Chan Zuckerberg funds KC nonprofit to help AI tech empower educators, innovators

A nearly $1 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is expected to help a Kansas City-based nonprofit expand and strengthen the infrastructure of its national education research and development coalition, its founder said.

Katie Boody Adorno, Leanlab Education, speaks during a launch event for AGILE Network in June in Denver; photo courtesy of Leanlab Education

The funding specifically supports Leanlab Education’s American Group of Innovative Learning Environments (AGILE) Network, a national education R&D network and collective impact initiative seeking to bolster education R&D infrastructure, said Katie Boody Adorno, CEO and founder of Leanlab Education.

“We’ve grown from a locally-focused organization to a national distributed team with global initiatives — though we’re still working closely with local partners in the AGILE Network,” Boody Adorno told Startland News. “This funding highlights the momentum in the field to promote ecosystem collaboration and alignment, better understand AI edtech, and ensure that edtech products are evidence-based, effective, and codesigned with learners and teachers.

Leanlab was among three grantees funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to explore the impact of artificial intelligence on teaching and learning in the school, with a specific focus on inclusion of diverse and underrepresented voices.

“In the age of AI, traditional research timelines are insufficient to keep up with the pace of education technology development — leaving us unable to understand if these emerging technologies are helping students or not,” said Boody Adorno. “AGILE solves this problem by creating an on-demand network of research-ready school sites that are eager to engage in R&D that is ethical, non-extractive, and aligned to their areas of interest.”

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Leanlab Education organized a launch event for AGILE Network in June in Denver.

Katie Boody Adorno, Leanlab Education, speaks during a launch event for AGILE Network in June in Denver; photo courtesy of Leanlab Education

Katie Boody Adorno, Leanlab Education, leads a group conversation during a launch event for AGILE Network in June in Denver; photo courtesy of Leanlab Education

Building a robust AGILE Network will not only support Leanlab’s codesign product research infrastructure, Boody Adorno said, but the research efforts of partners like CZI, AERDF, Digital Promise, and ISTE, and the capacity and influence of education partners.

“The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is thrilled to support LeanLab as they expand their infrastructure to bring together more K-12 educators and edtech developers to co-design research-based tools,” Sandra Liu Huang, head of education and vice president of product at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, told Startland News.

“Leanlab cares deeply about ensuring educators play an active role in developing education technology and making it more effective,” she continued. “We know from co-building technology with educators in their network that it makes a difference for students.”

Leanlab previously earned grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2019 and 2020.

The Kansas City-built nonprofit plans to release a report on themes from its AI edtech research later this fall.

Katie Boody Adorno, Leanlab Education; photo courtesy of Leanlab Education

Now a nationally recognized education research operation, Leanlab evolved from an incubator/accelerator model — boosting such high-profile edtech startups as Boddle Learning, Healthy Hip Hop, Transportant and Base Academy of Music (BAM) — when Boody Adorno and her team realized that while they had successfully launched commercially viable ventures, they didn’t know a lot about Leanlab’s impact, she said.

“We then learned that most education technology tools have little third-party evidence measuring if they work for students and teachers, with only 26 of the 100 most used tools having federal ESSA standard aligned research,” said Boody Adorno. “We believe that when we co-build products in partnership with school communities, they’re more likely to be used with fidelity, and thus more likely lead to positive impacts on student outcomes.”

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“We’ve now built out a full internal research team that can facilitate both the co-building and evaluation process so that we can really understand what education products are working, for whom, and in what context,” she added.

Click here to learn more about Leanlab’s team of experts.

In the past two years, Leanlab has experienced significant growth, Boody Adorno said, noting demand for its codesign research services increased dramatically; it launched two new educator R&D networks (AGILE Network and the Codesign Collective); was a founding member of the Global Edtech Testbed Network; and it expanded Leanlab’s research services to effectively study AI education technology — a key priority for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and its grantmaking.

Each of the grantees was also chosen, in part, for their specific work and focus on diverse voices, ensuring that underrepresented students and teachers have a seat at the table, according to the funder, which announced $2.5 million distributed between Education First, the International Society for Technology (ISTE), and Leanlab.

“The funding also highlights Leanlab’s position as a leader in this work and a trusted partner of school communities, edtech entrepreneurs, and impact-oriented funders,” Boody Adorno. “We’re excited to further grow the AGILE Network beyond 20 learning environments, codesign AI tools with our partners, and share learnings with the field.”