Panorama Education, a Boston-based startup focused on collecting feedback to improve K-12 education, has raised $60 million in a Series C round of funding led by General Atlantic.
Existing backers Owl Ventures, Emerson Collective, Uncork Capital, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Tao Capital Partners have also participated in the fundraise.
The company plans to use its fresh capital towards product development, further deepening its district partnerships and hiring process.
Panorama Education provides research-based surveys for K-12 schools to gather feedback from students, families, parents, teachers, and staff. Students can customize their own questions in the feedback. It also offers tools to collect and analyze feedback from schools, networks, and districts, and tracks the progress of the survey completion rate. The platform has a facility to send reminder emails, personalized and interactive reports for every student.
The startup 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.
Started in 2012 by former Yale graduate student Aaron Feuer, Panorama Education's mission is to radically improve education for every student. The startup helps schools and districts transform their approach to education so that every student thrives in school, every student benefits from an excellent education, and every student graduates prepared with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets they need to thrive in the modern, ever-changing world.
Commenting on the latest development, Founder and CEO of Panorama Education Aaron Feuer said in a statement,
"We help schools survey students, teachers and parents to understand the environment and experiences of the school. And then we help schools measure social and emotional development so that in the same way you might have rigorous data on math, you can now get information about social-emotional learning and well-being. We met General Atlantic and realized the opportunity to reach the next level of impact for our schools. But it was important to me that we didn’t need to raise the money. We chose to because we want to be able to invest in the business."
Over 50 of the largest 100 school districts and state agencies in the country use its platform. In total, more than 1,500 school districts are among its customers. Clients include the New York City Department of Education, Clark County School District in Nevada, Dallas ISD in Texas, and the Hawaii Department of Education, among others. Currently, the company has
According to the CEO, since March 2020, Panorama has added 700 school districts to its customer base, nearly doubling the 800 it served just 18 months prior.
Managing Director of General Atlantic, Tanzeen Syed has said,
"Edtech has been an important area of focus for this firm. When we looked at the US education system, we thought that there was a massive opportunity and that we’re in the very early innings of using software and technology to really enhance the student experience."
The company claims that by using its software, districts can see benefits such as improved graduation rates, fewer behavior referrals, more time engaged in learning, and students building 'stronger supportive relationships with adults and peers.'
Panorama serves 13 million students in 23,000 schools across the United States, which means that 25% of American students are enrolled in a district served by the firm today.
In November 2017, Panorama Education had 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.
