EdisonLearning believes socioeconomics drives equity, and children deserve every chance to succeed at home, school, and in their community.

EdisonLearning, the nation’s largest minority-owned online education services and solutions provider, is launching a concurrent multi-phased initiative to help eliminate persistent disparities in academic opportunities, promote well-rounded lifelong outcomes for all students, and affirm that zip code location should never be a barrier to a high-quality education.

The new initiative – Equity Everywhere – will include:

• Equity Everywhere Podcast Series, in which EdisonLearning CEO Thom Jackson, and a variety of K-12 practitioners and experts engage in critical, meaningful, comprehensive conversations about equity in education. Together, podcast participants highlight, amplify, and refine best practices and solutions for ensuring education equity everywhere.
• Equity Everywhere Pilot Project, in which EdisonLearning will be partnering with secondary schools in a variety of small and large districts―rural, suburban and urban―spread across the U.S. to join the pilot project and test out EdisonLearning resources. By the conclusion of the pilot, schools will have implemented tools and strategies to enhance equitable opportunity and achievement for all learners.
• A wide-reaching public awareness campaign, including blogs, to help schools implement strategies to enhance equitable opportunity and achievement for all learners.

“The quality of a student’s education will define their future,” says EdisonLearning CEO Thom Jackson, “and at the core of a quality education is a student’s equitable access to the academic tools and specific instruction practices designed for their success.”

Mr. Jackson said, “Equity extends the concept of equality to include providing varying levels of support based on individual student needs.”  Yet, Jackson explains, that a discussion of equity requires us to address three distinct components.

“Equity in education begins with Scholastic Equity, which ensures that each student receives the academic and social-emotional support they need to address the individual barriers to becoming their best academic selves.  Second, is Structural Equity, which examines the quality of the resources available to each student – everything from allocation and quantity of certified teachers to the access to updated textbooks and technology to the quality of the learning environment, including the school building itself,” Jackson says.

“Finally, is Instructional Equity, which examines whether the policies and practices of the educational institutions (e.g., schools and school districts) are collaborated to or in conflict with the broad diversity of economic classes and ethnicities they are expected to support.  In the classroom, institutional equity encourages our teachers to calibrate their instructional practice to the individual and diverse learning needs and skills of each student in their class,” Jackson said.

Mr. Jackson sees EdisonLearning’s Equity Everywhere initiative as a logical extension of the company’s nearly three-decade legacy in helping to educate under-served students throughout the United States.

“I know these students – I know their experiences – not just professionally, but personally, because I have lived them. Many have not achieved academically, because they were probably convinced that they could not by an inequitable system that did not identify support their specific needs,” Mr. Jackson stated, “and, this has to change; and that is why EdisonLearning is willing to step up to help bring about that change.”

Since its inception, EdisonLearning has delivered comprehensive educational content, resources, and support that help their partners meet diverse learners where they are. The company believes that demographics, economics, and that each child in every home, community, and school deserves every chance to succeed.

About EdisonLearning

EdisonLearning brings together best practices in instruction, developed over three decades of supporting schools, with blended solutions designed by educators to meet students where they are and deliver the education they need and deserve. The company’s comprehensive content, resources and support include 150+ full eCourses in core and elective subjects, plus career and technical education and life skills; actionable learning analytics dashboards and blockchain-enabled micro-credentials; and instructional services teachers and advisors who provide personalized student support. The guiding purpose behind all of EdisonLearning’s work is to ensure equitable access and opportunity for each and every learner. Learn more at www.edisonlearning.com

About Thom Jackson

Thom Jackson has held key positions at Fortune 100 companies and served three New Jersey governors, but it was his upbringing in a high-poverty Ohio zip code that truly formed him into the leader he eventually became―specifically, he saw the critical role of education. “I'm living proof of how education can change your life,” he says. “I'm on this trajectory because my 8th grade teacher, Dottie Miller, pulled me aside in the hallway and put me on the right path.”

That trajectory led Thom to join EdisonLearning, originally as General Counsel and, later as Chief Operating Officer. In 2014, Thom engineered a management buyout of the company, making EdisonLearning the largest minority-owned business in the online education space.  Over nearly a decade as President & CEO, his passion has only grown: “I feel obligated to pay it forward at a scale Dottie even would not have imagined,” he says. “It keeps me laser-focused on ensuring that EdisonLearning is always innovating, providing accessible and affordable solutions and tools that help improve teaching and learning for every student, regardless of their zip code, or social or economic circumstances.”