school-choice
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The Company Running Public Schools Like a Network - and Teaching Courage on Tuesdays
National Heritage Academies has spent three decades turning a Grand Rapids experiment into a 103-school operating system. Its pitch is consistency: centralized support, measurable academics and a character curriculum built around one virtue at a time.
Odyssey
Odyssey is a New York-based education technology company that builds the software states use to run school-choice programs. Its platform administers education savings accounts (ESAs) and microgrant programs end-to-end - guiding parents through eligibility and applications, verifying identity in real time, disbursing state funds into digital wallets, and running regulated e-commerce marketplaces where families can spend on tuition, tutoring, curriculum, and technology. Founded in 2021 by former teacher and school-choice attorney Joseph Connor, Odyssey administers programs across states including Iowa, Idaho, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Utah, Wyoming, and Texas, and has helped families access hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding.
Joseph Connor
Joseph Connor is the founder and CEO of Odyssey, a New York based technology company that helps states run school choice programs like education savings accounts (ESAs). A former classroom teacher at KIPP and Rocketship who went on to Notre Dame Law School and worked on the landmark Espinoza v. Montana Supreme Court case, Connor built Odyssey to make public education dollars easy for families to access. The platform has helped more than 140,000 students across seven states tap into over $375 million in state funding, and raised a $10 million Series A in 2024 led by Tusk Venture Partners with backing from a16z's Katherine Boyle.
Kelly Smith
Kelly Smith is the founder and CEO of Prenda, a Mesa, Arizona education company that helps ordinary adults run microschools - small groups of 5 to 10 kids who take ownership of their own learning. An MIT-trained nuclear fusion engineer who once sold a clean-energy software business, Smith stumbled into education by volunteering at a library code club, watching kids light up when they wanted to learn. In January 2018 he started a microschool around his kitchen table with his son and six neighborhood kids. Since then Prenda has helped more than 1,000 adults launch microschools and nearly 10,000 K-8 students learn to lead their own education.
Prenda
Prenda is an Arizona-based education company that gives everyday adults - called guides - the software, curriculum, training, and support to open and run small, tuition-free K-8 microschools of 5 to 10 students out of homes, libraries, and community spaces. Founded by Kelly Smith after he started a learning club around his kitchen table, Prenda partners with state-credentialed institutions and school-choice programs so families pay little or nothing, while students learn at their own pace through a 'connect, conquer, collaborate, create' day built around mastery and student agency.
Nat Malkus
Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he turns national datasets into arguments that policymakers can act on. He built the Return to Learn Tracker that mapped pandemic school closures and now follows the chronic absenteeism crisis it exposed, and he hosts The Report Card, AEI's education podcast. A former middle school teacher who once graded papers in Prince George's County, he now does his grading on the whole American school system - with the data to back it up.
Rick Hess
Frederick M. Hess - known to nearly everyone in education circles as Rick - runs Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and writes the long-running Education Week column 'Rick Hess Straight Up.' A former high school social studies teacher with a Harvard PhD in government, he has authored or edited dozens of books on K-12 and higher education and is repeatedly ranked among the most influential people shaping U.S. education policy.