Building EdTech Around People Instead of Profit

By Brett Woudenberg, CEO of MIND Research Institute

I have been blessed with three daughters—Grace, Hope, and Joy—who came to our family within 15 months of each other after my wife, Brenda, and I struggled for years to start a family. We call them our “Irish triplets”. Our oldest two were adopted four months apart, and our youngest came as a surprise 11 months later. We often tell friends “be careful what you pray for, and be sure to be specific about numbers!” Our oldest is an incredibly driven people-person, while our second is a techie with an amazing memory, and our youngest is an outdoorsy creative who loves to write. Each of them is an oldest child from their birth family, self-directed with strong character.

As their father (“Daddio” to them), I’ve enjoyed working as an executive in the education technology industry and knowing that the work we did could help my daughters and other students like them. While this foundation helped motivate me in my work, the reality is that many people—especially educators—are deeply skeptical of the edtech industry. In many cases, I think they are right to be so.

Investors poured a record $1.7 billion into the U.S. edtech industry in 2019, according to EdSurge, and the total edtech market value exceeds $40 billion annually. The news headlines are filled with mergers, acquisitions, roll-ups, divestitures, and “unicorns” all designed to maximize returns to investors. It’s a world I know well having spent much of my career on the for-profit side.

Yet our children experience surprisingly little tech innovation in their classrooms, and when they do there is little evidence of impact. Education Weekly reports that only 29% of teachers think technology is doing “a lot” to support classroom innovation. Less than half of teachers said they receive training to support classroom innovation with edtech—and it’s even lower at schools that serve a large percentage of students growing up in poverty.

Education decision makers admit they don’t demand evidence of efficacy when choosing edtech programs, according to the EdTech Efficacy Research Academic Symposium. Another working group there found that although most edtech companies believe their programs are effective, it’s often just a marketing ploy. They found only half of edtech company’s efficacy claims were backed up by actual research data.

Amid this landscape, MIND Research Institute is a bit of an odd bird. (Or maybe I should say odd penguin, like our mascot, JiJi.) Although our flagship program, ST Math, is an edtech program, our organization is a nonprofit, neuroscience, social impact organization that exists to solve a societal problem, not line investors’ pockets.

"Our organization is a nonprofit, neuroscience, social impact organization that exists to solve a societal problem, not line investors’ pockets."

Mission Driven

MIND Research Institute leverages science and technology to drive learning, not to gamify existing classroom practices with tokens and buzzers. Our mission is not to sell a product. Our mission is to ensure that all students are mathematically equipped to solve the world’s most challenging problems. We are not driven by shareholder return, but rather by the measurable impact on student math achievement and reach.

Unfortunately, 70% of students in the U.S. exiting K-12 education are not proficient in math. While the scope of the problem is easily apparent at the end of high school, it starts well before that. Our education system is not building the neural circuits our students need from an early age in order to gain a deep conceptual understanding of math. Ironically, strong math skills are foundational to all science and technology fields—the fastest growing sectors in the country. This epidemic perpetuates itself in college graduates who did not become proficient in math, but in turn became teachers and parents struggling to help their students become proficient.

At MIND, we know that achieving our mission requires more than an edtech product. We need to change the entire ecosystem around how people—not just children—learn math and even how they feel about math. Classroom technology is only one part of the solution. Teachers, community organizations, and families are at the center of MIND’s mission.

People, Problem Solving, Learning

MIND’s mission and unique position in the edtech space initially attracted me to MIND. But when I got here, what stood out to me was how people-driven we are as an organization. We’re an innovative team of educators, mathematicians, artists, scientists, engineers, neuroscientists, game designers, and many more individuals talented in their areas of expertise. I’m grateful that long before I arrived at MIND, I learned to be comfortable with not being the smartest person in the room—because that’s an absolute requirement around here. 

It’s always been that way at MIND, which was founded in 1998 by three neuroscientists from the University of California who wanted to apply what scientists know about how humans learn to real-life classroom situations. They were out to solve a problem and improve learning. And today, those are our three core values: people, problem solving, and learning. Those values drive us to continually innovate and evolve as we learn and grow in pursuit of our lofty mission.

We believe every student has the potential to deeply understand and truly love math. I am immensely proud of my three daughters and their talents, but have watched them navigate away from math-related careers (despite a bit of nudging from Daddio). They’ve functionally learned math, but did not truly love it. I believe we still have a lot of work ahead of us to promote equity in math education among students. Too many students are still growing up and believing they are simply “not a math person,” or that “math is not for [name the group].” I believe all of us in the education industry need to work harder on breaking down those false constraints. 

"I believe we still have a lot of work ahead of us to promote equity in math education among students."

While we continue to believe that technology can and will be a powerful part of the solution and help us achieve our mission, the truth is that teachers—people!—will always be at the forefront of our delivery system. The newest version of ST Math, announced this month, does even more to equip and empower teachers to leverage classroom tech to dramatically increase their students’ deeper conceptual understanding of math. We hope this will lead more students to love math and see themselves as a math person.

With my daughters now grown, my wife and I moved halfway across the country, and made ourselves a home in a cozy little boat off the Southern California coast so that I could take the helm of this unique non-profit, edtech organization with lofty goals—to change the way people learn and feel about math. 

I’m thrilled to steward this organization to the next level, alongside talented people who are committed in their hearts and minds to provide all students with equitable access to high-quality educational content and dynamic learning experiences.