10 ms·

Clever Gets $10 Million To Provide A Standardized API For School Data

167 points by sethbannon 13y ago

templaedhel 13y ago
Last Spring, Clever was pitching me for a job (which full disclosure I accepted). I was dubious, edtech startups don't have the best track record, and they had barely gotten started (just got into YC). However after hearing the problem they set out to solve, and seeing how they planned to do it, I was convinced. Clever bypasses most of the biggest problems edtech startups run into, specifically selling to schools. Schools don't like to pay for things, and when they do it's shrouded in bureaucracy. Clever is free for schools, and instead sells to developers, easing their pain and in turn making it easier for them to sell and get setup with schools. From the Clever point of view a new schools takes 5 minutes to onboard. This is one of the major points that allowed us to see this level of growth over the past year, and I'm excited to see where Clever takes education going forward. We're also actively hiring so head over to our jobs page if being on the forefront of a revolution in the edtech space sounds interesting to you. https://getclever.com/about/jobs https://getclever.com/about/jobs
- bradleyland 13y ago
  I just want to say, I absolutely love what you guys are doing. Rourke Publishing (a small, independent, K-12, non-fiction publisher) used to be a major client of mine, and I still consult with them from time to time. They recently called me asking about integrating one of their applications with a SIS (at the request of a customer). I remembered seeing you guys when you were part of YC. I looked up your app and documentation, and it was immediately clear that you guys are the clear front-runner. It ended up making my recommendation really easy: integrate with Clever, then point all your customers there. Congrats on the funding, and all the best!
- japhyr 13y ago
  I'm a teacher by day and a hacker on my own time, so I look at ed tech initiatives with a critical eye. One thing I want in educational offerings: free and open access for teachers, students, and schools. These kinds of offerings are the only kind that have the potential to truly disrupt existing learning gaps. What you are describing sounds good, but I'd like to know: is what Clever offers truly open source, or is it just free as in beer? From my quick perusal of the Clever site, I don't see any real assurance that this is a truly open offering. I admit I'm taking a quick look on my lunch break, so please correct me if my impression is off.
  - 21echoes 13y ago
    there are plenty of non-profits in the edtech space if you're really looking for "free and open access". Gooru (http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover) is a Google spinoff backed by the Gates Foundation and others, for instance.
    - japhyr 13y ago
      It's not so much that I'm looking for nonprofits myself. I challenge the notion that anyone is really doing anything to improve public education if they are just another private company, with a profit motive, having access to student data. I have rarely seen companies continue to serve students well when there is a profit motive involved. People should get paid well for their work, I have no issue with that. But I am wary of where the profit motive leads ed tech initiatives.
- mathattack 13y ago
  It sounds like you hit on a key strategic insight. If you're free to principals, they'll find a way to use you without the admin headaches of finding money in an era of declining budgets. They get the added benefit of better apps too.
leeoniya 13y ago
"For developers, that means integrating with individual schools on a one-to-one basis, and that just doesn’t scale" sadly, it still means this exact thing for Clever's devs. good luck to them - it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.
- hashtree 13y ago
  The quote is not true. I've personally done dozens and dozens of integrations, which can/are all be applied to any district. It's actually fairly simple with a functional programming approach, set theory, working with the k-12 companies directly, and if you think of them as data flows. I've taken over for some ex-fb/ex-google, large k-12 companies, vc funded ones... and every single one does it in a really coupled/tangled-mess manner where the statement is actually true (I take over their codebases). If done right, the integrations are a few hundred lines of code (even doing schools, courses, students, teachers, enrollments, grades, standards, etc). The only thing that changes between districts is typically a couple of business rules which are done as filters on the data flow. The unit/integration tests take more lines than the integration. Example integration flow of SIS to LMS: SIS client (pull) <- business rule filters <- integration itself -> business rule filters -> LMS client (push) Example integration flow of LMS to SIS: LMS client (pull) <- business rule filters <- integration itself -> business rule filters -> SIS client (push) Examples of system clients: https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js Example of K-12 specific spec that is often so mangled into most codebases it causes bugs: https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js Some I've done (almost a cartesian product): Infinite Campus, BrainHoney, MasteryConnect, Moodle, IFAS, Blackboard, Safari Montage, Edgenuity, netTrekker, PowerSchool, Canvas, dozens more...
- templaedhel 13y ago
  While this is technically true, unlike our customers, our main job is the intergration. This gives us the benefit of doing some things our customers don't want to dedicate time or money to do. It also gives us a wider view of the systems that are out there (one benefit of having 1/10 USA schools using your product), and allows us to build some really efficient pipelines. For the vast majority of schools their data is syncing with their apps within a few minutes of them signing up. This is something that wouldn't be possible if we had to white glove every new school.
source99 13y ago
This sounds pretty interesting. I'm a bit confused by your business model though. It sounds like you aren't selling to schools but instead you are charging developers of education applications. Who pays the the developers? Is the school expected to pay the developers?
- swalsh 13y ago
  I was thinking a similar thing... what kind of apps would I develop? Sick day trackers, maybe some kind of grade statistics apps... there's a lot of value in these kinds of apps, but i'm not sure there's enough to support the infrastructure needed to sell things to thousands of different schools.
  - ryanhuff 13y ago
    I built a student tracker/analytics app for use by parents (and students) which integrates with school systems, but I tend to agree that you could not charge parents enough to pay for the Clever integration costs. The only way I think this will pan out for Clever is if they can somehow become the gatekeeper into the schools, whereby enterprise'ish edtech software companies are required to pay-to-play, such as an AppStore model. What I don't understand is why the existing back-office edtech software companies are allowing them to do so. They should be charging Clever significant integration/certification fees. Its done in other markets.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanhuff 13y ago
  I may be entirely off the mark, but reading about this gives me pause as I think of all of the 3rd parties that invested in other platforms (Twitter), only to be cut-off later. Why would I hitch my ride to this wagon?
- templaedhel 13y ago
  Schools have been buying applications since long before Clever. These are usually (but not always) gaint contracts across multiple schools or districts. after they are signed it can take months or sometimes full schoolyears to get the app provisioned and set up. This has to happen every time data changes as well. With clever it takes minutes.
teddyh 13y ago
Hmm. This is data which has no real value to schools themselves, which they are enticed to give access to for free. Other people wanting access to the data in aggregate are then required to pay the aggregators. Other aggregators can not plausibly compete with a better price, because the original aggregators (Clever) have occupied the very scarce mindshare of the schools’ “we give our data to these people” role. The schools will not be bothered to give the data to more than one aggregator, and so Clever thereby obtains an effective monopoly in providing aggregated data. (It reminds me of Google book scanning thing, which has the same issue, but worse.)
- bradleyland 13y ago
  I'm not sure that's an accurate portrayal of Clever's value prop. Clever is limited in what they can do with student data because of privacy laws. That's not really their play. Their value proposition is in providing a common interface to the growing number of systems used to manage student information at schools in the United States. Schools in the US are free to choose -- more accurately, must purchase their own -- student information system. Many different systems (old and new) exist in the market. If I'm an application developer who is building a literacy app that students will use in the media-lab/classroom at school, the customer (school) will inevitably need a way to get student performance data back in to their student management systems. There are no industry-wide standards for this, currently. I wouldn't expect any to emerge in the immediate future either. Schools in the US are autonomous, and are structured differently in different areas of the country. For example, here in Florida, schools are organized in to large administrative districts, where decisions are made for groups of thousands of students. By contrast, in northern Ohio, each school is largely independent. Florida school districts are some of the largest, in the country. According to NCES, there were 13,629 school districts in the US as of 2010 [1]. That number is trending downward slowly, but that's still a very large number of independent bodies making decisions. We'll likely see some consolidation instandards, but given the backlash against "Common Core" (an attempt at a standardized curriculum), I wouldn't hold my breath. 1: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp
  - 13y ago
l0c0b0x 13y ago
I'm not a programmer, but it sounds to me like the 'standard API' will be proprietary (?). Seems like a fundamental change from SIF (https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx). Working in education for years, I can tell you there is a real need for an open standard that is palatable and feasible for schools and vendors aiming to integrate with student systems.
- ejlax 13y ago
  this is exactly the point. This is only perpetuating the propriety and just changing the hurdles for vendors and schools to pass data. SIF was great in its time...it was expensive and cumbersome because it required specific knowledge which many district admins don't possess. The new SIF 3 using the CEDS should hope to alleviate many of these issues. As some one who has looked into data integration with Clever, the costs were prohibitive on a large scale, especially when you consider they are continual. While development may be expensive, we aren't paying for it after it is developed...
  - dingvarson 13y ago
    There are some examples for SIF 3.0 check out: http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structure http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structur... some REST clients here http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/ http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/ Example URL here:http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/ http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/ and heaps of training materials http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Workshops+and+VITTA+Conference http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Worksh... and a github with example clients and endpoints https://github.com/nsip https://github.com/nsip and Australia has just signed up to SIF as a country. https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why-Interoperability/Pages/Statement-of-Intent-(AU).aspx https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why-Interoperability/... So open Standards look to be in pretty good shape. Perhaps Clever should support SIF as well? Then it wont be able to be blamed as being so propitiatory.
bradgessler 13y ago
Does anybody know if Clever for Higher Ed exists? (Clever is super focused on K-12)
- kcollignon 13y ago
  Good luck with that.
pvnick 13y ago
Good for them! I was recently in charge of a team that developed a website to teach remedial algebra to children, which is now used extensively in Florida middle and high schools. The signin system, using Clever as a bridge, incorporated districts' native signin systems, so teachers and students could just use their familiar school logins to get in the system. Out of the gate we had to support over half a million students. Working with their API was really a delight, and I certainly have experience with some less than enjoyable services. Apparently public school IT systems are notoriously a pain in the neck to work with, but Clever just abstracts all of that out so you don't have to worry about it. Clever's development team was also very competent and professional. They seemed to really know their stuff and went out of their way to help us be successful. Assuming they take proactive steps to protect teacher and student personal data I wish them all the success in the world!
sputknick 13y ago
this seems like the type of thing teacher's unions would squash/render useless quickly. Anything that tracks data as a function of teacher performance would not be allowed, severly limiting the usefulness of the software. I HOPE HOPE HOPE I am wrong, can anyone explain to me why I am wrong?
- templaedhel 13y ago
  > can anyone explain to me why I am wrong Because you appear to misunderstand Clever. Clever is simply replacing the existing processor of schools having to coerce CSVs and other horrible formats and them them off (over email sometimes) every time data changes. Schools may or may not buys apps that help determine teacher performance. Clever may or may not be used for moving the data. However regardless teacher unions not be effected differently with Clever as opposed to without.
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  (Clever cofounder here) We get love from teachers all the time at Clever (which, as a former teacher, makes me incredibly delighted). Schools are using more and more technology (see http://edsurge.com/ http://edsurge.com/ for some examples), but often the burden of tech falls to the teacher. I remember burning the midnight oil manually setting up class rosters in MasteryConnect as a teacher, and fighting "roster rot" as students switched in and out of my class over the course of the school year. With Clever, teachers get to focus on using the tool with their students, instead of managing data. They love it!
  - sputknick 13y ago
    that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up! I clearly read the article with my own biases in place. Best of luck to you!
discreditable 13y ago
As someone who works as a school with a few SISes and LMSes around, would it be possible for me to use clever to integrate my existing systems and save headache? We're currently knee deep in Moodle, PowerSchool, SchoolAdmin, Active Directory, Google Apps, and even have some Access databases floating around.
- Edmond 13y ago
  a plug for an LMS project of of mine appynotebook.com ... is there still a market for LMSes?
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  Clever should be able to help with a few of those integrations! Send us an email (info AT getclever.com).
hashtree 13y ago
It is a shame how silo-ed each K-12 system is, in regards to data/integration. It is also a shame as to what some/most vendors call an API (sorry, a nightly CSV is NOT an API). Only in education do you see such poor APIs and programming on a whole making tens/hundreds of millions of dollars. I've seen source code from several major players that would cause shivers in both the lack of quality and holes in security. These are HUGE hurdles for districts. They often realize it too late and end up getting taken to the cleaners by some freelancer or company who milk the hours trying to do integrations/data-warehosues (I've seen 60k/1yr jobs that were solved with 10k/2wk rewrites). Congratulations on the funding, I am excited to see any company that can help break down those barriers. Sorry that I sometimes take business away from you as a freelancer doing integrations sometimes (you do get mentioned from time-to-time) ;)
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  Thanks for the support! No need to apologize for your custom integration work. As a company building integrations in an automated & scalable way, we can't cover all possible use cases & combinations. I'm thrilled to see devs doing great work at a reasonable rate (& let's talk - maybe we can send some referrals your way!).
drakaal 13y ago
I work with several schools as part of my volunteer work. And while it's a neat idea, but it is an EdTech startup that doesn't understand the legalities of school data. In the 49 states that Clever isn't sitting with servers in using them would be illegal. In most states you couldn't store data on third parties servers with out consent from the kids parents. Using Cloud Offerings just isn't permissible in most places because of the legalities. Clever would need a lot more than $10M to change all the necessary Federal, State, County, City, laws.
- ryanhuff 13y ago
  So it's a cloud solution?
  - drakaal 13y ago
    It is an off premise, out of state, third party, Internet based solution. Having worked with a lot of schools you can't even do this for Backups of data legally. eMail through Google, or Microsoft technically can get you in trouble if you use it for the Faculty. Basically Privacy of Minors trumps convenience for IT
    - ryanhuff 13y ago
      I know some/many schools use hosted solutions for their SIS. How is this different?
- nl 13y ago
  Can you point to the actual law that outlaws this? I work in edtech, and there is a lot of FUD around this issue. I'm not in the US, so I'm not familiar with the specifics of the laws there though.
  - drakaal 13y ago
    FERPA is the big one.http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
wehadfun 13y ago
This is great. Hopefully this will fuel make the sales channel for grade level software easier. I envision a Clever App Store, where districts/schools/teachers have credits that can be used to buy interactive work sheets, attendance apps, or whatever else developers dream up.
nl 13y ago
How does Clever deal with SIF?
- clavalle 13y ago
  It doesn't (thankfully). SIF is a bloated mess.
  - nl 13y ago
    It doesn't (thankfully). :( SIF is a bloated mess. It is indeed. Are you interested in international (Australia) expansion?
    - 2arrs2ells 13y ago
      We're focused on the US for now.
    - dingvarson 13y ago
      Huh? SIF used to be complex, but now its simple. It uses the same approach as Clever http[s]://<hostname>/<SIFObject Name>s[/{id}|<SIF Object Name>]. Thats very similar to Clever. So how can it be bloated, or maybe your not experienced with SIF? Which NSIP.edu.au can help you with. try http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/StudentPersonals http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/....
      - nl 13y ago
        Hi Dan ;) I think you'll find that's SIF 3. I think that last time we spoke there was only one SIF 3 deployment around, and that was a pilot. All production instances are SIF 2 - or has that changed recently? As I've said previously - I quite like the SIF data model, but I'm not keen on the SIF 2 programming model (to be fair - as many have said: it's pretty old software now). The SIF 3 programming model is a lot better.
        dingvarson 13y ago
bentcorner 13y ago
As a parent it's frustrating that my children's marks aren't accessible behind some sort of API. We have a web interface that we can use (which I guess is way way better than what was there when I was a kid), but I'd like to have my cake and eat it too :). Getting API access to the system as a parent is hard to impossible. The vendor's site is geared towards selling to schools and supporting them.
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  You're right - Clever isn't built for your use case today - but it is one we'd love to support down the road. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at the Dept of Ed's "MyData" initiative (http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/ http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/). It's addressing your need pretty closely (although not with an API).
scoot 13y ago
Clever is 100% secure [1] That seems like a dangerous claim. What does that mean in real terms, (beyond "end-to-end encryption")? If ~10% of US school-age children's personal data is stored with Clever, that's a lot of data to potentially lose... [1] http://getclever.com/schools http://getclever.com/schools
ryanhuff 13y ago
I applaud Clever's effort, but a superior solution to this problem is an industry standard, open interface. The market may be too fragmented for something like this to get off the ground, but it is sorely needed, and putting all the eggs in Clever's basket is not the answer. You would probably be right if you argued that Clever solves an issue of having to re-create the "integration wheel" for every implementation, and so saves money in the short run. However, if Clever is successful, they will be a gatekeeper, and could demand significant fees from software vendors, possibly resulting in higher prices for schools.
namuol 13y ago
What's Clever's equivalent for the Health Care Complex?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  We love the work our YC S12 batchmates Eligible are doing in the Healthcare space. Check them out - https://eligibleapi.com https://eligibleapi.com
- falsestprophet 13y ago
  Pervasive Health (http://www.pervasive-health.com/ http://www.pervasive-health.com/)
Einstalbert 13y ago
I'm a manager for a fairly big SIS and I think this is great news. We deal with a lot of nightly CSV files and it's awful. I'm hoping we take a look at working with Clever in the future.
- 2arrs2ells 13y ago
  We'd love to partner with you! Drop us a line - info@getclever.com
sdp1 13y ago
Interesting I have not seen any mention of InBloom - since they are both a standard API for School, and unlike Clever, an open standard. And they already interoperate with SIF.
- bitcow 13y ago
  Thanks for the InBloom mention! Looks like they have pretty good traction.
bitcow 13y ago
To the best of my understanding, Clever provides access to read-only data from the SIS. It does NOT provide a mechanism for education vendors to write data back into the SIS (an extremely important aspect of the problem in this ecosystem). While the SIS stores core student data, there is a lot of missing functionality that could be supplemented well by products specializing in a particular niche (eg school lunch tracking, alerting, progress reporting, special education documentation, medicaid reimbursement, etc). However, schools feel unable to use these products since SISes generally disallow information write-back, arguing that accepting data from 3rd party vendors makes the database unstable and violates their end-user license agreement with the district. Clever has helped with the easy problem, but the harder one is no closer to being solved.
- dingvarson 13y ago
  Agreed. We have plenty of examples of services which dump data out of a SIS and then run custom scripts to organise it for this use or that, from putting accounts into AD to creating a census or students ids for state. All been done. There are other businesses like StudentNet and GroupCall which are doing much of the same thing for cloud Identity as a Service. Some of these guys can offer the addition of real identify matching services and the tracking of students across schools.
salemh 13y ago
Ignorant question maybe, is Clever going to integrate into LMS, ala Canvas, Blackboard? Do they relate in any way? I imagine it could enhance the LMS/port too the systems?

167 points by sethbannon 13y ago

Last Spring, Clever was pitching me for a job (which full disclosure I accepted). I was dubious, edtech startups don't have the best track record, and they had barely gotten started (just got into YC). However after hearing the problem they set out to solve, and seeing how they planned to do it, I was convinced. Clever bypasses most of the biggest problems edtech startups run into, specifically selling to schools. Schools don't like to pay for things, and when they do it's shrouded in bureaucracy. Clever is free for schools, and instead sells to developers, easing their pain and in turn making it easier for them to sell and get setup with schools. From the Clever point of view a new schools takes 5 minutes to onboard. This is one of the major points that allowed us to see this level of growth over the past year, and I'm excited to see where Clever takes education going forward. We're also actively hiring so head over to our jobs page if being on the forefront of a revolution in the edtech space sounds interesting to you. https://getclever.com/about/jobs https://getclever.com/about/jobs

bradleyland 13y ago
I just want to say, I absolutely love what you guys are doing. Rourke Publishing (a small, independent, K-12, non-fiction publisher) used to be a major client of mine, and I still consult with them from time to time. They recently called me asking about integrating one of their applications with a SIS (at the request of a customer). I remembered seeing you guys when you were part of YC. I looked up your app and documentation, and it was immediately clear that you guys are the clear front-runner. It ended up making my recommendation really easy: integrate with Clever, then point all your customers there. Congrats on the funding, and all the best!
japhyr 13y ago
I'm a teacher by day and a hacker on my own time, so I look at ed tech initiatives with a critical eye. One thing I want in educational offerings: free and open access for teachers, students, and schools. These kinds of offerings are the only kind that have the potential to truly disrupt existing learning gaps. What you are describing sounds good, but I'd like to know: is what Clever offers truly open source, or is it just free as in beer? From my quick perusal of the Clever site, I don't see any real assurance that this is a truly open offering. I admit I'm taking a quick look on my lunch break, so please correct me if my impression is off.
- 21echoes 13y ago
  there are plenty of non-profits in the edtech space if you're really looking for "free and open access". Gooru (http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover) is a Google spinoff backed by the Gates Foundation and others, for instance.
  - japhyr 13y ago
    It's not so much that I'm looking for nonprofits myself. I challenge the notion that anyone is really doing anything to improve public education if they are just another private company, with a profit motive, having access to student data. I have rarely seen companies continue to serve students well when there is a profit motive involved. People should get paid well for their work, I have no issue with that. But I am wary of where the profit motive leads ed tech initiatives.
mathattack 13y ago
It sounds like you hit on a key strategic insight. If you're free to principals, they'll find a way to use you without the admin headaches of finding money in an era of declining budgets. They get the added benefit of better apps too.

leeoniya 13y ago

"For developers, that means integrating with individual schools on a one-to-one basis, and that just doesn’t scale" sadly, it still means this exact thing for Clever's devs. good luck to them - it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

hashtree 13y ago
The quote is not true. I've personally done dozens and dozens of integrations, which can/are all be applied to any district. It's actually fairly simple with a functional programming approach, set theory, working with the k-12 companies directly, and if you think of them as data flows. I've taken over for some ex-fb/ex-google, large k-12 companies, vc funded ones... and every single one does it in a really coupled/tangled-mess manner where the statement is actually true (I take over their codebases). If done right, the integrations are a few hundred lines of code (even doing schools, courses, students, teachers, enrollments, grades, standards, etc). The only thing that changes between districts is typically a couple of business rules which are done as filters on the data flow. The unit/integration tests take more lines than the integration. Example integration flow of SIS to LMS: SIS client (pull) <- business rule filters <- integration itself -> business rule filters -> LMS client (push) Example integration flow of LMS to SIS: LMS client (pull) <- business rule filters <- integration itself -> business rule filters -> SIS client (push) Examples of system clients: https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js Example of K-12 specific spec that is often so mangled into most codebases it causes bugs: https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js Some I've done (almost a cartesian product): Infinite Campus, BrainHoney, MasteryConnect, Moodle, IFAS, Blackboard, Safari Montage, Edgenuity, netTrekker, PowerSchool, Canvas, dozens more...
templaedhel 13y ago
While this is technically true, unlike our customers, our main job is the intergration. This gives us the benefit of doing some things our customers don't want to dedicate time or money to do. It also gives us a wider view of the systems that are out there (one benefit of having 1/10 USA schools using your product), and allows us to build some really efficient pipelines. For the vast majority of schools their data is syncing with their apps within a few minutes of them signing up. This is something that wouldn't be possible if we had to white glove every new school.

source99 13y ago

This sounds pretty interesting. I'm a bit confused by your business model though. It sounds like you aren't selling to schools but instead you are charging developers of education applications. Who pays the the developers? Is the school expected to pay the developers?

swalsh 13y ago
I was thinking a similar thing... what kind of apps would I develop? Sick day trackers, maybe some kind of grade statistics apps... there's a lot of value in these kinds of apps, but i'm not sure there's enough to support the infrastructure needed to sell things to thousands of different schools.
- ryanhuff 13y ago
  I built a student tracker/analytics app for use by parents (and students) which integrates with school systems, but I tend to agree that you could not charge parents enough to pay for the Clever integration costs. The only way I think this will pan out for Clever is if they can somehow become the gatekeeper into the schools, whereby enterprise'ish edtech software companies are required to pay-to-play, such as an AppStore model. What I don't understand is why the existing back-office edtech software companies are allowing them to do so. They should be charging Clever significant integration/certification fees. Its done in other markets.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ryanhuff 13y ago
I may be entirely off the mark, but reading about this gives me pause as I think of all of the 3rd parties that invested in other platforms (Twitter), only to be cut-off later. Why would I hitch my ride to this wagon?
templaedhel 13y ago
Schools have been buying applications since long before Clever. These are usually (but not always) gaint contracts across multiple schools or districts. after they are signed it can take months or sometimes full schoolyears to get the app provisioned and set up. This has to happen every time data changes as well. With clever it takes minutes.

teddyh 13y ago

Hmm. This is data which has no real value to schools themselves, which they are enticed to give access to for free. Other people wanting access to the data in aggregate are then required to pay the aggregators. Other aggregators can not plausibly compete with a better price, because the original aggregators (Clever) have occupied the very scarce mindshare of the schools’ “we give our data to these people” role. The schools will not be bothered to give the data to more than one aggregator, and so Clever thereby obtains an effective monopoly in providing aggregated data. (It reminds me of Google book scanning thing, which has the same issue, but worse.)

bradleyland 13y ago
I'm not sure that's an accurate portrayal of Clever's value prop. Clever is limited in what they can do with student data because of privacy laws. That's not really their play. Their value proposition is in providing a common interface to the growing number of systems used to manage student information at schools in the United States. Schools in the US are free to choose -- more accurately, must purchase their own -- student information system. Many different systems (old and new) exist in the market. If I'm an application developer who is building a literacy app that students will use in the media-lab/classroom at school, the customer (school) will inevitably need a way to get student performance data back in to their student management systems. There are no industry-wide standards for this, currently. I wouldn't expect any to emerge in the immediate future either. Schools in the US are autonomous, and are structured differently in different areas of the country. For example, here in Florida, schools are organized in to large administrative districts, where decisions are made for groups of thousands of students. By contrast, in northern Ohio, each school is largely independent. Florida school districts are some of the largest, in the country. According to NCES, there were 13,629 school districts in the US as of 2010 [1]. That number is trending downward slowly, but that's still a very large number of independent bodies making decisions. We'll likely see some consolidation instandards, but given the backlash against "Common Core" (an attempt at a standardized curriculum), I wouldn't hold my breath. 1: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp
- 13y ago

l0c0b0x 13y ago

I'm not a programmer, but it sounds to me like the 'standard API' will be proprietary (?). Seems like a fundamental change from SIF (https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx). Working in education for years, I can tell you there is a real need for an open standard that is palatable and feasible for schools and vendors aiming to integrate with student systems.

ejlax 13y ago
this is exactly the point. This is only perpetuating the propriety and just changing the hurdles for vendors and schools to pass data. SIF was great in its time...it was expensive and cumbersome because it required specific knowledge which many district admins don't possess. The new SIF 3 using the CEDS should hope to alleviate many of these issues. As some one who has looked into data integration with Clever, the costs were prohibitive on a large scale, especially when you consider they are continual. While development may be expensive, we aren't paying for it after it is developed...
- dingvarson 13y ago
  There are some examples for SIF 3.0 check out: http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structure http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structur... some REST clients here http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/ http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/ Example URL here:http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/ http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/ and heaps of training materials http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Workshops+and+VITTA+Conference http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Worksh... and a github with example clients and endpoints https://github.com/nsip https://github.com/nsip and Australia has just signed up to SIF as a country. https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why-Interoperability/Pages/Statement-of-Intent-(AU).aspx https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why-Interoperability/... So open Standards look to be in pretty good shape. Perhaps Clever should support SIF as well? Then it wont be able to be blamed as being so propitiatory.

bradgessler 13y ago

Does anybody know if Clever for Higher Ed exists? (Clever is super focused on K-12)

kcollignon 13y ago
Good luck with that.

pvnick 13y ago

Good for them! I was recently in charge of a team that developed a website to teach remedial algebra to children, which is now used extensively in Florida middle and high schools. The signin system, using Clever as a bridge, incorporated districts' native signin systems, so teachers and students could just use their familiar school logins to get in the system. Out of the gate we had to support over half a million students. Working with their API was really a delight, and I certainly have experience with some less than enjoyable services. Apparently public school IT systems are notoriously a pain in the neck to work with, but Clever just abstracts all of that out so you don't have to worry about it. Clever's development team was also very competent and professional. They seemed to really know their stuff and went out of their way to help us be successful. Assuming they take proactive steps to protect teacher and student personal data I wish them all the success in the world!

sputknick 13y ago

this seems like the type of thing teacher's unions would squash/render useless quickly. Anything that tracks data as a function of teacher performance would not be allowed, severly limiting the usefulness of the software. I HOPE HOPE HOPE I am wrong, can anyone explain to me why I am wrong?

templaedhel 13y ago
> can anyone explain to me why I am wrong Because you appear to misunderstand Clever. Clever is simply replacing the existing processor of schools having to coerce CSVs and other horrible formats and them them off (over email sometimes) every time data changes. Schools may or may not buys apps that help determine teacher performance. Clever may or may not be used for moving the data. However regardless teacher unions not be effected differently with Clever as opposed to without.
2arrs2ells 13y ago
(Clever cofounder here) We get love from teachers all the time at Clever (which, as a former teacher, makes me incredibly delighted). Schools are using more and more technology (see http://edsurge.com/ http://edsurge.com/ for some examples), but often the burden of tech falls to the teacher. I remember burning the midnight oil manually setting up class rosters in MasteryConnect as a teacher, and fighting "roster rot" as students switched in and out of my class over the course of the school year. With Clever, teachers get to focus on using the tool with their students, instead of managing data. They love it!
- sputknick 13y ago
  that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up! I clearly read the article with my own biases in place. Best of luck to you!

discreditable 13y ago

As someone who works as a school with a few SISes and LMSes around, would it be possible for me to use clever to integrate my existing systems and save headache? We're currently knee deep in Moodle, PowerSchool, SchoolAdmin, Active Directory, Google Apps, and even have some Access databases floating around.

Edmond 13y ago
a plug for an LMS project of of mine appynotebook.com ... is there still a market for LMSes?
2arrs2ells 13y ago
Clever should be able to help with a few of those integrations! Send us an email (info AT getclever.com).

hashtree 13y ago

It is a shame how silo-ed each K-12 system is, in regards to data/integration. It is also a shame as to what some/most vendors call an API (sorry, a nightly CSV is NOT an API). Only in education do you see such poor APIs and programming on a whole making tens/hundreds of millions of dollars. I've seen source code from several major players that would cause shivers in both the lack of quality and holes in security. These are HUGE hurdles for districts. They often realize it too late and end up getting taken to the cleaners by some freelancer or company who milk the hours trying to do integrations/data-warehosues (I've seen 60k/1yr jobs that were solved with 10k/2wk rewrites). Congratulations on the funding, I am excited to see any company that can help break down those barriers. Sorry that I sometimes take business away from you as a freelancer doing integrations sometimes (you do get mentioned from time-to-time) ;)

2arrs2ells 13y ago
Thanks for the support! No need to apologize for your custom integration work. As a company building integrations in an automated & scalable way, we can't cover all possible use cases & combinations. I'm thrilled to see devs doing great work at a reasonable rate (& let's talk - maybe we can send some referrals your way!).

drakaal 13y ago

I work with several schools as part of my volunteer work. And while it's a neat idea, but it is an EdTech startup that doesn't understand the legalities of school data. In the 49 states that Clever isn't sitting with servers in using them would be illegal. In most states you couldn't store data on third parties servers with out consent from the kids parents. Using Cloud Offerings just isn't permissible in most places because of the legalities. Clever would need a lot more than $10M to change all the necessary Federal, State, County, City, laws.

ryanhuff 13y ago
So it's a cloud solution?
- drakaal 13y ago
  It is an off premise, out of state, third party, Internet based solution. Having worked with a lot of schools you can't even do this for Backups of data legally. eMail through Google, or Microsoft technically can get you in trouble if you use it for the Faculty. Basically Privacy of Minors trumps convenience for IT
  - ryanhuff 13y ago
    I know some/many schools use hosted solutions for their SIS. How is this different?
nl 13y ago
Can you point to the actual law that outlaws this? I work in edtech, and there is a lot of FUD around this issue. I'm not in the US, so I'm not familiar with the specifics of the laws there though.
- drakaal 13y ago
  FERPA is the big one.http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

wehadfun 13y ago

This is great. Hopefully this will fuel make the sales channel for grade level software easier. I envision a Clever App Store, where districts/schools/teachers have credits that can be used to buy interactive work sheets, attendance apps, or whatever else developers dream up.

nl 13y ago

How does Clever deal with SIF?

clavalle 13y ago
It doesn't (thankfully). SIF is a bloated mess.
- nl 13y ago
  It doesn't (thankfully). :( SIF is a bloated mess. It is indeed. Are you interested in international (Australia) expansion?
  - 2arrs2ells 13y ago
    We're focused on the US for now.
  - dingvarson 13y ago
    Huh? SIF used to be complex, but now its simple. It uses the same approach as Clever http[s]://<hostname>/<SIFObject Name>s[/{id}|<SIF Object Name>]. Thats very similar to Clever. So how can it be bloated, or maybe your not experienced with SIF? Which NSIP.edu.au can help you with. try http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/StudentPersonals http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/....
    - nl 13y ago
      Hi Dan ;) I think you'll find that's SIF 3. I think that last time we spoke there was only one SIF 3 deployment around, and that was a pilot. All production instances are SIF 2 - or has that changed recently? As I've said previously - I quite like the SIF data model, but I'm not keen on the SIF 2 programming model (to be fair - as many have said: it's pretty old software now). The SIF 3 programming model is a lot better.
      - dingvarson 13y ago

bentcorner 13y ago

As a parent it's frustrating that my children's marks aren't accessible behind some sort of API. We have a web interface that we can use (which I guess is way way better than what was there when I was a kid), but I'd like to have my cake and eat it too :). Getting API access to the system as a parent is hard to impossible. The vendor's site is geared towards selling to schools and supporting them.

2arrs2ells 13y ago
You're right - Clever isn't built for your use case today - but it is one we'd love to support down the road. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at the Dept of Ed's "MyData" initiative (http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/ http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/). It's addressing your need pretty closely (although not with an API).

scoot 13y ago

Clever is 100% secure [1] That seems like a dangerous claim. What does that mean in real terms, (beyond "end-to-end encryption")? If ~10% of US school-age children's personal data is stored with Clever, that's a lot of data to potentially lose... [1] http://getclever.com/schools http://getclever.com/schools

ryanhuff 13y ago

I applaud Clever's effort, but a superior solution to this problem is an industry standard, open interface. The market may be too fragmented for something like this to get off the ground, but it is sorely needed, and putting all the eggs in Clever's basket is not the answer. You would probably be right if you argued that Clever solves an issue of having to re-create the "integration wheel" for every implementation, and so saves money in the short run. However, if Clever is successful, they will be a gatekeeper, and could demand significant fees from software vendors, possibly resulting in higher prices for schools.

namuol 13y ago

What's Clever's equivalent for the Health Care Complex?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
2arrs2ells 13y ago
We love the work our YC S12 batchmates Eligible are doing in the Healthcare space. Check them out - https://eligibleapi.com https://eligibleapi.com
falsestprophet 13y ago
Pervasive Health (http://www.pervasive-health.com/ http://www.pervasive-health.com/)

Einstalbert 13y ago

I'm a manager for a fairly big SIS and I think this is great news. We deal with a lot of nightly CSV files and it's awful. I'm hoping we take a look at working with Clever in the future.

2arrs2ells 13y ago
We'd love to partner with you! Drop us a line - info@getclever.com

sdp1 13y ago

Interesting I have not seen any mention of InBloom - since they are both a standard API for School, and unlike Clever, an open standard. And they already interoperate with SIF.

bitcow 13y ago
Thanks for the InBloom mention! Looks like they have pretty good traction.

bitcow 13y ago

To the best of my understanding, Clever provides access to read-only data from the SIS. It does NOT provide a mechanism for education vendors to write data back into the SIS (an extremely important aspect of the problem in this ecosystem). While the SIS stores core student data, there is a lot of missing functionality that could be supplemented well by products specializing in a particular niche (eg school lunch tracking, alerting, progress reporting, special education documentation, medicaid reimbursement, etc). However, schools feel unable to use these products since SISes generally disallow information write-back, arguing that accepting data from 3rd party vendors makes the database unstable and violates their end-user license agreement with the district. Clever has helped with the easy problem, but the harder one is no closer to being solved.

dingvarson 13y ago
Agreed. We have plenty of examples of services which dump data out of a SIS and then run custom scripts to organise it for this use or that, from putting accounts into AD to creating a census or students ids for state. All been done. There are other businesses like StudentNet and GroupCall which are doing much of the same thing for cloud Identity as a Service. Some of these guys can offer the addition of real identify matching services and the tracking of students across schools.

salemh 13y ago

Ignorant question maybe, is Clever going to integrate into LMS, ala Canvas, Blackboard? Do they relate in any way? I imagine it could enhance the LMS/port too the systems?