In Close with Pete Weir

A leading edtech’s head of product shares perspective and future.

INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero

The EdTech Digest team recently sat down with Discovery Education’s Chief Product Officer Pete Weir for a wide-ranging interview on several topics including edtech philosophy in the post-COVID world, trends the company uncovered in its annual Education Insight Report, and how its findings impact its recently announced back-to-school enhancements. Read on to see Pete’s thoughts on these topics and more.

Greetings Pete, good to sit down with you again! I am reminded that five years ago this March, the COVID pandemic hit the United States upending life, and education, as we know it. Can you speak a bit as to how Discovery Education’s philosophy of edtech has changed (or not) since the pandemic?

Good to be with you again Victor. 

Many aspects of our philosophy have remained constant through COVID and beyond.  Our desire to spark student curiosity and make real-world connections for students has been at the heart of what we do for over 20 years. Likewise, we have held fast to the belief that edtech should do four specific things:

• Save teachers time and effort so they can spend more time with students
• Help scale instructional excellence
• Ignite curiosity and engage students
• Drive the development of the skills and knowledge that will support student success both now and in the future

That said, there are a few areas where our philosophy has probably changed on the margins since COVID.  For example, as a digital-first organization we have tried to be cognizant of device equity within the districts we partner with.  While COVID presented many challenges, one unintended benefit was the improvement to device equity and access for students.  This improved access allowed our teams to lean into technologies like AR/VR, which allows us to immerse students in environments like a trip to Mars or visiting the Triassic period. Knowing a large majority of students in K-12 have access to devices has allowed us to invest in experiences that require a device to experience best. 

Last year, Discovery Education released the first annual report looking at the realities of the current state of K-12 education. That report, titled Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow, contained some interesting findings.  Can you outline some of those?

Sure! In the event your readers missed it, late last year Discovery Education released its inaugural annual report entitled The 2024-2025 Education Insights Report: Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow. This report utilized anonymous surveys from The Harris Poll to capture prevailing attitudes and beliefs from superintendents, teachers, parents, and students. We then compiled those surveys into a comprehensive view of the current educational landscape. While there are a lot of interesting insights included in the report, let me highlight a few:

First, let’s explore what teachers look for in classroom tools. According to the Education Insights Report, 94% of teachers surveyed reported that they are seeking classroom tools that will give them time to focus on students.

‘According to the Education Insights Report, 94% of teachers surveyed reported that they are seeking classroom tools that will give them time to focus on students.’

While this is perhaps not especially noteworthy—after all, don’t we all want technology to save us time?—this did validate Discovery Education’s belief that creating resources that save teachers time and effort should be at the core of our product philosophy.

Another interesting finding in the Education Insights Report was around Artificial Intelligence. When it comes to AI, 72% of teachers and parents, as well as 85% of superintendents surveyed, believe that AI-powered, customized learning materials are more trustworthy when built by experts in education. In addition, 84% of teachers and 90% of superintendents believe that as teachers receive more training on how to use AI, it will become a more trusted tool in education. These findings support our belief that opportunities exist to thoughtfully integrate AI into digital resources to help teachers save time and scale best practices.

The Education Insights Report also found that students want to learn more about life skills. 88% of district leaders, teachers, parents, and students rate life skills as very important, but only 57% of students believe their schools adequately teach the life skills needed for future success. Clearly, there is room here for edtech companies to provide teachers better support in connecting what is being taught in the classroom with its practical application in a potential career.

The last finding in the Education Insights Report I want to highlight is focused on adaptive learning. 93% of teachers believe adaptive learning resources would help students learn more effectively, and 75% of students say learning at their own pace would increase the likelihood of them engaging with lessons, feeling empowered in school, and more prepared for the future. We believe this points to a huge appetite for high-quality adaptive learning resources in U.S. classrooms.

There are many, many more very interesting insights to be found in our 2024-2025 Education Insights report, so I encourage your readers to download it today.

Shifting gears a bit, yesterday Discovery Education announced during a special event new enhancements to Discovery Education Experience and DreamBox Math. Could you outline for readers some of the major enhancements you made, and perhaps explain how Discovery Education’s Education Insights Report informed those enhancements?

Absolutely! Let’s begin by looking at the major enhancements we’ve made to Discovery Education Experience, the essential companion for engaged K-12 classrooms.

The Education Insights Report clearly showed that educators want to find more time in their day. In response, we added a new feature called Core Curriculum Complements to Discovery Education Experience. This enhancement automatically provides teachers with engaging resources that have been handpicked by our curriculum experts to enhance districts’ core curriculum—simplifying lesson planning and ensuring tight alignment with district priorities. We’ve also added a Personalized Content Recommendations feature, which provides individual teacher content suggestions based on their unique profiles and preferences, or what is frequently used by other educators like them.

In response to the findings on educators’ willingness to use AI tools from trusted providers, we’ve enhanced our AI-powered assessment tool so that educators can more easily create high-quality assessments using vetted resources right from directly within Experience. This intelligent AI-powered tool allows educators to customize assessments according to reading level, question type, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and more— ensuring optimal learning experiences for students. Educators can easily review and tailor the questions— and once ready, can be exported to a variety of formats. The assessment tool is the first in a series of AI-powered tools that we have slated to add to our service, so stay tuned in the coming months for more news on this topic.

To support educators’ efforts to connect classroom instruction to the “real world”, Career Connect— the award-winning tool that connects K-12 classrooms with real industry professionals— will now be accessible to all partners using Discovery Education Experience. With this new feature, educators and students using Experience now can directly connect to the professionals, innovations, and skills of today’s workforce like never before. What’s more, Experience is delivering a variety of new career pathway resources, virtual field trips, and career profiles to users to help build career awareness, invite exploration, and help students prepare for, and be excited about, their future.

Finally, I want to highlight the enhancements we are making to our adaptive learning resources. As evidenced by our acquisition of DreamBox Learning in 2024, Discovery Education understands the importance of adaptive learning resources in the classroom, and the results of the Education Insights Report further validates our position. In DreamBox Math, for example, we are updating our lessons to make it easier to start, play, and complete lessons. In addition, we’ve completely remade DreamBox Math’s middle school experience with a new layout and color scheme, and a reorganized Lesson Chooser that makes it easy for students to identify teacher-assigned lessons from their personalized lessons. Finally, we created a new interactive curriculum guide that helps educators explore the breadth and scope of DreamBox content by grade and standard to locate, preview, and play lessons.

Historically, Discovery Education has made this type of announcement in late June. Why did you move up the announcement this year?

Despite the heroic efforts of educators in the five years since the COVID pandemic, most students in the United States still struggle to reach the academic levels their pre-pandemic peers achieved in reading and math.

‘…most students in the United States still struggle to reach the academic levels their pre-pandemic peers achieved in reading and math.’

In addition, Discovery Education’s own research shows there is a curiosity crisis brewing in U.S. classrooms. Going back to the Education Insights Report, we found that 82% of students and 75% of teachers believe there are not enough opportunities to be curious in today’s classrooms. In addition, 94% of teachers surveyed agree that curiosity is key to unlocking learning, but 80% of students say there are not enough opportunities to be curious.

Finally, as part of my team’s work, we constantly talk to educators at all levels from school systems around the country. Teachers and administrators consistently express heightened urgency around the importance of closing post-COVID learning gaps. They know what the stakes are, and Discovery Education is dedicated to giving them the tools and resources they need, when they need them, to close those gaps.

Looking ahead, what is your company’s vision for the future?   

We remain very focused on expanding our reach and impact through a partnership model with district administrators and educators.  In the post-COVID world, Discovery Education seeks to help bridge gaps in achievement and curiosity by developing solutions that drive engagement and results for students.

To achieve this, we are pursuing a variation of the strategy that helped propel our growth before COVID.  We’re focused making real-world connections for students and making teacher’s jobs a little bit easier and hopefully more enjoyable.  The cornerstone of this effort is our work to expand the reach of our flagship service, Discovery Education Experience, as well as our series of Techbooks, Mystery Writing and Mystery Science, DreamBox Math, DreamBox Reading, Doodle Learning, and Pivot.

We’ve created suite of purpose-built products over the years, and we believe we have a tremendous opportunity to grow our impact on teaching and learning with these award-winning services, which are aligned to the philosophy I mentioned earlier that says edtech should do four things:

• • • Save teachers time and effort so they can spend more time with students
    • Help scale what we know is best practice
    • Ignite curiosity and engage students and
    • Drive the development of the skills and knowledge that will support success beyond graduation

The enhancements to our digital services we announced yesterday are indicative of our commitment to innovating on the strong set of products we created. These resources are tried and tested in the field and are scientifically proven to support student achievement. We never consider our job done; Discovery Education will continue to improve our solutions as we work to get them into the hands of even more educators and students.

What direction is education moving in five years removed from COVID?

That, Victor, is a much more difficult question.

When I’ve been asked this question 3, 5, or 7 years ago, I’d begin my answer by saying, “We are living in an era of rapid change the likes of which we’ve not seen before.”

Well, the velocity of change in education today is faster than ever. In addition, the nature of the rapid change—from both a policy and technological perspective—occurring nationwide makes it difficult to definitively answer this question.

What I can say is that the educators I speak to—those here at work at Discovery Education and those in the field—are more dedicated than ever to preparing their students for bright futures. NAEP scores show us that we have a lot of work ahead of us. But if educators continue to stay engaged in their work and if students continue to come to school ready to learn, I believe education in the United States will continue to move in a positive direction.

Thanks for your time, Pete! 

// Editor’s note: Readers interested in learning more about the recent enhancements made to Discovery Education’s products can visit the event homepage to watch the recording of the event.

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Victor Rivero is the Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com

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