Kermit Cook leads Penn Foster, an online school tracing its roots to an 1890 correspondence program for coal miners that today graduates more than 90,000 career-focused students a year. He shares how radically affordable, asynchronous learning is finally delivering on its long-promised outcomes with AI, why an AI writing-feedback tool moved the needle while an AI tutor didn't, and how employer scrutiny of training ROI is reshaping the market. He wraps with a leadership philosophy rooted in his years as a Teach For America teacher.

These are the same themes we'll be exploring with a small group of CEOs, investors, and operators at the StartEd CEO Summit at EdTech Week 2026.

If this is relevant to what you're building, you can learn more or request an invite here.