As we head back to school, it’s a good time to assess the K-12 landscape and look at some of the Education companies that are leading the way in terms of innovation, student performance, and teacher support.
According to HolonIQ, “K-12 education is at an inflection point, driven by technological advancements, cultural and economic shifts.” In this article, we’re highlighting 7 diverse companies that thoughtfully address these opportunities in ways that may surprise you. This is not a ranked or exhaustive list by any stretch, but it does seek to recognize a few companies that are standing out in terms of delivering high-quality K-12 educational resources, platforms, and technology.
1. COMAP
COMAP (The Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications) has been improving mathematics education with an emphasis on increasing student proficiency in mathematical modeling for over forty years. COMAP has worked with teachers, students, professional organizations, businesses, and industry to support and create learning environments where mathematics is used to investigate and model real problems and issues in our world.
COMAP creates, maintains, and offers a vast library of hundreds of curricular modules, textbooks, video series, periodicals, and other resources to help teachers and students teach and learn math both through and for real-world applications. They also administer international contests in modeling for students in middle school through college. About 85,000 students participate in these contests yearly. These flagship events celebrate excellence in the field and turn the mathematics curriculum into an exciting and collaborative arena.
2. EduStaff
EduStaff is an educational staffing company that provides consolidated Human Resource services to their partnering school districts. Through these partnerships, they reduce substitute teacher shortages and help improve student performance, all while saving school districts time and money. Edustaff’s role is crucial because, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are close to 600,000 substitute teachers that cover over 30 million teacher absences in schools each year.
EduStaff strives to be a partner with each school they work with, rather than simply acting as a service provider. The company provides experienced teachers who are highly competent and very passionate about what they do, giving clients the comfort of knowing that the substitute teachers coming in are going to deliver a high-quality teaching experience.
3. Content2Classroom
Content2Classroom (C2C) is the only standards-based curriculum platform designed for educational publishing. C2C aims to translate static learning content into an interactive environment that drives student engagement while also enabling teachers and administrators to harness comprehensive data sets on each of their students. It’s a world-class technology framework that can transform learning experiences and allow for highly scalable processes and workflows across the board.
C2C’s superpower is empowering clients to deliver teaching and learning experiences to a higher standard. Their curriculum solution delivers an accelerated time-to-market for education publishers with an integrated ecosystem, tailored engagement, and robust analytics, leading to data-driven outcomes for districts. Their leading ed-tech platform helps clients increase revenues, create operational efficiency, and get to market quickly—all while meeting educational standards.
4. Find Your Grind
Find Your Grind is a Gen Z learning solution that helps students discover who they are and where they want to go by flipping the script on traditional career planning and focusing on a lifestyle-first approach. With 75% of graduating students not ready to make college and career decisions (according to YouScience’s Post-Graduation Readiness Report), they’re creating new technology-backed-in learning science to revolutionize how users discover new skills, mentors, and opportunities – so they can find where they fit in the new world of work.
Find Your Grind’s curriculum is designed for middle school and high school and is delivered through an AI-powered approach to learning, self-discovery, and career exploration – helping students become future-ready in a rapidly evolving world. The educators and learners who’ve engaged with the Find Your Grind framework have found that it’s a refreshing, inspiring, and engaging approach to developing future-ready learners.
5. Just Right Reader
Just Right Reader is an early literacy company that is on a mission to make reading more engaging, more fun, and ultimately more helpful for America’s youth. Their decodable books were created to build a path to literacy for every child. Developed by educators for educators, the books are strategically designed using an evidence-based phonics continuum to accelerate students’ reading levels. With the Just Right Reader decodable, every child gets exactly what they need because they take each student’s reading data and curate a set of books for that student’s stage of reading.
Just Right Reader uses a rigorous phonetic progression as an essential part of building a skill set for reading in every child that will remain with them until adulthood. Founded in 2019, they have delivered over 1.75 million books to students, and they are just getting started. This innovation is critically important as, in the US, only 35% of public school students are proficient in literacy in grade 4, according to Prosperity for America. It is Just Right Reader’s goal to get every kid reading at or above grade level by getting research-based, phonics-based decodable books into every district, classroom, and home.
6. QBS
For over 20 years, QBS has provided evidence-based incident prevention and management training to help staff provide humane, person-centered interventions and behavioral training. QBS developed its service Safety-Care with a strong foundation in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) principles. Their work in education specifically helps schools create a supportive physical and social environment in the classroom, focusing on the safety of students and staff. Today, QBS certifies 200,000 professional staff members annually across the US and Canada, especially in education and healthcare settings.
The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) has reported that 87% of public schools agree that the pandemic has negatively affected student socio-emotional development, resulting in increased disruptions from student misconduct, rowdiness, acts of disrespect, and various other events that get in the way of learning. Behavioral training for staff helps them to understand how to handle challenging behavior such as neurological conditions, traumatic events, or reinforcement – both physically and verbally. QBS’s comprehensive and practical approach to de-escalation can be extremely helpful, and the skills learned help teachers make their classrooms safer environments for all.
7. TinkRworks
TinkRworks is a turnkey STEM solution developed by a talented team of teachers and engineers designed to empower educators to engage their students in practical, hands-on demonstrations of key concepts. They transform learners into innovators: by combining high-impact manipulatives with an innovative curriculum design, they help to reinforce key content across art, math, science, coding, computer science, data analysis, design, and engineering.
The hands-on nature of this learning makes the content that much more engaging and persuasive, catering to a wider range of students – especially those who don’t thrive in lecture-based learning paradigms. TinkRworks is built upon five core beliefs for student success, drawn from the best research on how children learn: Steam Is Essential, Effective Teaching is Key, Failure Can Be Productive, Social and Emotional Learning Matters, and The Future Needs Problem Solvers.
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Each of these companies is going above and beyond to invest in the future of K-12 Education, and they’re delivering the high level of competency, inspiration, and passion that we need in our schools. Their offerings support the tireless work of teachers and educators, providing a backbone of technology, curriculum design, and forward-thinking approaches that will give the next generation the best possible start to the rest of their lives.
Back to School Requires the Best Talent
Here at The Renaissance Network, we’re always inspired by the sheer breadth and scale of what Education providers are doing in the space, and we’re proud to play our part in this rapidly growing industry. If you’re looking to hire A-team players for your Education and Technology firm, be sure to get in touch today, and let’s see how we can help!
