It began with a particular human issue, as these things frequently do. As a boy, Stephen Schutz struggled with reading. The pages were challenging for him because of his dyslexia, and by the time he was nine, he was already lagging behind his classmates’ quiet expectations.

He returned to that old annoyance decades later, having transformed Blue Mountain Arts into one of Boulder’s more inquisitive publishing houses. More than any business plan, that memory influenced the website he started in August 2002 with his wife Susan and their son Jared. It’s difficult to ignore how frequently the most effective teaching resources originate from those who first experienced hardship.

The strategy is almost obstinately leisurely. Children can see, hear, and touch each letter in the untimed Starfall activities. For being slow, a preschooler does not have a scoreboard flashing at them. Early lessons were shaped by teachers, and the methodology is based on research by individuals such as Edward J. Kame’enui at the University of Oregon and G. Reid Lyon at the National Institutes of Health. The theory is straightforward: audiovisual play, sight words, and systematic phonics. It’s almost magical to watch a toddler tap a glowing capital A.

Growth was quiet. Nearly a million people had visited Starfall by May 2007, a 300% increase from the previous year. It was listed among the top 50 websites on the internet by TIME in 2011, nestled between industry titans that have since changed or collapsed. Starfall simply continued. Speaking with kindergarten teachers and parents, it seems as though the website has evolved into something like furniture—always present and subtly helpful. For ELL families, Pumarosa, its Spanish-to-English companion that was introduced in 2004, serves a similar purpose.

The money question is intriguing and a little out of the ordinary. Ads are not run by Starfall. It has never done so. The low-cost membership program, workbook sales, and Blue Mountain Arts provide the majority of the funding needed to keep the lights on. More books, animated songs, and math exercises are available with that membership.

This model might only be effective because the founders never intended to create a unicorn. One of the three founders, Jared Polis, went on to become Colorado’s governor. This is an odd enough second act to merit its own narrative.

More than anything else, the website shows how much of early education has been sold to the entertainment sector. Because it was created by a teacher, Starfall still feels that way. It runs on the same laptops that stream everything else, whether you visit a homeschool cooperative in rural Texas or a kindergarten classroom in suburban Ohio. Early childhood edtech appears to be a gold rush for investors. Conversely, Starfall implies that the long-lasting thing is the dull thing, done meticulously over an extended period of time by individuals who recalled what it was like to be illiterate.

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