Teachers in America
Education is ever evolving. On Teachers in America, we connect with real educators and ed leaders to provide practical instructional tips and talk about the latest teaching trends to help you stay on the forefront of what’s new in education. Tune in to learn from educators who are embracing innovations, rethinking their approach, and focusing on what moves their students forward in learning and in life.
Teachers in America
Ed Trends Minisode: Education Predictions for 2025 with Shawn Young
What will be trending in education in 2025?
Host Kailey Rhodes sits down with Classcraft cofounder and HMH’s SVP of product management and strategy Shawn Young to discuss ed predictions. They cover topics like simplifying EdTech, leaning on AI tech tools to build teacher-student relationships, and bringing the "human element" into technology.
Teachers in America profiles K–12 teachers across the country. Hear firsthand from the people who are shaping young lives in the classroom every day. If you or someone you know would be a good candidate for Teachers in America, please email us at shaped@hmhco.com.
Hi, I'm Kaylee Rhodes, and this is Teachers in America. Welcome to our mini-sode spotlighting education trends to watch in 2025. Every year, we talk with experts in ed tech, curriculum, education, leadership, professional learning and so many other fields, and they share their forecast for education trends in the year ahead. Here's a prediction from last year that's still worth watching. Districts will provide professional development in AI. Fingers crossed right teachers.
Speaker 1:This prediction from HMH's Senior Vice President of Research, fran C Alexander, is still one to watch in 2025. And we know from our recent survey that educators are asking for training in AI and many of them see how it can be useful in their teaching. If you want to hear more about that survey and what educators really think about technology in the classroom, check out our last EdTrends mini-sode. The link is in the show notes, along with the links to all our other EdTrends blogs, so you can see how previous predictions panned out. So today we're going to give you a rundown of the latest predictions to keep your eye on in 2025. And a very special guest here to weigh in is Sean Young, hmh's Senior Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, core Classrooms and Integrated Solutions. Wow, sean, you have your pulse on a ton of things. So can you introduce yourself? Tell us a bit about your background in education and your role here at HMH?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. So. Currently at HMH, I'm running our efforts around supporting teachers' delivery of curriculum and instruction within a classroom and integrating our various broad based portfolio into that experience. But I wasn't always doing that and I actually I started off as a teacher and I'm a physics major actually and realized I didn't want to work in a lab and ended up teaching high school for nine years.
Speaker 2:I got certified as, with a master's in ed during that time and was really extremely focused on making school meaningful for kids, and you know I had had. I didn't love high school. I found it kind of meaningless when I was a learner. So my mission as an educator was really to respect the fact that my students had to be there and make it as meaningful as possible, and I did that through. You know, I built 180 days of project-based learning for science. We did all kinds of cool stuff, like you know build cannons and shoot them off the roof and that type of stuff, and, and and.
Speaker 2:Throughout that I was also a developer. So I had a. I had a consulting business for that same period where I built applications and websites for customers, and, and and I was building apps for myself at the same time. So, yeah, how do you? You know teacher by day, programmer by night? How do you do those two things? What you do is you get really effective. So I started building a lot of apps to be a more effective teacher, and that's how I built Classcraft, which was really a solution for classroom management, using the principles of games and motivation to completely transform how students participated in the classroom. And that was just a side project. But over after three years of tweaking it, I was like man, this is really changing how kids are showing up in the classroom, and so I made a website to talk about it, just to inspire other teachers. And the day that website went online, 130,000 people came to the website. It started trending on Reddit.
Speaker 2:It was on the front page of Reddit gaming for two weeks and and then the BBC called to do a piece on like games and education and um, and it just took off and so, uh, that's kind of how you know it became a company and I started that, you know, with my, my brother and my dad uh, my dad's on the finance side, my brother's creative director and we just started that and we scaled that company to, um, 12 million kids in, uh, a hundred plus countries.
Speaker 1:And oh my gosh. Yeah, and now do we have the benefit of that? That craft at HMH.
Speaker 2:That's right. So, um, and so that's where I was coming to. How did we end up here? Um, you know, the our it's a, it's a really good, you know, kind of marriage, because our expertise was really on the classroom management. Uh, how do you, how do you help teachers run the best classroom possible?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But we didn't have any programs or content. So you know know, a lot of work for teachers they had to, yeah, copy paste over their stuff.
Speaker 1:They had to like configure it creation problem that's it exactly.
Speaker 2:And on the hmh side we have these really great programs, but up until now we haven't, you know, been um supporting them through the digital delivery of those programs, like running the classroom. And so, putting those two things together, uh, created HMH, class craft, which we launched last July, and um, which has built in, you know, all the lessons already built in the the uh, the core programs already uh, pre-made for teachers. So super simple If you're a beginner teacher, you just press teach and you get going.
Speaker 2:If a more experienced teacher, then you get the benefit of all these tools. Where you can, you know, leverage the, the data coming in from students responses to, to be able to, on the fly, adapt your instruction so um really being able to blend the gap between, you know, the print world, the the analog world of education, and adding on top of that, the curriculum world and the classroom management world, and that's right exactly Adding a digital layer to that.
Speaker 1:We can't just keep giving teachers discrete tools. We have to help them integrate because we have to remember that teaching is one big improv game and moment to moment is fast.
Speaker 2:They don't have time to wrangle on these separate experiences Exactly and it's interesting. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, you just said it's interesting, so you got me.
Speaker 2:All right. It's interesting because one of the things you could do by creating tools that help teachers run their classroom is start creating very rich data sources of what's happening in the classroom. Very rich data sources of what's happening in the classroom. So you know the I kind of I've been calling it stealth assessment, where you know you're you're not actually assessing students, it's not you know a quiz or anything but you're gathering a lot of information about them that you can use to. If we, if you're part of an integrated whole like HMH is, you can start doing things like recommend you know the next step in a lesson. You can recommend differentiation resources, you can recommend teaching strategies, and you're able to do that if you know what a teacher has taught, how they taught it and how students are receiving it and how they're doing against it. And so that data becomes the connective tissue between being able to help teachers run their classroom but also do it in a way that is super easy and helps them make the best decisions for their students.
Speaker 1:And helps prevent students from falling through the cracks. I'm a middle school math teacher that's my background and I always had these moments where I would be brushing my teeth or going to sleep and I would be like, oh my gosh, Elliot needs this workbook page, and it would just be like I really need someone to help me, and it would be really great if that help was linked to Elliot's actual experience in addition to my own classroom observations. It's an ecosystem right, and the more we create digital tools that mimic and support an ecosystem and not just like these discrete experiences, the more we're going to make a difference in the classroom.
Speaker 2:That's right and you know, and I think we're in a super unique time to be able to do that. I think the you know kind of the linchpin to being able to do that is to provide teachers with tools they really want to use so that make their life easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that they want to use. That's it yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's not like, oh, you have to use this. It's like, oh, no, cool, I do want to teach from here and in the background I'm getting data. You know, quote, unquote for free, I don't have to then go.
Speaker 1:What do I do with this? Yeah, because they've got so much to figure out.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's where AI becomes super interesting and that's why I think we have a very unique opportunity right now. To you know, AI is being used in a lot of ways to help teachers, you know, create resources or give students feedback doing. We're seeing a lot of those use cases. I'm really excited about um the capacity that we have with the data to be able to do things, to unlock um, you know, instructional contexts that are actually wouldn't be possible. So one of the tools we we built into hmh classcraft is um. We have. We have all these learning routines right. So it's not just about delivering content, it's about help teachers teach better, and one of them is turn and talk. So we have, you know, teachers. You know they, you know turn and talk, as you can imagine, is pretty exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:So you have students turn and talk about a topic and we know that that's super effective, that very high effect size on the Hattie scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also a really interesting volume meter. It starts out real quiet and then by the end you are like got to turn off the lights to get the kids back Cause they're chatty.
Speaker 2:Exactly and and and teachers you know, and what you've described is exactly right. So a teacher that's not sure of themselves will do that once, and then they'll be like, oh my God, I just lost control of my classroom. Oh my God, how do I know? They even talked about, you know, edgar Allen Poe, because they're chatty. And so what we've done is we've created a tool set where students can enter their answers. So the you know the, the response of that conversation. But now, which is great, so kids know that the teacher is expecting an output from them. So cool, we're getting data, we're holding kids accountable. But then now the teacher has all these answers she needs to look at in real time.
Speaker 1:Impossible.
Speaker 2:So we've built an AI tool that just summarizes that and says here are the top three things your kids discussed. Here's where they, you know, didn't answer the prompt, and here's where they, you know, didn't answer the prompt and here's some feedback you might want to give them. And so now, all of a sudden, we've created the possibility for her to effectively eavesdrop on all these conversations in a way that's not really possible. And then you know, and then in real time, she could say hey, guys, like here's the recap, and we see teachers doing this. They're like literally saying, saying, hey, the AI recap said X, y, z, and you know, now kids are like, oh, I want to make sure my answer gets into the recap.
Speaker 1:And we've seen completely different behaviors from kids.
Speaker 2:this we only found out recently that um in multilingual classrooms we have students who are answering not in english but the ai is smart enough that it can take those answers, parse them as well and summarize them into the english um summary, so you can have students answering in whatever language they want it's crazy that is a game changer and it's like what's really exciting is that we're able to um benefit from this technology in ways that we hadn't anticipated as we were building it, and again create really new instructional contexts that you know. This is super simple. It's not like the teacher needs to chat or needs to upload anything, just press a button, you know.
Speaker 1:It's actually don't change anything. Do more of those kind of challenging but necessary teacher decision moments. You know those moments where you do hand over control to the kids to have a conversation or go in the hallway and chat, all these different things, all those moments that you're like rolling the teacher classroom management dice. I think AI is helping you roll it a little easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, and you know you get sixes more often. Yeah, how dare you say, guys.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like I mean okay. So, first of all, you're still totally on fire for teaching, which is incredible. I'm so glad that you're our senior vice president, because that I just love working for a company that has like people at the leadership, that have that real pulse on teachers and learners and are just like so, on fire for learning.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I think it's awesome. So, sean, you know that we're doing this education trends to watch in 2025. It's early in the year. We always want to know, kind of, what's on the horizon. With your expertise, do you have a prediction or a trend to watch?
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:However put it on 22 black.
Speaker 2:Here's why I'm pausing. The world is changing really fast right now, both societally and from a technological space. You heard me talking about AI and how we can build in solutions that we hadn't even anticipated, so I'm kind of I will make some predictions here, but I will put a grain of salt here that you know, really, the only constant right now is change, and in an accelerating way that is really hard to predict. If you had looked at any predictions in 2019 about education, you would have been completely wrong, and then coming out of the pandemic, you would have been, again, completely wrong because, you know, child GPT happened.
Speaker 2:We're, you know, we're moving towards reasoning models very quickly. So, you know, let's just take any of this with a grain of salt. Now I will say that you know, I do believe that there's a strong desire from teachers to go back to, you know, kind of the foundational elements of of teaching. So, uh and by that I mean uh, you know, we were, we were just talking about classroom management, talking about relationships between students Um, I think we're, um, you know, we've reached a point where there's a, there's a tool for everything that you might want to do.
Speaker 2:So now it stops being about XYZ tool is super cool and it starts being really, truly about how does this using this tool, how does using this technology, how does using, you know, an ecosystem of products like HMH, truly help me be a better teacher and lead to student outcomes? So I think we're going to be seeing a continued refocus towards, you know, highly impactful solutions and not just from, like, decision makers, actually from teachers themselves, saying you know, I don't have time, I don't want to learn new tools. The good news is, tools are easier than ever to use and there's this moment in time that we've reached where tools have gotten super simple, where we have some of these like power tools, like chat. Gpt has kind of brought us back to teachers being able to focus on what really matters, and that's supporting students, understanding them, delivering engaging experience, building relationships, and so it really does become about creating the experience in the classroom, and I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of love how your prediction is that, like, as technology gets more advanced, we're probably going to see fewer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going back to human pieces of it, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And also we, because there's so much choice, we're giving teachers and educators and purchasers of that technology more incentive to say, okay, well, like in the technology world, we talk about the click path. Right, how many clicks are you?
Speaker 2:going to have to make to get to what you want.
Speaker 1:Well, how many things are you going to make teachers touch while they're in a classroom full of 35 humans? You got a human with other humans and you keep on giving them more buttons to push, they're eventually going to realize, like, if you just give me one button, that does it all. That's what I'm going to pick, and so I love that. You're kind of talking about maybe like separating what is it? The separating the wheat from the chaff, the chaff?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and it's interesting because you know part of it is about excellence. You know, solutions that are excellent obviously are going to, you know, be used more rise to the top, but it's also there's also like a bit of becoming more and more sophisticated.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting because, at the same time, we have a massive issue, which is teacher turnover. A lot of teachers that are new to the profession, a lot of them who are untrained. So there's, on the one hand, this body of educators that really needs support to to do their work, but effectively they don't.
Speaker 2:They're, they're, you know, coming in real hot, as you know a week ago, well, or or like a week ago, I used to work in a coffee shop and now I'm in a classroom Like we're seeing that happening. Um, and you know, for better or for worse, that's what's happening.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So those teachers need super simple, effective solutions that solve their problems At the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know. So that exists. At the same time, we have these, you know, more teachers who've been there longer, who really understand the space, et cetera, who've seen tools come and go, and it turns out they also want seamless and simple. So, on the one hand, I need seamless and simple. On the other hand, I need seamless and simple for different reasons. But we can actually through a convergence of, you know, really good user experience, really good data surfacing, taking data and not bringing teachers to reports, but actually surfacing insights at point of use, like here's what you should know now, as opposed to go look at these spreadsheets of whatever and try to figure it out yeah, and come back when you have an answer.
Speaker 1:You're like, yeah, exactly exactly so. So I think, I think, grading is taking up less time because of ai solutions, and interpreting data is taking up less time, and so what we're really getting back to, kind of what you're saying, is that, like, sometimes the most helpful tool is the one that's just outside your peripheral vision, like you, know it's there, but you're not trying to focus on it and that lets our teachers really focus on building those one on one relationships with students.
Speaker 1:And that really is what impacts growth building those one-on-one relationships with students and that really is what impacts growth. Like HMH's CEO, jack Lynch, he said his prediction was that we should expect ed tech to deepen teacher-student connection and like that's kind of what you're saying, that like get it out of your focus, get it out of your hands and really focus right back on the things that only humans can do, which is relate, connect, encourage growth and learn.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well and, and you know it's, it's interesting because, you know, jack has a um, a maniacal focus on, you know, seriously on this, on this human relationship, uh, connection, and that's, you know, part of why I was excited to join HMH, was that that's our mission. And, um, you know, I think, uh, that's not true of every company, uh, or or of every ed tech, you know, leader a lot of them are talking about, you know, how can we uh make systems more effective, how can we? You know that you, I, you, as someone who is an ed tech founder, who was an educator for a long time, um, I met a lot of ed tech founders who were, like you know, programmers with an idea or somebody who you know kind of said, oh, I can go fix that in education yeah, I went to school, so I'm yeah exactly, exactly, well, I talked to 50 teachers.
Speaker 2:Therefore, I know all of their problems, um, and you know and we don't you don't necessarily, and there's nothing wrong with that you know that people can solve these. Anybody who's trying to solve these problems deserves a, you know, a commendation. That's, um, but, but deeply understanding teachers reality, um, and making that really the heart of of how you're um building these tools is, is is really important and, and I think there's a huge, we have this huge opportunity at HMH with AI to do that. Uh, because, um, because we have the capacity to have the full picture, um, we have enough um data about students. We have enough resources for teachers. We have enough sophisticated understanding of the skills and how they connect to one another. We have enough solutions for, you know, supplemental and intervention so we can actually look at all the different pieces and really connect them in a way that really elevates teachers. So it's, you know, as you can tell, I'm really passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I think what's interesting about you is, you know, you've got this background in physics education. You've got this background in starting a company to really I mean, your company was itself a project-based learning venture you had a real problem and then you put it to real use Like that's what. That's what that is, and I think that what is interesting about your perspective that I think a lot of teachers, including myself, don't really understand sometimes is how data and more personal, deep interactions with students exists in the same sentence.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of times when we hear data, we think either a wall of scores that are a little intimidating to decipher, maybe disappointing just those scores in general, or maybe we hear like big data you know, like, or maybe we hear a forgotten password, like, or maybe we hear a forgotten password. But I think what's really beautiful is that your ed prediction is touching on this like deeper level of personalizing instruction, because you're freeing up teacher time by using data to make sure that they aren't teachers don't realize how much data they are keeping track of in their head informally. And when we make that formalized and when we take that guesswork out of it, it's not that we dim the light of a teacher. We actually free up and throw more grease on your system to be that teacher that you already are.
Speaker 1:Amit Patel is the managing director at Owl Ventures and they're an ed tech venture capital firm, so they're investing in these ideas and he brought up this idea that gaming, like introducing games on the fly, can generate new worlds or experience based on how the gamer is reacting in real time, Kind of like maybe what we would even say with map growth. It's adapting to that particular, it's creating this bespoke experience. It's like a choose your own adventure book. And he says this kind of gaming experience, adaptability, technology being applied to learning, not only to personalize that experience but to motivate students as well, and so like further humanizing them specifically and so getting away from just games for game's sake, but like really getting into games because it can be a personalized motivator. So like I'm curious to hear your prediction and your take on that. And it's okay if you were like nah, I don't agree with games.
Speaker 2:Well, I built a gamification company and I'm a lifelong gamer, I have a lot of opinions, well, and firsthand experience about games and education. I think, you know, I think so there's game-based learning, there's gamification. This idea is super interesting because you know we're talking about making game-based learning more and more sophisticated. Um, that's awesome because you know kids will learn. You know it's experimental um. You know there's a lot of evidence that shows that. For you know, a well-designed game can really lead to, um, very strong learnings. But then what if I want to move on to geometry? Well, now I need a whole new game, right, um? And so the the production cost. Why haven't, why don't we have AAA games working in the education space? Because the cost to make these games is is really, really high.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the motivation to make these games is is really low.
Speaker 2:Like the, you know if I'm going to spend, you know, a hundred million dollars to make a video game, I'm probably going to get. I'm probably going to yeah, exactly, probably gonna get a lot faster return on investment in the consumer space than I would in the education space, right? Um? So there's an economics problem that that would be solved by ai. You know, making games. Now, however, we're not talking about making games. We're talking about making learning games, and you know, there's a super interesting study. There's this game from like the early 2000s called Spore.
Speaker 2:I know Spore Okay. So Spore is this game. It's like the Sims or SimCity, but like you start as a bacteria and you evolve into, you know, a creature which evolves, into a society which evolves into a civilization, and that was kind of the game and all along that journey, as a gamer, you are, um, you know, making decisions of how your creature evolves.
Speaker 2:And so there's a you know super interesting study where they use that to teach kids about evolution right, because it's like bacteria evolving and and, and so they did that. They intentionally taught about evolution with that and um, and then when they tested kids about what they had learned, what they realized is that kids had interiorized intelligent design and that actually there's this super being controlling evolution, because that's what they had experienced as a player, and so, and all right, which is super interesting yeah uh, you know I don't want to get into the politics of that, but um, but the point is?
Speaker 1:is that it's just so interesting that they were learning a lesson we didn't know we were teaching?
Speaker 2:exactly, and that's kind of. There's implicit learnings happening in games.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:That you need to be really intentful about designing around or teaching back against, or at least just incorporating that into your Socratic lesson. Yes, exactly what do you think?
Speaker 1:this means about that Like at least just be, have your finger on the pulse, rather than it coming for you the last day of school so so, pedagogically, I'd be really curious to see how these ai self-generating games, you know what kind of?
Speaker 2:what kind of implicit lessons are they teaching kids, and how would we even know what those are if the games are self-generating? So you know it's. It's super interesting when you think about it from a personalization angle or from an engagement angle. When you think about it from a holistic like what are they learning? Angle, I'm like I'm not sure how effective it would be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think your example of like learning fractions and the game intuiting what question you're ready for that. You know that you, Sean, might be ready for question number 512. But I am far more ready for question 650, obviously, levels of student thought. You know, I don't know that a game is going to replace students and a teacher sitting around and talking about ideas, but I also don't know if games are claiming that they could compete with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it depends. You know games. Games are such an interesting thing. We try, we tend to think about them monolithically, but games are really. Games are really just another cultural medium. So here's an example. You know, we, you know I use this example all the time probably if we log into my netflix account and we log into your netflix account, uh, we'll see very different things I've played one game well, yeah, I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:I'm just talking about shows and movies, right like so if you go to netflix, for me what you're gonna see is, you know, uh, probably some star trek stuff. You'll see studio ghibli. There you go. If you go to my wife's, you know netflix it's all downton abbey and you know there you go um, and so we're both having the same cultural medium, but we're having very, very different experiences.
Speaker 2:You know, I I hate horror movies. They, they scare the bejesus out of me, um, and but those are. Those are movies in the same way that star trek is is, you know, tv shows, movie, etc. So so we have a medium here that has very, very different experiences for very different people, but it's all the same medium. And games are, are that, but like times one million yeah, they can play and you know we talked about spores. An example you could play sims, you could play candy crush. All those are very, very different experiences.
Speaker 1:Category of like art games that have no competitiveness to them, they're just an artist's world.
Speaker 2:That's it, and you know, if you look at games like what Remains of Edith Finch, that's a good example.
Speaker 2:This is a game where you backtrack through memories and it's all about processing grief. So this is like a social and emotional experience much different than you know playing a zombie survival game. So my point is is that when you think about games for education, you really need to be careful about the assumptions you make, because you could have a very experience-based type of experience, very narrative-driven versus like earning points and leveling up, and those are very, very different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's. I think a lot of teachers, including myself, sometimes approach games like we would approach a slot machine, um, where we're like I don't, I don't want my kids getting cheap rewards and dopamine hits for something that's not actually real rewards and dopamine hits for something that's not actually real, and um, and I think that reminding people that not only is there this whole vast library of games that, unless you are a gamer, you may not know exists, so don't, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater, um, but also making sure that we keep keep our eye on the ball of like, well, what is your goal? What's your goal with this game? What's the goal? Is it to teach fractions? That's a great goal for a game. Is it to, um, learn conflict management?
Speaker 2:maybe not maybe it depends. I mean, we're back, I mean this is how, this is how teachers should be designing lessons. Anyways, what's your pedagogical intention? What do?
Speaker 1:you want to get together and is this tool, this medium, this game, the right way to?
Speaker 2:do you want to get from it, and is this tool, this medium, this game the right way to do that? Maybe yes, maybe no, it depends.
Speaker 1:Okay, sean, let's look at one more prediction, and this one's incredibly important. Jack Lynch, our CEO, said that teachers are demanding that new ed tech tools come with safeguards consistent with their power. You know tech tools come with safeguards consistent with their power. You know, obviously, ai is incredibly powerful and also we need to have some guardrails around how we use it, how we tell children to use it, et cetera, and Jack predicts that we'll see a renewed call for ethical use guidelines and policies, you know, at various levels of leadership, in response to those demands. And can you talk a little bit about your predictions for how the ed tech industry will rise to that challenge?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's super interesting because you know AI in general is creating a lot of conversation around that, even outside of education. You know there's a ton of conversation around you know deep fakes and using AI to scam people, etc. So I think that the you know deep fakes and using AI to, to, to scam people, et cetera. So I think that the you know, societally, we're actually living that right now, um, and there is a larger call for you know better understanding, um, how data is used and how your own data could be used. You know against you, and so I think that we're we're seeing that as the zeitgeist and that is just existing even more within the educational space. You know educator's job is to prepare kids for, you know, the future and and society, and that means you know making them aware of these types of situations. I think the other piece is that we're you know whenever you see you know ESSER funds are running out now, so we're probably going to be seeing some constriction on budgets and whenever that happens, you know you start seeing. You know you see districts say, okay, here are all the things we have. Which of these work, which of these doesn't work? Which of these, you know, do we really need which don't we need? If I need to cut somewhere, where am I going to cut? And um, and so there's, there's natural pressure to um to start saying, well, which of these tools really does work?
Speaker 2:Um, and you know, one of the things I'm really excited about with with, you know, the NWA, joining HMH and map growth, you know being part of a lot of our offerings as we move forward, is that we'll be able to directly, you know, put our money where our mouth is. So if we say, hey, you know, interreading is super efficacious, well, we actually happen to have the data to show that growth, with the most valid psychometric test that exists that has the most national norming against it. And you know, you can make up your own mind as an educator. We're going to be open about, about how our solution is leading to growth and, you know, obviously, help you see that data. That's, you know, we want.
Speaker 2:We want, we believe that our programs work, but we believe it so much that we're willing to stand that up against real data and I think that that, you know, responsible ed tech companies are going to do more and more of that, because the you know it's a super interesting thing where education has this very powerful alignment of, especially if you're in the pedagogy space, where the business outcomes really align super well with what the customer needs and wants.
Speaker 2:So you know, if students succeed and we can demonstrate that students succeed, that is really good for HMH. But that's actually what educators want also. They want to use our stuff, stuff, see students succeed and they want to know that they're succeeding. And so actually, um, you know the, those two things are perfectly aligned and that's why hmh is a double bottom line company, because you know part of obviously it's a company, um, and you know that's financial reasons for for doing things. But actually those align super well with, you know, increased rigor, increased standards, increased guidelines around how we leverage and use these tools and, you know, ultimately demonstrating student outcomes.
Speaker 1:Wow. So, following what you're saying, you're saying that maybe this scalpel that might be arriving to trim unnecessary programs will actually really motivate us to choose. What is proven to be working and that's good, regardless of how it's happening is to stick with the things that are proven to be really moving and shaking outcomes for student growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, and it's our responsibility to be able to demonstrate that efficacy.
Speaker 1:Agreed. Well, thank you so much for all of those education predictions and all of those opinions. I mean, I think that we all agree we would love to chat with you for another hour and we have so many other education predictions for you to watch in 2025 on our blog. Get the link in our show notes and thanks for joining us today, listeners. And thank you so much for joining us today, sean.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the Teachers in America podcast, please email us at shaped at hmhcocom. That's S-H-A-P-E-D. At H-M-H-C-O dot com. Be the first to hear new episodes of Teachers in America by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed today's show, please rate, review and share it with your network. You can find the transcript of this episode on our Shaped blog by visiting hmhcocom.
Speaker 3:Forward slash shaped. That's hmhcocom forward slash s-h-a-p-e-d. If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the Teachers in America podcast, please email us at shaped at hmhcocom. That's S-H-A-P-E-D. At H-M-H-C-O dot com. Be the first to hear new episodes of Teachers in America by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed today's show, please rate, review and share it with your network. You can find the transcript of this episode on our Shaped blog by visiting hmhcocom. Forward slash shaped. That's hmhcocom forward slash S-H-A-P-E-D. The link is in the show notes. The Teachers in America podcast is a production of HMH. Thank you to the production team of Christine Condon, tim Lee, jennifer Guadalupe, neo Fry, thomas Velasquez and Matt Howell. Thanks again for listening.