Kidappolis for Early Equity

Low-income and under-served American children start kindergarten 12-14 months behind their peers in pre-literacy, language, and numeracy skills, resulting in 1.8M children beginning school unprepared for success. These children need early literacy/numeracy instruction to thrive.

LitLab impacts early learning and family engagement through provision of early learning resources, and digital and mobile technology in under-served communities. We create interactive learning environments by deploying books, digital content, and mobile learning solutions for children and caregivers in their home language.

The kidappolis app measures the child’s knowledge, personalizes learning plans, and assesses progress. Tips/activities supporting positive parenting and skill growth are shared with families in their home language, so caregivers drive healthy development.

We’ll create kidappolis AI, delivering a personal assistant-style home teacher that improves over time, supporting the learning journey while providing local resources to target families. After saturating low-income communities in the U.S., we’ll expand globally.

The dichotomy between the haves and have-nots is growing. Closing the education opportunity gap matters now more than ever, impacting vast numbers of children globally, and the more than 2.5 million American English language learners and low-income children who start kindergarten without access to a quality preschool education. “When compared to their wealthier peers, children growing up in low-income families are less likely to attend preschool. They are also more likely to fall short of proficient in fourth-grade reading scores (Annie E. Casey Foundation),” a finding linked to greater likelihood of adult poverty and early death.

Early numeracy and literacy skill development are key to future academic success. Research shows “…early math knowledge not only predicts later math success, it also predicts later reading achievement (National Research Council, 2012).” Cognitive development during pre-kindergarten years improves long-term outcomes, with well-prepared children likely to thrive as healthy, resilient adults.

Interactive learning revolutionizes education outcomes, but for low-income millennial families learning must take place everywhere - at home and on the go - in real-time. Although 90% of low-income families have smartphones and data plans, children use them daily for an average of 2-3 hours of entertainment, taking away otherwise valuable learning time.

Students starting kindergarten behind the skill level of their peers make similar gains in school but aren’t catching up. More than three-quarters of low-income children don’t reach the 3rd grade literacy milestone alongside their peers. Only 63% of U.S. English language learners graduate high school, compared to 82% of students nationally, reinforcing the opportunity gap.

LitLab solutions activate academic skills in children of immigrants and families of color. We provide children in the highest need communities with access to quality early math and literacy resources, including a family learning component to support improved academic achievement, accelerating learning increases and increasing parent engagement. The work we do aims to create equity across all communities nationwide by sparking interactive learning for under-served, low-income and immigrant children, aged 2-8. 85% of children served by LitLab qualify for free and reduced lunch and attend Title 1 schools. Parents who may not be highly educated or fluent in English engage with kidappolis to receive texts in their native language aimed at guiding the child’s learning.

Our deep experience in how to best engage hard-to-reach communities, allows us to successfully serve early learners and families in close partnership with family-serving resource centers and parenting groups.

LitLab supports early learning and family engagement through provision of traditional books, digital tools, and mobile technology. We create revolutionary scalable learning solutions accessible to schools, families, and community-based organizations. Our programs include:

Kidappolis – A single-point multilingual interactive learning portal accessible from any mobile device, to prepare under-resourced children for school and lifelong success. We measure a child’s knowledge against age appropriate benchmarks, personalize learning with curated apps targeting academic weaknesses, and measure progress toward goals, sharing details with families and adding child development tips to support positive parenting and skill growth.

LitBag – Our bookbag rotation component works with kidappolis to make interactive reading accessible with an enriching experience for children and families beyond the classroom. Agencies receive books from a curated list of Spanish/English bilingual titles. Families take books home and establish a reading routine with their child. Each book comes with an activity prompt to guide parents in asking questions to develop the child’s critical thinking skills. Grade-appropriate journals encourage skills related to reading comprehension and writing. Interactive blended learning solutions engage families in academic skill development to help children build a solid learning foundation.

Unlike similar solutions, we emphasize:

• Early exposure to and skill development in literacy, math, science, and technology.

• Healthy relationships that link in-school or community-based learning with at-home learning, to honor the child-parent/caregiver connection in a fun and supportive manner.

• Parent/caregiver education and advocacy, to enable every family to engage in the creation of learning objectives and academic goals for their child, through a clear understanding of age-appropriate academic benchmarks for school success, regardless of whether the family is fluent in English or not.

• Empowering a new generation of active, knowledgeable parents to guide the social/emotional wellbeing of their children.

Focused on sustainability, we work with local community organizations as distribution channels for our products and services, creating mutually beneficial opportunities. Organizations that primarily operate through direct service (healthcare, family resource centers) are limited by the necessity of face-to-face interaction. Our products allow them to scale engagement by taking advantage of the time between interactions. We gain access to a pipeline of families requiring academic skill development and we provide tools and services that encourage families to learn those skills together. Our partners extend their work and impact, and instead of families using valuable time to meet with a service provider, they spend time learning and growing together.

The current market for education apps focus on children of privilege. Genius Plaza, PBS Kids, and Vroom are in-school education apps that don’t address skill gaps, progress, or caregiver engagement, while kidappolis speaks to these needs and more. In addition to offering a bilingual app for caregivers, kidappolis sources the top free learning apps for kids, using mini weekly assessments to understand the child’s strengths and weaknesses, and measuring improvement against age-appropriate benchmarks, while tracking usage, and providing personalized data and learning plans to families. Families receive support activities via text that extend learning beyond the screen. As we invest further in content, additional languages, and expanded features, kidappolis will become the Fitbit of parenting, school readiness, and academic success.

Our innovative approach benefits families in school and beyond by extending through informal care partners, faith-based organizations, and healthcare agencies to the broadest range of high need families and children. In partnership with child development centers and other community-based partners we work to prepare all children, regardless of income level or background, for lifelong achievement. We grow with the child and family; our flexibility is one of our strengths, as is our knowledge of the unique needs of the low-income bilingual market. This demographic, lacking resources and often ignored by product developers, is our focus. We believe our attention to their specific needs will help make their careers and lives more fulfilling and valuable within American society.

We'll build a guided, parent focused service to help caregivers to improve their child’s abilities. With a personalized experience, we engage kids in learning they need to accelerate growth. We currently operate using manual performance assessments/responses to offer simplified, rule-based suggestions that improve learners’ skills. 

With AI we’ll deliver a personal assistant-style home teacher that improves over time, partnering on the learning journey. In an AI model, we’ll initially analyze data from the MVP release. Experts will pre-define the order of questions, preparing example content suggestions for various student knowledge gaps/strengths. Users’ behavior will be analyzed over time, promoting activities leading to faster, more consistent skill improvements. This process trains the network to analyze behaviors and produce better feedback to create a path to accelerated successes for parents and children, helping them build effective academic micro habits.

Data will be refreshed continuously as users answer questions, focused on the fundamental point: In what order do we ask questions to best diagnose strengths/knowledge gaps? This foundation will use a random forest algorithm to determine the question with the highest impact on the analyzed phenomenon. A similar process will provide content suggestions. We’ll review changes over time and analyze patterns. Student t-distribution and standard deviation will help pinpoint anomalies, with experts tweaking the system as issues surface. The highest impact success metric will correlate the extent/rate at which a child is progressing in skill gain (according to assessments) and the extent of parent interaction (app usage, activities) with kidappolis. 

Strategy

Output

Outcome

Design products to meet the unique needs of low-income ELL adults/children

User Centered Design Design: 

-20 user interviews/year

-2 user surveys

User data confirms traction (downloads and retention) 

User survey feedback indicates positive user experience

Support low-income ELL children and their caregivers early and often

Establish distribution partnerships with healthcare centers, preschools, elementary schools, and family resource centers

Formal partnerships with 5 urban school systems in and outside of CA

Low-income ELL families have access to high quality early learning resources

-App curation developed by early educators

-Weekly tips & activities developed by early educators

- Regional resources pushed

- Bilingual books w/prompts 

80% of users are accessing resources weekly

ELL caregivers are supported and activated to guide their early learner

- Assessment summary

- personalized resource recommendations

- Weekly tips/activities 

80% of caregivers report using the recommended resources weekly

Literacy, Numeracy and Social-emotional skill development

- Learning Activities based on ASQ/Common Core

- Recommended resources based on individual student performance

- Personalized learning

50% of users demonstrate progress in literacy, numeracy and social-emotional learning activities

By 3rd grade low-income ELL children are reading at grade level in the locations where we distribute kidappoilis

Right now, in our early proof of concept pilots, we have approximately 600 downloads and 300 monthly active users. In fall 2019, we’ll be outlining several new partnership launches aimed at bringing our monthly active users to 3,000 (10x) by December 2019. We have an organizational goal of reaching 1M users by 2023, so in order to reach this goal we will have to secure even larger, multi-state distribution partnerships. In five years we plan to serve 1 million users across California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Nevada.

Our immediate goals include raising enough capital to continue developing kidappolis into a stickier product for our target families (kidappolis 2.0). We also need to secure major distribution partnerships - ideally as paid contracts - to reach more users so we can demonstrate market traction with potential donors. If we can increase our users, and generate more funding to put back into the product, we will significantly scale the breadth and depth of our impact over the next five years. 

One of our most significant barriers is that we must raise an additional $250K to begin development of kidappolis 2.0. Ideally, this raise includes enough funding to bring on a part-time lead engineer who will own the kidappolis product and architecture, reducing our reliance on external vendors. 

As we grow, we’ll have to invest in marketing and sales capacity, something we’ve never formally had in-house leadership and expertise around. 

Culturally, we are moving into a space where we’ll look and act more like a tech company, rather than a traditional nonprofit, which may be a challenging change for staff, volunteers, and donors. 

On the fundraising front we’ve adjusted our program and partnership model to include healthcare and family service agencies, in addition to schools. This opens up the number of potential funders available to support our work. Also, by establishing partnerships outside of California, we can access larger national funders interested in supporting scalable solutions. We are exploring a number of co-fundraising strategies in collaboration with like-minded nonprofits such as Worldreader, to identify interesting, mutually beneficial product and programmatic projects as opportunities to introduce both organizations to new donors and funders. 

For marketing and sales support we are currently relying on volunteer/pro bono support through organizations including Catchafire and Full Circle Fund. We hope, with additional funding, to hire this capacity in-house and to establish a strategy that aligns with our product, growth, and funding roadmap. 

Culturally, we are holding regular staff meetings to address the “elephant in the room” of who we are and where we are headed as an organization. We’ve experienced some expected staff turnover as we pivot toward new products and programs. These transitions have opened up new opportunity to recruit staff who are a good match for us in terms of experience and cultural fit. We’re also actively recruiting new board members who represent the tech, sales, and marketing fields to advise and shape our future path as an organization. 

NA

Full-time staff: 2

Part-time staff: 3

Contractors: 1

LitLab was founded by two moms of color, Mialisa Bonta and Laura Gonzalez Reed. Inspiration to launch LitLab grew from Mialisa’s 20+ years in the education sector, her work drafting the FCC’s National Broadband Plan for Education under the Obama Administration, and her experiences advocating for communities experiencing poverty. Laura now takes the lead as CEO, pushing us toward a future aimed at equity for all children, regardless of background or family income level.

Ed Gutman leads product development for kidappolis and has worked as a software product manager and designer with a passion for social impact at Yahoo and Twitter.

Our administrative and programmatic staff possess a combination of educational practice, research experience, and direct-service work with high-need families.

The kidappolis MVP launched in October 2018, with v1.0 in two states, California and Texas. Partnerships include West Contra Costa Unified School District, East San Jose’s Family Connections, Oakland Unified School District, and agencies across Marin County and Union City, including Tri-City Health. Pilots in Texas are in 7 school districts and with HIPPY, a federally funded home visiting program for children under age 5. 

Our model for agency partnership brings high quality educational programs to under-served families, at scale. We work with local community organizations as distribution channels for our products and services, creating mutually beneficial opportunities. Organizations that primarily operate through direct service (healthcare, family resource centers) are limited by the necessity of face-to-face interactions. Our products allow them to scale engagement by taking advantage of the time between interactions through SMS/text messaging. We gain access to a pipeline of early learners requiring academic skill support, and we provide tools and services that encourage families to learn those skills together. Our partners extend their work and impact, and instead of families using valuable time to meet with a service provider, they spend time learning and growing together.

Our three-pronged business model focuses on: 1) fundraising through private foundations and individuals, 2) digital sales of the paid version of the kidappolis app, and 3) paid district/agency contracts. We build relationships with customers including school districts, healthcare networks, and family service providers to saturate the communities we serve. We market a version of kidappolis to higher income families at $4.99 per month, while contracting with family serving agencies serving high need beneficiaries at the significantly smaller cost of $15 a year per family. Kidappolis is free to beneficiaries who use a school/agency code, and can be used by all children in the family, aged 2-5. Kidappolis School Plus pairs kidappolis with LitBag, our take-home book rotation program, to reinforce kidappolis skills through traditional books. 

To date, philanthropy accounts for 90% of our revenue. We’re building the capacity to support a long-term earned income strategy through app and contract sales. Since 2015, for development of kidappolis and its predecessor products/services, we have raised $4.1M for the organization.  Approximately $160K is projected to come from paid contracts and individual subscriptions. Projected total revenue for 2019 is $900K, with an additional fundraising goal for 2020 to raise $1.4M to support version 2.0 development as well as the internal capacity to build out a sales/marketing team to distribute kidappolis in several states beyond California. By 2022 we intend to flip this revenue model, securing 75% of our revenue from earned income and 25% from philanthropy.

We work with Title 1 schools and districts in California and Texas to secure the contracts with which we offer high need families access to the kidappolis and LitBag programs for free, focusing on childrens’ academic skill-building, and engaging parents in support of age-appropriate learning. Districts gain access to detailed analytics on app usage, identifying how kidappolis activates families. In Q3 of 2019, in an effort to scale our impact and secure additional revenue, we’ll bring kidappolis and LitBag to healthcare and social service agencies working with high need families, through paid contracts and/or philanthropic investment. 

We believe that with support from Solve, we be able to begin to develop and scale kidappolis with AI functionality in both breadth of users and depth of impact. In the short-term, AI will allow kidappolis to quickly diagnose skill gaps, recognize commonalities across individuals, and identify key distinctions in the best content to be pushed to a specific learner. AI will also influence the content/resource selection, generation, delivery, and reports to partners including parents, teachers, district and organization leaders, and community sponsors.

In order to expand our user base we need to deliver a product and delivers on the highest quality experience so that we can retain users over time and ensure they utilize this one-of-a-kind tool to support their child’s educational experience through the third grade literacy milestone.

In the long-term, AI will allow us to create learning exercises with dynamic performance allowing for truly differentiated instruction, personalized activity recommendations, and custom push notifications to families based on real-time assessment. AI will improve our connection with support digital resources, including links to videos and websites for targeted content. Awards and incentives built into the app will gamify the child’s experience. 

With Solve assisting us along the way, it is our goal to partner with experts in the AI field to create a tool that will continue serving the equity of kidappolis beneficiaries for years to come.

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We want to identify partners currently working directly with low-income ELL families with children from 2-8 years of age. These organizations might be school systems, healthcare providers, library networks, or family resource centers - anywhere our target families convene. Catholic Charities, Kidango, Head Start, Stand for Children, and Every Library are partner organizations with whom we’re currently in discussion. They are highly trusted direct service organizations with missions and target populations aligned with our own. 

In addition to distribution partners, we would like to formally partner with high-quality apps with whom we can be the exclusion distribution partner. We are in the process of formalizing a partnership with Worldreader, an international nonprofit with a strong brand in early literacy, who’ll use LitLab and kidappolis as their U.S. distribution platform. 

LitLab doesn’t currently use AI. However, we already have a partner identified, byteLAKE, and they’ve supported our initial thinking and planning around how to incorporate AI to strengthen our product and achieve our vision. Lead by Co-Founder Marcin Rojek, byteLAKE is a team composed of scientists, researchers, programmers and designers who specialize in using AI techniques to foster innovation and value across all industries.

To effectively use the data in an AI model, we will initially analyze data from the MVP kidappolis release. Our AI experts will predefine the order of questions and prepare example content suggestions for various student knowledge gaps and strengths. Then the system will analyze users’ behavior over time, promoting those activities that lead to faster, more consistent improvements in skill building. For example, if a child with a math weakness performs better when engaging with specific content, that content will be promoted higher, making it a more likely recommendation for similar profiles. This process trains the network to analyze student and parent behaviors, and to produce better feedback. The goal is to create a path to accelerated successes for parents and children, helping them build effective academic micro habits. Bad responses will result in close analysis of the data, including any necessary changes to the algorithm.

Should we be able to advance through the MIT/Solve Challenge, we would be able to accelerate our product roadmap to include AI, which would differentiate our app solution and create an exponentially richer experience for the user.

Millennial women accounted for 82% of all U.S. births in 2016. Mothers bring their young children to healthcare providers annually for trusted advice on the child’s physical and developmental progress. Medical office visits offer a unique opportunity for healthcare professionals serving low-income ELL families to disseminate educational resources, in alignment with American Academy of Pediatrics advice, for reaching key early academic and developmental milestones and managing screen time. 

LitLab partners with healthcare providers by distributing free books and bookmarks for each child’s annual wellness visit, along with free family access to the kidappolis application. Medical staff explain the app’s value in empowering families to provide necessary early math and language skill development for the child’s long term academic success. 

By empowering mothers and young girls, we create an avenue for equity, removing one of the many barriers to a life of health, resilience, and long-term success.

The AI kidappolis model will deploy using the successful paradigm we’ve used across the Bay Area, with a goal to decrease 3rd grade illiteracy rates by school, from 78% to 20% or less. With AI, kidappolis will be deployed through existing and new school district and agency partnerships targeting highest need PreK to 3rd grade classrooms nationwide; expanding internationally as we prove our success. Working closely with community-based partners we prepare early learners, regardless of income level or background, for college and lifelong achievement.

LitLab’s starting point was to develop mobile technology educational solutions for typically disenfranchised users, so we have been focused on this for quite some time. Our dataset is more likely to have to mitigate issues related to selection bias, given that we are targeting initial users that tend to be lower-income and English language learners. For instance, we have already had to mitigate for the latent bias in types of assessments that come with targeting dominant Spanish speakers who live in the California region. Our mitigation plan is to ensure that we have a linguistically, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse set of content developers, and that we take care to have a broad user base across different populations in the United States early on to support diverse data collection. In order to support such diversity, we will use a strict review process that prioritizes gender, racial, geographical, economic, and religious equity.