♪ >> welcome to a special edition "2020oomberg technology," year of crisis: virtual classroom." we will cover the state of schooling worldwide as technology has transformed the way millions of students are learning amid the covid-19 pandemic. we will talk to the head of google classrooms, the founder of an online academy, investors and innovators. first, a sobering assessment of where we are now. ofe is former u.s. secretary

education arne duncan. we should not be in this situation. other countries are not. we should not even be talking today. lost,f thousands of lives the impact on millions of millions of children, education around the country, is extraordinary. it is tragic, there is no easy way to put it. having said that, on the local level, unbelievable leadership empathy, compassion, urgency. i'm talking about superintendents across the country trying to figure out food distribution, telehealth, social and emotional health during tough times, and yes, education. horrific leadership at the top and amazing and inspiring leadership at the local level. so as a have four kids, parent i am feeling this, my kids are learning remotely as we speak. we are lucky we have access to

technology. still, even i am concerned. what are your biggest concerns about how this could play out? mr. duncan: on socially, multiple concerns. one is the political pressure could physically open. open -- is not to pressure to physically open. the goal is not to open, to stay open. there is a rush to open and then you shut back down, you traumatize. the health risks are very significant. that is one. a hierarchy of needs and we have so many children who are newly food insecure because of families losing jobs. schools have done an amazing job of keeping food distribution throughout the pandemic. schools are social safety nets.

this sounds a little odd, that it was easier when everything was shut down. now in the hybrid situations where kids might be coming two or three days a week, that can be more complicated. people are working so hard to make sure that millions of young people who are hungry who maybe were not hungry six or eight months ago have access to food. the telehealth piece is so important. teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists. kids that were dealing with trauma before and now additional children dealing with trauma, and figuring out the best way to help kids learn, whether it is virtually or hybrid. there is a small percentage of children who learn better in this situation, but there are many children who are falling behind. i worry about the most vulnerable and most marginalized who will fall the furthest behind. i would like to see a national tutoring program to help kids catch up. there has been no appetite for

investing in public education, unfortunately. emily: consulting form -- from mckinsey and company is tracking education trends and has raised similar concerns but also sees silver linings. we spoke to their education practice manager. technology does something is really well. to help students adapt a mastery approach, to master one topic. but technology also doesn't do some things well. on the relationship side, for example,. of 2018ome analysis results across 50 different countries and what we found is students who use a tablet in their classroom perform half a grade below the students who don't in math, reading and science. emily: you are kidding. emma: it is important to integrate what we know works

with tech but not uncritically adopt a bunch of devices in the classroom. emily: there are some systems looking to make dramatic changes, like some schools in cleveland considering throwing out grade levels altogether. is that something good that should stay or something not so good that should go? emma: i think we are in the midst of a vast experiment. we've never had a shift to remote learning across the whole nation. i think those experiments will be important. i think what we really need is data to understand which of these are working well and which are not. scrapping grade levels is one example. moving to mastery based learning approach more broadly is another example. i think what is really important is that we are gathering the data we need to assess and work out whether we are delivering for our children. emily: you also talk about the importance of relationships. how do teachers foster

relationships at this time? emma: that is really critical. one of the things we hear especially from teachers is students are coming back into the classroom traumatized by everything you were just talking about. how do we improve remote learning that is focused on relationships, that is critical. at the beginning of each day is an example. another is checking in with every family and every student. what some districts are doing is an assessment. it's critically important to work out at the beginning of the are how much learning these kids lost. you also want to bring kids back in and sit them down. already traumatized. they are scheduling time one-on-one with each student come up between teacher and student, to do reading assessments.

you both start to rebuild the student-teacher relationship and you also understand where the student is so you can design curriculum to help them. emily: you mentioned the learning gap could have an impact on earning potential. what about on gdp and the economy as a whole? emma: absolutely. in that same report, we looked at the potential gdp loss and we estimated the gdp loss would be year by70 billion per 2040. that's about 1% loss of gdp. we can put in strong programs now to help kids catch up lost learning, i can sure they are still exposed to grade level learning but that is matched with high intensity tutoring to help them fill in the gaps they lost in the spring, and summer may be losing in the fall. emily: millions of students around the globe and their parents are using virtual

interfaces like canvas along with -- like canvas. there are also the development of micro-schools or pandemic pods. online education pioneer says there's an urgent need to make online learning more equitable. >> this is been a dream of mine a long time. obviously we can help student learn at their own time and pace with feedback. tools for teachers to keep track on what students are working on. the ideal is to have that and in person whatever you want to call in a classroom or video conference. when covid hit last spring and we saw a huge variation in how well schools were able to , some schools and some kids were doing incredible jobs, while some schools couldn't do anything at all.

i started talking to volunteers and said we need to build something where we can match kids who need help with amazing tutors and teachers from around the world who are willing to give that help. that is what this is, it is academy,from khan volunteer driven and a not-for-profit project. we have the capacity for a few thousand more students. that haveton of them volunteer tutors. let kids know they can go to the website. i encourage everyone to register, we will expand to k-12 and other subjects. emily: a lot of things have to go right for this to work. you've also said this can lead to an education catastrophe. are you seeing signs of that so far? sal: we are still early in the school year but the catastrophe scenario is not that far off. 20%, 30% of the population that doesn't have

sufficient internet access. school districts have done a heroic job eating laptops out and local telecom carriers have been doing a great job with internet access, but we still see 5%, 10% of the population is not a gauge whatever reason. a bee they are young kids, they don't have enough bandwidth, we don't know. 10%, these were already the kids who were probably disproportionately not engaging in school. now if they are not even being reached for six months, a year, not only will they not learn over that period, they will atrophy and they might lose the structures of school. the worst thing is it will be bad for mental health. distance learning is most kids lifeline to community and socialization and friendship. these kids are completely disconnected and i worry what will happen. emily: if you could quantify at, are you concerned this will be a

lost year for many children. and if so, how many children? sal: i wish i could say something more positive. i think the reality is, in the coming year, middle-class children, upper-middle-class children are probably going to do fine. they will be engaged and there could be some silver linings where parents are more engaged than ever and providing them extra support, while about 20% or 30% of the population, it will be a difficult scenario. the schools might not have the resources to support them appropriately, they might not have the resources to support them at home appropriately. that's already the group that might have been struggling. if you have a year of this -- everyone i have talked to, the whole crisis people have been treating this as a series of one or two month rolling crises and now we are six months into it and any reasonable scenarios around vaccines and therapies keep this crisis through the

school year and into the next school year. emily: coming up, the investor view on the potential and pitfalls of online education. you are watching "2020 year of crisis: virtual classroom." this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ welcome back to a special edition, "2020 year of crisis: virtual classroom." technology and access to it has posed challenges to millions of students and educators, and is also providing opportunity. googlee to the head of classroom. totechnology has a huge role play in making education more valuable. and i would like to say that for covid, a lot of teachers do not use technology. it was not really what they were trying to do.

usually we would never go to work without a computer or think about going through our day without technology. i hope that through this, all of the education technology tools rise to the occasion and we can get to the point where they are still helpful and valuable. emily: earlier in the pandemic, security was a huge issue. we saw hackers jumping into zoom meetings, zoom bombing was a thing. what are you doing to protect privacy, to protect the integrity of the classroom, given you have small children on there who might not have been connected to the internet at this point in their lives? zach: that's a really good question. security and safety are considerations when building our product and how they have been designed from the beginning. evolve had to adapt and as the world has evolved.

in march, we made some quick updates to google meet, so only teachers could mute other people. we found some students doing that to each other. recently announced upcoming changes to give teachers more control in meeting experiences, like who can present or chat to each other. emily: what do you see is google's role post covid? obviously google is playing a critical part of keeping people making remote learning possible. toand when life goes back normal, where does that leave your efforts in education? zach: we were in the business long before covid, and even before covid we had 50 million students around the world using google classroom. i think technology has a unique role to play in being helpful to learning. i hope that as we come out of

this, out the other side of this, a lot more teachers, a lot more schools will see the benefits of technology and are not to scarred -- too scarred by the hard times and are able to bring that back and make use of technology and all of the ways it can help. emily: does that mean you think it will change education as we know it? zach: i think a lot of how the world works, including education, has changed from this point forward. how technology is helpful in learning is one of the things that we don't know exactly what will happen, but i do think that a lot of promise and potential, especially as the technology world is rising to be helpful in this moment. emily: some investors are seizing the moment while others wait it out on the virtual sidelines. here is jeff richards, an

investor in public and private education technology around the world. jeff: people initially try to sell technology into the existing education system and our system is largely government run and the government is not an impressive adopter of early technology. in an ideal world, the school systems would have been prepared for this digital transition. most of them got started in q2. i think you will see a shift and adoption of zoom and remote learning and the applications we talked about. but outside the u.s., there are 7 billion people outside the u.s., the trend has been happening for some time. have portfolio companies with tens of millions of users on digital learning platforms that are way ahead of companies in the u.s. and i think you will will probably it

happen outside the u.s. first. 20 years ago, there were only 100 million people on the internet and now you have several billion, creating access not only to education but finance, banking, all of the things we have known in the u.s. as a modern economy for a long time. emily: that said, you can have the greatest software in the world but if it can't reach a student, it is meaningless. >> i think the most pressing need is infrastructure and internet access. if you don't have those things, the rest of the other things, whether it is online curriculum, management tools, all of that doesn't really matter if you don't have the primary tools. in terms of the companies that are operating, i think it's less companies and i've seen a lot of work around nonprofit trying to make a difference and some survived -- some trying to make

it more affordable and there's some government regulatory trying to give more access, but that doesn't mean they're going after the infrastructure that is needed. in terms of the concentrated effort, we have yet to see across the country. you see it more the school district level and the local level and some states taking more of a charge. where are the opportunities for investment? there's been an explosion in demand for supplement to learning tools, live online classes, how big an opportunity is that and does the opportunity remain once things go back to normal, whatever that is and people don't necessarily need to supplement their education? >> that's a great question. as someone who has been in the sector for several years, the sector has room and bust, you have moments where investors are

super excited to invest and moments where they are like tech is terrible and you shouldn't put money toward that. we are in that boom period. one of the areas where we are seeing excitement is the supplemental learning, primarily for k-12 students. i think there are massive tailwinds in the market because there is online live and it is more exciting. it makes it more accessible. also companies that connect classes of 6-8 students, students meeting that might not ever otherwise meet. are a lot more positives that come out of the experience and engagement the, -- engagement that comes out of the experience. will --nk a lot of that post covid. when you think about school districts and public schools, a lot of things cut our enrichment and supplemental learning and the cork curriculum asked the

core curriculum remains. companiesrting to see targeting learning pots and been able to facilitate learning pods. most of the parents i talk about want to send students back to school after covid, i am skeptical whether those remain. emily: coming, learning a new school -- skill or trade from the best in the world. we will step into a master class with the company ceo himself, next. you are watching "2020 year of crisis: virtual classroom." this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to a special edition, "2020 year of crisis: virtual classroom." ceo has beens

candid about his struggles with education and wants to make sure no child or adult is left behind. we end with his story and the demand to keep learning from the best in class in a covid-19 world. david: one of the things that will change education is it is forcing almost everybody on the planet to ask themselves one question, how do i learn online? that is a question lots of people had never thought of for my and on of the impacts -- thought of before, and one of the impacts there are types of online learning that are better than in person learning. it lets you pick who in the world you want to learn that thing from? it is not dictated by where i live, what school i go to. if you are going to do that, one of the things i allow you to do is say i want to learn from the best in the world. i think that's why we see a surge in the amount of people taking master class right now. emily: you shared with us that you struggle with a stutter,

which has been a subject of national conversation with joe biden running for president and sharing his struggles with a stutter. with so many kids remote around the world, one of the things i am concerned about is how do you celebrate the individual and deal with the individual challenges each student has? how concerned are you about that given your own personal journey? david: it is a great question. hard to beis really a kid and to stutter. i still stutter now. one of the hardest things is you are teased for it and people spend time thinking about how you are saying it rather than the idea. that is hard because i want people to think about what i am saying and not how. one of the nice things about online, and it is not a

placement for everything in person, but it allows you to go one-on-one so you can meet with people in your us is, you can get a tutor. it is harder in a full classroom for any one teacher to be able to spend time with one student. online, it allows you to get that one on one help. i don't think doing things online takes away from that, i think you have to work harder to find it. emily: how have you overcome that in your personal life? you are the ceo of a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars if not more. one of the things that helped me the most is i was set anby parents that expectation early in my life that that was not going to be a thing they would allow to stop

me. emily: that is it for this special edition of "bloomberg technology," "2020 year of crisis: virtual classroom." i am emily chang in san francisco. thank you for joining us. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ you can go your own way

♪ go your own way your wireless. your rules. only xfinity mobile lets you choose shared data, unlimited or a mix of each. and switch anytime so you only pay for the data you need. switch and save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. with the carrier rated #1 in customer satisfaction. call, click, or visit your local xfinity store today.

yousef: welcome to the "best of bloomberg daybreak: middle east." the uae and bahrain signed landmark agreements towards establishing normal ties with israel. qatar's assistant foreign minister says her nation will not be joining the party. we hear exclusively from her. we look at how amazon is teaming up with a key abu dhabi fund to provide support for the emirates. ♪ first, the uae and bahrain this