Online learning pods gain in popularity as schools face precarious reopening
Yahoo Finance Video
Debate about school openings during Covid-19 continues across the country, prompting start-ups for online learning alternatives. Victoria Ransom - Prisma Founder & CEO discusses her newly founded business with Yahoo Finance's On The Move.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: A union representing New York City principals, administrators, teachers-- they have written a letter to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as well as the school chancellor saying the start of school should be delayed, that New York City schools are not ready, that they do not have the resources they need. We are joined now by someone who is helping take learning online. That is Victoria Ransom. She is the founder and CEO of Prisma. She's joining us from California.
And, Victoria, thank you for joining us. There's been a lot of talk about so-called pods, right, where families team up, and they maybe hire a teacher to teach their kids. Your company sort of does the same thing, but online-- grouping kids together and teaching them. I imagine you've seen an uptick in interest as of late.
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VICTORIA RANSOM: We have seen a lot of interest. And so we call ourselves a co-learning network, which has got some similarities with pods. We actually were not started because of COVID. Our vision for education has been around-- we've been working on this for several years. But certainly, we have seen a lot of interest. I will say that this is our pilot year, so we're being very selective about the families that we bring on board who believe in our education as a long term solution, not just a COVID solution-- happy to describe more about how our model works.
MELODY HAHM: Victoria, if you could expand on that a little bit-- as I understand, you're gearing up for launch in September and right now, you're focused on two different pilot groups with, I think, 20 students across each group. Can you tell us about the sorts of families that they're coming from. I understand it goes for about $8,000 annually. So what is the selection process? And tell us more about that.
VICTORIA RANSOM: Yes, so let me unpick that, because there's a few different questions. Let me quickly describe how it works. So in effect, we provide a much easier, much more social, what we think will be much more fun and effective way to educate kids from home. We're focused on middle school right now.
What we do is we group kids into cohorts of 15 to 20 other kids. They do part of their time synchronously via video, but that's really focused on-- it's not lectures, it's not boring updates, it's really meaningful discussions, small group exercises, sharing each other's work, celebrating each other's wins, really focusing on where you get a lot of meaning from bringing kids online together.
And then part of the time is asynchronous, where the kids are working through their core curriculum, but there, they are still connected to their coach, to their peers. They're actually one click away for support. And we really focus on providing a lot of flexibility, a lot of choice around what kids focus on, a lot of project-based learning.
Our standard pricing is $7,900, but we've actually built into our model a lot of opportunity for families who cannot afford that. We have families in the mix who are paying effectively nothing, families that are paying half of that, and some families that can easily afford that.
We are selecting families-- we have a whole range of families. We are selecting them, though, based on their real belief in our approach to education. It's a very progressive approach to education. And we are selecting them on their willingness to help us build the model. It is a new approach to education. We think it will be really amazing for kids, but we want a lot of feedback. Part of our belief here is we should listen to what the kids want and really react and adapy our model quickly.
And we're seeing families across the spectrum, from families that really believe in progressive education, to families who have kids that they have found that when their kids-- you hear a lot of negative stories about distance learning, but within that, you hear a lot of stories about kids that are breathing a big sigh of relief.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Victoria, on that note-- that big sigh of relief, I'm curious-- because up until the pandemic, the choices in the United States were public education or charter school or private or home schooling. But after the pandemic, might we see a burst of people to continue, perhaps, the more affordable-- not necessarily private, but in home via these kinds of video pods for education for the kids?
VICTORIA RANSOM: That's certainly what we believe and what we're banking on. And I think there's some growing evidence for that. There's the anecdotal evidence. And the "New York Times" just had an article a couple of days ago anecdotally, but talking to a lot of families who say, my kid is much happier. My kid is able to move faster. And my kid is not suffering from the social pressures of school. And then you start to see some surveys coming out around families that say this is really working for us.
I spoke to a principal of a charter school in New York recently, and they surveyed their families and said, who would like to continue with distance learning? It was around 30% of their families. Among that, the question was asked, is it because of COVID, or is it because you just think distance learning is better for your child? And half of those families said-- so half of 30% said, it's because we think distance learning works better. So yeah, we think there could be a real shift in education coming.
MELODY HAHM: Well, Victoria, can you tell us more about the certification process? So you talk about how it is very progressive-- a very progressive approach to education. For a lot of parents out there, is this sort of a credible alternative? Because I understand this is for people who are in fourth to eighth grade. So it is kind of a very crucial time in their education process.
VICTORIA RANSOM: Yeah. So we are absolutely credible. We are really focused on what we think are the most critical skills and competencies that you need going into high school, because we're not focused on high school right now. And for us, we believe that mathematics-- so really being at least at grade level. We believe we can get kids much further than grade level in mathematics.
Being very competent writers-- we build a lot of opportunity for a lot of practicing of writing across various different mediums for our kids. Loving reading and being competent readers and being able to read across a wide variety of medium, and then sort of your core skills like being able to research, being able to find information, being able to think critically, being able to set deadlines, being able to meet those deadlines-- this is what we think was really critical to be successful in high school.
Beyond that, we want to expose kids to a lot of different subject areas, and hopefully really spark interest in that-- so expose them to science in a way that's so fun that when kids get to high school, they'll really want to dig deep into science, expose them to history in a way that fascinates them so much they'll really want to dig deep. So that's how we're thinking about how we will prepare kids for high school.
Our belief is that they will be extremely well-prepared and more independent and self-motivated than most kids. But the proof will be in the pudding.
JULIE HYMAN: Victoria, thank you very much. Victoria Ransom is Prisma founder and CEO. Appreciate it.