Silicon Valley executives -- CEOs and COOs of companies like Netflix, Facebook, and Skype -- have funneled $3 million to Rocketship Education this year that will be used to refine its sophisticated software system.
The money will be spent to improve four components of Rocketship's computer software: assessment of students, the way it generates learning plans that identify what students need to learn, a scheduler that uses the learning plan to choose from a bank of lessons that's best suited for each student, and a management system that keeps track of all that information.
With a more streamlined process, the aim is to lighten the load for teachers who have to analyze all the data for each student, and to have the software recommend better default learning plans that teachers can easily adjust for students, according to co-founder John Danner.
It's a software engineer's dream -- or nightmare -- however you look at it. Creating a system that takes into consideration 1,000 standards that students need to master from K-5, and lessons mapped to each of those objectives offered by dozens of different vendors.
"There's a lot of nuts and bolts work to just make it simple for a student to sit down, log in, and start working on the right lesson at the right time," Danner said.