BetterLesson Announces Acquisition of Abl; Building a New Approach to Teaching and Learning Infrastructure

BetterLesson is on a mission to support every educator in developing the next generation of resourceful, compassionate, and resilient learners.

Today, our capacity to pursue that mission is expanding; despite – and perhaps because of – the obstacles our educators and students face having become exponentially more complex than they have ever been. 

Improving college, career, and community readiness for every student will always be first and foremost a critical priority for districts around the country. But, nationwide, our public school system is facing myriad financial pressures, staffing shortages, and increasingly complex challenges in supporting and engaging all students. 

These pressures must be addressed in order for every teacher to be as supported and impactful as our students need them to be.

That’s why Abl, a pioneer in designing academic pathways that ensure student success while maximizing impact of district resources, is now part of BetterLesson.

This development dramatically expands the capacity we – and Abl – have to help our schools, districts, and state education agencies to improve every student’s college, career, and community readiness.

BetterLesson has been helping improve teaching and learning since 2008

Founded by teachers for teachers, BetterLesson began in 2008 with the mission to provide a simple way for educators to connect with each other and share high-quality lesson plans. 

As our educators’ and students’ needs have evolved over the years, so have BetterLesson’s approaches to supporting them.

We’ve expanded from curated lesson plans and teaching strategies to a powerful and multi-faceted approach to professional learning that supports the whole educator, from classroom teacher to district leader.

K-12 professional learning is still too often one-size-fits-all; one more thing on top of other school or district initiatives, disconnected from each teacher’s reality in the classroom, or limited to one-off events. That’s why the Gates Foundation found that fewer than one-third of teachers were highly satisfied with their professional development and only 34% thought it had improved.

However, BetterLesson’s personalized, actionable approach shows the opposite. 95% of educators agree that BetterLesson coaching helps them positively impact student outcomes. And 97% of educators and leaders agree that BetterLesson Learning Walks help them positively impact student outcomes. BetterLesson’s ESSA III certification affirms that student learning outcomes are positively impacted by teachers who engage in our professional development.

Our multifaceted, year-round approach to data-driven professional development supports every educator from the classroom to district leadership with in-person and virtual workshops, 1:1 coaching, self-paced learning, and Learning Walks for classroom observations. 

Our Leader Hub now gives K-12 leaders an unparalleled view into the engagement and impact of their professional learning investment. And this data will only become more powerful, actionable, and vital as educators seek to measure – and defend – this necessary investment.

From student-centered instructional practice to comprehensive instructional leadership, to high-quality curriculum implementation, BetterLesson has helped improve instructional practice for more than 80,000 educators – and, ultimately, helped impact the learning experience of nearly 3 million students.

Directly improving instructional practice will always be at the core of what we do. And just as the challenges that teachers and education leaders face today have expanded and compounded, so will the ways that BetterLesson supports our educators and, ultimately, our students so far.

Amid myriad economic pressures, education and edtech landscapes are changing

With ESSER funds, the pandemic brought a massive influx of new challenges and new opportunities for schools and districts. The historic influx of funding allowed schools and districts to fill gaps in technology and personnel. But, this influx in funding was temporary.

In addition to the end of ESSER, schools and districts are facing increasingly complex economic and human capital challenges. Competition for student enrollment is likely to increase in 2025. Teacher shortages will continue to be a challenge, as will burnout and turnover among teachers and administrators.

Similarly, edtech providers saw ESSER’s pandemic-era increase in K-12 budget capacity coincide with an influx in venture capital. Both have ended.

Despite the headwinds facing education and K-12 partners, the mission of our public school system and its vital place in our national community and economy remains.

K-12 education leaders will be faced with new urgency to fulfill the promise of public education, with every minute and every dollar going to the greatest impact possible for every educator and every student.

The K-12 providers that thrive through the next era will be the ones that measurably and efficiently solve the most immediate and largest-scale challenges to teaching and learning. And, they will be the providers who join forces – as BetterLesson and Abl are doing – in order to amplify their impact.

Abl aligns district dollars with student opportunity, maximizing educational impact and efficiency

Abl ensures that scheduling, staffing, and student support strategies translate into meaningful access to career pathways and suitably rigorous coursework predictive of student post-secondary success.

Scheduling is an incredibly important aspect of ensuring that a district’s resources are utilized as efficiently and effectively as possible. It’s also a vital way of ensuring every student in our public schools experiences the highest-quality education possible – and graduates future-ready.

Abl’s academic journey analysis identifies course-taking patterns across a district and evaluates their effectiveness. Its powerful analytics examine how resources are distributed and their impact on student opportunities. That data turns into action with clear steps and powerful tools to shift district scheduling policy and practices to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of academic programming.

To date, Abl has impacted more than 2 million students in 81 school districts across 19 states. From Portland, Oregon’s public schools to the Rhode Island Department of Education, Abl’s ability to map students’ academic journeys and evidence-based approach to educational opportunity assessment have unlocked more rigorous pathways, freed educators from thousands of hours of manually managing scheduling, and saved districts millions of dollars in the process. 

Together, we look forward to expanding Abl’s impact even further, at a time when it’s so vitally needed nationwide. 

The future of K-12 teaching and learning

Our educators need to be more supported, make more progress, and meet greater challenges, with every dollar and every minute.

They need district initiatives to be tightly interconnected – with each other and with the reality in teachers’ classrooms. 

They need a unified view of the engagement, impact, and outcomes of every investment in teaching – and ultimately learning. That includes investments in teaching practice, curriculum adoption, and learning journeys. 

By bringing Abl into our cohesive vision for teaching and learning, we’re embarking on building a new approach to teaching and learning infrastructure.

This approach aligns professional learning, personalized coaching, academic management tools, and data reporting together to help educators improve teaching and learning – visibly, measurably, and sustainably.

The BetterLesson professional learning platform will expand to do exactly that.

Curriculum: High-quality curriculum implementation improves what’s being taught. 

Instruction: Instructional practice improves how students experience teaching in the classroom. 

Professional Learning: Data-driven, high-impact PL supports what’s being taught, how teaching happens, and how instructional leadership functions. 

Staffing and Scheduling: Academic scheduling ensures that the right students – and teachers – are placed in the right classrooms at the right time to support rigorous, equitable learning journeys that ensure student success while maximizing resource impact.

Learning Outcomes: Lagging indicators like grades and standardized test scores show educators what’s being learned.

And at the center of it all is data measuring changes in the factors that influence these outcomes: educator engagement, teaching practice in the classroom, coaching and PD learning objectives, student engagement, and learning outcomes.

We’re on a mission to build the future of K-12 teaching and learning. And to support every educator, and every student, along the way. 

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