The EdSheet Vol. 27

This newsletter covers the business side of the education industry - venture funding, M&A, other financial transactions. Whiteboard Advisors also publishes a daily newsletter - What We’re Reading - of curated, industry-focused news clips and a weekly newsletter - Whiteboard Notes - which covers policy, industry trends, and insights from W/A CEO Ben Wallerstein.

Hello! 

Thank you for all the notes on last week’s 2025 in Review essay! If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to check it out and send your reactions — replies to this email go directly to my inbox.

Two announcements as the EdTech community hits the ground running in 2026:

• EdTech Founders: The Milken-Penn GSE Business Plan Competition application window is open! The cash prize for winners is great, but what really makes this competition special is the team at the Penn Catalyst Center, who devote thousands of hours of their time helping as many applicants as possible, not just the winners. More information on the competition can be found below, I highly recommend applying.

• Hiring Managers: The EdTech MBA Spring 2026 Fellowship is open, providing access to top EdTech-focused MBA talent for ten-week projects. 

In this edition of the EdSheet, you’ll also read about:

• The newest EdTech unicorn is Preply: A language-learning app with real, human tutors. However, AI does still play a significant role in the company’s operations and growth prospects.

• Technology in the classroom falls under the microscope: At the legislative level and in new surveys of student and teacher sentiment towards cell phone bans.

• $145M in new funding for apprenticeships from DOL: An exciting development in an otherwise frosty environment for early-career talent. 

  • For more on this new funding, be sure to register for next week’s webinar on the topic.

With that, onto 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

• Preply raises $150M / US, Language Learning / WestCap

• Emversity raises $30M / India, OPM (Workforce Training / Premji Invest, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Z47

• Sora Schools raises $10M / US, K12 School Provider / Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst, Sparkmind Capital, Honeystone Ventures, LearnerStudio

• Tin Can raises $12M / US, Educational Toys (Screentime) / Greylock Partners, Lateralus Holdings

• Cloudforce raises $10M / US, HED Software Infrastructure / Owl Ventures, M12

• Flashka raises €1M / Estonia, Student Tools / Outlast Fund, UCP, Vento Ventures

M&A

• College Board acquires Teamship / US, Work-based Learning

• EAB acquires Hybrid / US (UK), HED Recruiting/Marketing

• Newsela acquires Schoolytics / US, Content Platform (Analytics)

• Pathful acquires JobReady360 / US, Career Development (K12)

• Lumi Gruppen acquires Edrupt for ~$15M / Norway, Test Prep

• Human Capital Education acquires Kennedy & Company / US, Services Provider 

Buyouts

• Bain Capital acquires American College of Education / US, Degree Provider

• Sun Venture acquires PSB Academy / Singapore, Degree Provider

• Cybernut raises minority growth round from Growth Street Partners / US, K12 Software Infrastructure (Cybersecurity)

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

EdTech founders: Apply to the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition by 2/11. Compete for up to $200k in prizes, get personalized mentorship, and connect with a global network of founders + investors. Learn more and apply:

What’s on your Whiteboard? CEO Perspectives

Natasha Case, CEO and Founder of Lunch Bunch, discusses how to educate students about nutrition and the imperative of offering healthier food options at school.

News of Note

This section is intended to be more exploratory, a reflection of stories, ideas, and trends that I think are important for EdTech executives and investors to be aware of. 

Early Childhood

• San Francisco to offer free childcare for families earning up to $230K. Exciting to see the drumbeat for increased childcare subsidies continue across the spectrum of rural states like New Mexico and Vermont and large cities like SF and NYC.

K12

• Last week, W/A CEO Ben Wallerstein discussed the intense Senate Commerce Committee meeting on the “impact of technology on America’s Youth,” a debate that is the early leader for education issue of 2026.

  • At the state level, Utah looks like it will join New York and New Jersey in limiting classroom technology use. In Utah’s case, the curtailment will extend beyond cell phone bans to setting safety standards and screentime limits for classroom tools. 

  • Where do students and teachers fall on the use of technology in the classroom? For cell phones, at least, teachers appear strongly for, while students are largely against. 

  • While I understand the motivation for regulation here, I hold out hope that the answer will have more to do with increasing literacy (through curriculum-aligned Lego?) for younger students and self-regulation for older students (as the students at St. John’s College are experimenting with). The variance in outcomes will be higher, but feels more consistent with preparing students for the workforce.

    • Speaking of, “variance” is Eduwonk’s word of the year for education. “Expect variance across the board” as the sector navigates new, more flexible funding channels, changing food and health standards, consolidation of both public schools and private companies, and preparations for the 2026 midterms.

      • Related to the 2026 midterms, Rahm Emmanuel is on the campaign trail with education as a centerpiece issue of his agenda.

• Also variable? The impact of Mackenzie Scott’s multi-million dollar giving to school districts around the country.

• Fun to see a hot topic in the industry translate into a national story: How Mississippi transformed its schools. 

• The hottest high schools in Massachusetts are trade schools.

• Philadelphia’s “Promise Zone” to launch 2 new schools, built on similar principles to the Harlem Children’s Zone in NYC.

Higher Ed

• Fall 2025 Higher Ed enrollment trends. Of particular note, enrollment of undergraduate adult learners – who have been a longstanding driver of online growth – unexpectedly dropped 15.5%. This drop in adult undergraduate learners comes in addition to the “enrollment cliff” population of traditional-age learners, which dropped 5.2%.

  • For a deeper dive into how these trends are playing out at individual universities, see Phil Hill’s analysis.

  • Also related, a college missed its enrollment goal by half. What happened? ”The enrollment goal was also based on necessity, reflecting what the college needs to be financially sustainable.” A sad but familiar perspective on how many small colleges are being forced to operate right now amidst the shifting enrollment environment.

• Purdue becomes first university to add AI literacy as a graduation requirement.

• Vanderbilt to acquire Cal Arts’ SF campus, continuing branch campus expansion. As discussed in my 2025 in review essay, it feels like branch campus expansion is a growing axis of competition for elite universities.

• Trump administration to start garnishing wages on defaulted student loans.

  • Or, not! Trump administration delays collections on student loan defaults.

• The godfather of Gator Nation. A great deep dive on Mori Hosseini, the longstanding chairman of the board at the University of Florida.

• Northeastern shares the results of their schoolwide adoption of Claude. First time I’ve seen such a candid, first-party analysis of AI use at a university, I hope more institutions follow suit!

Workforce

• DOL makes a $145M bet on apprenticeships amidst a frozen labor market.

• The end of entry-level jobs? “It’s been historically true that younger workers embrace new technologies while older workers resist change. But AI seems to have flipped this dynamic.”

  • I acknowledge that expectations for jobs are changing. In times of change (and higher unemployment) we revert back to what we know, raising expectations for a limited set of opportunities and closing the circle that we are willing to hire from. It is strange to see AI adoption coming from the top rather than from the grassroots level.

  • However, I’m not convinced that trend is universally bad. A world with fewer entry-level paralegals and more entry-level roadies (who have roughly the same median salary) is way more interesting.

    • Or, how about more teachers? Teach for America has also seen a surge in interest in this otherwise tricky hiring environment, and embraced by increasing their incoming corps class by 43%.

Other

• Bloom’s 2-sigma tutoring paper is incredibly misleading.This is not new news, but is worth an annual reminder since it is still frequently referred to across the industry. 

  • On the topic of annual reminders and in preparation for this year’s midterms, this is your reminder that the 6-figure welding or auto mechanic job is, largely, a myth.

What should you know about DOL’s new, $145M initiative to expand apprenticeships?

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a new $145 million pay-for-performance initiative to expand Registered Apprenticeships. The initiative, the first of its kind, will provide incentive payments tied to measurable outcomes — and is a key part of the administration’s push to exceed 1 million active apprentices nationwide. 

What does this funding mean for apprenticeship providers — and what does it signal for future efforts to help the model scale across the country? 

Join policy veterans and apprenticeship experts for a timely discussion of what the new DOL funding indicates about the future of federal apprenticeship policy, why performance-based approaches matter,  and what it will take to scale sustainable apprenticeships, including a broad overview of the most effective approaches—from braiding public and private dollars to employer cost-sharing, intermediaries, and pay-for-apprenticeship models—as well as the policy and operational choices that make these approaches durable over time.

Looking for your next opportunity in education? Check out our W/A Jobs, which features 3,648 career opportunities from 304 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that we’re excited about from the past week:

• Reup Education is hiring a remote Director of Business Operations to lead cross-functional collaboration across the organization’s go-to-market teams

• Newsela is hiring a remote Director of Marketing Operations to own the company’s marketing infrastructure

• Codepath is hiring a Director of Curriculum to be responsible for the vision, strategy, and execution of CodePath’s curriculum portfolio

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 dynamics into insights that inform decision-making. Reply to this email to learn more.