Serving 5 Million Students, Panorama Education Raises $16M to Expand Reach of Social-Emotional Learning and Increase College Readiness in Schools

BOSTON, Nov. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Panorama Education (www.panoramaed.com) announces it has raised $16M in Series B funding, led by Emerson Collective, with participation from Spark Capital, Owl Ventures, SoftTechVC, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) DAF. Now serving 10 percent of America's students, Panorama Education will use the funding to expand its tools that help school districts develop students' social and emotional skills, promote family engagement with school, and increase college readiness.

School systems, including the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), Dallas Independent School District (Tex.), San Francisco Unified School District (Calif.), and Long Beach Unified School District (Calif.), use Panorama Education's technology platform and professional training workshops to tackle critical challenges, such as serving all students equitably and helping every student develop social-emotional skills. Schools use Panorama to improve student and staff engagement, family partnerships, school climate, and social-emotional learning. Now serving 400 school systems across the country, Panorama Education will use the investment to bring tools for understanding and improving central aspects of student success to hundreds more districts.

"We founded Panorama on a simple idea," said Aaron Feuer, CEO and Co-Founder of Panorama Education. "Great schools go beyond English and math to help grow every aspect of the child, from social-emotional development to love of learning. Thousands of schools are embracing Panorama to help achieve this vision for every student, and this funding will help us expand and deepen this work."

Panorama Education helps schools better understand their students' growth mindset, social awareness, self-management, and other social-emotional learning domains through research-backed surveys. Many schools and districts use Panorama to analyze school climate and social-emotional learning for diverse student populations, including racial and ethnic groups, foster youth, and homeless youth.

Teachers, counselors, and principals use Panorama's Playbook, guided by their social-emotional learning data, to find strategies and resources to develop their students' skills and improve classroom and school climate. In addition to offering strategies from master teachers, Playbook provides resources from trusted organizations and curriculum providers, including Second Step, Transforming Education, and Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Panorama's new tool, Panorama Student Success, combines academic, attendance, behavior, and social-emotional learning data to provide a holistic picture of each student. Schools use Success to identify whether students are on track to graduate, to monitor the progress of students receiving special services, and to coordinate data-informed actions to support every student.

Washoe County School District (Nev.) works with Panorama Education to support students' growth in social-emotional learning. "We are on a mission to graduate 100 percent of our students," said Traci Davis, Superintendent of Washoe County School District. "We know that students' social-emotional learning is critical to their overall success. We're using social-emotional learning and school climate data from Panorama Education across our entire district for insight into our students' social-emotional competencies and what they need to succeed."

"I can't think of better data to help our 64,000 students on their path to graduation," said Kristen McNeill, Deputy Superintendent of Washoe County School District. "With SEL data, our district is taking a student-centered view of growth and development for every child, and we're seeing the impact of that focus across our schools."

Ross Jensen led Emerson Collective's investment in Panorama Education and will join Panorama's board of directors. "As a teacher in Newark (NJ) Public Schools, I cared about so much more than test scores, grades, and attendance because I knew that my students' mindsets, emotional well-being, and feelings about school were key factors to their success," said Jensen. "But without a way to measure growth, I had real blind spots around these areas. Panorama's tools would have been incredibly valuable to me as a teacher, and it's so exciting that this team is now poised to bring these tools to millions more teachers and students."

Founded in 2012, Panorama Education is a team of 80 former educators, engineers, designers, and researchers. With this funding round, Panorama Education will add significantly to its product team by hiring a VP of Product, senior and full-stack engineers, and for other key positions across the company.

About Panorama Education

Panorama Education partners with schools and districts to collect and analyze data about social-emotional learning, school climate, family engagement, and more. With research-backed surveys and a leading technology platform, Panorama helps educators act on data and improve student outcomes. Panorama has supported more than 5 million students in 7,500 schools across 45 states, including those in the New York City Department of Education, Dallas Independent School District, Seattle Public Schools, and San Francisco Unified School District. To learn more about Panorama Education, visit www.panoramaed.com.

Media Contact

Elizabeth Breese, Ph.D.
Panorama Education
[email protected]

SOURCE Panorama Education

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