The EdSheet Vol. 11

EdTech Market Funding, M&A, and News of Note

Author

Matt Tower
May 08, 2025

Hello! 

It’s been a while! The EdSheet is back and better than ever, with a new look courtesy of Beehiiv. 

Going forward, we will be publishing every other Thursday.

As a reminder, this newsletter covers the business side of the education industry - funding, M&A, other financial transactions, and the news investors and business leaders should know about the market.

Over the next few editions, you will see a survey at the top. This survey lets me learn more about who you are so that I have a better sense of who I am writing to and, importantly, when to invite you to happy hour if I’m on the road. I would be very grateful if you filled it out.

With that, on to the news!

Funding / M&A

Whiteboard Advisors not only provides policy and market-related diligence and advisory services, we track every financial transaction that happens in education — and keep a record of all deals that are publicly announced.

The following transactions caught our eye over the past few weeks. If you have a deal to announce, or would like access to the full transactions database, please reach out.

Venture Funding

M&A

Buyouts

New PE/VC Funds

New Reports/Research

Looking for your next opportunity in education? Check out our W/A Jobs, which features 3,393 career opportunities from 284 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that caught our eye over the past week:

News of Note

This section is intended to be more exploratory, a reflection of stories I think are important and ideas/trends I’m contemplating. It is free today, but will be going behind a paywall next month.

Deals

  • MagicSchool, SchoolAI, and Brisk raise a combined $85M: The specific merits of each of these investments is interesting, but there is also something deeper here. Instructor enablement and professional development spent much of the 2010s being put down as “services” businesses. There are few, if any, people who would have picked PD as the hottest market for venture dollars in EdTech in 2025. 

  • Sporty’s acquires PilotWorkshops: I expect a ton of variability in the flying market over the next 10-20 years as planes get both more technically complicated to maintain and accessible to larger audiences with advances in autonomy. I’d be really interested in this space if I ran a search or lower-middle market private equity fund! 

    • Of course, whether air traffic control can support any increase in activity remains to be seen.

  • Sempervirens raises $141M Core Fund III and $36M Opportunity Fund II: the only sector-focused private equity (including VC) fund to announce a new fund since Achieve Partners announced their $167M fund in December 2023. Some of this is just timing, as at least 5 of the established funds in the sector topped up in 2022 and 2023 (and, thus, would still be in the investment portion of their current funds), but also maybe reflecting some softness/change in the market for EdTech venture investment vehicles? 

ECE

K12

Higher Ed

  • House Republicans education plan: There is a lot to unpack from this plan - from workforce Pell to capping borrowing limits and forcing schools to make payments on delinquent student debt that they are responsible for. It remains a shame that such significant changes are being bundled into a budget reconciliation bill rather than a dedicated update to the Higher Education Act. (Shakes fist at sky.)

  • ED announces further changes to accreditation: Lots to unpack here even underneath the headline mandate to remove DEI requirements. At its heart, this EO intends to provide universities with a greater ability to switch accreditors - a continuation of a priority from the first Trump administration.

  • Updated Carnegie classifications: A generally well-regarded update to the classification system, designed to measure institutions on a broader set of characteristics than the highest degree they confer. Of note, 187 institutions will now carry “R1” status - 28% more than last year (which used the old methodology).

  • Tyton report on Inclusive Access: The debate over the validity of the inclusive access model - where colleges negotiate course material pricing with publishers directly rather than letting bookstores play intermediary - has always baffled me. Schools are orders of magnitude better equipped to understand the trade-offs of using different course materials than individual students. My only qualm with the model is that, at most schools, course materials remain a pass-through junk fee rather than being bundled into tuition.

  • Kentucky changes its athletic department to an LLC: college football and basketball continue on their inexorable path to professional status. It’s still not really clear how university administrators are supposed to handle this change, but my guess is fortune will favor the bold (and the spendy).

  • Community colleges struggle to respond to “flood” of bot students seeking access to financial aid dollars.

Workforce

  • There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt - FUD - in the job market today. According to the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, AI is taking the jobs of young people.Thompson’s proclamation comes on the heels of Shopify and Duolingo announcing that they are “AI First” hiring organizations and, as a result, remarkably more productive. I understand the FUD but do not embrace it. Most of the roles that AI is “taking” stink - even Meghan Markle realized there was an expiration period on being a paralegal.

  • That said, I do think there is a labor market shift happening, where jobs are increasingly bought rather than sold. That is to say, the onus is increasingly on job seekers to hunt down their next role by proactively researching and solving problems - probably using AI! - for prospective employers. 

Whiteboard Advisors is the leading policy-related diligence partner for education investors, advising on most major private equity transactions in education over the past 15 years. Our specialty is translating complex policy/political dynamics into financial models. Reply to this email to learn more.