ICYMI – Private Equity-Backed Businesses are Providing Virtual Resources for Parents and Educators as America Goes Back to School

Earlier this week, the American Investment Council highlighted how private equity-backed businesses are helping to make school safer and more accessible for students, parents, and teachers reopening amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, The Well, a Washington D.C. news outlet that educates policymakers and influencers, published two extensive pieces examining exactly how private equity stepping up to support the education system during this difficult time.

The first story examines how several portfolio companies of AIC members are providing free access to online learning platforms, making digital textbooks and virtual classroom software available to students and teachers, and working with individual school districts to develop health evaluation, testing, and reopening plans:

• Carlyle-backed Accelerate Learning: “While the pandemic affects physical classrooms, Accelerate Learning (ALI), a private equity backed company, is providing free training and resources to help teachers learn effective distance-learning practices.“

• Blackstone-backed SERVPRO: “In certain communities in the U.S., physical school buildings have reopened and private equity backed companies are playing a role in this process. These school systems may be taking advantage of Servpro‘s viral pathogen cleaning program, which is offering hospital-grade disinfectant cleanings to stop the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”
• TPG-backed GoUrgent Health: “GoHeath Urgent Care has started a series of free webinars to educate school officials on COVID-19 best practices and methods to develop testing, health monitoring, and risk mitigation protocols.”
• Riverside-backed School Check IN: “School Check IN, for its part, is providing software to screen and document visitors.”

The second story examines how the Modern States Education Alliance, founded by AIC Chairman and New Mountain Capital Founder and CEO Steve Klinsky, will help make college more accessible for low-income students in Michigan. Read a key excerpt from the story below:

“Modern States Education Alliance, a non-profit education alliance dedicated to making college accessible to lower-income students, will provide the preparatory courses through its website. The organization has also committed to paying for 10,000 CLEP exams for Michigan residents in the next year.”

“With activities cancelled and social distancing guidelines in place, we are seeing many individuals turn to Modern States, which is always open, to further their education while also occupying their time at home,” said Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of Modern States, in a statement. “The sustained growth of the program speaks to the need for online pathways to higher education and new ways to support individuals who want to attain their educational goals.”

Click here to learn more about how private equity private equity-backed businesses are working towards a safer school year.

Read the full text of both stories below.

In order to help, private companies are stepping up in communities across the country. Businesses are working with individual school districts to develop evaluations, testing, and re-opening plans as well as offering many free educational resources. Parents, too, are finding more complimentary tools than ever for at-home learning.

With a little searching, parents and educators can find a seemingly endless supply of free virtual learning resources. These partnerships and private business offerings are enabling a safer school year for students, parents, and teachers by providing free access to online learning platforms, digital textbooks, learning software, and more.

While the pandemic affects physical classrooms, Accelerate Learning (ALI), a private equity backed company, is providing free training and resources to help teachers learn effective distance-learning practices. Zoom is removing the time limit on basic accounts for schools affected by the coronavirus and providing K-12 institutions free access to video conferencing tools needed to run online courses.

“Having free digital resources available to educators is paramount. These digital resources are the only reason we can run a digital learning platform,” said Julie Woodson, an Algebra teacher at Dacula Middle School in Georgia. “Without apps like Zoom, we would not be able to make that eye to eye contact with our students. Making that connection with our students in the classroom is challenging enough, and achieving it digitally is even tougher. A free Zoom account allows that opportunity to all of my students.”

In certain communities in the U.S., physical school buildings have reopened and private equity backed companies are playing a role in this process. These school systems may be taking advantage of Servpro‘s viral pathogen cleaning program, which is offering hospital-grade disinfectant cleanings to stop the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

School Check IN, for its part, is providing software to screen and document visitors. And GoHeath Urgent Care has started a series of free webinars to educate school officials on COVID-19 best practices and methods to develop testing, health monitoring, and risk mitigation protocols.

“Whether your children are learning from home or back in the classroom this fall, private equity-backed companies are helping them have a safer and more accessible educational experience. Back to school will look different this year, but we’re all in this together,” said Drew Maloney, president and CEO of The American Investment Council, an association representing the private investment industry that backs many of these companies, including ALI, Servpro, and School Check IN.

For teachers, Common Sense Media compiled a collection of resources to help with teaching in the virtual classroom, and over 300 education companies have made their subscription materials free. These offerings come in the form of free video lessons, lesson plans, tutorials, mobile apps, audiobooks, foreign language lessons, test prep materials, and other web resources.

Khan Academy — and its new Khan Academy Kids — is stepping in to help those affected by school closures with free lessons in math, science, and humanities from kindergarten through the early years of college. Khan also offers tips, training, and tools for parents and teachers in the online learning space, and the Academy features thousands of videos and interactive exercises to teach a multitude of  subjects.

Google Teach from Home is similarly situated to help teachers set up a virtual classroom, and YouTube’s Learn at Home complements homework assigned by teachers with age-appropriate videos and livestreams. Popular school resource BrainPOP is also offering complimentary animated movies and creation tools to keep students on track with their studies.

Students needing textbooks can access a large free book collection with texts for everything from Art History to Biology and Physics to Psychology. Many are also taking advantage of the National Emergency Library, an internet archive that makes free loans available. LibriVox offers free audiobooks, and Audible is also contributing free stories to kids and teens. Age-appropriate recommendations and read-aloud suggestions are available through the New York Public Library. And if a student needs books in different languages, a great resource for that is the International Children’s Digital Library, which features books from around the world for ages three to 13 in many foreign languages including Arabic, Afrikaans, Danish, and Farsi.

Basic — and even some more advanced — foreign language courses are freely offered by a number of businesses including Duolingo, French in Action, Talk Italian, and Real Chinese. OpenCulture also has dozens of audio language lessons, including some more obscure offerings, available for free.

If parents are having trouble helping their students with Common-Core math assignments, MathShack, by Shmoop, auto-generates practice problems in pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry, and these self-paced drills even give students easy to understand performance feedback.

Don’t have a scanning electron microscope at home? The University of Illinois is sharing theirs. Through Bugscope they are letting K-12 students mail bugs to the University for viewing under the microscope via the internet. Experts are also available to answer questions in an online chat.

Free online lessons and resources extend beyond the basics of math and science. Educators can find options for everything from music education to philosophy, astronomy, and civics.

And lessons aren’t all seated and still. Physical Education is an important part of a child’s learning, and even in the pandemic, can come in many forms. Master Davis of Musa Martial Arts Academy offers Tae Kwon Do twice weekly from his Los Angeles studio where students of all ages can learn the fundamentals of self-defense. Tiler Peck, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet teaches daily ballet classes via Instagram Live. And Debbie Allen offers a variety of free movement classes weekdays, teaching everything from salsa to tap.

Children can even doodle with Kennedy Center Artist-in-Residence Mo Willems as he shares “Lunch Doodles” drawing episodes every day out of his studio. And for “Indoor Recess,” all ages can join DJ Hesta Prynn as she hosts daily mid-day dance break parties at home with her own six-year-old.

Storytime is taken care of, too, with famous actors reading children’s books on StoryLine, or — if your child is more space obsessed — astronauts are also sharing in orbit, reading Storytime from Space.

For years, Netflix has allowed teachers to stream documentaries in their classrooms, but with many schools closed, the streaming service made its Educational documentaries free to stream for everyone. YouTubeEDU, a subsection of the video sharing site, also has free streaming educational content. Ted-Ed, from the maker of Ted-Talks, has jumped in on the action, offering free curated educational videos from expert educators and TED speakers around the world.

World-class museums from all over the globe are releasing exhibits free over the internet, including over two million works of digitized art. Students can escape to just about anywhere, from Taipei’s National Palace Museum to The Louvre or The Guggenheim. Thanks to Villanova University, learners can even take a virtual panoramic tour of the Sistine Chapel, zooming in on everything including the ceiling paintings.

Should “on the go” students want to virtually follow in the footsteps of a favorite literary persona, GoogleLitTrips will mark Gulliver’s — or any other character’s — travels on the surface of Google Earth. Or, adventurous explorers can travel out of this world using EarthLapse to turn an iPad or iPhone into a window aboard the International Space Station. Planetary control is literally at the fingertips!

Businesses are offering numerous resources to structure school days and plans for keeping a detailed daily schedule. Centralized hubs like Buncee support remote student learning by making virtual lesson planning as painless as possible. Teachers can include texts, video, audio, and external resource links, record full lessons, and even create activity templates for students to complete at home. Teachers and parent educators can also make use of resources like PBS Teachers, Share My Lesson, and Curriki to share best practices as well as review more than tens of thousands of free lessons, units, assessments, and multi-media learning resources across all subject areas.

The tests allow students to qualify for low-level credits at participating colleges and universities, potentially saving them time and money by skipping some introductory coursework required to get an advanced degree.

Modern States Education Alliance, a non-profit education alliance dedicated to making college accessible to lower-income students, will provide the preparatory courses through its website. The organization has also committed to paying for 10,000 CLEP exams for Michigan residents in the next year.

“With activities cancelled and social distancing guidelines in place, we are seeing many individuals turn to Modern States, which is always open, to further their education while also occupying their time at home,” said Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of Modern States, in a statement. “The sustained growth of the program speaks to the need for online pathways to higher education and new ways to support individuals who want to attain their educational goals.”

The initiative is part of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s ongoing push to tackle a growing talent shortage in Michigan’s workforce. In 2019, Whitmer launched the Sixtyby30 program with the goal to increase the number of Michigan residents with postsecondary degrees to 60% by the year 2030.

The state’s higher education achievement rate, which hovers at roughly 45% for adults over age 25, currently lags behind that of many of its midwestern neighbors.

“Our state’s economic competitiveness and earning potential of our residents is directly linked to education,” said Jeff Donofrio, director of Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. “Earning college credit, certificates and degrees during difficult economic times will help create new career pathways for individuals and help Michiganders increase their earning potential.”

In April, Whitmer announced an initiative to provide tuition-free college for essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. The proposal, called “Futures for Frontliners” has yet to be approved by the state legislature.

CLEP exams cost around $85 and are administered by the College Board, the organization that oversees standardized testing for college admissions. The tests cover intro-level college courses on subjects like English, Math or Biology, and are accepted at 2,900 colleges and universities across the country.

“We are delighted to partner with Modern States and Michigan to provide opportunities for Michigan students to earn college credit through CLEP exams, which propel them on the path to a college degree and career success,” said David Coleman, CEO of College Board. “We applaud Gov. Whitmer’s bold Sixtyby30 initiative and look forward to continuing to work with the state in support of Michigan students.”