Khan Academy Ed Talks with LaVerne Srinivasan

Hi everyone! Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. Welcome to the Ed Talks version of our Homeroom with Sal live stream. We have a very exciting conversation today with Laverne Srinivasan. But before we get into that conversation, I will give my standard reminders.

First of all, we are a not-for-profit. We can only exist through donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about going to khanacademy.org/donate. Donations of all sizes make a huge difference and allow us to deliver Khan Academy to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

I also want to make a special shout-out to several organizations that stepped up, especially during the pandemic, when they realized that more people than ever were leaning on Khan Academy, which also meant our costs were going up—our server costs and our desire to accelerate a whole bunch of programs. So special thanks to Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors.

And then last but not least, there is a podcast version of this live stream available wherever you get your podcasts on Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. So definitely check that out.

So with that, I am excited to introduce Laverne Srinivasan, who is Vice President and Director of Education at the Carnegie Corporation. Full disclosure, full disclosure, also a funder of Khan Academy, so I am somewhat biased. But Laverne, great, great, great to see you! Thanks for joining us.

Laverne: Great to see you too! So pleasure to be here.

Sal Khan: Well, maybe a good place to start for those who haven't heard—and I'm sure there aren't many—what does the Carnegie Corporation of New York do, and what does the Director of Education do within that context?

Laverne: Absolutely! Carnegie Corporation of New York is actually a foundation that has invested in knowledge to inspire informed action since 1911. We actually invest in democracy, international peace and security, and in education. For my role in the education program, we are focused on ensuring that our American public education system serves all students by building the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that they need to be active participants in our democracy and be able to thrive and engage fully in our economy.

So we have five grant-making portfolios, but our strategy is really focused on making sure that parents and educators can be full partners in transforming the learning experience. We think it's absolutely critical that our best hope for having an equitable and transformed learning environment is by fully engaging the adults, building their capacity, and also ensuring that they can work in a system that's optimized to ensure their effectiveness, including making sure that their actions are informed by knowledge that's been developed in the field.

So our five portfolios are:

1. New designs to advance learning, where we focus on innovations in classrooms and schools to promote better student learning and youth development.
2. Pathways to post-secondary success, where we reimagine pathways for high school graduates, including access and completion of college, and better aligning K-12, higher ed, and careers.
3. Leadership and teaching to advance learning, where we focus on high-quality curriculum and strengthening teaching and learning to implement that high-quality standards-aligned curriculum along with professional learning.
4. A public understanding portfolio that focuses on family engagement, looking to have a shared understanding of how all of the adults in the system can work together along with students to transform the learning environment.
5. Integration of learning and innovation portfolio, where we inspire all folks who are essential in transforming our nation's education system to develop strategies, implement them in complex systems, and share the learning associated with that to foster collaboration.

So those are our five portfolios.

Sal Khan: And that was super helpful. I just want to remind everyone watching, especially those who are watching live, if you have any questions for Laverne or myself, we want to get to them—so please put them in the message board under wherever you're watching this, Facebook, YouTube, wherever.

But Laverne, on this focus on education, I'm curious about where you are most excited, where you're most hopeful, and especially what has the last year changed your perspective on anything, given all of the disruption that has happened to education because of the pandemic?

Laverne: Yes! So I feel we’ve really reflected on this deeply because there has been so much disruption, and there are so many people who are really struggling and have struggled. And also, people who have had incredible experiences. But within our work, we realized that so many of the aspects of the focus in our five portfolios are turning out to be really important aspects of places, schools, and school systems that have been able to pivot and adjust and adapt effectively in this disrupted environment.

So in particular, I’d say one of our newer portfolios—although we've been invested now for six years in family engagement—that's been a real area of priority for us and one that has been essential in helping our grantees respond to the challenges that families have faced with the tsunami of resources coming at them. But also, really connecting with their teachers, their schools, and school environments. Our grantees have really, I think, stepped up incredibly well to help all parents, schools, teachers, and educators connect with families in more meaningful ways. So we're excited about the possibilities that this has in continuing to build commitment and build on the strength of what's happened over the last year, so that we no longer operate in a way that has some artificial constraints and walls around schools that in the past did not effectively engage parents as well in communities as they could have.

Sal Khan: We have two questions that double-click on what you just talked about. From YouTube, Susana Garcia Dominguez—who's a regular on the show, so to speak, I almost view her as a co-host of sorts—she says, "Hi Laverne, please share some of the most innovative projects you support. Thanks for all you do!"

From YouTube, Suheb Alaska also asks, "What are some of the projects you support and in what way?"

So especially with this parent engagement, why do you think there was a gap to begin with, and what are some of the efforts that y'all are supporting that you think could close this gap? Because it does seem, in some ways, obvious that the parent is an incredibly important actor for children's learning.

Laverne: Yeah, I think we historically focused in school systems on parent engagement as just an activity where we were inviting parents to come, at the very least, for parent-teacher conferences, maybe for bake sales and other activities. But there hasn't always been—and you can't paint the entire country with one broad brush stroke around this—but, you know, I think that a lot of efforts were involving bringing parents into the school environment to participate in some particularly focused way.

The difference in what we have seen in the last year—and by the way, the research has shown—we've known through research for quite some time that parent engagement is essential to improving student outcomes. So what we've seen is, for example, efforts that we supported that home-school connection engagement isn’t just about, you know, showing up in schools on school time. Parents have busy schedules; not every parent can come in at the prescribed times that schools invite them in.

So how do we create an environment where there is a more dynamic engagement between home and school? One of our grantees that is really strong in this area is Power My Learning, where they've created an innovative app that allows children to demonstrate what they’re learning in school by actually teaching it to a caregiver or parent or other adult in their homes or outside of the school environment. So it really triangulates in a way that home, school, teacher, parent, and student learning creates a more bi-directional engagement that fosters a more inclusive learning environment.

Those are the kinds of things we can do. I mean, during the pandemic, there were also efforts that helped with translation, whether to help parents understand how to read to their children, like Springboard Collaborative. As a matter of fact, we actually have a number of these resources on our website that we tried to help curate for busy families who also couldn't work through the tsunami of resources that started flowing their way.

I think the real secret, Sal, and what I hope we will see looking different going forward, is a better understanding of where families are and meeting them where they are in a more authentic way, as opposed to just, “Let us invite you into our four walls.”

Sal Khan: You know, I love that example you gave. I've always been a huge advocate and supporter that some students could actually be incredible teachers—or maybe I should say tutors. And to maybe leverage them within a classroom to tutor each other or to tutor younger peers. But it sounds like y'all are taking it further with some of your grantees to say, “Why can't the students tutor their parents?” which I think is a very, very powerful idea. Because it is—you know, I always cringe when a parent, but I understand at the same time when they say, "Oh, well, I haven't seen this since fourth grade." I was like, “Yeah, but you went to fifth grade and sixth grade.” But there is sometimes this fear of parents to even engage. But this almost flips things in a really interesting way.

What are your... you know, you've been in the field of philanthropy and the field of education for a while, and I like you, I’m very optimistic about where the world can go. But there's also sometimes cynicism that people have been working on this problem for a while. They've been putting money at different parts of the problem, but at least from some vantage points, it looks like it hasn't moved the dial.

Do you agree with some of that cynicism? Do you have some fears? And how in the philanthropic world do y'all maybe even learn from... it might not be things you all have done, but stuff that happened in the past. And what are those learnings?

Laverne: Yeah, that’s a great question, Sal. You're right. I want to be optimistic, but I also want to be realistic. We really have a big challenge in front of us. I found myself thinking that we have to get out of our comfort zones. We all have to grapple with new ideas and engage in effectively a design challenge, where instead of gravitating to just siloed solutions, we start to look at the full ecosystem of learning and center children and families in that as authentic partners in it and designers in it.

We also need to recognize that, you know, we can't all in the education sector get attached to the thing that we think is the most effective or likely to be the most highly effective solution to address the change we need to see in education or to better meet student learning needs.

One of the things we have to learn is less fragmentation, more collaboration, and much better sharing of learning. Understanding that it’s not just what we do that matters, but how we do it that matters. Those, I think, are going to be essential in making change.

And you know, aligning resources, aligning that highly effective curriculum with aligned professional learning. Keeping in consideration that adults and students make up that learning environment that we really need to transform to lean into a future that is going to thrive on lifelong learning.

If our learning environments aren't more porous inside of school, outside of school, at home... learning happens in all of those environments. And how we really take ourselves out of our comfort zone to imagine a way that we can knit together the positive and promising proof points and solutions that we've seen to actually support adults and students to thrive in a transformed and more equitable learning environment and a learning ecosystem?

Sal Khan: Yeah, it sounds like one of the key takeaways has been it's not just what happened—obviously, what happens in the classroom is incredibly important—but what goes on beyond the classroom, especially the family. And you know, related to that, the pandemic introduced a lot of disruption. But people explored things like pod schooling, homeschooling, and distance learning. For a lot of folks, that didn’t work, but for some, it seems like at least parts of it might.

And related to that, there's a question from YouTube. Shraddha Padwa asks, “Hey Laverne, what do you think about homeschool learning in normal school?” And I'll just add to that, do you think we're kind of going to start hybridizing in certain ways? You know, that's kind of the ultimate bringing the home into the classroom.

Laverne: Yeah, I think that what happened with pods is really compelling. In many ways, you know, I think people are focused on the fact that there were pods, but what did pods represent? I mean, pods represented another opportunity to bring community and families together, again understanding better what's necessary to support their students and their children and their learning— and a little bit more of a strategy around how you can focus that in smaller groups.

Well, we can learn from that both in the classroom, but we can also learn that not everyone learns the same way. Paying attention to the individual needs of students allows you all of a sudden to open your mind and realize that learning in classrooms can be approached differently.

We do it now that it happens in small pods in schools, with attention from one teacher and the ability to accelerate learning while others are finishing learning that they're not as fully advanced in yet. So, I think that, you know, I think homeschooling is something that works extraordinarily well for some families, and I think families know best what's going to work for their kids.

But I think, again, that making it more porous, realizing that there's something that we can all learn by centering on the needs of students and the needs that specific students have for their learning and to advance not only their academic development but their socio-emotional development as well, I think are what's going to make the difference in whether we learn from this experience and advance our conception of what learning is and where it takes place, or whether we stay rooted in a compliance-oriented industrial age education system.

Sal Khan: Makes a lot of sense. And there's another question here—I guess this is a question for both of us—from Facebook. Mir Nalani Prabhu says, “Hi Sal and Laverne, please listen in order what I, as a parent tutor, can do for student success.” So I'll let you take a stab at it. I have some ideas too.

Laverne: As a student tutor, well I guess it depends on what they're tutoring in. I think that it's important for a parent or tutor... I think she’s saying that, you know, essentially as a parent, “What can I do right now to help my kids?”

Sal Khan: Exactly!

Laverne: I think some of there's some really great resources out there. And Sal is probably going to give us some of those, also from his perspective. The Wide Open School, which is actually one of our grantees, has some incredible resources that were curated there for parents and activities.

Depending on the level your child is at, you'll find different resources that will help you understand, “What should my child know at this level, and what activities or strategies can I use to make sure that I help them at home continue to advance and learn along the pathway that they're on?”

In addition, there are also other resources, whether it's Great Schools. Again, I invite you to go to our website as well—not as a commercial for our website—but to say we have tried to thoughtfully curate some of these things that we think will help parents navigate.

And if you have young children, reading is so essential. Having the opportunity to read with your child is one of the most critical things that you can certainly do.

Sal Khan: No, I love all of those. And I will add things that will not surprise anyone, but you know Khan Academy. As I tell everybody who will listen, if you're able to work with your children—I don't know how old they are—but we go down all the way to Khan Academy Kids, all the way through.

Especially Khan Academy Kids covers math, reading, writing, social-emotional learning. But then, you know, math—we have very comprehensive all the way through middle, high school, college-level mathematics. And they're pretty consistent, you know? We have 50 efficacy studies that if students even put in 45 minutes a week, it grows them 20, 30, in some cases 50% more than expected.

So if you're able to—if your child is able to put in, I would say, 15 minutes a day, which is very doable—you can help motivate them as a parent. In two or three months, I will be surprised if you don't see a massive difference. Otherwise, I will give a personal money-back guarantee—partially joking—but even if we did charge you, I would stand behind that with a money-back guarantee.

And the other is an effort that I can vouch for as a parent: as a parent, I've actually used Khan Academy with my child as well.

Laverne: Oh, well, no, I actually... we've talked about that before, and I actually... that's, I think, our most powerful. You know, even when we talk to philanthropists—if the philanthropist sees it work for their family, they're like, “Hey, it could work for a lot of folks' families.”

But the other effort is an effort which is that you could do this as a spin-off of Khan Academy or a complementary effort called Schoolhouse.world for free tutoring. So if your child is 13 or over, they can either get free tutoring right now—it's math and SAT—but it's going to expand and actually it's expanded into the sciences and AP subjects as well.

But also, once they really master concepts, they can give tutoring to other people, which is analogous to what Laverne was saying about the power—when you teach others, not only are you helping them, but you're helping yourself.

So there's a lot of resources now, and it's just about making sense of them and doing them consistently. You know, it's all about—we're all guilty of saying, “I'm going to play guitar, and I'm going to do 10 hours today,” and then it drifts away. But it's all about if you do 15, 20 minutes a day for a long period of time, it makes a huge difference.

Laverne: And these conversations always go faster than I expect, but I also want to understand a little bit of your background. What got you into this field? How did you get into philanthropy, education in particular? How did you get here?

Laverne: Sure! Well, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that absolutely thought education was the most important thing, and I am so grateful to school every day for that. That has had me on a lifelong journey of whether it was tutoring younger kids or working while I was in college to set up opportunities in communities to work with young people—with computers and helping them do exactly what we're talking about now, which is sort of out-of-school learning. That's something or being a mentor—those are all things that I did while I wasn’t in education as a career.

But what inspired me to get into education and stay in education is actually using my skills and background from private sector experience that I had and thinking about how to transform the system. Transforming a complex system like education is really hard to do, but it gets a little bit more realistic to believe it can be done—which is what I've seen when you actually center students and families in communities and design from that perspective.

We really have to stretch ourselves to get out of our compliance-oriented approach to education because that's not the expansive learning environment and ecosystem we need to succeed. So, my family inspired me. My teachers inspired me. Those who brought everything to life in the classroom, whether it was an English class or a science class—all of that has led me to say I want everyone to have the opportunity that I feel like I was fortunate enough to have.

Sal Khan: And on that last point, as we ramp into Teacher Appreciation Week, I'm curious, are there any teachers that you... you know, I'm sure many teachers that you want to appreciate, but any that come to mind that really made a lasting impact on you?

Laverne: I want to appreciate all teachers! Just because one of the things that I've done in education is really focus on how important teachers are. So first shout-out to all teachers: You are all special, and I hope in this time of COVID, when everyone has had to get so much closer to understanding what teaching is all about and what it means for their kids, that we all appreciate all of you more.

In particular, I'll shout out Ronnie Clemmer and Beverly Hannett. They were both English teachers of mine—one in middle school and one in high school—and they just brought every book to life for me, made it relevant, made it engaging, and really contributed to sort of my lifelong love of reading.

Sal Khan: No, that’s great! I mean, I think, you know, the teachers in our lives that have made a difference... yeah, I mean, it just keeps going. And unfortunately, they don't hear probably about it enough because, you know, maybe when you're in middle school or high school, we're not always there to say, “Hey, teacher, you've changed my life.” But then when we're in our 30s and 40s and 50s, we're like, “Wow!” It would be incredible to tell them that.

Well, Laverne, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation. I hope it's the first of many, and I look forward to our partnership, our journey doing all of the things that we talked about and more. And as we said, sometimes people get cynical about education, but I've never been more optimistic. So thank you so much!

Laverne: Well, it is such a pleasure to be on your show and to work with you, Sal! Thank you for having me!

Sal Khan: Well, thanks everyone for joining! Especially, it's been a little while since we did one of these. I was on vacation; I went to Joshua Tree. Very, very nice! Highly recommend it. Actually, I’m going to post a video on it on my new TikTok account. I was very dismissive of TikTok until I tried it out, and now I'm kind of, I think, getting it.

But thanks for joining, and I look forward to seeing you all shortly for our next Homeroom live stream, which I think will be next week. But I will see you all then!