BetterLesson provides personalized professional development to education industry players through classroom-embedded coaching and a large catalog of teacher-created lesson plans and instructional resources. Its core offerings include BetterLesson Coaching, a learn-by-doing, classroom-embedded professional development solution, and BetterLesson Plans, which offers thousands of lesson plans and resources created by teachers. The company is led by co-founders Alex Grodd (CEO) and Erin Osborn (COO) and is based in Boston, MA. BetterLesson raised funding to expand its operations, broaden its business reach and accelerate product development. The business serves schools and education operators seeking scalable professional learning and curricular materials. BetterLesson offers a personalized professional-development product, PersonalizedPD, built on its TeachCycle (Teach-Measure-Learn) framework that pairs teachers with personal coaches, schedules regular online coaching sessions, and provides a digital portfolio app for evidence and reflection. Teachers meet with coaches every other week for 45-minute sessions and share videos, student work, and other evidence between meetings. The company began in 2008 assembling a library of free lesson plans (used by more than 400,000 teachers) which now serve as lead generation for its paid services. BetterLesson has closed deals in more than 24 U.S. districts and is deployed in another 78 districts through a partnership with the National Education Association; it charges districts an annual fee based on the number of teachers. The company employs 33 full-time staff, including 10 instructional coaches, and expects to grow headcount. Financially, BetterLesson has expanded from grants to equity funding and continues to combine paid district contracts with philanthropic support. BetterLesson, founded in 2008 and based in Cambridge, offers a library of roughly 10,000 lesson plans and classroom resources created by Master Teachers. Its core product TeachCycle is positioned as a combined tool, service, and process that pairs a virtual instructional coach with curated resources to drive structured, teacher-led experimentation (teach, measure, learn). TeachCycle guides professional learning communities through selecting challenges, measuring baseline data, implementing chosen lessons, and reviewing impact with coach-led feedback. The company has piloted TeachCycle in 30 schools since Fall 2014 and charges $490 per teacher per semester for the virtual-coach service. BetterLesson plans to enhance TeachCycle with web and mobile features to capture classroom video and student work. The company emphasizes coaching and curated content as the key mechanisms to change teaching practice, using its Master Teacher library to recommend interventions. BetterLesson curates and shares teacher-developed lesson materials focused on blended learning and Common Core practice. The company previously profiled 137 Master Teachers and published their full year’s worth of Common Core lesson plans. It is expanding into blended learning by recruiting ten top blended-learning teachers to capture authentic classroom practice, experimentation, and practical strategies. BetterLesson will host regular virtual meetings, biannual in-person collaboration, and coaching cycles to develop shareable resources. The project is funded with $780K from The Learning Accelerator, and each selected Master Teacher will receive $15K for the year. Resources produced through this initiative are slated to appear on BetterLesson’s website starting in autumn 2014. BetterLesson is an open, social platform that aggregates teacher-created K–12 lesson plans and resources. Educators can search, upload, and share documents, presentations, lessons, and complete units through a dashboard; most of the platform is free. The company sells premium, on-site networks to school districts and enterprise customers for customized home pages and enhanced functionality. Since launch it has attracted “tens of thousands of educators” and collected hundreds of thousands of lesson plans, and paying customers have grown to over 200 schools in less than a year. KIPP joined the platform and helped the team develop a suite of premium features for schools. BetterLesson plans to use its new funding to ramp hiring, continue building out the platform, and accelerate user acquisition.

Total raised

$20M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Nov 2017