E07: Neerav Kingsland Relinquishes

The Education Conversation with Ryan Knight

Our guest is Neerav Kingsland. Neerav is the CEO of the Hastings Fund, a $100 million dollar philanthropy seeded by Reed Hastings, the Netflix CEO. Neerav also writes a blog called Relinquishment that is one of the most consistently thought provoking places I read. Neerav is a Senior Fellow at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and previously served as the CEO of New Schools for New Orleans. One of the things I love about podcasts is that they can help you come to see thought leaders as people, and I think we do that with this conversation. We get into Neerav's personal story, then discuss whether a school's responsibility extends to supporting its graduates, and we speculate on the long path that education technology may take to impact students at scale. As always, I want your feedback and guest suggestions. Email me at [e-mail]. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell someone about it! And rate us on iTunes -- it helps. Thank you to Neerav for this conversation. One point that I wasn't able to make in the show, because we were disconnected: If you believe in the story we spun, that the path for ed tech to create impact at scale is by helping schools that are 7 out to 10 get to 10 out of 10, and then those 10 out of 10 schools grow through governance changes -- that changes the way you should think about ed tech as a user, a purchaser, a seller and a developer. If this is true, the essential problem that ed tech is trying to solve is that there are 7 out of 10 schools that could be 10 out of 10 with better software. I'm on Twitter @rgknight and Neerav is @neeravkingsland. Rate us on iTunes, tell a friend, and send your guest suggestions to [e-mail]. Our theme song is Quittin Time by Patrick Lee.