Pop Quiz

Which CEO has recently said or done all of the following:

• Suggested to an audience of VCs and ed tech entrepreneurs at the GSV conference that the importance of big data in education has been overstated
• Told that same audience that the biggest gains from adaptive learning come when it is wrapped in good pedagogy delivered by good teachers
• Asked former CIOs from Harvard and MIT, both of whom are senior company employees, to develop collaborations with the academic learning science community
• Accurately described Benjamin Bloom’s two-sigma research, with special attention to the implications for the bottom half of the bell curve
• When asked a question by an audience member about an IMS technical interoperability standard in development, correctly described both the goals of the standard and its value to educators in plain English

Answer: David Levin of McGraw Hill.

Yes yes, those are just words. But I have gotten a good look at some of what their ed tech product and data science groups have been up to lately, and I have spoken to Levin at length on a few occasions (and grilled him at length on two of them).

My advice: Pay attention to this company. They are not screwing around.