Art of Problem Solving

So great to celebrate social impact last night at the Robin Hood gala with some of my favorite people in education including Anu Malipatil Jesse Silberberg Tim Daly John King Claire Zau Dave Levin plus NY icons Mike Bloomberg Charles Oakley Marcus Camby Fat Joe eli manning Pete Davidson and of course @Pink!

Tonight I'm excited to attend my first "Weaver Day" hosted by Renaissance Philanthropy . For those that don't know RenPhil, see the attached annual report. Inspired by Focused For-Profit Investment Funds, RenPhil works with individual and consortiums of donors to stand up impact-focused funds designed to create philanthropic leverage to advance solutions for some of our most pressing social challenges. The model is working: In just two years, they've catalyzed $533M across 22 programs and funds, with anchor donors like XTX Markets , Walton Family Foundation , Gates Foundation , and Builders Vision putting serious capital behind time-bound, thesis-driven bets. For the education world specifically, here's what they've built: 🎯 LEVI Literacy ($40M, anchored by Walton Family Foundation ): A moonshot to cut the number of struggling early readers in half over five years, using AI to diagnose speech errors, dyslexia, and other reading difficulties earlier and more precisely than traditional screening. 📊 LEVI Math: Has cumulatively reached 1.3M+ learners. Carnegie Mellon University PLUS program lifted math proficiency 1.8x for students with disabilities. Rising Academies ' Rori chatbot doubled learning gains over six months for ~500 students in Ghana. 🧮 AI for Math Fund ($34M from XTX Markets , with Fields Medalist Terence Tao advising): Funds the open-source infrastructure, datasets, and talent pipelines to integrate AI and formal theorem proving into mathematics. The second round drew 478 abstracts, a 71% jump year over year. 🌍 Talent Mobility Fund: Working to keep top global STEM talent in the US through existing legal pathways. inSpring has already placed 240+ international engineers, nurses, and skilled professionals in markets with acute talent shortages. The thread connecting all of this: empowered domain experts (RenPhil calls them "field strategists") with a credible roadmap, paired with anchor donors willing to bet on ambition. It's ARPA logic applied to philanthropy, and it's exactly the kind of infrastructure the edtech and broader social sector has been missing. Looking forward to learning from the team and the community tonight. Hat tip to Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg for building this. What questions would you ask the RenPhil team if you were in the room tonight? CC: Alexander Gerko Edtech Insiders

I know where I will be April 22!! 👇

Go MATHCOUNTS!!!

T-minus 30 hours to lift-off! Can't wait to see everyone at the Edtech Insiders Rooftop Happy Hour tomorrow night! HUGE thanks to our cohosts Learning Commons and Anthropic and our event sponsors EdTechnical , Kira , Catalyst @ Penn GSE , Lincoln Learning Solutions , and Magic EdTech for making this happen. And last but certainly not least, shout out to our season sponsors Cooley LLP , HireEducation, Inc. , and Tuck Advisors !!

"I understand how you feel." Today we know very little about AI<->Teen interaction and the near & long-term impact on social and emotional health. High risk behaviors include Human displacement, AI dependency, Emotional disconnection. In this groundbreaking report from Michelle Culver and The Rithm Project , we get incredible new insights that are essential for educators and parents alike. They have also put together a full tool kit here: https://lnkd.in/gxBEeGYb My biggest takeaways? 0) The root causes of negative AI use is loneliness. As parents and educators, we need to support a sense of belonging in school, in family, in friend groups. It's quality, not quantity that matters. 1) We need more open dialogue with young people about their AI use - teens need to feel comfortable sharing how / why they are using AI. Shame can be real in this area. 2) We need to empower students to be more intentional in how they use AI and making choices proactively about what they want that interaction to look like. 3) We need to work with AI platforms to incorporate guardrails that intervene when negative use cases spiral. THANK YOU to Michelle , Alison , and Walton Family Foundation for this incredible set of research and tools!