Thought Leaders in Online Education: Steve Gross, CEO of Calvert Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So your primary business on the B2B side is as an online curriculum provider, effectively.

Steve Gross: That is true but I don’t think that’s the full description of it. I would say that we are a curriculum provider as well as an online program manager. What that means is we provide the curriculum and also the educational platform in which that curriculum and reporting resides. We also provide the services that are required, specifically tailored and optimized for the virtual environment, which is different from the brick and mortar environment.

Sramana Mitra: That puts you in competition with a number of players that we have featured here. People like Apex Learning. Is that a correct observation?

Steve Gross: Yes, but not necessarily in the online space that we specialize in.

Sramana Mitra: Which is what?

Steve Gross: The younger grades.

Sramana Mitra: But all of those have younger grades as well.

Steve Gross: Not really. Apex does not and many of the other curriculum providers pretty much focus on the middle school and high school.

Sramana Mitra: Your sweet spot is in kindergarten to middle school?

Steve Gross: In the United States, our sweet spot is that. There are not many providers in that part of the market. There’re not many providers who don’t compete with districts. Connections do compete with school districts by creating their own curriculum for their own schools, which are often in direct competition with the district. In fact, the students who are going to K-12 at Connections schools would exit the district and their funding would exit the district with them. Now that funding is part of K-12 and part of Connections. Those companies are taking students out of the district and at the same time, they’re trying to sell to those districts. Unlike other players in the market, we don’t compete with districts.

Sramana Mitra: I’m listening to you and I’m hearing that the K through middle school is relatively underserved from the online learning curriculum and process management point of view. Is that a correct observation?

Steve Gross: We’re more than capable of serving that market.

Sramana Mitra: But it’s not a market crawling with competitors. Therefore, it’s an underserved market.

Steve Gross: Right. That’s why we’re really focused on it. Not only is it an underserved market, it’s a group of students that badly need support. It’s been an underperforming market academically.

Sramana Mitra: What do you think are some of the design principles of serving that market that are unique and where modern technology lends itself well to that market?

Steve Gross: Our belief is that we need to take the virtual environment and turn that into a strength as opposed to an obstacle. How does the virtualness of it all become an advantage? We use a learning framework called PLUS – introduce the Project, Learn the material, Use for mastery, and Show the material. That learning framework is organized and developed for the virtual environment.

For example, the projects that are included in our curriculum are designed to specifically happen and take advantage of the environment outside of the classroom, which is the world as opposed to the limited opportunities available inside school classrooms. How do we take advantage of the fact that these kids have the world and create projects that take advantage of that?

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Steve Gross, CEO of Calvert Education
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