Volume 59
This month we're celebrating two birthdays. Our newsletter and our podcast are both turning six. Wow. SIX years old.
Launching two really big things with a very small team, in the same year and the same month, while navigating a pandemic as a small business, was a little crazy. Well…a whole lot of crazy. And when I look at our very first issue now, I can see how much grief and change was happening in my life at the same time. In the span of about six weeks, my dad passed away from COVID and my niece was born. About a week later, I hit send on that first newsletter and dedicated it to both of them.
I loved my dad more than I can put into words. Nothing replaces that love, but my two nieces have filled my heart in a whole new way. They always manage to make me smile (even in the middle of meltdowns).
I find myself reflecting on the choices we make when life gets upended. Those moments can paralyze you. OR they can catalyze you and empower you to just do it and not be afraid.
In our first issue, we boldly claimed that most newsletters suck and that ours doesn't. Looking back, our first attempt did suck. :) But it was the beginning of a journey. Six years later, our newsletter and our podcast have fundamentally transformed who we are as an organization and how we serve the industry we love. I tell everyone who starts a content or community journey the same thing. It will change who your organization is, and I can't imagine us not creating consistent content to help our industry.
Right now, email matters more than ever, and it's also harder than ever. Inboxes are flooded, and ironically, AI is doing a lot of the flooding. The one way to stand out is to be human and to invest in relationships over time. People respond when they know the human behind the email.
There were plenty of days it felt like I was shouting into the ether and waiting for an echo. So when you write back, it makes me smile and lets me know you're reading.
So thank you for being on this journey with us. These six years have been some of the most challenging times and some of the best times, and I'm so happy to be on it with you.
With gratitude,
Elana
Your Content Repurposing Playbook
Steal our free playbook to level up your content output with the same methods that LCG uses. We've included best practices for turning a single source asset into every content format that supports it, including blog posts, LinkedIn posts and carousels, newsletters, short-form video, and email. Get the playbook and start building your own content engine.
Resources Powered by LCG
AI Bans, Fall Deadlines, and What Will Get You A Response On LinkedIn (podcast)
K-12 EdTech Go-to-Market: Why Fifty States Are Really Fifty Different Countries (podcast)
[Popular] LinkedIn's Algorithm in 2026: What Works to Drive Reach and Engagement (blog)
[Trending] Why K–12 EdTech Sales Requires More Than a Great Demo (podcast), check out this clip of advice for early-stage EdTech teams picking their first markets.
EdTech Good News
More students are staying enrolled past their first year, especially those who need it most. A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center finds first-to-second-year persistence rates rose across the board for the 2023 high school graduating class. Persistence among graduates of high schools in high-poverty areas climbed 1.7 percentage points to 76 percent, the largest gain of any group tracked in the report.
Marketing & Education Must Reads
Marketing
IBM found that thought leadership drives $107 million in annual revenue for the average enterprise, proof that your exec's LinkedIn post might be doing more for the bottom line than that mid-year rebrand. (Content Marketing Institute)
Before you spin up another LinkedIn Company Page for that acquisition or regional team, ask whether it makes your presence clearer, stronger, and more useful, because every extra page means a fresh audience to build, more analytics to track, and a follower count split thin enough to make your brand look smaller than it is. (Michelle J Raymond, Social Media for B2B Growth podcast)
A view counts after one second on TikTok but two seconds on LinkedIn, a good reminder to check how each platform defines the number before you compare it in your next report. (Matt Navarra)
Only about 46.5% of your LinkedIn impressions are unique humans, and it gets weirder: posts using the "celebrate an occasion" template pull 1.38x more reach than a real, organic post, but only 0.94x the likes and 0.81x the comments, so the format trades real engagement for a bigger number on the dashboard. (Richard van der Blom, Algorithm Insights Report)
Education
Researchers point to a motivation shift instead of a biology problem behind kids skipping hard tasks, so maybe put the pitchforks down. (Edutopia)
The newly released PISA results show the steepest reading decline on record, and Juliani points to curriculum instead of classroom tech as the real driver, since some of the most device-heavy countries are still topping the charts. (A.J. Juliani)
Massachusetts got it right with real, externally validated graduation requirements, while New York's Portrait of a Learner framework risks turning into an every-teacher-grades-however-they-want free-for-all. (Fordham Institute)
Districts with shrinking enrollment often land bigger funding increases, and a companion piece traces the real driver to falling birth rates rather than school choice. (EdChoice)
[Bonus] One Florida district built an AI guidebook that starts with the learning goal first and makes AI earn its way in, asking students to explain what they accepted, rejected, or changed, and why. Credit to Martin County School District and Superintendent Michael Maine, and thanks to Holly Clark for sharing it with us.
In Good Company
This is our chance to brag on the clients and partners who make up our community. Here's what they've been up to lately:
BoardSync just released a free guide of 10 practical ways to build a fundraising culture for executive directors, board chairs, development committees, and board members.
CAST received a $300,000 Catalyze Challenge grant to extend its UDL approach into career exploration, partnering with rural Montana educators and middle schoolers to co-design learning experiences connected to the state's emerging photonics industry.
NSSI is sponsoring an Oct. 6 edWebinar on math fact automaticity, where researcher Dr. Brian Poncy and Fulton County Schools' math director unpack why students need basic facts down cold before they can tackle deeper problem solving.
Teach For America is celebrating 35 years with a Summit in Las Vegas next month, bringing corps members and alumni back together across every field they've since moved into, from classrooms and school leadership to business, healthcare, and government, to find new ways to put their time and expertise toward education.
Meta Finally Did Something Cool...
Meta's new AI agent, Muse, just launched, and people are actually saying nice things about it, which might be a first for Meta and AI in the same sentence. Here's how to get started if you want your own personal agent filling out forms and booking dinner reservations while you supervise like a nervous parent.
The results, so far, are wonderfully inconsistent. Meta's chief AI officer promised the #MuseMoneyChallenge could save you $1,000. One tech writer tried it and squeezed out $35 in forgotten Patreon subscriptions, while this YouTuber is out here claiming $800 a year in real savings. Your mileage may vary. A lot.
And in maybe the most 2026 sentence we've written all year, Wall Street is nervous. Goldman Sachs has an actual "consumer inertia" stock basket, companies like AT&T, Allstate, Netflix, and Expedia that dropped after Muse launched, on the theory that an AI agent which cancels your unused subscriptions for you is bad news if your business model depends on people forgetting to.
Extra Bonus:
If you or someone on your team is using Claude for Teachers, Drew Bent at Anthropic wants to hear from you. This is an important chance to provide feedback on something that changes daily. He's collecting feedback on what's working and what needs improvement. Leave a comment or grab time on his calendar.