Ronald Fortune and the Trouble With Clever Machines

Ronald Fortune had come to Washington with a future in mind and a demonstration to follow. It was June 18, 1991. Appearing before a House subcommittee, the president of Computer Curriculum Corporation described children carrying portable computers between school and home. He also talked about artificial intelligence: software that could identify a pupil’s mathematical mistake and provide the right tutorial. The phrase “intelligent tutor” was already part of his vocabulary.

It is tempting to stop there, admire the date, and award the prediction a small brass plaque. Fortune’s more revealing contribution came immediately afterward. He listed the things that could prevent the future from arriving: expense, insufficient teacher training, difficulty fitting computers into the curriculum, resistance, hardware obsolescence, and incompatible equipment. Even the future, apparently, would need somebody to sort out the purchasing.

That combination of technical possibility and practical inconvenience runs through the career of Education.com’s co-founder and founding CEO. Before the website, there were classrooms, educational software, and arguments about what a computer ought to accomplish. Fortune was interested in what machines could make possible. His public work also kept bringing the conversation back to the people expected to use them.

A future with a training budget

The hearing gave Fortune room to be specific. He discussed multimedia, pen-based input, and tutoring systems. Portable computers would travel with students. Pictures, speech, and sound would broaden the kinds of instruction software could deliver. These were concrete proposals about how learning might work, offered in the language of the equipment available at the time.

“In the future, students will carry their personal computer notebooks from class to class and to home.”

Ronald Fortune, June 18, 1991

Then he set out what a school would need. His recommendations included six to eight student computer stations in each classroom, specialized computer labs, a presentation workstation for each teacher, and a computer teachers could use at home. The adult preparing the lesson had a place in the equipment budget. Preparation counted as part of the system.

Fortune also recommended a high-speed network connecting schools, homes, and information resources. But the ambitious infrastructure sat beside a modest classroom concern: involving the teacher more directly. When a lawmaker asked about costs, Fortune distinguished a lab of roughly thirty computers from a smaller group of stations inside a classroom. Where the equipment stood would affect how it was used.

The discussion did not remain solemn throughout. Asked about small children using a mouse, Fortune observed that adults could have more difficulty with the device than children. Representative Tim Valentine recalled relying on a seven-year-old neighbor to help with his VCR. Fortune joined the exchange about the trouble adults had programming the machines. The conversation about tomorrow’s school had briefly encountered the living room.

There was a serious point underneath it. Familiarity with equipment and the ability to teach with it are separate problems. Fortune’s testimony covered both the machinery and the conditions around it. He wanted research, coordination, training, and enough access for the tools to become part of instruction. A demonstration could show what worked for an afternoon. A school needed something that worked on Monday morning.

The teacher behind the software executive

Fortune had worked as a secondary classroom teacher and school administrator before his business leadership roles. His qualifications included a bachelor’s degree, an MBA, and a doctorate in education from the University of California, Berkeley. Education and business were both part of his preparation for running companies that sold learning tools.

He led Computer Curriculum Corporation for a decade and founded Edumetrics Learning, which developed technology-based educational content and partnered with Stanford’s EPGY program. These roles placed him inside the business of instructional software before Education.com brought him to a broader parent audience. His career crossed the classroom, the company, and the institutions deciding how educational tools should be used.

In a 1995 editorial, while president and CEO of Computer Curriculum Corporation, he opened with “Buyer beware!” It was a bracing greeting from someone in the business. He urged purchasers to consider standards, measurable learning, and whether students had mastered material. Features deserved scrutiny. Software had to earn its place in the instructional program.

He also addressed the balance between engagement and substance. Multimedia could attract a child’s attention, but its appeal needed to serve learning. The position was consistent with the questions he had taken to Congress: what could the technology do, and what would make it useful in practice? The lively demonstration still had homework to complete.

A shorter route to an answer

Education.com, founded in 2006, took Fortune into a different kind of educational problem. At its public launch on June 21, 2007, the company presented a destination for parents and educators. Its opening offering included more than 4,000 reference articles, original editorial material, and online communities. The starting point was the difficulty of finding dependable educational information.

Fortune described a web where resources were scattered and inconsistent. Parents had questions, yet the search for answers consumed time they could spend supporting a child. The launch argument was practical: bring material together and make it easier to use. His own experience as a parent formed part of the company’s account of his commitment to the project.

“The ultimate goal of Education.com is to empower parents to help their children succeed.”

Ron Fortune, at the website’s 2007 launch

The executive team combined educational and publishing experience with marketing. Todd Schwartz led marketing, and Danielle Wood led editorial work at launch. Venture funding came from Azure Capital and TeleSoft Partners. Bringing parents to the site and giving them useful material were connected tasks, requiring both an audience and a reason for that audience to return.

SchoolFinder extended that approach in 2008. Introduced at DEMO 08, it offered a database of more than 100,000 public, private, and charter schools in the United States. Parents could examine academic performance, demographics, and reviews from parents and teachers. Search options included location, school name, district, proximity, and school attributes.

Choosing a school brings several kinds of questions together. Where is it? What does it offer? What do families think? SchoolFinder assembled information that could help parents investigate those questions in one place. Fortune described school selection as a process the company wanted to make easier and more collaborative. The product gave that intention a specific shape: a directory people could search and compare.

Five million visitors, many different jobs

By October 2011, Education.com reported more than five million unique visitors a month. Its materials included activities, worksheets, printables, video, community features, and school information. Fortune was still CEO when Rich Yang joined as vice president of marketing. The organization had acquired several distinct jobs beneath its tidy domain name.

Yang joined a management group that included Schwartz as chief revenue officer, Wood as editor-in-chief, Bob Brown leading technology and engineering, and Seann Birkelund in business development. Fortune welcomed Yang’s experience in expanding awareness of the site. A useful resource still needed parents to discover it, understand it, and decide to spend time there.

Fortune also participated in the wider education entrepreneurship community. In 2011 he was among the judges at Penn’s education venture competition. The role put an established operator on the other side of the pitch. Having spent years explaining educational technology to purchasers and policymakers, he was now helping assess other people’s proposals.

The question outlived the job title

Fortune’s CEO tenure ended in 2012. He was subsequently identified as chairman; Edthena now describes him as Education.com’s former chairman and lists him on its Education Advisory Board. His later record also includes nonprofit work. Level Playing Field Institute’s fiscal-year 2013 tax data lists him as chief operating officer, while Equal Opportunity Schools’ 2018 filing lists him as secretary and treasurer.

Education.com continued developing after his executive chapter. IXL Learning acquired the company in November 2019. At that point, Education.com offered more than 30,000 digital and printable resources and reported serving more than 23 million teachers, parents, and homeschoolers. Those later figures belong to the company’s subsequent history, with Rich Yang identified as CEO at the acquisition.

Fortune’s own story has an earlier image worth keeping: an educational software executive in a congressional hearing, laying out portable computers and intelligent tutors, then discussing training, classroom arrangements, and the teacher’s equipment. He had helped arrange demonstrations for the session. He was prepared to show the machines. He was also prepared to talk about the work required around them.

Thirty-five years later, the juxtaposition remains useful. The names of the devices have changed. The need to explain their purpose survives. Fortune’s career offers a way to read an education technology announcement with a teacher’s practical interest: picture the student, picture the lesson, and ask what happens after the demonstration ends.