Exploring the Impact of AI in Education with PowerSchool's CEO & Chief Product Officer

With just under 10 acquisitions in the last 5 years, PowerSchool has been active in transforming itself from a student information systems company to an integrated education company that works across the day and lifecycle of K–12 students and educators. What’s more, the company turned heads in June with its announcement that it was partnering with Microsoft to integrate AI into its PowerSchool Performance Matters and PowerSchool LearningNav products to empower educators in delivering transformative personalized-learning pathways for students. In this conversation with its CEO Hardeep Gulati and Chief Product Officer Marcy Daniel, they detail where PowerSchool is going with its AI plans—and just how much they think they can make productive personalization a reality for students and educators. There were lots of notable parts of the conversation, but I’ll highlight this one from Hardeep:

There could be a lot of good use of supplemental tutoring and supplemental content and they can go to Khan Academy and they can go to Excel and other systems, but they're only doing that 1 hour in a week. If we really want to improve achievement, we’ve got to actually do that within the context of [students’] day-to-day learning. And that's really a unique opportunity for PowerSchool because we are where they are doing their homework, we are the system where they're getting the homework and we can now personalize the entire homework within that context.

As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation above, watch it below at YouTube, or read the transcript.

Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and this is the show where we are dedicated to helping the world build education systems where every individual can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And I am delighted because we don't often get to be in-person when we have these conversations, but the folks at PowerSchool have graciously allowed me to be one of the keynotes at their conference here in Orlando, Florida. And so they've made available the CEO Hardeep Gulati and the Chief Product Officer, Marcy Daniel. And it's just really good to be with you all in person. Thanks so much for doing this sit down.

Hardeep Gulati:

Thanks, Michael. Great to have you here, especially for somebody who really talks and has so much written about the things which we are really focused on, not just on the competency-based learning and other elements. You have really helped us show them the way in terms of the innovation. And thank you for taking the time to actually be at our user conference.

Morning Warmup

Michael Horn:

Oh, you bet. So, I mean, this is honestly a delight for me. And we often when we have these conversations, divide them up in four segments. We get our morning warm up, we go into our work cycle, we have some specials and then closing time so Hardeep you get to kick us off on the morning warmup. I think a lot of people, when they think about PowerSchool, they think of it as an SIS provider, student information systems, right. The origins in some ways, but from my perspective, it seems like you guys have grown into so much more, a much more complete set of solutions. And now obviously, you're a publicly traded company. It's a very different setting from maybe a decade ago. So in your words, how do you describe what PowerSchool is and what it's evolved to be?

Hardeep Gulati:

Yeah. Thank you. And as I was sharing with you in the hallway, the PowerSchool journey has been a phenomenal journey.

Michael Horn:

Right.

Hardeep Gulati:

We've been around more than 25 years. We've always known to be the student information system leader, and we are still today almost more than 21 million students, which is almost one-third of the North American school districts leverage our SIS. But we are a lot more than that now. In fact, in the last eight years, we have grown from an SIS to a full end-to-end platform. All the different elements of student information cloud build on our SIS, but also our Personalized Learning cloud with Schoology, which again has more than 50 million students assessment and curriculum. We have our Student Success cloud with MTSS and behavior and special ed support. We have our Workforce Effectiveness and Workforce Recruitment cloud to help, really help school districts not just recruit teachers and onboard them, but also helping them with their professional development and then we take all the way into even the student workforce development? How do we really help with our Naviance product, with our college career readiness? So we now reach actually 50 million students. Almost 80% of the North American school districts actually leverage some of our capabilities. So we are really now a more holistic provider for all the different things the school districts might need.

Michael Horn:

So it's holistic. It's end to end, from back end to front end, and from really early learning all the way into college, essentially. That's quite a reach. Against that backdrop, obviously, artificial intelligence, I don't need to tell you, is an incredibly hot topic in education. It's something we're going to get into a little bit more in the details. But I guess I want to do sort of bigger picture because it's such a hot topic right now. As you think about all of those things that PowerSchool is doing, how do you think about the vision for artificial intelligence with the roadmap that you have for Power School in the long run?

Hardeep Gulati:

As you said, this is so much of a hot topic and you now see everybody getting onto the bandwagon. But actually, if you look at our vision eight years back when I joined, one of the first things, when we talked to our customers and majority of the customer, we asked them, what is your biggest problem, right? And a lot of them pretty much said, hey, fragmentation, I've got all these different systems, I can't really improve student outcomes. And asked the second question to them, okay, tell me your nirvana. What is the one thing if we are able to do? And ultimately, if you have a clean, say, no limit budget, if you can do and say, I want to be able to personalize education for every child. We actually set up our vision and mission almost eight years back on that personalized education. But we did know that to build personalized education, you need to be the system of record, which thankfully with coming from an SIS word, we already are the system of record for all these school districts. You also need to be the system of engagement. Your parents, students, teachers need to be in your system to be able to truly personalize education within the context of their everyday learning. So that's allowed us to really bring tools like Schoology, like performance matter assessment, like special education, like Naviance, like the teacher professional development all into our tool to really be that comprehensive system that we can understand everything. What's happening with the student, what's happening in the classroom, what's happening with the teacher, all those elements. Then allow us to really build our personalization our data strategy and bring AI to help give those insights all the way into personalizing the actual education and learning itself. So we have been marching this vision, but great to see now the technology and the metascalers are actually helping us. Hyperscalers are actually helping us through accelerate our roadmap even further. So we're very excited about some of the innovation. Now we are really able to accelerate, and we'll happy to share more about that.

Work Cycle

Michael Horn:

Yeah, well, let's get right into those details and shift to our work cycle. We're going to bring Marcy into the conversation because obviously PowerSchool had this big announcement about embedding generative AI into a few of PowerSchool's teaching tools themselves. So why don't you level set us on what was the announcement specifically and what should we expect coming?

Marcy Daniel:

Thanks, Michael. So, I mean, really, our announcement was about a collaboration that we're doing with Microsoft with their OpenAI tools. And the first place that we're starting is really with generative AI and how you can use it with an assessment or check for learning understanding. And we have two core tools, performance Matters Assessment and then also our Learning NAV, which is a tailored or personalized learning pathway that you can use. And in both those environments, what we are doing is enabling the teacher to quickly develop a formative assessment in really minutes to be able to leverage that in those core workflows that she has.

Michael Horn:

Wow. And I love, by the way, I should say this up front, my own bias. I love that you all are focusing on the assessment piece of this because I hear for so many years I've heard all this conversation around personalizing learning. I've obviously driven a lot of the conversation and if you want to do that, you need to know where the student is and they're learning without the assessment. What are you actually basing that off of? So I love that you're leaning into that. And I guess that's where I want to go next, which is for educators who maybe they're hearing a lot of the hype and buzz right around AI, and maybe they feel, like it's a cool technology in search of a problem, or it's causing problems because, gosh, it's complicating my own assessments that I've had out there. They're cheating, whatever it might be. I guess say it a little bit more succinctly, like, what are you trying to solve for educators and what can they expect as these tools get embedded with AI?

Marcy Daniel:

So, I mean, I think what we're looking at is how do we apply AI to core workflows, things that teachers do every day, and really how we can save them time at the end of the day. You mentioned assessments used in a lot of different ways, but it's used pretty much every day for a teacher to understand they might do an exit ticket once they teach a unit or a plan that day, what did they get? What did they not get? And so if we can enable them to take something that normally takes an hour, an hour and a half to put together, like a five question assessment, we can give them a tool to just generate based on a particular standard, a particular grade, a particular topic, even contextually a particular, maybe interest or theme area that goes with another lesson plan they're doing that takes something down to really just a matter of minutes that they can then incorporate into their plan immediately. So I think it's because it's used so high frequency that it was very attractive for us to immediately put that into Performance Matters assessment to be able to generate that assessment in a matter of minutes.

Hardeep Gulati:

Wow.

Michael Horn:

So take us through sort of what this looks like in the course of a teacher's day. And either of you can jump in here. But I'm a teacher, I've got my students. Is this something that I'm generating after school when I would be lesson planning in the old days? Is this something that I'm watching students do independent work and I can create that assessment? What do I need to change in my classroom to make this really work for me? How is that going to look?

Hardeep Gulati:

I can start at Marcy and feel free. I think the way I always tell the team is think about it's. Like, let's pick the examples of how other industries have taken advantage of AI. Let's take about the car industry, right, which automated driving my Tesla. Right. Think about the initial lane change warnings. Right? That's where it started. And then went into, hey, I'll keep you in the lane. Then to almost give me your directions and I'll help you navigate there. And even I can navigate your complex path within a city. Well, our AI path is very much similar. We started today with already in the last couple of years we have branched ATRIS based on AI. So we have a lot of districts who take advantage within our data analytics platform, different attributes to be able to come with address modeling so we can actually tell them these kids might get at risk based on these factors. So that way you can provide the right support intervention. So we are giving them those warnings with the things what Marcy talked about, giving them tools to help them stay in the lane. We are helping teachers come up with the lesson plans, come up with the questions, as well as guide the student to on a mastery that here's the things which actually might help you. The piece where we are actually taking this one step further is now almost taking to automate it to their directions. So this is where how do we put AI in that whole thing from end-to-end flow, where let's take one of the biggest areas where the learning happens every day, which is homework. Let's personalize the homework itself. That's something homework hasn't changed. Simple mythology has been doing for 100 rows a year, but every child struggles and has their different needs, but yet we measure them with the same homework. We also, if you think about it, and I have done this. A lot of data around this is that number of kids in North America who actually spend more than an hour of supplemental learning outside homework are very few. So if we really want to improve the achievement gap, we got to actually make the homework itself personalized. There could be a lot of good use of supplemental tutoring and supplemental content and they can go to Khan Academy and they can go to Excel and other systems, but they're only doing that 1 hour in a week. If we really want to improve achievement, we got to actually do that within the context of their day-to-day learning. And that's really a unique opportunity for Power School because we are where they are doing their homework, we are system where they're getting the homework and we can now personalize the entire homework within that context. Now there is here, which is now the actual scenarios are a lot more complex. You look at a lot of different behavior aspects, their career pathways, how do we now incorporate that into their homework itself? So we're not measuring every kid by the same mastery. We actually want to factor that kid's passion, that kid's career path, that kid's goal and bring that learning into it. So we're not measuring the same thing and deal with the environment for that child. And that's where things like our Naviance and other pieces come into the picture and helping even take that one step further and provide a full personalized learning pathways. So we're really kind know doing that now as Marcy were mentioning, actually it really helps the teacher. Sometimes people are scared to your point is like hey, this is going to take teachers away. Actually not. I take the same example of an automatic car. It's not taking the role of the driver if I'm shuffling my kids to the stuff. It's not that the automated car means I'm going to send my kids to go by themselves. I would still be in the car. But now rather than the tedious task of driving, I'm actually engaging with my kids and family. Well, that's what now we're equipping teachers with those automated tools to now actually focus on the engagement rather than actually have to worry about the mundane task of homework and collecting that to know where the kids are. So it really actually allows our teachers to teach and focus on the teaching. So it's augmenting the teachers and really into their day to day learning.

Michael Horn:

It's powerful because I think for years we've talked about technology really powering those human moments and making it a much more human to human connection which frankly a lot of schools, traditional classrooms are actually not all that much. So if you're lecturing to a large mass of undifferentiated sort of lessons to them. But the other piece that I just want to pick up on there that you mentioned that I think is quite interesting is when you think about sort of connecting that into Naviance and those career or college pathways? If I'm hearing you all correctly, it sounds like you could start to say, like, hey, Michael, you're really excited about this career field or this set of skills or whatever else. Why don't you learn algebra? In the context of this? We're going to generate problems that show you the relevance. Am I catching where you're going with this?

Hardeep Gulati:

You're absolutely right. It actually lets them not just do the competency and masteries on the different standards or what the lesson plans or the curriculum is. It actually takes that one step further to start building life skills, collaboration skills, other things which the kid is passionate about. So we are really focusing and developing the whole child and helping them achieve their true journey of their career goal.

Michael Horn:

That's really neat. So, Marcy, this is rolling out this fall, right? So what should educators expect as they come back to their classrooms in August and September?

Marcy Daniel:

Yeah, so they should expect we're rolling out into a beta or a pilot format. This fall is really where you normally log in and you have to create items, and that has a big task associated with it. Now you just press a button, hit generative item and it automatically creates those items. You can select them and put them directly on assessment and use that. You asked before, is this in class? I think it could be in class. I think because it's so easy to generate them, I think you could do your exit ticket literally after you taught your lesson. Have kids, take it. I think the other part that's really exciting and you started touching on this is that you could really personalize it for every student. Let's say you have 25 students in your class. You know what their interests are because we are connected to the college and career readiness, you could really start tailoring that experience because you've cut down the amount of time that it takes to do it.

Closing Time

Michael Horn:

Wow. So as we go into closing time, if you will, Hardeep, I guess the question I have for you is that we're all excited about this. There's a lot of folks who are nervous about AI in general, AI in education specifically. What do you think about those risks and what do you say to those who are maybe nervous to embrace AI in the classroom?

Hardeep Gulati:

No, I completely know where people are coming from, especially coming out of this pandemic and the crisis after crisis on certain engagement and to outcomes to teacher know, we almost are, hey, we want a breather. But in reality, with the generative AI, we are already facing another challenge. I shared in my keynote, Google just shared earlier this week about the stats on ChatGPT. If you look at the search, homework was the second highest category of search on ChatGPT. So how people are doing homework today is anyway getting disrupted because those same questions without kids actually taking advantage of ChatGPT is not going to really be any more feasible. So teachers and school districts have to evolve. Even they can look at banning as much, but they still have to evolve. And what we are seeing is actually a lot of our thought leader districts are actually trying to get ahead of that and they are figuring out how you take advantage and actually rethink about the homework itself to be able to factor that it's actually a lot more different interactive. And to your point, I think we are taking these steps, we are building these components, we are launching the item generation and lesson plan so that allows teachers to create better personalized lesson plans and pathways. But as we work with them and look at how we can actually help them rethink about homework into the next year and think about even broader than competency-based learning into their career pathways, we have opportunity to partner with school districts to really drive that and stay ahead of it. And as I said, it's not to replace teacher, it's actually, as Marcy said, it actually gives time back in the hand of teacher so they can actually focus on teaching, which is what they love and that's why they're in the profession to begin with. So it actually really takes all that administrative aspects and automates a lot of the company. The other concern I think I do hear about is equity element. Does this actually help equity or actually makes it worse? It's very important that we do address the access problem, right? And this doesn't take the address the access issue, but as we have seen, there has been a lot of investments over Pandemic when with ESSER money to address the access issue, but just that giving more hardware doesn't solve the equity problem. What we have seen that to address the equity problem truly and we have seen equity problem does get worse actually through the Pandemic. We actually need technologies like this at scale, which can really help it but address the equity at scale problem. And I think again, the partnerships and rolling into the right way allows us to stay ahead of it rather than making it worse.

Michael Horn:

You went where I wanted to do, where I wanted to go for the last question on this question of equity. And so I'll phrase it this way because you mentioned some of the districts that have banned ChatGPT or AI and things of that nature. And I guess my take and I'd love you both to reflect just briefly as we wrap up here, my take has been that when you ban AI from your school systems or whatever else, or ChatGPT or whatever, it is that, in effect, you're saying to those students who have access outside of school and at home and so forth good for you. Go wild. But those of you who don't, too bad. And that seems to me deeply inequitable. How would you respond to that take? Do you have a different way of thinking about it?

Hardeep Gulati:

Go ahead.

Marcy Daniel:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think districts that struggled with do we ban it, do we embrace it? I think that they're starting to come around to the fact that we do have to embrace it. It's here. And I think one of the things that I have found fascinating as I've talked to districts is that they are finding unique ways to use it and it does drive more equity than it does disparity. If they can work with their communities to understand those things. And to your point, students that maybe not have access to computers and things like that outside of the classroom, it actually starts opening an entire new world for them. And so I think that there was a speaker on one of our earlier panels today that said he was familiar with both sides of that coin and that as he's worked with districts, is fully embracing on moving people over into the empowerment camp of AI for districts overall.

Hardeep Gulati:

No, I would completely agree with Marcy. And what I would just say is know it's important for us as a technology providers to actually partner with people like yourself, the districts who really do this and educate the right way. This is our fundamental opportunity and it's a pivotal moment to actually help us x rate a lot of the things we've always wanted to do, the competency based learning. A lot of districts have struggled. How do you do that? Well, this actually gives you a path to do that. It's also important this addresses the teacher burnout problem. Let's give the tools to the teacher which helps them actually take a lot of that work out of their hands and we can actually improve it. It also helps us address the personalized learning and engagement problem. Let's help support each child. And then also let's not just focus on achievement, let's focus on the whole child. So let's give them all the other things that helps us. So it is a journey, it's a lot of different elements. We're actually even partnering with organizations like Code to even have initiatives like teach AI. So we want to actually teach even AI, not just to schools from professional development perspective, how they take advantage, but actually how they can actually introduce to the kids as well. Because I think that allows us to really take advantage of really helping use this as a transformational moment. And we're very excited about the unique opportunity we have to actually support. We're really excited about all the work going on in the industry. But as we can kind of really integrate all that into the day to day learning and really help where learning and engagement is happening in the power school systems for 80% of the North American school districts, we have a unique opportunity to really partner and help them with this journey.

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