Our Investment in EveryDay Labs
Amid the global uncertainty and economic calamity left in its wake, COVID-19 has exposed founders and teams who are adaptable. At a time when future K12 funding is uncertain, school structures are ambiguous and highly variable, and school district leaders are frantically trying to get basic distance learning structures up and running, management’s ability to adapt around a customer-centered focus is suddenly essential. We at Edovate Capital believe that CEO Emily Bailard and her team at EveryDayLabs (fka InClass Today) have passed this test.
Emily and her team are addressing the large-scale attendance crisis in the U.S., which affects more than 7.5 million students who are considered chronically absent (missing 10% or more of the school year). Chronic absenteeism contributes to lower reading and math scores, higher student course failure rates, and increased dropout rates. It seems obvious, but students who attend school more often achieve better results than students who are often absent.
EveryDay Labs helps K12 schools and districts reduce chronic absenteeism and improve student outcomes by using behavioral science insights. Through targeted programs involving individualized “absence reports” mailed to households, EveryDay Labs motivates families to reduce school absences resulting in lower rates of chronic absenteeism. The concept was incubated at the Student Social Support R&D Lab (S3 R&D Lab) at Harvard University through research by co-founder Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist and professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. EveryDayLabs is the only solution in the market supported by randomized control trials (RCT) as proof of efficacy and impact. Measurable impact has been proven through 14 RCTs that consistently reduce rates of chronic absenteeism by 10–15% across districts of all sizes. The program is equally effective regardless of a student’s grade level, socioeconomic status, or language spoken at home.
So, why do mailed absence reports work? Research by the S3 R&D Lab shows that parents identify with these mailers as artifacts that are often placed on bulletin boards or refrigerators and generate the greatest amount of recognition and impact. The Lab’s research shows that parents frequently have misconceptions about their child’s school attendance. For example, parents routinely underestimate how many days their children have missed and tend to believe that their children miss about as many days as other students, or even fewer days. Some parents also believe that missing a few days of school is not that important. EveryDay Lab’s Absence Reports directly address these misconceptions in simple language and with frequency, keeping parents’ attention focused on attendance throughout the year.
The company’s engineering team is focused on automating key aspects of data collection, synthesis, identification, and distribution to improve efficiency and enable the company to scale their service to more districts. The combination of a rich, evolving research base and automation creates a unique value proposition that’s defensible in comparison to the competition, which is more focused on service-oriented interventions that don’t have the backing of RCT efficacy data.
Student attendance is not only a baseline factor for student success, it’s also a key variable in state funding formulas and accountability frameworks. Absenteeism and truancy have become focal points for both state and district leaders, leading to more accurate datasets that reveal even larger levels of truancy than previously reported. As recently as 2008, most attendance data was collected on paper, making high quality aggregate data virtually impossible to acquire. With the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) now requiring states to include rates of chronic absenteeism in their annual report cards and 36 states plus the District of Columbia including chronic absenteeism as an indicator for accountability purposes, rates are likely to increase. The financial consequences for these increases are dramatic. With high fixed costs and budgets that have flattened since the 2008 financial crisis — and that are projected to go down in a post-COVID-19 state budget environment — attendance plays a critical role in the financial solvency of school systems. It is a problem they cannot afford to ignore. We expect districts to maximize revenue tied to attendance to chip away at deep cuts that are expected in future budget cycles.
Leading districts are paying attention and signing up for EveryDay Labs. The Los Angeles Unified School District achieved both measurable improvements in attendance rates as well as increased revenues. EveryDay Lab’s program generated 24,000 days of instruction, representing $1.5m in ADA revenue, more than nine times the cost of the program. For students who received a full course of five Absence Reports, chronic absenteeism went from 29.5% to 26.2%, an 11% reduction. The Windham Public Schools also achieved an impressive reduction in absenteeism by partnering with EveryDay Labs. The company already works with 13 of the 100 largest districts in the U.S. with more expected in the months ahead.
The investment round was led by Reach Capital. We love working with our partners at Reach Capital because of their commitment to supporting impact-focused founders and teams who are pursuing dual missions of educational improvement and significant financial returns. We believe that the moment has come to tackle chronic absenteeism in the nation’s K12 schools and that EveryDay Labs is ready for the challenge. Through their research-backed programs, the company has added 500,000 instructional days and 200 million additional minutes of learning across 2,800 schools.
The EveryDay Labs team has accomplished this with relatively little capital, making them capital efficient during a time when scrappiness, efficiency, and adaptability are not only valuable but essential for business survival. Edovate Capital is proud to play a small part in supporting Emily, Todd and the rest of the impact-focused team at EveryDay Labs. They’re just getting started and are poised for a very successful outcome for both school leaders and investors.
