Validated Learning Co. Receives 2018 Visionary Award from City of Cambridge, MA

Validated Learning Co. received the 2018 Visionary Award from the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern and Cambridge Chamber of Commerce President David Maher presented the Award to Validated Learning Co.’s CEO Isaac D. Van Wesep and his co-founder Walter O. Duncan IV. The Award was given in recognition of the company’s impact on student learning success and its innovative learning platform.

Validated Learning is focused on making it as easy and simple as possible for teachers and schools to use data to differentiate instruction and personalize learning through the use of frequent formative assessments. Quick Key, the company’s flagship product, is a tool for authoring, administering, and analyzing these assessments. Quick Key makes frequent formatives fast and easy by allowing teachers to collect formative data in two ways: by using their own paper quizzes, or by building assessments in the Quick Key app and give them on student Chromebooks. Each question can be aligned to a standards tag or code, and Quick Key tracks student progress on those tags.

Schools that use Quick Key data have seen significant and measurable improvements on state test scores from elementary through high school. The company also provides publications, training and professional development for teachers and principals on how to use the data provided by Quick Key.

Michael Horn, Co-Founder and Distinguished Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and author of the award-winning book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, said “What Validated Learning is doing right now is tackling the most important problem in education and they could literally transform education across the globe. I'm hugely excited about the vision that Walter and Isaac have."

Simone LaPray, Program Manager for entrepreneur network TiE Boston, said "TiE Boston was so proud to see Validated Learning receive the Cambridge Visionary Award. We jumped at the chance to have them in our Seed to Series A accelerator, ScaleUp. The Validated Learning platform is a true disruptive innovation that is democratizing access to technology that improves student outcomes and making a positive impact on society. We know that this is one of many milestones in the success of Validated Learning.”

Pictured:  The Validated Learning Team at the Visionary Awards Gala. Isaac Van Wesep, Ted Hoff, Walter Duncan

About Validated Learning Co.: Validated Learning Co. believes that genius knows no zip code and is on a mission to democratize access to tools that help students achieve their best, no matter where they live and go to school. The company has helped schools and teachers measurably improve student learning outcomes since 2013 with its Quick Key Mobile student feedback app. The company is now launching the Question Xchange platform - a peer-to-peer marketplace powered by machine learning and the crowd - that dramatically improves teachers’ and students’ ability  to check for mastery, identify learning gaps, and close those gaps through human-centric personalized learning pathways.