Dive Brief:
- AltSchool on Thursday announced the addition of five new executives, including four K-12 administrators, as it ramps up efforts to prepare its platform for wide-scale use by public, charter and private schools by 2020.
- Joining the executive team are Vista Unified Superintendent Devin Vodicka as Chief Impact Officer, Pittsburgh Public Schools district leader Sam Franklin as VP of Schools, Envision Charter Schools COO Ben Kornell as VP of Growth, and ReSchool Colorado Chief Learning Designer Colleen Broderick as VP of Pedagogy.
- Rounding out the five new executives is AirBnB Director Laura Modi as VP of Operations and Services.
Dive Insight:
Founded by former Google exec Max Ventilla, AltSchool is aiming to scale personalized learning for all school models and sizes. The past few years have seen the company work to refine its platform with a variety of partner schools, including Northern Virginia's Berthold Academy, and in its own lab schools.
As Ventilla told Education Dive earlier this year, when choosing those partner schools, it looks for four qualities: that they would be successful without AltSchool, that they’re educationally aligned, that they would get real value from the company's platform, and that they would be able to actually help AltSchool figure out what to build and how to build it.
Adding administrators from traditional public school districts and charter schools to its executive team is a smart move in line with those values. The insight and experience from those who have led traditional public and charter schools will be invaluable, especially in working to ensure the platform is prepared to meet the demands and challenges, such as larger class sizes, faced by those schools.
