, but in general, I feel that capturing data. And what we do with the data and our platform is something we're still figuring out, right?

We launched our pilot in August. We are getting tons of user you know, data at this point, questions that kids are asking on a daily basis. But what's really unique is having a lens to the teachers too, like how are they using AI? So that's helping guiding, guide continual development, right? We've already pivoted, you know, in the last two months because we've saw that teachers are using this way and we need to evolve it this way to help, you know, support them.

So that's really one of the other things I'm excited about is. Throughout our pilot process, just fine tuning and creating [00:31:00] a platform that's really dialed in on how to support teachers and how to support students in this, you know, triad way, rather than just, you know, another point solution that teachers have access to.

Scott Schuette: That's exciting. That's really great. As we look to begin to wrap things up, I want to give you an opportunity to maybe share something with the audience that we didn't get a chance to talk about today. Like, is there something that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to? Or maybe there's a couple points that you want to make from a wrap up perspective.

so we're in Florida right now. And so our pilot is based in two school districts here and the Hillsborough and Pasco County area. What we are, we have in the woodworks right now is expansion.

Marlee Strawn: So we are most likely moving to North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. We have very strong connections to all three of those states. So one of the things I would say is any [00:32:00] teachers from those states that are interested in learning more about Scholar follow us on socials. Our handle is joinScholar and, That way you can get priority access because we are going to be expanding very soon.

So if you're looking for a tool that is focused on those three things, planning, teaching, and reflecting, we're the tool for you.

Scott Schuette: Sounds great. In addition to your social handle, how can our audience connect with you?

Marlee Strawn: Yeah. So on our website, so joinscholar. com, there is a priority access link there that will give you access To the platform, you know, before the general public, but also you'll get all of our newsletter updates. So we send a biweekly updates so you'll know what features are being highlighted.

We give you examples of our teachers that are using it in their classroom. We highlight students and whatnot too. So I think staying up to date is, would be really helpful as well. We're very active on socials, very active on. [00:33:00] Instagram, very active on TikTok. So, please follow us and you'll get to know the platform and not just the platform, but the inspirations behind the platform.

So our two AI bots are inspired by Bernadittles. So their names are Bruce and Baxter, and you'll see a lot of adorable dog photos of Bruce and Baxter in real life as well.

Scott Schuette: That's fantastic. Really creative. Marley, thank you so much for spending time with us. I'm super excited, as you should be, of the work that you're doing in this space, and we look forward to talking with you again.

Marlee Strawn: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.