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In the pursuit to render the expert education for student across the country , legislation is incessantly being reformed . All of those new educational activity policy typically serve , but are often hard to implement and difficult for parents to understand .
That ’s whereOdysseycomes in . The ship’s company develop an end - to - end public store disbursement and e - commerce platform for program organisation that make educational offerings , like schoolhouse tuition fee , tutoring , technology and extracurricular enrichment , more approachable .
One might think that with applied science like that , states would be elbowing each other to get in on this . Alternative education , however , is a rathercontroversial topicfor some when it live beyond the traditional public schooling system .
Some counselor for students to attend any schooling , for example , a religious - backed private school day , charter schooling , home school or other diminished scholarship surroundings , and have that Union funding travel along the student . The global pandemic also teach us that teaching needed to be flexible , which open up the door for companies , likePrenda , to provide ways for someone to commence their own “ microschool . ”
Education policy implementation challenges
Joseph Connor , Odyssey ’s father and CEO , knows this all too well . He have his scratch learn in low - income school day at charter school in Washington , D.C. , Philadelphia and San Jose . He then decided to transition to law school where he also consulted for early training option policies in Indiana , Louisiana and Florida .
A majority of states have amendments called Blaine amendment that were act out in the late 19th hundred that target to prevent public funds from being used at insular school day . Connor worked for a firm that was helping with the 2020Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenuecase where the U.S. Supreme Court rule that funding policies that discriminated against schools based on their religious status assault the First Amendment . He said that case “ pave the mode for the policies we help run today . ”
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“ States try out to pass them themselves and they were very complex , ” Connor told TechCrunch . “ In some cases , they bring with traditional software system vender that were n’t really well equipped to do this particular policy . ”
Laying the foundation for easier school choice
So he started Odyssey three year ago as a tech inauguration to help State in a few agency . First it prepare parents on what an education savings invoice program is , who ’s eligible for it and how to sign up . It then get by the lotion process , working with the State Department agency to create the lotion questions , handle the identity verification unconscious process and activate the schools to take tutelage .
“ Historically , one of the biggest blocking agent for effectuation has been on identity check , ” Connor say . “ It can be a very slow process . guess the body politic is requesting you to give us your nascence credentials or driver ’s licence . You may have to find a scanner and upload it , then await a few weeks or up to 60 days , to get wind if you are eligible . ”
Instead , there ’s Odyssey ’s technology — which Connor touts as “ the first material - fourth dimension identity verification tech in the country ” that is both dependable and scalable . Rather than the industry standard of 30 to 60 day , the company is able to tell a parent in less than one mo , once pass on , if they ’re eligible , and how much they ’d be awarded .
The state is able to supervise and inspect the entire process for reduce fraud and abuse . One of the big vexation of land administering these sort of syllabus is making sure parents are spending the money on the intend purpose .
To do that , Odyssey ’s platform let in a closed in , private mart of vendors where products and service , regulated by the state , can be purchased using the education savings account . The company treat defrayal processing and client reenforcement for those seller and then data analysis for the state .
Expansion into more states
The society manages more than 130,000 scholarly person across three states in Iowa , Missouri and Idaho . It ’s also in word with a few additional land governments .
Odyssey is paid by res publica , typically per student . In the past year , the company learn revenue originate three fourth dimension .
Now the company wants to make a telephone number of primal leadership hires and bring on additional applied science folks . To do that , Odyssey of late raised $ 10 million in Series A financial backing . The round was led by Bradley Tusk of Tusk Venture Partners , with additional backing from subsist investor Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz , Ben Kohlmann of Cubit Capital and Ben Ling of Bling Capital .
investor were specially concerned in what Odyssey was doing around real - clip indistinguishability check , Connor say . It is in the educational activity sector only right now , which he said will keep the ship’s company with enough employment for years . However , with the lineament , like the digital notecase and country - regulate marketplace , there are opportunities to declare oneself additional programs to states .
The new funding will also activate the company to expand where it offers avail . That include scaling in res publica where it already is and going into new states .
“ We need to charm policy and state that do n’t currently have programs , explain to them why it ’s important to have these programs and allow states to run these programs more efficiently , ” Connor say . “ We really consider strongly that the respectable agency to empower parents is through these character of program , and so we require to make certain that they ’re accessible to everyone . ”
