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Rachael Nemeth, co-founder and CEO of Opus Training, joined me to share how Opus leverages real operational data to deliver personalized, actionable training in over 130 languages through mobile devices to bridge the learning gap for the 110 million Americans who aren’t desk-based. This was a fascinating conversation, if for no other reason than so few companies focus on these front-line workers and that the training Opus provides isn’t your standard compliance-based stuff, but the education that will most benefit individual employees, teams, and sites based on their actual performance on the job.

Rachael shared her own journey from the restaurant industry to building Opus. Our conversation explored the shortcomings of traditional training metrics, the importance of manager enablement, and the need for technology that truly serves and empowers America’s frontline workforce.

Michael Horn

Welcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I’m really excited because we get to focus on an area we don’t talk nearly enough, in my opinion, about in the conversation around helping individuals skill up and figure out potential and so forth. And none other than Rachael Nemeth. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Opus Training, which we’re going to hear all about today. But I think the motto is turning training into traction. Rachael, thank you so much for joining us.

I’m excited to hear about your story and about Opus.

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah, thanks for welcoming me. I’m excited to be here.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. So, why don’t you just start us off, like baseline, you know, tax, like what is Opus Training before we get into the backstory of how you created it?

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah, so when you think about the 2,100 learning management systems that are in the world today, it’s obviously just from that number, it is a very fragmented market. Opus is a training operating system that’s designed specifically for the 110 million Americans who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. So, it is a big product for a big workforce that is largely underserved. What’s special about Opus, though, is that we aren’t just helping teams create training, which is kind of, you know, a lot of what you see in a traditional learning system. We’re actually helping operators change behavior in their workflow by using live operational data from the business, which we’ll talk a little bit more about. Yeah. But we’re sort of taking knowledge to the next level, knowing that this workforce is changing.

Michael Horn

Okay, I have so many questions that I’m excited to geek out on this, but let’s back up a little bit. Tell us the story. Most people don’t focus on the frontline, as you said, right? And the people who are not in front of computers when they picture their upskilling or reskilling platforms. How did you decide to build Opus Training? What was the background that you brought to it and the problem that you saw that you wanted to solve?

Switching careers to teaching English

Rachael Nemeth

It was definitely not an overnight, you know, light bulb moment. Maybe just to rewind, so my background is not in tech. It’s actually early. It was not in teaching either. My background’s in restaurants. So, I worked for 13 years in the restaurant industry, most recently for Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group.

Michael Horn

Best hospitality anywhere.

Rachael Nemeth

If you’re a foodie, you know Danny. And before that, I cut my teeth in baking manufacturing. My mom worked in bakeries for 43 years. My grandfather owned a barbecue chain in Kansas City called Don’s World of Beef. So, I have this sort of rich family history of the food service. And candidly, I thought I was kind of destined for it. And also very candidly, I spent my whole life trying to get out of the industry. It is a terrible industry.

You’re overworked, you’re underpaid.

Michael Horn

Listeners know my wife’s,, that’s her background and her industry and Some of the work conditions and personalities, shall we say, are not Danny Meyer. So, yes, I get it.

Rachael Nemeth

And I still eat spaghetti over the sink. Like, I do not go out to fancy dinners. I still eat on the go because that is the life I’ve lived. But maybe just fast forward to about 10 years ago, I was looking to make a transition. And so, I quit the industry to start teaching English as a second language. My second passion is language. And within a couple of months of teaching and getting my certification and thereafter starting to earn my master’s, I got pulled back into the industry. I got a call from the executive chef of Gramercy Tavern, Mike Anthony, who said, hey, I hear that you teach English and you know restaurants.

And I said, yes, what’s your point?

Michael Horn

Guilty on both, yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

And I was like, how did you find me? And he said, I want you to teach English to my kitchen team. And I filed for the LLC for ESL Works the next day.

Michael Horn

Wow.

Rachael Nemeth

I had always wanted to run a business. I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, but I never was chasing an idea. I’m a big believer in ideas that sort of float around and it’s if you catch them, you do. So, I chased it and the next day ESL Works was born. That was 2013. I basically ran a logistics business. I was hiring green, fresh out of college teachers, and I was teaching them how to teach English in restaurants.

They were, I was deploying them across all of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens to teach a 90-minute English class between shifts. So for anyone listening who has not worked in a restaurant, that is the only time you can effectively teach a classroom training. People have second jobs and kids and commutes and all these other things. That was very successful. I wouldn’t call it a brick and mortar because I didn’t have anything except whiteboards that I was taking on the subway, but it was a really successful services business. And when we got to, you know, a few years in and we really wanted to scale, the only options were franchise or license or digitize and productize.

And the latter was obvious to me, but I didn’t know how to do it. So, I spent about 18 months in incubators and testing different products. I ended up landing on a product that delivered English language training over SMS and WhatsApp to frontline teams. At that point, it was still specifically in restaurants, but then this is sort of the untold story. So that was, oh my gosh, you know how when you think back on time, you say 10 years for so long and then you’re like, wait, but 3 years has passed now.

Michael Horn

3 years. Well, and I think COVID has accelerated that. Let’s be clear. I was talking to someone, they were like, how long have you been doing X? And I was like, it could be 3 years, but it also could be 6. I’m not sure. Oh yeah, I get it.

Origin of Opus SMS system

Rachael Nemeth

So, so, you know, this is like, I was joking with my aunt the other day, like she was saying, you know, there’s a difference between a biography and a memoir,a memoir is what you recall. And so anyway, this is my memoir of the timing, but COVID happened. So March 13th, I got a call from a customer. We had already launched this SMS product. I was actually in the middle of raising a round of funding, a seed round of funding. And they said, we’re shutting down. And then, of course, you know, the CDC announced and everything shut down, and I said, well, how can I help? And he said, I’m not sure, but like, we obviously don’t need ESL right now.

The next day, I went home, called all of our customers, and said, you know, and at that point, the world had shut down.

Michael Horn

Right.

Rachael Nemeth

I said, listen, like, we’re not going to invoice you. We know this is a nightmare. Whatever we can do to help, just let us know. So, I can’t take credit for this idea because our customers came up with it, but they said, listen

Michael Horn

Those are the best ideas though, right? Where your customers bring you to something of real demand and need.

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah. And this, talk about ultimate need, right? Like, it was the beginning of COVID, everyone was on lockdown, but restaurants were switching their operating model to off-premise. They were online and they needed to keep their employees safe. So, we repurposed The ESL Works SMS product into a COVID safety product that delivered daily SMS messages and quizzes to team members before they went in for their shift so that they knew what was new and how to feel safe and protected at work. It was a public initiative. I had, I think, a quarter of a million dollars in the bank and a prayer and didn’t charge a thing and basically said, we’re gonna just try to help and see what happens. We grew to 20,000 users in 4 weeks.

Michael Horn

Wow. 20,000 users, meaning like different businesses?

Rachael Nemeth

Different businesses. Yeah. Again, I mean, this was so lightning fast. Actually, if you go to Wayback Machine, you know, that online, you know, database where you can see old websites, you can probably look up Stop COVID still and see our old website. But we lost the URL long ago. I was like, I don’t want to think about COVID ever again, but But the premise was that a business could go to the website, they could sign up very quickly, they could upload a spreadsheet or CSV of all of their employees’ names, phone numbers, and it would text their whole team instantly in 5 different languages ,these updates. But that was all the validation I needed to know how to scale this thing, right? Now, fast forward, and Opus is no longer on SMS. We have a beautiful mobile app and all these other things, but that’s really the root of Opus.

It was this kind of volunteer project. I had amazing engineers who were also volunteering, many of whom still work with us today, but now I pay them. And to your point, it’s sort of like the purest product development story of customers having a real need and meeting them in the moment to get it done.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. So now you fast forward, you’re working with a lot of restaurants people would know the names of Luke’s Lobster, right? Like Just Salad, the José Andrés Group, right? And restaurant Smashburger, et cetera, et cetera. As I understand it, you probably have many, many, many, many more. And, and you mentioned that you’re doing training based on the, I think you said something like the data that they recognize is most crucial for their own operations.

Which I assume is in contrast to training data that someone else once thought was important as a static sort of living thing, as opposed to, which sounds much more emergent based on the needs of the business. But maybe unpack that, tell me where I’m wrong, and how do you build training around that on demand, and if that’s the case?

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah, and I mean, I’ll give you the quick summary of it, and then maybe we can rewind and just talk about metrics too, because I feel like some metrics are just so backwards these days, but very strong opinions about the word engagement. But basically, I’ll give you like a practical example.

Michael Horn

Perfect.

Rachael Nemeth

Imagine that you are a Paris Baguette, right? You’re a fast-growing brand, hundreds of locations, and you get all of this feedback from your guests on Google and Yelp and all these things. And you’re, you really are probably aggregating that data somewhere with your marketing team, right? Like they’re trying to figure out what people like, what they don’t like, how they respond to the brand. The status quo today is that training and operations teams are getting none of that data, but it directly relates to them, right? Those are the teams that they work with every day. So, what we can do at Opus is we can pipe those Google reviews into Opus, and we can analyze it and automatically generate recommendations.

Automating training for franchises

Rachael Nemeth

Based on the trends that we’re seeing against a location, a franchise, an individual, and we can use that to automatically generate a course. You know, maybe it says, hey, you know, Michael, you know, you’re saying that you have this pastry, but none of your team knows what it is. We actually need to train them on it. Or maybe it’s just a retrain, or maybe it’s something like rewarding your team. Hey, you’re getting lots of 5-star reviews. So, think about what difference that makes for your team when all of a sudden the training actually becomes relevant, which is really the challenge with today’s workforce is, and I knew this when I was a manager, your wife probably knows this too, I don’t think people realize how fast service businesses are changing.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

Every day you are looking at the weather to see what your PARS should be and what your inventory should be. You’re seeing if there’s going to be a parade down the street. If 5 people aren’t going to show up, how does that change your operation? So, there’s so much you have to flex. And so, we’re just trying to make it easier for people to respond to that data and activate their team as a result of it. Of course, we have this sort of core product, and we can take training and turn it into really engaging TikTok-style learning experiences. But I always love to nerd out about the recommendation engine because that’s really the kind of core of what we’re trying to do. You hear all these things about training in the flow of work, but a lot of that is candidly like false. That’s not, it’s, it’s just micro-training, which is cool too. Right.

Michael Horn

Which is surely better than probably like a 9-week course that you could imagine. But yes, right.

But, your point is like, this is not only am I actively engaged, but the content itself is much more dynamic relative to whatever the thing that we’ve decided is most important for the business to be getting better at.

Personalizing learning experiences

Rachael Nemeth

We’ve talked so much over the years in learning about personalizing the experience and individualizing the experience, and I don’t think anyone’s really done a great job of it. And I’m not even saying that Opus does a great job of it, but that is the holy grail, I think, that everyone’s trying to seek because classroom training is out, web training is out. We live in an increasingly isolated world where people want to feel more connected. But they don’t have the time to convene. So, how do you make people feel connected to your brand and your customer experience, but also feel like individuals at the same time who have the flexibility to learn? In Opus, they can learn in 130 different languages. They can learn by listening. They can learn by reading if they prefer. 30% of our users prefer to listen to their training and not even look at a screen.

So, there’s so much flexibility to how people learn in the modality, but also in the content, which I think is really what we’re doing, where we’re doing some really cool work right now.

Michael Horn

So, I want to let you show that in a moment, but one thing first, which is it occurs to me what you’ve built is also, I’m assuming it’s like a manager enablement tool as well, because one of the, again, I’m not in the industry, but I hear a lot about it. And one of the things that I see is like, it’s really hard to build really good management that knows, A, how to act and get the most out of your employees, but also like what to say, where, like how to coach, like all those things are really hard. I imagine there’s like a 2-way part of this that you’re enabling, I would think, from what you’ve described.

Rachael Nemeth

Most training programs fail because of manager accountability. I don’t know the statistic, but I can tell you from experience, that’s why they’re failing, either because you don’t have that top-down buy-in, right? The COO doesn’t view this as important as the L&D team, or because the managers don’t understand why this is so important. And so, we built a mobile experience specifically for that busy manager. And by the way, this isn’t just restaurants, right? It’s all services business. So, think about fitness clubs, And anything that’s sort of a customer-facing, you know, car washes, we work with lots of car washes that it’s all the same problem, right? You need for customers, it’s an increasingly competitive world and you need for customers to come back through the door. Yeah.

Michael Horn

And your frontline is literally your front door to that experience. Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

Correct. And they represent your brand. So, and they’re, you know, they’re young or they’re multi-generational and, You have to cater to a lot of different needs and preferences. So, the manager experience helps enable the manager in a way that it basically gives them a checklist for things they should be looking for when they walk through the door. So, if I’m Michael, I can view that Shirley is behind, and so I need to chat with her. I can view that CJ needs a little bit of coaching, that Ruby needs to be certified in a specific skill. So, think of it as a punch list for managers. They’re spending enough time reacting to the world around them.

Ask Opus chat tool use

Rachael Nemeth

They should have an intelligence tool that helps them coach their team. They have their own coach as well. So, we have a feature, a chat agent, it’s called Ask Opus, where a manager can ask any question they want back to their company’s, you know, knowledge base. And Interestingly, when we released that about 2 years ago, this Ask Opus feature, and our assumption was actually that frontline teams would be using it the most, like the hourly team members. Our top 2 users for that Ask Opus agent are managers and non-English speakers. And you can probably guess why, right? Like, the non-English speakers don’t feel comfortable asking, so they can ask in their native language and get a response in their native language. The managers are getting bombarded with so much new information. all the time that it’s burdensome to remember it.

So, the recall is very poor with the managers. So, Ask Opus helps them surface that information very quickly.

Michael Horn

And also probably without shame that like, I couldn’t remember that arcane thing that came through, right? As well. So, yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Why don’t, if you’re up for it, I think you can show a little bit of that experience, maybe. I would love to see it. So our audience is always forgiving of these things, but I think it’d be awesome to show a little bit of what this experience looks like and what these learning opportunities that are geared for the frontline actually look like. Because as you said, this can’t be a web course. This can’t be a thing that you sit down at night for 90 minutes, right? Like it’s gotta be as life happens in the consumable chunks when you have an opportunity, I would imagine, on your mobile phone.

Rachael Nemeth

That’s exactly right. So welcome to the trainee experience. If I am Michael and it’s my, you know, my first day on the job, the most overwhelming thing you can feel as a new hire is sitting in a booth and watching videos for 5 hours and then being told to go straight to the register and, you know, remember everything. So with Opus, you actually have a guideline as a new hire for what you’re expected to learn and when. So this is an example from a customer of ours, and you can see that it’s kind of a branded experience. Each course also includes a quiz. It includes interactive content. So, you can see that this is a very kind of fun, engaging experience.

There’s drag-and-drop questions, all that fun stuff. But when I’m done, I want to talk to someone.

Training and manager check-ins

Rachael Nemeth

So, in the course, you have an option to check in with a manager. This is a really simple example on purpose, but we have a lot of customers that are really adamant about coaching their team, and candidly, like, I am too. I don’t believe that we should ever eliminate in-person training. It is so critical to how people receive knowledge and absorb it, but you have to make it easier for managers to know what to coach on. So, as a new hire, I’m looking at this and I say, okay, I need to talk to my manager and answer this question for him. And then in a minute, we’ll go over to the manager mode so you can see what they’re doing. The other thing I can do as a trainee is complete checklists. But you can also see here that all of this can change into any language you want.

So I can change this into Lithuanian and the entire experience changes for me. I’m going to change it back to English just to, because I don’t speak Lithuanian.

Michael Horn

So we can, so us normies can follow along.

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah. The other thing I might want to do as a trainee is, you know, pull up a quick resource, something like that, but maybe I don’t want to sift through my whole company’s knowledge base. So, maybe I can just ask, you know, what is the newest uniform?

We see a lot of employees, this is a really fascinating product because it’s not only just getting you questions in the or answers in the moment, It’s getting you the resource that relates to it.

Michael Horn

So, it’s giving you an answer, plus if you want to train on it.

Rachael Nemeth

If you want to go through it again, it’s a brief answer, so you get the question fast, but most employers do not know what knowledge gaps their team has, and Ask Opus helps them identify it. So, they’re making pretty big swings on, you know, what their team might need, but we just had a customer today. It’s a very large, fast-growing brand, and 58% of their Ask Opus responses came back with no resource attached, which meant that their knowledge base is lacking. And I think in their case, what was lacking was recipe data. So, it’s just interesting to see what, you know, a team wants to experience and what they want to know. And so, it’s a really cool way to sort of crowdsource what needs to come next from your team.

Michael Horn

Well, you’re making me also, a bunch of things are pinging for me, but one of them is a friend of ours, Steve Spear. He did all this research on like what makes Toyota basically better than the Detroit automakers at the time. And one of them was training because what he learned was like, you showed up to the job at Detroit and they were like, okay, watch how I install the front seat. You know, these are the 10 moves I make in 90 seconds. Okay, your turn, go for it. You’re on the line. Whereas at Toyota, they’re like, Okay, when you master step 1, then we’ll go on to step 2. And you realize that’s really hard to do in a frontline job to set up that sort of mastery-based learning environment.

If you can surface, to your point, these gaps of an individual, then as a manager, or I suppose as the system, right, both things can do a much better job of saying, hey, Michael, you seem to be constantly checking on the protocol around this or how we greet here or whatever it is.

Let’s give you a little bit more support and handholding to make you feel confident and perform as we want our brand to be represented.

Rachael Nemeth

That’s half the battle, right, is the confidence that someone needs to be able to operate independently in their job. And I feel like that’s a lot of what’s missing from how we talk about learning and talk about training is like, this is about confidence and independence. It is not about mastery. And I think I think that that’s what we’re getting wrong in the conversation right now as it pertains to the frontline. Do people want certification? Of course.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

But there’s so many steps before that that need to happen that we aren’t achieving right now as a collective, as employers, as providers. So, I don’t, I, it always seems so simple to be like, well, you just need to set the standard before. You try to do all this fancy stuff, but that’s the reality. You know, someone just wants to feel good about their job.

Michael Horn

Yeah. I mean, there’s no, right. I mean, frankly, and students just want to feel like they’re making real progress also in general, right? Like no one wants to feel like the slow, you know, like they’re struggling and never going to get out of something. I’m curious, like the value proposition when you go, it sounds, you know, it’s certainly not just restaurants, anyone that has a frontline workforce you’re selling to at this point, how do they frame the value proposition before they really have experienced with, with Opus? What are they like? Are there metrics that they’re looking for? You mentioned beef with metrics, so I suspect there’s a whole talk track there that’s worth giving you the stage for, so to speak.

Rachael Nemeth

You want me to start with the beef or?

Michael Horn

Yeah, why not? Let’s go with the controversy first. And what are the right metrics?

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah.

Michael Horn

What should we be— what do they think that they’re looking for? What’s the value prop that they come to you for? And maybe what do they learn along the way in the journey around what they should be looking at?

Rachael Nemeth

We, You know, most of the time, about 70% of our customers are switching from paper. They’re switching from nothing, and these are large companies, right? So, we work with a 500-unit brand that had nothing, which is incredible because it means you can still grow with all of this.

Challenges with brand consistency

Rachael Nemeth

But when you talk to these businesses and you say, well, what’s the problem? They say, well, I have no visibility. Okay, I get that, but that is not the core business issue. So when you dig in deeper, the number one issue that these businesses are facing is no consistency across their locations. Every location runs your brand standards in the same way across every shift, market, language, what have you, and most brands cannot achieve that. If you walk into a Chick-fil-A tomorrow, you wanna make sure that the chicken tastes the same way it did, you know, across the street, and most of the time you lose customers when that’s not the case. and you lose trust. So, when you really dig deep with these brands, whether it’s a food business or a fitness brand or whatever, it’s all about consistency. My beef with metrics specifically around engagement, adoption is important, and that’s something that we prioritized very early in Opus.

Happy to tell that story too, because it’s kind of interesting. Engagement to me is a bad proxy for how your employees are really absorbing information. So, at the executive level, we think about the business metric we’re moving, right? Like faster ticket times, happier customers, what have you. At the field level, we’re really thinking about, once we get the adoption, we’re really thinking about the confidence that your team has in their job. Are they showing, are they, do they keep showing up to work?

Michael Horn

Sure. I mean, huge issue, right, is turnover and, yeah, and absenteeism.

Rachael Nemeth

Correct. But what’s interesting is when you talk to these businesses, they’ve already worked turnover into their budget. That’s not a top-line number for them. Yeah, like, this is pretty natural, right? Like, attrition is— when you’re working with 16-year-olds, they’ve got to go back to school. So, you’re going to have.

Michael Horn

Sure, yeah, it’s assumed.

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah. So, what it’s really about is knowledge retention. Is, am I seeing the behavior change in my business as a result of this thing? So, when I talk to training directors, their eyes light up because they’re like, I’ve been trying to justify this to my team for years and can’t get the budget for it, but we can prove that we can lower order accuracy issues by 70% in 30 days. We can prove that we can increase or decrease voluntary turnover with managers to zero within a year. Those are the metrics that move the needle. And so, I’m not saying that engagement isn’t there, but it’s just a lagging indicator as far as I’m concerned.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And I’ve seen plenty of businesses also that have in this world where there’s engagement, but it’s not real engagement, it’s click-throughs, right? As opposed to actual, whatever the desired behavior is, the mastery, the learning, the confidence, whatever it might be, like the underlying actual change, right? It does not in fact happen.

Rachael Nemeth

And there’s so much cool stuff we can do now with technology to really start to track and trace those things. We’re bullish on integrations with Opus so that, you know, that recommendation engine I was talking about earlier with guest feedback, we’re really excited about what’s next for that product, you know, and hooking into secret shopper programs and point-of-sale systems and scheduling systems.

Michael Horn

I was about to say, so this isn’t just like feedback, this is POS system, this is everything.

Rachael Nemeth

Okay. It’s a monster. Yeah. do so much. And frankly, as somebody who is a former teacher in training, it’s about time. Really selfishly, I’m just building the thing that I wanted.

Michael Horn

Right. When you were trying to do the training or teaching.

Building for underserved populations

Michael Horn

Well, I mean, that’s the perfect product to build is something you know that there’s a real problem that you’ve experienced. Let me ask this question, which is like maybe we zoom out as we start to wrap up here, which is it strikes me that A lot of people don’t build for this population more generally. There are a few exceptions that we could all name, but as you noted, a lot of them are at the exec level or they’re for the folks that are in front of computers or they’re the, you know, like the, I mean, there’s tons of things for digital skills and so forth. Why, in your view, has that not been the case? And why, in your view, have you been able to perhaps transcend those set of reasons that people have maybe not built as much for this, this, this part of the landscape?

Rachael Nemeth

This is a population that’s always been ignored. A story I love to tell that one of my co-founders told me a long time ago, and he’s an incredible designer. And he said, Rachel, every morning, 110 million Americans wake up and they use the most sophisticated technology on the planet. Their phone, right? It’s this little computer in your hands. They never have seen anything like it before. And then they go to work and they punch in on an old system that’s half broken down all the time.

And they’re logging into a POS that doesn’t cooperate. And they’re using all of these systems that aren’t built for them. We owe it to the people who are making the American economy keep running, to provide them with the same technology that we would to people who are working behind a desk all day, because these are the people who are actually not just serving our meals, but keeping like things flowing. And we are at a pretty dangerous point, I think, where if we don’t build for this population, then we’re going to see a real deficit in knowledge gaps, in technology gaps, and that sort of the chasm between, you know, the haves and the have-nots is just going to continue to grow. So, I think it’s about like providing equitable solutions for everyone, and it’s easy to chase the thing that is easy and big. You know, it’s easier to sell to Goldman Sachs than it is to sell to you know, a 200-unit Burger King.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah

Rachael Nemeth

But we know that this is the majority workforce. We know that this is the bigger opportunity. It’s just the harder problem to solve, which is why it’s taken so long for us to figure it out. It’s why we solved this problem so differently. So, the little story I like to tell people is Opus ran for 2 years without a backend. We optimized the experience for mobile before anything else. There’s no other training platform on the planet that’s done that. They always build for the admin first.

And we said, you know what, we’ll figure it out later.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Rachael Nemeth

The first couple of years we were like, you know, man in the machine, sort of like, what do you need? Okay, we’ll build it for you. Yep.

Michael Horn

Yep.

Rachael Nemeth

But that’s why—

Michael Horn

Obsessive about that frontline and mobile experience.

Rachael Nemeth

Obsessive. They can scan a QR code and get in in 12 seconds. We have the highest adoption rates ever because of the way that we’ve formulated the login experience. And we’re saving, you know, the amount of companies who have admins who are just focused on getting people’s passwords reset. Those days should be over, but they’re not. And so, I hope that that exemplifies like how big of a problem this is, but also just, it’s still largely ignored. And I think we’re just kind of at the, the beginning of what’s possible.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Well, I’d love to keep track of this and Rachel, huge thank you. For those that want to learn more about Opus Training, where should they check out? Where should they go to stay on top of this story?

Rachael Nemeth

Yeah, of course. So I, if I had to recommend any 2 things to keep track of Opus Training, go to our website, opus.so, and you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I love chatting and commenting and nerding out about training and being contrarian. So please comment. Tell me how much I’m wrong.

Michael Horn

This sounds like a good follow.

Rachael Nemeth

Okay.

Michael Horn

All right. So now we got more. Fantastic.

Rachael Nemeth

Challenge me.

Michael Horn

There we go. There we go. It makes us all better. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us. For all of you tuning in, check it out, learn more, and let’s see how we can invest more in this space and these important people. And just hugely appreciate it as always. And we’ll see you next time on The Future of Education.

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Thomas Arnett from the Clayton Christensen Institute joined me to once again explore why families and students seem to be quite willing to try innovative microschools in the K–8 grades, but considerably more resistant when it comes to high school. Traditional high school experiences, particularly social and extracurricular elements like sports and common rites of passage, continue to hold such strong appeal for most families, even as innovative, personalized, and lower-cost education models expand. Drawing from personal anecdotes and research, we talked about the social and developmental needs of adolescents, the trade-offs families make when considering alternative schooling, and what it might take for disruptive education models to achieve mainstream adoption without reproducing the conventional system’s limitations. I continue to think that thinking through these questions is among the most important facing the emerging sector of innovative, low-cost schools with disruptive potential.

Michael Horn

Welcome, everyone, to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. We have a repeat guest. I don’t know if guest is the right word anymore, but Thomas Arnett from the Christensen Institute, friend, and someone I love to geek out on various topics about the future of education. Tom, welcome. Good to see you.

Thomas Arnett

Good to see you too, Michael. It’s always fun to be here. Always love these conversations.

Debating the Purpose of Education

Michael Horn

Yeah, we’ve got a meaty one today. And I’ll just say, like, we’ve been exploring a couple times on this podcast already and in a lot of our one-on-one conversations as well. Something that I think has stood out to both of us, and I’ll set the table this way and then you can amend it, which is I think we’re both intrigued in a world of education savings accounts that as low-cost private schools, often micro schools but not always, come into the world, that there’s actually a real potential disruptive innovation of schooling as we’ve known it, the creation of new value networks and so forth. And then some of the things we’ve been sort of wrestling over is, okay, they come in at the low end, if you will, people who are overserved by all the offerings of comprehensive district schools. They want a more tailored, customized experience. And now that, you know, they’re sort of government funding, if they don’t choose it, it’s sort of an opportunity cost, if you will, of not taking it. And so these low-cost, at least private schools where you can afford them and then have more money for some other, you know, tutoring, piano lessons, whatever it might be around the sides. Feels like it could be a real disruptive innovation.

And certainly the enrollment numbers in a lot of these states that have ESAs have been growing pretty rapidly, Florida, Arizona in particular. And one of the questions we’ve been puzzling over is, okay, so that gets its start there. What’s the upmarket climb such that you can start to serve more complicated problems, more families that require more services without replicating all of the cost and centrality of the school district model where it’s sort of everything for everyone. And in particular, we’ve been looking at this in high school because what I think we’ve seen is kindergarten, first, second grade in particular, there seems to be lots of willingness to make choices that are not in your district school. Middle school, there’s certainly a lot of people willing to do that because middle school in many parts of the country is a pretty bad experience. We don’t have fond memories of it. And then high school, though, a lot of people sort of snap back into a traditional high school. We’ve seen it with our friend and colleague Heather Staker, even like she moved her whole family to Austin, Texas from Hawaii, of all places, to attend Acton Academy for her kids.

And then the oldest got to high school and was like, nah, I want football and sort of the traditional high school experience. So, so even there. And I think one of the things we’ve been puzzling over is how do you replicate a few parts of the high school experience, or replicate’s the wrong word, but sort of learn to serve or offer those things that we think people are clamoring for. And I think they fall in a few buckets. One is there’s certainly college fears and pressures, like if I go this alternative route, will I get into a great college? I think the second one is what I would label Friday Night Lights and prom, but it might be better thought of as cultural nostalgia, or we framed it as coming-of-age experiences, rites of passage in a conversation we had about this topic a few months ago with our friend Tyler Thigpen. And he talked about how at the Forest School and Acton Academy in Georgia, they handle this. But what we’ve also noted is it’s not just that, like there is certainly nostalgia at play, but it’s also this sort of clamoring for common experiences that seems to hold people back. And so then the longtime commentator, former schoolteacher, writer, great thinker, Robert Pondiscio, had this very intriguing piece a few months back in May on his Substack that he titled Schooling Alone. It was his commencement address to people at a classical education high school who were graduating.

And I guess it struck me because he talked about, his piece was more about the commonalities in curriculum, which we can talk about, but it did strike me that one of the things that I think maybe people are resisting when they, you know, don’t choose different models of high school that might be more personalized or might better engage them or whatever else, it’s maybe that they’re clamoring for commonality. And so— How’d I do on setting the table? And what do you think about that sort of comment? Obviously, Robert’s piece was titled Schooling Alone in a not very subtle homage to Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. But I guess I wondered, maybe, you know, he’s worried about all the personalization in the curriculum. I guess I wondered, hey, maybe actually people are clamoring for commonality, which is slowing up some of this growth and disruption of some of these new models.

Thomas Arnett

What do you think? Yeah, I think that sets the table really well and catches anyone listening to this up to, hopefully up to where we’ve been talking about a lot of the things that we’ve talked about. We had to do a lot of table setting about like, here’s what we’ve been thinking about. So the thing I found interesting when I read Robert Pondiscio’s piece was I think schooling for maybe its entire history has had this, it has many purposes and people debate the purpose of education and it’s kind of complicated because we layer so many purposes of education on top of each other. But I think one that traces back a long time is this idea of having a common experience. Now, sometimes that gets, I think, framed unfavorably of like, in the 1800s, it may have been more about cultural assimilation, about getting immigrant groups, minority religious groups to conform to the mainstream American culture by saying, no, you will go to these schools that are going to teach what Protestant kids should learn. But I think a more generous approach is kind of what he talks about in that piece, students need to have, to some extent, he’s arguing they need to read the same books as everyone else and they need to think about the same big ideas so that when we’re having conversations in our civic and political arenas, that we can be speaking the same language and have the same vocabulary to talk to each other. So I find that really interesting, but it was framed in, I think, as someone who thinks a lot about policy and thinks about society and society’s wellbeing, what would you want if you were taking that almost paternalistic role of how do we make sure education is serving our society? But I think there’s an adjacent and very similar, but at the same time really distinctive piece that is related to that, which is just the common experience kids want. So where I think, to me the contrast was like, Pondiscio was talking about we need to teach certain books in school so that we have common literature. And I look at schools that I’ve visited, places I’ve interviewed, the schools my own kids attend, and they want a common experience too, but it’s generally, they’re not thinking about, do I read the same books? Did we all read Mice and Men? Did we all read Animal Farm? It’s more of—

Michael Horn

This is where I say I have not read Mice and Men and I have to admit it.

Thomas Arnett

Let’s not say that. Yeah. Okay.

Michael Horn

I watched the Animal Farm movie. No, go ahead.

Thomas Arnett

Which version, right? Yeah.

Michael Horn

The original. Yeah. Not the distorted new one.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. But, you know, when I look at my own kids, a lot of it is like, I want to be able to talk to other kids my age and feel like I’m part of the in-group, that I know what they’re talking about. And it shows up in like really funny and subtle, like funny for me to laugh about as an adult, but really important things. Like my kids come home with vocabulary like, you know, that’s low-key fire. I don’t know if your kids are—

Michael Horn

What does that mean? No, they don’t. What does it mean?

Tell me. Yeah.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. I don’t know if I’m a good translator, but lowkey is like, like it’s not, it’s cool, but we’re going to like downplay that it’s cool, but it’s really cool. And fire is like, oh, that’s awesome. You know, or buns is like, oh, that’s buns is like, oh, that’s awful. I think, I mean, this is, this is a 40-year-old man trying to translate.

Michael Horn

They had a great segment on Instagram with Peyton Manning translating the speak, so I’ll believe anything.

Adolescents seeking status and respect

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. But I think that’s a lot of, you know, it’s. That is what a lot of kids are getting out of school is, and I think of David Jaeger’s book, 10 to 25, that I read a couple years ago and has one of those books that’s really stuck in my mind because it had some really deep insights. But he talks about adolescents have developmental objectives that are just wired into their biology and their genes. And just like a baby needs to learn how to crawl, needs to learn how to walk, needs to learn how to talk, He frames it as the developmental objective of adolescence is to figure out how do I earn status and respect? And the reason that’s so important is because humans by and large have, our ability to thrive is strongly connected to our ability to work together, whether it’s a local hunter-gatherer tribe group or whether it’s big corporations or big nations that build the pyramids, that kind of stuff. And so your ability to figure out how do I earn status and respect in a group is essential for you to figure out, how do I contribute to a group such that the group values me, such that the group wants to keep me in so that when the group succeeds, I can succeed with the group? And I think that’s what a lot of this is about that we just underappreciate is that, yes, students want a common experience, but for them, it’s the common experience of figuring out, how do I fit in with other people? How do I feel like I’m a valuable member of the social circles that I’m a part of? I think of homeschooling too. One of the longstanding critiques of homeschooling is like, oh, your kids will be weird. Well, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s not that kids who homeschool don’t learn how to socialize, and there’s plenty of ways in which I think homeschoolers get supplemental experiences that aren’t just, we’re sitting at home all day having our own family culture, and that’s all the world they see.

But I think this is what a lot of people are pointing to when they make that critique is like, your kid may homeschool and race ahead in the academics and get all sorts of neat experiences, but they’re missing out on being able to talk about prom, being able to talk about the football game, being able to have that common experience that other people go through so that when they go out in the world, they can fit in with those other people and be parts of teams with those other people and be, you know, fit in in companies and organizations with those other people. So anyway, I’ll pause there because I got—

Michael Horn

No, no, I have so many questions for you out of that. One is in the conversation with Tyler, in terms of the fit-in part of what you just said, what I took away from it is like they could actually engineer a bunch of those opportunities for students that actually might be better curated and more meaningful, still have friction to be clear. But more meaningful in helping understand, like, learn about who am I? How do I fit in? What do I want to, you know, what’s my mark in the world, if you will, those sorts of questions and purpose.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. But I think what I hear you saying is like, what you’re saying is like focused on like the individual identity and individual purpose, right? Do you think, I guess, do you think there’s a distinction there?

Michael Horn

I guess that’s what I was wondering, it sounds like that can be solved for, but does even that still, you know, and it’s certainly within a community, right? It’s like, there’s a lot of other students in the school. They interact with other schools. There’s athletics and stuff like that. I guess my question is, to your point, are they still missing out on some larger cultural zeitgeist that some kids are saying like, hey, I, you know, actually my discovery is I don’t want to be part of that. But maybe it’s still not enough for others who are sort of clamoring that common experience. Yeah, let’s, let me hold it there and get your take.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Well, I think one thing we should probably complicate the conversation a little bit by saying like, this isn’t just a monolithic, like there’s one mainstream culture and then there’s people on the margins. Like even within conventional high schools, I mean, the whole, all the stereotypes about different cliques within a high school are different versions of people saying like, well, I don’t fit in with that, so I need to find my own group that I belong in. So I don’t think it’s so monolithic.

Michael Horn

But is that part of the element also? Like, right, there’s fascinating research on nostalgia that in some ways we have when we have pretty bad experiences and we sort of reformat the story in our mind to tell a story of growth and sort of togetherness, whatever. And so maybe some of that navigation and some of that nostalgia is about the fact that like, oh, I just couldn’t make it with that group, but I found my tribe here.

Thomas Arnett

Right.

Michael Horn

I don’t know.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Well, I think struggle is a key part of this story. So when I look at micro schools or when I look at even within school district systems, the alternative schools, the hybrid virtual schools, the programs made for homeschoolers, in my research, what I see really consistently is that the people that often pick those programs are making a trade-off.

Michael Horn

Right.

Desire for alternative education options

Thomas Arnett

And it’s a trade-off they’re willing to accept because there’s something about the conventional school that isn’t working for them, whether it’s the academics, whether it’s the social scene, something’s not working for them. And that struggle drives them to a point where they’re willing to accept, I am giving up something. I’m giving up that Friday Night Lights, that mainstream socialization experience and other things. Maybe it’s also like AP classes or whatever, but I’m giving that up because I want something different. And the struggle is strong enough that it compels me to go look for something different. I just think that that’s not most students. So this is where I think the field could get kind of caught in an eddy if these things may exist that right now are on the margins, but I don’t know that they go mainstream if they always see themselves as distinctive from, different from the mainstream.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Thomas Arnett

And that’s not necessarily a criticism. There’s value to be had in just saying, look, we have this diverse ecosystem that includes a lot of these niche environments, and people find the niche that works for them. But at the same time, I just think it’s important to say to the people that are building those niches, but those niches are never going to become the mainstream. or the main, they’re never going to become the new normal or become mainstream until somehow this gets solved for to where people don’t look at the niche and say like, uh, that’s, you know, some kids, not every kid, but some kids saying like, that’s for the weird kids. I don’t want to go there because I want to be a mainstreamy normal kid.

Michael Horn

Let me step out of my lane on something I’m not, I don’t know enough about, but I guess I wonder about charters in urban areas, if they’ve figured out something around this, or if maybe the cultural pull is just less right in some of those areas of the commonality as we frame did, at least in the straw man that we framed in this conversation. Because it does seem to me, you know, there’s lots of students who enroll in charter schools that don’t have football teams and, right, like, look like the comprehensive high school. And maybe to your point, the trade-off is like really clear there, right? Like, I don’t want to be in that environment, the district environment, whatever it might be. It’s not safe. It’s like, I got to get out of that. Like, this is my ticket out, whatever it might be.

And so therefore it’s like so clear, but if that’s the case, that would suggest also a different sort of growth strategy, if you will, for this low-cost private school unbundled sort of world that’s emerging. I think, what’s your thought on that?

Thomas Arnett

That would be my guess. Like, I feel like that’s a little bit, I don’t have enough firsthand experience to speak clearly to that of like, why do families that go to some of those charter schools in urban areas that often serve lower-income students.

Michael Horn

Or even some public schools, right? It’s a high school network, right? And we know that they’ve been oversubscribed historically in most of their schools. So people are certainly running to it.

Discussing mainstream versus niche experiences

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Well, I don’t think oversubscribed necessarily has to contradict mainstream. You can have a lot of people that want to exit because they’re struggling, and it’s still not the normal. It’s still not the thing that. I think the thing to look at is like, and maybe this is more true in the suburbs or in affluent communities than it is in urban areas, but I think there’s a lot of people that still want the mainstream experience. In fact, I was on a camping trip with some people from our church last week, and I was trying to explain what I do for work, which is always a challenge. But in the middle of that, I thought like, well, let me just open with asking them like, what did you think of your high school experience? And the other men, the other dads that were on this trip, one of them said, well, it depends on which piece you’re talking about. And he was like, if you’re talking about the academics, it was meh.

And they all kind of nodded their heads like, yeah, the academics was meh. But they’re like, if you’re talking about my experience on the baseball team or on the football team, that was awesome and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. So I would never pick a different schooling experience if it involved giving that up. And I think this is the reality as much as we kind of talk to people that are in the fringes that are pushing the frontiers. And the people that you and I often talk to see the value of these new models of schooling and we’re excited to see them move forward. I just don’t think that’s most people. I think most people, if you talk to them, they’d say, yeah, high school is meh. At least some of it is, but some of it is a formative experience I’d never want to give up.

So yeah, I’d stick with the conventional wisdom.

Michael Horn

So the meh is worth it. That’s a trade-off worth it to be part of this And I hear in that both formative sort of rite of passage, right? Glory days, but also common experience of like, I know what a comprehensive high school is and what that means. And I guess, you know, the question we asked, right, is can you have, you know, town baseball and sort of town football and other ways to plug into it that are maybe distinct from the schooling piece? But I think what I hear you saying is actually that’s connected though to the schooling piece because it’s sort of you jockeying for position and trying to understand where you fit in within a larger mosaic of society. And maybe actually pulling it out as a separate thing, while it solves for part of that job, actually doesn’t solve for the whole job of an individual.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. This is where I feel like I’m pushing my depths in terms of understanding sociology and how that all works. But let me give a quick anecdote. So my middle son, He’s just finished his freshman year in high school. And with both of my high schoolers, I have consistently tried to bring up the topic of, hey, look, you don’t have to go to the regular high school, the high school that’s right across the street from our house. Because they often come back and they’re like, yeah, class is so boring. We do nothing. We just sit around.

Can we just skip school? And so I bring up like, hey, we could do different things. We could enroll you in the district’s hybrid virtual program and you could do classes at your own pace and you could do a dual enrollment at the community college and you could have way more flexibility to do the things you’re excited about or to go get a job. And they always push back and they say, no, I don’t want to do that. And in fact, our district has programs where you can do those things and still participate in the sports teams that my kids are on and still go to the prom and still do all that. Yeah, the Tim Tebow rule.

Michael Horn

Yeah. I know you’re in California, but still.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah, we don’t quite have Tim Tebow rules, but if you’re within the district, you can do these alternatives within a district and still do some of the mainstream stuff at the regular conventional school campus. But they don’t want it. And when I really pushed one of my sons on it, he was like, well, that’s not where my friends are. And the kids that go there are kind of different. And I don’t see myself as like those kids. I see myself as like my friends. And even if class is boring for 6 hours straight, I get to see my friends at lunch. I get to hang out with my friends before school.

I don’t want to—

Michael Horn

Well, so let me ask you this, which is if they had, they did a little bit for a few years there, go to the not district option in the beginning. and they got pulled back into it. I guess I was wondering if like you saw your tribe as the kids who don’t go to that school, might they have had a different reaction? But that actually was the tribe in which your kids were and they still got pulled back into it.

Thomas Arnett

Well, I will say when my kids were going, so this was during COVID when they were doing virtual schooling, you know, they were young enough that they didn’t really have that same tribe identity. Like David Yeager’s book is 10 to 25 and they were under 10. And so I don’t think they had quite the same pull. And for their tribe, it was like, Hey, our family, Nana and Papa across the street, people like friends we know from church. Like it was a small circle and that’s all it was. But I will say like when schools were reopening and the option came up of like, do we send the kids back to the conventional school or do we keep ‘em in this virtual school? My wife and I loved the virtual school ‘cause like we went and visited my sister in Hawaii for a month ‘cause we both worked remote. The kids could go to school. It was awesome, right? But my oldest son in particular, the 2 younger kids were like, eh, sure, whatever.

They were kind of indifferent. But my oldest son just came to us and he says like, mom and dad, I need to be around friends. It’s not enough to just hang out with my brother and sister and then have some other homeschool kids come over a couple times of the week to play and hang out. I need to be in school.

Michael Horn

He wanted it in the water. He wanted it in, right? Not the, you arranged for socialization. It was like, no, I’m in socialization and I’m navigating that.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah.

Michael Horn

Yeah. It’s interesting. And it’s, it’s certainly true at that age, kids become just like the social, the need for social connection just explodes, right? In a way you just, it’s, it’s fun to watch. Yeah.

Thomas Arnett

And I think David, gently just make a plug real quick. I think Jaeger’s book just explains that so well. I recommend people go read that book.

Michael Horn

All right. Well, let me ask this then, which is, so we talked about a bunch of elements here. I guess, where does that leave you in terms of your thinking today, knowing that it’ll change tomorrow of like this burgeoning sector?

Thomas Arnett

Which is a good thing, right?

Michael Horn

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what does upmarket against these things? I think you and I are increasingly thinking that upmarket in some ways is less like, oh, you know, we got technology better so we could better teach this subject or whatever else, but it’s more about all these things. that somehow this burgeoning new sector, if it actually wants to not be niche, has to figure out without replicating entirely the one-size-fits-none architecture of those environments as well. And maybe that’s a trade-off like that just isn’t ready to be broken yet.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah.

Michael Horn

And so there isn’t enough market climb there, or maybe there are some ways to start to, you know, continue to sort of take the next rung, if you will, in the steel mill story of jumping into Angola and sort of get, we’re not at cheat still yet, but maybe we can go beyond the lowest rung, if you will.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m of a couple minds on this, so I don’t, I’ll just lay out my different thoughts on this. And let’s see, you tell me which ones seem reasonable and which ones don’t. I mean, along that trajectory, I think it is valuable to lessen the trade-off. Like I mentioned, my kids didn’t want to go to the district non-conventional program, even though they could participate in sports and things.

Cross-participation in education programs

Thomas Arnett

But I think that that ability to cross-participate does matter to a lot of people. So I think finding ways to, if it’s a program within a district, make sure that the students can get the pieces they want from whichever side of the conventional and innovative realms that they want. Or if it is a private microschool, finding ways to partner to try and offer those comparable types of experiences, recognizing that some families are happy with the trade-off. In fact, your initial adopters are going to be happy with the trade-off, but recognizing also that to become more mainstream, you have to lessen that trade-off for people. So I think that’s important, but I will say, I think where it’s really going to tip has less to do with the program you design or the technology you develop, and it really is more of just a social tipping point. So another book that’s been deeply influential on my thinking is Change: How to Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola. He’s a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a sociology professor, and he talks about whenever people— he kind of dispels the common notion that people adopt an idea through just exposure. If you just pay for enough billboards, pay for enough ad space, get enough influencers to talk about your thing, people will get on board.

And the point he makes in that book, or one of the key points, is that’s true for memes when there’s no cost of sharing, but whenever people have to make decisions that really involve risk and uncertainty, which education clearly is that kind of a decision, The biggest predictor is not how people weighed the pros and cons and how people weighed the features and benefits. They may tell you that’s the reason they made a choice, but the real reason comes, like the best predictor is, did they look around their social network and see other people like them doing the thing? And that social proof is really the selling point. And so in some ways, I think some of this just has to come from these programs that are on the margins, like growing and growing over time until eventually, in that book, he talks about a tipping point that’s around 20% adoption. When you look around and you see 20% of the people in your social network and people that are similar to you on the dimensions that matter, when you see 20% of those people adopting, that’s when you really start paying attention. And I think some of this is just, it’s going to happen that way. So what that makes me optimistic about is these innovative on-the-margins kind of programs don’t necessarily have to figure out, well, how do we copy football and how do we copy band and how do we copy prom? They may come up with different things than what the conventional system offers, but those things won’t become appealing until they reach kind of that in any given community. So this is where it’s interesting too, is like it doesn’t have to be 20% nationwide. You could see in any given community when you’ve got 20% of your people making those choices, all of a sudden that choice goes from being like, oh yeah, that fringe thing that some people do that are trade-off acceptors to like, oh, that seems kind of normal.

That seems kind of mainstream. It doesn’t feel so risky and feels like I’m missing out if I’m not paying attention to it.

Michael Horn

Super interesting.

What I hear in that, I’m going to put in jobs-to-be-done language. Forget about the push and pull for a second. Let’s talk about what’s impeding the change, the switch, or the progress. Habit and anxiety. Habit is the status quo, commonality, football, prom, et cetera. This is what we do, what we see in the movies. But the anxiety is connected to the, are there people like me who are doing this? And it’s more about, it’s less about increasing the pull perhaps of these solutions, and it’s more about reducing the anxiety. And I think in my head until this conversation, I framed a lot of that reduction in anxiety around parents, but for high school, it might be actually reducing that anxiety more around kids’ peers.

And that maybe is what we’re not spending enough time

Thomas Arnett

Yeah, I think that’s true. I think that’s a perfect crosswalk between those ideas of the social proof from that sociology research is a powerful lever for addressing that anxiety and the jobs-to-be-done framework.

Rethinking Early Education Narratives

Michael Horn

Yeah, this is super interesting. One last thought back to the curricular one, because it’s just been on my mind because I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff around what happens in the world of AI with jobs and things of that nature. And one point that stuck with me, Noah Smith wrote this piece on Substack And made the point that humans, yes, far fewer of us do agriculture and in factories, et cetera, et cetera, over time. But actually economic history has seen a huge diversification and explosion in the number of tasks that humans do over time beyond what we could always ever imagine. And so I just say that in terms of if you think back to the 1800s or early 1900s schoolhouse, there was always a dichotomy of developing the individual versus common for society. I think that’s still a thing to navigate, but in terms of connecting people to economic opportunity as part of that equation, you really, I think, do need to acknowledge the explosion in terms of human tasks and prepare for that. And I do think, particularly in K-8, and maybe this is wrong because of what we just said around desire for some commonality in high school of kids, but I do think in K-8 we can do a much better job of the common sort of frameworks that are so important from a paternalistic civic perspective. And I don’t think we do particularly well right now on those in intentional ways.

And I just think if we spent a lot more time on narrative building in those early years, and then as you start to get into middle, particularly high school, it can become more exploration and personalization of not just how you learn, but what you learn, and that there actually may be an economic imperative to do so. I know that’s the flip, that’s back to the curriculum part where we started with the Pondiscio prodding, if you will. And I think we’ve done a good job of teasing apart that this is actually a different aspect of it. But I did want to make that point as well and see how that lands for you, because I do think the circumstance is somewhat different now.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it’s valuable not to think in dichotomies. And I think that’s what you’re pushing us on is like, it’s not everything should be common or everything should be personalized. Like either of those are maybe not good.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Yeah. And actually I love Khan World School on this, right? Like they do great books, curriculum in high school, and there’s huge room for personalization. Right. And it strikes me that both of those actually are probably quite important because maybe, you know, K-8 is Maybe my sort of narrow view of this, uh, that I just sketched out is a little overly simplistic. I’d readily concede that.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that I’m pausing because I don’t, I don’t feel like I have anything to add. I think that’s the—

Michael Horn

No, that works.. That’s, I feel like I learned a lot.

I feel like I learned a lot in this conversation. So let’s leave it there. We’ll keep chipping away at this, but I think where we came to at the end hopefully provides a roadmap for those entrepreneurs, not just schooling entrepreneurs, but others working in the ecosystem. to think through how they can pull just a couple more families into this world and lessen the feeling of those trade-offs, if you will. So Tom, thanks as always.

Thomas Arnett

Just give one anecdote. The thing I look forward to that to me is the sign if this is going that direction is think about all the TV shows and all the movies where the conventional high school is just the thing. In fact, funny little story, we live in California. We don’t have the conventional high school building where you have the hallways with the lockers because all of our buildings, the doors open to the outside. Right.

Michael Horn

The outdoor design.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my daughter, before she got to middle school, she— well, when she first saw the middle school that my sons went to, she was shocked. She was like, wait, where’s the hallways with the lockers? Because that’s what she’d seen on TV. But to me, the sign of things really tipping is when you start seeing more TV programs that will show different models of schooling. There’s a XQ Institute had an email that went out, I think this week about a TV program called Murder 101 that’s on Amazon Prime now about students at the, I think it’s Elizabethtown in Tennessee.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Thomas Arnett

That were like, their class was, their sociology class was a project-based class of like, we’re going to try and solve this 30-year-old cold case serial killer murder. And, you know, you, the building still looks like a conventional school, but the way they’re doing school is very different. And I think that’s, that’s the thing I’m looking for is like, when do we start seeing more of that showing up in like mainstream TV, mainstream movies?

Michael Horn

Yeah, goes back to Pondiscio’s argument. Are we even watching the same things though? But, I think actually, I actually think at least in terms of entertainment, there still are shows. They don’t occur at the same times, but there still are shows, right, that we’re all told to binge, that my kids somehow find out about and they binge as well on Netflix and so forth, right? And so that, I actually think there is more cultural currency that is common there than we sometimes acknowledge.

Thomas Arnett

Maybe from just not necessarily from school. Is that what you’re pointing at?

Michael Horn

Yeah. Not just necessarily from school. And yes, it’s not like, you know, it’s not 5:30 on every weekday we sit down and every, you know, every kid’s watching the show. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, or nightly news or like, yes, that stuff is not happening, but there are a lot of shows that escape the zeitgeist and do seem to capture, um, Not everyone like it used to be, perhaps. It’s not Friends, I guess, and Seinfeld, but nevertheless, there are plenty of shows that jump into that stratosphere of everyone talking about it, I think.

Thomas Arnett

Yeah. So, yeah.

Michael Horn

All right, Tom, we’ve covered a ton. Huge thanks as always.

Thomas Arnett

We’ll leave it there. Yeah, this is always fun.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, no kidding. And we’ll see y’all next time on The Future of Education. Thanks so much.

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Four of my former Harvard master’s degree students—Ruben Villarreal-Halprin, Matthew Millikin, Jaysan Shah, and William Wiltshire—joined me to discuss their independent study project exploring seven diverse microschools across the United States: the Village School, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools microschool, NuVu, the Levitt Lab, Khan Lab School, Red Bridge, and Alpha School. Several of these I’ve featured here before; others are new. The conversation dove into the range of models, philosophies, and uses of technology and AI within each school to reflect on the spectrum of innovation in schooling, the challenges and opportunities of choice, and the importance of creating learning environments that both lift the floor and blow through the ceiling for students. I look forward to your thoughts and where you all want to learn more!

Show Notes:

Tomorrow Schools on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomorrow-schools-50881b3b6

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today I’m, I’m really excited. I’ve got four of my former students. I say former because not only did I teach them several months ago at this point, but they’re all graduates now at, at Harvard. So congratulations to them. They all made it through the rapid fire year that is the Harvard Graduate School of Education experience.

But welcome guys. We’ve got Jaysan, Matthew, William, Ruben, all just amazing. You’re all amazing. You all come from really cool different backgrounds with education. And, first, welcome. And then second, I, I’ll say the reason I wanted to talk to you guys is because in the second semester you chose to do an independent study with me for some, you know, inane reason of wanting to continue to work with me, but you did it around a series of microschools that are emerging that in your words, like start to allow us to question the principles of what is a school? What’s the purpose of schooling in this era of AI? What are the things that are most important perhaps, or how can we think about things perhaps differently from how we have? And you did these deep dives into these seven microschools around the country and got to visit and spend time in all of them and create some really cool rapport and reflections around them. And I wanted to dig deeper with you on the podcast about it. So welcome.

Maybe let’s start, just go around, if you will, the proverbial virtual studio and, and just sort of give the thumbnail sketch of who you are, your background. Why this was an interesting conversation for you to do research in for an entire semester. And we’ll, we’ll start there. So William, why don’t you jump in first?

William Wiltshire

Sure, yeah. Thank you so much, Michael, for having us. I was a middle school math and history teacher in New York City before coming to the Harvard Graduate School of Education at a charter school. And charters were thought to be the innovation to traditional education when they kind of started gaining momentum. And in my teaching experience there, I enjoyed my time and loved working with the kids, but there was certainly nothing innovative about the role of a teacher in that school. State test was kind of the North Star and seat time regulations and requirements were super strict. And so as AI was coming on the scene in the world of education. I started kind of expecting change in my role, but not seeing anything meaningful.

And so came to Harvard to try to better understand where the profession is moving and kind of where schools in general are shifting and evolving. And met these three great guys in your class in the fall. And we just kind of went 100 miles an hour on this school visits project. And it was incredible. So, really glad to be here. Excited to keep chatting.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let’s do it. So, Ruben, let’s go to you next. Tell us your background. We didn’t officially intersect pre Harvard, but we kind of did because you were at a school that an organization I was a founding board member had funded. So tell. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you jumped into this.

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

Yeah, we were awfully close to running into each other. I spent three years at that school as an assistant principal. It was in Richmond, California. I ran the humanities department there. Prior to that, eight years teaching humanities as well, all around the country. Memphis, Tennessee, San Francisco. Came back to my hometown of Cambridge in the Ed policy program. This project really excited me. My time in schools.

I was really just grinding all the time, like William said, like all of these sorts of pressures coming on, coming down from on high, and was constantly looking at my feet, doing one step at a time. And I was just so excited to get in and see schools and some of the things that they were able to do with teaching. And really, for me, this project was all about, like, opening my eyes to what else was out there. It’s so hard when you’re in the classroom, when you’re in the grind of a school day, to really take time to look around at the other amazing things that are happening around the country in schools. And they’re there. They’re happening all over the place. And so this was awesome opportunity to do just that.

Michael Horn

And what you just said really resonates for me. I’m struck constantly by how many teachers, when you describe sort of personalization or things that are possible, they’re like, there’s no way that could happen. I’m like, have you ever been to a Montessori school? They’re like, all over the place in your community. And to your point, almost no one gets into a school that looks different from their own. So it’s very hard to find the time to see those. All right, let’s go to the man from Australia down under. Matthew, talk to us about your background, getting into this space and in education, coming to Harvard, then in your journey.

Matthew Millikin

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me so I was a mathematics teacher, high school teacher in Canberra, Australia the last couple of years. A lot of my work has been around the human skills of learning and growing and developing. And so I was working a lot on self perception and self efficacy within mathematics and that really led me to this human development pathway and program. What really fascinated me with this project and what kind of brought me together with not only to your class, but also with the other guys was this idea that if school looked different, what capabilities can we grow in the students when we are given some time and some space to very clearly teach the skills that are incredibly important, that are going to be more important with the way that the world and technology is developing. So it’s honestly just been a pleasure to not only be in a different country and see how things are done differently, but also really be at the forefront of what, yeah, innovation is looking like.

Michael Horn

Very cool, Very cool. We’re going to get into that more in just a moment. But Jaysan, give us your background. You’re the man who wasn’t in a school compared to these three guys. So tell us your story.

Jaysan Shah

Yes, definitely. Yeah, I’m very much the odd one out. I was never a teacher if you don’t count being a student instructor in undergrad. But yeah, I’m a cognitive scientist and I was working in neurotechnology before coming to Harvard, working for a company that had designed its own brain mapping headset. Really interested in studying brains in real life situations. And yeah, a lot of my passion was for how really scientific understanding of how the mind works can be really enabled by new technologies and exciting technologies. So I’m in the technology program. I was in the technology program here at Harvard.

And when AI and all these new technologies are really creating some interesting conversations, I thought what better time to move over and to see what it’s actually looking like in exciting, innovative schools.

Exploring emerging microschools

Michael Horn

Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so four very different programs, four very different backgrounds coming into this question of like, what can schooling look like in the future? William, let me start with you here. Why don’t you like, tell us the overview of what you guys actually did. It was like seven different microschools around the country. What was the work itself? What were you looking for as you went in there, there?

Why did you guys pick these seven that you did?

William Wiltshire

Sure. So we sat down early on in the process and really just kind of started big and then whittled down the pool size. And with your network and, and, and support from other teachers, we identified these seven schools around the country that we thought kind of represented the whole spectrum of what microschools are and what they can be. Size, I think is a common through line of all these microschools. But then we also tried to factor in public versus private versus charter and we tried to factor in kind of socioeconomic status of families and we tried to get the whole range. And so we saw some private institutions, $65,000 a year down to the, in public school district, microschool in rural eastern North Carolina and really everything in between. So we’re really pleased with the seven schools that we chose because we did not want to pigeonhole ourselves into one type of emerging school model.

Michael Horn

And I’m curious, all of you, like, let’s list them, right, and sort of maybe start to plot them against these different ways of thinking about it. You got the Village School, microschool in Virginia. You have Elizabeth City public schools, I think it is in North Carolina, more rural, if I’m not mistaken. You got NuVu, which is a sort of evolved from an after-school program into a high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You have the Levitt Lab, which is partnership really with Arizona State University for a new school model. The Khan Lab School, which many people will be familiar with who’ve listened to my past podcasts out of Khan Academy and sort of maybe the best way to say it is like Khan Academy is one thing. It’s sort of a narrow slice of what school is. And Sal has always imagined that schooling is actually a much more comprehensive way of thinking. And so the Khan Lab school is sort of like his manifestation, if you will, of that, Red Bridge, which in some ways spun out of Khan Lab School and has some different things that it leans on in San Francisco. And then the one everyone’s hearing about these days, Alpha School, which of course many locations now increasingly not just in the United States. I think they have global ambitions as well that is spreading pretty rapidly.

Help us sort of orient right a little bit on the seven schools. Where would you all put them? And maybe anyone can jump in on this and you guys can sort of pick and put them in different segments as you all might have slightly different perspectives on them as well. I don’t know. Open ended. Who wants to jump in? Yeah, yeah.

William Wiltshire

I might just kind of circle back to my original introduction. We chose the spectrum of high tuition, no tuition. But we also thought about kind of two factors and made our kind of X, Y axis. And those two variables were human skill development in teaching and then also tech informed student experience. And so when we were choosing these seven schools, somebody else will jump in after. But we really tried to think about what human skills are they pushing, how hard are they pushing them in comparison to the student experience as informed by their use of technology.

Michael Horn

Who wants to dig in? Yeah, go ahead.

Matthew Millikin

Yeah, I think just a quick comment. I think it was really interesting. Well, while we did definitely try and get that diversity, I think as well, anyone who’s done lots of different school visits knows that you never quite know what you’re going to take away from any school. And I think it was really clear, even though we were doing research and talking to you and talking to other professors and looking at websites and everything like that the actual heart of each school within kind of those two metrics was quite. I think if we were to like, kind of go through the continuum of where we think they were placed before, I think it would be quite different to what our final answers were. And so, yeah, I think, like, by a little bit of luck, we ended up with this incredibly different set of schools. But yeah, it was super interesting from that perspective is that I don’t think that, while it was. It was something that we tried to do, I think that there was definitely this element of movement as we went and saw them on the ground.

Michael Horn

I want to stay with that. That’s like really interesting to me, right? That like, you had a certain perception, you had read, you had heard about a lot of these schools. A lot of these schools are buzzy schools, right? They’ve been on my podcast, they’ve been on other people’s podcasts. In the case of Alpha, they’ve been on much bigger people’s podcasts. Help us. You know what surprised you maybe across these seven schools that led you to say, like, oh, I thought it would be here on that continuum, but actually it’s like, were they closer together? Were they further apart? Was something more tech forward than you expected? Help us? What does that mean?

Schools’ approach to learning technology

Jaysan Shah

Yeah, I think I can jump in here a little bit. I was really looking at these schools through the lens of how they’re applying learning sciences and new technologies, specifically things like AI. And I think something that really jumped out at me is that sometimes being tech forward doesn’t necessarily mean that you are using and designing really unique forms of AI, but that you have a really keen understanding of how you want students to be using it and where you think its role is in the school. And I think both of those can count as being very tech forward. It’s really clear when schools have thought deeply about these issues, and I think especially how they’ve thought about what it means to learn and how students learn. And I think really going in, especially schools like Alpha, things like the Khan Lab school, it’s really clear that they have a strong stance on technology and they’re really thinking about the physical tool itself. But then when we went to schools like Red Bridge or Village, where the students might not be using technology as much as they are in those other schools, but they have really clear intentions over what they think its role is in the classroom, it was really exciting. Really shifts my perspective throughout the semester.

Michael Horn

So maybe let’s start to dig in there. And Ruben, maybe I’ll. I’ll jump with you here and you can pick the one you want to go deep in. I know different ones of you sort of like dug in, if you will, more or less on different models as you designed your full report. But I think, like, for example, I think you did Elizabeth City. Ruben, I think that was one of yours, right? So, like, that’s one model. Where does it sit in this continuum? What does it look like in a public microschool? That seems to be the one that maybe stands out the most in terms of being a district public.

It’s not a private structure. Right. It’s. It’s not a whole cloth like reinvention. In some ways, it sits within something we understand.

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

Yeah. And it’s a really interesting place to start because we showed up there because of their use of AI. Keith Parker, their superintendent, came to Harvard. He spoke in a forum at AskWith about AI. And we showed up and we were just struck by what we took away from it. Yes, it was an in district microschool, but what really felt innovative about ECPPs was their structures and the way they structure around the community. 25 students, a school bus. They have a rolling field trip permission slip.

And so their principal and English teacher has a bus license and can load the kids up at any given moment and take them out into the community. And where we actually first caught up with the school was at the local gym. It’s like a regular fitness center in the middle of the day where they were having P.E. class. And they were in a class that looked like, you know, your 11am Pilates class at your local fitness center. And they were doing real workouts. But it showed the way in which this community was really taking on these students and the way that this school, because of the limitations of sort of.

Well, I guess like the 25 students in a public school is extremely expensive. Right. And, to build a microschool in that. And so to counteract that, they built these partnerships. So rather than hiring a PE teacher, they do this. Rather than building an art program or building an art studio, they go to the performing arts center down the street and are taught by the people who run that building. And so we were really struck that their use of AI, which was there, and they did math instruction through Khan Academy was just a small part of the bigger picture.

Michael Horn

Let’s stay on that for a moment because that’s really interesting. Right. In some ways they’re basically saying, look, we’re not going to pay for a full time music teacher, a full time gym teacher, a full time. Right. But we’re going to take advantage of the resources our community has. Right. If I’m hearing you correctly, to get actually probably far better instruction. I mean, like.

Right. These are like crazy professionals probably in some cases for some of these things. And we’re paying for a fraction. Right. Of their time for a 45 minute block a couple times a week maybe or something like that it sounds like. And so that’s how they get the economic model. Does AI also help like with logistics or that, or is it really about the instruction for AI in that model?

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

No, it was really about the instruction. They had a portion of their day that was, and we caught it at the end where students are just sitting there with their AI programming, learning math working with those programmings and, and sort of getting feedback through their AI system. But it wasn’t, it didn’t expand beyond that that we saw.

Michael Horn

All right, so maybe then let’s take that as a departure point and go to Village School or Red Bridge or something like that, which I think, Jaysan, you painted as sort of the opposite end of the AI spectrum from, from some of the. I made an assumption here with what you said, right. That maybe Khan and Alpha, very clear AI instructions, sort of. Ruben, how you were just saying, right, in Elizabeth City that it’s sitting there as that instructional core. We understand what it does. Village and Red Bridge, it sounds like, are different from that. How do you know, what are their models look like, where’s AI used and sort of give us a flavor of the day and what you guys observed.

Jaysan Shah

Yeah, I can jump in a little bit, but feel free to add to what I’m saying. But I think Village and Red Bridge weren’t using AI for instruction to really make it a little bit more clear based on what Ruben was saying. But I think what’s really interesting is that both Village and Red Bridge have really thought about what the affordances of something like AI are and where some schools are leaning on personalization of AI as their really big betting point. I think Village and Red Bridge are both similarly thinking about the generative use of AI as something that’s really exciting. So how can we let students still be very self-directed in their way they’re using AI, but instruction and the time in the classroom is still very much a very human interaction. And I think it’s really interesting to see how clearly those designers understand AI and how as a result, I think the students are really keenly aware of what the technology is they’re using, the same way that somebody who is using a computer or smartphone in a very deliberate way is using it. We’re seeing that happen with those students as well.

Michael Horn

Matthew, let me bring you in because you also, I think, spent some time with NuVu, which I’m guessing is the third that has like uses AI sort of in that way of if I’m catching what Jaysan’s saying in terms of creation, right of work as opposed to instruction of work. And I get that can be a false dichotomy, but let’s go with it for a moment. Is that correct, number one? And number two, sort of. What’s your observation off of what Jaysan just said? That and like, how do you make sure these students really know, you know, when I’m using AI well, versus, oh boy, it’s hallucinating on me and doing all sorts of things that are misleading me if I’m a novice, if you will.

Learning experiences at NuVu

Matthew Millikin

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think NuVu was so interesting because I thought there would be more use of AI, but because of their incredibly clear value structure for what they’re trying to teach at NuVu, the fact that they’re trying to teach these skills of being a designer, it very much was kind of sectioned off as a tool for students. And so I think the through line, and particularly Village, Red Bridge, NuVu kind of all had this through line that was it was incredibly clear what learning looked like in every single one of those schools. And not just to the point of it was defined and it was talked about. I think that the students knew what learning looked like. Like every student could describe what it felt like to, within the system of that school, go through that productive struggle or what skills beyond the actual curriculum they were trying to build. An example with NuVu is we were talking to a student who had been there for a couple of years. And they were talking about how in the first year they had really learned how to give and receive feedback and how, how that system was and how it was painful and how it was this, this skill that they learned throughout the year.

And then we got into this amazing conversation of how that, learning about that giving and receiving feedback led to his development of other skills like writing and how that mentality and that really deliberate curriculum of skills in students allowed him to use the tools within NuVu to better their own learning rather than something that might take away. And so it was interesting. Like another parallel is, Red Bridge really didn’t have no student facing AI within the school. As Jaysan said, they very much were thinking about what was more important and doing trade offs. But I would say that from those students and the fact that they have this incredible definition and clear structure for what learning looks like by this idea of being in autonomy levels and being an autonomous student, I would say that those students would be better protected in using technology because they have such a clear idea of what learning feels like and looks like.

Michael Horn

I want to stay on NuVu for one more moment just because in some ways, in terms of what the curriculum is there, I think, and you guys can push back, but I think they’re probably the furthest out in terms of rethinking what a high school curriculum looks like in terms of all these. It’s certainly not subject matter specific. It’s much more design focused, as you said. I think you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think, like, you could go four years there and never like, you know, study history, quote unquote, per se, help us understand that curriculum a little bit more and how they’ve made those choices.

William Wiltshire

Yeah, I’d love to jump in. NuVu was mind blowing from that traditional charter school teaching background. But so, so in such a positive way. In their freshman year, the students work in kind of studio sprints. So two, three, four weeks, where their autonomy level is lower. And they are still figuring out what it means to be in school at NuVu . And then by senior year, they have eight weeks to work on these studio projects where it’s largely independent. There are adults in the, in the space for support when needed.

But these students, over the course of the four years are really figuring out what it means to research a question deeply, use that tool belt that Matt and Jaysan alluded to with where AI is part of it, but not the entire tool belt, and come to an understanding of a topic or that question or whatever it is at a really deep level and an anecdote that I think underscores this type of learning or this curriculum, like you said, Michael, we went to the end of studio exhibition. So at the end of the eight weeks, the students presented their, what they had been doing for the eight weeks. And like you said, it’s not. There’s no history PowerPoint where kids are like rifling through flashcards like you would traditionally see in a school. This one student I’ll never forget was standing in the front of the room with just a command of the room talking about the environmental factors of waste from car bumpers. And I’ll, if you’ll allow me.

This student figured out early on in the design studio that every year something like 3 million tons of plastic waste gets put into the environment because of fender benders. This kid went through the process of doing the research, understanding the question and then working with his adults, figuring out a way to create an alternative bumper with a new type of metal that refixes itself under heat. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This child is not going to be, my bet is he’s not going to be a bumper, a car bumper expert for his entire life. But it was clear as day that he possesses a style of learning that is so deep and so personal and authentic. And that is a, that type of learning is going to benefit him in whatever work he pursues in whatever classroom he’s in for the rest of his life.

So that was just something that really struck me from our visit to NuVu.

Michael Horn

That’s really interesting. And what seems you made a comment when we were talking about this in front of all your peers, William, that like we are pro math and literacy. Right? Like it’s, this is not an either or. Because something that’s incumbent in all of your answers so far is like they are learning knowledge, they are learning these skills and that destination is bigger. That, that doesn’t sound like, you know, you, let’s be candid. You go into some project-based learning schools and like it’s a lot of empty calories in these projects. That doesn’t sound empty at all. It sounds like a lot of depth, if I’m hearing you right.

I’d love to hear the contrast or, or, or sort of the vision of what you saw then when you went to Levitt Lab school, which I think is a very different model from, from any of these that are out here today.

William Wiltshire

Yeah, I can touch on that too. And then some might feel free to jump in, Levitt has an amazing vision for what school can and should be. And my lens, this whole project was thinking about how the role of the teacher is evolving. Levitt has a really impressive vision for what the role of a teacher is. The role of a teacher is not to be the deliverer of facts and knowledge. It is to be the guide of self-directed students and encouraging students and motivating students, forming relationships with students so that they can go deep on whatever it is they care about. And that’s a really exciting idea. In practice, I think it was.

They’ve run into the challenge, which is not one of a surprise. But when you hire former teachers in a traditional classroom and don’t undergo the, like a really thorough process of helping them unlearn their teaching habits and unlearn their teaching kind of positionality, you run into issues and miscommunications. And so what does it mean to be self directed in a school? Is there accountability? Is there discipline? What kind of expectations do we have for students if they decide the work that they are kind of putting forth? And so that was a really interesting model to see because it was clear that they were in the process of growing. And so I have full faith that they will pull it off. It’s just there. I mean, as with any new school model, there’s a lot of, a lot of unlearning and growing to be done.

Vision and leadership in schools

Michael Horn

I’m curious and it’s interesting to hear you say that because I think I’ve been to a lot of quote unquote innovative schools over the years where the really good ones have a very, I’m going to use the word good leader, but I’m going to use the word good leader because they understand the why behind the model that they’ve created. And they really spend a lot of time making sure that the whole team, faculty, staff, et cetera, like everyone understands what the vision is, why they’re there, what that means for workflows. Like they don’t take any of that to chance. And when things don’t work in some of these models, it seems like there’s a broken link, maybe at multiple junctures of what I just laid out there. But like at least, at least one or two of them it seems to me, I’m curious because like this, this jumps to Alpha School, I think, which is they go so far as like they don’t want former teachers being quote unquote, their guides, fancy word for teacher with a different name but in a different role. But like that’s a very different sort of vision of that, I can’t remember which two of you wrote up Alpha School, but if someone jumps on, jumps in there, maybe, and sort of paints that contrast with what you just described with Levitt Lab.

Jaysan Shah

Yeah, I can jump in as one of the writers, but Matt as well. I think something with the Alpha school that doesn’t always get talked enough about is how deliberate the other parts of the day are. I think a lot of people talk about the two hours a day and how students are learning academic content very quickly, performing really well on exams. But as an institution, I think they’ve really done a good job of defining what their principles and purpose are for the life skills that they want students to develop. One of the mantras that we would hear walking around the campus is that they’re building creators and not consumers. And I think that was really embodied by the specific skills that they had chosen. Things like entrepreneurship, things like public speaking and leadership. And I think it goes to show what they really hope teachers are doing in those environments.

And a lot of that is modeling, and a lot of that is trying to figure out how students are progressing along those different life skills because they understand why each of the five different life schools that the school has chosen are their guiding principles. And I think something that goes with school choice as well is that families can also decide which life skills speak the most to them. And I know Alpha gets some controversy over the model, over the skills that they’ve chosen, but the fact that it’s so clear what skills they have chosen, I think is also a representation of strong leadership.

Michael Horn

That’s really interesting to me. It’s something that’s jumping out. Let’s not do every single model. I think we’re going to leave one or two on the cutting room floor, if you will, for a moment. But Ruben, maybe let me go to you on this question, which is like, when I’m hearing these NuVu to Alpha, to, you know, Levitt, like, these are very different visions. Red Bridge, right. Like Elizabeth City, Village School.

These are, like, very different visions for what schooling looks like. One of the things that jumps out to me is like, and I’m curious if you’d agree, but you know, someone who’s attracted to NuVu, that’s not every kid. And that’s probably the point in, in some ways. And Jaysan, what you just said, you know, in terms of Alpha, like, if we’re creating entrepreneurs, that probably also doesn’t speak to every single person. And that’s probably also the point. Right? Just sort of curious your reflections on that, Ruben, you know, being an assistant principal at a charter school, right. Like, you’ve seen a lot of different schools and school models themselves trying to be innovative.

Is that characterization right about, like, hey, it’s okay that these are not for everyone. And. And what, did anything surprise you around that?

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

Yeah, I think. I totally agree. I think in the schools that I worked at, we often. I think our. Our big fault was always concerned with. This is hard to put this in, in a way, but I think we were always concerned.

We always raised the floor. We kids were not falling through the cracks. Kids were doing well. But at the same time as doing that, we often constricted the ceiling of where kids could go. And I think these schools really bust through that glass ceiling and say, like, if. If this is the right fit for you, if you’ve found the right place, then the sky’s the limit, because you’ll have the autonomy, the support, the resources that really feed into you as a learner that allows you to accomplish amazing things before you leave 8th grade in some of these cases. And so that, to me, was a super inspiring piece of all this in visiting these schools was for students that found the right school, for families that found the right school, iIt really created incredible opportunities and that they were so different and that it really was like there was an option for every family to do something really incredible with their learning.

Michael Horn

Jaysan, let me ask you this question, because that’s pretty powerful, what you just described, Ruben. And it seems like the challenge then, or the opportunity maybe, if we’re moving to this, you know, more of a system of, like, lifting the ceiling for every kid is to make sure that the floor also comes up still for every kid as well. And part of that is helping them make choices that are synergistic. Right. With what really makes them tick. Is that right? Is that your observation? Like, it becomes more of a choice and system question than the responsibility of each school to be the right fit for every kid. Or how should we think about that?

Jaysan Shah

Yeah, I mean, start by saying this is definitely my opinion and be curious to see how.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Why doesn’t everyone jump in after you out in this? Okay, let. Let’s let everyone have a shot on this.

Addressing school discontent and options

Jaysan Shah

Yeah, I think that a lot of what’s happened in school that has led to some of the discontent that a lot of families are feeling is this overemphasis on standardization of the model, of school, of what students have to learn in. In the classroom. And as a result, I think more options is like a natural reaction to that discontent. I do also think that some of these schools, as much as we may love them, might not actually be the fit for some families. I’m sure that there are families that have come to these schools that have had the most amazing outcomes and some who have had to continue to find a school that was the right fit for their kids. But I think that what’s important is that the process of finding a school and the process of choosing the school right for your child is one where there’s as little friction as possible. So I think from like, a systematic standpoint, like, that might in my mind be like, one of the important places to start to resolve the barriers that families are facing, because I think there’s a lot of knowledge in communities over, like, how learning can occur, what learning can look like, and if we can continue to incentivize that entrepreneurship of these different school models, I’m sure there’s going to be some that continue to rise to the surface as like, the most prime examples, even beyond just the seven we’ve seen.

Michael Horn

All right, everyone, get in there. Feature bug concerns, worries, excitement. Yeah, go ahead, Matthew.

Matthew Millikin

I’ve got a. Okay. So I think my perspective from this human development side is that the couple of character skills or human skills that a school builds should be the most important part of this whole continuum. And I want to be clear with like, what that means. I think it’s a deeper level of purpose of schooling than, say, the Alpha school’s life skills. I see like subjects and jobs, life skills or kind of that different level. And then you have this, what characteristics are we building?

And, and that’s why I think Red Bridge as a school cuts through is because they have one characteristic which is being an autonomous learner. And like, and like, that is a human skill that they’re building. So I think that that is, that is like, for me, what should be the most important point to connect the students or, and the parents of a community to a school, because it then informs every other level. And so, yeah, I think, I think if you don’t build up from there and then you don’t align people at that, at that deepest level. Well, it’s not. That’s where you do get friction.

Michael Horn

Ruben and William, I want to hear you both get in this also. And I just want to add off of what Matthew just said, like, in some ways, I think, Matthew, you’re suggesting, like, that’s the new thing that’s in common. And this is something I’ve thought a lot about is like in many ways like prom or Friday Night Lights in America. Right. Different from Australia perhaps because football’s a little harder core where you are. Right. Like those have been what we’ve taken in common and you’re speaking a different language of commonality in some ways. So I’d love your guys’ reflections though.

Focus on learner-centric schools

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

Yeah, I think, yeah. What Matt said really resonates with me about, about focusing on, on human skills and, and focusing on the learner. I think like these schools and when I think about Village School and Red Bridge in particular, their focus on the learner in front of them, who that learner is and that learner understanding who they are as a person and as a growing learner being and someone who’s, who’s going to spend this time in school understanding like where have I been? What skills am I developing? And then where are my gaps? Where do I go from here? But they really do an incredible job both those schools of pairing that with a strong foundation of reading and math and those foundational skills that we associate with school traditionally. And so they’re able to do both of those things. They’re raising the floor and opening up that ceiling for students to explore in depth those interests. And so they have courses of their day that might look and feel a bit. Well, they look and feel like really solid ELA class. And then there’s a portion of their day designed and, and designated for students to explore their interests and to explore their learning in a deep way that’s, that’s self driven.

And then there are those skills that are required to do those things to be a self driven learner are developed as a part of that. It’s not a separate skill. It’s not decoupled from their instructional classes. It’s a part of the whole coherent structure of the school that really thrusts kids upwards.

Michael Horn

Fair to say that like the knowledge building you just described in mathematics or ELA, it’s viewed as like foundational to that larger question. And then that intent or purpose of what we’re building, that autonomy and self understanding, that’s the consistent thing that appears in every single learning activity. Is that the right way to think about it?

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

Absolutely, yeah.

Matthew Millikin

Cool.

Michael Horn

All right, William, your turn to worry or get excited.

Choosing the right school fit

William Wiltshire

No, I’ll do a little bit of both. I think I, I think about even some of my family members like say you’ve, your family’s been going to a school for generations and, but for this one kid, it’s not the right fit. And no matter how hard you try to put the square peg in the round hole, like these are formative years of a student’s life where if they’re not in the right fit, it’s doing more harm to the student’s development than if they made it out the other side and figure it out by senior year of high school. Like, that is what’s, what’s the point of that? And I just, on these school tours, I was really just so inspired by knowing that different is okay and different models are more and more becoming less stigmatized. And I just think, I think back to even when I was in school, a different model most likely would have been the right fit for me. And yet it’s a big jump for parents to make to leave what’s familiar for something that’s unfamiliar. So I think that’ll be a really interesting kind of trend to keep an eye on in the next couple of years, what parents make of leaving the comfortable traditional model. And then the thing I think I’m worried about is where higher education kind of fits into this equation.

They kind of seem to. Higher ed kind of seems to be in between, causing friction from K through 12 to the job market, where if we’ve got these really inspiring, innovative K through 12 models, but they have to adapt their transcripts or adapt their curricula to appease a higher education institution, and then the student has to then apply to the job market. It’s, it’ll be. That’s one of my worries. I don’t want some, a place like the Village School where it’s all about knowing yourself, to have to change anything about their model to satisfy the needs of higher education. Because I know that when those students from the Village School do make it to the job market, that ability to know yourself is going to do them wonders. So higher education is the biggest question mark I have.

Michael Horn

Friction. Yeah. And it’s interesting, right? Like if I’m a college, I sure would want somebody who actually knew themselves and could learn autonomously. Like that would be a way more valuable student than the traditional sort of play the game student, if you will, for lack of a better phrase. So. All right, last question for you all as we wrap up here. And, and you guys, it’s a sort of lightning round question, but you can take it where you want. Which is, you know, the thing that’s most surprising to you or the thing that you’re going to take from this as you’ve now graduated and go out into, back into the working world, back into the working world of education.

Something you’re going to do with this and take with it in your own careers, and maybe we’ll go the same order through. So, Jaysan, then Matthew, Ruben, William, final word all right? Go for it, Jaysan.

Jaysan Shah

I think my biggest takeaway from this is that nobody has the answers, but I think the answers lie in trying and trying something different. And I think that the more that people really think deeply about what led to the success in their own life and really try to understand how, how things like research and technology can support that is when we can kind of break away from nostalgia that might be kind of halting other innovations.

Reflecting on meaningful practices

Matthew Millikin

It’s a great question. So I think one big reflection is. And the other’s going to laugh because I pull out this quote all the time is one of my professors uses that what counts cannot always be counted, and what can be counted does not always count quite a lot to push us to ask people what matters. And I think a practice or a thing that I’m going to continually follow through from this project and just based on what we saw and what I can’t unsee is asking people what matters to them and then trying to use that to establish this common ground. Because I think in schools where I don’t think, and to my point earlier about the human skills, I don’t think we’re getting to the ground level, foundational beliefs enough and then building up from that. And so, yeah, I think a practice going forward is I’m going to ask what do you think the purpose of this is? What do you think the purpose of all of it is? And let’s figure out what’s common and build things from there.

Ruben Villarreal-Halprin

For me, it’s part of the reason why I wanted to do this project with these guys in the first place was to get out there and see it. And I think that’s my biggest takeaway is that these schools, the leaders, the guides and teachers that were most inspiring were those who had gotten out into other schools who had both seen things happening and then came back and made it their own. And I think I am not going to be the same teacher, the same leader after going to see these schools and what they’ve accomplished and what they’re aiming to do. And I think it. You’d be hard pressed as a teacher, as a school leader to go back and not be changed by some of the inspiring things that are happening around the country.

William Wiltshire

I think I would echo what Jaysan said about just trying will get us to a better understanding of what the purpose of school is. I think, shout out to our friend Aashna who is starting her own school. But the process of building a school right now is very feasible. If you work out the financials, obviously that’s a huge hill to climb. But like people can just build schools now, say this is the thing I care about most, this is what I want my students to be and who I want them to become, or just a general kind of set of principles and just do it. And I think that the more leaders that we see kind of getting to that point, like we just had a cohort of 750 students at Harvard graduate and the vast, vast majority of them are going back into existing institutions. But imagine if a fraction of that class size went off and built what an exciting landscape we’re walking into. So I’m really motivated and hopeful that more children will have more schools that work for them.

Michael Horn

Amazing guys. And just for those listening, it’s Aashna Mago who’s starting Purpose Schools right in the Bay Area. But just, you know, folks that want to follow the work, look at the report you produced. They can follow Tomorrow Schools on LinkedIn. Is that the best, is that the best way? I’m getting head nods, but. And a thumbs up from Matthew. So cool. All right, so check that resource out.

We’ll link to it. All four of you, congratulations on graduating. Congrats on asking the hard questions. Right. It’s a lot easier just to stay on the path, I think, of what’s been. But congrats on sort of asking where the exceptions, those anomalies are, where that can give us a window into how we might rethink what’s been and create a lot more opportunities. And Ruben, I’m going to keep that quote of we’re blowing off the ceiling so that people can just reach their potential. That’s a cool way of thinking about what we’re trying to build here, I think.

So huge thank you to all of you and for all of you tuning in. We’ll be back next time on the Future of Education as always. And let’s keep building, folks. Thanks so much.

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Ryan Delk, the founder of Primer, an innovative K–8 private school network focused on accessibility, mastery, and student agency, sat down with me at a Primer school in Florida to help me learn about Primer’s schooling model.

Ryan explained how Primer partners with passionate educators to launch flexible, community-focused campuses that prioritize affordability and transparency for families. Our discussion showcased how Primer leverages technology to personalize academics through regular assessment, supports teachers by reducing administrative burdens, and cultivates real-world skills and student empowerment through project-based “pursuits.” And we have clips throughout of teachers and students interacting in the school, as Ryan gave me a tour of the school. I can’t wait to hear all of your thoughts in the comments.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. As I’ve discussed, for the last decade-plus, we’ve seen a wave of microschools and, more accurately in my view, low-cost private schools, emerge across the country. Many are local schools with one or two sites. But a few have scaling ambitions through different mechanisms—names like Acton Academy, Prenda, OpenEd, Wildflower, KaiPod arguably, Flourish, and a few others. And then there’s another school network with such ambitions called Primer. I had long heard about the Primer model from many folks and knew several of the team members. But I had never had the opportunity to visit a Primer School. Knowing I would have the opportunity to interview Gov. Jeb Bush and Primer’s founder, Ryan Delk, in Florida at a Primer School, I was also excited to visit and learn more about the model.

What follows is some of the conversation Ryan and I had and a look into the school itself. For those listening, you’ll miss a lot of the video of the actual schools but you should be able to get the basic flavor. For those watching, I hope you enjoy and learn from the accompanying video of students and teachers.

Creating a high-agency learning environment

Michael Horn

Ryan, I’ve been wanting to see a Primer school for I don’t know how many years now. We’re here, we’re here at Coconut Grove. Tell us about the Primer model. That’s the first thing I always hear when I hear about Primer schools is you have to understand the Primer school model. What is it?

Ryan Delk

So it’s, I’ll talk about it from the family, teacher and student perspective. So from an educator perspective, Primer exists to empower these great educators who have dreamed of starting a school or want to start a school and want to serve their communities. But that’s a quite arduous process if you want to get a school ground. And so we partner with these great educators, we help them open these schools across Florida, now Alabama, soon Texas. And these are sometimes former administrators, they’re sometimes longtime teachers, sometimes Teach for America alums. But they’re people that see that the traditional system is not meeting kids needs, not meeting the needs of their community. But they really care about figuring that out. And so they, they, they partner with us to open, to open these schools.

From a family perspective. Most of our families are in some sort of school situation that they know is not meeting their needs. And they’re typically not the families that can afford to move to a private school. These are really mostly working class, middle class, sometimes low income families that really care about their kids’ education. They’re deeply passionate about this. They believe in education as a driver of upward mobility and the importance of it. But they know that the current setup is not meeting their kids’ needs. And so they seek out Primer.

They’re able to attend Primer often for free or for a very low tuition cost per month. And then from a student perspective we really believe in this idea of taking kids seriously. That’s like our sort of North Star from a student experience. And so we’ll talk more about that and I think we’re going to go, go see some kids in action. But this idea of when you create a high agency environment for a student and specifically around academics, you give them transparency into exactly where they’re at. Are they above grade level, behind grade level? And so parents, teachers, students, everyone can see, okay, I’m a grade level ahead in math, I may be a grade level behind in reading. Here’s the game plan. You give them agency over, you sort of give them the opportunity to get, to either get farther ahead or to get onto grade level.

And so all the software that we’ve built that powers the school day, is really sort of built with that in mind. And so you have this high agency environment for kids. You have teachers who are really excited about serving their community, and then parents that are motivated to find a better option for their kids.

Michael Horn

Maybe let’s back up before we actually get to see what that all looks like and just how many schools are in the network? Like, you’re one of a handful of networks that I think of going to scale right now with your model. How many are there? How many students in a school? Like, give us some of those fundamentals, if you will.

Ryan Delk

Yes. We have 14 campuses across Florida, Alabama and Arizona. We’ll be launching a handful in San Antonio this fall as well, and a few more across Florida. And the average campus is anywhere between 50 and 120 students, depending on the real estate. So it depends on the campus setup and the number of teachers, et cetera. We will open Primers, our model is intentionally flexible from a real estate perspective. And sort of the controlling variable for us is access and cost.

And so we have this core value of access as the constraint. And so we start from that place and then we figure out how to deliver a really high quality education in a way that’s accessible for every family. And so we open Primers in spaces like this. We’ll sometimes partner with churches, community centers, charter schools, some property developers, residential developers that want to bring a Primer to a residential community. We’ll do a lot of different things to get Primers off the ground and do it in a way that’s as affordable to every family as possible.

Making Primer accessible for families

Michael Horn

When you say affordable, like, what are we talking about tuition levels and how are, you know, families here? How are they paying?

Ryan Delk

I think we, I mean, you would maybe know this. It’s hard to know for sure. I think we might be the only private school network in the US that lowered tuition for the majority of our families last year. So the majority of families are paying less for Primer in School Year 25 than they were in School 24. Okay. And my hope is we can keep doing that for a very long time. We’ve never turned away a child for their family’s ability to pay.

So if a family comes to us and says, hey, I really want to attend Primer, but 50 bucks a month is too much, like, we will always work with them. We have the Primer foundation that unlocks scholarships for those kids when they need it. And so, so we are, we are really serious about this idea of making this accessible to every family. And then for the families that do pay out of pocket, in addition to their state ESA, they typically pay between $50 and $200 a month. Most families, it’s a sliding scale based on income. And then in some states like Texas, it’s 100% free. So it depends a little bit state by state. But my vision very explicitly is to get Primer to be 100% free or ultra low cost.

Some states require some small amount out of pocket, but ultra low cost for every family that attends. And that is, that is our North Star.

Michael Horn

It’s interesting. Purdue University in the higher ed space got however many plaudits for holding tuition level. You’re lowering it. That’s truly unique, I think. Talk to us about, you know, sort of the day in the life of a student. Right. Are they coming five days a week? What sort of the arc of their day looks like?

Ryan Delk

Yeah, something we believe that’s really important for these kinds of quote unquote alternative education models. We really want Primer to feel legible to parents, sort of legible to the existing system. So it feels like a school. So we operate from 8 to 3 or 8 to 3:30 every day. Students come five days a week. And so when you’re here, it feels fresh and it feels new and exciting and different, but it still feels like a school. And that’s really important to us. And so for parents that are working that, that, you know, are thinking in terms of a traditional school schedule, Primer fits, you know, exactly what they would expect.

The basic day breakdown, and we’ll see some is in the morning, kids are working on core academics. So all core academics at Primer are individualized for the student. And so they join Primer, they take a nationally normed reference test, the NWEA map test. We get a snapshot of where that student is academically. Every student is. There’s no student that is perfectly at the exact same grade level in every single subject. And so we get a snapshot of this student is maybe half a grade level ahead in math, half a grade level behind in writing, on grade level in reading. And then the system builds an academic model for them.

And that academic model includes direct instruction from the teacher. So there’s, you know, moments during the day where either the teacher has a small group of students or she’s doing group instruction. There’s also moments during the day where the students might be learning from a virtual instructor. So let’s say they need remedial support in reading. They might be in a remedial math or reading class with another small group of students across the Primer network, virtually with an expert tutor that’s helping them accelerate back on grade level. There’s also points in the day where the student might be working on a learning app or software tutor. Some of the students that are really far ahead, that have mastered concepts and can move quickly.

Some students that might need, you know, very specific targeted instruction to a specific concept. And then the fourth sort of modality is students working together. So it might be students reading a book together, discussing it. We really want students to learn this idea of the sort of, we can call it learn how to learn, but this idea of them being able to take agency and ownership over their education even at a very young age and not need a teacher hovering over them to make sure that they’re doing their work, but be able to sit in a group of students and have a robust discussion and understand that they have the freedom to go do that, but also the expectation that they stay on task and, you know, have a fruitful discussion.

Michael Horn

And then. So that’s the morning block, basically, these fundamentals of all the subjects, I guess, reading, writing, math, science, et cetera.

Ryan Delk

So, yeah, so science, social studies, history, those happen in the afternoon through pursuits. And so pursuits are sort of are you think of it as i t sort of accelerates over or becomes more robust as kids get older. But we want to figure out what makes every student tick, what are they excited about, what are they intrinsically motivated, and then develop a set of projects that they can work on that align with those interests. And so when kids are younger, you know, these are group projects like, let’s build a community garden. Let’s, you know, learn about local politics and, you know, how a new law is going to, you know, become law in Miami Dade County.

Student-led projects and pursuits

Ryan Delk

These are projects that the primary leader is usually kind of facilitating as a group, but as kids get older, it turns into, let’s start a company, let’s go work on a microbiology research project. Let’s launch a podcast, you know, let’s publish a book on Amazon. And then we have a team that works with both the students, students and the primary leader to set academic milestones for against state standards, against different gaps that the student might have that weave into that project. And so we really want the pursuits time in the afternoon, from a parent perspective, to almost feel like something that you would expect to be paying for as, like, enrichment or after school. But it happens during the school day. And then from a student perspective, this is when they learn that agency and that sort of, you know, by the time they’re in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, it’s, hey, this is, you have two hours today.

How are you going to use that time? Are you going to hit your goals? These are really important skills that they learn. And they’re also getting, you know, these academic milestones, plus the ability to work on these projects they’re excited about.

Michael Horn

And this is a K through 8 model. Right. So it’s those early years and sort of this arc of having more and more agency and into these maybe bigger projects as they get older. And then you mentioned your tech system. So you take the NWEA map in the beginning, it sort of maps out this, what your academic plan is going to look like, how are you measuring mastery and then sort of pulling that back into the system to right size that educational experience. Because I’m assuming not all the kids are moving at the same pace and so forth.

Ryan Delk

Yeah. So this is probably the thing I’m most excited about that we’re building. We actually just shipped a new version of Academic Progress last week. But the basic idea is we want every teacher, every student and every parent to be operating with the same. There should be no information asymmetry. They should have the same fidelity on how a student is doing. And so we show the parent in our mobile app, on their desktop view every concept, every academic milestone, every concept, every state standard, depending on where they are for that child’s education, exactly where they are, whether it’s on grade level, ahead of grade level, at grade level, and exactly how they’re progressing. And we actually project into the future and say, okay, your child is, let’s say it’s a fourth grader that’s a half grade level ahead in math, by the end of this school year.

Here’s exactly where we expect them to be based on their current learning velocity. Or let’s say that it’s a child that’s a grade level behind in reading, based on their current learning velocity. Here’s where we think they’ll be by the end of the school year. And if that says, hey, they’re going to be caught up, that’s really exciting. If it doesn’t, then we’re going to work with that child to set more aggressive goals and the Primer leader is going to be involved in that. They’re going to do that every session, every five weeks and the parent’s going to see that, the teacher’s going to see that, the child’s going to see that, and then it sort of incentivizes them to want to work harder to get on grade level. And so the transparency and fidelity is sort of key to the whole way we think about mastery. And then the actual data itself is coming in from a variety of exit tickets.

Virtual instruction for students that might be behind, direct instruction from the PL and their notes, learning apps, like they could go on Khan Academy and take a quiz or Newsela or Frax or different applications we use. And so our system ingests all of that.

Michael Horn

So basically, lots of measures of assessment, lots of measures of mastery, and you can almost triangulate. Do we really figure out has this kid really mastered?

Ryan Delk

Exactly. And the thing, you know, the number one thing that alternative schools or whatever you want to call them like to do is come up with these kind of like internal metrics for academic outcomes that are, you know, sort of a black box and sort of shun, you know, third party nationally norm testing. And what we do is we take the NWEA map three times a year. And what that does, and, you know, parents get that data, teachers get the data, students get the data. And what that does is it keeps us honest. And so we have this.

Michael Horn

You’re looking at your internal metrics and does it line up?

Ryan Delk

Exactly. So we have daily information on every single student, that every individual Primer leader has a dashboard view of their classroom that sort of aggregates all the student data. Every campus leader has a view of all their classrooms at their campus. And then our academic team has the view of the whole network and they can drill into any campus, individual classroom and an individual student. And then we look at the map data and make sure that it correlates with what we expect. And so we can actually project what we think the MAP score is going to be for each student based on, you know, their learning velocity. And then of course, when those things are, you know, not tied, we adjudicate like, okay, was the kid sick when they took a map test? Did they not sleep well the night before? Like, we’re, we’re sympathetic to those things, but it creates this, I think, very robust picture of how kids are doing academically. And this is, I just think it’s really, really important as part of this kind of low cost, high quality school movement, to be honest about, like, we have to deliver academic outcomes for kids and not shy away from that.

Michael Horn

And not shy away from it. Everyone is buzzing about AI as, you know, what’s the role of artificial intelligence in what you just described or what you’re developing.

Reducing teacher administrative tasks

Ryan Delk

I’m more excited in the short term and this is a bit of a hot take of how AI impacts the kind of administration. So maybe just zooming out like what I aspire Primer to be for an educator is that we take on all of the sort of crufty bureaucratic administrative junk that you have to do. You know, we’ll talk to educators who say like look, I spend like two hours on the weekends filling up paperwork for different students, like all this crazy busy work. And so I don’t, I don’t know that any Primer leader has ever filled out a piece of paperwork ever. Like I think it’s just all abstracted away for them. And so that is extremely important to us. And so a lot of the ways that we’re using these new models is in empowering the teacher. Like if you think about a teacher’s day, my mental model for this is that you want to maximize the number of minutes where that teacher is doing what only they can do, which is engaging with a student one on one or in a small group or the whole class, investing in a kid, building a relationship, building trust, helping them through some really important learning unlock and when they’re tied up thinking about schedules and rosters and who’s out sick today and all those things, all that takes away both from like a cognitive load perspective but just literally from like a minutes in the day perspective.

And so a lot of what we’re doing right now is on the teacher and the parents side creating more robust visibility. But we will test and we will deploy all the latest technology for students. And so we don’t shy away from that. And so if the team will find some really exciting new math AI tutor and we’ll go, if some students want to try it, they’ll try it. We’ll look at the data, we’ll look at the learning velocity. We actually just concluded one which I won’t name here, but didn’t beat the current system. And so we said hey, we’re not going to deploy this. And so it’s not that we’re sort of shying away from the student side, but it’s just that I think my current view is that the underlying models have gotten to the point where they can deliver incredible academic outcomes, but the sort of packaging of it in a way that is accessible to students, that’s multimodal, that meets students exactly where they are and then importantly that creates on the back end has the data architecture to be able to map whatever’s happening in the AI tutor to state standards to learning outcomes.

That is still quite messy, but I think we’re like three to six months away from that. And sort of the whole point of the software, or a significant point of software we built is to ensure that we can plug in those best in class tools and deliver for kids when they’re ready.

Michael Horn

Well, something that seems distinct about your model compared to a lot of the other models I see and hear about right now is that rather than saying we’re going to sort of reduce the number of inputs into a kid’s education, you’re basically saying flowering. If a teacher one on one or in small group with you is the best modality, great, we’ll take that and ingest the data and figure out did you master it, if it’s this software program, if it’s a tutor, whatever it is, and basically the system is sort of taking all these inputs and refereeing or sort of coming up with a picture of mastery. Talk about that philosophy. Because that does seem distinct, I think.

Empowering teachers with technology

Ryan Delk

Yeah, there’s two things that I would say. One is we are big believers in the educator and the teacher as a sort of sacred part of a child’s school experience. I think that’s true for any kid. I think it is especially true for children increasingly that come from one parent households or situations where their home life might not feel as stable. Teachers provide a really important role for those kids, far beyond just the education. And so this idea that like AI is going to replace every teacher, you know, we sort of reject that future. And I care much more about how do we empower teachers to do exceptional work to build these relationships with kids to be, you know, how do you take a, you know, 75th or 80th percentile teacher objectively? And how do you, how do you make them a 99th percentile teacher? How do you give them superpowers? By taking on all this admin work by, you know, we’re starting to do this, this thing called alerts where a teacher can get a ping in real time when a student is struggling with a specific concept. And so imagine a 99th percentile teacher is sort of constantly keeping in their head where each student is, what concepts they’re struggling with and knows when to sit down with them one on one and grab the scratch paper and intervene.

Well, what if the software did that for you and said, hey, this student right now in real time, 10 seconds ago was struggling with 3 digit subtraction. I think it’s a really high leverage moment for you to grab some scratch paper and dig into this. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that we get really excited about. So we’re, that’s sort of our vision for the future. And then I think from a, from a sort of modality perspective, we care a lot about ensuring that what we put in front of kids and the way the school day is structured meets our internal bar for delivering academic outcomes. And so we’re very thoughtful about screen time, we’re very thoughtful about the technology the kids are exposed to. We’re very thoughtful about what we ask of teachers. And so it is, we’re sort of, we’ve built the system to be highly flexible around the best in class tools, but we still have an extremely high bar for what makes it in and what students are exposed to. And that will never change.

Michael Horn

So we’ve talked about how you measure the fundamentals and mastery around that. You’ve talked a lot about the importance of agency and these other habits or skills right

That is going to serve students not just in school but throughout their lives as they try to live choice filled lives. Yeah. How are you measuring and looking at that? Right. Because that seems like an important piece of what you’re doing.

Ryan Delk

Yeah, we think of those as like the inputs to, you know, there’s academic outcomes and then there’s the inputs to academic outcomes. And so we call them habits of work. And so every time a kid engages, a student engages with a pursuit and other parts of Primer, they know that the habits of work are really important input into the score that they get or the grade that they get. And so, you know, these are things like, you know, is the child showing up engaged? You know, is the student working hard? Are they, are they hitting their goals? Do they have legible goals? And I think that piece of it, I think is an underrated part. So people are focused on the outcomes. What’s the MAP score, what’s the grade levels, gpa. But we care a lot about these inputs, one because I think they are inputs to academic outcomes and they’re important.

But to your point, if you’re launching a Shopify store as part of your pursuit, learning how to show up even if you didn’t sleep well the night before and be focused and work hard for 45 minutes or an hour on that is a really important life skill. And if you learn that in sixth grade, that’s going to pay dividends for you well into adulthood. And so we think about them both because they’re important for academic outcomes, but also because they’re just important for life.

Michael Horn

And it’s the context in the academic outcomes. What’s the connection between, I’m learning the fundamentals of English, math and so forth, and then I get these projects in social studies, science in the afternoon. Is there a connection? Do the students say, like, hey, I’m learning reading so that I can do this thing? Like, do they understand that connection?

Connecting learning to real-world applications

Ryan Delk

Yeah, we had a student. So yes, the high level sort of answer is that we want students to feel a direct connection between what they’re learning academically, unlocking these cool projects that they’re excited about. And the, the point of that is, you know, eventually it’s grows to, okay, I’m gonna go study this thing for four years in college and then go become this, you know, or I’m gonna go to trade school, learn this set of skills and then go, you know, have this profession. And so this, this starting to sort of develop the pattern matching of hey, I can learn this thing in school and then it unlocks this project for me is really important. But what we, what we try to do is we try to both, both have that happen kind of fluidly and natively within the projects, but then also explicitly create that. And so I think last year we had a student that was really interested in statistics or, or math, and they’re really excited about the NFL draft and like how teams were going to, you know, were going to be able to decide who they were going to draft and relative to their current roster and salary caps and all these things. And so I was able to connect her with an NFL team. And we, you know, we were on FaceTime, talking to them about who they were going to draft and why they were going to draft them.

And that was like a very, you could tell, the kind of like, eureka moment for her of like, okay, I learned this math, and then I was able to use that math to create this sort of view of what the optimal strategy would be for a draft. And then I actually got to talk to an NFL team about it and have a conversation. And that’s just like a very, very small anecdote. But those are the kind of connections that we want to make for kids. And I think that if we do that, especially fifth, sixth, seventh grade, that’ll pay tremendous dividends.

Michael Horn

That’s real empowerment.

Empowerment indeed. I hope you enjoyed this special edition of the Future of Education as much as I did. Being able to be in a Primer school with the students and teachers live was just a huge treat. So a huge thank you again to Ryan for joining me, and a huge thank you to the whole team at Primer and all the supports behind them that helped make this visit possible. There were a lot of logistics to make all these things come together and they just were absolutely top flight professionals in making it happen. And a huge thank you as always to all of you for joining this special edition. I look forward to hearing about all your reactions and thoughts and comments to the episode. And as always, we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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I hosted a conversation with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Ryan Delk, the founder of the Primer micrschools network, about the evolution of educational choice in Florida and its broader implications for the nation. Our discussion explored the state's journey from the early implementation of school choice policies to the current landscape where over half of Florida's families have the ability to select their children's schools and other educational services. The episode delved into key issues like funding, regulation, accountability, and federalism.

Michael Horn

Governor, Ryan, welcome to the Future of Education. Thanks for being here.

Governor Bush

Good to be at a Primer school.

Michael Horn

Yes, it is indeed. And the history, Governor, of publicly funded widespread universal school choice, educational choice in Florida really gets its start from your time as Governor. You have laws in 1999, 2001, I’d say 2003, with funding following the student to Florida Virtual. You have all these milestones. As you look back now, 2026 at the state of educational choice here, how would you describe where we are in Florida? Where in the movement, if you will, are we right now?

Governor Bush

We’re not completely there, but we certainly got to scale for sure. When we started, I think we had 80 kids in that, parents went to a private school with public money. And that’s expanded over time. One voucher program, another corporate tax scholar program. Today, over 50% of parents in Florida choose where their kids go to school. It could be we have universal public school choice, we have universal education savings accounts. And so we’re, we’re building what I think is the right way to educate our children by empowering parents. It’s really exciting.

Michael Horn

And as you noted, we’re sitting in a Primer school, literally one of hundreds of microschools, low cost private schools throughout the state right now. I’m curious, did you envision this sort of education entrepreneurship that we’ve seen when you were Governor?

Governor Bush

I didn’t envision anything. I hoped that it would happen. My personal belief is that parents deserve to have this power to choose where their kids go to school and if they do that, that there will be schools like Primer, more tools for homeschool kids. Charter schools will emerge. The religious schools that were in decline in terms of providing education to their students would see growth, all of that. I was hopeful it would happen and I’m proud that Florida has been a leader. But it’s also exciting to see it happen across the country.

Michael Horn

Ryan, you’ve been a direct beneficiary of really the foresight of these policies that I think it’s fair to say. And you also, as I understand it, have quite an intergenerational connection as well when it comes to microschools, educational choice in Florida. What’s your family connection to the story that’s unfolded here that started under Governor Bush?

Ryan Delk

Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a very personal connection, but then there’s also this sort of interesting macro connection. And the personal connection is my mom was a public school teacher, so she was very pro public schools. We were zoned for. She took me to kindergarten orientation at the school that we were zoned for. And she quickly realized that it was a failing school. It wasn’t going to meet, you know, her standards for us. We were living with, in my grandparents house at the time in a low income area outside Orlando.

We didn’t have, you know, any choice to move. We couldn’t afford private school. And so she just took matters into her own hands. And so she ended up starting one of the first kinds of homeschool microschools in Florida. She got me and my siblings and then about a dozen other kids together and she just willed this thing into existence. And what’s interesting, and this is where it kind of connects to the macro. So I, this incredible education that frankly was like, you know, significantly higher quality than, you know, what I would have, you know, deserved, you know, relative to our socioeconomic status or what you would have expected. And what’s interesting is that she started that right before Governor Bush’s first term.

Impact of Governor Bush’s Policies

Ryan Delk

And so, we sort of experienced, you know, what I think of as the before times and it was very contrarian. We got a lot of questions. I think she was frankly judged by a lot of people, you know, for, for doing what she did. And then when Governor Bush took office, he, you know, sort of decided to, to go to the mat for, you know, a lot of these issues and make it a key priority. And so we, we actually sort of experienced the shift where it was, it was you know, not only just normalized but sort of like celebrated and empowered. And so I now feel this frankly like a real weight and responsibility as sort of the first generation to benefit from these policies. And then now, three decades later, you know, getting to spend my life building schools like this that open up those same opportunities to students with the same, you know, structure and work that, that not only, you know, Governor’s administration, but many, many folks since then have carried the torch to unlock these opportunities for kids. And so the weight of that is not lost on me.

And I think it’s quite powerful that we’re sort of seeing the second generation now. The folks that had the, that got these opportunities from, from sort of generation one of these programs now being able to reinvest in the next generation is, is quite exciting.

Michael Horn

Well, and it’s fascinating, right, that narrative of ostracism almost to norm, to expectation, right, for families. And as I understand it, you all at Primer are thinking a lot about the policy and regulatory landscape and some of the critical questions when it comes to things like microschools and the like, zoning, fire safety codes, things of that nature. I know there have been some big developments over the past couple years in Florida around some of those zoning questions. Can you just update us both on what’s happened, but also why it matters so much?

Ryan Delk

Yeah, so we are, we’re one of. There’s a lot of people doing great work on this Excel in Ed. There’s a ton of great, great orgs. And so we are one of many people that are working on this issue. There is one, you know, very narrow and perhaps, I think, very underrated, but maybe, you know, kind of unexciting part of the regulatory landscape that I happen to care a lot about, and that is the regulations around new school supply. So there’s an enormous amount of energy that’s gone into what I would articulate as the demand side, unlocking funding for parents, making sure that the funding follows the student. And that’s, you know, as we discussed, many decades in the making. But now that that exists, the reality is that a lot of the regulations around starting new schools, and I learned this firsthand, like the amount of nights and weekends that I spent early on at Primer staring at zoning maps of cities and counties is far more than I ever anticipated.

And the reason for that is that there’s all these regulations that sort of, you know, take as a sort of starting assumption that every school is still a, you know, 60,000 square foot, $30 million build to serve 2,000 students. And so in that framework where every single school looks like that, of course there’s traffic studies and school bus parking and very intense building regulations, that all makes sense in that context. But now in this world where you have a great educator who wants to open up a school in a church or a community center or, you know, a facility like this, those regulations are quite arduous. And they’re arduous, you know, we’re a fairly sophisticated operation. They’re arduous at times for us, but, but in many ways they’re impossible for like a sort of seasoned educator that wants to go serve their community. And so what I care is the sort of common sense, right sizing of these regulations specifically for small schools.

So for the large schools, a lot of what’s in place is, I think, serving that need really well. It makes a lot of sense. But for small schools, we want to make it much easier for those schools to open up in existing facilities to serve their community. And the reason that I care a lot about this is that I’ve seen firsthand stories of dozens, maybe hundreds of educators who want to start not just primaries, but all sorts of types of schools who reach out to us and say, hey, I got stuck. I have, you know, I’m trying to get this building permit, I’m trying to get this code, I can’t figure out zoning, or I’ve got to do a nine month variance process. All these things that are sort of just, just incredibly arduous for the task at hand. And so we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy from a legislative perspective making sure that we can knock down those barriers.

Michael Horn

Governor, I want to broaden the view now beyond Florida and think about these sorts of questions, supply questions, others, in the context of this sort of nationwide movement right now we’re seeing toward educational choice. And I’m curious both of your takes on a couple of items that we can run down. First, it strikes me just thinking about what you said on the zoning side of it. As an onlooker, there’s a pretty robust demand right now for different options that meet different kids needs. But the supply side that you just described, so you’re taking some significant steps there, but getting a sustainable supply side that’s affordable, low cost, private schools like Primer. What’s holding up the supply side? What else should we be thinking about in terms of that? Or maybe my perspective is wrong on this, but I would love to think about how do we really encourage this robust supply side.

Governor Bush

Ten years ago the big fight was how do we get charter schools to be able to access, as public schools to access public capital, what we call in Florida pico dollars. And that was a struggle because look, the public schools feel threatened by all these choices. I mean my, my hope and dream is that there’ll be a superintendent in Miami Dade county or some other place that says every child that goes to school in my county is my responsibility and I’m going to create a menu of options for parents and I’m going to try to do everything I can to make sure that every child succeeds.

Michael Horn

So really helping them navigate to the right option.

Funding challenges for private schools

Governor Bush

Yeah, but if you had that attitude, you wouldn’t be, you know, making it impossible for a private school to get a permit or you wouldn’t have, you wouldn’t restrict private capital to come in. I mean, there’s really one institutional source of money for private school capitalists, the Drexel Fund, which is for Catholic schools. The charters have, you know, three or four fundraising operations for their capital growth needs. So that’s part of it is you need to have more private philanthropy come in. But ultimately this should be a state responsibility as well. I mean, do we, do we do this in Medicaid? Do we have government run doctors and government run nurses and government run clinics? Some, but it’s not the dominant way that someone that is qualified for Medicaid gets access to healthcare. We should have the same mindset for education. And I think you would have an acceleration of really interesting options both in terms of hybrid learning, you know, where a parent could choose to take care of many much of their healthcare, their education needs, or they could go to Primer and take some of the money maybe and go to do something that accelerates the learning.

This is where we’re moving and there’s still, it’s work in progress. But I’m really excited that Ryan and others like him, education entrepreneurs, are advancing this at a pace that’s pretty exciting.

Michael Horn

Ryan, what’s your take on this in terms of the sustainable supply? What’s it going to take to get supply to meet the demand that we’re seeing?

Ryan Delk

I think it’s all about cost. And we have this core value that acts as the constraint. And so we start from the place of Primer needs to be accessible to every family, regardless of income. We’ve never turned away a student. And so some of the regulatory work that we’ve discussed that to me is all connected to this idea of how do you get these schools open as efficiently as possible and then how do you get the cost to educate down where parents can attend these schools for ideally nothing. Ideally it’s completely free. They just use their ESA and they can just attend the school. But if there is some out of pocket, it’s 50 bucks a month or 75 bucks a month.

And to me that is the key thing to unlock because then these scholarships are accessible or they’re unlocking opportunities for the families that need it most. The families that can afford a $15, $20,000 a year school, they don’t necessarily need these options as desperately as the families that are trapped in schools that are not serving their needs. And so that’s what we’re obsessed with. And I think there’s a kind of growing coalition that’s really focused on this low cost, high quality private school.

Michael Horn

Second thing I’m curious about, and we’ll go to my inner wonk here, your inner wonk here, which is there’s been a big proliferation of education savings accounts across the country right now. But there are subtleties in the policies in different states and I’ll just name a few of them because I’m curious what you all think about the impact of these differences. I’m thinking of the increasing number of states with accreditation requirements for example. Florida, you know, does not. You have some states that require external assessments of students in these low cost private schools. Some don’t. Some states are tuition first ESAs and some are not. Some allow you to roll over dollars even for post secondary education.

So it really creates a savings and value ethos as opposed to others that are not. We in the media often call these all ESA states. Are we sort of masking over these subtleties? Do they matter, the variants? Are we lumping them sort of at expense of understanding what we’re really trying to create here? What’s your perspective on these differences?

Importance of State Flexibility

Governor Bush

My perspective is that’s all good. You know, if we had one size fits all, it’d probably be driven out of Washington and that would be. It wouldn’t happen. It would be an unmitigated disaster. So having states have the ability to implement as best they can a version of ESA and then modify it as they go along because someone from another state’s done something interesting like the education savings account where you can reinvest it if you didn’t spend the whole amount. I mean that’s an interesting idea that may catch on for all the states that don’t have it now. To me I think the baseline should be there’s a financial responsibility that if you’re taking taxpayers money directly or indirectly, you should be a good steward of that money. And there’s health and safety issues that are really important, particularly for young kids. Beyond that, let’s let a thousand flowers bloom and come up with the best approach.

The important thing is that we get to scale so that parents demand that no one tries to take it away. That’s the first mission and that’s happening. You know, if 50% of all kids in Florida parents choose, it’s going to be hard to imagine if someone wants to come and try to re regulate this and have it just be traditional schools being the only option. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Texas, you know, having a hundred thousand kids to start with and over time that growing is going to create another kind of scalable moment for that state. And so if you try to impose a bunch of rules on top of that, it’s not going to grow at the speed that I think will make it more effective.

Michael Horn

Ryan, what’s your take on the variance?

Ryan Delk

I mean I’m a personal big fan of federalism so I just have a personal bias towards that. But I think what I’m encouraged by is the movement is coalescing around the right things. And so when you look at the programs that have launched recently, they have measures to make sure that the providers are delivering for students, they’re fiscally responsible, the dollars are flowing to low income, working class, middle class families that need them. And so I’m really encouraged by the way, I think the last four programs that have launched at scale have all had versions of that in place. And I think if that’s taking the best practices from other states, implementing them into new programs and if that continues then I’m quite optimistic.

Improving financial accountability systems

Governor Bush

You know, one of the things that could be done in a federal system and it’s happening right now and ExcelInEd is working on this is to create a coding project because right now the technology isn’t the same as it would be for a health savings account for example, or think about your MasterCard or Visa. All this stuff is done, you know, we have no clue how it, at least I don’t have any clue how it works, but it works really well. Whereas if you think about all the coding that could happen to make sure that there’s financial accountability and also that parents aren’t out of pocket making these commitments that they don’t have the resources to do because of some bureaucratic snafu at the state level. So there are things that could be done, but those are more like private sector enhancements that will make this more effective.

Michael Horn

And I guess it also helps the supply side so that those dollars actually reach the operators. Right. Ryan, you’re not sitting there waiting for it. Let me ask, Governor Bush, if we zoom out, what do you see as the big flashpoints to come in educational choice? It could be Florida, but also nationwide.

Governor Bush

Well, you can see it happen if there is, I’ll use Florida as an example. We have several hundred thousand, we have half of all the ESA kids are in our state. So you could have 1/10 of 1% of those transactions take place in a way that is inappropriate as they’re trying to sort out. You know, you’re dealing with scale, it’s hard to do all that. And so then you know, Senator Schmidlap will want to say well we need to like regulate this and regulate that. That’s the biggest danger is Washington getting involved or states trying to re regulate to deal with the tiny fraction of problems that impacts 99.9% of families. So regulate in terms of testing. We should trust parents to make these decisions and then give them the tools to be informed consumers and give them an array of choices.

And we need to protect that. That to me, you can see this happening at the state level. New governor comes in, they feel compelled to do something. And I’m very fearful of Washington getting involved. I’m excited about the tax credit program, but I haven’t seen the rules. And, you know, I’m paranoid about this stuff because I’ve seen there’s too many examples of Washington with good intentions getting things wrong.

Michael Horn

Ryan, I’d love to hear your reflections on the big flashpoints of the moment and both to comment around what the Governor just named, because you’re operating not just in Florida. So what are you seeing as those big questions or big issues that the field’s going to really have to think about or protect against in the years to come?

Focus on quality in education

Ryan Delk

I mean, I think a lot of people care a lot about education in this country, and that’s a good thing overall. And so there’s, you know, people with strong perspectives on both sides. A lot is changing. The world is changing really quickly. And my view on this is there will continue to be flashpoints, there’s going to continue to be contentious policy debates and accreditation and testing and all these things. But I really believe, I have deep conviction that if we stay focused on delivering high quality academic outcomes in a way that’s accessible for every family, that that is the winning strategy. And if we can stay laser focused on that and all the inputs to that, from, you know, great rigorous academics to unlocking the regulatory environment for new schools to open, to empowering educators to serve their communities, if we stay just maniacally focused on that, I think everything else falls into place. Because when you unlock those opportunities for those kids, and it’s not just that family that becomes a huge advocate for this movement, it’s their city council member, their city commissioner, all these people start to see, wow, this is transforming this community.

And when you do that, I think that is the winning focus. And so I hope that that can be the thing that we all rally around. And obviously these flashpoints will continue to happen. But that’s what we’re focused on. We’re going to stay maniacally focused on that. And I think a lot of other folks will too.

Michael Horn

I was curious about the assessment piece of this.

It seems this is much more of a trust the parents accountability model model that you’d sign up for as opposed to with traditional public schools. Let’s test. Is that accurate?

Governor Bush

It’s accurate, but I think parents, most states do have norm reference tests as a measurement of how kids are doing. And if you want parents to be empowered to make these choices, they need to be informed about the caliber of the education. So I personally support the idea of norm reference tests, and that’s the norm across the country. But I’m respectful of places like Arizona that, you know, want to have a little more libertarian approach. It seems to work well there, and maybe it’s part of their culture, a little bit more of their culture than it is in another place in the country.

Michael Horn

Final word. Governor, as you reflect over a quarter century of publicly funded choice in Florida, and we sit in a school that probably could not have existed, serving the students, you know, that could not have been in such an environment before if it weren’t for these policies that you started to put in place. What are your final reflections?

Governor Bush

Look, when you get a chance to serve, it’s really cool over the long haul to see successive legislatures and Governors embrace this idea and build on it. And I’m proud that our political leadership over the last 25 years has accelerated this. And my hope is that it stays the course. Look, big ideas take a long time. You could be patient. You got to be stubborn. In some cases you can. You just, you gotta, you know, stick with it.

Parental involvement in education

Governor Bush

And in Florida, that’s the case, I don’t think. And I would say there are external issues as well. If we didn’t have Covid, which allowed parents to really realize that maybe their kids weren’t getting the education that they thought they were getting because they became the teachers of their kids and they saw the slop that many of them sadly had to deal with, that accelerated it even more. So I’m excited about this. I think it’s really important that we stay the course because the world we’re moving toward at warp speed is exciting, but it’s also really scary. And you want to make sure that kids can read at the end of third grade in a capable way so that they can learn in a dramatic way, and that parents know what’s best for their kids to make the right choices. And there’s an array of them. That’s the mission, and it seems to be doing quite well right now.

Michael Horn

Governor, Ryan, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation.

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In a live conversation at WHOOP headquarters in Boston moderated by Rags Gupta, I joined Joe Liemandt, the principal of the much-discussed and debated Alpha School, to talk about the hype and hope behind AI in K-12 education. Our discussion explored how AI, when paired with a redesigned learning model centered on student motivation and mastery, could unlock student growth along a number of dimensions. And we talked about why there’s never been a better time than now to be an education entrepreneur.

The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Michael Horn

Several weeks back, the Massachusetts AI Coalition hosted me along with Joe Liemandt in a conversation about Alpha schools, the reinvention of learning in general, the role that AI could or may not play in reinventing education. All hosted at WHOOP headquarters in a conversation that was moderated by Rags Gupta. Fascinating conversation. We covered a ton and we have a recording of it, so we thought we would repurpose it for you here on the Future of Education. Enjoy the conversation that I had with Rags Gupta and Joe Liemandt of Alpha School at WHOOP headquarters.

Rags Gupta

Welcome, Michael Horn. And welcome, Joe Liemandt

Joe Liemandt

Thank you.

Redesigning the school day

Rags Gupta

We’re going to kick it off. And Michael, we’re going to start with you. We’re two or three years into this AI wave. Where are we and how is AI best being deployed in education today? What are you seeing out there?

Michael Horn

Yeah, It’s interesting because I think there’s a couple answers to that question. On the one hand, education, when I started, when we wrote that book, it was thought of as the backwater of technology. It’s where you never saw it, if it was there, it was rarely used, and so forth.

I think we are at a very different moment where, for better or worse, AI is ubiquitous in K12 schools across the country, meaning that if you think beyond just a chatbot, or if you do think of a chatbot, it’s embedded in almost every product. Chromebook, Magic School, various apps that are being used. The average school district has nearly 3,000 apps that are being used. AI is somewhere in there, to say nothing of the fact of how students and teachers are using it on their own time. So on one level, it’s everywhere, and on the other level, I would argue that what matters far more, and I think Joe’s going to agree on this, is not the technology per se, but the learning model itself or the model of schooling itself. And so on the reinvention question of how is AI being used, there are a handful of models, I think Alpha being one, that are putting AI at the centerpiece and creating truly new school models. And that is a significant minority of the action. I would argue most of the AI is being leveraged onto the traditional status quo to either reinforce existing processes and priorities, or, frankly, in some cases, the better verb would be to exacerbate them.

Rags Gupta

I’m going to pull on that thread a little bit, but Joe, you’ve been studying this for a while. Where are we in the cycle of deploying AI in education?

Joe Liemandt

Well, I believe we’re right at the beginning of it. I do believe it’s ubiquitous. But I believe, you know, I believe there is, in all the debates, I believe there is good screen time, there is bad screen time, there is good AI, there is bad AI. And all the concerns right now about it being deployed poorly are very well founded. You know, 90% of chatbot use in schools is for cheat bots, right? And its chatbots are designed for cognitive offload, literally the opposite of learning. And if used incorrectly, we literally are going to have a generation who knows much less than they need to. Now I also obviously believe there’s good use of it and using it correctly.

And I believe part of that is, at least in our whole theory, is you have to re envision the whole school day from the ground up. It enables this totally new model. And that part of it is just at the start. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to a lot of schools all over the place and you know, I, the first question I ask of them is, you know, our first commitment to every kid is that you will love school, right? And three weeks ago when we did our last survey, 43% of our students said, I’d rather go to school than go on vacation, right? Like a high bar of loving school. 90 some percent said they love it. And my first question to everybody, and they say, oh, can I use this Alpha time back model? I’m like, are you willing to redesign your school day so that kids love school more than vacation? And my view is if the answer is no, then using AI to reinforce your existing school system is not going to work. It’s going to have the same failure rate of ed tech over the last 25 years, which is 95% failure rate or something like that.

Rags Gupta

Michael, you’re nodding your head, it sounds like you agree. And is that what you were talking about earlier when you’re saying that AI could exacerbate existing problems today?

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, I think in Disrupting Class we got a few things right, we got a few things wrong. We can talk about both perhaps, but one of the things we got right was that layered on the existing system would not have the effects that people wanted it to have. That when you layered on into this industrial model as you described, where time is fixed, learning is highly variable, and we have basically advancing kids based on data manufacture, otherwise known as their birth year, that you are not going to get the impact that you want. And I think what we missed frankly in the book was just how bad that could be, which is what Joe’s alluding to in terms of the detrimental impacts sort of incoherence, frankly. Again, those 3,000 apps, like that’s not a good thing. I don’t think we know coherence in terms of curriculum and instruction and knowledge building and so forth is really important. We have a very incoherent school day right now.

And then I think the second thing that we didn’t see coming, frankly is with the online usage. You put the Chromebook in front of the kid, the most powerful learning tool ever in front of anyone. And they have a billion other things that they could also be doing that are extremely motivating, distracting and so forth. And the detrimental impacts of that are real. Right. And so there’s a lot of research and Joe referenced it. There’s this 5% problem where there’s some great ed tech solutions, even relatively primitive in terms of the form factor of what you’re asking and how someone can input an answer and so forth, get really good results. And only 5% of kids really use them.

Because we haven’t actually re-architected the school models to create the feedback loops and motivation where they say I would want to do that or that’s built into my day. And that’s the core of the experience in a way that actually moves us past that 5% number today.

Rags Gupta

So Joe, walk us through how you guys are doing it today. Like what is that? I mean that 2x learning in two hours. It’s a big statement.

Joe Liemandt

Yeah.

Rags Gupta

How does that work?

Joe Liemandt

So the first thing you have to. We’ll talk about how it works, but the first thing you have to believe is that we’ve known for 40 years how kids could learn two, five or 10 times faster. It’s not the AIs that actually do that, it’s the field of learning science. I’m sure we have some Harvard, GSE students here or Stanford or any of them. Where there have been papers written about how kids can do this. Right. Where if you have, used things like if everybody had a personalized tutor, if you hold kids to a mastery standard instead of a time based standard, if you were able to embed things like spaced repetition, right, instead of cramming, all these concepts have been out, there’s 10,000 papers written about it. But they all started with this model that doesn’t work with a teacher in front of a classroom.

Right. When you have one to 30. You can’t do mastery based learning. You can’t make sure that every kid is in the zone of proximal development where they’re getting 80 to 85% of their lessons and questions correct. Right? You just can’t do that with a teacher in front of a classroom model. And the enabler of all of this is with a personalized tutor who sits here and gives you an unending stream of content lessons that enforce a mastery standard. At 80 to 85%, kids can learn 10 times faster. And so the way we operationalize it in our school is you come in and you actually have a 15 minute launch.

Think Tony Robbins for kids and growth mindset and all that. And then they sit down at their computer and they do 25 minute sessions with breaks between them and they’re going to do your math, science, language, reading, writing, all the core subjects and they’re doing 25 minutes at a time. And during that two hours they are going to learn twice as much as if they sat in class for six and did homework. And that’s all measured by standardized tests. So one of the first standardized tests, obviously a lot of debate around them. 60% of Alpha families before they came to Alpha didn’t like standardized tests. The day you join, you decide standardized tests are the greatest thing ever. Because you definitely don’t believe Joe when he says, don’t worry, your kid’s learning, right? You’re like, show me the proof.

Show me the proof. And so we do everything with standardized tests. We’re the highest on any, you know, standardized test. We’re the best academic performing school in the country, right? On every grade level, every subject is top 1%. You know, our freshmen, when we get to high school, we switch from NWA map, which we use, to SATs and APs, right? Our freshman average of SATs is over 1400. Right. Our high school is 1550.

Deciding future skills for students

Joe Liemandt

And so our ability to score max to show parents, yes, they get a five on Calc PC, they do know this stuff. And it only took two hours is the big unlock. And then the second part of how it operates on a day, as principal, the one thing I can tell you that parents really, really don’t like and wouldn’t want is us to send the kids home after two hours. They’re like, you got them all day. And that actually leads to what I think, think right now nobody believes that first part and we’re pushing out enough data and I don’t know, and all of you, two years from now, everybody in this audience is going to be like, okay, that works. We’re going to have enough data pushed out at scale and the set will be big enough where the real discussion that’s going to occur for the next decade is going to be what are the skills that they should be learning the rest of the day? That this new world’s coming, we all don’t know what it is. We all are guessing. We’re like this, you know, I talk to a lot of kindergarten moms, right? And we’re like 12 years from now, right? What is the world we’re getting them ready for, right? And he talked about, right, Rags talked about, here’s the life skills that we’ve done, here’s what we’re doing, right? But I believe over the next 12 years it’s going to evolve, right? But every parent and I believe every society is going to be faced with the decision of what are the skills that matter that we’re going to get these kids ready for?

And that’s what, you know, every department, you know, there’s lots of ministers of education, right? Departments of education where instead of what the classic reading, writing, arithmetic is, because that’s going to be for all intents and purposes, commoditized, right? That you can learn that in two hours. They’re going to be spending their time saying, how are we getting either my kids ready if you’re a parent or a population ready, right? How are we getting our society ready for the future?

Rags Gupta

Michael, what’s your take on all this? What would you say, what would Clay Christensen have said about a model like this and what else are you seeing out there, other models similar to this?

Michael Horn

Well, so let me just like say something that we got really wrong in Disrupting Class and start there to answer the question, I think, which is we had this notion that it would be disrupting the classroom model within school, that there would be. So for those that don’t know, disruptive innovation, basic ideas, relatively primitive product comes, more affordable, more convenient, more accessible, simpler to use. People who can’t get access to it are delighted with this quote unquote more primitive thing that then gets better, powered by a technology enabler. And people flock out to that because they’re like, wait a minute, I want that thing. And that’s how transformation occurs in sector after sector. Now, when we looked at the US at the time in 2006, I guess when we were writing it, I see some of my classmates back there when we started. So there was no nonconsumption of schooling in the US, it was compulsory, there was some homeschooling. But as Joe said, the problem with homeschooling is the word home, it doesn’t scale.

Rise of microschools and education savings accounts

Michael Horn

And so the challenge was like, where are these areas? And so we thought within school there’s all these classes that schools would like to offer and can’t. And the challenge I think, as we saw, is that yeah, you can grow digital learning within those environments they have, but it would be subsumed by the rules of the school. So the seat time being the biggest, frankly, and what I think has really changed pretty dramatically. So about 2013, (20)14, this notion of microschools started to become bigger and bigger in the US and then the big change was education savings accounts, which all of a sudden says dollars to the families in about almost 20 states across the country now. And these new schooling models, I have a choice. Do I go to the quote unquote free public school, give up this money that I can use a la carte [on] my kids’ education, or do I spend it now on something that’s much more customized for their needs, desires, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that is like, that’s creating a wave of entrepreneurship. I think it’s never been a better time to be a K12 school entrepreneur than right now.

The tools, the policy, families looking for other options is, I think, a big opportunity. So when I look at the landscape, I think we’re going to see more and more of these models. I could name half a dozen right now, but the point is we’re going to see more come along and I’ll just make one plug, which is in my mind, TimeBack might be one of these technology enablers kernels that then powers a whole wave of entrepreneurship depending on what Joe decides to do and how it works. Right. There’s a bunch of design questions there, but like that may be part of this technology enabler of a lot more school models that appear.

Rags Gupta

So yeah, a lot to unpack there. But just, just as a clarification, TimeBack, that’s the name of the platform that Alpha built, right. And yet just talk, yeah, talk about TimeBack.

Joe Liemandt

Back to me becoming principal. I’m a product guy, right? And so four years ago I told MacKenzie, who had started the school, you know, I’m in, I believe Gen AI is going to be able to get this out to a billion kids, but I have to be principal. I have to go see what happens when fifth graders get in a fight and when parents yell at you and how do we design a product? And you know, every educator will tell you, the key that you need to educate a child is first and foremost, the most important part is you need a motivated student. And then second, you need to put them in lessons of the correct difficulty. Not too easy, not too hard. Those are the two core elements. Ed Tech historically has done the second well.

Whether it’s AI or not AI, you can give people assessment and figure out what they know and don’t know and give them lessons. Because knowledge grade and age grade are two totally different things, as you said. Right. And the problem is when the gap between those gets too big is when the teacher in front of the classroom model fails. Right. And so we were able to. Our engine is able to do that second part. Give kids lessons of the correct difficulty.

But if I don’t get students to engage, it’s useless. This is the 5% problem. Right. And so, you know, and MacKenzie, you know, when her first commitment is kids will love school. So I come in my first week, I’m talking to some fifth graders, you know, and they’re new, and I’m like, all right, do you love school? And they’re like, no. And I’m like, what would make you love school? And they’re like, less school. I’m like, how much less? None. I’m like, that seems a little light, you know? And so I was like, how about this?

Would you engage in these apps for two hours? Like, no screwing around. Like, really engage with them for two hours. If I made sure the other four hours were totally awesome, that you loved them, that you would just sit here and do that, and the kids are like, okay, that seems fair. And so, literally, the number one motivator four years in, that I can tell you, of kids, is give kids their time back. And if you give your kids your time back, there’s a lot of things you’ll read about. Alpha weaves, lots of motivational models, and we’ve talked through all of them. It’s a whole other talk of extrinsic versus intrinsic. But the single biggest motivator by far is give kids their time back.

And so when you tell kids you can learn all your academics in two hours and then do what you want the rest of the day, do all the awesome stuff you love. They engage in the apps. And so I went to my team. I’m like, okay, we got two hours. Let’s go take every learning science thing. Dean Schwartz at Stanford’s got a book, A to Z, where I’m really like, okay, we’re gonna take chapter K, right? We’re gonna implement it in the software, right? And we take all these learning science concepts, put it in and get two hours. Cause that’s what we got. And so the whole key of this software is to give kids their time back.

And then the afternoons are all these great workshops that they love right. And that they engage in. And I’ll give you sort of the most extreme case that’s it’s not Alpha, but it’s a sister school that we have in Austin or in Texas, which is, we have Texas Sports Academy, right. It’ll probably be announced later this week that we’ll have thousands of kids in Texas Sports Academy who are all families under $65,000 got a voucher, right. Who now next year will be able to access Alpha academics. But the model there, just as an example, gives those kids your time back. The average kid coming into our Sports Academy is in the bottom 25% academically, right? Below $65,000 family income and their knowledge grade versus age grade.

Improving student engagement and motivation

Joe Liemandt

Bottom 25% in America means if you’re in seventh or eighth grade, if you’re a middle schooler, you’re really in third grade, right? You need third grade phonics, you need to understand, you need to learn what seven times eight is to fluency. And so our students who haven’t been engaging, right, Our middle school as an example in Dallas is run by six time NBA all star Jermaine o’Neal. And there are kids who when you sit and talk to them, they’re like, I used to skip school 25% of the time, right? We just get stoned in the bathroom and now I wake my mom up to make sure we’re never late because I gotta get my two hours in because I’m not gonna miss one minute of practice with Jermaine, right? That starts at noon. If they get through their lessons, right? And those kids are learning as fast as anybody in the $50,000 high end private school, right? Because they’re motivated, right. That you solve the motivation problem. And so when you think about it, whether it’s the Alpha workshops and you hear about all these crazy things, on the entrepreneurship one, we have fifth graders launching food trucks.

Our middle schoolers, you know, learned Ukrainian and went to Ukraine to train a thousand Ukrainian refugees on the software and all these crazy great workshops that motivate kids, right? What really matters is what is that afternoon that’s going to get them to engage. And if you give them their time back, they will.

Rags Gupta

So, you know, let’s talk about that access. And you know, there’s this notion of AI and you know, it can raise the ceiling and there’s also the floor, right. Or, you know, is it, is it going to raise the floor? Is it going to widen the gap that’s out there today or could it narrow it? Michael, what’s your take?

Michael Horn

I think, gosh, I hate to be a broken record. I’m going to say it depends on the school model again. Right. So I actually think it’s going to, I think it certainly raises the floor when we rethink the school model, but I think it’s going to lower dramatically the floor potentially because of the cognitive offloading problem that Joe described up front when we have not put that thought into it. And so, you know, when I talk to a traditional school that’s trying to implement an app, I say, okay, like tell, help me understand your current model. And they have to be able to articulate that up front. And then like, is there a discrete use where you could use, you know, a mirror learning is a great way, AI powered way to build literacy skills for young kids. Great peer review research and so forth.

Can you create a dedicated block for that? That’s something that’s going to raise the floor. Right? But again, sort of this unmitigated use without thought and intentionality and design around the model itself. I’m pretty worried about where that goes if we don’t, if we’re not more deliberate. And I think that’s why, and just for everyone here, like that broadly, I think why we have this weird parallel track where you can have the kind of enthusiasm and excitement around something like Alpha that you have simultaneously is on Capitol Hill you’ll have hearings about banning technology in schools. And so like how to resolve the dichotomy. I think that’s what it is. It’s like you actually have to think about the model itself first.

Rags Gupta

That’s well put. Joe, any take on that and feel,

Joe Liemandt

I think this whole debate around AI is it can be used poorly and learning outcomes are going to plummet. And the only part that I add is it’s occurring because the kids are already using it. And so the longer you wait, you know, so we have hundreds of kids who transfer in from high end private schools and into Alpha, right. And these are coming in from $50,000, best schools in the country. And our middle schoolers, right. When they transfer in, on average, when they transferred in August were 2.2 grade levels.

We have sixth and seventh and eighth graders who can’t write a grammatically correct third grade, fourth grade sentence because they’ve been using ChatGPT to write. They were never taught sentences. They were never taught how to build an essay and they just cognitively offload and have it written. The academic standards, because it’s being used by the kids at home and the current system isn’t set up to stop it.

Universities have. Stanford for the first time in 100 years now is proctoring tests because cheating is so rampant. Right. When I was there, right. It was total honor code, but totally the culture of what is considered cheating and what is acceptable. Now they proctor. My daughter goes there and she’s like, I’m like, proctors, really? And she’s like, oh, dad, the cheating’s crazy, right? And they won’t. You can’t go to the bathroom for too long or the proctor’s like.

They’re doing it, which is, you know, at Stanford. So this whole concept of it’s something that needs to be addressed. It’s a problem. Now the second part though, the other side of. Is it going to raise the ceilings? You know, is it going to raise the roof? I believe done, right. It’s going to raise the floor like crazy, right? And we are going to take, we’re going to show, right. That what matters more is not your SES, which is our current system, right. Is all SES based in a time based system.

Selecting schools based on motivation

Joe Liemandt

It’s going to be motivation based, right? Like if you take my Sports Academy guy and then you move them to my gifted school, right? Where they’re not excited by the motivation, it’s not going to work. And so I believe schools are going to have to select for motivation. Right? Did you design a school that the kid loves more than vacation? And if you love sports, you’re going to want to be in that. Gifted school is one. We have a gifted school just for that data side on the roof. Those are kids who, when you say what would make you love school? They say more academics. I want math olympia, third power hour. Can I have a third power this two hours not enough, right? And those kids, it’s crazy how much. Right.

On how much they’re learning. So we have, you know, I have kindergarteners in sixth grade. My third and fourth graders outscore 50% of the high school graduates in the country, right. And they just take to it. And so I believe both sides are doable, right? You can do both, but it’s how you implement it.

Rags Gupta

So let’s keep on, on that track. You know, how does that scale, you know, you talked about reaching a billion kids eventually, right, Joe, and how does that, how does that happen? Right. And you’ve, you’ve tried with public, you know, in the past, right? And yeah. How do you see that play out? And then we’ll go to you, Michael.

Joe Liemandt

Yeah. And so to his point that he made, which is there’s two tracks as sort of, I see it, which is there’s, you know, the U.S. system, you sort of have $100 billion private school market today. Right. ESAs vouchers, the ECCA next year. ECCA, if it was fully implemented, be like an extra 200 billion that would go to parents to do private school.

Rags Gupta

What is the ECCA for people?

Joe Liemandt

The ECCA is a nationwide voucher program that starts January 1st. States are doing it and you’re going to get tens of billions, hundreds of billions are. Every American can take a seventeen hundred dollar tax deduction if they give it to a scholarship granting organization. And so 100 million times 170, 1700 dollars is what the size of that is. So the largest back to your entrepreneur shop, the largest subsidy outside of health care in American history. And that starts January 1st. And so the current market’s 100 billion, which is still plenty big.

It’s going to get even bigger and in those markets. And what I see is parents wake up and say, what is the solution I can buy tomorrow for my kid because time’s a wasting. The urgency is off the rail. Like for everybody here who’s interested in an Alpha school, right. When we meet after this, they’re going to be like, is the school going to be open in May or June? Right. I heard you have a summer program.

Is that summer program, is it going to be ready? There’s no time. Right. The pressure we have to scale is enormous. There’s 50 Alphas that are going to open up. I’m flying around the country and every city is like this, right. That every parent who wants this is pushing hard. Now the flip side of it is on the public school side, you have a different set of issues, right. That I believe we’ll be able to show people.

Yes, it would work. Right. But we’re working with lots of states. We’re rolling it out to public. There will be public schools in August running on our system. Right. But there’s also states where we’re not running on the public school because they have a rule and regulations. Education is highly, highly regulated where they say things like, there needs to be seven hours of seat time.

And I’m like, I’m two hour learning. I can’t, I can’t bridge that gap. Right. And so that whole thing like if Massachusetts has a million kids. You spend 23 to 25 grand a kid. Right. We absolutely could build an Alpha like model that would deliver. Right.

Awesome MCAS, if you want to use your standardized test, MCAS , academic outcomes for those million kids. Right. We would have to develop different school systems to have different motivational models. Right. We’d have to have a sports academy, gifted and we have a Montessori school and wilderness school and an Alpha. Right. All these different ones, you could totally deliver that. Except.

And my team will be up here tomorrow. Right. We make it, we do a deal where it’d be 100% outcome based. If we don’t deliver it, don’t pay us. Right. That my team would love to go do that. The problem is they’re then going to meet and I don’t know what rules Massachusetts has, but, you know, seven hours might be one of them. Right.

And there’s a whole bunch of other ones that are going to prohibit or slow down how fast public schools adopt it. And so our answer in the short term of how we get it to a billion kids is we’re going direct to the parents who have urgency. And if you want the most extreme example, and if we just sort of keep it among us because it’s not really announced is, you know, we have. That kids will play and have as much fun as if they were playing a video game and they will get to top 1% academic performance and that will be free to learn for 500 million kids. Right. And so back to just reach, we’re going to be coming up with a lot of things where you have to solve motivation. You can’t just do edtech. Right.

90% of the solution is motivation. 10% is the edtech. And so you’ll see us. Right. How do we get reach? How do we get cost? How do we get that out there? But once things like that are out, every parent’s going to say, wait, what are they doing the rest of the day? What are the life skills we care about? The whole. What are we really defining as development of a child for the next decade?

Rags Gupta

Michael, what’s your take on that? Do you agree?

Michael Horn

I mean, with a lot of that, yeah.

I think that we’re an unprecedented opportunity and I think it’s largely going to start outside the public system for the reasons just said. And parents are voting with their feet right now, I think, depending on how you think about it. But if you want to be really provocative, 50 plus percent of kids are already in schools of choice as measured by where they bought the house or by taking advantage of some form of school choice, private school, charter school, something like that in the country, if you look at certain states, frankly. So let’s just take Florida. That has probably the longest history with education choice. And I actually like to use the phrase education choice because what you’re seeing families there do increasingly is say, I actually want a couple classes at my public school district. I want the world’s best tutor for this here. My kid wants piano here and like assembling.

Joe Liemandt

Right.

Michael Horn

And so what you’re starting to see there, because so many families are opting into these alternative forms that are rethinking education with entrepreneurs driving some really interesting things in these communities is public school districts are saying, wait a second, we have a choice, in effect, we just let this happen or we compete. And so you are seeing public school districts. I’ve got students here at Harvard who are profiling some public schools in North Carolina, I believe, who have their own microschools. You’ve got places in Florida that are unbundling different parts. Like, we are actually the best at doing this in the area. Let’s make it open. Right.

And so you’re starting to see innovation and so forth. And, and again, I’m not saying everyone’s going to unbundle. That’s not the message here. But the message I think is you’re going to start to see a lot more innovation from all sectors as the pressure ramps up.

Rags Gupta

The pressure on the traditional bundle.

Michael Horn

The pressure on the traditional bundle and parents voting with their feet. I mean, gotten to hear your story. And I think a lot of families have had that where they look at their fifth graders, the homework that they’re bringing home, and they’re saying, are you kidding? And what happened during COVID seeing it up close, plus these policy changes, plus this opportunity for entrepreneurship creates a real opportunity to rethink something that’s been very, very rigid in this country for a long time.

Rags Gupta

And you’re touching nerves because our fifth grader, I think in September came back with a worksheet or two. And see me afterwards, I’ll show you a picture. And I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was outrageous. And we’re in a Blue Ribbon school in a really good school district. And yeah, so you’re touching nerves there. Let’s go to the human element of this. Actually someone in the audience, Brandon, he wrote something which is that his current test for AI is does it create more time for human relationships?

You hear about AI in schools and some of the press out there and you sort of think about this dystopian future of like, are kids just plugged in, you know, and just like on screens all day and just sort of like, you know, not talking to anybody and so on, right? What is, you know, I mean, how does Alpha handle that? And then Michael, let’s go to, you know, how do you see the humanity that AI can enable?

Rethinking the future of education

Joe Liemandt

Yeah. And so great, great question for every parent, which is we view, right? They are on computers for two hours a day and all the good screen time, bad screen time, you have to do it the rest of the day. They are in project based workshops dealing with humans, right? With adult, right. I believe in 20 years 90% of parents are going to drop their kids off at a building and in that building are going to be other kids and adults, right? ie school. Now, if we do our job right, what happens during that six hours a day, seven hours a day is completely different than what we all experienced. But socialization and relationship building, right? It’s one of the life skills. We spend lots of time, right, actually developing those skills. You know, in the average high school, you’re not taught socialization, you experience it, right? And when you go into every mean girl movie, right, you go in, you experience it.

Our middle school program, like the number one we, our middle school program is get kids ready for high school. And so on the academic side, you sort of dial what do you want in your ISEE or what’s your percentile? But the number one thing that kids care about, that they’re terrified, is not academics and it’s the high school social scene. So all our workshops are totally geared about socialization and relationship building because that’s what they care about and that’s what they, those are the skills you need. You know, my oldest daughter, who’s a sophomore at Stanford, loves academics, you know, introvert, you know, in high school I just told her guide. I was like, she needs to spend all her time on relationship building and socialization, right? And she got her to write and make a substack. So she started having to build an audience. She now has tens of thousands of moms who read it every week. But like that Guide. Right.

That adult. Right. That trusted caring adult would sit there. It took her six, her name’s Chloe, Harvard grad. It took her six months to convince my daughter to send a DM out there. She just wrote no. Terrified.

But six months to finally be able to do it. And those are the kind of back to the skills you want. As a parent, I’m like, that’s the skills that I want kids to develop.

Rags Gupta

Our kids did a shadow day in New York and gave us a lot of comfort because one of the things they had to do is they had to figure out some dish to prepare, but they had to be unanimous consent on what to prepare.

And it was, the kids had to figure that out. It wasn’t the adults actually inserting themselves to do it.

Joe Liemandt

Yeah. No. In high school, back to teamwork and leadership, right? Most people believe the life skills are taught in after school sports. 50% of America says the place you learn life skills is after school sports, leadership, teamwork, grit, hard work. Right. And for us in eighth grade, one of ours is we have a grit teamwork combo, which is all the kids have to run a tough mudder adult course and cross the finish line at the same time. And the tough mudder is the easy part. Getting a group of 8th graders to cross the finish line at the same time is so hard.

Right? Back to teamwork and socialization and all those skills. And, and, but that’s. And, and it does. They have, they spend weeks and weeks and weeks. Right. Because we have all this time in the afternoon to develop those skills. Right. Every school historically has said, we want entrepreneurship, we want all these life skills.

There’s no time. There’s no time. Everybody, every kid in high school who’s in the SAT grind and spending all time on the hours and hours of homework. When are you going to teach these life skills? Alpha has half the day for 12 years to fill up. Right. We have tons of time. Right. We’re making up workshops.

Oh, let’s try this one. Right? These are. Right. That’s what you need. If you don’t get time back, you can’t fix the current system.

Michael Horn

What else to add? So same statement, right? That to me, a good AI tool I agree with Brandon, like it is one that actually increases human connectivity, not decreases it. I think that’s 100% correct. And frankly, like a lot of the AI tools that are useful are not those that are going to necessarily be student facing. They might be assessed to give rapid feedback. They might write, everyone loves talking about data driven decision making in education. The big irony of that is we know from research that if you give data with no ability to do anything with that data and, and it labels you, it actually kills motivation. It does not increase motivation.

So something that actually is actionable and I can do something to improve performance, that’s a dramatically different use of these tools. So I think that has always been true that technology to actually increase the human connectivity. And when people say, oh my gosh, what’s gonna happen in the classroom, like I love that you all showed up, but this is not the most human connection that we can do in a lecture like setting. It’s the individual conversations you all will be having afterwards that’s like the real human connectivity. Right. And so these opportunities, whether working in projects, working on a sports thing, whatever, working on the actual thing that you learned in your academics that now is actually relevant to something that you’re going to do together with a group, that’s where I think the real magic happens. And I guess just one last thing, Rags, on this, which is some of our, we have this research around what’s the job to be done of why students hire quote unquote school and what does it compete with? And what you realize from a student’s perspective is they really just want two things.

They want a place where they can feel successful and they want a place where for most of them they can have fun with friends. There are a couple exceptions on that one, but most of them want to have a place where they can have fun with friends. And the places where you experience success and have fun with friends is historically were extracurricular sports, music, like after the school day, which I think speaks volumes about how we thought about this. And so to me the question is how do you actually make the school day a place where every kid is experiencing success and having fun with friends and when they disrupt class, right. That now it’s actually, this is actually part of the learning.

Rags Gupta

Let me, let me push you on that and then we’ll go to questions right afterwards. But you know, we’re hearing about this great inflation, right? We’re hearing valedictorians are in remedial math. Right. They’re not, you know, valedictorians in Massachusetts are not being able to finish four year colleges. Right. So they might feel successful.

Michael Horn

I’m glad you said it right. What about success?

That’s the other part of it. I’m glad you said it right. That objective yardstick matters. And whether it’s the external assessment or frankly, as I produce a real project, having real professionals come in and give me actual feedback, like real, not my teacher said, yeah, pat on the back, gold star. But like real feedback to a real standard. I think the best, I teach at Harvard, but I think the best from a pedagogical standpoint, University, one of the best is Western Governor’s University. They have, most of you probably haven’t heard of it.

They educate a quarter million students a year online in a mastery based system. They have four different roles for faculty. One of them is like teaching and working with you and helping you master things and so forth. There’s a whole separate faculty member whose sole job is to look at your performance against the standards to see is this mastery or not? And if you didn’t achieve it, you can’t complain and say, oh, they hated me because we had a personality clash because that person assessing you does not know you, right? And so they, and there’s inter-rater reliability. There’s other people also looking at the performance so that you actually have to do something that’s excellent in masters and thank God because they’re training nurses and people who are working in the healthcare system and so forth. And I want them to master it. Yeah.

Rags Gupta

You want to say something about standards?

Importance of high standards at Alpha

Joe Liemandt

Well, I think there’s a couple things on standards. One, this is why we use standardized tests. We don’t use grades at Alpha because they’re made up and subjective and inflation. We literally just take standardized tests and show you your results, right? And knowledge is just something how much. And if you don’t like your score, you just go back and learn more, right? It’s just, you know, they’re a reflection of how much you know, right? And so that’s one. But the other part, just about standards, one of the things that we talk, that people are worried about is because of all these things we do, which are our Alpha standards too high? Is it too hard for my kid? And one of the things that we tell everybody before they come in is you have to believe this in the Alpha world, because this is what we believe and do is the key to my child’s happiness is high standards, right? If you say I can’t build a school that kids love more than vacation if I have low standards. The reason kids want to come, you’ll see if you go on my Twitter account, they, these kids were in over the weekend, right? They were doing a hackathon and building robots and drones and doing all this stuff, you know, and the reason they’re coming in and they like school more than vacation is because they are working with their friends on a project that’s hard, that has meaning.

That’s why. Right. They’re building an app. Right. We have a project back to character development. You know, where the key is. All of our students believe the key to my happiness is contributing to my community. Right.

And so we, last May, my high school students said, hey, can we keep the school open this summer because we don’t want to take a break. Right. And that was. I was like, I guess we’re open all summer. But they’re building an app to convince 100 million teens the key to their happiness is contributing their community. And they’re working with influencers and stuff. And so they, you know, the get all the social status and they love it and it’s really hard.

And you know, once again, if you go to the sports, as the model people, I’m from Texas. Everybody in Texas expects people on the football team to be there in the summer. And the reason they joined, they want to be on the Westlake state champion football team is it’s the hardest thing the kid’s ever done. He’ll remember it the rest of his life. Right? And school’s the same thing. If you want to build a school they love more than vacation, you have to give these guys something to work on that they love. That’s hard, that’s challenging with their friends.

Right? And that’s what we just do all day. Right? Is that world. And that’s when we say we can re envision it. You can now. And so back to standards. You either need on the academic side, there are standards, just absolute standards. And mastery get 100% right. We have a school, we have a building with 250 kids that gets more hundreds on the Texas Star than a school district of 100,000.

Right. Because that’s what you do with mastery. And time based systems don’t. Right. And every kid at Alpha, if you talk to parents, less than 5% of Alpha parents when they come in, think their kid can get 100 on the Texas Star. Right. Just the GT kids. Right.

95% of Alpha kids believe it because they’ve done it. Right. And that’s the difference when. When you get a mastery based model, you know, versus a grade inflation grade based.

Rags Gupta

Well, thank you. Let’s make this more human and let’s go throw it open to some questions. A lot of questions. Okay, let’s go with this gentleman here.

Unknown Question Asker

Thank you both for your time. Two, I think quick questions. Who is this not for, like, what are the types of kids that this doesn’t work well for? And then the second question is, as far as I understand, it’s for profit and why. Why not non for profit?

Joe Liemandt

Yeah, I’ll address the non profit first and then, and then do who it’s not for. Which is the reason we need for profit is we need scale. Right? We need scale, which is if you’re nonprofit. I’m a product guy, right? A nonprofit who has a great product, burns through its donations very quickly. There’s a lot of really good charter schools who I met with who have 3,000 person wait lists. I’m like, why don’t you open another campus? They’re like, we’re waiting on a $40 million donation to open another campus.

Basic schools, you know, there’s tons of them where if you put yourself as a non profit, you’re basically hostage to the donation base. And fundamentally, you know, education is a trillion dollar K through 12 in the US right. If you sum all the donations made to education, it’s not enough to scale. Right. Capitalism has to provide capital to transform education. Right? And you want to get the Fortnite team to come down and scale you. It’ll be free for 500 million kids. Just like Fortnite was free.

Fortnite was also the most profitable video game ever built. There’s 10 million moms in America who will pay 100 bucks a month for their kid to be top 1% performance when they ask for it. And that money is what’s going to fund it. And so that for profit loop is required. Right. Alpha can get as much capital as we want to open as many of these schools that parents want. And that’s obviously.

Right. A different one, which is there’s also a different part that actually I got from listening to all your podcasts, which was you can’t do disruptive innovation when the competitive product’s free. Right. You actually have to come top down. And that’s why Alpha is expensive. You need to actually do the Apple disruptive or Tesla disruptive innovation, not the bottom up.

And so our view is we are going to get it to a billion kids, but the way to start is at the high end, right? So that you actually create the funding so that you can do the rest. No, I mean, I put a billion dollars in, but that’s a drop in the bucket, right. When you talk about a trillion dollar industry. Right. The amount of capital that will be required. Second, who’s it not for, you know, number one, you know, the technology is not perfect and works for everybody, which is, you know, at the easiest part, the language models can’t teach, you know, four and five year olds how to read. It can’t understand.

What they’re saying. And so we have human teachers, right. Reading specialists who bootstrap you into reading. Right. Once you can read, then I can take you on. The second one for a parent would be if I can’t get you to engage in the app, it’s not going to work. Right. So if I can’t get, if I can’t motivate, right.

And I don’t have you in an environment where you’re motivated, then I’m worse than standard school because you’re not going to learn anything. Right. Hopefully, at least if you’re sitting in class hearing it, you would have learned something. Right. And so I have to get engagement and we measure it and any parent where engagement isn’t working. Right. Our guide’s entire job is figuring out how to get the kid to engage. Right.

But back, as I said, if you take a parent who’s like, I want my kid in GT school and the kid doesn’t wake up and say, I want more academics. Right. Even they can be as smart as you want. It’s not going to solve. And so you have to. It really is. You have to solve the motivational problem to get it to work.

And then, then you also just then get into the school model itself. Right. Where our model, while we have an individualized tutor, right. That gives them academic lessons and, you know, personalized learning. If you need a one on one human, our model’s not built for that. It would. If you need.

A Fusion academy, which has a one on one person, you know, I believe they could use technology, but our model doesn’t solve that problem. Right. It’s when you’re designing your school. Right. I believe schools now instead of one size fits all, you’re going to design a school for the kids. And that’s going to influence a lot of different things about how the day is spent and where you spend your money.

Rags Gupta

Yeah.

Joe Michael

Fellow disruptor Joe Michael. I’m really appreciative of this work that you’re doing. It’s so critical. We work in a nonprofit that works to help all schools think about how to make the motivation problem solved. Right. We know that kids won’t engage if they’re not showing up. We’ve seen results that have shown a 35% decrease in chronic absenteeism 230% increases in family engagement. I very soon in the future see a way where this type of learning, this like 2 hour solution will be in all schools.

What I worry about is the other four to five hours, right. If the pond is not ready for this innovation, how can we support schools to rethink what they do with that time? My concern is that in low income schools, we’re going to see more control compliance and less creativity and innovation. So I’d love to hear. I know that’s not the specific problem you’re working on right now, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on maybe some of the key levers that you see to disrupt that mindset.

Alpha’s future in education

Joe Liemandt

Yeah, well, I, this is, I completely agree with this. I love that you’ve jumped over the hurdle on everybody’s going to have two hour learning because I hope the rest of you get there because once you do, this is all you worry about, right. I believe, you know, Alpha has the best learning science team in the world, right. Who is building these engines on the academic side, making these work. You know, I believe over the next 10 years, actually Alpha Core is what we call our life skills development, right. That team is actually going to be the ones who we think are going to be inventing the IP that really matters. And I believe every department of education. In every state, right. Has to be spending their time moving, moving their budget to say this is what the problem’s going to be.

Right, because these skills matter. And what is the curriculum in the afternoon. That’s going to deliver it. And I believe that’s, you know, back to, you and I are over it and we should sit and talk because we’ve jumped the, jumped the chasm. But I do believe a couple years from now when we have that discussion, that will be the discussion with a group like this. So.

Rags Gupta

Oh, and Michael, you’ve talked a lot about that about, like, why don’t high schoolers or kids work doing community projects in the community?

Michael Horn

No, I mean, I think flipping the school day, right, is the way I would think about this. Right. And we flipped classroom is what it is, but flipping the school day so that more of this time is spent on these sorts of projects and real world opportunities. And I would go further, right. I think in this era of AI, everyone says, well, what are we doing for the future? We don’t know.

But what I think we do know is the closer you can tighten that loop between experience and schooling. So you’re getting experience in schooling itself, the more ready you are going to be to jump into work, to set goals, to learn what you need to do to be productive and maybe most important, build social capital. Because the way people get jobs is through who you know. And we have a mindset of kids, students who think that, oh, I apply online to get jobs, not realizing that north of 55%, maybe as high as 80% today, jobs are filled by network. That’s going to get even more so because right now it’s AI applying to AI, applicant tracking systems with AI generated resumes. You better meet people. And the only way you bridge that gap is through school itself is to pull experience into it. I think.

Rags Gupta

Adam, let’s go to you.

Adam

So maybe zooming out for a moment. If we end up in this situation where we sort of realize some of this vision and we have an amazing school for sports and we have a gifted school and we have the school that’s for drama and art and kids who go there and the ones who

love entrepreneurship, do we end up. Maybe there’s the one for the kids who are super passionate about evangelical Christianity and the ones who are super passionate about atheism. And we end up in a situation where we’ve sort of driven polarization into our societies. Or you don’t get a chance to hang out with the jocks. The jocks don’t get put on a play.

Rags Gupta

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question.

Joe Liemandt

No, I think that’s a great one. Which is. I actually believe that the model, I mean our high schools are that today of the integrated one and you have the jocks and you have drama. Right. It’s after school activities are this model we’re looking at and we’re not at the scale yet. I literally believe school is going to evolve into a mall where in the morning you are going to have the two hours and then your afternoon is like shopping in a mall. And no, you don’t have to do gifted academics the whole time or sports the whole time. And there will be cross, in this case cross functional domains that you’re going to want to have.

You’ll have a specialization. Right. Because that’s what I like. But I want to, you know, whatever is doing that. But you’re going to do other things. Our, you know, at our sports academy they very much are. I’m doing public speaking right now at Sports Academy. It’s called post game press conference because that’s how you motivate a 10 year old.

Or financial literacy and entrepreneurship is a NIL contract. And so you’re spinning it for what they like. Right. But fundamentally back to socialization being it, you’re going to want to have all of those. One of the other things I think schools are networks first, right? They’re actually, whether it’s a parent network or the kid network of your friends, schools are primarily a network that then tags on some other things like academics.

Michael Horn

I largely agree with that. I didn’t expect you to actually say that. So my vision of the future of schooling is much more actually similar where there are actually community centers in effect, and that different centers of excellence, if you will, are plugging into them that gives students choice. But I’m very skeptical that single school model scales and educates everyone, but I think principles underlying learning do scale. So the analogy I like to use is rather than thinking about software engineering, when we think about the grade size, you were just talking about, civil engineering, which is to say how I built the bridge in Boston is different from San Francisco with earthquakes, but the laws undergirding that, right., actually are the same and we haven’t designed systems like that right now. And so the other reason I think this is important is as a 14 year old kid, I don’t know who I am, right.

Breaking down societal barriers

Michael Horn

And so I want to be able to try on these different pathways and identities and not have what I think right now we have, which is huge inertia or friction that prevents me from saying, oh, I’m gonna go jump with that group now. Right. And how do we break down those barriers? Last thing I will say is the choice to get out, frankly, at the school. I also think it will reduce some of the polarization right now in society because I think we tend to fight in our school communities over the 10 to 20% of things we disagree on. When you look at the actual survey data across the country, we agree on like 70 to 80% of the stuff. And if we can just take some of the friction or the tension out of the system, I actually think it’ll do more to bring communities together than what I perceive the current system, which is more segregated, frankly by political belief than based on race at the moment.

Joe Liemandt

I’ve listened to all your podcasts, which is why, and read everything you’ve ever read. No, I totally believe it, actually.

Rags Gupta

Michael, let’s go to you.

Michael (question asker)

Hi. So as a parent, it’s very clear that the health of the school, the performance of a school has a heck of a lot to do with the people who are running the school, the staff. So my question is like, what is your model for how you hire people, how is it different, maybe from how a public school would hire people? And are these people. This is crass. Are these people making more or less or the same? Like do you have to pay more to get…

Joe Liemandt

Yeah, let’s talk about teachers, right? This is important, right? The adults in the building, they’re going to be here forever, right? Kids need adults to, a caring adult to help grow and develop them. And so at our school, you know, and this back to my background, I was like, okay, why is it so hard to hire teachers and what’s the issue? So, you know, a teacher spec is basically a complicated spec, right? You need five things generally. One, you have to be a domain expert. I know seventh grade science. Second, you actually have to be able to teach it, not just know it.

Third, you have to connect and motivate students. Fourth, you have to deal with parents. And fifth, admin, right? And so that’s a complicated spec. And in my back business background, any HR director would say that’s a complicated spec. So in America, the way we try to solve that is by underpaying them. And then we literally are like, oh my God, nobody applies for these jobs and we have massive turnover. And any HR, it just, I’m like, well, every HR director in the world would say simplify the spec and pay more money.

So at Alpha we do both. So the key is those first two, right? You don’t need to know seventh grade science, right? And the 10,000 learning science papers how to teach it, because the AI does that, right? But you have to be the world’s best at connecting and motivating students, right? And we also have a dean of parents role to take the parent side off. Because I actually was told this, this teacher is really great with kids, but they can’t handle the parents. So don’t promote and vice versa. Where, oh, not as good with kids, but the parents love or so promote. And I’m like, we will never have that at our school, right? I want you to be great with 8 year olds and I don’t care how you are with 30. And so we simplified the spec. We pay more money.

So at every Alpha, the minimum is a hundred thousand. In cities like New York, it’s like 140, 150. I’d have to check to go get great talent. Right, Go get the talent. And then second, when you, when you talk about it and you know the role of teacher, if you talk to, you know, Wendy at Teach for America, right? Or whatever, you know, and you say things like teachers became teachers to transform kids’ lives. Not grade, seventh grade science quizzes, right? Every parent, every adult had one or two teachers who transformed your life. It wasn’t because they marked your paper up, it was because they saw you, right. They connected and they motivated you to greatness that you were able to.

They set high standards that you wanted to live up to. And that’s what, that’s why teachers are teachers, right. And that is why everybody who comes to Alpha, we had 80,000 people apply for our jobs. Right. Last year because they, that’s what they want to do all day. Because that’s what they do do at Alpha. Right? Because they, during the two hours they’re taking the kids out for a one on one and they’re like, hey, how was the soccer tournament this weekend? Oh did you lose?

Okay, let’s talk about. Right. And they’re connecting with the kids. They spend all their time on personal connection and can take those first two roles outside of it. Right. And take those off. And so we believe when you talk about it, it’s, they’re running the afternoon life skill workshops and things like that. I do believe the role of teachers will transform right.

Going forward in our world. It does. But it is a better role for the teachers. That it’s scary like any transformation is. But if you talk to all our ex teachers, they’re all coming here because they love the new role. And that actually extends to the university where we’ve been starting. The average researcher at university doesn’t want to teach his hundred series classes. That’s not what they’re there for.

Rags Gupta

Let’s go to Stephanie.

Stephanie Minyardi

Hi, Stephanie Minyardi. I’m a school committee member in Winchester and I was curious how you determine your curriculum. Now something like early elementary literacy can be controversial. But even things like current events, how do you talk about current conflicts in the Middle East, how do you have that conversation in those two hour sessions? And you can even expand it to talk about history, how do we talk about the Holocaust, how do we talk about slavery, how do you determine that conversation in those two hours?

Joe Liemandt

Yeah. No, okay. And I’ll take it broadly. So when you talk about how we decide all the fights that are, I’ll call them pedagogical, direct instruction versus inquiry, learning, all this literally, we just follow all the data. So we have the only closed loop right.

System in education where our learning scientists take it, put it in, create the lessons, it goes to the kids. Right. We measure how long it took them to get through it. Were they 90% first time right? Then they got, what did they score, how are their standardized tests? And then we improve it. Right. And that just runs all the time. So we can tell you we have data like let’s talk about memorizing multiplication tables and fluency as an example.

Lots of schools have dumped it and said, we don’t want that. Right. It’s not worth it. Every third grader at Alpha knows it takes about 11 hours to do fact fluency. They’re third grade. Takes about 11 hours. They also know that if they have fact fluency, fourth grade math takes 30 hours. That’s it, Right. To get to mastery.

And if they don’t have fact fluency, it takes 62 hours. Even a third grader knows, I’m going to do fact fluency. Right. So we just take all the data and present it. In general, inquiry learning is about five times slower than direct instruction. So the kids, if you’re giving them the time back. Right. Inquiry learning a lot is trying to solve the motivation problem.

If you actually just have them do the direct instruction, the kids are like, I’ll take that trade. Right. To do it quickly so I can actually go to the workshop I really want and sort of this half and half one. It’s all that just, it’s purely database that you present with the kids. We have a video game that teaches them fact fluency that takes instead of 10 minutes a day, it takes 20 minutes. And those they have to do at home since it’s more than the 10 minute block.

And kids totally do that because it’s a multi user game and competition. About 30% of kids love that. If it goes to 30 minutes though, they’re like, oh no, no, that’s too long. There’s all of that measurement on that. The second one you had though is really an important topic, which is what’s going into my kid’s brain. So the moment you decide I’m going to have an AI tutor educate my kid, the next question is who’s in charge of it? Who’s in charge of that AI tutor and what is going into my kid’s brain? And so there’s a couple different answers to this. One is that every Alpha parent gets to see every lesson that their kid sees.

And so if you know and we use core knowledge. And so if you’re looking at what we’re teaching, it’s going to be a standard common core curriculum. With core knowledge overlay. Right. Of knowledge building. But every parent, right? Every parent can look at every Alpha read article that’s done, et cetera.

And back to your point of it’s 10% they fight about like in Texas there’s this big curriculum thing where they’re changing it. It’s like 3% of the lessons. And so we solve the problem just by letting parents go take them out. We’ll put parents in charge. And I’m like, I’m not here to arbitrate it. And so parents actually get to decide. Now I still have to get the kid to the mastery standard and be able to pass all the tests.

Right. That’s my responsibility. But parents get that control. I believe that’s a broader question. Right. We’re talking to sovereigns, right? Yeah. And every sovereign and every parent is going to have to answer the question: what are the laws? Customs.

Values and curriculum I want to put in my kids’ heads. So we’re actually developing an EDU LLM that every parent and well, maybe not parent, but every sovereign, right or every state who has their own version is going to be able to train it for the curriculum they want. Right. Laws, custom values, curriculum. And so as soon as the next question you have, as soon as AI tutors are doing it is what is that? And in our answer it’s right now, sort of parents can block it. The year from now the answer will be here’s an LLM you can decide.

Unknown Question Asker

in the way that you present. It seems to exist a strict separation between the academic component in the morning and the workshops in the afternoon. The way that I’m reading it, it must be a connection. Right. I would expect that in the afternoon they are also building in what they are working on and perhaps even discussing what they were learning in the morning. So that’s part of my question. How do you link both and how do you leverage that? The other question is about the resilience. So I find myself having my daughter with the expectation that everything has to be fun and life is not always fun.

So how do we teach that? The contents are not tailored to them and they have to do them anyway and that’s okay, that’s part of the process.

Teaching grit beyond academics

Joe Liemandt

So the second one, which is grit and hard work. Right. And high standards and you know, at our school, the question you’re asking in our school, how it gets answered by a guide, is the best way to teach hard work and grit to the student via calculus or via the tough mudder. Right. And there’s a ton of after school, a ton of these afternoon workshops where it’s a better place to teach those skills because if the kid really doesn’t like the subject, right, there’s an eventual point where you run out of gas that you can keep pushing on, that you can get a little bit, but you can’t get long term. And so on that one, the answer is, I believe if you meet Alpha students, it is their resiliency and self confidence and grit that they have. But it’s developed as much through these workshops and afternoon as it would be traditionally in academics. The second one you have, which is I want the workshops and the academics combined, that’s generally a normal standard school view.

The problem is our workshops aren’t going to be academically based. I’m running a tough mudder this afternoon, right? It’s not discussing what was the world history discussion. Now there are a set of seminars you’re going to have, but it’s going to be a minority of the afternoon workshops, which is I want to get together and we’re going to discuss this book in a Socratic debate. That’s going to happen, but that’s a minority of the time because they’re going to be saying, well, I’m giving a TED Talk, right? I’m working on my TED talk, right? I’m working on, you know, my public speaking, I’m doing my entrepreneurship, we launched a food truck and I’m working on all the teamwork because my friends didn’t show up and I have to do this whole food truck by myself, all of those things. And so there’s not that normal connection that you would get because we’re doing a completely different non academic curriculum in the afternoon.

Rags Gupta

Robert?

Robert

In Massachusetts, our schools are really good at academics on average, and they’re also really good at encouraging high anxiety in our students, especially at the high school level. I’ve heard anecdotally that Alpha is really quite effective at mitigating that, but I’d love you to expand on it.

Joe Liemandt

Sure. Anxiety comes from lots of different things, right? But kids working on stuff they love, that’s really hard, isn’t anxiety producing because they love it, right? And so, you know, in middle school we start with putting kids into Dream Launcher. This gets into like, everybody changes, right? You know, Dream Launcher is figure out what do you love, right? Go do a vision board, right? So let’s talk about anxiety. The average middle schooler transfers into Alpha, right? A high percentage of them are going to be consumers, as we call them, right? They’re TikTok scrollers, they’re for Fortnite players. They’re caught in the dopamine loop. Right.

And you take those people and then you say, do well academically or you’re doomed. High anxiety, mental health problems, very bad. Right. Instead, our job. And if you take those same kids, though, and say, who do you want to be or actually who you are? Because they all think they’re awesome. Right. Go do your vision board.

Right. Go do your Japanese ikigai. Right. For those of, you know. Right. And those are. Every kid comes in and those are awesome of who they want to be. Right.

And whether it’s at the sports academy where they’re like, I’m going to play in the NBA or at Alpha, they’re like, I’m going to go launch my Broadway musical. Whatever it is, it’s great. Then we make them do their 168 hour project, which is track every hour of the week. You are what you do. And that’s where the realization comes in. They’re like, well, Mr. Liemandt, I guess I’m going to be the world’s best TikTok school. And the disappointment in their voice because the disconnect between.

Those two things are so large of who they want to be, but how they spend their time. And then the Dream Launcher project is. That is our job is then to make sure we have afternoon workshops where they’re figuring out. How they can bridge that.

But you do it by engaging them. These kids are stuck on Fortnite and TikTok because we don’t give them something better. Right? Back to hard things. You got to go give them a project with their friends that’s hard that they want to engage in and that it’s a lot easier than you expect, right? I’d love to say, like, oh, my God, this is the most complicated thing in the world. Our afternoon workshops aren’t that complicated to get them to do it. And so that’s how.

And then high school is the same thing. Every kid works on an Alpha X project. Right. And when your academics only takes two hours a day. That anxiety goes away because you’re not spending 10 hours a day. Kids, when you don’t give their time back, they’re like, I want to do all these things in high school. I have no time because if I don’t study for my AP, I’m screwed.

Right? Because it’s zillions of hours. And you’re like, you know, actually, I do have to adjust. We do have a third hour if you want to be on 1550 SAT. It’s three hours, right, instead of two, but literally two or three hours a day. The kids are working on most of their high school career stuff they love. And that’s how you solve that problem is we put, we create all these mental health issues and anxiety for kids by filling their day end to end right where they have no time to do anything and then have them wake up and say, but I can’t do what I want. And.

That sucks.

Rags Gupta

We have time for one last burning question. Who has it? Burning question. We’ll go to you.

Joe Liemandt

Yeah, lady over there.

Rebecca Wolf

A lot of pressure on burning questions. Hi, I’m Rebecca Wolf. I recently published a paper with the Harvard Institute institution at Stanford on how we scale bottom up innovation in education. And the paper is literally called We can’t get there from here. So I can clearly see, Joe, your vision for how we get there from here. Michael, I’m curious as you listen to Joe, because you’ve been in as many states as I have over the years. We have been fellow travelers trying to build personalized competency based systems all over this country. We have not gotten nearly as far as we thought we would.

So as you listen to what Joe is proposing for scale, are there hopes for states, are there hopes for the system? Or do we all just need to send our kids to Alpha schools?

Michael Horn

I guess what I would say, I think you’ve heard optimism in me that this is the time of entrepreneurship that I haven’t seen before. And I go back to that and I would say very clearly, look, we living in Massachusetts are not having that influx at the moment. I am hopeful the more we see models like Alpha come into the scene, there’s a few others that are opening up. There are a few others that are already opened up that will start to change mindset and push this conversation forward. I don’t want to get too political, but I’m hopeful that, you know, Joe talked about the choice opt in that states they’ll have a choice. I’m hoping we’ll opt into that, because I’m hoping we won’t leave those dollars on the table for those that need it the most so that they can have some agency in those families to make those same choices that frankly, I already made for my kids. Right. And I’ve opted out of the public school system already with my kids because I believe these principles so clearly.

So I say that in the sense of like there’s some hard choices, I think, in Massachusetts. And the more we see this burgeoning supply meeting this demand that I believe is here, I think we’re going to start to see some changes. And so I feel more hopeful today than I have.

Youth entrepreneurship and parental support

Joe Liemandt

Yeah. And back to this, his point about entrepreneurship, I completely agree with that, which is, I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I now talk to who are like, oh, I’m going to build Alpha school for this, right. How do I get access to time back so we can go build it for this? And I believe that’s absolutely going to happen. And back to time back being available. I have a 17 year old in my high school who’s building his own time back that he’s going to be releasing. You can follow him on Twitter, with AI he spends his afternoons, he’s like, I’m going to be the best ed tech entrepreneur in the world to be able to do this. I believe entrepreneurship is that way. And the second part is, I believe the strongest force in the world is parents who care for their kids and it’s going to blow through all the problems.

And, and I think a lot of the issues of reform before were there weren’t 10x better products. You weren’t sitting there and saying, you know, you could go to a private school, but it’s basically the same as a public school, except a little bit better, a little net, right. On these things. There wasn’t this two hours a day, right. I mean, it’s just, it’s a fundamental switch. Right. And they get to do this all day. And so I believe for the first time, right, this is enabling such a different product that the parents are going to be like, I have to have it.

Michael Horn

Just to jump on that for two seconds more. Because I think our criteria often was, you heard parents say, oh, that’s the best school. I heard, therefore we’ll go there. I was talking to again, my students were doing a project this morning and they were describing a particular school in the Bay Area. I won’t name the name at the moment, but where families have opted in, quote unquote, because it’s the best, but they hadn’t thought about what that model actually going to look like? Is this the right motivational match, etc, etc. And so what is still a very good school is drawing in families and students for whom, like, I’m not sure. Right. And so I think the other piece of this is we’re going to become more demanding.

We already are, I think, but we’re going to have more language to help us choose more. And I think tools are going to emerge that help us make those choices more intelligently as well.

Rags Gupta

Awesome. We’re at time, so we’ll wrap. I think we can still be around for the speakers will be around for questions for a few minutes longer. But thank you to the speakers and thanks to you all. And thank you, WHOOP. And the Ma AI Coalition for hosting. Thank you all. Have a great evening.

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Steve Kossakoski, outgoing co-founder of the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS), and Natalie Berger, its new CEO, joined me to talk about lessons learned over VLACS’s history and its evolution as a leader in virtual education, particularly in a world of AI. VLACS has one of the most important funding models in education; instead of receiving money based on enrollment or attendance, it only receives funds when students demonstrate mastery.

Natalie also shared her vision for expanding career-connected and project-based learning, as well as deepening partnerships with New Hampshire universities to offer more dual-credit opportunities for students.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I’m really excited because it’s one of the schools that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from over many, many years, written a lot about it, lauded it many times, but it’s at an interesting inflection point. It’s the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, VLACs as it’s commonly known out of New Hampshire. And Steve Kosikowski, who of course is the co-founder and has led it for many, many years, stepping down as the leader. And Natalie Berger, you’re stepping into these shoes to lead the organization as the CEO. Natalie, Steve, welcome both.

I’m excited to get the update from you both and hear all the things VLACs. So thank you so much for joining me.

Natalie Berger

Thanks for inviting us.

Steve Kossakoski

Thanks, Michael.

Starting charter schools in New Hampshire

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. So, Steve, maybe like round us and like where the organization is today, as you like, made this decision to step into your next act that does not involve shepherding children and so forth and tell us like, you know, give us a quick arc of like, for those that haven’t followed the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School over the years founding story, where it has evolved to, who are you serving today? How does the funding model work? Some of those sort of nuts and bolts of the school.

Steve Kossakoski

Sure, yeah. So the founding story is, I think, an interesting one. I was assistant superintendent in the Exeter, New Hampshire area and I work for a very innovative superintendent, Skip Hansen. And when the charter school laws changed in New Hampshire, he was the first superintendent to step forward and say, I think there’s a great opportunity to create charter schools that could benefit our kids. And so he thankfully allowed me to do the design work on the Great Bay Charter School, which is still operating today. And then a few years later, he asked me about the virtual side and he said, do you think we could help another group of kids through a virtual charter? And again allowed me the opportunity to do the design work on that. And so it was just that simple, you know, interaction in his office one day that led to everything.

Soon thereafter, he decided to retire. And I said, well, it’d be an opportunity for me to do something different. And I stepped into the role. And the first few years were really quite interesting. There were nights when I would go home and wonder if we were going to make payroll and where the money was coming from. And we were always following the policies available at the state level. But since we were doing things in a different way, there were just questions all the time and just always thankful for the commissioner, Lionel Tracy,and always finding answers for us or knowing the right person to ask and really helping us to get off the ground.

And then I think the next piece that led to our success was the people we were able to attract and hire, one of whom is here with us today, Natalie, she was in our second cohort, or first. Natalie second. Came in as a teacher and for many, many years just continued to do exemplary work and kind of rose up through the ranks. And I think one of the cool things about Natalie is if there’s a job at VLAC, she’s probably been involved either directly in it or somehow in it. So she really has just a wonderful understanding and an understanding that I don’t have because I’ve never been a teacher at VLAC. I’ve never taught a kid, and, you know, she has. So I think she brings a lot of wonderful things.

Serving diverse student needs

Steve Kossakoski

Over the years, we have grown to a point where now we serve regularly 10 to 12,000 students on an annual basis, you know, 98% or so who are from New Hampshire, the rest are from out of state. We come close to 1000 full time students each year, K through 12, and the rest are part time. And all throughout our history, the question has been, well, who are the kids who come? And people are expecting the answer, like, you know, it’s a certain type of kid. There came a point we stopped asking the question because early on we surveyed, you know, why are you here? And what we found was it wasn’t about only kids who struggled, it wasn’t about only kids who are, you know, on the high end academically. It was just across the board, every type of student you could think of. And you can see that in our graduates. We’ve had kids whose parents have thanked us for saving their child.

And there are other kids who are ready to step out and become the next president. I mean, they’re just all over the place. And we’ve continued to be able to attract just amazing, amazing folks. We have about 250 employees, although in the month that I’ve been gone, Natalie’s probably hired another cohort. And we continue to grow, which is amazing. Of course, we went through the pandemic and helped a lot of extra people. Almost overnight, our number of kids increased by 47%. But what’s, I think really interesting is we’ve never went back to the enrollment numbers that we had prior to the pandemic.

We dropped, but you know,

Michael Horn

You had a lot of these new students.

Steve Kossakoski

Yeah, yeah, a lot of them have stayed or more people got to know about us and came to see us. So it’s really been, for me, it was, the last 18 years have just been a highlight of, you know, I can’t think of a better way to cap off a 45 year career than to be able to experience what I experienced and the people that I got to work with. And Natalie may have another thought, but I think it’s pretty, this is pretty true that the school’s in a really good place. The enrollment numbers are still healthy. We’re not seeing 20% increases, but we are seeing regular 2, 3, 4% increases. Financially, we’re in a really good place. We have our own building now for administrative purposes and a really stable staff.

So I think things are really in a good place. And I don’t mean that to sound like I did that. It’s really people like Natalie and others who did all the work to put us in that place. So if I left anything out, let me know.

Michael Horn

But no, no, that’s good. Well, let’s maybe start to color in the lines for people just a little bit more and then we’ll, Natalie will talk about the future. But Natalie, maybe I’ll ask you this question since you’re now leading this organization. Just paint the picture for folks like when Steve says part time students, these are people who are taking 1, 2, 3 online classes. Right. These are virtual students. But you have a very different flavor of how people do virtual learning than most of the virtual schools that are out there.

It’s enabled by the policy environment, certainly in New Hampshire you have a very innovative funding model. You have a lot of choices about how people complete learning. So maybe fill in the lines of that student experience a little bit more.

Natalie Berger

Sure, yeah. You’ve mentioned some of the really key parts there. I’ve had people say to me, I wish my state had something like this. Like when they hear about it, we, you know, have students from Massachusetts who will come and take courses with us. Because Massachusetts does have online schools, but not in the same way. Where they’re asynchronous, where they’re, they can be just taking one or two courses. In many states you have to just choose to take your entire school online. And so this idea that, you know, you can be a full time student at any school in New Hampshire and then take an additional course because perhaps your school doesn’t offer it.

Certainly the ability to access a wide variety of courses is a key thing for small rural schools that can’t support having maybe just one or two students who are ready for a particular math course and they can come and take it at VLACs. And then we also, as you said that competency based funding model is key for us. The idea that we are not getting funded for kids just coming and showing up and sitting and doing nothing. They have to master their competencies, get credit for their courses and that is how the state is paying us. And that’s a really innovative piece that you know, we can give credit to Steve and others. But to really that idea that students are progressing and as they are progressing, that is how we are getting funded. We aren’t.

And that really helps us make sure that we have that idea of we really need to support students to get to fulfill their own version of success which you know, they might come and do one course, they might come and take a ton of them, but we’re there to help personalize and to support them in that so that it’s going to help us be successful since that’s how we are funded. But it’s really for them to be able to, you know, take their own path and you know, figure out what they want to do and, and how to proceed. And it’s just really about the opportunities we’re able to provide that I think is just, is unique and how we’re able to do that.

Michael Horn

Yeah, and it’s interesting, right? I just to make sure folks are following like literally it’s mastery is the new seat time in your model. Right. Like if I make instead of average daily attendance, you’re looking at basically average daily progress. If I make 10% and I exhibit mastery of the competencies in a course, you get 10% of the funding. I’d love to hear, Steve, when you were still leading, you put in sort of multiple versions, right of courses and multiple ways of showing mastery. I don’t know who’s best to talk through this, but just talk about how you think about the assessment of mastery and students exhibiting and showing that, showing what they’ve learned in effect.

Steve Kossakoski

Well, there are traditional online courses, if you will. We also have something called projects and then we have even rebranded what we used to call experiences to custom projects. And so what that allows kids to do is to move from, to pick the place where they feel comfortable. So if they want to take algebra 1 as a traditional course, they can, they could take it as a project, which in our world we put them in a scenario where we may say, you’re going to be starting a business and you need to do certain things from an accounting perspective and you’re going to produce a budget or something. And then there’s some competency that is supported by that. But then also that kid could come to us and say, well, I have an idea for working with an engineer and I’m wondering if there are some math competencies that I might be able to master as part of this. And we would work with them to do that. And we have a growing number of instructors who are really becoming very knowledgeable and very skilled at those alternative assessments.

Whereas when we first started it was a smaller group. And that group is continuing to grow. But it really allows kids to approach things from many different ways. And what we’ve basically done is standardized our competencies and built rubrics around our competencies and done professional development around, you know, how to assess and so forth. And so, yeah, it’s a very different environment. And also, I’ll go off track a little bit here. You alluded to funding and you know, and as you said, if I have 10% progress, we get 10% funded. And one of the concerns early on with that model was what do you do about the kid who is going to take more time than normal? You’re not getting paid for time.

Discussing course completion times

Steve Kossakoski

So what if a kid takes a year and a half to complete a course? Well, what we found, and this is what we had hoped, was that there’s a balance because you also have the kid who completes that same course and 60 days. And over time we just, that has just really played out very well for us. So we haven’t had an issue where kids are taking too long and, and we’re losing money and not able to support. So it’s been really interesting and there’s actually, for those who might be interested in that, the document is a little bit old now, but Larry Miller did a study a number of years ago about competency based funding. And one of the interesting things he found in his analysis is that if we had been paid based on seat time, the state would have had to pay a considerable amount of additional funds to us to support that model. That there were, you know, there were savings to the state, if you will, because of the way we were doing it, which I can’t say it was necessarily our intent, but it was just interesting that that happened. And I’m not making the case that everybody should jump to our model. I’m just saying it was, you know, an interesting outcome.

Michael Horn

That’s super interesting. I’m curious, let’s actually stay on this assessment strand because I think sort of two questions probably come up for folks right when they’re listening. One is, how does the state trust you all with assessing? Like, isn’t. Don’t you just want to pass kids and so that you can get the funding? And then the second, which I think is extremely pertinent at the moment, is about can’t go more than five minutes without asking in education. Okay, impact of AI. And you know, I hear it a lot from our higher ed friends, which is AI is taking the online courses for the students. Like I don’t, you know, they’re using AI to do the work, cognitive offloading, et cetera. How do you all think about those two questions? You know, around the did the student actually do the work? Did they master it? And perhaps this.

On the one hand, it’s a beautiful incentive. On the other, I can imagine the state being like, oh, wait a second, did they really master it? How do you show them that? Natalie, you want to take it?

Discussion based assessments in education

Natalie Berger

Yeah, yeah. I’ll jump in with one piece and then I’ll invite Steve to jump in too. One of the pieces that’s been core to every single one of our learning experiences is a discussion based assessment at the end of every competency. So every student is meeting with their instructor for every competency and doing that discussion together. Over time, how we’ve sort of helped students prepare for that discussion based assessment has changed and I think that’s going to continue to evolve, especially as you’re saying that second question of how do we ensure that students are really doing their work? That has always been one of the pieces, one of our goals of our discussion based assessment. Because even before the current age of AI, there were plenty of opportunities for students to turn off their camera and secretly type the question in while we were. I’ve had that happen. You know, you hear the kid clicking on the other keys like what? What’s the answer to this question? So we really focused on the relationships of those instructors and those students.

And I think that’s going to be ultimately the thing that is going to always be the central core part of our system is going to be that it’s a relationship, human focused relationship. And no matter what’s going to happen, we’re going to have those pieces where the instructor is going to know the student well and they’re going to have that ability to verify that it’s really them and that there’s real learning happening along with changes that we’re going to have to make with that model. But Steve, I think that you have some thoughts about the state and how they trust us probably?

Steve Kossakoski

Well, I think over time that people have realized that our model is one where there’s at least an equal amount of one on one time to any traditional school, if not more on the one on one side. And we have a representative sample of public school teachers across the state because a lot of our, most of our instructors are adjuncts working in traditional schools. So I think, you know, it’s not as if there’s a workforce that is totally separate and not integrated into the rest of the state that if anything untoward were happening. Right.

Michael Horn

They don’t have the incentive to not hide it. Yeah, yeah.

Steve Kossakoski

I think also the results have spoken for themselves where our test scores have been at or above state averages, you know, throughout 18 years. You know, our kids go to every college in the country and have, you know, had wonderful results. And so I think just over time we built up a lot of trust and plus more or less because of all the reports we have to do on an annual basis and so forth, that kind of an open book and you know, there’s almost no way you could hide it. Especially for 18 years, you couldn’t hide anything. So I think that trust has, has built up and, and we have so many stories of, you know, parents who, and kids who have said, wow, what an experience. And I learned so much. And you know, I think that’s really the simple answer.

Michael Horn

Well, and just stay with it also because I remember, I think it was in your office when years ago, Steve, you told me around the discussion based assessment or the oral assessment, right. You were like, most teachers know within 30 seconds that this kid knows this competency or not. Like it’s the purest form of mastery. And we sometimes overcomplicate, if you will, this picture and like, if I’m being honest, you don’t have it yet. Like, let’s keep working on this. Right. And I think there’s a purity of that, I’d love to hear you both talk about it, but there’s a sort of a purity of that, that you all have brought back and I imagine in an age of AI is actually even more like, sort of stands apart even more so than, than all these games of monitoring or this or that, that maybe folks are trying to play right now. But I love your reflections on that.

If I’m wrong in any way. Yeah.

Steve Kossakoski

One of the things I always enjoyed is when teachers would say things like, I love discussion based assessments because when the kid has done their work, I’m talking about something I love, which is history. And the kid loves history too. And we’re just talking about history. And you know, that doesn’t mean every discussion is like that. There are some kids who haven’t done the work and, you know, but then it turns into a coaching session. Oh, well, you need to work on this and need to work on that. So it’s one of the things I think Natalie could tell stories about is how we have to continue to coach kids so that they don’t get really stressed out about this, that you’re not going to fail. You may be told you got to keep working, but it’s not as if, okay, I’ve listened to you for 20 minutes, you’ve got an F.

We don’t fail kids. We just say, you’re not there yet and so they can come back and, and so forth.

Discussing the value of DBAs

Natalie Berger

So, yeah, and I was one of those instructors who would tell Steve how much I loved doing discussion based assessments. We call them DBAs for short. And as Steve said, one of the reasons is it’s a chance to talk about something that we as instructors are passionate about with students. And to be able to see a kid, you know, curious in the moment about something, it’s a really special, like a privilege, I think, for a teacher to be able to have that moment. And that’s a unique thing for us because I was a classroom teacher in a brick and mortar school and I would see those kids every day and I loved those kids. But there wasn’t ever a time when I could take 20 minutes with that one student at the end of every unit and have a one on one conversation with them to make sure that they felt like they had understood it and that they were ready to move on. And so I think that’s the reason that our instructors love those DBAs is it’s just such a unique opportunity for every single kid to have that uninterrupted time with their instructor. And so that’s going to be something that we, no matter what we change going forward, that’s going to be a key element still of what we’re doing.

And I had one other piece that I can’t remember, so I’ll let you ask.

Michael Horn

When we come back. Yeah, yeah, grab it when you come back. I was going to turn sort of past reflections and future directions as we start to sort of veer the corner toward the end of the conversation. And Steve, you wrote a really, I thought, prescient, moving letter series of reflections on your time at VLACs, your decision to step away now and what’s next and sort of the directions of the school, you know, what you’re both proud of, but also directions of the school. You don’t have to reiterate that. We can link to it in the show notes, people can find it on the website. But I just, as you know, you, I’d love to hear your own personal reflections. Right.

Of, of the state of the school, where it’s been, where it’s going and, and some of those thoughts that occur to you now.

Steve Kossakoski

Yeah, just incredibly proud of the work that everybody’s done. And you know, when you go through the retirement kind of cycle and people are saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I, I truly meant this, that whatever people are saying to me is just a reflection back on them because one person doesn’t do the work and one person doesn’t, especially in an organization of the size of VLACs. It’s really about the people and the employees and then the support we get from parents and schools throughout the state and organizations and the DOE that, you know, I hope it’s something that New Hampshire is proud of, that exists in New Hampshire. But I just think that in some respects the timing is really good. I think when I wrote to you, Michael, and said I’m stepping down and thank you for your support, I mentioned how lucky we were to have Disrupting Class come out about the time that we started because it really was a wonderful way to begin a discussion about what we were thinking about doing at the time and, you know, putting some components of it in, into effect. And I think going forward, and I’m going to step into AI here for a second, but I also want to preface this by saying I’m no longer the leader.

So some of the things I may say may be very different, but some of the things I kind of worked on over my last six months was the idea that we really need to embrace AI as a teammate, not in place of any human, but as an incredible technology that can do things we couldn’t do and couldn’t use as supports for kids before. And also, as much as we may have really big concerns about AI, understand that it’s our kids world, and if what we do is push it away and don’t involve kids and using it and learning how to use it effectively and using it honestly and with integrity, then we’re doing a real disservice to the kids. And that’s what I worry about, because I, you know, I worry about the pushback all the time. At the same time, you have to acknowledge those concerns and you have to deal with them. And I think VLACs is in a transition. You know, in the transition’s always the difficult part because we still have. Even though some of these ideas are innovative, they’re older now, now that AI is here, and there’s a transition to really bring AI into it.

And, you know, so, you know, other schools have issues with academic integrity and so forth, and so do we. We have to work with kids all the time. And most of the issues are about teaching the kids about the proper way of doing it instead of slapping them on the wrist and saying, don’t do it again. And that’s all you do. Again. That to me is a disservice. But this idea of a teammate, you know, so one of the things Natalie and I and Julie Reese, our director of learning, have talked about is discussion based assessments and how possibly we could bring AI into that as another discussant. And perhaps the AI brings up or poses some questions that we may not have thought of.

Isn’t that a wonderful thing? And certainly by having an instructor there and a student there, if AI says something that is not factual, well, you have two people there who are going to push back, but it can take us to another level instead of thinking of it as a negative.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. And Natalie, I’m going to bring you in a second. But I’m reminded of, we recently interviewed Dacia Toll, who created CourseMojo in the middle school English language arts space. And it’s basically trained with amazing educators, creating lots and lots of rules and guardrails and so forth around the AI to ask the next right question constantly of kids. And that is an interesting tool to, you know, tools like that. I could imagine being really interesting with the teacher there as well. And maybe sometimes the teacher, you know, you want to help out the student. And the AI says, oh, wait a second, let’s slow down.

I could imagine an interesting give and take between the two.

AI and academic honesty

Steve Kossakoski

Yeah. And I think we’re hearing reports of, you know, someone saying, well, the AI took this course for the kid and so forth. Well, there have long been concerns about courses, you know, all right, so if AI wasn’t there, did I hire my older brother to take my course for me? And then if we bring it back to more traditional part, did I hire my older brother to type up my essay and then I brought it into school? I mean, those concerns have always been there and I think we’ve always known that. I think AI is going to push us to rethink some of these things. So if a course can be taken by AI, maybe the course isn’t quite what we need for the future. We need something else. And maybe we say, okay, I want you to use AI to teach you that course. And then I want you to do this other thing that is far beyond what we would have normally done in that course. And to me, that’s the exciting part.

And I told Natalie, I said, boy, right at the point where this is exciting technology, I’m leaving. I feel like I should be staying.

Michael Horn

Well, Natalie, let’s bring you in there. Like future directions. Things you’re excited about, maybe scared about, but you can take it as a choose your own adventure question. But like, you know, VLACs has such a cool legacy and set of things that it has been serving students. But where’s it, where’s it all going in your view? What are the things you’re excited about building on, introducing, changing? Yeah.

Evaluating courses and student engagement

Natalie Berger

Yeah. I think we’re right now in that sort of taking stock mode of, you know, Steve and throughout his time helped build some really amazing opportunities for students. And some of that was sort of the idea that if we build it, they will come, which they have. But there are elements, some of, I think the more, the pieces that we find more exciting and innovative like the project based courses and learning through experiences, those pieces have not necessarily had as many students engaged in those as we have with our traditional courses. And what Steve just said about, you know, maybe if we’re worried about a course being able to be taken by AI, maybe that’s not where we want to put all of our energies. I think some of our more innovative project pathways are really the places that we are hoping to draw more students into those. And so it’s kind of looking at our distribution of our offerings and figuring out, you know, how to, how to kind of direct maybe more of our students into what we think are some more of those really authentic, really exciting opportunities for students. And along with that, you know, continuing our career connected learning that we have for students, that to me feels like a place that, sure, students could use some AI to write some things.

But there’s also, if they’re passionate about what, they’re there because they want to work with a mentor and they want to, you know, go to a job site and learn what it’s like to be there. That’s a really, you know, exciting place for them to be. And also we have interest based courses. Some of our most popular things these days are enrichment experiences where students are actually meeting synchronously. It’s one of our only courses that we have that are really synchronous opportunities for students. You know, they’re there to learn how to bake bread because they’re a fifth grader and they want to learn how to do that. Like those pieces are still. The human element of VLACS is alive and well in all of those courses.

So that’s really exciting for us to continue as well. And then we’ve been developing partnerships with three New Hampshire universities. We have Southern New Hampshire University, UNH, and also the Community College System of New Hampshire. And we have partnerships with all of them for dual credit courses. And we’re really excited to continue developing that with them. And I think one of the things that is key for that partnership is it’s really win-win for both of us. They’re looking at how to retain students within the New Hampshire university systems and, you know, being able to have students have an inexpensive way of getting some college credits. But then they also see what it’s like to be a student in New Hampshire.

And you know, with the population declining these days, I think those universities are really excited about continuing those partnerships with us as well and getting kids an idea of what it’s like to take a college level course when they’re still in high school. So those are some of the things that were, Steve’s planted all of those, those trees that we’re going to keep watering and help them grow with, he’s mentioned Julie Reese, our director of teaching and learning. She’s really taken the lead on figuring out what are we going to embrace with AI and how are we going to move forward with that. And I’m excited to see what she and her team put together as we move forward.

Michael Horn

Well, I hadn’t thought about it. I guess a couple reflections off of that. Take it for what it’s worth. But it strikes me on the dual enrollment front, you have an advantage because I see a lot of high schools, they’re offering dual enrollment classes. And I’m putting my hands in quotes because it’s really just a high school class warmed over and with a little college curriculum sprinkled in, you’re really partnering with universities that have online courses themselves. It’s the real McCoy, if you will. And so that seems distinctive and important. The second thing that occurs to me is in this time of AI that’s changing work, I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right.

With the experiential, career connected, et cetera, opportunities you have for students, you could bring them into the ground floor of like working on these problems. The AI becomes a tool because employers are not having this question around cheating. They’re like, how do you use it to get better results? And that’s fantastic. Right? And then two things, one of two things happens. Either the student says, man, I love this. And so I really want to apply myself more and I’m not going to fake it because this might be my future job. Right. Or they conclude not for me.

And what a great thing that they learned that they can cross something off the list, if you will. Right. Like both of those seem to me to be really positive outcomes. And, because you’re in a mastery based environment where there’s not failure, but just keep working at it, you take away, I think a lot of those incentives where people are like, oh my gosh, it’s midnight. I got to get this done, I got to pass. Because otherwise got turn it over to AI or Cliff Notes or whatever it used to be. It seems like those incentives are not present. And if anything they maybe move the other way Natalie, to your points,

Natalie Berger

I mean kids are still kids. Sure. And they’re always going to, you know, they do fall into that trap of, you know, oh my gosh, it’s due tomorrow. And we have over all these years worked with them on understanding that one of the beauty of our model is that ability to say, hold up, I’m not ready to submit this yet. And helping students identify that more than waiting for the instructors to decide what’s competency and are you ready to move on? But helping students see whether they’re really taking that control themselves. And so yes, we still have some work to do with that, but we’re excited to keep going.

Michael Horn

Well building agency in them to recognize where they are in their own learning. So let’s just finish up with this. I’m tremendously grateful that you both jumped on to give me an update and give the audience a look into what’s coming, but also what’s been. And Steve, I’ll just say I appreciate the kind words about Disrupting Class, but you have been an inspiration. What y’all, you, Natalie and the whole team there have built for me something I talk about in all my classes. I love pulling you out as an example as I’m on the road. And so just thank you for all that you’ve done for the students that you’ve served. And Natalie, as you step in this role, you got a friend in Massachusetts who’s a big fan.

So keep up the great work. I appreciate you both. And Steve, you know, don’t be a total stranger as you go off into the world of photography and exploration outside of this world.

Steve Kossakoski

Well, thank you very much.

Natalie Berger

Thank you, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. And for all you tuning in, you can learn more on the web, of course, about VLACs. We’ll put a link in the show notes and also put a link to Steve’s blog. And just thank you as always for tuning in. And we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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Academic research is under serious fire right now. The suspects fueling a replication crisis include the peer-review system, academic journals, and the system of evaluating faculty for tenure. The questions are also not new. The challenges are structural, baked into the underlying incentives. There are no easy answers it seems to the challenges.

My guest for this episode is Mathïs Fédérico, founder of the startup company Bycelium, which aims to rethink science with Bayesianism. Mathïs shared his personal journey through the traditional research pipeline and explained how the emphasis on publication count and narrative crafting distorts scientific progress. Our conversation explored Bycelium’s approach to measuring the credibility and impact of scientific hypotheses in real time by incentivizing the sharing of data and negative results and encouraging honest debate rather than just novel publications.

As Mathis told me, “Science is never perfect. Science will never tell you that something is true or false. Science will just nudge the credibility of things thanks to evidence.”

Will Bycellium work? It’s too early to say, but I find the ideas behind it intriguing and illuminating.

Challenges in academic research trends

Michael Horn

Alrighty. Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m delighted because several months ago Mathïs Fédérico reached out to me somewhat on a whim, I think because he had seen something I had posted about the research challenges in academia and higher education. And my hypothesizing that actually, you know, a lot of my research and writing is about how we need to reinvent the teaching and learning model itself is broken. And I said, you know, there’s this whole other thing that’s also broken, which is the research model itself. And then since then he reached out and we’ll talk about why he did in a moment. But one of the things that’s happened since then is a lot more people are very dialed into the challenges that the research process has. We’ve had this Nature article coming out that said, you know, 3,900 studies published in 62 journals and half of them could not be reproduced.

We’ve seen a lot of people realize, hey, actually a lot of the Nobel Prize winners are not coming from traditional higher education pathways. As of late. We have DeepMind, Google, pharma companies, a lot of researchers that are the most impressive breakthroughs aren’t coming from the universities we expect to produce the research. We have a lot of claims of not just reproducibility challenges or replication, but outright falsifying of research and the like. And then you have this other backdrop, which we know well, is that people, when they publish in research journals, increasingly to get published, not only do you have to have something that looks statistically interesting, you also have to have something that is unique. So by definition almost not replication. And that has caused many faculty to look at narrower and narrower and narrower questions that have less and less relevance to other people. And as a result I don’t have the stats in front of me.

But very few peer reviewed journals, articles that get published are ever, ever read. Very few get more than say two or three citations ever out there. And so you have a bunch of challenges hitting all at once. And so my guest Mathïs Fédérico, he has started an entity called Biselium, which we’re going to talk more about to actually solve the root causes of this challenge. But first, Mathïs, welcome. Thanks for reaching out. I’ve been like, we had this conversation on the phone and I’ve been buzzing ever since and saying, I think we have someone who might have an answer actually. So first, welcome and thanks for being here.

Mathïs Fédérico

Well, thanks for having me. I’m very glad to be here, I guess. Yeah. All that you’ve said, which seems very diverse in a way, and seems like a lot of things are happening independently, but all linked to the same source, which is, we are not pushing for the right thing. The thing that academia is optimizing for is not the good objective. And so whenever you try to maximize an objective like this, well, what’s happening is you maximize the wrong thing. You have a lot of the wrong things. And for us the wrong thing is the number of publications.

That’s what we maximize today. The number of publications is what we use to evaluate. It’s what we use to quantify breakthroughs, to quantify how good a researcher is. But it’s not what matters. It’s not what matters at all. What does matter though, is how much did you change the minds of others, what are the evidence that were provided and how much did you change what we think of reality, what is credible and what is not? And so that’s exactly what kind of data we want to measure now with biselium, the general idea is to say, okay, could we reimagine a system where what we measure is not publication and citations, but what’s the credibility of things, how credible are hypotheses? So if we could measure this in real time and know that, oh this, this changed my mind and like this evidence changed my mind, then you literally have the impact, the scientific impact that you had on others minds. And so it has a lot of ripple effects around this.

And so that’s the main idea.

Michael Horn

Yeah, well, I want to get into all of them because. So let’s talk about your personal story before we even get into what you’ve been building and the root cause, because I think you just actually nailed it, that this emphasis on publication number for its own sake has sort of become its own ill, if you will. It’s the law of unintended consequences. Right. When you pick one metric that is not the actual metric you care about, but a proxy for it becomes a bad proxy pretty quickly, Campbell’s Law. But you had a personal set of interactions in your own educational journey that sort of laid this bare where you were doing research, as I understand it, in a lab. So maybe talk about that origin just to ground us about your own personal journey to this.

Mathïs Fédérico

So my journey started as I want to pursue science. So I discovered science in higher education in France, I discovered like preparatory classes, how you can reason. So the thing that fascinated me with science is that not only you can prove others wrong, but you can prove yourself wrong with tools.

Michael Horn

And that’s actually a good thing.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah, yes. Because that’s how you learn, right? That’s how you progress. So I love this. And so very quickly, when I was 16, I was extremely passionate about epistemology, which is, how do you like, what’s the science of learning? What’s the science of us discovering knowledge altogether? Right. And so being into this, I continued my studies, went into engineering school at CentraleSupélec in France. But after that I reached research and my goal was like most young people that go in the system. I want to do a PhD, I want to pursue research, I want to be a researcher, I want to push the boundaries of knowledge. That’s the classical route you’re told is the good route to do science. Right.

But then when I tried to do research at some point I actually had the advice being given to me that in order to have a scientific career, I had to spend less time on my experiments so I could write. And I should spend time on writing a nice story about it so I could get published in high chair journals so I could get cited because this is how you make a scientific career. And I refused it. I refused it because for me this was not a good way to do science. So I looked for other ways. And so this led me to entrepreneurship, this led me to other paths, even like research and development in industry, hoping that it would be different, but it’s not.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And I want to, I want to come there in a second because there’s something else when we talked that you said was, if I’m remembering correctly, which was not only the focus on crafting the narrative, right. Sell it in essence, but you actually were very interested in like, how do I make my data vary. So others can understand it and others can look at it and really present it neatly. And like you were very obsessed with that and they said, why are you doing that? Stop doing that. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah.

Mathïs Fédérico

It’s not just making it understandable. So I guess I was leaning into software engineering a bit already at the time. And I just wanted to make my code to make my experiment very reusable. I wanted what I was doing to be packaged in a way that anyone could build on top of it very quickly. So not only they could understand it, but they could tinker around with it and they could build on top of it. So that was one of my main interests. And so what people told me, as you said, is stop spending time on doing that because you don’t really care, what matters is that you have the paper, you ship the code with it, but people that will build on top, that’s a problem. Right.

And so this was crazy to me that you have to optimize for this short term paper publication instead of the long term science for it. That’s obviously that target for me. But somehow this is how the system works and this is what the system pushes you to do.

Michael Horn

Right, and so let’s dig in then. So then you said you started to look toward entrepreneurship. You sort of rejected this system. Tell us about your pathway then, because it starts to wind into Bycelium, but maybe before that, like what are the root causes you discovered that are distorting this system where someone would say to you, ah, you know, the data, whatever, making it accessible and whatever, like, you know, just focus on selling it. We just need you to get published regardless of the truth underlying it, regardless of how much we-

Mathïs Fédérico

I will make the argument against it. Yeah, I would make the argument against the fact that no, no one will push you to ignore the truth. That’s not the case. Right. It’s more subtle than this. It’s really more subtle and that’s why it would be much more visible if it was as bland as this and people just pushing you not to.

Michael Horn

So then we’d all see it and do something about it.

Mathïs Fédérico

Exactly. So it’s more subtle than this. Right. It’s a few things here and there that tell you, oh, well, you know, spend less time on this, spend more time on this. It’s like this small orientation and these small pushes that you have in the direction of writing and being a good writer of science and being able to tell this nice story about the ideas and basically trying to convince the reviewers more than trying to convince yourself at some point. And so that’s, I think, what I didn’t like at all within that system. And that triggered some alarms in my instinct that was telling me, well, I don’t want to be part of that system because of those small signals that were accumulating. So it’s much more subtle than someone telling you you should lie.

That never happens. It’s really more, there’s the ground coming up and we have to have released some papers, we have to have done some public. So let’s rush for the deadline, let’s publish. Oh, we have the conference deadline coming up, so let’s get some results quickly before the conference so we can publish something. It’s more like those kinds of things which are not bad and wrong in a way it doesn’t seem like it, but it accumulates. And at the end of the day you’re not happy about what you’ve published.

And so I think that’s one of the most important signals that we have is, that imagine for authors of books, actual books, and you’re one yourself, right?

Michael Horn

Yeah. For better or worse.

Mathïs Fédérico

So imagine that we would force you to publish fast and so you wouldn’t be proud. So as much that you wouldn’t be proud of the thing that you publish when you do, because they have been rushed and they have been pushed because they needed to be there. And there is studies that shows that it’s very little scientists that actually are proud of the thing that they have published. So it could be also that maybe we want to publish the perfect thing and so on. And that’s also a bad thing. And so that’s why I’m arguing against publication oriented science altogether, because I think it’s a very bad practice. Science is not and should not be about publication at all. Publication is something that happens always, all the time.

We are in the 21st century. We are not writing things in journal and communicating by letters anymore. The information is everywhere and we should share it as much as it’s produced. For me, the freedom of science that we could have back is that you’re just doing things, you’re doing your experiments and you’re publishing as they go, as they are done. Because you don’t need to have the approval of people to see that something is relevant or not. It comes afterwards anyway.

For me, the problem that we have with the current scientific system is that we mixed publication and evaluation. They are not the same thing at all. And they should not be mixed. Evaluation, which is how much impact will have, is it true or does it hold or does it not hold? That’s something that evaluates over time after it has been shared. Because as you mentioned, it needs replication, it needs to be checked in other contexts, it needs all of this. And if you don’t have this, you don’t have this before publication. So when do we have it right? So how could you try to do this filter before publication? For me, it makes no sense. And so it’s not necessary and it’s not good to have this filter of before we publish.

We should try to make sure it’s perfect or it’s good. Science is never perfect. Science will never tell you that something is true or false. Science will just nudge the credibility of things thanks to evidence. Evidence will always nudge and nudge the credibility until the credibility is so far on one side or another that it’s nearly certain. But it’s never completely certain. Because if it were completely certain, it also would mean that any data that you would gain in the future would never change your mind, which is weird. That’s not really a very scientific mindset to have a mindset where anything in the future would not change your mind.

So, yeah, I guess that’s what.

Michael Horn

That’s an important insight, right, that you just landed on, which is my understanding and you can correct me, but is that sometimes people will exclude certain data points because it does not contribute to the narrative or it looks like unclean data or things of that nature.

Building a new research system

Michael Horn

Right as opposed to saying, wow, that’s an anomaly. I don’t know how to explain it. Let me just sort of be honest with that and then let’s see what that means in terms of where the preponderance of evidence falls. Or maybe there’s a different circumstance and under one this is true, and under another it’s not. Who knows? Let’s try to work this through. But I guess a lot of that thinking though is still under the notion of publication is the referee, if you will. Right. And you’re now creating Bycelium to say, actually there’s a different system altogether where other scientists can look at people’s research to sort of say, hey, do we believe this hypothesis? Do we not? Where’s the preponderance of evidence and belief at any given point? Talk about what you’re building.

Mathïs Fédérico

So it’s not just me, to be clear. It’s actually an ecosystem that’s starting to be built. So not my part and my job within that ecosystem is exactly the bit that you mentioned, which is for me, it’s about this idea of hypothesis credibility and attributing the evidence, attributing the change of credibility to some evidence. That’s the part I want to contribute with Bycelium. But that’s not like the only. We are not the only actors, actually. There is the Open Exchange Architecture, the Continuous Science Foundation that are like making things that are. On this idea of continuous science, we should publish things as we go.

And there are a lot of institutes that are existing. There is the Astera Institute, for example, in Arcadia Science. There is a lot of people that are trying to do other ways of doing science where there is a lot of more transparency and honesty and openness from the get go. So it’s not publication oriented. Publications are always happening in real time as you do experiments and you just share everything that you do when you do it. And afterwards you can look back and try to do a summary, try to do this kind of summary of concise journal, journal and concise bits of information where you summarize everything that has happened. But when you do the thing, you publish it on the go. And on the go, those little anomalies, sometimes they accumulate and they actually shine light on something deeper that has happened a lot already in history.

Those things we were considering anomalies became entire different fields. That’s the case of quantum physics. Quantum physics in the early of the 19th century was, you know, it was just when Planck was trying to work. I think there is this anecdote of his professor telling him that there’s nothing left to do in physics so he should choose another field. Right? Because there’s nothing to discover in physics. Right. And so he leaned into like a, Planck leaned into the Wien’s constant of like the black body radiations, right. And so these laws that were here and that has some discrete jumps. And so this is the, the thing that was the entrance and this little anomaly of this little weird data point and weird jumps are the thing that led afterwards to quantum physics.

Right. And so we have had anomalies like this that accumulate into very important things. So that’s exactly your point. The fact that us wanting to tell a perfect and nice narrative to make believe for the reviewers is, I think, detrimental to actual science and honesty and transparency about what’s happening and why, and also to the reviewers and also to everything. Because if you’re optimizing not for publication and the acceptance by others, but you’re optimizing instead for the long term impact, which is what we should do long term, it will change the mind of others on those subjects. Then it changes everything. So that’s exactly what we’re trying to orient with Bycelium. But Bycelium is really a simple idea actually, right.

Scoring and incentivizing contributions

Mathïs Fédérico

It’s really just let’s measure something that we don’t. So it’s just instead of doing this whole review process and the citations and using all of that, let’s just use instead, I changed my mind because of X. And so the question of course lies on if you have this data, how do you derive a score out of it? How do you score people depending on the contributions that they have made? And so how do you score them in a way that you drive the right incentives for them? So how can you establish a game if you want, in a way that maximizing the score of that game. So maximizing prestige if you want, right would lead you to do science, would lead you to be honest about the credibility of hypotheses that you’re putting on the like. So it’s very similar to predictability prediction markets in a way. Right.

Where if you have a prediction market, your internal belief is the best action that you can do on a prediction market. And so we kind of want to do exactly the same kind of mechanisms. Except unlike prediction markets, where you’re trying to predict an event so there will be a resolution at some point that tells you, oh, well, this was the truth. Right. For science, not really the same. It’s not like someone will tell you at some point, oh, the hypothesis was correct. No, nobody would know.

Michael Horn

An election doesn’t. Right. So just to make it clear to the audience, right. In a prediction market, there’s a game, there’s election, there’s some sort of thing, we all had made bets on it and now it’s proved true or false relative to how we bet. Science, this prediction market, if you will, will actually be ongoing for any item or piece of scientific question that we’re sort of, or hypothesis maybe is the better way to say about it that we’re, that we’re looking into. Is that the right way to think about it?

Mathïs Fédérico

Exactly. So it’s the idea that you have this never ending update of what do humanity think is credible? And so if you provide evidence that changes what humanity thinks is credible on how reality works, you’ve done science. That’s as simple as this, right. And so this is the simple equation. We’re trying to put the infrastructure, the platform and everything around and the framework and everything around for it. And we are trying to integrate, as I mentioned, through this new ecosystem of how to do this continuous science and how to do the science in this more transparent and better way and more, without this drawback of having journals and needing reviewers before because it seems weird, but for, for people, it seems that if two people have said like two reviewers have accepted a paper, that’s, it becomes science, you know, because before that it was not science and because it’s accepted by two people now it’s science.

Michael Horn

A silly low threshold there, if you will.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yes, it’s critical. And so I don’t think it’s a good truth now.

A walk-through example of Bycelium’s system

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah. So, let’s dig in. Like take us through a micro example, right? Say Planck’s constant or Heisenberg or someone comes in today right. We don’t know, we, we don’t have the, that, you know, that they, that we now accumulated around these questions. How would this play out? Right, in Bycelium, what would. They would put forth a hypothesis, they would back it up with data. People would start to make bets of some sort, I guess, of whether they thought this made sense or not, or what would this actually look like on a micro example.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah. So let’s take an example like this. Do you want a concrete scientific example or do you.

Michael Horn

Sure, you get to choose. You get to choose.

Mathïs Fédérico

I guess let’s take the example of the Aharonov–Bohm hypothesis. It’s a very nice hypothesis in physics because it has spanned a lot of back and forth of people changing their mind over 30 years. So that’s why I like it. So let’s imagine that you’re Bohm or Aharonov at that time initially. So before the data, before the experiment, and you’re having this idea that actually when I’m looking at Schrodinger’s equation, so on the hypothesis itself, what it is, is to say that potentials can act on matter and can act on particles and not just fields, because usually in physics only forces can act on things. Only forces will change the behaviors of matter because you have to have a force somewhere. So it might be electromagnetic force, it might be gravity as a force, but there needs to be a field that contains that force. Right? And so what this hypothesis was that actually not always there is space, there is cases where just the potential can change the gravity.

So imagine, like if you take the physical analogy for this, imagine that if you were to be higher on top of a mountain, right, Just because you had a higher potential, then you would change, something would change in the way you fall because you’re higher. And so that’s something that’s very weird and very surprising in physics. And so everyone was against this when the hypothesis was of course initially published, right? So how it would play out in Bycelium would be that Aharonov and Bohm could open the hypothesis, which is an absurd hypothesis for most, and bet for it, right. And have this position where they say, actually we think it’s pretty credible they might not be like 100% certain. So they don’t, you can’t anyway say on Bycelium that you are 100% certain or 100 or 0%.

Michael Horn

But they put a percent confidence essentially with their claim, if you will.

Mathïs Fédérico

They might even be a conservative themselves and say, oh, maybe there’s like 60% chance or something. Like that it is, or maybe even 20% chance. Right. Maybe they say that there’s 20% chance that this is actually,

Michael Horn

I think we found some evidence that suggests this could be so we’re going to put forth the claim with our level of confidence against it.

Mathïs Fédérico

Okay? Exactly. And so they do that, which is we could be just, instead of being negligible, like 0.1% now it becomes like 1% or 2%. Right. So that could already be more than most scientists. So they do this, they do that bet if you want, and then they release evidence. And so that evidence might change the mind of others. So the others would initially bet, like in the negligible, like below 1%, below 0.1% Probability that this is true. And then maybe some would change their minds.

For example, Richard Feynman changed his mind very quickly when there was the first experimental experiments around it. Although there were imperfections in the system. Richard Feynman looked at the equation and said, at first it looks horrendous, but then it looks obvious that this is the case. And so he changed his mind completely. And he actually started to teach this at that time. And at the same time you had people that were completely against this and were saying, ah, but the experiments are flawed because there is some leakage of field. And so there is actually some existing field that exists. And so we would.

Michael Horn

So it doesn’t in fact change the principle.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yes, exactly. So it is evidence, but it’s not enough evidence. And so there are people that completely try to gather evidence to go against this. And so, you know, there was this battle, and so you could see on Bycelium, this battle, because people would change their mind and update their position depending on, oh, actually, this new thing that came out changed my mind. No, I’m thinking more this. Oh, no, I’m thinking, I’m thinking a bit more this. And you do as such as more as you, you gather evidence.

And the more you have evidence and the more you would gather while you would converge to the truth is what we expect of science. Right.

Michael Horn

You’re essentially incentivizing others then to do experiments, to replicate, to seek. Because they can change people’s mind as well.

Mathïs Fédérico

Exactly.

Michael Horn

Let me, let me ask this question. What’s the trigger that gets me to care about the question in the first place or to participate and say, I actually, you know, you put forth this crazy idea that I’d never thought about before because it seems so crazy now I’m looking, why do I even pay adherence to it and participate?

Mathïs Fédérico

I think that’s a very good question. I think the question of what makes an hypothesis relevant is actually a good question already today. What makes an hypothesis relevant for someone to explore it in the first place? And it’s very hard to know and to pinpoint exactly what would drive people. The easy answer to this. Let me start by this, probably, the easy answer to this. This is just because you are a domain expert and you want to prove that you are an expert in a domain. Whenever there is a hypothesis that pops in your domain, you try to gain prestige because if you’re right on that hypothesis, then you would get prestige on it.

So that’s the game, mechanical explanation.

Michael Horn

So in essence, I can actually get credit not just for, quote unquote, doing the experiment or presenting the data, but actually arbitrating it or weighing in on the discussion in some sense. So universities presumably could actually give credit for me being someone that is digging in on these important hypotheses.

Understanding foresight and hypotheses

Mathïs Fédérico

Okay, yeah, because you were right on how people were going to change their minds later on. And so you had like, you were right before the others, these kinds of things. So you had this good foresight on your own domain. So within a hypothesis of your domain, you’ve been able to foresight what was going to be the credibility of the hypothesis in the future. And so that’s kind of one of the easy incentives that you would have for an hypothesis. But yeah, as I mentioned, there is also a deeper question on what makes a good hypothesis. And actually there is a very nice suggestion of an economist that thought a lot about academia and how to change this, which is Robin Hanson. And he thought about this idea that I think is very relevant to the question here, which is we don’t know now what hypotheses are relevant.

Right. But we will know in 50 years or we will know in 100 years. Right. We will know in the future what were relevant hypotheses or not, right?

So what we could do is we could have a prediction market basically, or a future market more generally that will make us bet on what are the importance of those hypotheses. And so it would be our best estimations of that future, knowing that in 50 years we will ask some historians or scientists to look back and say what were important hypotheses. And so you could try to have this measure of the importance of hypothesis or even contributors themselves. Right. And try to have this like, oriented towards the future incentives system of incentives as well. So this is exactly the kind of subjects we are thinking about,

Michael Horn

Sort of two layers Then right one is, is it an interesting hypothesis? Do we want to engage into it? Because there’s lots of hypotheses that we could come up with. And then the second one, and you could imagine vectors, I guess, based on plausibility, impact, influence, et cetera. And then the second one is, is it true or false in our estimation or how likely. True or false is a little binary.

Mathïs Fédérico

I would prefer to say is it credible or not? Because credible or not. Because true or false is like zero or one.

Michael Horn

Thank you for correcting my language. Yeah, no, that’s better. Right, so is it credible or not as a hypothesis is another set of debates. And then I guess the next question is, right, how do we get people. You can imagine that there’s a sort of a piling in or lobbying external sort of set of incentives that could occur outside of the market.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yes, of course.

Michael Horn

How do you get it to impact present day behaviors the way we want it to, not just a hundred years from now. We figured out, wow, Mathïs was really onto something and we should have recognized it because that’s the thing. It has to really supplant or disrupt the publication peer review model to really, I would imagine, take off in some ways. So how does that process work in your mind? I know you’re building it right now so you don’t have to have every answer, but I’m sort of curious your current thinking.

Mathïs Fédérico

So there’s good news and bad news about this. So I’m going to start with the bad news. The bad news is that time is unforgiving and the way causality works prevents you from forecasting actually breakthroughs. By definition, breakthroughs are things you can’t see coming. So by definition you cannot say, oh, this hypothesis on frogs that no one cared about actually changed the course of humanity 100 years from now. That may be true, but you have no way to know it beforehand. Right. And so you don’t really have a way to forecast faster than the future comes.

So that’s the bad part and the sad part about this. So we have to have a system that does its best at, but it will never be able to have this like actual future impact, knowing this actual future,

Michael Horn

Maybe that’s, maybe that’s okay because you actually developed a real conversation. Right? Okay, so I’ll let you go. Go ahead, tell us.

Mathïs Fédérico

No, no, go on, go on.

Michael Horn

But that’s, I was going to say it occurs. It occurs to me though that that’s okay because we want to have robust discussions about what are the relevant hypotheses? And you could imagine two archetypes, right? One is we have a very robust set of debates around a limited set of hypotheses that seem really important and that solves the problem of us doing arcane things that aren’t relevant. And then you could imagine that there’s a couple rogue scientists, right? Or people in their field and they’re like, I am so convinced this is important. I don’t care what you all think about, I’m going to, over, you know, the course of my 50 year career, persuade you that this is a question of real import.

Right and maybe that’s actually healthy.

Challenges in scientific reproducibility

Mathïs Fédérico

And I think that’s healthy. I think it’s always what science has been. I think I started by this like science. I liked science because it allowed me to prove others wrong and myself wrong, but also others wrong.

And so proving others wrong is, I think, a feeling that is underrated. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not a bad feeling to have. I think it’s actually quite healthy that you do your best to prove others wrong and you do your best to prove yourself wrong. As long as you’re not trying to prove anyone’s right, that’s fine. I would say, because otherwise you would fall into your own confirmation biases and so on, right? So as long as you’re trying to prove someone is wrong and you’re trying every way to prove that something is wrong, I think it’s a very healthy way to debate. And so that’s exactly what we’re trying to push for, which is not the case in the current journals where you can’t really say and publish negative results. Right? You can’t really say, oh, this actually doesn’t work.

And so that’s exactly what we want to have with Bycelium. We want to have a place like this.

Michael Horn

Well, that was going to be my next question. Right, so you’re now actually creating an incentive for people to publish sort of the null result, if you will.

Mathïs Fédérico

Exactly.

Michael Horn

Okay, say more about that because that seems like a very important piece that’s missing right now where you, you gave the example earlier. There’s the time pressure of grants, but there’s also the pressure of just like getting more grants. And I want to be in a lab seen as having lots of publications and proof points and positive results. Right. Because therefore my center is going to get more research grants than your center. And that’s its own problem. Right.

Mathïs Fédérico

And so for that you need to have high chair journals. And in order to have high chair journals, the number one criterion that they all have is novelty because they are literally journals in the sense of they want to be read by people. And so their incentive is to publish shiny good new things, not to publish the hard, oh, actually we were wrong or you know, that kind of thing.

Michael Horn

Well, so make this. I mean, I think this is clearest in social science research, even more so than. Right. Where you know, sort of the posturing and all these things like had magical effects. And then you look into it and it’s not quite as big as you first thought, but to your point, huge publication value to be out with that first right.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yes. And so there is that and there is a. But you’re mentioning social sciences. I would also say that even in condensed matter physics you have this problem. So it’s also a problem of hard, hard sciences too. And it’s. We are clearly not immune to that. We have the same system.

It’s quite universal. So it’s maybe more visible, I think, in social sciences because it’s maybe more approachable and more reproducible in some way than the condensed matter physics experiments that you need a lot more material to be able to try it again. Right. But it exists too and there is actually a very good documentary about this if you are interested online, you can look it up on condensed matter physics and the crisis of unpredictability within condensed matter physics. There’s also those problems and it’s not immune. And math is the same. Like there is a lot of wrong math proof out there. Yeah, yeah.

It’s not just social sciences, just to put the emphasis on it and. Yes. So to come back to the idea of having those incentives to push for negative results. That’s exactly what we want. We want to be able to have someone, to have a platform where if you push for negative results and you say actually this thing that people think is working, it doesn’t. And I’m going to show you, I’m going to show it. I want this to be evaluated. Right.

By the system. That’s one of the main interests of the system. And so the good thing for us is that, as I mentioned, what we want to reward is people changing their mind. But either way we don’t care if they change their mind positively or negatively. Right. On a hypothesis, as long as you change the mind of others, that’s valuable. That makes success. That’s matter.

Yeah, that’s what matters. Right. So for us, we don’t have a bias towards positive things. We actually have no bias in any direction as long as you do amplitude. And amplitude means you actually convinced others with strong arguments. It could be just arguments. Even a position proper like the words themselves can be considered as evidence. If they change your mind on how to view something, that’s fine.

It’s a lesser proof, but it’s still a proof. It’s still proof of something that could work and something that is becoming more credible in your mind. And that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be always data based.

Michael Horn

That’s good, right? Because you create room for theoretical and experimental both in this system. I was going to ask a curiosity question which is, is there a danger that if people get really confident about a particular hypothesis, people don’t want to weigh in because they’re like, yeah, that’s probably true and I won’t be able to change someone’s mind. How do you get people to still put sort of their whole bets forward? Yeah, talk about.

Mathïs Fédérico

The whole idea of designing the game around it. Because that’s why it’s so interesting for us to be able to design the algorithm that will link those input data to the prestige. Because now the question is, how do you make this system so that it has the properties that you just said, that the more people are agreeing on something that is wrong and the higher you will gain if you make them change their mind with strong evidence. And so it just means that you might have to look for stronger evidence than if they were uncertain. Of course. But the good thing is currently in our current first design of the system, the faster you move your mind compared to others and the best it will be for you. So if you think one evidence has came up, and it will change the mind of everyone, you are incentivized to react as fast as possible.

Because if you are the first one to move, you will benefit for all the others that will move after you on your position. Right. Or towards your position.

Michael Horn

So you get more currency, in other words, for being okay, gotcha,

Mathïs Fédérico

or more prestige or. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Horn

And so that currency is the prestige. Yeah, okay.

Betting against popular market beliefs

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah, yeah. So that’s exactly the idea that if you move early and then so having a lot of people at the same place on the market or on the hypothesis more. If you have a lot of people at the same place on the hypothesis very positively and you have a strong evidence, something that you think is a strong evidence towards the negatives, then you are very incentivized to bet yourself the other way or where you think you will convince others and then reveal your evidence, and then reveal your evidence and try to convince the others your way. Because if you do so, you gain twofold once because your position will gain in value if people go towards your position. So you will have the first forecasting prestige that we talked about. Right. And on top of that, you will also have the contribution prestige because you provided evidence that changed the mind of others. So, yeah, that’s exactly the kind of.

That’s exactly what we’re trying to see is how can we design a system that have those kind of properties that we want?

Michael Horn

Okay, so let’s say there’s a hypothesis out there. There’s a fair amount of consensus. I want to jump in there and disprove it or, you know, try to convince other people, right. That they should switch their minds. I go through it and I’m like, oh, man. I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that I probably would put the bet that confirms the hypothesis. What’s the incentive for me to make that bet and sort of increase, you know, just be one more voice, if you will, on the bandwagon.

Who’s agreeing now with. With the prevalent view. If. Does that make sense?

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah, yeah. So one of the ways we’ve done this for now, so this is a more technical question on how do we measure things?

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mathïs Fédérico

One of the ways we have done that is that whenever you arrive at a position, the people already there will gain from your arrival. So, for example, if you can precisely predict where people will enter the market, you are actually gaining on that. So it looks a lot like a Ponzi scheme, actually, but it’s a Ponzi scheme that will shift on evidence. So it uses kind of the mechanisms and incentives mechanism of a Ponzi scheme in some way, which is fun because the Ponzi scheme itself, of course, is not a good thing. But I guess if you can use a Ponzi scheme to find science and to actually change their mind, to actually change the way we view the scientific incentives, that’s fine by me.

Michael Horn

I was going to say you’ll have made two contributions. One, to improve science and second, to show the one useful place for a Ponzi scheme. I suppose if you.

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah, I mean, that’s fine by me. Right. If that’s the case. And so it’s a bit like a Ponzi scheme in the sense of if you’re early on a place that you think a lot of people will agree with you, then you will gain from that.

Michael Horn

Okay, last question as we start to wrap up here, which is talk about the entrepreneurial journey. Where are you in developing Bycelium.? I know you’ve been in some startup camps of some sort, incubators of some sort, I don’t know exactly what, but trying to get it out there. So talk to us about what that process is like. Where are you in development? When might people start being able to use this in your best imagination?

Mathïs Fédérico

Yeah. Okay. So for now we have made a lot of focus on building initial draft and initial platform and trying to partner up with foundations because we think that’s where it will start. Like the actual prestige comes also from the money. And so people that are giving you money. So funders of science, I think, are one of the most interested in having the science for their money. Right. And so that’s where we’re starting right now.

What’s next with Bycelium

Mathïs Fédérico

And so our main interest for us is to be doing pilots with foundations right now. So that’s what we are doing, like small control pilots where we have those kinds of competitions where we make scientists try to maximize their prestige. And by doing so we test those incentive designs and it allows us to have those testing bears and those experiments to see do we actually drive the right incentive, do we have the good metrics? Should we tinker the system one way or another? So that’s what we are doing at our stage right now. But of course the goal is then to open up and have as much and to grow the size of each of the experiments in order to afterwards be able to open it worldwide and have something that everyone can hop in. You mentioned the startup program. Yeah, I’m part of freight right now. So actually in Helsinki we are having a three months condensed work on the subject. So this allows me to build the initial platform, all the initial technical details, the first model that we just talked about a bit, which is how exactly the system and the instances.

Because before the streamers it was just an idea, now it works in practice. And so, yeah, we’re getting there. And so things are building, things are getting there. And so now what we need is mostly, well, people to join us. So smart people that are able to build fast and good and then the scientific funders that are willing to take the adventure with us and see how we can measure science and how we can measure the impact of science in a different way. And so our hope is that we will gain more and more credibility ourselves so we can probably have an hypothesis on the credibility of our own system.

Michael Horn

Well, I was about to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If the hypothesis works for it, we’ll just see what the revised hypothesis is if it doesn’t work out. But that’s the call to action is those who want to see better science and are funders or connected to funders, get in touch. How should they get in touch with you? How should they learn more about Bycelium?

Mathïs Fédérico

They can go on the website. They can actually book a meeting with us on the website directly. They can contact us by contact Bycelium..com for the email. And so they can. Yeah, there are a lot of ways to contact us, mostly directly, like via website or by direct email. That’s fine.

Michael Horn

Well, the tagline I think that you’re using is rethinking science at Bycelium.. So Mathïs Fédérico, everyone get in touch. Let’s work on this. Because this is another part of higher education, a part of our society, a part of progress that needs a desperate injection, I think of reinvention compared to where we’ve been. So I really appreciate the work you’re doing and hopefully you’ll come back, couple hypotheses down the road or as it starts to play out in the real world and give us an update. I really appreciate it.

Mathïs Fédérico

Thank you so much for the invite, Michael. It’s been a pleasure to be here today and talk about this. We have been a lot of time spending on our computer by ourselves. It’s nice to get the word out there and to have some feedback. So if you have feedback or just if you want to support us, you can also follow us on LinkedIn and try to reach out to just say that you like the initiative. That would also make our day much happier. So, yeah

Michael Horn

Good call to actions. Yeah. So everyone check it out. We’ll be back next time on the Future of Education.

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Joe Ross, president of Reach University, joined me to offer an alternative take on where the “College for All” movement went wrong. His analogy? One that will be familiar to my audience—computers. Specifically, disruptive innovation in computing. Our discussion covered the historical cycles of higher education reform, the false dichotomy between liberal arts and career-connected learning, and the emergence of disruptive models like apprenticeship degrees that integrate workplace learning, reduce costs, and challenge traditional assumptions about who higher education serves and how.

Show Notes:

A Student’s Guide to Apple Computer Guide for Apple Computers by Simpson’s creator, Matt Groening

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today, I’m delighted we’ve got one of my favorite folks in the world of education joining us. He’s none other than Joe Ross. He’s the president of Reach University. You’ve seen me appear on his podcast, and I thought it was only fair play, Joe, that we had you on mine now. So welcome.

Joe Ross

Well, really excited to be here to see you again, Michael. How’s it going?

Michael Horn

Good, good. I’m. I’m excited for this conversation. You and I have been riffing on a few topics together a lot, asynchronously, a little synchronously. And so we’ll let people into our headspace here. But I want to pose a question for you. It’s sort of almost a riddle, if you will.

Okay, so we’ll go back to the late 1970s. I think it’s 1977 or something like that. Ken Olson, he’s the CEO of this company called Digital Equipment Corporation. They make mini computers. And he has this quote that there’s no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. And, I’m gonna share with you what a computer to him at that time looked like. We’ll share that up there for folks, this is what a mini computer looked like.

It was like a very, very large file cabinet. Yeah, not particularly mini.

Joe Ross

Yeah, right.

Michael Horn

Cost quarter million dollars. And I think the mental thing in his head, Joe, was like, hey, computers for all. Everyone’s buzzing about this in the hobbyist circles and stuff like that. Are you crazy? We’re not scaling this thing to every single home. What’s wrong with the picture I just painted?

Joe Ross

Well, it’s funny, just a couple years later, Microsoft was getting started, and the vision that Bill Gates put out there was a computer on every desk and in every home. So there was a rising tide of the sentiment that computers actually should be for all. And it took some time. But what’s striking today right now is I think well over 95% of households do, in fact, have a computer on a desk or in their household. And that is a huge turnaround. So, yeah, famous last words.

Michael Horn

Famous last words. Right. And so it’s the power I think you’re pointing to is disruptive innovation. Right. People didn’t think of computers at that time as these small, dimpy little things that then Microsoft comes along and, you know, it’s a couple thousand dollars, it’s a toy for hobbyists and children. It’s radically more affordable, convenient, portable over time and so forth, and it. And it literally changes the world. And then you made the observation to me that there’s been this quote unquote, College For All movement.

Questioning the necessity of college

Michael Horn

There’ve been a bunch of people like me questioning that movement as of late. But you said there’s like another possibility, which is we’ve gone about College For All in sort of the most backwards way you would go about it in any other sector of the world. So, maybe talk us through your thinking there and you have like a really interesting statistic that goes, I think, 10 years or so later, 1989, if I’m remembering correctly, about how many people had computers versus college degrees. If I’m remembering.

Joe Ross

Yeah. Right. So back in 1989. And we’ll come back to why that year is interesting, but other than the fact that it’s the year I graduated from high school but in 1989, just aged myself beautifully, didn’t I? Yeah. But back in 1989, 15% of households had a computer and bachelor degree attainment was about 21%. That is flipped. So today over 95% of households have a computer, including the small computer people have in their pocket.

And college degree attainment is now well behind that. It’s more than 21%. It’s grown to close to 40%. But it’s nothing like the way the computers become something for all. College degrees not for all. Yet the computer definitely is. And that’s an interesting contrast to examine.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And I guess the point. Right. Clay used to always say this, and Clay Christensen would talk about healthcare and he’d say, you know, what we’ve been trying to do is allow people to afford what is an expensive healthcare, as opposed to ask the question, how do we make healthcare itself fundamentally affordable?

Joe Ross

Exactly.

Michael Horn

And we’ve done the same thing in higher ed. We’ve asked how can subsidy and so forth allow people to access what is fundamentally in most places still an expensive college degree? As opposed to how do we radically remake that degree and make it more affordable and accessible?

Joe Ross

And this is what’s so ironic because in the last couple years there’s been a whole lot of dialogue around the idea that College For All is not actually such a good idea. The same folks who were proponents of College For All 10 years ago, 15 years ago, are now proverbially off the bandwagon.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I mean look, look at my co host at class disrupted, Diane Tavenner, like famously 100% of their students at Summit going to college. And she’s sort of like, I think we had the wrong goal. Like we need to be looking at economic mobility and things of that nature. Much wider prism of pathways, if you will, which may still be right, but sorry, stay with the argument.

Joe Ross

Yeah, no, absolutely right. So you have the charter movement personified by someone like Diane Tavenner. You’ve got folks like Kathleen DeLaski who herself admits that she is off the bandwagon in which is, I think aptly titled, came out last year, Who Needs College Anymore? And, what’s ironic is that there are a couple things that are ironic here, that should be noted. There’s three. First is this idea of College For All is actually a long standing aspiration probably you could argue goes back to the 1800s with the, with the launch of the, the Land Grant University. There was a little bit of a spirit of democratization in that. The reality if you look at it, is that this sort of, this concept waxes and wanes. In Kathleen DaLaski’s book, she acknowledges that her title, Who Needs College Anymore? Is a riff on a headline in Newsweek, a cover story headline in Newsweek from 1976, which was Who Needs College? And so back in 1976, you saw kind of some doubt about whether college should be for all.

And that came after about a decade of College For All policy advocacy. In 1967, the New York Times published an op-ed about how the legislature in New York is trying to do College For All, for both private and public universities, making them free for everybody. And so you have this wax and wane, that’s thing one, thing two, and I’m not going to, I don’t think we’ll get into it in a big way today, but AI has I think just recently caused a lot of people to write, oh, maybe we do need more liberal arts. So I think you see, you kind of see another kind of potential driver of this waxing and waning, and we’ll see where we are five years from now. But third, to your point, Michael, one could argue that the College For All movement that we most recently came through, and I would argue that it really kind of took off around 2001 in earnest with the Jobs for the Future and Aspen Institute publishing a piece that took for granted that the purpose of high school was to send everyone for college, like literally was the first line. It’s like every high school needs to send everybody to college. Jobs for the Future does not have that position anymore. Right.

But I think the ironic thing is, as you said, I don’t think we’ve really tried College for

All yet in the way that it’s most likely to succeed. And yes, the way we have seen efforts around it has been more top down, around subsidy, around encouragement, around movement building for many decades. We basically expanded access to student debt almost without any kind of underwriting, without limit at the graduate level. It’s as if back in the 1980s when Bill Gates was saying a computer on every desk and in every home, that he was seeking federal student loan subsidies to enable everyone to buy a $30,000 computer, well, he was not doing that. Right. You can’t look at any. I can’t think of any other industry where we’ve done so much. Maybe healthcare is the one.

Michael Horn

Healthcare would be the only other one.

Joe Ross

Would be the one example where we’ve done so much to try to make college something affordable for the masses by just stuffing the channel in terms of providing financing. Right. And it’s worked to some degree, but it’s created a lot of side effects everyone’s complaining about. So the question is, could you imagine College For All following at some point the same storyline that computers for all did?

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Joe Ross

When I read Kathleen DeLaski’s book and I interviewed her for my podcast, I saw that her idea of calling the question is college relevant anymore was not a new idea. 1976 Newsweek cover, I thought, hmm, I wonder if there was a time when people were asking the same question about computers. I wonder if there was a time when people literally were publishing articles that said, who needs a computer any, you know, anymore?

Michael Horn

So. Right. Like the CEO of DEC.

Joe Ross

Yeah, I literally searched for that and, and I. And you know what came up was a Matt Groening cartoon from 1989, the Matt Groening advertising.

Michael Horn

Not tracking the Simpsons founder. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Ross

Right. So this is the Simpsons founder before the Simpsons made him super famous. And. And in 1989, Steve Jobs evidently hired him. Was Steve Jobs still at Apple 1989? Was that the.

Michael Horn

That’s a good question. I guess it was around. That was around the time he prob, maybe a year or two later he got. I think 1990 was when Scully came in. So yeah, we should. We should Google that.

Joe Ross

So I did this search. Who needs a computer? And up comes this pamphlet by Matt Groening. With the one eared rabbit Bongo. And it’s basically making the case for why someone going to college should have a computer. Right.

And so in 1989, it was not a, it was not a given that everyone should have a computer. I think this is evidence of that. The next, the next three decades saw everyone deciding, yep, we all need a computer.

Michael Horn

We all actually need this. Yeah.

Joe Ross

So I think we should put a link to it in your show notes if you have something like that. It’s kind of a fun thing.

Michael Horn

Yeah, we’ll definitely do that. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Ross

So nobody today is asking who needs a computer anyway. Right. But back in 1989, people were asking who needs a computer? And, and I think it’s interesting to think, okay, so what was the difference here? And what you saw with computers starting in the 80s was the classic elements of disruption which you can talk about. And what you’ve seen with, with higher ed for a variety of reasons is not that. Right. And when you, when you, when you think about what College For All means, it means targeting non consumption at the end of the day. Right. Like if everybody’s going to get into this market, that means you’re dealing with non consumers becoming consumers.

Well, that made me think of disruption theory. Made me think of you. Right. And I think it’s worth asking, okay, what if we’ve been going about this all wrong? Maybe what we need to do instead is address the barriers to disruption that are endemic to higher ed. And if we can remove those barriers, or if the timing is right for other reasons, perhaps we will find that the headlines saying College For All is dead may be famous last words. Almost like saying College For All is dead to Long live College For All. Like we might be at an inflection point right now.

Evolution of higher education

Michael Horn

So I just looked up, we can correct ourselves. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 and the cartoons a few years after that then. Let’s dig into this and one of the arguments you’ve persuasively made is that there’s been more, I’ll call it generational innovation in higher ed over the years. Like we have reinvented what is college several other times in ways that we don’t always give credit to. So I’ll give my run through. And then you edit me. How about that? Which is like, so first you sort of have this very religious tutorial, almost model of higher education, very bespoke, very often actually, frankly, high school age students attending Harvard and places like it. And then the real sort of two revolutions, I guess, that really start to change that occur in the 1800s.

You mentioned one of them, the land grant universities. And then the other of course is the research university being brought over from, from Germany really and adapted here with Johns Hopkins and the like. And sort of a change in what we think higher education should look like. And then I think that the next wave, if I would, is probably the GI Bill and community colleges dramatically expanding access and our notion in the 1940s and then through, I guess maybe you’d say the Higher Ed act. And then I would say the next wave was online education, which I would argue was the only one that could have been potentially disruptive. And I think there are some entities that are disruptive, but big but, because we had the subsidy top down thing that you were describing, a whole bunch of traditional institutions implemented online learning as a sustaining innovation, which actually meant they never innovated on cost because they didn’t have to. And so it sort of gummed up the wheels, if you will, of disruption in some pretty significant ways.

Those are the big shifts off the top of my head, but I’d love your edits on that because you’ve thought more about it.

Joe Ross

Yeah, I think that you’re right that there’s the storyline of the College For All movement that goes back literally a couple centuries. Right. And I think you’ve laid that out and it’s basically marked by various efforts to expand access to post secondary education for a variety of motivating reasons. Another angle on this history is to think about the seasonal, if you will, pace of change in higher ed. And John Thielen in his History of Higher Education book that is I think required reading and for anyone who goes to get a PhD in the history of higher ed, I dug into it when we started reach universities six years ago and one of the things that struck me is his observation that higher ed undergoes a series of pivots every generation or so, every 20 years, but undergoes a major revolution every century or so. And like folks waiting for the next big earthquake in California, I guess we’re kind of due for this, this earthquake. It’s been about a century or so and if you mark it this way, you could observe for example that three centuries ago Harvard was actually primarily focused on religious education and teaching in Latin.

That was the primary language of instruction at Harvard. Into the early, in the 1800s you saw the emergence of the land grant university. That was a major change. And then in the 1900s, I think we saw a lot of the systemization and industrialization of higher ed processes as well as approaches that we just take for granted now. The SAT, the fact the medical school starts with four years followed by an internship and then a residency, the way business school leverages the case study method, all that kind of, all that kind of systemization and uniformity around approach started really in the, in the 1900s with an attempt to expand access and make it more efficient. I think in the 20th century the question is, the 21st century where we are now, what is the big pivot we’re about to experience? And I think you’re right. There was a sense with the arrival of the Internet that the Internet was going to transform higher education in a material way. And we saw lots of interesting sustaining innovations, whether it was the, you know, flipped classroom or the MOOC or a variety of other things.

But I would argue, as you just, I think said, that these were examples of higher ed adopting an innovation, but not actually doing the innovation themselves. That’s the way I would put it. Meaning they adopted technology. Fine, great. But disruption theory, as I understand it, includes a couple of elements. And one of those elements is a radical affordability that expands access to people’s, you know, creates more capacity to engage in something.

And that leads to non consumption being addressed. Typically it’s paired with kind of a simpler streamed down approach to the product or the service. I guess my question is technology has driven so much disruption in the last several decades. I mean, one of my questions is if higher ed adopts technology and that creates sustaining innovation, what would it look like for higher ed as a human to human enterprise? Let’s just assume that that’s what it is. We could argue about that. We’re seeing schools arise that are thinking about using AI to do all the teaching and learning.

Right. But there’s a case to be made that education requires social construction of learning, interaction with other people, dealing with ideals in real time, building relationships that are learning relationships and also networks. So if we were to assume that higher ed is a service in the same way that Chipotle is a service, right. Then I guess what are the models for disruptive innovation that higher ed could look at? Are there examples of primarily human to human businesses that have been disrupted not so much by the technology adoption, but by other things like process innovation or the like?

Michael Horn

Yeah, and it’s interesting you say that because Paul Peterson has made the case that disruptive innovation, right. In lots of service industries it looks like changing the relationship and the work that you have the consumer themselves do. In some ways there’s a change. There’s a technology enabler. Yes. And there’s some sort of process change that puts more, if you will, on the consumer and changes the relationship in some way to the entity itself. And so I would argue it’s almost always a process change is at the heart of disruption. And process you could almost actually think of in technology.

If you think of technology as sort of like input, process, output. Right. In some sort of like simplistic way. It’s not how we think of it today. We think of it as technology being synonymous with digital, but I don’t think that’s how it would have been historically thought of. When we think about the big disruptions throughout history, you know, going to like steam ships, disrupting sail. Right. Or anything like that.

So that’s my quick reaction to you. I have a second reaction which is I do think like the Western Governors Universities of the world and the Southern New Hampshire onlines, they do bear a lot of the hallmarks of disruption. And I think the question has always been in my mind is the reason the technology enabler is so important is it allows you to start doing simple things but without changing your cost structure, start to do more complicated problems, if you will solve more complicated problems. And it hasn’t been clear yet what that looks like in that context. Right. So you just referenced. So let’s stay with Western Governors. I love them for a lot of reasons, but it’s largely asynchronous.

Discussing upmarket education strategies

Michael Horn

Not while there are a lot of people supporting you. It’s not that person to person delivery or conversation you just referenced. One might think of that as like the step up, if you will, in terms of like, you know, more complicated use cases of education and things of that nature. Which then asks the question like, okay, well what would that look like for them to go up market or for fundamentally, you know, what you all are doing, obviously this apprenticeship degree concept that you have slotted in here, perhaps take advantage of online, but actually to enable some of these conversations and really dramatically change the credit. I’m going to use that word that the student gets for work that they’re doing in other realms of their life. And that may be the interesting flip that allows for that sort of upward technology enabler to do things that were previously complicated and expensive and had to be sort of centralized in, in a traditional public university. Those are quick download of thoughts. Your turn to riff.

Joe Ross

Yeah, no, so I think I’m drawn to the Examples of innovation. I don’t know. There’s the Minute Health clinics, for example. Yeah, Minute Health, what was it? Discount retailers, clothing retailers.

Michael Horn

Discount retail was actually the one I was thinking. Right. So like if you think about Walmart, Kmart, Target, all birthed in 1962, disrupted the 300 plus full service department store chains. And like, I don’t think people realize because of like what Macy’s has become, how radical it was because like you walked into a Macy’s, you had literally like a store consultant as your shopper, like helping you navigate this. And the big innovation in some ways of Walmart was. No, no, no, no, like we’re going to organize it super easily for you, but like you do the work of like finding your stuff. Right, right. In many ways.

Yeah, sorry, keep going.

Joe Ross

Yeah, yeah, no, so I look at this and think, okay, so, so there are ways for service businesses to disrupt and then technology can actually accelerate that or enable it in certain ways. I agree with you that WGU, Southern New Hampshire University radically lowered the costs of a degree and altered processes and leveraged technology in a variety of ways. But I wonder whether there’s a broader, deeper disruption possible here. If you fully think about rearranging all this deck chairs, all the chairs on the deck. And I think this work embedded education movement, including the apprenticeship, including the apprenticeship degree, is pointing to some things that we should look at as possible drivers of a much more radical disruption of higher education. There are a couple things that you could point to. First, work based higher education and apprenticeship degrees leverage workplaces as their campus very intentionally so. There are plenty of places in this country where college or university is not within community distance.

But there’s no county in this country where there’s not a school within community distance. And there’s almost no county where there’s not some type of medical center within community distance. And in those places, especially in rural communities, those are the families sustaining wage jobs in those places, the school or the hospital. Right. So you’ve got all these workplaces that could become learning places. That’s thing one, thing two, the apprenticeship relies on people in the workplace to do a lot of the teaching. Right. Whether they’re mentors or they’re providing on the job training or related instruction, you suddenly have an opportunity to bring instruction out of the ivy tower and into the you know, floor of the workplace.

And now you have a different pool of folks who are able to provide instruction and that could drive different cost models. And to your point, the behavior of the learner is driven to change here too. To some degree there is still instruction, there are still assignments. We’ll talk about the credit hour being disrupted or broken up in different ways. But at the end of the day, an apprentice or anyone engaged in work based learning needs to do their own sense making and their own connection making. I am at work. How do I connect what I’m doing at work with whatever I’m being instructed on? And there’s a little bit of increased onus on the learner in that context as well. I think that there’s a bit of a perfect storm converging that suggests maybe we’re going to see.

Shifting views on higher education

Joe Ross

I actually think there’s a good chance that we’re going to see all the calls for all the obituaries for College For All look like famous last words say 10, 15 years from now. Because things are really different than they were for most of our adult lives. There’s a complete collapse in confidence in traditional higher ed. There are a lot of folks and families who used to want their kids to go to college and half as many do now as they did 10, you know, 10 years ago. Employers are seeing once in a lifetime labor shortages in healthcare and teaching and other fields. There’s a call from this administration to re industrialize the country and bring more jobs to more places. There are a lot of things coming together and the student debt system has been discredited. So you could decide based on all those things.

College is dead. Right? And as I said, the history of higher ed suggests that it’s. Everyone hates when I say this, but it’s kind of like a cockroach. It does not know how to die. Right. Like higher ed has changed radically when it has needed to. And I think there’s some early signs that my proposition here may be right. You’re seeing the potential of new accreditors arise to make it easier for new entrants into the field.

You’re seeing both sides of the political spectrum, whether or not they like degrees, they seem to like apprenticeship degrees. I think there’s a lot of ingredients in the soup here that suggest we may be looking at a book that says who needs college anymore? In the same way that we could look at the pamphlet in 1989 asking who needs a computer? I mean look, I’m staked in this future obviously, so I think.

Michael Horn

Yeah, but what you just said is important, right I think. Which is, it also answers them. So people like me who’ve been arguing, I’m not sure College For All makes sense. What we’ve been saying is career connected learning makes sense. What’s interesting about the vision you just laid out is we don’t have to choose. Right. Like it sets it up as a false choice because there’s this new structure coming in that actually does both.

And maybe that’s where I want to dig into because like, you drew a very subtle distinction for me, a few, maybe it’s a couple months ago at this point, but where you said there’s sort of like apprenticeship degrees and degree apprentices or something like that. I may get the second formulation wrong. But. So I’d love you to unpack that. But I’d also love you to unpack something else really interesting you said to me, which was all the people like me who are now saying the liberal arts actually are.

It’s their moment in some interesting way. You actually made the argument. Yeah. And it also might like liberal arts versus career connected might also be a false dichotomy. So I just asked you two questions in one, which is like, you’re not supposed to do that, but

Joe Ross

You’re not a lawyer, so

Michael Horn

I can go riff.

Joe Ross

I can’t say Objection. Compound question.

Michael Horn

Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Ross

But let me hit the liberal arts one too first and then I’ll go back to the apprenticeship degree. I think that a couple years ago it was very, very unfashionable to say liberal arts still mattered. That that is clearly not as much the case today. I’m seeing lots of articles being published. Elevating the liberal arts is a answer to the challenge of AI, but it’s still considered kind of a binary work based job training on one hand versus liberal arts on the other hand. As I’ve shared with you before, I think it’s a false binary. I think that. And it was a false binary before the challenge of AI.

I think liberal arts can equip people to solve problems and be entrepreneurial. To draw metaphoric connections between one problem and other contexts in ways that I think have driven a lot of innovation in this country. And of course there are a lot of examples of. Let’s go back to Apple. But Steve Jobs talking about how important the humanities was to innovation in his context. And I think that you just have to posit a few examples of how this could be true. Yeah. Learning some.

Connecting liberal arts to careers

Joe Ross

You know, when I was at Yale, I took a course on Chinese Buddhism. It’s hard for me to know exactly what Chinese Buddhism has to do with my life. I’m dure, I could draw some connection, but probably there’s some way to do it. The great books that you see being taught at St. John’s College or starting at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, there are ways to draw connections between that classic conception of liberal arts and on the job work. The example I always give is if you’re teaching someone project management, you could assign John Locke, who writes about property and goes on the sort of a topic of how ownership of property actually leads to better productivity of that property. And then you could ask someone to make their own sense of that in the context of a project. Okay, what does what John Locke has to say about property have to do with you as a project manager in the workplace? Make your own sense of that.

Right. And I think it’s pretty easy to say, okay, ownership of a project leads to more productivity. And so I think there are ways to make the liberal arts applied and connected. And there are also ways to let it be completely irrelevant. And that’s just a choice. It’s a design choice. Right. You could design a scope and sequence of curriculum that really embeds and centers of liberal arts.

One of the things we’re doing at Reach University is doing that. One of our big convictions is that liberal arts should and can be applied to work based learning no matter what field. And that’s a challenge we’ve set out to realize.

Michael Horn

Quickly, what does that look like? Right, like just break it down because you just said the students workplace. And so just to be clear, like for the teachers you’re educating, future teachers you’re educating.

Joe Ross

Yeah, the teachers need to know liberal arts. So it’s actually a gimme in teacher education. Teachers need to know literacy and history and social science. And the broad definition of liberal arts being basically conversation with works and conversation with other people. It’s easy to make the case that that’s essentially liberal arts in the workplace. Okay, how about healthcare? We’re about to launch a healthcare college. It’s gonna be called the Apprenticeship College of Health. By the time this airs, probably it will been announced and we are starting in a behavioral health occupation.

And so the question is, okay, what does liberal arts have to do with behavioral health? Well, one of the things you need to learn in behavioral health is Psychology 1, Psychology 2: Abnormal Psychology. And so we challenge ourselves to pair that psychology sequence with something in the liberal arts that was relevant. We need to provide a literature course as part of general education. Even in an apprenticeship degree, you could choose whatever literature you Want? Well, why not choose the literature of mental illness to pair with the psychology and abnormal psychology course? So you have a track on psychology, you have a track on the literature of mental illness, which could be everything from Freud to anything written by a Russian author as far as I’m concerned. And you got the literature of mental illness. But it’s about the intentional pairing of works that you would consider part of the liberal arts world with the workplace. And that’s an act of selection.

Right. You, you need to be intentional about that. And I think sometimes in traditional higher ed, professors want to teach what they want to, what they’re, you know, what they’re writing about. But when you’re designing work based education, you need to be selective about making sure that there’s an applicable relevant.

Michael Horn

Well, it points to the other piece, the disruption. Right. In the sense of like this is not a research driven institution. It’s an education driven institution which starts from a different set of precepts. And you’ve rethought what the faculty’s role is in that we’re not going to just listen to. Because Michael Horn wrote a book on this. He’s going to teach that which is, let’s be honest, that’s somebody do.

Joe Ross

It’s still very interesting for faculty to do this. It’s just a different challenge. Right. Instead of teaching the thing that you’re writing your next book on, how do I look for a way to find something that’s relevant to the workplace but still gives someone grist to engage in kind of like thinking about how things are different, how things are the same particulars versus generalities in life.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And it might be okay to say it’s not perhaps the right model for the research. New knowledge of the future that is perhaps disconnected from the immediate workplace concerns. And that’s okay as well. That’s a different model.

Joe Ross

There are still mainframe computers out there. It’s still a business, they still exist, they serve a function. Right. It’s just a different model. And there are a lot more laptops and desktops than mainframes as a sheer number and a sheer revenue volume. But you still need mainstream computers for certain things. Similar.

Michael Horn

Can you actually just. I’m going to highlight that point and then a couple other questions, which is just to make the point, like mainframes, you just said it. They still exist. They still do raw computing better than does the things we have in our laps and desks and pockets. And what disruption really was, was the volume went elsewhere. Right. And the market greatly increased in terms of the number of participants and volume collapsed from the mainframe computer companies, which led to their demise, I think in higher ed, frankly, like the Harvards of the world, the research universities, you know, they’re sort of predicated. Their quality is predicated on whom they exclude, not whom they include.

And so.

Joe Ross

That’s right.

Michael Horn

They may be just fine with the volume going elsewhere. And their business model is actually built to last in that scenario, which is different from say a Digital Equipment Corporation as a mini computer provider. So that, that’s one thing just to underscore. I mean, even vacuum tubes are still used for crying out loud.

Joe Ross

That’s right. That’s right.

Michael Horn

So, so the other thing just on that, the. There’s an important part of your definition of liberal arts that I think is clarifying because I also think it’s like a. It’s a bit of a catch all phrase and a lot of people sort of mean more humanities by it. But then they exclude the natural sciences, which that’s actually incorrect. If you think about liberal arts, it is incorrect. You have it as more like that conversation piece of what the liberal arts. Can you just expand on that? Because that’s an important piece.

Joe Ross

Yes. You know, my son went to St. John’s College and that’s one of the. That’s kind of a pinnacle. He turned down a bunch of places to go to St. John’s College, which basically is a four year experience of reading a prescribed curriculum of great books and great works. And it includes the history of science, includes the history of math. It is a broad view that defines liberal arts as having to do with works across many fields that have been in conversation over the centuries with other works.

Defining liberal arts education

Joe Ross

Pano Kanelos was the former president of St. John’s he went on to become the founding president of the University of Austin. And I’m actually drawing a little bit on his definition here, which I think is really compelling, which is liberal arts can be thought of as a conversation in two dimensions. In the first dimension, it is a conversation with works, human creative works. And in the second dimension, it’s a conversation with humans about those works and about ideas. And I think if you think about liberal arts as that, the word liberal comes from this idea of free. And so how do you free one’s mind to engage with different ideas with surprising evidence, to unshackle itself from dogma? And I think that when I think about liberal arts, I think about that conversation and then if you can apply that conversation into the workplace, you create a toolkit for solving problems and for being creative and for challenging assumptions. And I think that’s a core skill in the workplace.

I want to get back to the apprenticeship degree itself.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s where I was going to go next.

Joe Ross

Apprenticeship degree, you want to go there? Yeah, let’s, let’s go there. Because you mentioned it there, there is a such thing. If you look at New America, they have defined a degree apprenticeship, which is the foreign terminology for this model that comes from the uk. The UK has a whole degree apprenticeship field. In France they call it the laissez professional. In Germany it’s called dual education. There is kind of an international set of examples of work based higher education paired with apprenticeship. You could argue that that’s been going on here for some time.

New America just came out with a report. There’s 600 registered apprenticeship programs that they found that have a degree embedded into their program standards. So I think of that as a kind of a useful thing. Knowing that a degree apprenticeship defines an apprenticeship is helpful, but it’s really an apprenticeship that includes any kind of degree at all. Right. There’s a degree in its program standards. The reason we’re really intentional about talking about an apprenticeship degree where the apprenticeship is the adjective and the degree is the noun, is that we are challenging the concept of what a degree can be. And I’ve laid out three core elements in this definition that I remember as the ABCs that I think fit with disruptive theory to some degree.

A stands for affordability right there. That’s what we said at the outset has been lacking in kind of the history of higher ed College For All recently. And at reach, we just, we just set a price for ourselves. $75 a month out of pocket for every learner. We’d figure out the rest through a combination of employer contributions in the Pell Grant and workforce dollars. B stands for based in the workplace from day one to the day of completion, where the workplace is the learning place where classmates are colleagues. I think that’s part of the process change in an apprenticeship degree where you’re really leveraging real estate differently, similar to the way maybe mimic clinics leverage real estate differently. Right.

And then C stands for credit for learning at work where you’re embracing the idea again, a process change that actual measurable and credible learning happens in the workplace and you’re actually giving credit for that learning in a way that just makes it a lot more easy for more people to get into the pathway towards a higher credential.

Michael Horn

And that’s important, I think because. Yeah, I was gonna say that

Joe Ross

I think it’s important because, yeah, it calls. When we think about the apprenticeship degree. I’m not trying to change apprenticeship. Right. I mean, maybe there are reasons to change apprenticeship, but that’s not my job. We’re trying to change the degree. We’re trying to create a model of a different kind of degree that is still not a compromise in terms of what you get from it, but fundamentally different. And so if the degree itself becomes driven by apprenticeship elements, you could imagine much more access, much more, if you will, College For All than necessarily would arise from expanding the apprenticeships in the department of labor that have a degree because that’s going to serve a certain subset of the population.

But if degrees change as a thing, whether it’s part of an apprenticeship or not, you get to a space where maybe we’ll see the trajectory in college follow the trajectory that we saw with computers. Right, like that.

Reducing student opportunity costs

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s what we’re hearing that switch. Well, so let me try to draw out what I see as a couple important precepts here as we start to wrap up, which is not only have you dramatically reduced the out of pocket cost to the student and frankly the fundamental expenditure that you all are putting forth, you’ve also erased the opportunity cost in large measure because now I don’t know the number, 70% of students are actually working at least part time, I think, while they’re doing their degrees in the US and you’re saying, great, that’s no longer at the expense of time studying. It is congruent with studying. So you’re like, right, and you can keep earning. And so you sort of have obliterated sort of this time pressure and the opportunity cost, it seems to me on students that’s a big deal, I think. And then the second thing you’ve done which is so critical at the moment is, you’re embedding it in the workplace itself. That’s going to be relevant to what they go do next. Right.

It’s not just like a random walk place and you know, walk through work. It’s intentional around the things that they’re going to go do. And there’s some sense of the competencies that they should master in that set of experiences. And then as I understand it, at least the online is sort of giving both theoretical construct and importance to what they’re doing in the job. But it also is allowing for these conversations, this liberal arts part of the package, if you will, which seems so important at the moment with AI and sort of, again, splits these things as false dichotomies and radically changes this picture of what is college. And so maybe there are a few other things you’d add, but I’m curious how you think we did.

Joe Ross

I think it’d be great. And I think on that point, it’s an example of how technology is actually enabling this. Right?

Michael Horn

Yes, I agree.

Joe Ross

Online, before COVID meant message boards and asynchronous correspondence between faculty and learners.

Michael Horn

Or when it was synchronous, let’s call it what it was. It was more expensive. Right.

Joe Ross

Or when it was synchronous, it was more expensive. Yeah. Everybody’s very much used to using Zoom and Zoom, but people forget, like, it used to be very hard to have multiple people doing video conferences at once. That was a technology problem.

Michael Horn

That’s a good point.

Joe Ross

Until, like, 2010. So Zoom got started in around 2011, by the way. I was at Cisco at the time. The founder of Zoom took me to lunch and said he was going to leave WebEx and start this thing called Zoom. And it was going to be. I think at the time, he was done with the enterprise world and he wanted to create a video chat experience for teenagers.

Michael Horn

Well, you remember, like, we had. What Cisco was telepresence. Right.

Joe Ross

And it was like they tried telepresence.

Michael Horn

Expensive. Yeah, it was hugely expensive.

Joe Ross

The mainframe. Yeah, like the mainframe of video conferencing. But they also had. They also had acquired WebEx. And WebEx was like the dominant player in video conferencing. But it was quite expensive and challenging to have multiple different videos happening at once, even in WebEx. And so one of the things that Eric Wan did is he really wanted to have multiple folks talking at once and have that maybe more affordable. So he leaves Cisco, starts Zoom.

He actually had my oldest child play with an early version of it because he thought it was for teenagers. And then he’s like, no, it’s not for teenagers. It’s still enterprise. Right. This is an untold story, perhaps, but I remember this was real. I met him at a party and he was like, you know, if you could have your children come and play with my new things, Zoom, maybe I’ll learn something. And he did some user interviews with them. Next thing I knew, it was for the enterprise.

But anyway, point being, it’s much, much more possible and feasible and affordable now to have a seminar online with 20 or 25 learners at once, cameras on, talking to each other around a virtual Harkness table than it was 15 years ago. It’s much, much more possible. And so I think that’s critical. If you believe in liberal arts, you believe in that synchronous conversation and you believe in that discussion. And we’re able to do that now at scale because we could have several thousand people online at once in Zoom spaces of 1 to 20 across the country. And for us that makes a lot of sense. I don’t know if we could have done that 20 years ago.

Michael Horn

So one other piece of this that I imagine is that hopefully people will agree with this framing, but if they don’t, that’s okay too. But one of the trade offs, it seemed to me, was the asynchronous again, dramatically improves convenience, access, et cetera. And because like you’re not supposed to be at a certain point, you know, a certain class at a certain time, success rates are lower and contrast with the synchronous versions. And so I’m thinking of the OPM providers like 2U at the time, right. Going to top institutions, charging a ton of money, right, for these synchronous experiences doesn’t really expand access. But like success rates are super high. And so all of a sudden that becomes like a bit of a talking point in the industry, right? Well, you can do high cost synchronous or you can do low cost asynchronous where the success rates aren’t going to go. You can, you know, expand access versus success.

You probably know where I’m going. I think you all have 3400 students at this point at Reach. What do your success rates look like? Have you broken yet another dichotomy, if you will?

Joe Ross

Well, I think so because, you know, overwhelming majority of our population are what used to be called non traditional, so working adults in their 30s, sometimes, more often than not, single parents have full time jobs, full time families, anywhere between 65 to 75% Pell eligible, depending on the moment in time. That is a population who typically graduates college at rates below 50%. If you just look at the pell eligible population, we across our cohorts are seeing 70% on time graduation rates, a trend towards that. We’re seeing much stronger, not just first year retention, but retention overall. And part of that is because of the human social connection in the experience right. If you can actually put people in a space together as we do, and not only are they during the day treated with their colleagues who are also their classmates, and they build that social nexus there, but also the seminars in the evenings, which by the way mix people from all parts of the country and seminar spaces on Zoom. We’re seeing people become close to each other in those Zoom spaces and forgetting that they’re far away from each other,

Michael Horn

Which is what 2U reported as well. Like when they were powering the UNCMBA, these people would show up on campus and be like, oh my gosh, it’s you. And they’re thrilled to see each other.

Joe Ross

It’s real. It’s real, it’s real.

Michael Horn

But you’re doing it with this radical affordability and access piece that is like, seems different to me.

Joe Ross

That’s right. It does not need to be expensive. And I think, you know, part of the reason 2U, it was expensive is they were working with the elites, right? So the elites had.

Michael Horn

They were layering it over their existing business model rather than reinventing it.

Joe Ross

That’s right. They had a high sticker price. It was their existing business model. You know, it cost over $10,000 to recruit people into those programs, but they were charging much, much more. Our approach is almost no recruitment costs because our employers are doing the recruiting. And so we’re able to charge much, much, much, much less and cover our costs.

Michael Horn

Sorry, that’s a big piece. Can we just like. That’s a huge piece. Because the biggest cost to online programs, if you just looked at one lump sum, is the cost of student acquisition. Everyone loves to poo poo it, but it’s just like it’s real. Right?

Joe Ross

So it’s real.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Ross

And look, it’s very hard to know what actually it costs to recruit people into higher ed because so little of it is public and it’s conflated especially with.

Michael Horn

Well, with athletics and all sorts of things.

Cost of student acquisition

Joe Ross

Yeah, all those other things. But if you look at some of the public company P&Ls the public for profits in higher ed, you can get a sense of what it costs to recruit because they do have to report everything. So if you look at that, whether it was Grand Canyon or Phoenix when they were public, because they’re public again for a quote unquote affordable mass market higher ed degree, typically the cost of student acquisition is around $3,000 right there. So that’s a chunk. It could be more, but it usually is about $3,000. For the very expensive programs. I think I looked into 2U public filing. I think they were looking at 10 to $12,000.

Michael Horn

I was gonna say 10 to 15 was my memory.

Joe Ross

So 10 to 15,000. All right. So if you want to disrupt with affordability, that doesn’t work. But if you leverage the workplace as your learning place and employers as your partners now you have virtually no marketing spend. Everything is partnership based. I think the biggest vendor for WGU, if you look at their 9/90 is Google. And so they’re spending tens of millions, millions of dollars on advertising. Even at WGU, I think it’s over 90 million a year last I checked.

Right. It is really expensive to recruit consumers on the Internet. Work based education skips all that. Right. And this is what I tell higher ed partners.

Michael Horn

So you just need a way to make the partnerships line up though.

Joe Ross

You just need, you just need to sign up the partnership. So you have a couple of partnerships folks developing relationships with employers. And I’m not competing for AdWords. Right. And so if you’re not competing for AdWords, if you’re not doing billboards, if you’re not doing radio, your cost of acquisition goes way, way down. That’s a huge driver of cost savings. There are other drivers around the process. Right.

Streamlining the curriculum

Joe Ross

One of the things that we did is say, you know what, we’re going to have no electives, we’re going to have a prescribed curriculum and business speak. Much fewer SKUs. We just had one simple thing to offer from beginning to end. This lowers costs in so many ways, including all our advisors know exactly where people are, what they did last semester, and what they’re going to do the next semester. They don’t have to look anything up. They just know, oh, you’re taking a social science semester. We know that next is math.

We know that. Right. Everybody knows that. And so there are a number of things that we realized in kind of the environment of constraint that we faced in starting Reach University are really unusual in higher ed and they lower your cost dramatically. And that was a huge driver. That’s why A is first in my ABCs. Affordability is the first thing we had to debate should it be access or affordability. And we’re like, access can be with debt, like, let’s name it, it’s affordable.

Now it’s really, really, really fashionable to talk about affordability in American politics. But we were talking about it before it was cool.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And you were talking about real affordability. Because that’s the other thing. Allowing people to afford what is still expensive is not true affordability. And that’s, I think that’s what drives me nuts about a lot of the ROI calculators out there is that they’re not taking into account the full cost of attendance.

Joe Ross

No.

Michael Horn

Meaning the government cost plus the student and in your case, the opportunity cost. So, like, those are three big things.

Joe Ross

Right? Right. If people don’t need to leave their job, leave their home, leave their work and go into debt, the barrier to entry gets way way lower.

Michael Horn

All right, well, it’s time to get. As we wrap up here, it’s time to get Matt Groening to write or to draw a cartoon saying, who needs college anymore?

Joe Ross

I love that. Exactly. Who needs college anymore?

Michael Horn

That’s the next step. But you have split a lot of the false dichotomies, it seems to me at this moment. So final thoughts as we wrap up here.

Joe Ross

Well, I think that I’d say maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question. Right. It’s not who needs college? It’s how does college need to change?

Michael Horn

There we go.

Joe Ross

I think if we think about it that way, maybe all the obituaries for higher ed will look like famous last words In a few years,

Michael Horn

There’s going to be a lot more to watch and unpack. But, Joe, seeing the signals before the data. Appreciate you joining us. Joe Ross from Reach University. And we’ll be back next time on The Future Of Education. Thanks to you all.

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In 2012, Clay Christensen joined with James Alworth and Karen Dillon to write what I think of as one of the most important books out there called How Will You Measure Your Life. It was based on a the last class that he did at the Harvard Business School every single year. And in this conversation that you’re about to hear, Karen Dillon, Scott Anthony, another of Clay’s acolytes, and me got together and were interviewed by Victor Zhao and Martin Ekiti, co-presidents of the Parents@Harvard Chan School of Public Health to think about how we measure our lives and things that we take from that—to really make sure that we’re living in concert with purpose and the progress we seek to make and not drifting off course. I hope you enjoy the conversation that I’m bringing to you here that was recorded live on April 3rd.

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Victor

First, I’d like to quickly introduce ourselves and then just set up the backdrop for today’s conversation. Thank you everyone. My name is Victor. I’m one of the co leads of the Parents at Harvard Chan community which is the Parents club of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Along with my co moderator Martin we are really grateful to bring this conversation together. And this conversation is a part of the whole life Leadership speaker series, a Harvard affiliated series exploring one central question. What are the pivotal mindsets, habits and tools needed to succeed both at work and at home? At its core, the series is built on a simple belief that leadership is not compartmentalized.

Honoring Clayton Christensen’s legacy

Victor

How we show at work and how we set up at home are deeply connected. And today leaders we have a very special session. We are gathering to honor the legacy of Professor Clayton Christensen, whose work reshaped how the work understands innovation, but who also challenged us to think more deeply about something even more important, which is how we measure our lives. In his well known framework, Clay encouraged us to think about three key questions. How do we find meaning in our careers? How do we build enduring relationships? And how we live lives of integrity. And today we’re honored to be joined by three remarkable individuals, thinkers and leaders who have engaged deeply with Clay’s work and ideas and they will help us explore how these principles apply in real life. First, we have Scott Anthony. Scott is a Clinical professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and previously spent over two decades at Innosight, the forum co-founded by Clay Christensen, where he served as a global managing partner.

He’s a leading thinker on innovation and disruption, a Thinkers50 award winner and author of several influential books including Dual Transformation and the most recently, Epic Disruptions. Scott brings both deep intellectual and practical perspectives on how Clay’s idea have evolved and been applied over time. Next we have Karen Dillon. Karen is a co author of How Will You Measure Your Life based on Clay’s work and teaching and served as the editor of Harvard Business Review. She worked closely with Clay for over a decade and has been instrumental in translating his ideas into guidance for individuals navigating life leadership and well being. Her current work focuses on helping people understand how everyday decisions shape long term outcomes, including her recent book the Macro Stress Effect. And finally, we have Michael Horn. Michael is a co-founder of the Clay Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

He is a widely recognized author and thought leader in education and career development, including his recent new book, Job Moves. Michael’s work focuses on helping individuals build lives of meaning and fulfillment. He closely aligned with questions Clay challenged us to consider. And with that, we are very excited for you all to be here. Let’s dive into the conversation and Martin will open our conversation up with a question for all our panelists.

Martin

Thank you so much, Victor, for passing the baton to me. Well, I am personally very excited to be part of this conversation. We’re going to talk about a few things over the next few minutes. I know we had some technical issues in the beginning, but we’re going to divide the talk into different sections over the next, I don’t know, 40 minutes and then have some time at the end for Q and A. But before we go into some of the specific sections, I just want to ask all the panelists in general, when you hear the phrase whole life leadership, what does that mean to you personally? And how did your relationship with Clay Christensen’s work or personally shape that understanding for you? So Scott shows up first on my screen. So I’ll start with you, Scott.

Scott Anthony

All right, well, thank you very much. The last name of Anthony often gives me the first right of speaking in discussions like this, but it is a real privilege to be part of this discussion. Karen and Michael are longtime friends, although we’ve never, the three of us done something together. So this is a great opportunity. You know, Martin, when I hear whole life leadership, I really think of something that I teach my students at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. I start by reading poetry to them, which is a little weird to do in an MBA classroom, but I like to do slightly weird things. And I had the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I won’t recite it now because we all know it.

Finding balance in leadership

Scott Anthony

But the idea that a traveler stands in the yellow woods and he has these choices. I said, this is what life feels like to you, right? You have these either or choices where either I can do this or do that. I could focus on my work, or I could focus on my family, short term or long term, in Clay’s language, sustain or disrupt. I said, what you have to do as a leader is to recognize that these are false choices. And what you have to do is find ways to integrate things where you don’t make it either/or, but you make it both/and. And that, to me, is whole life leadership, where you’re not saying, I’m one way at work and another way at home, or I’m one way with this child and another way with that one.

You are one and the same throughout everything. And this, to me, the understanding, all started 26 years ago now when I was sitting in Clay Christensen’s classroom in Aldrich hall at the Harvard Business School, and he gave what I think was one of the first prototypes of the lecture that ultimately became the book How Will You Measure Your Life? And that idea of intentionality and integration, which we’ll continue to talk about through this discussion, really planted very firmly in my head at that moment. So that’s what I think about. And Clay was absolutely seminal in implanting that in me.

Martin

Thank you, Scott, for sharing that. I mean, one thing that you said that really stood out to me is you have to switch from the mindset of either or to a mindset of. And so, you know, after that, I’ll call on okay to go.

Karen Dillon

Well, I definitely agree with Scott. So you. I would have taken away the same lessons from Clay as well. But I think the idea that you bring your whole self to work and you bring your whole self home from work, and they’re really integrated. One of the things I used to love that Clay would talk about is management is a noble profession. Not just because, you know, what you do in the day with the people who report to you can be meaningful

And they can feel like they’ve had impact on the world, but the people that they go home to and go home to have a ripple effect on so many other people. And so you, as a manager or a leader, have the ability to sort of exponentially influence lives for the better. If people go home from work feeling fulfilled and feeling like they believe in the mission of what they’re doing, and they know their purpose at work, that person goes home and is a whole different person than the person who goes home and is grumpy and upset and unappreciated and doesn’t want to talk to the family or friends. So I just think the idea that you integrate, which is what Scott talked about, came for me too, is a powerful lesson from Clay that it is a noble profession. So taking leadership seriously beyond the walls of your organization, I think has a real impact.

Martin

Thank you so much, Karen, for sharing that. I mean, you said, just like you said leadership, being a manager is a noble profession. So it’s not something we should take for granted. It’s definitely something we should lean into intentionally. So thank you so much for sharing that. And Michael, by virtue of alphabetical order, you come last. Hopefully we’ll switch it up into previously next in some next questions. But thank you for sharing your, go ahead, please.

Life lessons from Clay Christensen

Michael Horn

I’m quite comfortable coming after Karen and Scott throughout all this, but I think you’ll hear a lot of similarities in some of our answers because we all sat literally at the feet of Clay, given how tall he was, and had these conversations with him over a number of years. But like Scott, I remember that last class where Clay gave a version of what of the talk that ultimately became How Will You Measure Your Life? And I remember running home and calling my mom actually up in Bethesda, Maryland, where Scott also grew up, coincidentally and literally reciting the whole thing to her and story that Karen just told around where he actually talked about when he was running a company that he took public and at the company picnic he saw this woman with her family there and how deeply all of a sudden this sort of washed over him, the realization that if she had a great day at work, she would go home and bring that joy and gratitude into the lives of her family. And if she had had a terrible day at work, been really beaten up, been, you know, yelled at by other people, whatever it was, she would bring sort of that pent up frustration and anger home as well. And just that ripple effect that these spheres of our lives that often we’re told to treat independently are not in fact independent of each other, that they’re quite inter-dependent and I would say in my book Job Moves, that was something that came out loud and clear. We studied literally thousands of individuals as they were switching jobs and what you see is that the decisions that they make where they say, you know, I’m not going to take the higher paying job that climbs the career ladder or whatever else that seemed like a mystery to some managers, it’s actually quite well explained when you realize, well, they had things that were going on in the rest of their lives, children, older parents, whatever it might have been, some sort of set of circumstances where they were making trade offs and these things were not independent of each other. They were quite interdependent. And I’d argue even more so today in a world where Zoom has made remote working more and more a reality for so many. And these questions of how we’re trading off our work and other parts of our lives increasingly are intermixed.

And we can argue whether that’s a good thing or bad thing thanks to technology, frankly invading much of our home lives with work. But the reality is they are much more integrated. And so living your life with that authenticity that Scott talked about, I think is incredibly important in all spheres. And treating all people as you want to be treated, really that golden rule in all parts of your life are incredibly important.

Martin

Thank you so much for sharing that, Michael. I mean, one thing that you said that definitely stood out for me is, you know, as managers, as leaders, there’s things going on in the lives of people that you’re leading that you’re not necessarily aware of. So we not only have to be empathetic towards that, we need to understand that those things are driving the choices, even though we don’t understand it. So thank you so much for sharing that. Now we’re going to go into the different sections where we’ll talk about one thing and then the other and probably ask you questions one after the other, probably different questions as well. I’ll pass it over to Victor to introduce section one and then he can ask the first question over to you, Victor.

Victor

Thank you, Martin. As we mentioned earlier about whole life leadership series, we have three focuses: what is the mindset? And then what are the habits? And then what are the tools or systems to help us succeed at home and at work? So first we’re going to focus on the mindset. So Karen, Clay often argued that strategy is shaped by how resources are allocated over time. How did the idea change the way you think about your own time, energy and attention?

Personal strategy vs daily choices

Karen Dillon

Well, the theory of resource allocation may sound very dry to people, but it’s a really powerful insight. It’s a very simple idea that no matter what a company says its strategy is, that strategy is actually formed. The reality of achieving or not achieving that strategy is formed in the everyday decisions and choices that employees make. People on the front lines, people all the way up and down the ranks about how to use company resources and their focus and their energy. And it’s one thing to say what your strategy is, it’s a whole different thing to live it in those everyday resource allocation decisions. And that insight, that simple theory that Clay and I talked about years ago in his office, was a total inflection point for me personally, because as he probably talked about it too, with both Scott and Michael in the class, years before that, you can apply that to your life in a really powerful way. And the idea is very simple that you can say what your strategy is, but your strategy is formed by the reality of the everyday decisions you make personally about how you’re going to focus and where you put your energy and what you prioritize over something else. And for me, when Clay said that, I was in my sort of early 40s and I had two young kids and I had a really big consuming career, and I knew that my personal resource allocation process did not match what I would tell you my life strategy was.

It was very different. And, and for many people like I, people like me, you sort of think you can sequence that. You can, you, you can fix it later. You can match your resource allocation process to your real strategy, your real priorities. You know, when, when I get this promotion, when I finish this project, when we move to the big house, whatever, whatever sequence thing comes in your life. But for me, it was really a kind of lightning bolt that I would have told you very clearly that my strategy, my personal strategy, was to have a fulfilling career, but also to be a great mom and a great daughter and a good spouse and a good friend. And I had part of that right. And the other part I really did not have right.

Reevaluating personal resource allocation

Karen Dillon

If you looked at my actual resource allocation over time, over a long period of time, the past month, the past six months, the past year, the past years, you would not say that my strategy was clearly being formed by that resource allocation to achieve what I said I wanted to achieve. And until you actually look at your personal resource allocation process and see if it matches what you want your strategy to be, you’re not going to achieve that strategy. It’s just as simple as that. Everyday decisions and choices and priorities will affect that outcome for you. So it’s a really powerful, simple insight that totally caused me to completely reexamine my own life and think about my own resource allocation process over the long term.

Victor

Yeah. Thank you, Karen. I totally agree that this resource allocation idea sounds simple, but it’s such a powerful mechanism that students are learning why we everyday people use it in their day to day in their personal life. So I really appreciate how Clay translate business strategy to life strategy.

Karen Dillon

To add one thing, one thing, I was going to give you a quick example of it. So in the business you think about the resource allocation might be which customer is more important than another, where will we cut a corner or not? They’re just simple choices that may not seem to in the moment make a big deal, but they can really be, again, an inflection point in the strategy of the company. We’re cutting corners here. We’re being a little shoddy there. This is more important than that. Those are simple choices. We do it all the time in our personal lives as well. I will make my friends and family a lower priority this week.

I’m not going to commit to meeting them for a walk or I’m not going to go to that family birthday party because we just think we’re making a small choice now and it won’t really play out in the long run. But again, every time you make a decision like that in your personal life, I’m not going to get home from work on time today or I am not going to focus on my children, my relationship with my children until school’s out or whatever you are, you’re then making resource allocation decisions that you don’t think about as being such a significant thing, but they are building, and forming your strategy with those every simple everyday decisions.

Martin

Thank you so much for adding that, Karen. So the next question I’ll ask to Scott. In Clay’s work on disruptive innovation, he warned that success can blind us to weak signals. How does that insight apply to leadership in life and family? Where do the costs of ignoring small signals and how can these compound quietly over time?

Scott Anthony

Well, the costs are monumental. So let’s start first with the Clay teaching and then I’ll quickly apply it to three different domains. So the things Clay would teach is there’s no data about the future. When you’re trying to make decisions about the future and you are trained to make data based decisions, those will take you backward, not forward. Because again, there’s no data about the future, which means you have to sense and then find a way to amplify what can be very weak signals of change. Now let me start with just physical. If you’re doing any kind of training, it’s obvious to you when there’s a sign of distress. So as a personal example, I’m doing something I’ve never done before.

I’m training to run in the Boston Marathon in just a couple weeks. I’m 51. This is a stretch and a push. I’m doing it for charity and all that. But when I am training too hard, I know my knee just tells me, all right, it is time to stop. There’s no ambiguity about it. I don’t argue with the knee. I just go and say, all right, that’s enough for today.

But when you’re inside an organization, you might have some low degree of emotional distress and say, you know, something doesn’t feel right about how business is going, but you don’t have the physical signal of your knee shooting paint at you so you can safely ignore it. Or, or find ways to avoid that distress by doing things like, well, maybe we should do another reorg or why don’t we hire a consulting company that’ll keep everybody busy or whatever. You can distract yourself from it. Or in your personal life, if your 14 year old, who’s outside that door right now because they’re off school Today, if your 14 year old is just not having that great a day, it might show up as something very small and subtle and you might say, Harry, go ahead, just play on your device and play geometry dash or whatever. While you’re ignoring that, underneath the surface, there’s a sign. Physically, you see it inside business leadership, you miss it. In our personal life, you can really miss it. And then years down the road, you’re a business leader, your business has gotten away from you, your kids have gone in directions that you’re not happy about.

So the trick in all of this is to say, when I sense there’s something going on, stop, pause, reflect, try and grab hold of it and use something to bring it into sharper context. One of the great teachings that Clay gave all of us is lenses. He gave us theories and models and frameworks so you could take that weak signal and make sense of it. It is, in my view, the most important general lesson that he taught. Because if not, you get yourself in trouble because you make a steady stream of incremental decisions that seem to make sense until you end up in the position you don’t want to be in. That’s the essence of the resource allocation process Karen talked about.

Martin

Thank you, Scott, for that. One of the reasons why I really like, you know, not only attending the sessions, but actually putting them together is I personally learned so much because you just gave an example about a 14 year old, and I have a 14 year old, right. And I’m looking forward to coming back from school today because for some odd reason, here we have school today, which makes no sense. But there’s, like you said, there’s always things going on beneath the surface. And unless you are intentional about seeking this out, they just pass you by and it’s one thing and then it goes into another thing and then before you know it, you look back and like, wait, what happened? But you know, you know, consciously, intentionally looking, seeking these things, you know, that’s what I hear you saying. And I definitely, I agree with you. That’s, that’s the way to go when you want to, you know, pivot in time, adjust in time so you’re not looking back and say, hey, where do we go? Going one degree off track for the past 50 miles. So, yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Victor

Next question for Michael. Question about purpose. Clay believed that motivation and meaning, not just talents, drive sustained performance in your work on talents, careers and education. How have you seen purpose shape people’s ability to thrive at work and at home?

Michael Horn

Well, I’ll ground us sort of how Clay came into it first and then talk about the application that I’ve seen in my work. But Clay believed everyone was motivated and that motivation was to make progress in their lives as they defined it. And this came from a theory that he developed with some folks, Bob Moesta and some others around jobs to be done. What job are you hiring someone to do in your life? And the observation he made was that a lot of times school, when you were enrolled in it or the job you were in, was actually fundamentally misaligned with progress as you were defining it at the moment. And so it wasn’t that we’ll stay with the 14 year old analogy for a moment, that they were, you know, that they were unmotivated and listless and whatever else, but they were motivated to feel, you know, success and have fun with friends or things like that. And the way school was set up was not, in fact helping them accomplish that. And so instead they were realizing success on that video game that Scott referenced or maybe on the playing fields, right? Or band performances, whatever it might be, they were able to have fun with friends and feel that sense of progress.

And then what you realize from that insight is, well, you really have to actually define what is, what does progress look like for me at this juncture and as I’m searching and so forth and making choices. So in college, for example, one of the big ahas from our book Choosing College that we did was that roughly almost half the population, when they enroll in college and they choose a school, they have no idea what that purpose is underlying. They make a decision that’s fundamentally inconsistent with what they’re trying to achieve in their lives. And they often do it because someone else expected them to enroll in college in general or that specific school that they did. And those expectations, it turns out, are a pretty lousy reason to enroll in school. And this may shock this audience at, you know, largely Harvard individuals, but the graduation rate from colleges in America is 60% in six years. So 40%, roughly, of students who go to college, do not graduate within six years.

And I will tell you, we make a lot of big deals about student debt and so forth in this country. Turns out generally, actually, that student debt is a good investment to get a college degree. But if you don’t graduate and you also incur debt, that’s the worst of all worlds. And it’s because they often go there without a clear sense of why am I enrolling, what is my purpose here? And when times get tough, as they always do when you’re studying, they could drop out, right? Because that actually seemed like a better way to get back on track in many cases. And the same thing is true in your job, right? We realized as you’re navigating your career. And what we’ve realized as we looked at it is we tried to understand why people made the choice that they did, what was progress for them at any given point. What we saw was that sometimes people work to figure out what is my purpose right there, it’s sort of a learning step, if you will, which is great.

Finding purpose

Michael Horn

It can be short term, it can, you know, sort of help you make progress, move to the next thing that is perhaps closer to what purpose is for you. Secondly, it might be, actually, I already know what my purpose is. And this is very consistent with the work that I’m doing here, is very consistent with the impact I want to have in the world or in my job and so forth. And that could be either sort of a larger, loftier mission, or frankly, just the sense that, like, the work that I do actually has meaning and moves the needle, if you will. You’d be surprised how many people work in jobs where they feel like I show up, and frankly, if I didn’t show up, no one would know the difference. And then the third thing that we often saw is that people work so that they can actually live out their purpose outside of the job, which is a great thing as well. You know, whether that’s in their communities, whether that’s with their home life, their family, the volunteer things that they choose to do work allows them to afford, if you will, the time to dedicate to those things. And I think where people go awry or struggle is not necessarily because of a talent mismatch, but frankly, when those purposes and progress don’t really line up with the choices that they’ve made.

And Viktor Frankl and many others have taught us about the centrality of purpose in the human experience and sort of being able to work through struggle and make progress. And when those things don’t line up, you actually see the rampant disengagement. I talked about the college dropout rates, but look, 2/3 of individuals in jobs today completely disengaged from work. And it’s no surprise because they really haven’t thought about or found jobs that tap into that sense of purpose. And likewise, frankly, on the job of colleges and employers or companies making sure, hey, am I hiring someone? Do I really understand why they’re here? And can I help them make progress toward what they’re trying to achieve as well?

Victor

Thank you, Michael. Yeah. Purpose is so important in any area of our life. As you were referencing different researchers, one additional author came to mind is Simon Sinek with his Start with Why. Start with why. You can push through innovation, you can push through challenges, difficulties. So, yeah, thank you for that. And now let’s shift gears to the second part of today’s discussion, the habits.

So Martin will kick us off with habits.

Martin

Yeah. So again, in this section two, we’ll be focusing on habits, basically what sustains alignment over time. Because it’s one thing to want something, to have the mindset to do it, but then you have to be able to, you know, move yourself to actually get the thing done. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about in this section. So I’d ask Karen to begin with, in the Micro Stress effect, you show how small chronic pressures erode well being. How does Clay’s work help explain why leaders with good intentions still manage to drift away from what matters most to them?

Karen Dillon

Well, I’ll just explain what microstress means because I think it relates to what Clay talked about as being most important. Microstress. From my research with Rob Cross, a professor, an expert on collaboration at Babson, are the frequent, really quick routine interactions that we have with other people that are so quick, but they’re so micro stressful in the moment that they cumulatively take a real physiological toll on you, meaning by the end of your day. So how many of us have fallen into bed exhausted but you can’t even actually remember what happened that day. It was a normal day, but I’m exhausted, I’m fried. That was probably a day full of microstress. All these interactions with people that are cumulative, taking a toll on you. And the reason that’s important to connect to Clay’s work is because one of the most powerful antidotes to dealing with microstress in our research from a really substantial group of high performers is having meaningful relationships and contacts with other people.

And what happens when your day is filled with microstress like that? You don’t have time or energy or emotional bandwidth for anything but responding and reacting to the stresses coming at you. And it could be anything from being mildly misaligned with a colleague to a stressful interaction with a family member you love. They happen in small doses all day long and take a real toll. So you’re too tired to do the things that we know are going to actually give you an injection of joy, in the short term and the long term. So for one, just responding and being on the back foot all day to this barrage of microstress, which feel too small and too stupid to complain about because individually they are small, but cumulatively they’re taking a real toll. And that toll includes not only your physical well being. It’s very bad for you physically to feel this day in and day out, but it’s playing a really negative role in your long term happiness because you are not making time for the things that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt are going to be the most meaningful investments of your life. The personal relationships in your life.

So allowing yourself, and we all do, to kind of juggle and just grit through it and deal with a day long, a week long, a month long of microstress, which we all do, is going to take a much bigger toll than you’re realizing in each of those individual moments.

Martin

Thank you so much for sharing that, Karen. I mean, it brings to mind for me personal experience. You know, sometimes we go out to work and then we know we go home, we have to meet a spouse. And sometimes you don’t want to say anything, but then if you don’t say anything, you don’t connect. Like you said, meaningful connections. Making these connections with people that you do love and who are there for you can de stress your life in general. So if you don’t, then the next day it could get worse, even though nothing worse actually happens. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Victor

And next question is for Scott. Clay emphasized that processes, not willpower, drive all costs. What habits or routines have you seen leaders adopt that protect relationships and values during intense professional seasons?

Scott Anthony:

Right. Well, let me again start by talking about how Clay would explain this. So he had a couple different stories that he would tell that generally related to his religious beliefs that led to him not working on Sunday. And there’s a famous story about a basketball tournament that he did not attend a final game for. There’s a famous story about a train departing from the BCG office at a certain time that he would always make sure he was on that train, which meant that was when he was going to stop working. That I remember back when I was his research associate after graduation, the other person who was doing research with me, we would just joke about the train, and that was our signal for, we’re done for the night. We’re just not doing any more work.

Finding balance in work and life

Scott Anthony

The idea here is you’ve got a decision rule that says, I am going to have a boundary condition. And Clay would say, once you said it, you have to stick to it 100% of the time. It’s actually easier, he would say, to stick to it 100% than 99%, because that 1% turns into 2, 5, 10, 20, and then you don’t have a decision rule. And I think about this personally, going back to what Karen was talking about, about resource allocation should say, I’d be out of balance for a week, month, six month period, et cetera. I think about things in quarterly periods. If you zoom in to any given moment, you cannot be in balance, because in a given moment, you’re doing a thing. So I’m here with all of you. I hear my kids behind the door there, but I am not with them.

If I zoom out and look at my entire life, you know, I work reasonably hard, a couple thousand hours a year. You do all the math. You’re working about 22% of your life. That’s kind of useless. But if you look at things over a quarterly basis, I can say, how many of the baseball games and shows and performances did I show up for? How many times was I there for family dinner? How many times was I able to take my kids to a baseball game or whatever? But over the course of a quarter, you could say, hey, in balance or out of balance. And then you can say, what adjustments do I need to make? So that idea of saying, I’m purposely seeking this and I’ve got a mechanism by which I’m going to check it can be a way to do it professionally. One thing that I learned from AG Lafley, who was the CEO of Procter and Gamble for a long period of time, is if you are serious about something and you’re serious about getting your organization to have something be a value that turns into a habit. It has to be first thing Monday morning, not last thing Friday afternoon.

Because last thing Friday afternoon. Those are the things that you get to Friday afternoon and the micro stresses that Karen talked about have ground you down to the point where you say, you know what, that can just wait until next week, month, quarter, year. Never gets done. If you say it is the most important thing. So I’m going to do it Monday morning, then you do it. One example, I lived in Singapore for about 12 years. I remember one time P&G’s board met in Singapore and I had breakfast with their head of R and D and I said, how you doing? He said, well, I’m a little tired, to be honest, because before we came to the board meeting, we all fanned out across different regions in Asia and all went to go and spend time with consumers in their home. It was a ritual that P and G did before any big meeting.

The top leaders would go out and live what AG Lafley was trying to promote. The idea that consumer is boss, the job they’re trying to get done is what we have to help them with. And if we don’t do it first, we’re never going to do it. So the idea of decision rules and having mechanisms to make sure you do it first, not last, those are the things that I think help to bring intentionality to the different things you’re trying to do.

Victor

I love that. Scott. I think that it’s very important for all of us, most of us on a call, our parents, to set that ritual, set that process so that we don’t rely on willpower, which can deteriorate as we go throughout the day, throughout the week. So thanks for that. And because of time, we’re going to jump to the third section, the tools and systems. How we can use those tools to help us design a life that holds. So again, back to you, Scott. Clay believed that bad outcomes are really the result of one bad decision, but many small ones compounded over time.

So what tools or systems help leaders avoid those kind of drift when trade offs are not obvious day to day,

Scott Anthony

I’ll try to be succinct just to make sure there’s plenty of time for the other panelists to have great things to say. I would summarize and simplify down to get outside voices in. So, you know, if you look at people who are elite athletes, the best in the world at their professions, none of them do it on their own. All of them have coaches, multiple coaches to help them be at the really top of their game. Yet somehow we think that our parenting, our business leadership and so on should be something that we do on our own. That’s crazy. Of course, if you’re in a relationship, you’ve got a partner, spouse, or whatever, that can help, but really, it does take a village. So make it collective and have people from the outside that can really hold you accountable professionally.

I have a kind of informal personal board of directors that I check in with repeatedly just to make sure that I’m not smoking my own exhaust fumes or whatever, and I’m really doing the things that I want to do. The outsiders can see things in a second that are not obvious to you. So make sure that you got outside voices that help. That, to me, is the most important thing.

Martin

Thanks for sharing, Scott. And I’ll just ask one, you know, ask Michael one other question and then we’ll probably open up the floor for Q and A from the audience if we don’t have any other structured question after that. But Michael, in your work on careers and education, what practical tools have you seen help people navigate transitions? That’s whether it be new roles, parenthood, reinvention, without losing momentum or meaning.

Clarity through outside insights

Michael Horn

Yeah, I think clarity around what is the progress I’m trying to make in this struggling moment is maybe the most important question to dive into when you’re making those transitions. And just to build on Scott’s point, I think having outside people that can ask you the questions to really surface what is that progress for you is actually maybe the most important thing because we’re often, we’re almost always unaware of what the job to be done is for ourselves. We sort of act in these subconscious ways, if you will. And so if you ask someone, you know, what are you trying to do, or why did you buy this particular product, or why did you make this resource allocation choice in your life or whatever else, you’re going to get an answer that’s either an outright lie or frankly masks the truth. But having outside people that can actually see the patterns, the choices that you’re in fact making and help bring those insights to life, I think is one of the most important things you can invest in to help clarify what does progress look like for me and then be able to adjust course in that quarterly look as Scott was saying. Just two quick examples of that. For me, my calendar is the biggest way I can control that. Right. So I frustrate a lot of people I work with.

But Thursday for me is a no meeting day for the most part. It’s a writing day because otherwise I don’t allocate time to it. In the course of the week, too many things bubble up, if you will, that just constantly compete for time and feel urgent, even if they’re not the most important thing. And then the second one, I’ll just tell you from the outside perspective, I could tell you a couple stories on this, but my wife and I, when we got married, actually we wrote our wedding vows and we wrote that a deliberate strategy to continue to invest in each other would be a critical part of the life that we were choosing to live. We looked out at Clay, obviously, when we both said that line and smiled at him. But the reason I say that is actually she and I will connect every so often and make sure I am still allocating the time that I need to to you and to the kids and making sure that we’re living that deliberate strategy that we wanted to. And she has full permission to call me on it when I have not successfully done it.

But that helps me figure out right in these points changes, these navigation. As you’re switching career, you’re switching a job or you’re adding a new gig or embarking on school, is this really actually carrying us toward where we are trying to go as a unit and we’re not going to drift apart from each other and the deliberate strategy that we’ve identified is so important to us. In addition to being Good Friday, it’s also Passover, which is a holiday that I celebrate. And there’s this concept in Judaism of Kadosh that you can make something holy by setting it apart. And so that’s how I see it really, is that she’s helping me set apart that relationship to make sure that we’re continually investing in it.

Victor

I love that. And thanks for sharing that story from your wedding. That’s amazing. And next, I would love to open up the floor to questions from our audience. We’d love to either start with, anyone want to unmute themselves or you can put your question in the chat. All right, go ahead. Lalith.

Pavni

Hey, first of all, thank you so much for this session. I’m Pavni and I’m sorry for not enabling my video. I’m putting my 8 year old to bed. It’s 9pm in India and hey Michael, so good to see you. Alam from hugsy here from 2025 life. But yeah, so much wisdom. I’m trying to still process both the books like I’ve read Job Moves and then How You Measure Your Life. I mean life changing books for me.

But one question is that, I mean, this is truly what I’ve been grappling with after I read the book when I was making my career choices, trying to change jobs and you know, make those decisions. Honestly, after Harvard, I feel that I’m in a privileged position to make those kind of decisions. Like how I would choose my time, allocate my time, where do I spend it? But before that, when I was working with the government, working 12 hours a day, I honestly felt that I didn’t have that privilege. So do you think I’ve been thinking about it, is there a play of power and privilege and does it mean that only when you get to a certain point in life you have the power to make these decisions and arrive at these mindsets or is it something that you can start very early in your life? I mean, I’m happy if any of the panelists could answer those questions, no preference here.

Michael Horn

I can give a quick lightning round answer and I suspect Scott and Karen have thought about this a lot as well. The one quick thing I would say is I think at any juncture of life, whether you have lots of income, little income, lots of power, if you will, in a society, or little, you’re always making trade offs between competing interests. And the question is, what are those trade offs you’re willing to make and what are the things you’re willing to say? I’m not going to invest my time in that today because, you know, of the circumstances in which I am. And so a lot of people, you know, have said to me, oh, you know, it’s, it’s all well and good to figure out your progress when you’re, you know, in a particular situation. But if I’m working three jobs and just, I need that paycheck, right, for these reasons, and even though there you’re still making trade offs around, okay, what amount of salary am I going to take and what is the trade off in other parts of my life? And so the trade offs may be different, but I guarantee you there’s no one at any part of our society that has a completely frictionless experience where they’re not making trade offs. And if they do, I would argue that they’re probably not particularly happy because I actually think life comes from working through these struggles. The purpose actually makes it worth the struggles, make it worth living, I guess is what I would say. That’s part of the fun of life.

Scott Anthony

And I just built out of what Michael would say, just a personal example. So after I graduated from undergraduate, I spent a couple years as a consultant at McKinsey and Company. And you know, it’s a big company then, even bigger company now, and I was a peon, the lowest of the low. But still there are opportunities to set decision rules. So one that I said is, I know this job, it demands a lot out of me and I’m here, I want to do it. However, I’m 21 years old, so at 5 o’ clock on Friday I’m turning off and going to a place where I can enjoy myself. Five o’ clock on Saturday, I’m doing the same thing. Do what you want the rest of the week.

But those are two things that I’m going to hold a sacrosanct. And I did. And then after the McKinsey experience, I said to myself, look, when you are a cog in a really big organization, there’s just limits to the degrees of freedom that you’re ever going to have. Which is one reason why the idea in 2003 of joining the very small team at Innosight was so attractive. There are downsides of being in a smaller organization, but there’s the ability then to be much more conscious and purposeful in your trade offs. And yes, it is absolutely true. There’s a lot of privilege behind the story, no doubt about it at all. But in those moments, the micro moment and the deciding what path I’m going to go on, there’s the ability to shape and have intentionality in it.

Karen Dillon

I think I just weigh in with one thing. I agree with what they both said completely. I know it does sometimes sound like, oh, easy for you. Again, easy for you to say. Maybe you’re in the financial position to do this. What I would say is the longer you wait to try to course correct or get that right or struggle with those trade offs, the harder it will be because they become baked into your life. So I made dramatic changes in my life in my 40s. Maybe I should have done that in my 20s so I didn’t have to do such a dramatic thing in my 40s to kind of really repurpose my whole life.

Making better daily choices

Karen Dillon

But I just would say all of us, every single one of us, make discretionary choices with our time every day. Yes, you have to do your job. Yes, you have to do whatever it is to put food on the table to maintain your everyday life. But I know deep down in our hearts, each of us knows the discretionary choice we made to scroll a few more minutes on the phone or sit in the car finishing a podcast. I’ve done that too and not go into the house quite yet, or not get around to doing something. We all have some ability to control the choices we make on a daily basis. And when you think about it that way, you can even make some small changes that will help you get to the trade offs that are going to make you happier in the long run, rather than waiting until you’re really far down your life where maybe you haven’t invested in the rest of your life in the right way.

You don’t have the relationships, you don’t have the friendships, you don’t have interests outside of work and family, which maybe is growing up. It’s really important investment to make all along your life, not waiting till someday when you’ll finally get to it.

Martin

And Karen, thank you so much for sharing that. I just mentioned something, you know, a question that came in earlier kind of like popped into my mind and I was like, I’d like to pick your brain on that and any other person on the panel can share. But you mentioned course correcting, right. So what would you say are some of the tools or some of the, you know, means you’ve used to recover when you do realize that your life is getting out of alignment?

Karen Dillon

So I’m going to tell you what I did, which I don’t recommend, but it worked out really well for me. I was actually the editor of Harvard Business Review at the time. When I first started working with Clay again in my mid-40s on what became the article How Will You Measure Your Life In Harvard Business Review and ultimately the book. And when he and I talked about resource allocation, that totally caused me to rethink my life. And I was really afraid that I was going to not know my own children very well when they went off in the world. My kids were about 8 and 9 at the time. And long story short, with a lot of thought and deliberation, I resigned as the editor of Harvard Business Review. And kind of with my husband, we rebuilt our life on different priorities.

Deciding personal commitments

Karen Dillon

I ended up doing lots of really wonderful work with Clay. So I didn’t stop working. I just worked differently. You don’t have to do that, but you do have to take the time to decide what are the commitments you’re making to yourself. Forget, in a way, pleasing everybody else in the world, we’re all probably better at trying to keep our commitments to other people. But what are the commitments you’re gonna make to yourself? And if you don’t make those commitments to yourself, Clay would say, you’re bobbing around in a sea like you’ll just go wherever the currents take you. And I think even taking the time to do that was a dramatic change in my life. What do I actually wanna commit to? I’ll tell you the single biggest change I made in my life.

Well, in addition to quitting my job, the everyday changes. I actually once wrote an article for Harvard Business Review called Confessions of an Unrepentant BlackBerry Addict. That was the time when blackberries were dominant and I thought it was the greatest tool ever. And I figured out a way I could sneakily put it on top of the television and I could see the light when an email came in. I could get up and check my email and nobody in my family would notice. When I realized the signal of my research allocation process to my family, I chose. I made the commitment to myself to be present with the people in my life.

So I’m looking you in the eye when I’m talking to you. And my phone I’m not trying to sneak and scroll, and I’m not just relaxing or just one more minute. That just changed my relationship with my kids in a really great way. They knew, like, I know my children now they’re in their 20s, but I know them well and they know me and they know that they matter to me. And I realized the signals I was sending by just the thing I thought I was very sneakily doing. It’s so simple.

But I think it’s a catalytic thing, and it doesn’t take a lot of different time. You can put that down, go look in the other room at the moment when you need to. But when you’re present with someone, be present with them.

Scott Anthony

If I could just quickly build on that. So we have a family device. We got the brick device, which some of you might have heard about, where you can essentially deactivate your phone for a period of time. And no family meals until you go and brick your phone so we can make sure that we’re all present. The other thing, Karen, you said, that really struck me, this idea of, say you did the big, bold thing, which is quit and start. So I joined Innosight in 2003, 2007, I announced I was going to leave. It took me 15 years before I actually did that.

For a variety of reasons. But you know, somewhere along the way I said, I want to do something different. It’s hard to go left, right, do something completely different. Herminia Ibarra, in the book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, has really good advice. She says, flirt with your future self. So go and find low risk experiments where you can go and try something out to see what it’s like. For me, I kind of had a sense I wanted to teach. It’s a big change to go from consulting to teaching.

But it’s easy to go and give a guest lecture or go and run a single seminar or run a webinar. And when you go and do one, you say, okay, I like this. I didn’t like that. The ability or the opportunity to run low risk experiments is a really good thing that can help you then say, all right, I now have enough data to suggest this is really what I want to do. And Herminia Ibarra’s stuff is really, really helpful on this topic.

Victor

I love that, being an innovator. I think big part of it is have the design thinking hat empathize with different scenarios, possibilities. Anyone else have any questions? We have three minutes left. We’d love to address more questions.

Scott Anthony

So, yeah, but there have been a couple other tools have been put in the chat. But Andrew’s question I thought was a juicy one.

Martin

You guys worked with Clay a lot. What would you think Clay would have thought about AI and how it relates and how it relates to the questions posed, and how will you measure your life?

Michael Horn

Who wants to go first?

Scott Anthony

I do have an answer to it, so it’s not fair to ask, but I’ll give a short answer again. You know, so in How Will You Measure Your Life, I talked about the Ship of Theseus paradox, the idea that you bring a boat into harbor, you remove piece by piece, and ultimately, is it still the Ship of Theseus? And he used that as a metaphor for if you’re outsourcing the development of your children to lots of different places, are they still your children? I think he would use the same thing to talk about artificial intelligence. There’s an emerging framework from a few academies that there’s a few different archetypes of how you use artificial intelligence. There’s cyborg, where you fuse the AI into what you do. There’s a centaur, the body of a horse, the head of a human. You divide the tasks. And there’s the chauffeur. I’m just going to get in the back and let AI take me anywhere.

When you do that, you have lost something really important. And that’s what I see a lot of our students doing. They say it’s so easy just to do that. I say, well, you’re never going to learn how to drive if you never take the wheel. And I think Clay would ponder the ship of Theseus paradox and AI. There’s a lot more he would say about it. But that one thing I think really struck me with your question. Great question.

Michael Horn

Karen, you want to jump in or

Karen Dillon

I’ll just. I’ll disagree with that. Basically. I do think that one of the chapters of the book is about the schools of experience that help you become the professional you want to become, and probably personally as well. And I do think that’s the struggle. AI obviously, is an amazing tool. It has lots of good applications, and I am a fan of AI in some.

Some places. But what Scott said, what are you missing? When you’re not going through the struggle to make sense of something or to learn something or to have a setback and figure out your path forward, but AI is solving it for you. You’re not getting those critical thinking skills. And I think that can be very powerful. And there are all kinds of moral implications in How Will I Stay out of Jail? The last chapter of the last section of How Will You Measure Life from AI that I think we as a society still have to struggle with.

Michael Horn

Andrew, I would say, obviously Julia Freeland Fisher, who you know well, has been writing a lot about. Right. The dangers of outsourcing your friendships and relationships to AI. I’ll go a slightly different direction, which is, I think from a jobs to be done perspective. We talk about any job having functional, emotional and social dimensions to it. I suspect we’re going to be using AI a lot for the functional ones. I think the mistakes we will make are when we outsource the emotional and social aspects of those struggles to AI and we don’t get.

Look, AI has built itself on a couple dimensions of the human experience, largely language and sight. It has not done huge swaths of what makes us human. And that’s how we connect with each other, which sends unbelievable feedback loops of positivity to us that we don’t even still understand the full mechanisms of. If we’re avoiding that, I think that gets into what Scott was saying as well.

Victor

Yeah, I love that. Michael, what you just said reminded me of the longest running study on happiness. A Harvard study of adult development. They find that the strong positive relationships are the primary driver of lifelong health and happiness more than anything else. So I think in the age of AI and especially what we’re talking about today, relationships with family, with kids, with spouse is so important. With that, I love to conclude our conversation. Thank again, so, so much to Michael, Karen, Scott for jumping in and super excited for the dialogue that will continue after the conversation. And so thank you so much, everyone.

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Yet another episode where I crash someone else’s podcast!

James Cryan, CEO and founder of Willow Education, invited me back on his podcast for his excellent Substack, Purposeful Paths, to reflect on my predictions from last year and to make forecasts for the coming year.

Our conversation dove deep into topics like the slow momentum of apprenticeships in non-traditional sectors, increased emphasis on experiential and work-based learning, pressure mounting on traditional colleges amid demographic changes, and the realities behind skills-based hiring. We discussed policy shifts, the impact of AI on career readiness, the role of community colleges, and potential regulations around social media and AI for young people. A lot in other words.

But most importantly, perhaps, we held ourselves accountable for our predictions last year. Check out how we graded ourselves and let us know your thoughts—and predictions.

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Michael Horn

If you’ve ever been annoyed by people who make predictions about what’s to come in the year ahead around January in education, and then don’t hold themselves to account for the predictions that they made, this conversation is for you. Look, I know a lot of you have probably been annoyed with me over the years because I love making those predictions often. But in this conversation, James Cryan, the CEO and founder of Willow Education, holds me to account. This comes on the heels of a conversation that the two of us had last year where we went over predictions we had for 2025. And in this conversation that you’re about to hear, recorded with a group of other people on a webinar that James hosted me for, we go over those predictions from 2025 and give ourselves some grades. I’ll give you a quick heads up. I was overly harsh, I think, on my results. I think I did actually all right overall.

And then we talked about some predictions to come for 2026. See what you think. Can’t wait to hear from you and enjoy the conversation.

James Cryan

Well, let’s get started. This should be fun. Michael, thank you for joining me again. You’re— I think I told you this, but you’re our first ever repeat guest. No one will ever be the first ever repeat guest to the—

Michael Horn

Oh yeah, that’s pretty good. Okay.

James Cryan

Virtual Conversation Series. So kudos. Kudos to you for that accomplishment. I hope that comes to the top of your resume quite quickly. If folks don’t know Michael, A, I’d be surprised. And B, Michael, you’re just one of the most forward-thinking, prolific thinkers about the future of education and workforce and keeping on top of all the trends, research, and people and companies who are doing really interesting and fun work trying to transform education for the better in our country. So thank you for joining us. And if you don’t know me, my name is James and I’m the CEO and founder of Willow Education.

We are a career readiness platform and curriculum that school districts use to support their young people in developing purpose, in exploring and experiencing different careers and work-based learning opportunities, and then making a high-quality post-secondary plan. And our big innovation, and it’s kind of silly to call it an innovation, but we’ve got two innovations. One is we are highly opinionated about the quality of next steps and programs when we project a personalized ROI for each young person. And two is we serve all students. We serve the kids who are going to college like everybody does, and we also serve the students who choose not to go to college after high school, which right now very few forums and curricula do. And so that’s kind of the day job, and the fun part of my job is I get to have conversations with leading thinkers like Michael on what is, what can we do to realize the American dream in our country? What can we do to make sure that everyone who works hard has the opportunity to have a good life, meaningful work, buy a house, raise kids in the city? Not, not many of my students in Denver were able to do that through the current post-secondary pathways that exist today. And so we need to do a much better job at both preparing them for what programs are working and preparing them to have the skills to do so. And so, Michael, last year I asked you to come on and make some predictions and share your thinking about what you expected for the year ahead.

So we’ll start there with your predictions from last year and give you some grades on those. And then we’ll move into predictions that each of us have for this coming year, and we haven’t shared notes and so it’s gonna be a live conversation. And I think I’ve made at least one prediction that I know you disagree with, so I’m gonna be excited to dig into that with you.

Michael Horn

Awesome. Okay, that sounds juicy, and I like that we’re doing this. I’m going to confess I’ve done a lot less thinking about the year ahead, and I was super nervous about what I said last year and so I think I hold up better than I thought, but we’ll, we’ll see how people feel as you go through it.

James Cryan

Well, I gave you some grades this morning. I was preparing as well. And I think that there’s a risk that, uh, you weren’t bold enough in your predictions. So I’ll encourage that for this coming year.

Michael Horn

Fair enough. Fair enough. Good.

James Cryan

So, anything to add at the get-go? Anything I missed from your, your story and your bio that you’d like to—

Michael Horn

No, I mean, I’m excited for the conversation. Last year when we were all talking around, it was a great group and we got into a really interesting conversation around Career Connected Learning for all, and really the notion that CTE or voctech, as it were, was historically a tracked thing and more that this is a menu, right? And a set of experiences we want all students to have so that they can make an informed choice around, is it college when you leave high school, is it something else? And that they understand what that means for them and their likely path. And it’s not something that sounds good on paper, but that they actually really understand what that’s gonna look like, right, in the journey ahead. And we want a lot more individuals having that set of experiences. So it was a really interesting conversation. I changed my language, uh, around the space because of some of the contributions from folks. So I’m excited to dig in again.

James Cryan

Absolutely. And that’s a good reminder, for some norms here, the risk of webinars, or my preferred language virtual conversations, is that they’re boring.. And I get the need to grab lunch and maybe go off video, but I encourage everyone to like, let’s make this a conversation. Let’s have fun and dig in together because we’ll have a richer and more fun, engaging learning experience if we do so. And that was the case last year.

James Cryan

So Michael, last year you made 4 predictions. That there would be growing momentum for apprenticeships, particularly in non-traditional sectors like healthcare.

The second prediction was there’d be an increased focus on work-based experiential learning at all education levels. Number 3, less linear education to career pathways would become the norm. And number 4, there’d be continued pressure on traditional colleges as students seek alternatives. Let’s take those one at a time. Growing momentum for apprenticeships, particularly in non-traditional sectors. What grade would you give yourself here, Michael?

Forward– But Moderate –Momentum on Apprenticeships

Michael Horn

I honestly, I think it was, I would put it not an A, if you will, on this one. Like it was, I think it was less momentum than I expected. If you count the January Department of Labor adding the, what is it, the $145 million in funding for pay for performance, if you count that in 2025, I look a lot better on this one, but I would say by and large momentum along this axis, James, at least my take is that it was more talk than action in ‘25 and that it did not materialize the way I thought that there could be some bipartisan opportunities on this. So, you know, I frankly coming into this, I was thinking, ooh, it’s like a D. I think it’s a little bit higher than that because again, sort of the, the April executive order preparing Americans for higher pay, high-paying skilled trade jobs of the future made way for the January funding announcement. But I think we’re still talking probably like C+ or something like that is where I, is where I would grade me. What did you do on this one?

James Cryan

C+? Okay.

You were a little more negative than I was. I think it’s helpful to remember that we were expecting a lot from the incoming Trump administration when we made, when you made this prediction and thinking that there was going to be a lot of momentum out of the gate for apprenticeships. And like you named, that did not materialize. In fact, the opposite materialized. And but there’s been a correction since then and there’s been some interesting work at the state level. California announced $30 million in apprenticeship funding focused on health care and education. I think this is going to be growing, but the point you make resonates for me, that, a lot of talk and not a lot of this yet, resonates.

So I had this at a B, to cut to the chase.

Michael Horn

Yeah, frankly, I was going to be at the B until, you, you sort of foreshadowed that maybe I sandbagged on the predictions a little bit, so I thought I’d go more negative on this one. I think the point being though, right, like, this is an area where there’s, you know, you Governor Newsom in California, you have the Trump administration, a lot of bipartisan interest in increasing apprenticeships, a lot of— it’s a little wonkier, but a lot of interest in apprenticeship degrees as well. And it’s not— I think, you know, $145 million, that’s a start. But if you put it in the context of how much we spend on post-secondary education in this country, even the state numbers added— and yes, Indiana has continued to make progress. And so there are some absolutely bright spots. Colorado has continued to make progress, etc. South Carolina and some other places. But by and large, I would say, you know, we are still at the fringes of tiptoeing into this world and not where I think I had expected some bigger announcements would come out.

I would’ve expected as even part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act where there were some big overhauls of higher ed and really, you know, creating a new, playing field for gainful employment definition across the field in essence, I would have expected some more movement on this front and we didn’t get it.

James Cryan

Yeah. What’s the missing link here? What’s the lever that needs to be pulled? Is it just money or is it more complicated than that?

Michael Horn

Well, that’s a good question. I mean, I do think that there is— more money is part of it, right? You need performance pay that I think follows the student into the experience and de-risks it for the employer. I think that’s a critical piece of this. But then, as you know, we’re going to have to have a lot of intermediaries build businesses and frankly, a lot of culture change around apprenticeships in general. It is interesting. I was having a conversation with someone in this movement and I sort of asked, I was like, I don’t understand why we think that industries at the moment should be registering for the federal apprenticeship because there’s no upside to doing so really, unless there is actual funding tied to it. And so from my standpoint, a lot of the stuff that’s occurring on the margins in the informal space makes a heck of a lot of sense. We don’t tend to count it, if you will, in the apprenticeship number, but I think that makes a lot of sense.

But to really make it a movement, I think you need funding that makes it worth it to put up with the regulations and so forth to get into this. Otherwise, I just don’t think the incentives are there for the intermediaries to materialize. There’s a reason why Multiverse completely pivoted away, right, from their apprenticeship strategy that had been so successful in the UK when they came into the American market. What about you? Because you’re spending probably more time connected to the space.

James Cryan

Honestly, I’m not an expert here, so I don’t know. I think the thing that scares me is the complexity and complexity without funding. It just seems hard to figure out. And if it’s not simple and clear like why employers are engaging here, and it’s actually connected to one of my predictions that I think we both agree on, then I don’t expect behaviors to shift much.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Let me say one quick thing on this, which is Ryan Craig always reminds us that in education, we tend to call them employers, but they’re really companies that happen to employ. I think it’s an important thing because when we say employers, we act like they’re mission is to employ. They employ so that they accomplish their mission. And I think sometimes we forget that human capital is, I would argue, the most important thing on their balance sheet and in their organizations. But they don’t necessarily see themselves as human capital development organizations. So to your point, complexity scares them, risk scares them. They’re going to retreat from things that aren’t obvious ROI in the short run.

And I do think there’s a larger need to reduce friction to experiential learning. It’s why, you know, we like efforts like what Jeff is doing, for example, when he came on here is important, I think, to make this much easier for companies, government entities, nonprofits, whomever, right, to offer experiential learning opportunities. And there is like a finite pipeline, right, of how much you can even have in terms of how many spaces can you really absorb in a lot of these things. This is not infinite, if you will, and so there has to be a range of experiential learning opportunities offered, I think, to students.

States Driving Work-Based Learning

James Cryan

Yep, good point. Okay, let’s keep moving. Second prediction from last year: increased focus on work-based learning, experiential learning at all education levels. So it’s a pretty good segue from that last point.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I mean, obviously this was a building notion. I, you know, in terms of dramatic policy changes, not huge, but I do think in terms of momentum in the field, this was pretty good, probably a B+. You can look at Colorado and Governor Polis there. You know that state well. Executive order to, you know, really reorganize the state’s talent development system around a lot of this. Massachusetts has continued to lean into some of these areas. California, you mentioned, but they allocated an additional $64 million around CTE programs. Alabama has done a lot around this, obviously Indiana with the apprenticeships, but frankly, larger experiential learning in the other diploma that has become more concrete now for high school students.

So you can look at a lot of these different states. I think there has been continued momentum and interest around this movement. And if you look at folks like the CAPS Network or places like that, they seem to be growing. I always talk to our friend Andrew Frischmann at Big Picture Learning, and I say, this is the moment your network was built for. In many ways, you guys were 25 years too early, and now is the time, right, where a lot of the things you’re doing are growing into it. And so I think those aspects are pretty exciting. And so I’d say we certainly have more room to go, but, but I think I would give it a B+. The other piece I would say is I think because of AI in the workplace, and even if frankly the pullback in entry-level hiring is overstated because of AI, as I think it is, it has caught enough people’s attention to realize schools need to be providing real-world experiences later on in the journey so that students who graduate when they’re applying to that job can say, I have 2 years of experience of X already.

Right. And I think that’s a growing recognition. It almost feels like a truism now in the field, and that seems like a big plus in this favor. What about you?

James Cryan

Yeah, I agree. I had you at a B+ on this one as well, for a lot of the reasons you named. I can’t remember if it was last year or the year before that Burning Glass and Student Strada put out the Talent Disrupted report that found that college students who had an internship were almost 50% less likely to be underemployed after graduation. So many good partners on the call who are doing work in work-based learning, education to career pathways work. Dr. Danelle Letler, any additions from these first two predictions?

Dr. Danelle Letler

I feel like you’re grading Michael very well. I like this. I was expecting you to be much harsher on him. Clearly, Michael, being a return guest gives you some love. Gives you some love. That’s good. Keep it going.

Michael Horn

I was going to say either a victim or a beneficiary of grade inflation.

James Cryan

I’ll take it. Awesome. Well, I hope— and there’s lots of other great partners on the call who do really powerful work-based learning work. We’re learning from a lot of them, including Big Picture Learning, like you named, Michael. I’m going to skip the third one because it’s very similar. Less linear education and career pathways becoming the norm. And let’s go to the fourth and last one, Michael. Continued pressure on traditional colleges as students seek alternatives.

Continued Pressure on Traditional Colleges

Michael Horn

Yeah. Well, I would say I think it’s depending on whose count, you know, somewhere around 16 or so colleges closed in ‘25. You had a bunch of mergers, the merger in Pennsylvania State branch campuses, you know, fully, fully going to be happening in the year ahead. And so I would say it was a little bit less closures, I think, than the year prior, but growing. And the demographic cliff is now here. So I think we’re really about to see a lot of retreat. Obviously, in December or maybe it was November, I published that piece looking at 44 mid-sized private colleges and I’ll give this group a tease. We’ve now expanded that to roughly 315 private mid-sized colleges across the country.

And so this was a group that I wasn’t thinking of originally when Clay Christensen and I made that prediction of a quarter of colleges would consolidate. I was thinking largely of the frankly small colleges under 1,000 students, the regional publics that we’ve seen merge and for-profit institutions without big brands and tuition dependent. But there’s a lot of schools, you know, 500 or 600, I think, that enroll somewhere between 1,000 and 8,000 students, very tuition dependent. A lot of them are strong brand names and they are in a world of trouble. By our estimates, a good third of them will have challenges with financial solvency over the next 5 years, call it. And so look, the overall prediction is still going in the direction. I think the world of hurt is really going to materialize over the next 3 to 5 years on this one. I’m not sure how to grade it.

It’s a little bit true— I think I’ve used this prediction, frankly, like 3 different years I’ve made predictions. And every year you look pretty good on it when you look back on it because the pressures are just mounting and colleges are, look, everyone believes it’s not going to be them, that they will be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat. They won’t have to downsize. They’ll be the beneficiary of some other college closing. It’s interesting, of the 44 that we looked at in New England, 38 of them in their strategic plans list growth as their primary strategy for dealing with this. And growth ain’t going to happen for most of these places that are serving traditional age students, number one. But number two, a lot of them, I think, believed that they could launch online master’s degree programs.

One of the things that came out of the one big beautiful bill, is that gravy train is done, I think, with the caps on grad— or the elimination of Grad Plus and the caps on non-professional programs and even professional programs. And so, I think if you thought you were going to just simply scale into lifelong learning through those mechanisms, that’s not not available to you anymore. You’re going to have to be a lot more innovative, which means you need to have cash on hand, I think, in many cases. so I think it’s getting bleaker, not better, for these, for, for a lot of schools that have not taken steps or thoughtfully focused in the past few years. Where do you have me on this?

James Cryan

I give you an A- for this one. DB, I don’t know if it’s inflation or not. But, you know, one part of this prediction that I hadn’t thought through is, Michael, you and I are friends with a college president who leads a small private institution that does great work, and he’s a phenomenal leader. And over the summer, he saw a third of his freshman class make a different decision, his enrollment, just kind of cratered in that freshman year. And so as we encounter the demographic cliff, I think we’re going to see a lot more fluidity amongst institutions as they compete for students. It’s going to get pretty tough out there. And we can think about analogues from— I can, I can think of analogues from seeing declining enrollment in K-12 scenarios and how students move between different K-12 options. That’s interesting.

The competitive pressures that exist there.

Michael Horn

And I will say that same friend of ours without naming, I would say, you know, one of the things that we talked about was he was saying like, I have to have an English department, but no one majors like 2 people major in English a year, if that. Right. And, and I was like, you know, this is where I think course sharing, like people say, what are measures short of consolidation, what can I do? And this is a place where I’d say tenure makes this hard in many cases, but I don’t know that I would be carrying a full roster of faculty members in particular departments that are under-enrolled. And I would still make those classes available through partnerships with other schools that have similar mission focuses and things like that using online. That seems like, you know, to really downsize and focus on the things that make you valuable and differentiated. And I think they have a very good value proposition in a lot of things, which is something that I would be wielding a little bit more aggressively to right-size the cost structure of some of these schools. Because I do think if you could reduce some overhead costs, use AI to become more efficient on some of those, and then focus a little bit more academically and stop treating those as fixed costs. It’s a way to, it’s a way to deal with a very different environment.

But look, higher ed’s never— none of the leaders in higher ed in our world have ever managed in a time of shrinkage, right? It’s been growth, since at least 1965, and arguably since the GI Bill, right?

James Cryan

Yeah.

Michael Horn

So they just haven’t managed, you know, they’ve had 2-year blips, right? But they’ve never seen a 15-year trend line, a structural one that’s about to come out.

James Cryan

Yeah, yeah, it will be interesting and challenging, I’m sure. Okay, well, let’s turn our attention to this year.

Michael Horn

Yeah, do you want to start with yours? Let’s start with yours. Yeah, okay, so I’m admitting I’ve done less homework on this. Yeah, okay.

Entry-Level Hiring Challenges

James Cryan

Well, I’ll start with my first one, and I’m very curious how you see this. I think the entry-level labor market is going to get worse, not better. I think there’s a lot of attention on AI’s impact in the entry-level labor market, and I think we can find data that supports that conclusion. I think what we don’t talk enough about is that the economic uncertainty and trade policy contexts that all companies are existing within right now is having a significant impact on the labor market. And then secondly, just especially with tech companies, they’ve learned that they can continue to thrive and grow with fewer people, which some is somewhat AI related but is not entirely AI related. So I would expect that the entry-level labor market is going to get worse over this next year. I’m sad about that and it makes all the work-based learning and career readiness, uh, conversations all the more pressing and important from my perspective.

Michael Horn

I completely agree on this. In some ways, I think debating the causes distracts from the headline, which is right, that entry-level hiring is, as we’ve known it, is shrinking. The expectation increasingly is that someone coming in as an entry-level employee is performing at year 2, 3, right? If someone in the industry, which requires a set of experiences, requires a certain understanding of cultural norms. This is where the durable skills conversation enters the picture, etc., etc. I think all those things become more important. And, you know, people sort of throw up their hands and say, how are companies expecting to fill their talent pipelines? And look, from my perspective, this is something that favors those that are well off and have good social capital, which is why education organizations need to provide this, because otherwise this is a clear opportunity where people will get left out of the equation and it will be on very unsavory lines that this— that people get left out. And so I completely agree with the observation. I do think, for what it’s worth, that the macro environment is a big piece of this.

And the other one I’ll add is I think there was a lot of overhiring during the pandemic for tech in particular. It makes up less of a share of, you know, labor than people sometimes think. But look, if AI, if some of the circular nature of this, if that dries up in any way, if there’s any sort of a bust there, I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next 12 months. But I suspect it will happen at some point. That’s going to be a crushing blow to the entry-level employee, even more so than what we’ve seen.

James Cryan

Yeah, I totally agree. Some, some room for optimism. We do see entry-level roles growing in low AI exposure fields like healthcare, skilled trades, specialized services right now, and I would expect that to continue. The other thing we’re talking a lot about internally at Willow is AI fluency is career readiness at this point. I can never imagine hiring someone without an expertise of how to use AI tools and a deep desire to learn and get better quickly with those tools. And so that’s something we’re thinking about— how are we integrating that into our curriculum with our partners.

Michael Horn

Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. And I think you’re seeing, in a good way, like Purdue, other places, right, requiring AI to be part of the graduates portfolio in a variety of ways. And I think that’s a positive trend. Pace University is another one that’s done this, like at different ends of the higher ed spectrum. I think schools that lean into this as opposed to run away from it will be— that’ll be important. And I guess I’d say like there’s this whole education policy debate of banning AI completely from schools and things, right? Sort of the Andy Smarick view. My own take is like, this is the classic DC Beltway wishing things were different.

And the reality is that first job, they’re not like thinking about, is AI taking cognitive load off or not? They want to know, can you use it to be better at your job? And so In particular, it might be worth scaling AI back in certain academic applications, but in terms of a tool to do real-world work better and learning how to integrate it, it seems like this has to be a big piece of what— of the curriculum as we develop.

James Cryan

Yeah, absolutely. And I said we’re talking about it and thinking about how to integrate it. And then I recalled that Jamie earlier today, we’ve built out an AI fluency quest, which is what we call mini units. And we were piloting it with one partner and a different partner heard about it and called and said, hey, we want to pilot that too. So they’re already— it’s already live in classrooms today with some of our partners. You know, you know, I live in Middlebury, Vermont. And so every year, even though I didn’t get into Middlebury when I was applying to college, I still leave the campus and lecture in their entrepreneurship class each year. So I did that a couple of weeks ago and some students asked like, what should we do? What should we do to get ready for jobs? And, you know, how should we be thinking about AI? My advice, and I’m curious if it resonates for you, was to use it every day.

Use it to think harder. Don’t use it to cheat. Like, think— use it to think harder and learn stuff and then use it to build stuff.. And that was kind of my simplistic, simplistic take on how we’re framing and thinking about how people can prepare to be successful in this context.

Michael Horn

Yeah. One of my former students, he graduated last year from the ed school at Harvard. He started a couple AI companies in the last 12 months.

James Cryan

As you do.

Michael Horn

And as, as you do. One, he was actually, it’s featured in my Substack yesterday that went out, this M7E thing that basically will help curriculum publishers make sure that the text around math problems are not interfering with multilingual learners’ ability to access the actual mathematics so that you’re actually testing their comprehension skills or verbal skills as opposed to the math that you’re trying to do. It’s a very interesting application. But he wrote a book which he’s going to self-publish. And what’s interesting is the big argument he makes is that the way you learn in the future and test hypotheses is by building. And because AI has made it so simple, the reflection I had when I finished reading it was, man, like I’ve always said, I write to figure out what I think about something. But here he’s making the argument, in fact, you should build to figure out what you think about something because you are going to get so many feedback loops about where your thinking is wrong. Whereas like in writing, you can construct these nice, you know, it’s hard to, you know, it forces you to deal with logical fallacies in your argument, but not necessarily how that confronts the real world.

And building something will do that. And I thought, That’s very interesting that building is how you learn about a problem and think through something. And a bit of a pushback on those like me who’ve said, ah, writing is how you think about something.

James Cryan

So I love that. I think I’m a little bit old school with you that I kind of don’t fully internalize and learn something until I’m writing about it, which is why I try and carve out the time monthly-ish to write my Substack. And, you know, in our product meetings, 6 months ago, we would look at Figma designs for how we were thinking about new features. And today we look at prototypes that are interactive and you play with and we get feedback from our educators and our counselors and our students on it.

Michael Horn

Exactly. You test your assumptions in real time. Life is not always rational, right? There’s emotional and social reasons that people like or don’t like something, and you learn from it in the real world. I think it’s a really interesting— I’m sure there are a certain set of problems that are better for building, and there are a certain set of problems— like, there’s a circumstance context thing here, I suspect, but I haven’t thought that through yet. The point being, the barriers to building are much lower, and that is an opportunity for learning, I think, is a huge point that I had not thought about.

James Cryan

Hmm. I love that. Okay. Do you have one that you want to share?

Regulations, Licensure, and Workforce Bottlenecks

Michael Horn

I was going to say to go a totally different direction, which is I’m going to do a classic sort of canary in the coal mine argument, which is that because of the new regulations around these gainful employment measures and so forth, that effectively, as I see it, are going to mean that cosmetology schools, So I’m going very specific part of the economy. Effectively, almost none of them are going to be allowed anymore under federal financial aid rules. They’re all going to fail the earnings test, I believe, or do you make at least what a high school graduate does? And as a result of that, my take is that states are going to have to radically rethink licensure for those roles if they want to not have a dramatic shortage in that profession. Now, here’s the question that I don’t have the crystal ball on. I think they ought to be also having these conversations in health jobs and nursing and like figure out ways to unstick the bottleneck that has occurred in training and practicums and things of that nature in those professions. And they haven’t really done it. Will this, you know, be sort of such an obvious new area that it’s the regulation that is now creating the bottleneck, that it will force a conversation to be had in some measure? Or will, like, we just accept that there’s no new people getting trained or that they’re self-paying, right, into these licensures? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it’s going to force a conversation. And I think the ripple effect of that would be healthy across states that have created increasing numbers of certification requirements to practice certain fields that probably not all of them need those regulations and requirements in place.

James Cryan

Fascinating. It’ll be like primary care doctors where there’s not enough residencies.

Michael Horn

And so, yeah, exactly. I mean, right there, it’s a constraint in terms of supply, right, of places to pump through. Alison Salisbury just did a fantastic set of work around some of these shortages in the nursing space, for example. Look, you don’t expect, nor do you want, I think, licensure rules to go away for nurses and doctors. But I think a dramatic rethinking in some of these other fields like cosmetology would be welcome. So, and there’s a whole bevy of them in lots of industries that have held up hiring and created these shortages. And I suspect we’re overdue for a pruning of those regs or rethinking of them.

Gainful Employment Measures

James Cryan

Well, personally, I hope you’re right because those are not worker-friendly regulations in how they show up. And cosmetology schools, I forget if it’s 91 or 92% of the time, have a negative ROI on the investment, which is why they’re not holding up to the gainful employment laws. Are you bullish on the gainful employment exercise?

Michael Horn

Net-net, I think it’s a positive step forward. I’m with Phil Hill, that I think regionality as opposed to state-level metrics would have been a better idea so that we acknowledge the variance, if you will, of salaries in a rural part of the state versus an urban part, for example. Right. And so the blunt tax has been a little bit too blunt. I wish out of gainful employment— I get why they did one regulation to harmonize with one big beautiful bill. I think if it were me on the— like I had my druthers, I like an ROI focus on things. And so I would like a return on the investment, not just like a minimum floor that you have to clear, so I prefer— I didn’t love debt being the only part of the investment equation.

Like I would actually go further than that and look all in cost and I would do it both with the government dollars and with the self dollars, but, you know, so I would probably go more, but Net-net, I think this is a positive step that we’re taking toward a do-no-harm stance. Yep. What about you?

James Cryan

Yeah, I agree with all that. What you described for the ROI calculation is exactly how we do our personalized ROI projections on our platform for students, is we project their net costs and then take a 10-year view of will they be better off 10 years later or not, if they graduate from the program.

Michael Horn

Which I think is the right way to think about it. Look, let the families decide. I don’t have to optimize for, you know, ROI per se, but if it’s negative and I’m not in a family circumstance where that makes sense for us, like, that’s a severe red flag that I would steer away from.

Social Capital Driving Hiring Trends

James Cryan

Yeah. Yeah. Our belief is informed choice and, and a value of being honest with young people. Because they don’t have that data and information today when they’re making decisions. All right. Prediction number 2 from me. Our chat’s a little quiet.

I would invite folks into the conversation. So, and feel free to come off mute. This is the one I know we agree on. So maybe a little less exciting. All right. I’m pretty sure we agree on. I think skills-based hiring is going to face a kind of more public reckoning this year. We know that it is not working in practice.

It’s a lot of lip service. It’s not a lot of behavior change. Only 1 out of 700 hires benefited from skills-based hiring practices from Burning Glass Institute. Like, I’m fairly smart. I just— it’s too hard. It’s too complicated. And the incentives don’t align for employers or companies, to your earlier points. And it’s like the right aims and the right goals but it is— you said like this is too wonky.

There’s a group of funders and policymakers who got together to say, this is a real problem, like, wouldn’t it be great if this world existed? And it would be great, but it just doesn’t.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I’m 100% with you. And I think on the show last year, I came out very hard against this practice because it’s divorced from reality in my view. And then I used the transcript of that to write a piece about why I thought that.

James Cryan

So thank you. Oh, really? Oh, cool.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I missed that one. So, I mean, look, I have the same view. I think this bleeds into another prediction that I made last year that I think will be even more true this year, which is social capital is going to gain in importance for hiring. Based on the conversations that I’m having, there was a huge leap last year in applications for job openings, and it’s gone up even higher now. AI is just making that harder and harder, and people are more and more looking at their network to find qualified individuals that they believe actually have the background and experiences. Look, I know a lot of people say, look, AI is going to solve large parts of this and create a realistic skills-based hiring. I just continue not to see it at the moment. And so I continue to be skeptical.

This, this is one of mine, frankly, as well. So we’re on the same— this one we can line up and say. Now, last year, I think I said experience-based hiring would increase. Mm-hmm. Not sure that has happened as I would think about it. I think more people are thinking about what that might look like. I think we need more maturation of the experiential learning we just talked about on the education side for that to become any sort of reality.

James Cryan

Yeah, agreed. Okay, so we’ll call that one shared prediction number 2. That last year, I feel like when we talked about this, it was a little bit kind of quiet, like, I don’t really think this is working. Like, do you— like, what are you seeing? And I think this year we’re gonna get even more public with it, and I think maybe Um, it’ll be interesting to see where we go from here. I just want to call out Jeff in the chat. Um, yeah, important counterexamples of where this is needed. Uh, one is like the tightest labor markets, like healthcare, um, skilled trades, uh, veterans, and how to qualify and understand veteran skills and through their experience, I think is a super important application of this work. Uh, Jeff, you want to speak any more to that?

Bridging Gaps with Task-Specific Skills Training

Jeff

So yeah, we actually just started, at the beginning of the— well, actually last quarter of last year started testing. We now send all of the participants to any of the lab programs, whether they’re directly operated by us or like the Vanguard Rising program is a branded solution that we run for the Ascend Collective to kind of meet their target audience where they are. But we’ve started sending all of our participants, and where their approach to skills-based hiring is kind of our approach to kind of helping close the gap that you were talking about with the government coming in and kind of supplying and supporting the apprenticeship programs is we’ve looked beyond the government to solve this problem, and we’re looking to the people who are really suffering the most, which happens to be businesses, to solve the problem by saying, look, we know you have an internal learning and development program that you spend a lot of money in once you hire people, and that traditionally you may have relied on education to prepare them before you ever hire them.

Clearly, the gap between education and employment has grown. The gap between, you know, employment and workforce development has grown. The gap between, you know, community economic growth and workforce development and employment has grown.

So we have developed a system that kind of sits at that juncture and kind of brings those parties together where it’s like, send us your people who need their training, bring us the work that you need them to get trained on. We’ll give them the durable skills training that industry is spending billions of dollars on, lean system thinking, how to automate, all these things that in my professional career I did for 25 years, right? This is what industries are training in their learning and development programs.

The fact that no one’s teaching it in education was a shock to me. The fact that education teaches these behaviors out of our students was a bigger shock to me.

Michael Horn

Thanks, Jeff. I think, Jeff, it’s a great set of points. What seems critical there, right, is you’re training on the actual tasks that people right and, and work that they would be doing. I think part of the challenge on the skills-based hiring movement is we’re not sure what it means, right, a lot of times, right? So you called that a skill. I think for a lot of people, they’re like, oh no, the skill is like learning how to think critically. I don’t know what that means. It’s like, it’s very different from context to context, right? And so you used a phrase, durable skills, for that. I think most people would call that, you know, of those fields.

And people use durable skills differently in many cases.

Jeff

So we actually, we don’t in our context. Durable skills are the critical thinking, systems thinking, the things that regardless of the industry, the sector, the role I go into, everybody needs to learn how to do. How do I collaborate? How do I take a complex problem and start breaking it down into small little pieces so that although I can’t figure out every step, I can figure out the next couple of steps, which when dealing in complex problem solving, I need to be able to move, sense, adapt, and then plan. Different set of skills.

But we’re also having students come in and go through a program where they learn those durable skills, but they’re going on to be electricians, plumbers, right, because those skills— doesn’t matter if you’re sitting behind a keyboard, you’re sitting behind a steering wheel, you’re sitting behind a forklift, it doesn’t matter. You need these regardless of where you go.

And then we back them and wrap them in professional certifications that we give the participants as they head out the door so that the employer can see, you know, we connected in an LER record. They can actually see the work that was done

Michael Horn

Well, and that’s the critical piece I think that you’re doing, ‘cause I will confess, I am much more skeptical that those teaching of skills transfers between different domains unless you’ve done the domain training. My read of the evidence is consistently that they don’t transfer. And so that’s why I think you being able to wrap it in a context makes it valuable. And then look, if I’m able to take that and learn something new and be able to use that process fantastic, right? That’s the ideal. Most experiences don’t do that well. And so when we use the word critical thinking, of course it shows up in every industry’s job application. It’s sort of a truism.

Of course I want people who think critically on the job, but how I think critically in one environment manifests quite differently in another. And so that seems to be the magic to me of pairing it.

The Role of Community Colleges

James Cryan

Yeah. Great, great addition. Thanks so much, Jeff. Thanks for your important work in South Carolina. And connecting to Sophia’s question here around community colleges, how do they fit into the future of education and purposeful pathways? You know, Jeff, when I heard you describe your work, I thought of the Education Design Lab, which partners with community colleges around the country to work with employers and students and educators to align what student— what programs are being offered and what students are learning to real-world needs in the local labor market. Love it, Jeff.

Michael Horn

I’ll say just to Sophia’s question, I think actually community colleges are extremely in the conversation at the moment in the sense that, again, the short-term workforce Pell conversation just dramatically brought them in with a funding pathway for these short-term certificates that are 8 to 15 weeks. So I think they’re, they’re being brought in in a dramatic way. I do think community colleges, they have 3 competing missions as I see it. One is academic transfer, a second is the workforce engine, and the third is sort of general community enrichment. And my read is that all those missions are not complementary. They actually work against each other in optimization.

And I think more community colleges need to make a clear bet on one of them. The workforce is where I would make it. But, but that actually means, you know, college gen ed English is not going to be as important. That’s a very— that’s a big design decision, right? That has a big impact. And I think it, a lot of community colleges struggle to optimize on the workforce piece of this because they’re sort of having these priorities play off each other as opposed to clear optimization. And that’s why I think the outcomes are not what we would hope for from a lot of community colleges.

James Cryan

Can I have an honest admission, a moment of kind of vulnerability here? I really struggle to think about the answer to your question, Sophia. I— the completion rates of community college programs are so abysmal, I have a hard time recommending students that they pursue those as next steps. Usually that’s not true for every community college system, obviously, but the majority of time that’s true. And on the other hand, two-thirds of students from low-income households that are enrolled in higher education are in a community college. So they’re obviously serving such a huge equity function for our country. And the majority of students from low-income backgrounds are going to community college. And so I really struggle to think about how to navigate that and think about that from a student navigation and advocacy lens.

Sophia

Yeah. And if I may, hi, I’m Sophia. I took myself off of mute. Hi. I feel like I’m in a very unique position because I used community college to get to a place like Harvard. I’m from a low-income community, but I also used community college to get my medical assisting license, which I didn’t end up doing anything with. But I don’t know, I’m kind of delusionally optimistic where I feel like we can bridge this.

It just hasn’t been done. And I just feel like I’m a little bit relentless right now to see. I don’t know, I feel like sometimes it’s too easy to say we can’t do things like workforce transfer, community engagement, right? So I’m trying to figure that out. And I do tell students to go into community college. Of course, it’s not perfect, but I definitely feel like it’s something, at least in California, that’s thriving and that students are asking a lot about because, yes, affordability is real. But yeah, I just want to appreciate you guys for answering those questions. And yeah, I am a CC advocate and I do tell people to go into it because of course I’m an exception right now, but I shouldn’t be. So just trying to figure that out. But yeah, thank you guys

James Cryan

Well, the world needs more delusional optimism and tenacity. So I’m hopeful for the future of whatever future you’re a part of, and I hope it’s a big one. Check out Education Design Lab if you haven’t seen that, and send me an email later and I’ll connect you to a member of their team if you’re interested in learning more about their work.

Michael Horn

I want to hear James. I know, Jeff, you had a question, but I want to hear James, your last one that you say we’re going to disagree on.

Smartphone Policies in Education

James Cryan

Okay, yeah, this is— I’ve got two controversial ones potentially. The last one I think we disagree on is I think 10 countries will follow Australia’s lead and ban social media for students under 16. I think 3 of those countries will also ban AI companions for young people, of which 70% of young people have tried and, and half are regular users at this point. A stat that I find mind-blowing and I’m here for it. I think that is a good thing for our, the future of our society. So Michael, I think you disagree with me on this, and so I’m curious.

Michael Horn

You’d be surprised. I would say I take the Tyler Cowen pushback on the Australia law very seriously, that there could be a lot of unintended free speech consequences. And I am not wild about kids being on social media algorithmic or AI companion services as registered users. And so I’m actually probably leaning closer to you on this one than you’d expect. Where I’m different is I’m not wild about the cell phone bans top down in schools because I want to create room for the educators to have productive uses of them. But that doesn’t include social media or AI companions. So like I would, I actually think we would help the educator use case on that.

If we had those bans in place and took them seriously. And I still think, by the way, a lot of educators would make the very rational choice in my mind to not allow smartphones during the day. Like, I think that would be a very good choice. And I want to empower educators on the ground to be able to make that choice right for their model without criminalizing those educators that have said, actually, there’s a really productive use case here. But believe it or not, I don’t have a prediction on the number of countries likely to follow Australia. But I mean, look, we’re a wait until 8th household for my kids, my daughters. And so, you know, far be it for me to sort of push back on that is, I guess, the way I would say it. And as I understand the law, you could still watch a YouTube video. You just can’t be registered and have, right, like a relationship, if you will, and a set of notifications that are personalizing around your under-16 profile.

Right. That seems commonsensical to me. That’s the addiction part of it that I think is so dangerous. Yeah. Megan wants you to name names.

James Cryan

Oh my goodness. I mean, I, off the top of my head, France, Spain, Denmark, UK are all thinking about this. Germany is thinking about it. I think New Zealand, Malaysia. Not us.

Michael Horn

Okay. No, yeah, I don’t think we’re there, although it is interesting, right? Like, you look at the hearings on, on, in Congress, this is an area where there’s a lot of bipartisan agreement, right? That sort of, I, you know, again, I don’t know the facts, this is not my area of expertise, but there’s a lot of bipartisan agreement that Meta and others have hidden a lot of the research from public view on this. And sort of it feels like a cigarette moment in some ways where you may see some legislation. You’re certainly seeing some state activity on this. I think Montana and some other places have passed laws. It’s not clear how that like operationalizes in a country, right, to just do it within a state. I think that probably doesn’t work. So I’m not wild about the state-driven sort of take on it, but we’ll see.

This is something that could bubble up. I do think we have a stronger tradition of free speech that’s important in this country. And I’m super worried, frankly, about what I see as an anti-free speech movement in Europe in specific. I find that extremely dangerous.

James Cryan

Yeah. Hey, Michael, do you have a last one?

Michael Horn

No, I want to hear your other disagreement.

Building an Ownership Society

James Cryan

Well, this one I just don’t know. I do disagree with you on the cell phone ban. I think it’s too hard for educators to, to own it themselves. Yeah, it’s just been— it’s like a losing battle for schools and educators.

Okay, my last one. I think Trump accounts, the baby bonds, are going to revolutionize philanthropy and economic mobility. I think that philanthropy will make them more progressive and focused on students further from opportunity, rightfully so. And it creates an infrastructure where philanthropists are no longer going to want to take an automatic 30% off the top of their philanthropy for overhead and then be uncertain around the programmatic impact. I’m bullish on Trump accounts.

Michael Horn

I did not expect you to go there. I don’t disagree actually with you on this one either, believe it or not. I think it’s a positive thing in terms of— I’m not sure how I feel about universal basic income. I’m not sure that the evidence from my standpoint backs up a jobless future. And giving people equity in the future, I think, is a positive thing. And so your idea, I hadn’t thought about the philanthropy piece of it, but I think that’s compelling. I do think that no one should be naming things for living politicians as a general rule, but that’s a separate point. But I think the structure actually is a very compelling way to build up an ownership society, which I think the US would do well to move to move more aggressively into in general.

James Cryan

The Dell commitment more than doubled their foundation’s entire giving with that one commitment.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s really interesting. So we’ll see how it plays out. I’ll stay on that for one second. The last one that I’ve been puzzling over, and I just— I don’t have a strong take on it for a prediction, but the ECA, right, piece of the one big beautiful bill that gave choice for states to arguably opt in. Even if the states don’t, it creates scholarship, scholarship contribution opportunities for individuals. And so politically, that is going to build, I think, a lot of momentum for choice. Like, wait a minute, you’re not letting our students benefit from it.

And the real wildcard, I think, is what the regulations end up looking like and how much customization can you do within those structures. And so that’s— I’m not ready to— I don’t feel informed enough to make a prediction, but I think it’s a really interesting trend line.

James Cryan

Yeah, that’ll be interesting. I’m helping set up a scholarship foundation in Colorado to take advantage of, because Governor Polis opted in, which I think is the right call for governors. Why would you leave free money for—

Michael Horn

Yeah, because it’s not state dollars, right?

James Cryan

That’s right. Well, this has been fun, as I expected. Thank you so much for joining us, Michael, and thanks to the folks who joined us and participated in the conversation. Hope it was sparked, you know, the point of doing predictions is not to be right, it is to spark a more constructive and better future. And so hopefully that, that certainly happened for me, and hopefully that happened for others in the room today.

Michael Horn

Huge thanks, and I’ll shout out Gina’s 3 areas, also in the chat of: teach K-12 how to embrace AI and not ban it, Shift high school credit requirements to include work-based learning and valuable skills and revisit recognition for industry-related certifications and shift to recognized application of the learning. I’m all for showing evidence in general and not just taking people’s word for it.

James Cryan

So those are good 3. So, Gina, are you in Colorado? That’s pretty similar to Colorado’s big 3.

Gina

I live in Colorado, but I work for Acceleration Academies. We’re in 9 different states. So, yeah. I was just going to say my husband’s a high school principal out here in Aurora, so I see a lot from his perspective as well.

James Cryan

Excellent. All right. Well, thank you again, Michael, and to all of our folks who joined us. This was fun.

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I’m normally the one asking the questions on this podcast. But when Kelly Smith, founder of the microschools solutions provider, Prenda, reached out with a bigger question around how has disruptive innovation in education evolved since Clay Christensen, Curtis Johnson, and I published Disrupting Class, I was thrilled to join him in a conversation on his KindlED podcast (check it out!)—with the idea that I’d also post it here.

In this conversation, we discussed why technology alone did not (and will not!) produce the student-centered transformation many expected, how entrenched school structures and family habits can slow change, and how microschools, homeschooling, and education savings accounts are creating new pathways for more customized learning. We also reflected on the growing role of parents in shaping educational choices, the relationship between learner-centeredness and rigor, and what a more pluralistic, choice-filled future for schooling could look like. I hope you enjoy our conversation—and look forward to your thoughts.

Michael Horn:

A school doesn’t move to mastery-based learning, but they move to mastery-based grading, which I think is the wrong way to organize the world, but they’ll make that move first. And parents are like, whoa, like rebellion, right? Like, what are you doing? So like, you can see when you jump ahead of them, yeah, you get pushback. But if the parents are in the driver’s seat and they’re sort of piece by piece, like, wait, can I do that? Wait, can I have that? Like, they start to assemble the pieces in community.

Kelly Smith:

Hello and welcome to the Kindled Podcast for another exciting episode. I’m Kelly Smith. I’ll be your host today. I’m excited to be talking to Michael Horn. Michael’s an award-winning author. He’s written 8 books, including a national bestseller, Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. He’s also teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and he co-founded the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, which is a nonprofit think tank, along with Clayton Christensen.

We’ll be talking about that in today’s episode. Michael strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of meaning through his writing, speaking, and work with a portfolio of education organizations. I’ve known Michael for years. He’s influential in my personal story. I’m very grateful that he took the time to sit and talk with us. I think you’re going to love the insights on what’s happening in the education world, How does disruptive innovation as a theory apply to what we’re seeing right now? And where does this all go from here? So with that, Michael Horn. All right, Michael Horn, thank you so much for joining me on the KindlED Podcast. We’re excited to talk today.

Michael Horn:

I’m thrilled to be with you, Kelly. Like, I was thinking about it when you were starting up Prenda, man, what is it like 10 years at this point or something like that?

Kelly Smith:

Pretty close. I think I was in the year 2017, so that would’ve been 9 years ago.

Microschools Nomenclature

Michael Horn:

Wild. So like, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been fun to watch you all grow and redefine learning and, and, and, you know, around the kitchen table for so many families and families coming together and create such cool spaces. So I’m delighted to be with you.

Kelly Smith:

Well, not, not to go too hard on the love fest here, but you were using the word microschool online and I wasn’t sure what to call it. I actually went through a brief stint. You could probably still find this out there. I was writing about nano schools because I thought, you know, some people are saying microschools really. Feels still like a school. I was really talking about something different, like very small groups with one adult. And I used nano schools a couple times. My wife put a stop to it. She’s like, that’s way too nerdy. And I said, well, there’s this guy, Michael Horn in Cambridge, and he’s talking about micro schools. And she’s like, yeah, I could get behind that.

Michael Horn:

You know, so now our, and now our friend John Danner is saying, call ’em low-cost privates. Cause some of them grow big. And I was thinking, wow. I was like, okay, I don’t even know how to call it anymore. But people sort of understand what we’re talking about, I think. And that’s, that’s a sea change, right? From like again, like 9 years ago where, you know, you, me, and a couple others, right? Absolutely.

Kelly Smith:

Well, first you, and then I just kind of picked up the words. So thanks. Another fun, fun story. I got to do Y Combinator in 2019. This is like famous for helping startups get their, get their launch, and they’ve launched Airbnb and some of these big companies. Paul Graham’s the notoriously eccentric guy at the, at the core of this thing. And Paul’s not as involved anymore in Y Combinator. Of course, he’s busy doing other things, but he came for one day and, you know, a few startups got to meet with him. We were one of the lucky few that we had like 15 minutes with Paul Graham.

And I remember it took a little while for him to get the idea. First it was like, this seems crazy. No one’s gonna do that. And then once he caught it, you could see his eyes, like he’s just visceral. His eyes lit up. He’s like, Microschool, Microschool. He’s like, stop, drop the name Prenda. You are microschool.com. Like that is, Microschool is the word. And he was right. You know, Microschool as a, as a word now, Prenda, of course, stands for more than just microschools to us. We have a mission that is really about what we’re doing for kids. And so we kept the name Prenda. Maybe we shouldn’t have, but he was, it’s interesting to see now here we are in a world where everybody’s talking about microschools.

Michael Horn:

So, yeah, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that story. That’s fun.

Forming the Thesis of Disrupting Class

Kelly Smith:

Well, let’s go back in time. I mean, while we’re already back, you know, 9 years, you, I became acquainted with your work because I’m a major Clay Christensen fanboy. You got to work with, with Professor Christensen at Harvard, famous for the invention of Disruption Theory. Talks about business cycles and how new entrants come in. You know, this is like scientific analysis for those of you who haven’t like studied any of this. There’s, there’s rhyme and reason to the way big industries get disrupted and the reason why big companies don’t often lead the innovation in their space. It happens from outside and all of these things. You guys were turning your attention to education as one of these institutions that maybe hadn’t changed that much and you were thinking, how could, how could this theory apply? I mean, I’d love to just kind of, I don’t know, dive in on reflections on this. How were you thinking about it at the time and would, yeah, would love to take a, take a peek back at your thinking and how you’ve updated it since. Yeah.

Michael Horn:

I mean, it’s so interesting to see how it’s changed, right? Um, but at the time, so Clay started working on this in like 1999, 2000, the original folks who had passed the first charter law in Minnesota had approached him and Tom VanderArk, Paul Hill, some other folks had come to him and was like, there’s something here, right? So what I didn’t know when I signed up to start writing the book with him in 2006 was he had like tried to write a book 5 times earlier. Disrupting Class is what it ended up being. But the title is like really important to the story, right? Which is one of the things when I, to your point, took the scientific look at like where could disruptive innovation actually happen? The challenge, frankly, in the United States was like there was not really any pockets of what you call non-consumption., right? Like public schooling was universal, compulsory, largely felt free. It’s not actually, we can get into that because there have been some policy innovations that I think radically changed the game in the last decade. But at the time we were like, so where is this disruptive innovation going to come from? And so we sort of had to wedge into this Disrupting Class, which on the one hand felt great because you’re like traditional classroom model, 1 to 30, like that is not optimized for learning, right? It’s built around this factory model of standardizing the way we teach and test and sorting kids out at various intervals. And then everyone’s shocked when like it does that really well and we’re upset at dropouts and things of that nature. But essentially, right, systems do what systems are built to do. Our schools are perfection, frankly, at that.

And in the knowledge economy, we decide that no longer works. So you’re like, how do you transform the classroom model? And then we’re like, there’s lots of non-consumption of classes that students would love to take within schools. Maybe that’s the opportunity. So we look at credit recovery, advanced classes,, right? Like all these little pockets, unit recovery, if you want to go down to that level. And we’re like, you could launch disruptive innovations within the school system. Maybe, maybe I’ll pause it there, but like, that was where our head was initially of like how you overthrow the, the, the hierarchy of the one-to-many sort of standardized monolithic system. And just to say one more beat on it, the subtitle originally was For Every Child a Tutor. And so that was how like we were thinking about The publishers said we had to have disruptive innovation in there, but the, but that was sort of how we were thinking about it.

It’s not just that you’re moving to digital. That’s not actually particularly exciting. And there’s a lot of reasons as we’re seeing right now that we hadn’t anticipated that aren’t amazing about it. But if you could use it to personalize the learning for each individual and let them move at their path and pace and so forth, wow, that could be really interesting. Ran up against a few realities we hadn’t, I think, fully anticipated that we can talk about. But, uh, that’s why, that, that, that’s why we went with that.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. I love it. I love it. I mean, really, like, I went through and reread this in preparation for our conversation today, and I just was like, there is a very strong thesis in this book about student-centered learning, like putting a kid in the center, activating things like agency. And I’ve heard Clay Christensen talk about this in other contexts and just the role of of an inquisitive learner asking a question and Jobs to Be Done and, you know, all of these things that, um, that really do grab the human and put them at the center. And you guys hit that. I mean, that’s all here in the book. I think the question is, okay, how is it going to come to pass? And I hear you talk about it’s like, yeah, I, I would have, I think, done the same thing.

I would have said, I don’t see a way in a, you know, kind of monolithic, uh, compulsory system. That that could happen, but I’m going to just joke a little bit here. Data suggests, so this is, uh, page 98. The data suggests that by, and this is, by the way, thank you for doing this because I teach kids algebra a lot and they’re like, when will I ever need, I’m like, Clay Christensen uses logarithms to analyze.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, there you go.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Horn:

It turns out if you, if you array it on a 0.1, et cetera. Yeah.

Obstacles to Realizing the Book’s Predictions

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. And you say by 2019. About 50% of high school courses will be delivered online, which is, you know, like a mathematical prediction based on what you guys were seeing at the time. I don’t think 50% of high school courses are being delivered online right now, and I’d love to just sort of, yeah, just get thoughts on that. Like there are more, there certainly are more, and a lot of these things you talk about credit recovery and, you know, all of that.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I guess the one caveat to that one, I’d say where we, well, if you modeled the pandemic, we nailed it. But, um, the, the, the, the one caveat to that is, is in some ways I think what it’s actually really picking up is not virtual, but online, whether virtual or blended, right? And so I actually think we’re pretty close on that if you realize that the data isn’t like a wholly, like, teachers separate from you, right? Most of this is in blended learning environments, and which, which we did say, and then my second book was blended. So I actually think like we’re kind of closer on that prediction. Where I think we fall off the wagon is we wanted it to get to the student-centered learning that you just described. And we had a logic of like how it would, you know, sort of these facilitated networks outside of the world would start to work and things of that nature. And then the system would move from very linear software to something more student-centered and directed with teachers and look at the operating system, if you will, of traditional schools, the time-based nature, the, cover all this in 180 days, how they’re funded, you know, based on butts in seats, not how much you learn. Look for all the reasons in all of our research, and we do say it a couple times, but then we sort of jump ahead and say, well, but it’s going to be different because of this, like has been overwhelmed and sucked into the traditional system, even as those independent classes and like nowhere more so than credit recovery, right? Where I mean, I don’t know how many students, but at its peak around 2019, like tons and tons of students in urban districts are taking tons of online credit recovery courses. But because it’s still based around seat time and not like what you’ve learned, it sort of becomes this synonymous with like a scam market, right? In some ways of like, just like sort of, well, throw them there, we’ll accelerate them in 2 weeks and maybe they learned, but like we have no idea because the traditional system doesn’t care about learning and neither did credit recovery based on how it was implemented.

Kelly Smith:

When you look at this, I’m super curious about this. And now this is not about the book. This is what we’re seeing since, you know, I, you’ll sit with a room of educators and they’re well-meaning and they get this completely. Yes. Learning should be student-centered. I want this to be, they’ll say things like, I can’t because, and sometimes they’ll point to regulation, but it’s interesting to sit with the administrators on the other side, or even legislators or commissioners of, you know, from departments of education. And they’re like, It’s not actually, the regs actually allow a lot more than what we’re seeing. It’s that, you know, people are used to it a certain way.

Kelly Smith:

And I’ve even heard, you know, the third angle of this is the parents don’t really want it to be that different. So, I mean, what’s your, your kind of, how do you make sense of all of this and why maybe we haven’t raced to a world of student-centered, uh, like we, we all kind of hoped we would?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I think, well, the parent piece of it, I think is real, right? And, and let’s maybe let’s park that because I think you’re part of the movement that could change that over time. Right. But it’s like a much longer time time horizon, I think. But on the first one, so the logic of disruptive innovation, why organizations fundamentally don’t change, why systems, like everyone’s like systems change, systems don’t change. They get disrupted by new systems, right? And so, and the reason for that is Clay articulated is that every organization has a business model in effect, dirty word in education, but it’s effectively a business model where you have a value proposition, resources, processes, and then some sort of financial formula that supports it all. And what you really very quickly realize is all of these things become interdependently locked, like as you’ve run it through a few years in a row, right? And process in particular is where culture lives. And it’s almost like grooves in like a, you know, you’re cross-country skiing, right? Like you’re like the grooves in the snow, you can’t even step out of them or the train tracks, right? And like, just organizations become exceptionally good at making process incredibly rigid, which I get, like a good process is built to design to solve one kind of problem.

Well, it’s not built to solve all kinds of problems. If it, if it was, it’d be a really lousy process by definition. But as a result of that, how many thousands of processes unspoken and practices and like, this is just the way things work here are done in schools every single day. Forget to get for, you know, forget like the planning cycles of master schedules and all those things, right? That just cause it to say it’s like really hard to break out of it. So like I would have this discussion a lot of times with policymakers because when I was at the Christensen Institute, which Clay and I co-founded, I spent a lot of time testifying in state capitols and they would create these waivers, right, for, you know, get out of seat time, right? All sorts of flexibility in the law. And then they’d say, well, like, none of the schools are taking advantage of it. And it was like, well, because like, they’re, they have their pro, like, they have their practices and processes that are extremely exquisitely well honed for the existing policies. And I would even go so far as like, K12 Inc, now Stride Connections, right, then got acquired by Pearson, these full-time virtual learning schools that school networks that popped up in around like 2000, they, I mean, you remember this, Kelly, like they exquisitely have built technology systems to map back to seat time laws.

And then, right, exactly. And then like, you were like, well, why aren’t you doing X? And like, I mean, I guess we could have, but we’ve built this incredible technology that is geared around like the traditional and they couldn’t even get out of their own way. Right. In many ways.

Kelly Smith:

And they would say, well, we had to make some compromises. We were up against rules and requirements, and even if one state allows it, other states don’t. And so you kind of go back to, yeah, it’s interesting to watch this all play out. It’s like, no, everyone wants it to change. Honestly, I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t, but can’t. And maybe an example of this that’s concrete is you and I have friends that have done these workshops, right? You’ll get a bunch of educators together and they’ll always start with the same speech, right? It’s a blank sheet of paper. Look at this.

And they’ll physically have a blank sheet of paper and like, let’s design around what we think school could possibly be and how amazing. And people get excited, the energy’s there. And by the end of that session, it looks very similar. I mean, every time it’s like maybe it has Japanese classes.

Michael Horn:

Well, it’s right. And I think that’s what’s unique about say Prenda or like Florida Virtual School, right? When they did these exercises in effect, because they were creating something completely different that was allowed to operate outside. And that is the innovator’s dilemma or the logic of disruption that you led with, which is it really does take independent organizations that do not make those compromises with the existing system or value chain. I remember our early phone calls when you were designing Prenda. Like my big concern for you was, oh, if you partner with a school, are you going to have to make an accommodation? Like be like, that was my big worry for you, right?

Kelly Smith:

Yes, by the way, you were right.

Michael Horn:

Interesting. Okay. Well, so yeah, I mean, that was my big concern, right? Was like, like you have to fit into, and then my, my colleague at the Christensen Institute, Tom Arnett, like, and loves to talk about on top of the business models, you have value networks, right? Where you’re sort of form-fitting into the ecosystem around you and that further constrains. And look, at some point you are form-fitting into society, right? The question is at what level, I think, and what node.

The Impact of Evolving School Choices

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a fascinating question. I want to get back to the theory here and just say, if you were to redo this book now and given kind of what you saw, because it sounds like one of the assumptions you had was compulsory monolithic, you know, a system where there’s not really, you could do things differently in the classrooms, but you can’t really get out of it. Now we’ve seen homeschool rise. We’ve been through COVID. We’ve seen families look at this differently. I think you are seeing parents taking a little bit more ownership. They’re at least awake to it. They’re asking questions. What is going on? How is my kid doing? And, and they’re not just assuming everything’s fine. And then, uh, and then school choice, right? So now there’s this mechanism by which families can get some percentage of the tax dollars that would go toward public education. They can use it for educating their own kid. I think those things have shaken things up a little bit, and I would love to just kind of hear your perspective as you think about that now.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that’s my read as well. I think it’s not in the book, but homeschooling was growing quite a bit when we wrote Disrupting Class as well. It was going through sort of the first boom, I would argue, powered by the online learning, right? That was now, that now made it far easier to sort of give your kid a, uh, an education beyond the couple things you knew really well, right? And, but we did actually that same logarithmic S-curve calculation on the growth of homeschooling and it flattened out at around 10% of families, which I think like finger to the wind is about the upper limit of, right? Families that want their kids at home. But now you couple that with some innovations that have unlocked hey, you can send them over to Kelly’s house, right, for, for learning. You can send them to the church. You can write like these micro schools, et cetera. And then the other piece you just named COVID, obviously awakening a lot of families and asking questions that they weren’t asking before. And then the fourth, which I think is the biggest, is these educational choice.

In particular, I actually think there’s a big difference between vouchers and educational savings accounts. I think the educational savings accounts are a big policy innovation over vouchers because now I have dollars in an account where I’m making a series of decisions across multiple providers and I’m making cost-value trade-offs, right? And trade-offs are really important. And then the other piece of that is now I’m a family in Arizona or wherever, you know, name your state. I could go to the quote unquote free public school, but I’m actually losing out on how many thousands of dollars, right? In the education savings account. All of a sudden it doesn’t feel free. It feels like a negative when I could be customizing my education for my kid. And so now all of a sudden, quote unquote, it feels pricey. And so to me, one of the big unlocks of microschools that was interesting and why I started writing about them before these policies gained steam was I started saying, well, the other place disruption happens is not from non-consumption.

It’s when the existing system overserves families. And you’re like, public schools don’t overserve families. Like, we’re not learning nearly enough, blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, actually not. Not true, right? There’s plenty of families that look at it and they’re like, the academics are like, my kid’s fine on that front, but like, I really don’t care about, you know, the 15 sports teams and the 26 clubs and the, you know, the 5 bands that they like. I just want like the best piano experience coupled with like a tailored learning around this, right? Or whatever it is. And you’re like, okay, so they’re overserved. Plus educational savings accounts now makes it feel more expensive too.

To me, that’s dynamic. And I think it creates real room for, you know, if I rewrote it now, Disrupting Schools. Now we can get out of the system, right? That’s pretty, at least in my mind, that’s pretty huge.

Fostering Family Buy-In

Kelly Smith:

I hope you guys listening at home are recognizing the impact of this. I mean, I think we are at that moment, but it’s interesting to hear you talk about it. I work with a lot of parents. I get to be there often at the, the very first sort of realization of what an ESA even is. And they’re like, wait, what? How does this work? So I’m, we’re not yet at this point you’re describing where, I mean, out here in Arizona, it’s 10% of the kids in, in K-12 in Arizona are doing ESA. So it’s not unheard of, but I’m still, most people, if I just pick a parent and start talking to them about it, they have not heard of it yet. And, and I think. I think as that kind of climbs up the S-curve, there is that tipping point where people say, yeah, there is an opportunity cost to not taking that scholarship.

I think on the flip side, it can feel scary. I mean, there’s all the psychology around, well, now I’m in charge. Once I get that money, it’s like, there’s, there’s at least comfort in sort of just doing what everyone else does, sending them to the school everyone else goes to. Even if I, you know, I personally don’t feel super happy with it, I can at least kind of tell myself a story that feels good. Yeah, the tipping point here is I see enough of an opportunity to sort of quell my fears around that. And it is, you know, I don’t want to just passively sit there and go with whatever the— we wouldn’t do that in almost any other aspects of our lives. You think about health and nutrition and, you know, apparel, like we research the heck out of things.

We study them. We’re agents in our own personal decisions. We’re with our child, our precious child and their whole future 7 hours a day for however many days.

Michael Horn:

It’s, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s, I think I told you this, my, yeah, I think if I can’t remember both of my daughters, but definitely one of them read your book in addition to me, she sort of grabbed it off my nightstand and read it. And she was like, yeah, Dad, like, this is weird. Why don’t you, why aren’t more families doing these things? It was really interesting to like hear her just sort of give her like very childlike, right. Sort of blunt view of like, this just makes sense. Of course you would make these choices. Right. But I think what you just said is right. Like, parents, and you said parents like push back against it.

And you see it like, I’ll give a couple examples where you see it in big, big places, right? Number one is like a school doesn’t move to mastery-based learning, but they move to mastery-based grading, which I think is the wrong way to like organize the world. But, but they’ll, they’ll, they’ll make that move first and parents are like, whoa, like rebellion, right? Like, what are you doing? And so, so like you can see when you jump ahead of them, yeah, you get pushback. But if the parents are in the driver’s seat and they’re sort of piece by piece, like, wait, can I do that? Wait, can I have that? Like, they start to assemble the pieces in community. And I think that’s the big part that you’re pointing to, right? Like with social proof, with others around it, it’s not like data saying, is this a good choice or a bad choice? But like, man, I know my friend did this and now I’m going to like have that experience too. And our friends at outschool.org are like, done some great research right around the importance of social proof in helping people actually use those ESA dollars and actually activate them. To me, that’s like the bit by bit where you start to see maybe that S-curve actually materialize in a way that’s not just like we’ve digitized the existing system, which by the way, not only was that not great, it also like has had a bunch of negative ramifications, I think, within traditional schools. And I think we did actually predict that. I don’t think anyone like took that part of the book seriously.

We warn vociferously about cramming technology into existing, into the existing system, but whatever. But, but I think in a new system, right, piece by piece, parents making these choices, that’s how we start to build a movement over time. And look, I don’t, I haven’t really looked at the calculations. It’d be interesting to do so, but yeah, I think it’s probably a longer timeframe for a full transformation, but, but I think there’s actually way more opportunity now than there was.

Kelly Smith:

Well, I’m now very curious to run the S-curve and the logarithmic analysis again.

Learner-Centeredness in Support of Rigor

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I was going to say, get your students to get some of your students to do it with like the growth of ESAs or something. Look, you’ll have some exogenous factors that are tamping it down, which is, as you know, outside of just a couple states, like they’re not fully funded. So you’re getting weight. So like we’d have to put some assumptions around that. But I think the momentum is there. I will tell you the other pushback. So there are some people who are against student-centered learning. There are a lot of my friends who like believe in science of reading and things of that nature. I’ll just call it out. ‘Cause like they’re very into the whole classroom large thing. And I guess what I would say is like, they want more rigor in academics.

Kelly Smith:

Sure.

Michael Horn:

I’m with you.

Kelly Smith:

Right.

Michael Horn:

But like, I can’t imagine what’s more rigorous than making sure that like Michael understands how to decode, you know, like this set of phonemic things before, like he jumps into some crazy text way above him. Like I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want that. And look, I want conversations and so forth, but I want a conversation around a text where like I can actually participate and have a real exchange of ideas. And I don’t know, like most 30-person environments for that are not that great. But what’s your ratio, like 6 or so?

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, 7.5 is the average per class right now.

Michael Horn:

Okay, so there you go. Like, that’s probably a pretty interesting conversation.

Kelly Smith:

No, and I know these folks too. They’re friends. I’m always curious. It feels a little bit like like just apologetic or it’s basically, it’s hard to be an educator, which I agree with, to really be and do teacher-led. And there’s not that many of ‘em, so that’s what brings them to 25 or 30 kids. But I, I don’t think they would say if you had a great educational experience for 10, I think most people would say that’s, that’s gonna be better. You can dive deeper or you can get into it. And with, with more data, more visibility as well.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. I don’t know. Do you see those as mutually exclusive? Rigorous learning and student-centered? I mean, are those two competing ideas?

Michael Horn:

I don’t, I don’t even, yeah, I, I don’t personally, I don’t. I get that there have been some parts of the quote unquote personalized learning world that have been less rigorous in the sense of like concepts are a little bit too atomic. They’re like lack coherence, right? Yeah. In terms of like what you’re learning about and sort of like a lot of ping-ponging around and piecemeal. I don’t I, look, I, I helped set up the Robinhood Learning and Tech Fund back in 2015, and the basic hypothesis around literacy was you could use the technology to really personalize, like, the, the mastery of the skills of how to read, right, while creating a really content-coherent, rich set of opportunities for students to, to, to build that background knowledge to access anything. I guess the other thing I would say is there’s a group of folks who I love, but they’re convinced that there is one canon in all of this. And I don’t know how you think about it, but I agree there’s a lot of useful texts that are like culturally helpful across. And but like, I do think that there is an exaggeration of like how common that is.

Michael Horn:

And I suspect that they would be pretty horrified at some pretty foundational texts that I have never read. Yeah. And I think I have gotten by okay.

Kelly Smith:

Well, let’s not expose ourselves too much here, Michael. I don’t want to, I definitely don’t want anybody watching this and judging us, but the same, right? And I think they would also be intrigued to find something that I have read and that’s, that’s made a difference in my life that wasn’t in their list. Right.

Michael Horn:

Oh, that’s interesting. It goes both ways.

Looking Ahead to the Future of School Choice

Kelly Smith:

Who’s to say like, this is an education, you know, that feels very, 18th century schoolmaster in Princeton or something. What do you see as, just as we look at where we’re at and we don’t know where we are on the S-curve, but it’s definitely climbing. It’s rising. One quick test I do on this is I look at Google Trends for the word microschool and I go all the way back to 2004 and it’s just nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s a little blip and then there’s this like spike in 2020, which of course, right? Everyone was talking about microschools in 2020. And then, um, since then it goes back down and it’s just this noisy but consistent, like steady. I mean, we’re well above where we were at peak, peak COVID in terms of just Google searches, right? People are actually looking up this word and thinking about it. And we see this in, in the business.

Like we’ll go out to a new entity, right? Texas has an EFA program, ESA-style program, and we do a webinar about microschools and people come, they show up, and then we talk to ‘em on the phone and they’ve researched and they’ve got a vision for what they want to do and they’re ready to go and making plans. And, and so you can feel the maturity of the concept. Yeah. And I think depending on your interpretation of how parents think about this and what they want, I think we could argue that we’re still relatively very early stage in microschools. As you mentioned, it’s a, it’s a long journey. It’s, it’s a lot going on and it’s going to take, I would imagine, a long time, but I don’t think it caps at 10% either. I think there’s a lot of families that are going to find a lot of value in this. Be curious to just hear your, yeah, your thoughts. Just what are you seeing today? Things that make you excited, things that you’re maybe concerned about.

Michael Horn:

So I largely agree with, well, I agree with actually everything you just said. So let’s start there, right? Which is to me, it feels like the momentum is growing. The numbers are growing. A lot of families want different experiences. And look, I think some families will continue to opt for a traditional experience, but like, it’ll be an active choice as opposed to a passive thing that it’s just because I’m supposed to. And I think that’s part of this is like, I imagine that there’s going to be just a multiplicity, like an explosion of opportunities for students in the future. And where I am in Massachusetts, we’re the furthest thing from having an ESA, I think, probably anywhere in the country. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m like, I am just fighting to have like an array of very different options open for my kids by the time they get to high school.

Like, that’s my mission is to see like, hey, there are 6 meaningfully different options that you can choose that fit like the the kind of person you think you want to go be, right? And then you have the information to make that choice yourself. So I feel like it’s growing though in the other states. You know, you mentioned Texas. By the time this comes out, I think it’s going to be oversubscribed already, right? The number of slots, we’re well on the way to that as of the day we’re recording, day two of having them released it open or whatever it is. So that’s exploding, I think. The things I’m worried about at the moment are a couple things on the policy front. One, legislators who are putting in input-based or accreditation requirements as part of these, I think that is a very bad idea. It’s not been a good quality seal in higher ed where we have a lot of experience about this.

I think that would, like, we want lower barriers to entry. We don’t want to do anything that raises barriers to entry in my mind in terms of education entrepreneurship right now. And then the second thing I would say that sort of like I think goes alongside that is there’s a bunch of the newer ESA laws that make it tuition first for those dollars. I would much rather the families have much more choice on like how they spend it. Look, you come up with your guidelines of what counts in your education marketplace, but then let the families make the choices around these things. You don’t know their circumstances. You don’t know if they need like a one microschool anchor experience with other things around it, or if they are going to, you know, go full à la carte. I think that’s the minority for the foreseeable future, but Certainly in Florida, more families are moving to a lot of interesting experiences around that.

And I think that’s great. Understand, hey, my kid already knows X, Y, and Z because of our home environment. This is the thing that I want them to go chase. Like, that’s awesome, I think.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, no, it’s exciting. And I share your concern. I mean, it’s interesting your point from earlier, and you’re saying it again here that, you know, putting the money in their hand as money. Not like a coupon to go to a private school. It’s like, this is dollars and it has a dollar sign. Now it shifts the psychology. I’m going to think about this differently because, you know, I understand how money works and I understand how markets work. We, this is, this literally just happened yesterday.

I talked to an educator in Florida, 26 years with special ed education. Like she’s deep and she’s so passionate and so caring and she’s frustrated. She’s been limited in her, you know, traditional environment for what she’s able to do, and a lot of emphasis on testing, just things that are getting in the way of her responding to what she sees kids need. So she’s ready to start a microschool, right? And these are the conversations I love. She immediately comes with this question of, well, what about IEPs? You know, what about special ed and how does this work? And it’s interesting, right? One, this is private. It’s outside of, you know, the normal realm. So you don’t have the lawsuits and all the litigious aspects of, of special ed, which is what it turns into sometimes. But then in terms of accommodations, accommodations, you know, if you worked with Prenda, like we’ve built in most IEP accommodations and offered them to every single kid.

So you, you really have so much flexibility, so much ability to just tailor the experience. And then I said services is an interesting one. I actually used to like be afraid in these conversations to say, well, you know, services can be tricky. Like we don’t really have the ability in a microschool to provide everybody with the right therapies and speech and, you know, different things that you need. And the parents are actually like, thank you, I get my money. I have a person I already like, I want to work with them. So the question is just, will they accept ESA? And it’s an easy process for them to get registered as a vendor on the, the system. And so all of a sudden you’re seeing the market kind of evolve to those needs and respond.

And I agree with everything you’re saying about just watching parents feel empowered and intentional, I guess, even in the way they’re thinking about this. So it’s it’s shifting. I guess I didn’t see this coming, but it’s a, it’s a shift in perspective. That’s almost a side effect of the way that the programs are structured. That’s fantastic.

Michael Horn:

I didn’t, that’s a great story also. I don’t think I appreciated half of what you just said, but that’s a really cool evolution. And the people who work in special ed in the traditional system will tell you that the incentives are all backwards, right? In terms of, uh, like if you prize, uh, like an efficiency innovation that makes it way more accommodating and streamlined for a that, that’s a negative in many cases because all of a sudden, like, you did it with fewer dollars and what, what, what happened, right? It’s, it’s, so the, the opportunity to custom build for each kid from the ground up is just a much better way. And Diane Tavenner, my co-host at the Class Disrupted podcast, she always says, like, people think this is more expensive, but that’s because they’re doing it from a system that was built to standardize and they’re layering it over as opposed to designing from first principles around personalization and optimization for each kid. And when you build it in from the beginning, it’s often not just like, it’s not more expensive. It’s actually, forget about even cost neutral, can sometimes be less expensive. Because you really are tailoring it for that kid from the get-go.

Kelly Smith:

1,000 micro schools plus, we’re probably closer to 1,200 now. And our average is $6,800 tuition. So that’s less than half of what the average in the US, you know, Public dollars spent on education. So yeah, I mean, absolutely true. Now we’re also saving money because people are working in free spaces and they’re doing this all outside the system.

Michael Horn:

I want to— sure, but stay with that, stay with that for a second, right? Like, because to me, this will be the other piece of it, which is that the market that you just described innovating to create, say, the special ed marketplace or whatever it might be, I think we’re going to see continued innovation around that. Like, the hallmark of disruption is not that it comes in with its initial offering and that initial offering stays the exact same and everyone moves to it. It’s that that initial offering improves in a variety of ways to tackle quote unquote more complicated use cases or problems. And piece by piece, people migrate out to the disruption as it becomes capable of doing it right. And so in some ways there’s something symbiotic around 5 parents moving to the system, right? And 5 parents are watching it, but they’re like, can they handle my edge case? And then like the system innovates and then they come in, right? And like you sort of have this iterative nature on a very almost one-by-one basis. Right. And so the conversation I was having recently with our friend Tyler Thigpen at Forest Acton was like, you know, high school has been relatively rare in the microschool space. And like my hypothesis has been a lot of families, it’s not the academics that are holding them back.

It’s like high school is a big part. A big part of high school is identity formation. Right. It’s like Friday Night Lights, like all these things that we sort of make fun of a little bit in the culture, but like are actually helping you understand who am I within my community with common experiences. And so we were talking about all the intentional ways microschools can build a, like other kinds of identity forming experiences that, by the way, are more inclusive, I think, but can start to more intentionally pull people and say like, oh, like if that’s the thing you’re trying to solve for, like we can help you with that.

The Role of Districts in a Choice-Filled Future

Kelly Smith:

So interesting. I want to stay on the future where this all goes and just get your look. I know we’ve talked a little bit about this so far, but any other thoughts on that? And one specific twist I’ll throw at you, because I know you’ve worked with the, you know, on the legislative side of this, you’ve worked with leaders from that have heavy ties to the system as it stands, right? The actual incumbent system. Um, maybe this goes back. This is a story from early, early Prenda, and it goes back to your, your comment about train tracks or, uh, cross-country skiing. By the way, I’m in Arizona, so I have to like think about what cross—

Michael Horn:

Yeah, yeah. You have to adapt that. Sorry. I have to come up with an analogy for the warm, uh, the warm environment.

Kelly Smith:

I thankfully have done it before, so I know what you meant, but I had this microschool going in my house and I had already seen by that point, you know, 8 or 9 kids that had had a, what I’d just a breakthrough, you know, like they started to see themselves differently. The student-centered nature of this was taking. You’d see offshoots of their, their young roots growing and it was working. And I’m saying, this is a great model, but like, it’s crazy that I’m doing this at my house and using the park down the street for our playground. And so I went and I was friends with the principal of the school locally. We, I had known her pretty well. And I explained what I was doing. So some of these kids did drop out of your school and they joined, you know, my thing, but I’m not here as like a muscle thing.

It’s just like, I think there’s an opportunity here for them to still get, you know, what if they need free lunch and what if they need counseling? What if they want to participate in PE or be in the school band? And I can’t offer all of that. So I said, what if we did micro schools on your campus? And it was this interesting moment where she, she, you could tell she’s like thinking about it and processing it. And she kind of looked back at me and just said, why would I do that? And I think I have like a, I have a, an ungenerous version of that, which is like, because maybe you don’t care about kids enough or something. But as we talk, I think it’s actually different than that. It’s she was on tracks that would literally have required her to take a whole train off of tracks and do, do something different. I guess I’m curious, just your thoughts on where this goes relative to the the system as a whole. I know in other, you know, in the business model examples that you guys give, like the steel mills go out of business, the mini computers go out of business, but that’s not necessarily where I think I want this to go or anyone wants for schools to quote go out of business. So how does this recover or what happens next, I guess?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it’s a good question. I’m not sure I have all the answers on this. I guess my take is, you know, often look, some part of the incumbents stay around, right? And So that may be part of this story. I think part of the story is we see, you know, in Florida is a good example, right? Where there’s probably been the longest history of choice in all forms and to most students, a lot of districts are starting to innovate themselves, right? And they’re like less wary of the microschool or fractional, you know, the Tim Tebow law, right? Sort of stuff or like offering a set of services that they’re really good at into the ESA marketplace. And so you’re seeing some really cool innovation there. And so I think that might be part bit, I could imagine some district school, like the biggest challenge with the response to COVID in the last several years has been sort of the one-size-fits-all way that districts like met the moment. You could imagine that starting to break down, I think, in the years ahead and then starting to be like, like, what if we had 10 different microschool communities in the, in the building, right? Like there are some examples of school, traditional schools that have done that. They’re few, but if they see that, like, if I don’t do that, I’m going to lose students.

I wonder why not take like the things that they do offer in terms of the community and create these more umbrella opportunities. Right. And so I guess I’m curious about where that goes. I don’t have a strong, I can tell all the reasons why it won’t happen, but I don’t have a strong hypothesis yet one way or the other, because there are some compelling case studies of districts that have made these switches. And I think we should honor those and, and, and like see where it goes. And part of my hypothesis would be the way microschools sort of climb that last part, if you will, of the curve, is that they do create ways of creating bigger communities when that is appropriate for the given, you know, like when being part of a bigger community, it makes sense relative to the activity or, or culture or whatnot. I do think the existing system like provides an incredible umbrella for that gathering space. So can it re-envision itself as more of a community center in effect where there are these à la carte services that you might provide? And look, some kids I think probably need the full bundle, right? And so maybe, you know, there’s a version of this that is more tailored around them because it becomes smaller and more personal where they’re getting everything from that.

And then there’s others that are sort of plugging in, right, in a more à la carte or ad hoc fashion as they’re deciding on the ground makes sense. I don’t know yet, but I do think, yeah, I mean, I guess I will say like in the, in the retail space, right? Like the traditional retailers that have done well, they haven’t done well by like trying to out-Amazon Amazon. They’ve done well by like really leaning into experience, right? And what makes them compelling. And I do think I’ll take higher ed for example. Where I spend, you know, like 40% of my life, which is do you think like, you know, labor markets are regional and people hire based on who you know. And like, I think in the world of AI, that’s actually going to increase. I think it’ll be 80% plus of jobs will be filled somehow by social network. And so creating communities where people can mix and do stuff together, I think will be really valuable and important.

So that is opportunity, I guess, to lean into place and experience and stuff like that. We’ll see what the form factors are that get that done.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, it’s a, it’s an open question for me too. And in fact, one of my personal goals is to just partner with more of these forward-thinking school leaders. I was just at an event with Tom Vander Ark. He was gathering folks together and just talking about new pathways. And I said this on stage, you know, if you are a school leader, I’ll say it here, you know, to your crowd as my crowd. If you’re a school leader and you think, hey, maybe a microschool would work, I will donate a microschool to, to do it as an experiment and we’ll make this happen.

Michael Horn:

Well, by the way, can we just say it for a second? Like that act alone would, I think, jump a lot, start a lot of this. So like coming out of the pandemic, I was having a conversation with our local superintendent here and, and her cabinet and they’re like, okay, we think we’re ready for a microschool. And so I sort of described to them what it would take for them to do it. And you could see like the blood just drained from their faces over Zoom. And I was like, that was really dumb of me. Like I made it. Yeah. Like I went about this the exact wrong way. I think the more it’s like in a box almost, right?

Clay Christensen’s Impact on Michael

Kelly Smith:

Like here it is, the better. There you go. This has been so fun. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. Really appreciate the work you’re doing, your writing and thinking and just helping shape all of this. It’s, it’s huge. We’d like to ask everybody before we wrap up just to kind of think back in your life and name somebody that’s been somebody who’s kindled a love of learning for you. It could be all the way back in childhood or later in life., but would love the opportunity to just kind of have you reflect on that question and shout somebody out.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. I mean, am I allowed to say Clay Christensen? Because he was certainly the most influential teacher who changed how I saw the world, but then created this desire. Clay loved it when someone proved him wrong because it was an opportunity to learn and refine the understanding of the world. And he didn’t I think when he first came out with Disruptive Innovation Theory, he wasn’t like, this explains everything. It’s perfect. The evolution of that over time through people saying, doesn’t quite work here. It doesn’t quite work here. And I think school frankly has been like part of that humble pie part of it as well, right? Has sharpened our understanding.

And so it’s a cool, like lifelong learning model of not like, oh, you were wrong being like a dagger, but like, oh cool, tell me more. Right? And so he’s one I don’t always live up to, but I try to keep learning from.

Kelly Smith:

I appreciate that. And yeah, I think so highly of him. I didn’t get the chance to work like you did with him and he’s passed away now. I just shout out to Clay Christensen and, and thanks for that. And thanks for being here. This has been such a fascinating conversation.

Michael Horn:

I wish you all the best in, in your work and look forward to staying in touch. Vice versa. The entrepreneurs of the world create the future and, and you all have been a shining light for our families and kids, and I just really appreciate what you’ve done, Kelly.

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Bryan Hassel and Ashley Williams from Public Impact joined me to discuss the Opportunity Culture model, which is transforming the traditional “one teacher, one classroom” approach. We explored how this model extends the reach of excellent teachers through leadership roles, shared practical lessons from scaling the model, discussed challenges like overcoming ingrained mindsets and transition costs, and looked ahead at how technology, policy changes, and innovative staffing can make these transformations more accessible and sustainable for schools everywhere.

I featured Opportunity Culture in my most recent book on K–12 education titled “From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child,” as a major argument I make is that asking teachers to be superheroes and be all things to all students is an insane job description. The work Bryan and Ashley are doing speaks to a great solution—that also makes the job of teaching more motivating and viable.

Michael Horn

Welcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, we’ve got two incredible guests that is tackling one of my favorite topics, which is rethinking the role of educators in school. We’ll get more into that in a moment. But first, let me introduce them. We have Bryan Hassell, the co-president of Public Impact. Bryan, good to see you.

Bryan Hassel

Good to see you, Michael.

Michael Horn

And we’ve got Ashley Williams, who serves as the vice president of innovation and specialty services at Public Impact. Ashley, good to see you as well.

Ashley Williams

Yeah, you as well.

Michael Horn

I’m excited for this conversation, Bryan. I think I’m going to get the chronology slightly wrong, but I think pretty close. You and I were working on a bunch of blended learning projects together probably 13, 14 years ago or something like that. And then my recollection is out of that, you sort of said like, wow, there are other things we could do with innovation as well. And we could start rethinking the role of the teacher and sort of how they interact with other teachers in the building. And one of my favorite things is like there was the movie Waiting for Superman, and I was like, the biggest problem with that movie is the title that we’re expecting every teacher to be a superhero and do like an unfathomable list of things for kids. And then of course, out of that, I think you and your colleagues created this notion of the opportunity culture staffing design model, and you had a range of models for how to really distribute responsibilities and create teams and management structures and all sorts of things for the adults in the building to better serve kids. And it was, you know, I’ve written about it several times now.

Rethinking Education Through Innovation

Michael Horn

It’s in my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent. The chapter sort of formed around what y’all have been doing with opportunity culture. This notion really of teaching should be a team sport. But maybe, Bryan, in your words, like when you all created this, what challenges were you aiming to address? How do you think about opportunity culture today? And then, Ashley, if you have anything to jump in on, please.

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, Michael, that’s a really good introduction. It really does go back to that time period. And I think, you know, Emily Hassel, the co-president of Public Impact, was really thinking about, you know, the one teacher, one classroom model. I mean, Michael, you’ve written about— with Clay Christensen, you wrote about how kind of hard and fast these notions of schooling are, right? It’s like there’s one teacher for each classroom, we assign kids there, and that’s how almost every single school in the country has worked for 100 years. And so Emily started thinking, what could be different? And she started getting input from people like you and teachers, and that led to a bunch of different models because the one teacher, one classroom creates a ton of challenges. One of the big ones is it’s very inequitable. It means that only a fraction of kids get access to teachers who are really strong enough to give them that kind of high-growth learning. So it’s built-in guaranteed inequity every year.

It also means teachers don’t have a career path to move up without leaving teaching. And so that’s another crisis in our country right now is the teacher retention and recruitment crisis. And part of that is there’s not much opportunity. And then finally, it makes it really hard for schools to implement their vision of what they want instruction to be like because it’s every single teacher for themselves rather than working together. So lots of challenges, all can be addressed, Emily thought, by thinking, how can we extend the reach of excellent teachers and teaching across the whole school?

Michael Horn

Ashley, what would you add to that and sort of how those models have evolved now and sort of the current form, if you will, of opportunity culture that people might see in the various many, many schools that you all work with?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, so I feel like I’m entering this from a very unique perspective because I was one of the first multi-classroom leaders. And so I was there when, you know, we had just some chart paper and some sticky notes trying to figure out where to move teams around. And honestly, when I first heard of the idea, I thought, wow, that’s a really novel concept. I’m really interested to see how this is going to work, but having been in the role and also having done the work that I’m doing now in my role and seeing how this is scaling across the country, I would say that we’ve nailed it down to a few design aspects that really make this work, right? And we are seeing an incredible response from teachers and teacher leaders and their amount of satisfaction, the amount of support they’re getting. It is a culture of coaching and support that schools are adopting when they adopt these roles. And so, it’s no longer, like Bryan was saying, this one teacher, one classroom model where, you know, a principal would be responsible for giving feedback to all of the teachers in the building. Maybe they get around to them once or twice a year, right? Now you have this expert teacher leader who is in those classrooms partnering alongside teachers. I would co-teach with my teachers.

I would, you know, do small group teaching in their classrooms. And it’s really this wraparound support that you traditionally just don’t get in a one teacher, one classroom model.

Michael Horn

Yeah, hearing you say that just occurred to me. Bryan mentioned Clay Christensen, and he used to make the argument in his last class every year that the most noble profession was one of being a manager because you were really directly working with individuals and helping them be their best selves. And how you did that didn’t just impact them at work, it also spilled over into their home and community lives and so forth, right? If you had a bad interaction with your manager or frankly, to your point, Ashley, no interaction at all, no feedback with adults, the way that could spill over when you came home with your kids, with your spouse, with people you were working with could, could be pretty toxic, right? And sort of managers in the ideal sense would really be heavily working and supporting and coaching like in a very supportive way, right, the folks around them. And you’ve created that structure, it sounds like, to enable that and not make it be an act of heroism as well. So maybe talk a little bit about the impacts and the results you’ve seen. Both in the teaching force, but then also like how does it parlay into student outcomes as well?

Bryan Hassel

We’re really encouraged by the results for students and teachers. On the student side, we’ve seen a lot more growth by students because they have that team wrapped around and they have that expert teacher leading the team. So in the third-party studies, kids are learning an extra 2 to 7 months per year when their teachers are part of these teams, which is really strong. Last year in North Carolina, the Title I schools that met Opportunity Culture Certification standards, which we can talk about as well, were 2 to 3 times more likely than non-Opportunity Culture charter schools to make high growth. So it’s really hitting the students really well. They’re learning more. Teachers are highly satisfied. Vacancy rates are coming down 50 to 75% when districts implement this because they’re not losing as many teachers and they’re able to attract more teachers.

And they’re frankly sometimes having fewer vacancies to fill, because, Michael, some of these models involve changing the size of teams to meet the needs more effectively rather than filling every vacancy with a long-term sub or some other kind of emergency certification situation. Schools will use a team to handle the students in a different way and not have to fill that vacancy.

Michael Horn

Ashley, were you going to add in? Yeah, I want to make sure, because you directly experienced these results on your own, in your own practice. So I just love sort of the color on that, to give us a sense of what that felt like and what that could enable for students?

Opportunity Culture Boosts Growth

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say we saw a direct correlation with what Bryan is talking about in the school where we implemented opportunity culture models. The school was a high-needs Title I school in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and I want to say at one point we had over 20 teacher vacancies, right? We were at a point where we really needed to grow students and we didn’t have time to experiment. We needed results now. And so we implemented these models. The team where I led ELA that year, we ended up getting 4th highest growth index out of 160 schools in the district. And I think that is directly correlated to the opportunities we provided to those teachers, that coaching support, aligned curriculum. There were no more guessing games about what lesson plans we were teaching today. As a multi-classroom leader, I was responsible for getting that curriculum, and we had literally rounds of practice where we would stand up and practice those lessons.

And we looked at data very intensively, not waiting until the end-of-year assessment, but really saying week to week, what are our students learning? Where are the gaps? So there was lots of work done on that behalf. And I think that the multi-classroom leader model really just helped to shape all of that so that that work could be done.

Michael Horn

It makes a ton of sense. I’m curious about this. Where are you all right now in terms of scale? How many schools are in the, you know, using opportunity culture models right now? And Bryan, you mentioned the certification, which I don’t think I actually was aware of. So maybe that probably ties in. How many schools, who’s certified, how do you get that, and how widespread is this model, are these models at this point?

Ashley Williams

I can talk a bit about that. So we’re in over 90 sites across 17 states and DC, and it’s not just one type of district. So it’s very large urban districts to small rural systems. So we’ve seen it work, like I said, in places like Charlotte-Meck where they have over 140,000 students, also to those smaller districts with fewer than 10,000 students. And so it’s happening in several places. As far as certification, this is a set of standards that were developed based on over a decade’s worth of data, right? And so it’s thinking about what works and where, and really using this as the driving force for designing the models, right? And so you don’t have to say, you know, I wonder what would happen if we had a team of 4 teachers led by a multi-classroom leader doing these things. Instead, we’re saying we’ve done the data and we’ve compiled it, we’ve done the research, and here is what works.

But it’s also a way for folks to just have a really clear destination of what they’re designing, right? And so it’s, you know, putting a structure in place of, you know, if you follow these standards, pairing it with your local context, of course, we’re seeing that this is what is yielding the highest results for students.

Bryan Hassel

And I’d add that, you know, we’ve got, so Ashley mentioned 90 sites. That means close to 1,000 schools, over 1,000 schools engaged in some way. 250,000 students were being reached last year. So there’s enough data for us to really learn over time. And so that leads to this kind of certification system where we can say, do you live up to these standards? And it’s things like you’re being very selective about who these teacher leaders are. You’re paying them a lot, an average of $13,000 around the country above their salary, which sometimes leads teachers to be into six figures in some places where you’re paying within existing budgets. So you’re not relying on a grant for that. So you can keep going.

You’re giving people time to play these roles differently and be a team and lead. So it’s not just an add-on, but it’s really changing the school’s design in a fundamental way. So those are the kind of certification standards which are like something to shoot for, like Ashley said, a destination to drive for, and yet lots of flexibility. So how are you constructing your teams? Are they subject-based? Are they grade levels? How big are they? What do teachers do within those teams? How do roles change? What kind of specialization goes on? How do you move the kids around and group them differently for small group instruction tutoring and technology-based learning and everything else. So much flexibility, but within some guardrails that are like, we’ve learned from data over many years, you’re going to get better results if you go in that direction.

Scaling Schools: Challenges and Insights

Michael Horn

Well, so that’s where I want to go, because 1,000 schools, so 90 sites, I assume, are like a lot of these districts that have multiple, you know, lots of schools, right, jumping on, quarter million kids. One of the questions I suspect you get all the time is around student-teacher ratios. I know think, Bryan, you’ve written eloquently about student-teacher ratios being sort of the wrong way to look at the world and that it often backfires as a policy response. So maybe you can sort of address that. But I think the larger question that I want to get into is, you know, if you’ve scaled to, you know, 1,000 schools, what are you learning in terms of like what are the challenges to get to the next group? What are the “yeah, buts” you hear? What are the barriers perhaps to going faster and moving? I mean, I’d love us in a decade from now to come back and be like there is no school in America where the one-to-many model still persists. I think that’d be a— that would be a big— that would really be moving the ball forward in my judgment. So I’m curious what you learned about those obstacles as you guys have gone about this work.

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, we’ve learned so much over the years. And I think one, you know, one big set of lessons is around the, you know, the leadership required to pull off the change to something like this and then to maintain and and support it over time so that it stays strong. It’s not Superman. You mentioned the Waiting for Superman. It’s not that you need some heroic principal to lead this, but you do need some commitment at the district level, commitment at the school level to say, okay, we’re going to make a change to something different and see it through, which means realizing it’s not going to go perfectly the first time and you’re going to have to come back and change things and tinker and fix. That’s the kind of innovation cycle that has to go on. And that’s pretty important. It’s not one and done.

So I think that’s one challenge that we’ve seen. I think another big challenge has to do with just mindset. There’s, again, kind of going back to the picture that was in Disrupting Class of that classroom 100 years ago that looks pretty much like the classroom you might walk into in today’s schools. And that’s just so ingrained, and we’ve all been through it. And so it’s, it’s often challenging in these conversations to, to help people see, hey, there’s a different way to do this. Now, having 1,000 schools doing something is really helpful for that. But still, there’s a sense of, well, can this really work in my context? So we’re always working on the mindset.

But then I would say the biggest challenge, and maybe we can get into this a little bit, is just that it’s costly both in terms of time and potentially money to make a change from an old way to a new way. You have to either put staff time onto it or you have to hire an organization like Public Impact to help you get from point A to point B because you’re building it while you’re flying, right? You can’t close the school for a year, rethink everything, and then come back. You’ve got to keep going. And so how can we bring that cost down? That’s really been our mission for the last 3 or 4 years, especially looking at the fiscal situation in the country, looking at what’s happening with funding and enrollment. That’s the imperative, is to make this a lot easier and a lot cheaper to do.

Michael Horn

So how do you do that? What, like, let’s address the transition costs specifically. How do you reduce those or, or make it palatable, right, to a school going through this so that they can actually move to this change? Ashley?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say one of the ways that we’ve lowered the cost significantly is through those certification standards by having that guiding process, that document to say, this is where you are going instead of a longer design process. I would also say that technology plays a role, right? And so we’ve developed an Opportunity Culture Portal that houses tons of modules where districts and schools can go on and they can self-design, right? Aligning their design decisions to those certification standards. There’s tons of tools and resources, Monday-ready resources that they can use with their teams, with their students. And so taking some of that aspect of it and putting it onto our portal has been a great way to really lower the cost. But it also, I would say, increases the amount at which we can scale, right? So you don’t need to partner with us so intensively. Schools definitely still do. They want that hands-on support, but now we’re putting it in their hands. We’re saying you can go on to the self-driven modules and you can do your own design and you can tell us, hey, Public Impact, I actually want your help in designing these stipends, or I actually want your help in how to hire, you know, really, really exceptional talent.

And so that’s some of the ways in which we thought differently around, you know, making sure we still have that support, making sure we have guardrails for good design, and also pushing this out so that schools can access it now so that all of their students can benefit from that excellent teaching.

Michael Horn

So, so in essence, the cost savings, if I’m understanding you, Ashley, right, is, is like, I, I’m going to need some support, whether that’s my staff time or, you know, the outside consultant or whomever it is, right, to come in and guide us. But now, because of the technology layer, the certification, the clarity, you’re basically saying like, hey, I’m, I’m a school and I’m like, I got this part of the journey. Like, I, I don’t need, you know, to buy extra time or, or to get hand-on, but whoa, like, so you want me to have a multi-classroom leader doing this? I need a little bit more support here than just the online module. And so you might come in here. And so it’s sort of more, there’s still a cost, but it’s more targeted. Is that the right way to think about the savings?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say so. We’ve gotten it down to about 10 to 50% of what it originally cost.

Michael Horn

Oh wow. Okay. That’s meaningful.

Ashley Williams

The lowest end is that DIY self-driven aspect of it, you know, to where schools can go on and make their own decisions.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And, you know, how are you evolving the models themselves now? Like, what’s, you know, what’s next? You’re learning from a lot of these sites. You’re probably seeing, and maybe you can describe some of the different models you’ve seen out there a little bit more granularly. But like, I imagine you’ve said like, Oh gee, you know, it seems like when people partner in this, or, you know, create this particular teaching arrangement or this multi-classroom leader in this particular way, it’s not as effective as when they do it this way or something like that. I imagine you have a bunch of lessons learned around that. How, how’s this all evolving? Where’s it going to? And, and what, you know, what further improvements might we be seeing?

Optimizing Multi-Classroom Leader Impact

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, we’ve learned so much it’s hard to know exactly where to jump in there, but I think we’ve learned a lot about the kind of support that the multi-classroom leaders can most effectively provide to their teams. And so one of the frontiers is just aligning that much better with the instructional strategies that the district and states and others are taking on. So the multi-classroom leader is really the person that can be trained in whatever it is that the science of reading or the curriculum that the district’s adopted or the personalized learning approach that they’re undertaking. And then they can turn around and deliver that effectively to their teams every day in a way that’s much more effective than like a teacher showing up for one training and then being expected to go off and do the thing for the whole school year. So that alignment though is so important for any kind of system, whether it’s a charter school or a charter system or a whole large district. So that’s one. I don’t know what you would throw in, Ashley. There’s a lot.

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would name that, you know, these are really exceptional leaders who are in these roles. And, you know, some districts who work with us, we go through the design process and they say, but where are we going to find these leaders, right? We’re in this rural setting. We’ve hired everybody there is to hire. What are we supposed to do? And so one of the things that we’ve piloted is a remotely located multi-classroom leader role. That is a mouthful. But it is essentially sharing talent across districts, right? And so you don’t have to physically be in that district or even employed by that district to support students and teachers in that district. So if a district is having, if they’re having a really hard time finding a math candidate for a multi-classroom leader role, they might look to a neighboring district who has several math candidates who might be willing to share talent with them. And so we’ve seen a lot of success just in the pilot stages with that.

We’ve done this in Rockingham County in North Carolina, and the superintendent is showing lots of, I would say, early results. He’s very satisfied with how those results are going. And so it’s just really helping us to think creatively, right? When schools and districts are bumping up against these barriers, what are some other things that we can do to create the conditions to where, you know, still we can have this exceptional teacher impacting more students.

Michael Horn

That’s fascinating, right? Because we’ve seen for years people use a sort of the virtual teacher to plug the gap of we couldn’t offer this particular subject or whatever else. But a lot of those models, at least as I’ve seen them, are sort of still very traditional, one-to-many. In the worst of all the cases, right, they’re beaming in the teacher remotely and like they’re like the native Chinese speaker or whatever. And then there’s like 30 kids somewhat unattended. Maybe there’s an aid maintaining discipline, sort of lockstep learning. But what you just described is like a new managerial model but using the same technology. So you’re actually changing the underlying structure of the school at the same time and bringing in expertise. That seems fascinating as, as sort of an upleveling of the talent at a site and not sacrificing the student experience and maybe bolstering it.

Empowering Expertise in Education

Michael Horn

The other thing I hadn’t thought about as much, Bryan, when you were just talking about, you know, science of reading or personalization or whatever it might be, you’ve created so much capacity in your school now for an expert in that space, right, who’s not just an individual expert, but they’re an expert working with the team to become awesome at whatever the practice is that’s designed to bolster student outcomes. That seems like a significant piece that’s maybe a distinction, and I’d love you guys to reflect on this because the other model that’s getting a lot of attention right now, not nearly as much scale or experiences you all have, is the Next Education Workforce out of ASU. But it seems like that actually is a tangible difference, as the multi-classroom leader has a lot of time to be able to sort of develop and then share and coach this expertise. Is that how you think of the major differences, or are there other things that or maybe they’re, they’re two peas in a pod, right?

Bryan Hassel

Certainly two peas in the pod in terms of getting away from the one teacher, one classroom model. But yeah, the teacher leadership, the highly selective, well-paid teacher leadership, is definitely a hallmark of the opportunity culture model. The team structure in the ASU model typically is a team sharing a roster of students across the whole team, which we do see within the opportunity culture network, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes teachers still have their own kids and they’re supported by that multi-classroom, that’s a little different across the opportunity culture models. And it really depends on how they design it. I think I mentioned there’s about more than 1,000 schools involved in this. Some 700 of them are already implemented.

The others are in some phase of design. So they’re really thinking through, usually as a teacher team, how do we want this to work? And that’s where they make decisions like team size, team structure, what are we doing within the team to share students or not? So there’s a huge important teacher-involved design process that goes behind this.

Michael Horn

Okay, last question as we wrap up here and we think about future scale, future spread, and so forth. We haven’t talked about policy, we haven’t talked about union contracts. What other changes have you all, you know, learned or speculate is needed to really make this sing and spread so we’re having an even bigger conversation over the years ahead?

Bryan Hassel

It’s somehow we haven’t talked about AI, which seems like

Michael Horn

We haven’t talked about AI either. Pull it in.

AI and Policy in Education

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, certainly, you know, that has so much potential both to, we talked about the technology platform for helping schools design, taking that to the next level of, of using AI to make that even more helpful to, to schools, but also the teacher teams. How can they use AI as effectively as possible? We’ve done some development of training on this, but there’s so many possibilities for the adults involved to handle tasks like differentiation of experience for kids much more effectively if they have more technology to help them. So that’s a whole frontier of this for sure. And then we think policy is a frontier as well, as you mentioned, just because states in this country have typically been the agents of saying, hey, districts, it’s time to rethink X, or it’s time to move in this direction. Lots of local control, of course, but they can incentivize, they can provide funding, they can guide towards standards like the ones we’re talking about. And that’s really the path to having your vision, Michael, you mentioned, of every teacher being outside of this one teacher, one classroom. It’s really for states to get involved and try to move this to scale much more quickly. We’ve seen North Carolina do some of that with an advanced teaching roles grant program.

New Mexico recently appropriated some funds for this. And so that’s a frontier as well.

Michael Horn

Ashley, anything you’d add to that that we ought to keep our eyes on or be pushing on?

Ashley Williams

I would echo what Bryan said about states. Right now we’re seeing a lot of districts who are interested in this work. I think we’d be able to scale a lot faster if we had that commitment from the state for them to put policy changes in place that make it possible for this work to scale, to put some funding behind it. I think that would really help the model to scale and it would help district leaders and school leaders as they’re drafting their models to feel really confident in the sustainability of it.

Michael Horn

All right. Well, you’ve heard it here. Let me give you guys the last word of how the educators tuning into this, they want to start to go down this road. How can they learn more? How can they jump on the process? Where should they go to get going on this?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, so we’ve got some free info sessions popping up every single month that folks can register for and, you know, really learn what the design process entails. And so I can share the link for those. We also have a really robust website where you can get a demonstration for our portal and actually see what all it includes. And so there’s like a webinar there and a walkthrough of the portal so folks can kind of see what they’re getting into. There’s tons of resources there on our website if folks want to start their design journey.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, well, we’ll get links to those in the show notes up front, from you, Ashley, so that everyone can check it out. And Bryan, Ashley, just huge thanks for the work that y’all are doing at Public Impact with Opportunity Culture. It’s amazing to see how far it’s come and how far it’s still continuing to grow and have impact. So and huge thanks for joining us on The Future of Education. Really appreciate it.

Bryan Hassel

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having this interesting show for everyone week after week.

Michael Horn

Well, we like to spread good work of innovation that is actually making a difference in the lives of students. So, you all are doing some incredible stuff and really appreciate it. And for all of you tuning in, as always, we’ll be back next time on The Future of Education.

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States across the country are banning cellphones in schools to try and restore order, attention, connection, and more in schools. As I’ve written extensively, my concern isn’t that schools should take this action in many cases, but that top-down bans (even with carve outs for educational uses) will likely (even if unintentionally) crack down on those schools and educators who have found good uses for phones in schools. And there are many of these use cases, as I’ve written.

But how can schools gain control of this issue? Shannon Godfrey and Julia Gustafson, the founders of a new company, The Commons App, joined me to explore how schools can rejuvenate “the commons”—that is, shared spaces for learning and genuine connection—by intelligently managing smartphone distractions.

Our conversation dug into the pitfalls of total phone bans; shared insights from public health and education technology on why nuanced, evidence-driven solutions matter; and detailed how The Commons App uses behavioral economics and geofencing to block the most distracting apps during school hours. Shannon and Julia talked to me about the importance of teaching self-regulation, involving technology directors in school policy decisions, and supporting educators in fostering healthy digital habits among students—and why that is something important for schools to wade into. I found the conversation illuminating and look forward to your thoughts after you’ve listened, watched, or read the whole thing.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we have the co-founders of the Commons app, as they call it, airplane mode for schools. We’re going to find out a lot about that and more in this conversation that I expect to go in a number of places. But first let me say hi to our guests and the co-founders of the Commons app, Shannon Godfrey and Julia Gustafson. Julia, Shannon, great to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

Shannon Godfrey

Yes, thanks for having us on. We’re excited for the conversation.

Julia Gustafson

Thanks, Michael.

Michael Horn

I’m looking forward to it as well. And I’ll give folks a little bit of background on how we got here, which is I had written a piece with an argument that I made a few times, but a lot of my audience probably saw that, in my judgment, a lot of the bans right now on cellphones, smartphones in particular in schools, while they do have an education use case clause, escape valve, if you will, in many cases, in my judgment they create a worrisome trend where, yes, in many cases phones are huge distractions and I would ban them and so forth from my individual classroom or use cases. And there are these moments, there are these teachers, there are these learning models who have created tremendously productive uses with those phones to really, actually engage and create a more active learning environment than they otherwise would. And I reflected on my own teaching practice at Harvard where for the most part it’s a phone-free classroom. We are having Socratic conversation, it’s pretty active. And then every once in a while we have checks for understanding or various polls to set up debates and things of that nature. And I say bring out your phones or your laptops. Let’s you know, do a quick pulse check here.

And then that allows the class to move accordingly. And my concern being, hey, it only takes one person to say that’s not actually educational use case. And all of a sudden you have a major nightmare on the hands of teachers. And so then, Shannon, you and I got connected through that because you basically said like, all well and good, Michael, but there’s a way to get beyond the sort of all or nothing that we’re looking at through actually a technology solution. And I said, wow, that’s fascinating. I want to, I want to learn more. And so here we are in this conversation and so maybe I’ll let you all jump in with that. And Shannon, maybe you take it first.

Just the Commons App, what is it? How did you know? When did you create it? How does it work? What is it doing?

The Commons App: Airplane Mode for Schools

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, I appreciate that. So the Commons app, just a little bit of background and I’m sure we’ll dive more into our backgrounds and what, what really, you know, created the Commons. But Julia and I both had spent many times working with schools on implementing phone free solutions across their schools, supporting schools with their phone policies, the state mandates that are coming out and ultimately, you know, our backgrounds combined and really thinking about some of these nuances that you’re bringing up. There’s so many different exceptions and it’s not black and white on how we can minimize the distractions. I think that’s one thing that came forward to both of us are the existing solutions really allowing that flexibility to adapt to the school cultures and the school needs based on innovative academic technology that is really being used or medical or what not throughout the day. On the other side of it, you know, are we actually developing students in learning the skill sets on being able to manage their phones only in the school day, but beyond the school walls and impulse control, self regulation, decision making, these are all skills that students are developing today and is so critical that they’re developing that when they’re utilizing technology as well. And we felt that that worked was also a gap that we are seeing with existing solutions. So as you mentioned, the Commons is an airplane mode for schools.

It’s intended to be a really simple solution that allows us to minimize distractions during the day. The most distracting apps that are hijacking attention and really causing the disruption and the lack of focus during the school day. That’s really what we’re able to block. Our application automatically activates when students step foot on campus. We’re using proven sciences with behavioral economics and how we’re designing the app to help make the right choice, the easy choice for our students so that they can keep their phones down. We can help schools support their phone policies and the state mandates that are out on reducing those distractions. But we’re also taking it a step further on being able to support students and really developing and putting into practice the ability to learn self regulation, impulse control and have that healthier relationship with their technology and specifically their phone so that they can function in the school that way, but also beyond the school walls, into higher ed, into their career over the weekend on really being able to learn time, place and manner of their technology and specifically their phone in this case.

Behavior, Well-Being, and Technology

Michael Horn

Well, so maybe that’s good. There’s a lot of things you just said that I want to unpack here, but maybe this is a good place to bring in the backgrounds of both of you into this. And Julia, perhaps start with you because I know a large part of the reason this has become such a conversation is actually not the education use case, but it’s the observations around the health challenges that a lot of teenagers, teenage girls in particular, based on a lot of the correlation research at this point, showing a lot of detrimental health impacts. Right. Social media in particular on these smartphones, you come to this as I understand it from a public health perspective. So talk about how that has informed your own background and how that has informed the development of the Commons.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, yeah, thank you for the question. Like you said, I have a background in public health and public policy and I specifically have focused on using behavioral economics to help shape and form people’s behavior, to make the right choice, the easy choice, or in this case the healthier choice. Getting into how this all formulated into the Commons, I was working at the Stanford Prevention Research center all on a project around well being, what contributes to it, what detracts from it. And it turns out the number one thing that influences people’s well being is actually in person, social connectedness, the real relationships that they’re having with individuals. And this was also at the same time that the algorithm based social media apps started showing up on phones, the infinite scroll. And so you really couldn’t separate the conversation between somebody’s well being and their technology use. Mixed with having, you know, a lived real world experience where I was at a restaurant with my friends and I looked up and everyone else was still on their phones. So it was that twilight zone moment where as you know, in education, you can theorize about something all you want and then in the moment in practice, sometimes it shows up right in your face. And so that was the moment that I wanted to take what I was working on at the Stanford Prevention Research center and do something in practice with it.

And so I spent from 2018 all the way through till the present working with schools on student cell phone policies and way to reduce those distractions. And I think one thing just echoing what Shannon said is that through the years of working with schools on very much black and white solutions, and I would say very much a whiplash effect from unfettered access to trying to do something about it, and take action, which the easy button for that and the surrender button is to ban it and lock it away. And so that is not the wrong move, but it’s only the first move in this evolution because some of the unintended consequences that we’re seeing right now is that there, you know, in the classroom, teachers actually want to be able to use the phone for really cool ways to engage more deeply. And students, when a phone is locked away and they pick it up, they’re getting bombarded with 200 notifications from social media. Right.

Michael Horn

That’s just pent up over the course of the day.

Julia Gustafson

Yup. And so the one app that the teacher wanted them to open for the academic purpose is lost in that swirl, that rebound consumption of other notifications. And so locking phones away or pretending they don’t exist is not really the solution here. It’s how do we have more consistent guardrails on things while also having the education around it? And I think that’s a huge thing that’s missing right now is that when you treat something as that it’s scary or shouldn’t be accessed, we’re just pushing it to the side and we’re not educating around it. And I’m just folding this all into my public health experience. When you think about substance use, sex education, and mental health, those are all things that initially started out as abstinence based or just say no or pretend it doesn’t exist. And now schools have adopted them around education models so that when faced with these bigger decisions or choices that they need to make or situations in the future, that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge in their toolbox in order to make the right choice. And cell phones are now getting pushed into that equation and most specifically around social media apps and gaming applications.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Okay, Shannon, let’s go to your background and how you came into this then and you all partnered up to create this.

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, absolutely. So my background has been in education technology, and I’ve seen the positive impacts of how utilizing technology in the classroom can aid in student success. And that is something, you know, that I think is really phenomenal with the evolution of technology in general. When it’s used appropriately as a tool not to replace education, not to replace our teachers, but when it can be incorporated into the classroom, the ability to really use data and insights to help individual students be more prepared, or the repetition that you get, some of it being a little bit more fun and conforming to what students are used to in life, you know, and those are the beauties of where technology can be really, really impactful. And then in general, you know, how much we appreciate technology, the fact that we can even have this podcast all being in three different places, technology is here to stay and it’s only advancing. And so that’s something that we need to be able to adapt and conform to. And being able to put that into our classrooms is really critical as well. With some of those caveats, right, of not fully being a replacement or a crutch and, and making sure that we’re utilizing it appropriately.

Shannon Godfrey

But that was my background. And so when Julia and I were working, you know, helping schools go phone free and collaborating together on this, I think as we were together on thinking about, you know, what worked really well and where are their opportunities, our backgrounds really collided in a positive way. Can technology solve a tech issue and be a more modern day solution? And what I love about the technology side of it is some of the areas that we found really challenging for our schools. How do schools identify students that are circumventing, you know, this policy that is in place? Because ultimately it is really difficult for students when they have created bad habits of impulse control, grabbing their phone for no reason or those notifications hitting them. You know, it is very much a dopamine release. It’s an addiction for some of us. And so how do we help schools identify those students that are circumventing it? Because it’s not a matter of are they going to. No matter what solution they are, when are they going to and how do you correct it so that your policies can be more impactful from a school standpoint and accountability.

But as leaders for the school, we can focus our time on the right students that might be falling off task. That’s something we’re missing with physical solutions. We’re either relying way too much on teachers being the phone police and managing it and then they’re not teaching. And that’s another issue in itself, because teachers are leaving this profession unfortunately due to some of these other behavioral incidents and burdens put on them where they can’t just be teachers any longer. So how do we remove teachers from being phone police? How do we help our administrators identify the students that we need to maybe support that are off task? That’s really difficult to do with a physical solution or a policy only solution. That’s where technology can really, really come to life. And then when we think about what if newer technology continues to evolve where it’s mobile optimized and the better experience is the mobile device or the only solution out there for students is a mobile device or to unlock the laptop you have to use the mobile devices.

You know, as this evolution starts to take shape, how do we start to adapt and mold to that particular school’s environment or that teacher’s environment within the classroom? Again, it’s really hard to do that in a policy only or physical based solution. But with technology it has this ability to adapt and to change. And so that’s where my background really came in, mirrored with Julia’s background on the behavioral sciences. Well, if we’re going to do technology, how do we design it in a way that does make it really simple for students to make the right choice, the easy choice. And that’s where we were able to infuse our two words together to really come out with the Commons and something that just didn’t exist in the market today.

Dropping Distractions and Keeping Learning Tools

Michael Horn

Gotcha. So let me make sure I have. It sounds like there’s sort of two aspects then of the solution that you all have built. One of them, if I’m understanding and maybe we’ll start here to clarify because I don’t think I have a full grasp of it is it’s really around a... lockdown may be the wrong word, but it’s like literally taking certain things off the table or at least making it transparent when a student is going off it. Help me understand what part of it looks like where you’re reducing what a student can actually do before we get into the behavioral sciences part of it, I think where there’s a set of incentives around when they even do pick it up. What they’re sort of motivated to do.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah. I’m going to start the response to your question with a study because the study was actually very instrumental in how we developed our technology. So JAMA Pediatrics now for two years in a row has released studies that show that despite having active student cell phone policies in place, students are still spending an hour and a half of every single school day on average on their cell phones. So that’s equate. We did the math because we are curious. That’s one month of teaching and learning time down the drain per student every school year because of cell phone use. So what’s cool about that study? Not that it’s like super, right?

Michael Horn

Not the great outcome of the study.

Julia Gustafson

But yeah, what the cool part of it is that they dug deeper and they looked at what students were spending that hour and a half of their time during the school day on, maybe they are on academic apps and in that way it’s not a waste of time. Well, it turns out that the hour and a half that’s spent on the phone during the school day is on social media, gaming, YouTube and other algorithm driven apps that are designed to hijack attention, not on academic apps and not the text home to mom or dad because soccer’s canceled or whatever. So knowing that information was really pivotal in how Shannon and I decided to design the Commons because we realized there are a subset of apps that are actually extremely useful during the day like Google Authenticator to get into your Chromebook, Duolingo and language class is really beneficial. Google Classroom to submit assignments during the day, during block periods. And those aren’t what is derailing the focus and attention from our students. And so when we designed our app we talked and we’re like, we don’t want a total lockdown of the phone. We do want students to be able to recognize when the appropriate time or places to use some of these academic apps or medical apps that they potentially need to have access to. Rather, it’s these highly addictive applications that are the one really causing the disruption during the school day.

And those are the ones that the Commons App automatically blocks as students come into campus. Their phone could be in their backpack, their pocket, they could be on it. But our app is triggered through a geofence technology as students come into campus, it runs silently in the background all day. Students don’t need to do anything. Teachers don’t need to do anything. They don’t need to spend the precious minutes at the beginning or end of class shuffling around phones or putting them in caddies. And at the end of the day the app simply releases by the time bound of our geofence or if they cross that geofence line.

Michael Horn

So it doesn’t matter what like, they don’t have to register the phone. It’s literally like whatever phone or technology you showed up with. When you’re in this perimeter, you’re not going to get a Facebook notification or whatever it might be.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, that’s the cool part. It is a one time app download, right where they then pair their app to the school. But every day beyond that it’s automatic and runs in the background. And that’s where infusing the science of behavioral economics, making the right choice, the easy choice was intentionally designed. If you have to continuously remember to take out your phone and tap it or do this or that. It’s just, it’s too hard. It’s a barrier. We want the default choice to be the choice that the school wants to change the culture, right? So that’s staying off your phone, staying off the distractions on it.

And that’s how we made it the easy choice. And so, you know, it’s not a matter of if, but when students decide they want to try to circumvent this app, right? It’s like doing a large-scale behavior change for hundreds or maybe thousands of students at once. If, when a school does this. And so it’s only a matter of time before students try to circumvent this or test the limits. And so that’s where we, with choice architecture, we decided to put in little nudges for the students. And so if they swipe away the Commons app and go on their phone, we send them a notification that says, oh, you’re at school right now. Time to put your phone away and focus. If they decide to turn off one of the necessary settings that the Commons needs to run, we actually send them another nudge that says, oops, looks like something’s off.

Here’s your opportunity to turn it back on. And we will redirect them to the page so they can make the right choice to turn that setting back on. Always giving students the choice, right? That’s a huge part of this. If they choose the wrong thing, which is to keep the setting off, that’s when we notify them that we’ve let the administration know that their app is not working. And that’s when the administration gets a notification that Michael has now turned off his app and he probably needs a little bit of a follow up.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And I guess if I get a new device or I sneak a new device in that it doesn’t have the app on it, that’s a teacher’s gonna notice. Hey, Michael’s a little more distracted in the hallways at the moment. Let’s make sure that this actually has the app on it and running. Is that the idea?

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And, and also when you’re doing this as a social norm, right, Tier one, every student’s doing this. It’s much more obvious when the phone is out. And so I think the other important aspect to note is when we implement it with the school, we’re not replacing their phone policy. It’s not, the Commons isn’t the policy. They still have a policy where the Commons fits into that as part of the requirements of the policy. So for most of our schools, they still have no phones allowed bell to bell, the intention is to have them put away and we’re making it easier to put away because those distractions or those impulse, they’re not coming to the student.

But if it is used for that academic purpose in the classroom, the teacher can also rest assure that by using innovative tech, my students aren’t going to be distracted by those other, you know, hijacking attention seeking applications. That’s really what we’re also providing. But if the students are circumventing or making it obvious, the expectations are set with the students through the policy, you get a new device, you need to come and get this set up. If you circumvent so many times, there may be some sort of, you know, consequence or something where at some point do you need additional support because you can’t handle this? That’s where, you know, the school and their resources can really step in and partner with the parents, which I think is really important to this, to really help the student get off track. Because most likely the phone is often a root cause to other issues. So now when we can look at the data of the phone use and circumvent the app, what else is happening with the student? Their tardy or their attendance overall, which we know is a major issue right now in the K 12 sector, their grades, their behavioral incidents. Like what else is happening with the student? Is the phone a portion of that, you know, the puzzle that’s missing right now to know so that we can help get that student back on track?

Making the Right Choice the Easy Choice

Michael Horn

It seems like there are other aspects of this, that Julia, you mentioned some of the behavioral science elements of it and so forth, but it seems like there’s other parts of that layered into the experience as well. Can you talk about what, what those other aspects are and how it really makes the right choice, the easy choice?

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, yeah. You know, just adding on to it. It’s like the automatic activation is huge here because people will always default to what’s easiest and, and what the default settings are. So actually, you know, this is science that Apple uses to make the experience on the iPhone so enjoyable. Right. And it’s like there are certain behaviors that they want you to do on the phone and those are the default settings. You have to intentionally as a user go in and try to set different settings to make it something else. But that is why automatic activation of our app is so important, because if people had to do an extra step to even turn it on at the beginning of the day, that’s the biggest point of friction to actually making a policy and program successful at the beginning.

But also we want this to be sustainable beyond the first couple months of implementation. So how do you think about something long term? It needs to be easy. And so that automatic activation was a huge portion of that for us. But it’s always about allowing that end user to make the choices at the end of the day and be able to learn that behavior. So that’s where we layer in some of those nudges to ensure that it is the right choice that they’re making. They are to put their phone down in the appropriate time, place and manner. And then if they’re not doing that, we send them a simple reminder. And like Shannon said before, also how do you make it a little fun? How can we send them little reminders here and there and we put a phone use tracker on there so they can see how much time they’ve actually been spending on their phone during the day.

Because when you think about behavior change, if you’re always in that pre contemplation stage and you don’t actually know what’s happening going on as an issue, you’re never going to get to that awareness stage, which is the first step in actually making a true behavior change. So the minute our students understand that they’re having rebound consumption, that they’re spending 45 minutes of a school day on their phone, that’s actually a huge win because they’re now aware of that. And beyond our technology, we do also support our schools with a four module digital citizenship curriculum that really layers in the why behind this, which is so important when you think of intrinsic motivation on this thing that’s really a true behavior change. And so we see a lot of success when our schools layer in the why behind it and that education component as well as the Commons as a guardrail to help make those choices a little bit easier for the students.

Schools’ Role in Building Healthy Tech Habits

Michael Horn

I’m curious about that last piece and it’s more like what I can imagine some people listening, the devil’s advocate part of this, which is like they’d say, ah, schools, you know, they have so much on their plates already now. There are these habits of success also like, oh gosh, yes, there’s this rebound. I had never heard it actually. Ben Wallerstein, who we all know wrote about how, you know these phone free schools, like the rebound effect after school was just dramatic on these kids. But I can imagine some people saying like, okay, but that’s not the school’s problem. Someone else has to deal with that, right? Why? Why are we putting this stuff on the schools? How do you all think about that aspect of it, like the responsible way to use technology that frankly we’re all dealing with these challenges in our lives with phones and so it, you know, having the school be the place of that education, how do you think about that? Maybe Shannon, you jump in first because you’ve been in schools for so long.

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah. You know, I mean, I think of it as number one. It’s not unusual for schools to consume these societal problems. And it’s happened. You know, Julia mentioned already. Right. Mental health issues, nutrition, sex education, drug awareness, you know, all of these things over time as they’ve morphed in, schools have had to figure out how to help support that because it comes into school. And I think that’s what’s really important is, you know, I know schools don’t necessarily sign up for it and fortunately for them, it is another aspect that gets added to their plate.

Absolutely. But at the same time, you know, I think that’s what we’ve seen and it’s always going to change. And phones right now and the distractions are the thing that needs to get integrated and to get created. And that’s where we have seen, you know, similar models, abstinence based right away as the easy choice. But then they’ve all morphed and adopted more of a scale, skill development, awareness and education model for our schools. When you look at their missions, most of our school’s missions isn’t to deliver academic content.

Their mission is to help shape the whole student. And so I think by design, part of that does mean taking in some of these societal problems and being able to be a portion of that in the education and in the support to help students learn that. And what’s really great about schools is that if we can get every student operating the same way, it’s becoming more of that social norm versus being able to expect and hope that each individual student on willpower alone, when they haven’t even developed some of the skill sets of willpower and you know, to be able to manage it on their own or that every single family is going to know how to navigate this as well, but at the same time, we don’t believe it’s just on the school to manage it. We, you know, really see that the parents, the school, the students all coming together is what changes major public health issues and crises. But from a school perspective, I think them, you know, having to absorb what’s happening is really important because if they don’t absorb it, students continue to be distracted in class and then they do suffer from an academic standpoint or a social connection, so they have to do something about it. But in terms of the mission of the school, shape and mold our students, you know, to be successful for life.

That’s where I think there’s a huge opportunity when it comes to this newer issue coming in for schools to be able to help coach, manage and develop the student.

Michael Horn

And I guess it won’t be too long until it’s all wearable glasses and things of that nature. So having technologies for a solution for that is going to be way more practical than a pouch. But I’m curious. Well, and you implicitly made another point there also, which I think just to make sure people don’t miss. Right. Which are these habits of how you impulse control and study and executive function, et cetera. Right. Actually pretty critical for mastering the academic content as well.

So if you don’t have them, it’s going to be a problem toward that mission as well.

How Technology Can Help Schools Curate Digital Tools and Tackle Distraction

Michael Horn

Maybe as we start to wrap up here, one more question that’s sort of occurring to me is this seems tremendous in terms of fighting the distractions that are plaguing a lot of classrooms and students and so forth right now. I think another challenge that technology has brought is sort of, you could argue, schools already had coherence problems in terms of multiple curriculums and things of that nature. It’s gotten worse, I think, with the number of technology apps out there and so forth. So I guess I’m curious there as well as like, can schools use this to help create coherence in some way to say like, you know, we’re not allowing these sorts of other, you know, apps or can they add other things to the list that they see sort of driving distraction or coherence challenges or whatever they might be grappling with as a school community. Is that something that they can custom build, custom play with it?

Shannon Godfrey

It’s really interesting the way that you’re bringing this up. And I, I mean, I think the answer is yes. And what I feel has been really amazing in this evolution with the Commons is that now the directors of technologies at our schools are actually getting brought into the conversation where prior for phone distractions and physical based solutions, they didn’t really have a place in that or were brought at all in the evaluation. But when technology directors are coming in, it’s really allowing us to create a stronger initiative around how are we intentionally using technology and in our schools. So I do think that that is a layer. How much the Commons plays the role in facilitating that, you know, who knows. And I think that it can morph and change over time, but at least pulling it together. When we think about how are we going to use AI in our school, how are we going to use these different technologies in our schools? What about the one to one devices or BYODs? What about the phones? You know, I think the phone part was almost lost on that, but it fits into the entire ecosystem in that initiative.

How do we think about our own school wi-fi network? You know, all of this can come together and facilitate a stronger discussion and game plan and framework for the school. And that’s what we’re seeing blended with within our app. We can white list academic based applications or medical that are really critical throughout the day. What that’s allowed us to do in onboarding is challenge the school or allow the principal to challenge their teachers on why are we using this technologies, how are we using this technologies? And I think sometimes those conversations are just not happening. So I think that also is a really amazing aspect that we didn’t even consider in the phone that now we are seeing it help to shape and mold it. So yes, I do think it plays that role and it can help schools think about it differently in building their frameworks and designing the way that they want to intentionally use technology. How they best educate, continue to train their teachers, continue to really make sure that we’re utilizing technology the right way, intentional use of the right screen time to aid in the student’s success.

You know, I think that’s still an area of education that we need to get better at and equip our teachers in learning and developing in that way. And it’s difficult when they have a thousand tasks to do. Absolutely. But to that point, you know, I do think the conversation of being able to facilitate it and incorporate us into the overall ecosystem that the school is building is something that is really awesome that our technology solution can do. That just wasn’t a part of the conversation prior.

Julia Gustafson

I think one thing to add on to exactly what you’re saying is that it’s been a facilitator to think about like the technological pedagogy of the school and overall philosophy of how they want to construct that similar and I like your word, cohesive feel through different grade levels and also a starting point on what is appropriate for different technology based use across grades, you know, across ages. And so it’s been cool to be part of that conversation with the school.

Michael Horn

That’s a really cool place, I think to leave it. I’m just reflecting on one superintendent I was talking to and he was bemoaning one of the chat bots, I can’t remember which one. And I was saying like, well, why do you allow it? Or why’d you put it in? And he was like, tell the companies. I was like, well, what do you want the technology to, let’s start with what you want the technology to do for you first, and then let’s figure out the right answer as opposed to, oh, there’s this technology, I don’t like it, sort of snap reaction. So the fact that you are facilitating that conversation, creating a place where they feel like they can be in the driver’s seat seems to me also tremendously important in all this. And so just huge thanks for the tagline again, helping students make the right choice by making it the easy choice.

Abstinence alone isn’t an answer I’m taking from this. And of course, the Commons app, airplane mode for schools. Julia Shannon, huge thanks for joining me and for doing this work.

Shannon Godfrey

Thank you very much, Michael. We appreciate it. And just really always enjoy being able to share more about the Commons. So thank you for that as well.

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The Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology (FC Tech), launched over a century ago out of the estate of Benjamin Franklin, recently had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on its brand-new campus in Roxbury in Boston. As covered recently in the Boston Globe, only six years ago, the school was seeking just to see its mission survive through a merger with the Wentworth Institute of Technology.. But after a big donation of $12.5 million from Bill and Joyce Cummings, the school has preserved its independence and grown.

In this episode, Danny Curtis spoke with the institution’s president, Aisha Francis, about how FC Tech is innovating to prepare the next generation of technical professionals through robust work-based learning opportunities. Aisha shared her personal background in education, the institution’s history, and how FC Tech’s mission has remained focused on broadening access to high-quality technical and trade education. In particular, subscribers will be interested in the discussion around the development and expansion of co-op and apprenticeship models that enable students to gain practical experience and earn income without increasing their time to degree in this two-year, full-time model.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Aisha Francis, President of the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, a college in Boston, educating students who aspire to advance themselves in the technical fields. I have had the pleasure of working with Aisha on FC Tech’s work around dual enrollment and industry alignment in the past and through that experience have gotten an up close look at the mission-driven innovation that they’re doing on their campus. And so I’m so excited to have her today to share about how they’re serving students through work-based learning. And Aisha, especially appreciate you carving out the time to join us because I know that this is a very busy time of year.

So yeah, just thank you so much for being here.

Aisha Francis

Well, thank you, thank you for having me and I’m really happy to be in conversation with you today.

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. So by way of introduction and just because I think it’s always so interesting to hear about college presidents’ paths to the role, I’d love if you could share more about your own pathway to becoming FC Tech’s president and how that path has sort of shaped your leadership in your time in that role.

Aisha’s Journey to Education Leadership

Aisha Francis

Well, that’s a wonderful question. It gives me an opportunity to reflect and share on my early childhood. I am someone who is from Nashville, Tennessee originally and I come from a family where a lot of people, people were educators and a lot of family members were in medicine, specifically in nursing. And I think I’m an example of this adage of if you can see it, you can be it. And I initially wanted to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps. She was a nurse. And then chemistry hit me really hard in the head and I thought maybe there’s some other things that will allow me to lead from my strengths.

And education seemed like a wonderful pursuit. And so from an early age I wanted to be in the education field. That desire evolved and I pursued English literature in college and went on to earn a doctorate. Earned my doctorate in English literature, all in Nashville and did all of my education there really cheerful by this extended family network of folks who were all kinds of teachers, paraprofessionals in preschools, and head start to administrators with master’s degrees. So when I finished that process, I did teach in the academy for a brief period of time and had been exposed to a lot of nonprofit work in various contexts from high school forward. And so I wanted to pivot into a nontraditional academic career. Did not realize that would lead me eventually to presidency, but the skill sets that I wanted to lean on were communications, making complex ideas and theories more clear in order to advance access to education, grant writing, which is a skill I picked up as a graduate student, initially for myself to fund my own education and then thought I can apply this to many mission based organizations that I care about. And then third, I was looking for more practical application of theories and approaches and ideas that I was learning and teaching in the classroom and decided that nonprofit leadership and administrative oversight would get me there.

Along the way, it turns out that I sort of supported a lot of current and former college presidents in various roles in the nonprofit sector. And that’s what initially exposed me to the work and the varied portfolio of college presidency. So fast forward, I finished a career in fundraising and development and I wanted to work in higher administration, continue that work, but from another perch. I became chief of staff at this college and then from the chief of staff position became president in the summer of 2020.

Danny Curtis

Sounds like a really strong foundation of a lot of education and educators exposure across various fields. And I’m sure all comes to bear in this role at FC Tech. So I appreciate you sharing that context. I’m also curious sort of about FC Tech’s story leading up to you as well, especially since I know that this is an institution that has career connectedness baked into its foundation and from its very interesting founding story. And so I think it provides a useful context for some of the conversation around work based learning. And so we’d love to hear more about FC Tech’s history and sort of how it’s evolved over time.

The Mission of Franklin Cummings Tech

Aisha Francis

Well, I was very intrigued by the opportunity to work at a tech and trade college that is accredited by the same national accreditor who oversees Harvard, BU, BC and a range of institutions throughout New England, not just in the greater Boston area. And that choice to be an accredited institution I think is an important distinction for our college. The mission of Franklin Cummings Tech is to deliver transformative tech and trade education that leads to economic advancement. And we are an access college, a broad access college, meaning we are test agnostic and we don’t have a minimum GPA. Our goal is to really broaden access to education for as many folks as possible, in particular tech and trade education. And that’s because our mission, our charter dates to 1790 to the codicil of the will of Benjamin Franklin, who left what many people consider the first estate gift in the Americas. And it was £1,000 that he left to the city of Boston for two purposes. To provide a fund, a revolving loan fund that was managed by an office in the city so that people who wanted to pursue a trade could borrow money to do that and they wouldn’t have to go into debt to be apprenticed.

The secondary purpose was for people who already had a trade, to borrow money from the same fund so that they could establish their own business. And Franklin was very clear that his largesse was created not only because he had a skill, but because he employed that skill to found a business. And so even today we’ve kept the connection to applicable trade education at the center of our mission. We are a special focused institution in terms of the majors we offer. We have 10 majors, we can get into that a little later. But we’re looking specifically for areas of education that will allow someone to get a very good paying job without a bachelor’s degree necessarily. So sub bachelor degree education certificates and associate degrees. So that’s who we are.

It’s a bit of our connection to one of the founding fathers and how we have lived out this mission in the 21st century in a new building here in Roxbury in the center of Boston.

Danny Curtis

Very cool that you know, you have such a strong connection to potentially America’s most famous apprentice. And I’d imagine maybe the industries have, have changed. I can’t imagine there was much H Vac back then, but it sounds like the mission has remained consistent over time. I’d love to kind of double click on the new campus that you brought up at the end there, just briefly because that feels like a big milestone in this history of FC Tech.

Aisha Francis

It is a huge milestone. Something that for the eight years I’ve worked here has been on the horizon and now you know, we’re here. We’ve made it. This building is a LEED Gold certified building. It’s really sustainable, transparent, purpose built for us, for our students, faculty and the majors that we offer. And the move from our former location was really just a little over a mile, but it puts us much closer to a lot of our students. Half of our students are from Boston and half are from other places. But the students who are from Boston do tend to reside in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park.

We’re in Roxbury here. So it’s a shorter commute for a lot of them. And it gave us a chance to think anew about how form follows function, how we design a building that is really industrial in look and feel so that the classrooms, our surroundings can be used as a teaching tool. So we’re happy to be here. This is about 70,000 square foot building on a little bit more than an acre, built to the zero lot line with a ton of windows so that people walking by can see robotics happening, they can see opticianry classes taking place, they can see our automotive repair shop in action. And so we’re thrilled that this has come to pass.

Danny Curtis

Wow. Really exciting times. And I understand you, you all are doing the ribbon cutting for that coming up this week. So very impressed by that and can’t wait to see it with my own eyes next time I’m back in Boston.

Aisha Francis

So happy to have you anytime. And welcome anyone who’s listening to come and take a look at 21st century career technical education in action here.

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you building that context and bringing us to the present day at FC Tech. And I’m really interested to hear more about some of these new forms of work-based learning that you all are building out at the college. Could you talk me through sort of the range of programming that you all are providing in WBL?

Expanding Access and Outcomes through Co-Ops

Aisha Francis

Yes. And so I think to start I want to share a bit about who our students are, who do we serve and what are our, what we call key three outcomes that we’re looking at. Because work-based learning is built in service of our students and in service of those outcomes. So our students are, majority of them identify as men of color. We are an institution that is really full-time focused. The vast majority of our students are enrolled full time, which makes us different than a community college. We are an independent technical institution, so we are not a public college. And the other thing that I think is important to share is most of our students are first generation and very low income.

And so you put all of those factors together and we know that a lot of our students are working. The challenge we were having is not a lot of their work was connected to H Vac and refrigeration, to practical electricity, to construction management. So they were working jobs that allowed them to attend college full time, which is helpful and it put money in their pockets which they needed, but it was not connected to what they were learning. And so the question we had is if we want to continue to see our Key 3 outcomes increase and those are our graduation rate, which is 52%. That’s about twice the national average graduation rate for two-year colleges. Our job placement rate is annually between 80 and 85%. And then our earnings, we want those earnings to go up for our students. Right now the average student is coming from a household income where they’re earning less than 40,000 and they’re graduating.

That individual is graduating in a role that will pay them on average about 58,000. So we know that we’re having a good impact on economic advancement, but we want to see that starting salary increase even more. So what does that require? Requires not a sort of mandate or request to work fewer hours. We know that’s not practical for a lot of folks who are low income and paying for the investment of education. But we also of course know that work based learning, co-ops, paid internships are invaluable to the education experience. And a small portion of our students were pursuing those opportunities because they could not fit them into a full time college schedule with 25 to 40 hours of work on top of that and their family obligations. So we spent about a year, a year and a half really designing a co-op model that did not add time to degree. We know in the higher education space that co-ops are powerful tools for learning.

They also tend to be designed to make a four-year college program take five years. But of course you’re graduating with a year and a half of work experience. And so we needed to tweak that model. We are now a co-op College. About 30% of our students are pursuing co-ops. Our goal is to have that at the 75% level in two years. It is primarily for our associate degree students, which is more than half of our students. And the idea is to have more aligned work experience with our students being able to apply what they’re learning in their co-op.

So that makes the work that they are doing more interesting and makes the classroom learning they’re doing more interesting. And to all of our co-op placements agree to a $20 an hour compensation and to an assessment so that we are checking in on a weekly basis with those students. And the ideas that the experience that our students are amassing will lead to better job placement rates even stronger than the 80 to 85% we have and higher starting salaries. So it’s all interwoven. The way that we are strengthening our work based learning offerings is really interwoven with better ways to serve our students and make sure they know about the return on investment and they’re experiencing that and better outcomes in terms of those key three outcomes that I described.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I really appreciate two pieces that you highlighted there. First it is just around the role of earn and learn and breeding access to educational opportunities. I think so often the conversation centers around career outcomes which post grad career outcomes and obviously that is a huge part of the equation and so important. But also just the ability to earn while you learn for many is a prerequisite to actually accessing the education in the first place. And I think sometimes that gets lost in the conversation and then part and parcel with that. It’s a reality for an increasing number of students in America that they will be working whether it’s through earn and learn or just through a part time role that’s disconnected from their career aspirations. And so aligning that part time work that’s already happening one way or another to their larger career outcomes and to the learning that’s happening in the classroom is so important. So I really appreciate you highlighting those points.

One question that I have in following up with that is you mentioned that the co-op model is not increasing the time to degree as it does in some other programs. Could you talk us through how that works, how you’re able to identify those synergies and get students to graduate on a regular time schedule?

Aisha Francis

Absolutely. Well, we are really looking at course replacement in some cases, so we are giving credit for the learning that is happening in the co-op. In other cases students are using the summer between their first year and second year if they need to take another course. And then third, we in some program models, actually rearranged the order of the way that courses are laid out so that students could really take advantage of learning the subject matter from your major first and then taking their general education aspects in a different order so that we could really accomplish our goal of creating co op programs that don’t take three years for a two year associate degree.

Danny Curtis

Love to hear that you are making use of those vacation periods to help students move on their path and graduate on time. From my understanding, the co-op model is a really exciting new innovation in work based learning at FC Tech, but it is not the only program type that you all offer. Could you speak to the range of the variety of different programs that you all have?

Expanding Work-Based Learning Opportunities

Aisha Francis

Yes, and so I alluded to the fact that work-based learning was important as a career-connected institution. We have long had students who pursued internships and externships as well as co-ops, but not in the volume that we have now. We also have apprenticeships, so we offer apprenticeship degrees which merge the apprenticeship, the federal oversight of apprenticeships with the degree seeking process and a few of our majors. And so what this looks like is we have an assessment that is done in concert with our faculty to really have faculty understand who is eligible and in a good place, which students in our associate programs are eligible and in a good place for what type of work based learning experience. We are also a project-based learning college. And so project-based learning still offers and we consider that form of WBL because the projects that for instance in our cybersecurity program, some of those students are in a project based learning environment where they spent the summer assessing vulnerability and CyberSecurity risk for 45 small businesses in partnership with the city of Boston. That is very much a work based learning experience. But they were doing that in the context of a course.

So those are project-based learning experiences that we also consider an outgrowth of work based learning. So you know, it has a lot to do with the students’ readiness for uptake based on their own schedule and what they want to do, how they want to really grab hold of their education in various ways. The apprenticeship and co-ops, it’s not one versus the other. They are both very fulfilling work based learning opportunities. Honestly has more to do with the company on the other end. Some companies are very well set up and positioned, particularly in automotive, for instance. They understand apprenticeships.

That’s already a registered apprenticeship. They already have a federally registered apprenticeship in play. So we didn’t have to create one with going through the O*Net process and all of that. And so you know how the industries that we are partnering with are set up. It really factors into what we offer, whether we offer apprenticeships, co-ops or both in a major. And then the other piece of that puzzle is who the student is and where they stand in terms of what they can take on. Because it is quite a big responsibility to have 20 hours, 25 hours of your week, be in a job site, at a work site that is related to your major, but also is really a long term interview for a potential employer. And some students would prefer to go through a more traditional career placement process.

A Suite of WBL Opportunities

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah. The range feels so important to have that sort of spectrum of options to match the readiness of students, as you said, maybe not every student is able or ready to tackle on a full, full blown apprenticeship, but might benefit from project based learning or an internship. And likewise on the employer side, maybe not every employer is ready to fully engage at, you know, the starting level. It’s maybe something to evolve into, but great to have that spectrum of options to have everyone engage at the level that they’re ready to engage with it. One sticking point that seems to be a real challenge for colleges in developing these types of, of apprenticeship and work based learning experiences is employer engagement in terms of matching up on the same schedules, aligning on learning outcomes, et cetera. And so I’m curious what has been, in your view, the keys to success in engaging with employers and successfully co designing and delivering these programs?

Aisha Francis

Yes, well, I’m glad you asked because it’s quite involved work, very detail oriented work I would say we built on the foundation of an active business advisory councils. And every major has a group of employers who are in the field who advise us and meet twice a year. They are advising us on the curriculum. What elements should we keep, what are they seeing in the field? So we had that in place, had a good group of people for every major. We also had a division formerly called Strategic Partnerships that I wanted to retool and you know, we’ve been grappling with as an institution, you know, how do you engage and meet the needs of employers as an audience. Right. As a service, we are providing the talent force for these employers and in relatively short order, some of our programs are, you know, really eight months and then we have other programs that are two years.

And so the strategic partnerships division was here. We really wanted to take it to the next level. So we added a senior leadership team member in charge of innovation and looking at what are some of the wish list items that we had. We had not quite been able to figure out the best way to apply these models at this institution for the students that attend. And one that stuck out and stood out rather was co-op. So we really did need to hire for the innovation role. That was important. And then once we got here, I think it’s giving that leader whose name is Michael Goldstein, giving Michael the tools that he needed to take some time and really assess how co-op would work, knowing that we would try some things that didn’t work.

So that cohort one, if you will, the very first guinea pigs who were wonderful. There were about 25 of those students and maybe 18 of them saw the co-op through. But that was a really important group, that pilot group who worked alongside the institution, the pioneer employers and those first students who helped us build proof of concept with a nascent team. Fast forward to today and this is only two years later, but that team has five people, the co-op and career team. We actually merged our career services department with co op because we figured that one of the outcomes, we want half of our students to be landing their job placement opportunities through co op. And if that’s the case, then this is really hand in glove with career services. It’s not separate. So that team is now called the career and co-op team.

And three years ago I’m not sure we would have known that we would get here. So we have to start off with a goal. 75% of students participating in co-op and half of those co-op experiences leading to a job offer. And we also are pushing ourselves to have something closer to 90% job placement and $65,000 average earnings. So all of those things, you have to have ambitious goals, got to have the right team and a good listening ear in terms of how we work with our corporate partners.

FC Tech’s Enrollment Growth

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I know that just serving students and keeping things running out of college is enough work on its own. And so I’d imagine having the dedicated personnel to be innovating and thinking through that next chapter, as well as the dedicated personnel to be engaging externally with employers is probably a huge help in keeping things running and continuing to evolve. You mentioned your big goal for work based learning and engaging with co ops and I want to circle back to that in a second. But first I want to focus on the progress that you all have already made as an institution. I know that over the past few years your enrollment has grown significantly. And when we talk about these types of innovative programs and I see those types of enrollment growth numbers, I naturally sort of draw that causal line. But I’d love to hear from you. What do you see as those drivers of the enrollment growth at FC Tech and potentially what role do these types of innovations play in that?

Aisha Francis

Yes, well, I think the transformation into a co-op college is really important and it has been and continues to be something that we are becoming known for. But our enrollment growth actually started before we made that commitment to invest in co-ops. And what we did, we took the horrible experience of the pandemic to assess, as we were among many colleges that needed to really tighten our belts. We went through a very difficult reduction in force, but we did that with an eye towards what the marketplace was already demonstrating throughout this public health crisis. What were the most resilient roles? If you remember, there were massive layoffs, you know, a lot of industries that retrenched. However, in the tech and trade areas of operation and maintenance, we were already seeing even in the middle of 2020, that, you know, building operations, building maintenance, H Vac, auto repair. These were resilient careers where there were not as many layoffs. In fact, you really needed these, what were now termed essential workers, and broadening of that term to include operations, maintenance, and trade staff beyond the typical emergency services, health workers, and service workers.

So, you know, that was a very moment, you know, kind of an existential moment for this institution is who are we going to be? How do we retain our relevance in a very rapidly changing world? And in order to make this, you know, kind of decision that, and feel that we have the integrity to continue to ask students to invest in this institution, we wanted to make sure that those were the majors that we had, were ones where we felt very confident that we could prepare students for the workforce of today and the workplace of today. So all of that to say we reduced our majors, reduced our offerings by almost half, that’s a very difficult process to go through. Those are real jobs that were lost. And it also allowed us to focus, to do what we knew we were going to be able to excel at. And I think because of that shift, you know, we really led from our strengths. And we almost, the very next year in 2021, started seeing amazing growth in more of our majors. So we had kind of uneven growth.

We had 20 majors and maybe three where there was a strong demand, and the rest really languished. And now we offer 10 majors. We’ve got wait lists for four of them, really good, strong demand for others. And that for us was the game changer. It’s really matching, thinking of ourselves as an institution that has two audiences. We serve an audience of students and their families. We also serve this audience of employers. And if we’re going to be a workforce or intermediary as an institution, we have to offer opportunities in education, in fields that are in high demand.

And so because we did that, we were able to really meet the student demand side as well. And I think it was that perfect combination. And so now we have twice as many students. We served almost 1200 students last year, as opposed to 500, 550 during the pandemic. And that’s been organic growth because we’re meeting a need that the market has displayed. Seeing that need and meeting that need is really important work, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.

Scaling Co-Ops

Danny Curtis

Yeah, well, listeners of this podcast will be very familiar with one of Michael’s strongly held beliefs that, you know, one of the keys to success for colleges is focusing on what you do really well and nailing that, investing resources in those areas and it sounds like that’s exactly what you all have done here. Looking to the future, now, as we wrap up our conversation and circling back to your mention of your 75% goal of engagement in the co-op programming, I’m curious as you look forward, what do you think it will take to reach those goals?

Aisha Francis

Well, it’s going to take more companies so we’ve got to, we are actively scouring the market for more companies that are eager to have paid co-ops or eager to start apprenticeships. We’re also asking the 100 or so companies where we have paid place folks in work based learning opportunities if they would take more students. So if you’ve hosted three, can you take five? And then I think the third piece is we need the testimonials. So in May we have a whole suite of students who are graduating and some of whom are anticipating their job offers from their co-op matches in a few months. And once we have more of those students, more of those stories, then you know, success begets success. So the word gets out. So those are the elements that I think we’re really counting on. And you know what, I’m going to add a fourth one which is the customer service aspect.

Aisha Francis

So we have to be very attuned to the student needs and also to the needs of our other customer. Who are those employers who are putting a lot of time and effort into building a co-op that is meaningful and that is on time and effort that we respect and we want to meet those employers where they are. Some of them are very sophisticated and large places, you know, enterprise mobility, some of our large general contractors here, Delbrook, JKS and places like that who have done co-ops before. That’s the point I’m getting at. So some of them have large, you know, sophisticated HR enterprises and they, they have done this and then there are small and mid sized companies that haven’t and so we want to give all of them the same customer service experience from the standpoint of FC Tech faculty and the staff of the, the career and co op team.

Danny Curtis

Well, as you said it, success begets success and success also begets scale. And I’m sure that more and more students will be flocking to this as well as employers. And I’m looking forward to watching as you all continue to support students and innovate on work based learning and just really appreciate the work that you do and really appreciate you carving up the time to do with me here today.

Aisha Francis

Oh, thank you, thank you for your interest, and we hope that this episode does pique the interest of others. We’re always happy to be a demonstration college. We have this open source playbook and would love that to be helpful in other institutions who want to proliferate this type of model.

Danny Curtis

And it seems like they have a lot to learn from you guys. So really appreciate that openness and all your sharing.

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Two past guests of mine—Tom Arnett and Tyler Thigpen—joined me on this episode for a wide-ranging conversation on what it will take for microschools, or low-cost private schools, to “go upmarket” and attract more high school students. Our conversation revolved around whether one of the key current stumbling blocks is too many of these schools don’t offer enough “Friday Night Lights” and prom-type events—and if the reason those things are important is because of the critical role they and other such traditions play in identity formation and community connection for high schoolers.

Our discussion dove into the challenges and innovations around helping students develop a sense of identity, community, and belonging within smaller, learner-centered school models. Tyler shared practical strategies from his perch leading the Forest School at Acton Academy, including student-led sports, theater, and flexible approaches to high school structure, while Tom reflected on the importance of supporting identity formation and building a strong value network around alternative school models. After listening, we’d love your take as well. What will it take for microschools and other self-directed learning environments to go mainstream? How might they tackle issues of scale, social connection, legitimacy, and supportive ecosystems without undermining the things that make them valuable to the students and families initially enrolling in them?

Michael Horn

Welcome everyone, to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through an aspect of that, today I’m bringing back two friends who’ve been on the podcast at least a couple times each, I believe. We’ve got Tom Arnett at the Christensen Institute, and of course Tyler Thigpen, CEO of the Forest School at Acton Academy and of course the leader of the Institute for Self Directed Learning. We’ve had Tyler on, talking about that in his fantastic book on the topic of self directed learning. So, Tyler, Tom, great to see you both.

Tom Arnett

Good to be with you, Michael, great to be with you.

Rethinking Education and Identity

Michael Horn

Well, we’ll see how we all feel by the end. But the topic I want to get into today is really this question of, you know, Tom and I have observed a lot of times that microschools have a lot of the characteristics of disruptive innovation. They look, you know, by traditional metrics in terms of the scope and breadth of services that your comprehensive schools can provide. They look primitive. They don’t have all the, you know, every single offering you can imagine, from cheerleading to football to volleyball to science labs to bands to choirs, you know, five different versions of beauty shop, quartet, et cetera. And so they come in at the low end, right? And the theory of disruptive innovation says for them to actually over time change or disrupt traditional schooling, they have to actually improve. And so the way disruptive innovations typically do that is by using some sort of technology enabler, they start to creep up the Y axis, if you will, and pack in more and more functions and features, but without replicating all the traditional trappings of the existing paradigm. They don’t replicate the cost structure.

They don’t replicate, in this case, we would think the time bound sort of nature. I would think of the existing school districts and sort of the grammar of schooling that David Tayak and Larry Cuban have historically written about when it comes to K12 schools. And I think a real puzzle, Tom, for us has been what will it take for these schools? And microschools may be the wrong word. I think that’s sort of too small an idea, no pun intended. But these new schools, like, how would they go up market, right, to start to displace the way of education that we’ve typically seen. And one of the things that we’ve both talked about is that in some ways they have to speak to in high school, in particular, this notion of identity formation, that a big part of high school, middle school as well, is sort of learning who you are. And so we can sort of joke, oh, those schools, these startup schools, they don’t have football and Friday Night Lights and they don’t have prom and things of that nature. But I think for an individual family looking to say, hey, am I going to make a jump to one of these schools, those sorts of things are actually very important.

Not just because of the traditions, although that’s probably part of it, but also because of the coming of age experiences that they provide and the way individuals sort of learn, who am I and how do I relate to the rest of my community? And these sort of shared experiences that you can talk about in the cultural lexicon. So we’ve been wondering, how do you tackle that? And we both wanted to talk to Tyler because we think he’s done such a thoughtful job of thinking about this in the context of the Forest School at Acton Academy, as they do run secondary schools. So, Tom, what would you add before we get Tyler’s voice to make us smarter here and we all sort of bat this around?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, I think I’ll just add an anecdote from my own family.

Michael Horn

And you’re telling your own personal story. Your son’s story.

Tom Arnett

Okay.

In that it’s really ironic. I spend all my working time thinking about studying, learning about really innovative school models. And my own kids attend the traditional district schools that they are assigned to based on where we live. And I have advocated to my kids for finding better options or creating better options. But the real holdbacks for them are there’s nothing that they’re struggling with to the point where they feel like they need an escape valve. Right. Like they’re getting good grades, their teachers like them, they have friends, they’re not getting bullied. None of those issues have come up for them.

And for them, they don’t want to give up that common school experience. In other words, they want to be on sports teams with their friends. They want to be in the band that their friends are in. They want to just be able to speak the same language as their friends so that when kids say, hey, did you, you know, did you see what happened at the football game last Friday night? Or did you, you know, what did you think of so and so’s class that they can relate to that they’re not like, I don’t know what you guys are talking about…

Balancing School and Sports Option

Michael Horn

Before you move on from that, just one question because like my observation is a lot of towns like the youth sports and stuff like that, it’s happening less at the schools. Like it is getting unbundled into various leagues and stuff like that. So I’m, I’m like. That still held sway for your boy?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, but it’s funny because we participate in both. Like they participate in leagues and they participate in the school sports. And so that does make a little bit of it. Like. Okay, so to get real specific, over this last winter break we had a conversation about like our district has an independent study program where you can do your classes independent study but still participate in the sports teams at the school or there’s an option through the community college where you can do something similar, but you don’t have access to the sports. And one of the things that came up as we were, you know, there’s different constraints and different challenges that each come with. And we talked about, well, you could do water polo just through the club instead of through the high school. Like he does both of them right now and a lot of his friends are at the high school.

So he doesn’t want to give that up. But he does have friends in the club league and it is an alternative. So I will say like the barrier is lower than maybe it was in the past. But it still is, there’s a sense of like I have to give something up if I want to do this. It’s not just all upside.

Michael Horn

Okay, Tyler, let’s bring you in on here because you’ve, as you all have operated your school network which goes K through high school, right? You all have thought a lot about how to run a thriving high school and get skeptical, maybe parents say, yeah, like I want the benefits of that self directed learning experience and not maybe give up some of these things. And, and you’ve thought about a lot of these identity forming rituals and some other pie it. So, so I, I don’t know where you want to take it, but I’d love to hear your opening reflections.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, well, we’re, we’re trying and we’re trying hard and once we get them, we’re trying to keep them. You know, I think one of the interesting, in my mind at least, differences between the league sports, the club sports and the school sports is the audience. You know, for so many of the league and club sports, you know, the audience is really just kind of parents, caregivers, you know, coaches, referees. But for the school sports, it’s their friends. And that’s just, I think that’s a game changer, you know. And I’ll say, I think the two biggest reasons why high schoolers would leave our high school at some point, is the, they sort of cite the social, you know, friends wanting to have more quantity because we are a microschool. So we got 45, 50 high schoolers on average at our school. And then sports opportunities, you know, that they may have.

So what we’ve done over the years to, you know, address this is. And it’s evolved, but number one is we sort of said, hey, if you want to start your own sport or start your own club, all you need is a critical mass and a parent volunteer and let’s do it. And so that’s how basketball got started. And they actually went to state in the first year.

Michael Horn

I was going to say you had a, you posted, I mean your, your team was pretty good. I saw the video you posted recently. There’s passes and shots there.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, and I’ll tell you, I mean I, and folks who’ve come into our environment from traditional environments will say something similar. But like, because it’s a school trying to really teach self direction, like they’re very resilient. And so even though they start out losing a lot, they have this mind, this growth mindset, you know, and they want to get better. And so like our volleyball team for example, which by the way, girls volleyball started because they saw the boys, were jealous of the boys basketball and were like, we got to start our own thing. Well, can we start volleyball? We were like, yeah. And so anyway, the first season they lost every game but one. Second season they lost every game but one. And then this last season they went nine and four and made it to state, you know, and just never gave up.

I mean they kept improving, you know, so I think that. But, I think the learners feel like they can start their own thing. And, and what’s cool in our state in Georgia is there is a league that accommodates small schools like ours. It’s called GAPS, Georgia association of Private Parochial Schools. A lot of them are faith based schools. We’re religiously diverse. But it’s awesome. And you can even have homeschoolers kind of play on your team as well.

Student Activities Encourage Growth

Tyler Thigpen

So some of our friends, some of our high schoolers have invited their friends, you know, to play. So that’s kind of how we’ve addressed the sports thing. We also, the learners have done shared dances, you know, and reached out to other partner small schools and you know, gone into downtown Atlanta. We’re trying to get them to come to us on the south side, you know, this time and, and that’s been fun. I think the apprenticeships that we do in an interesting way is an identity forming thing because the way they’re structured is you can sort of do it whenever and miss school and it’s not an unexcused absence. And you have to do so many of them that I do think they come to know themselves in a way that ends up being valuable. There’s no real comparison I think in the, you know, in the more traditional settings for that, that’s a one to one, but I think that’s valuable.

The other thing that’s interesting is when we launched the online school, we, our high schoolers now especially as they, because they really value the freedom, they really value going at their own pace, they. They don’t want to lose that and sometimes they only want to come into school. They’re just like, I want to get it done, you know, at home or at the coffee shop. And so they’ll actually jump into our online school for a while or make use of some of that online curriculum and then kind of parachute into the in person environment. Especially we see seniors doing this a lot, you know, which I guess is equivalent to working off campus, you know, working, doing an independent study or something off campus.

Michael Horn

That’s like a very interesting thing, right Tyler? Like they’re willing to, I mean, in some ways the gravitational pull, I guess it works both ways. Second semester seniors, you know, you got a lot of burnout and a lot of folks doing other stuff. But like that’s when a lot of the rites of passage, right happen. The connections to prom, college, right. Like all these things we sort of. All the movies in Hollywood, you know, down, down where Tom is, make us think are sort of America pie, right? Or apple pie and Americana. And so that’s interesting that you would see seniors going for that full online experience at that point and parachuting in when they want the connection.

Is that because they’ve sort of acclimate, right, like their, their definition of success has changed by being part of your community? Or is. Is it that you’ve, you’ve sort of cracked this nut of being able to provide enough connections into and sort of identity formation opportunities?

Tyler Thigpen

I don’t know. What my observation is is these learners who are older, some of them have the ability to drive, you know, and maybe have access to wheels or at least the ability to get around. They’ll see value in some of what’s happening in person and in groups at the school and they’ll want to be there for that. And then outside of that, they kind of really enjoy that independence of just being able to go, you know, vote with their feet and go eat where they want to eat, be at home if they want to be home. Just, you know, which I think is a good sign of independence. It’s almost like college. It’s almost like a college-like atmosphere in your senior year of high school, if you will. That’s my observation.

Michael Horn

But let me ask this question. It seems. So we went immediately to sports, I think, right? And then you brought in some of the other aspects. I’d love both of you guys to like jump in on this. It seems like sports, right, is often ridiculed among the educators of like ah geez, we also have to do sports. But it seems like a lot of these things are stand-ins, I guess is this is the, are we crazy for having this conversation, right? Because it seems like they are a bigger part of learning about who you are, building a community around you. Rites of passage, you know, it’s like we like to joke about the person who’s still living the glory days of their high school football, you know, game saving catch when they were, you know, 40 years earlier. But, but there is something about that that grounds you and, and, and gives you a narrative and connects you more broadly and, and look, story, you know, stories are part of life.

So, I guess I’m curious is, in your views, is there something deeper here like I painted and if so, what else, you know, do we need to be thinking about for high schools to sort of attract or these alternative student centered, self directed high schools. Maybe that’s a better way to call this movement. How do they start to attract more families and signal to them not only is it okay, but you won’t be missing out on these deeper things? Tyler, why don’t you jump in first and then Tom, go wherever you want to take it.

Tyler Thigpen

Communicating and actually living out the reality that the learners really can have agency and can create the kinds of experiences that they want. I think there’s a ton of value in sports. I agree with you Michael. The level of, you know, working on a team. I mean even just from a rite of passage standpoint. I remember our varsity and middle school girls this year and JV girls for volleyball got their, for the first time, like warm up jerseys in addition to regular jerseys and then a backpack, their name on it. And just that, I mean, that was an absolute core memory.

Michael Horn

Well, it’s like the letter jacket, right? I mean, the cool kids, quote unquote, had letter jackets.

Tyler Thigpen

Totally, totally. We actually are starting theater now, you know, in a similar viewpoint, we’ve got some learners who are interested in theater. That’s an incredible avenue for communication and for academics and just like, well being in general, you know, and, and so now like, and again, we’re in our eighth year as a, as a small microschool, but we now we have in the fall basketball, we have in the winter volleyball, and in the spring, you know, we’ll have, theater. But I think it’s about giving them choice, giving them agency. I mean, interestingly, you know, we’ll do field trips with them too. And it’s actually easy to do field trips.

Community-Driven Learning Experiences

Tom Arnett

Right.

Tyler Thigpen

If you could just get some volunteer folks to drive and they’ll go to colleges and museums, you know, and workplaces like some of our parents and caregivers who have interesting jobs. That’s also identity forming, I think, because it’s a great way for them to just rub shoulders and to figure out, oh, I might could see myself working here. And then interestingly, and I try and cultivate this as much as I can as a head of school. We’ll try and identify parents or caregivers who want to self organize some things for groups of high school kids. I’ve led field trips to colleges, like out of state. You know, it wasn’t necessarily like formally a part of the school, but it was like, hey, I’m doing this as a dad with my son, on my own. Who else wants to go sort of a thing. And you know, there have been rites of passage, like, you know, weekends that have been like literal rites of passage weekend that have been put together by men and women, you know, in our community.

And there’s things that we can do as school leaders to like, encourage that and to celebrate that and try and, you know, through celebration, cultivate the things that we want to see. But to me, it comes back to just helping them feel like it’s a blank canvas and that it is possible and to make creative connections. Tom, what do you think?

Tom Arnett

So what’s popping into my mind right now is, do either of you read David Yeager’s book 10 to 25? No, the book. Yeah, for sure. Great book. Yeah. So probably one of the most influential books.

Tyler Thigpen

On my list right now.

Tom Arnett

So that was. That was a book I read last year that really shaped my thinking about these kinds of issues. And on one hand, I think identity formation. I guess I’d parse it two ways. One is that even. Even in the conventional, traditional high school experience, there’s lots of kids who don’t have the traditional identity formation, you know, that aren’t all about wearing the leatherman jacket or being at the rally, because a lot of those spaces, like, there’s just not room for everybody. So kids have to form other identities. And I think there’s a lot of other healthy identities that people could form.

Like, I think of, like, the identity that you form when you work at an internship and you learn. Like, here’s my value in an organization is probably more value. I mean, I’m biased, but I would say that’s a more valuable identity than the identity of, like, I’m really cool because I wear the right clothes at school. So I think there’s a lot that could be improved on identity formation. But what Jaeger’s book makes me think of is he talks about how, just like, infants have developmental milestones of, like, you know, learning to have, you know, coordinate their limbs, learning to speak. He says the developmental objective of adolescence is to learn how to earn status and respect.

And the reason why is that people, like humans, thrive in society. Like, we, you know, we’re not all just lone wolves. We accomplish things as a. As humans by working together. But in order to be able to work together, you have to be able to figure out, how do I fit into a group? How do I show the group that I’m of value to that group? How do I essentially, like, that’s. You earn status and respect in a group by. By figuring out, like, what is my value to add, and how do I signal that to other people? And so to me, that’s the big question that you have to tackle for a lot of kids is how do you give them the experiences that let them earn status and respect, but in a context of other people? This is where sometimes I think, when we talk about learning, being really individualized, like, individualism, if you take it too much to the extreme, means, like, everyone’s doing their own thing, and it doesn’t matter to everyone, anyone else, because you’re just.

You’re doing your one thing you’re passionate about, but no one else cares. And I think a lot of kids, like, they don’t actually want to do that. They want to do something that they’re passionate about, but they also want to do something that others care about, that other people say, like, that’s cool, that’s valuable, you’re. Or you’re a valuable contributor to what the rest of us care about. So that’s, I guess that’s one way I frame this question of like, what, what kind of innovation and improvement needs to happen to make this more appealing to more people? So that’s one side. But then I’ll say, what about, I think for this to truly go mainstream, there are the people who are getting that fulfilled in a conventional setting. Like, you’ve got to figure out how to fulfill it for them as well. Not, you know, make it, make it a compelling alternative to them so it doesn’t feel like they’re giving something up.

And that raises for me the question of like, so is the future some kind of hybrid approach? And Michael’s, I see him squinting. Michael’s written a whole, you know, one of his first paper I read when I joined the institute was about hybrids and disruptive innovation. Like, is the future a hybrid approach where kids go to a conventional setting for some things and then they get other experiences elsewhere? Or is it, is there more of, going to be a tipping point where like these new identity forming experiences just become the new cool thing and people, you know, see that as the new cool thing and they want to do it because it is a new cool thing?

Redefining School Rituals

Michael Horn

Well, let me ask the question this way and either of you can jump in, because I think building off what you just said, Tom, which is interesting, Tyler, as you were starting to name all the things, all of a sudden I wrote down, like, oh my gosh, like, how do we provide all these things without becoming sort of the thing we’re trying to replace? Like, could, you know, could you accidentally fall back into the grammar of schools with all the trappings of it? And so it occurs to me, Tom, one of your points is a lot of these, I’ll call them artifacts of identity formation and figuring out how I add value to a group and so forth, have become more the artifact than the original reason that they were probably created, right? We sort of lost the, you know, the high school today. I suspect if you ask the average educator, you know, they might name at a surface level, like what athletics does or things like that, but probably not the depth or when thinking about dance or tradition, various traditions, right? Like they, they’re, they’re somewhat decoupled, I think, from this larger thing we’re trying to do with individuals as we help them build identity and awareness of how they fit in with others and so forth. And so I guess my, my thought is if, if there’s a more intentional building of these rituals and so forth, maybe you don’t construct sort of the, it looks different in some ways but like there will be some overlap and that’s okay, right? Like there will be some sports teams that are still there and, and, and there will be some dances that are still there. Or you know, as Tyler, you were saying, like, it doesn’t sound like you’re replicating everything yourself. You’re partnering with a few other schools to create a dance and think right. Like, it doesn’t mean you’re, you have to bite off the whole enchilada and then recreate, create the very thing that maybe had become too depersonalized and, and sort of unintentional walk through these rituals. Maybe that’s the way to think about it.

Michael Horn

I’d love your take on it, it resonates.

Tyler Thigpen

What you’re saying about some of them being similar, some of them being different. And even because we’re a small environment, even the ones that the rituals that we’re creating, you know, could be, I think they are uniquely set apart than the ones in the more traditional setting, but it might not be able to be discerned from the surface. Which reminded me one of the things that we did create that is fairly new and we participate in as a business fair and whether our high schoolers, almost all of them have participated in that, launched their own public business and sold stuff and made a profit or if they’re not participating, they’ll come, you know, and support their friends and buy stuff or whatever. But that’s just another example of a sort of, you know, they’re getting to know themselves for sure through that experience. But I think what further complexifies it too is especially in the more, you know, some of these new high school examples where they’re doing away with grades as we have, you know, and instead embrace the mastery, you know, a more mastery based approach, competency based approach. The, Tom to your point in Jaeger’s book for looking for status and respect, I’ve found it helpful to carve out with the learners and their families like new ways to be able to do that and even new ways to prove quote unquote rigor for college or employer audiences. And some of the ways we answer that are, you know, maximizing the number of things that you prove mastery of over your time in high school and going super deep, you know, in something and that being a real badge of honor. Another would be like really maximizing the number of independent studies that you create, you know, for yourself.

Another would be dual enrollment. You know, many of these progressive microschools or all schools, like, have the opportunity to participate in the state’s dual enrollment program and you know, get a taste of college and do it on a pretty flexible schedule. And I think that’s a nice opportunity. And then obviously you can, you know, for us, we. People can just do crazy and a ton of apprenticeships and then badges for. We use badges at our environment instead of grades. You can max out the number of badges and that’s a form of sort of status and what have you. So it’s interesting.

I mean, your question, Michael, is making me think that what we’ve done is some of it feels like the traditional, but there’s a. There’s one or two or three things about it that are unique and different, that are meeting a difference, like I’ll give you an example. So for our dance, you know, we created it for the high schoolers, but then the middle schoolers heard about it. We’re like, we want to do that too. So we actually created a schedule where for our fall homecoming dance, the middle schoolers come for the first hour and a half and then the high schoolers can come and then the middle schoolers have to leave. But there’s an hour of overlap, you.

Tom Arnett

Know what I mean? Oh, that’s cool.

Tyler Thigpen

School systems that have that kind of a. But that way the middle and high schoolers get to hang together for a little bit. But then the high schoolers get their own, you know, time and space, which they desperately want middle schoolers, like kick the middle schoolers out the door. They’re so, you know, like they want to stay, but like it’s just little nuances like that, I think that is when you just. I think it’s when you open up a conversation to kids and the parents and say, what’s the ideal? How can we create this? That’s when some really interesting stuff starts to happen for us.

Michael Horn

Well, and it strikes me like having dances like that that maintain continuity across generations, right? Like that’s a good thing. And then your spin on it, Tyler, is like a little bit more culture passing right between the different grades, a little bit more intentional mixing, which is in keeping with your general culture of how the kids are learning as they’re self directed there and not sort of. I’m a ninth grader, I’m a tenth grader. Right. And therefore I must be doing this. That makes a heck of a lot of sense. Tom, what are your reactions off that?

Tom Arnett

Well, the dance example, I was thinking of some ways that’s also a way that signals status and respect is like as a middle schooler, you’re like, this is, this is lame that I have to leave the dance early. Won’t it be so cool when I become a high schooler, I can move up and get to stay for the whole thing. I mean, in a lot of ways.

Michael Horn

Or will the high schooler dance with me during the hour overlap?

Tom Arnett

That would be the real, that’s the real status. Right. If they’re like, I can get a high schooler to dance with me. Yeah, yeah. But I think it’s, it’s funny because a lot of those are, you know, the idea of earning status and respect because we have like these age based rites of passage. Like that’s, that’s not an old idea, but it’s interesting to think, like, how can you take those old ideas and rebundle them in some new ways?

Michael Horn

Let me ask a question a different way, Tyler. I’m curious. Like, you’ve been recruiting families, right, for a long time. We’ve honed in on one of the barriers or a set, I guess, of the barriers. Right. That, high schoolers in particular are reticent to jump to these models. It seems like we have a lot of examples in the elementary school years, middle school, somewhat. I would have actually expected more because middle school feels like a time where most traditional middle schools work pretty poorly for most kids.

And they’re still very low stakes with the decision around college and things of that nature. But I think a little bit less than elementary and then high school. Significantly less, it seems like. So have what we’ve been talking about today. Does that feel like some of the biggest barriers? What are the other ones? And how are you all thinking about those?

Tyler Thigpen

Yep, it does feel like that one barrier. The peer pressure, you know, are young people wanting to, to, to be with their friends, to have more friends, to have the potential for more friends. You know, I think another dynamic there is when you are in a smaller environment, you know, you really do have, I mean, one of our pillars is learn to live together. Like they learn that, you know, you gotta. And that can be vulnerable and hard and frustrating. And you know, as parents and caregivers, we really value the learning that happens there for them, they’re like, it might just be a little easier to like ditch this friend group and go form another friend group or find another friend group, you know, and you don’t have that option at a small school. So I think that’s something that needs to be addressed.

And then, you know, a lot of these school founders, too, that will try and wrap middle and high school in together as they’re starting just from a financial model standpoint because they can’t afford, you know, a full staff for high, full staff for middle. And that’s not a great solution because at least in the United States, most high schoolers are like, I don’t want to be with these middle schoolers, you know, but that’s a barrier. Another barrier, I think, is founders’ fear and concerns. A lot of founders and school heads, you know, maybe don’t have the experience with high school and are concerned about legitimacy and making that connection between college and career and just the complexities, you know, that are involved in running a high school, that’s. That’s a barrier. I think parents are concerned about legitimacy. You know, a lot of the questions we get, that’s the first thing that they’re asking about our high school, like, what’s, what are the outcomes? What’s the legitimacy? What are the college career paths, you know, that sort of thing. And so parents are concerned.

And a lot of the coaching that I do with microschool leaders, too, is, you know, making sure that they are just being, you know, really clear about their own pedigree and experience because it’s so valuable, you know, and often they, like, shy back away from that and don’t want to talk about it. I’m like, no, you need to talk about it because you’re. You’re building trust, you know, and you’re building confidence with these, these families and caregivers. And then the last barrier I think I would name is, you know, some accreditation constraints where there, a lot of the accreditation processes that are in existence in the United States right now closely connect, you know, people and deep subject knowledge, expertise with expectations of, like, seat time and, you know, how many and which adults have to be in the room for a high school to operate, and there are creative ways to make sure that the expertise is there, but not in the traditional sense. And if you’ve got either an accreditor who has not bought into that, or if you’ve got a school leader who can’t quite figure out how to put the square peg in the round hole, then that could be a barrier.

Michael Horn

And are families asking for the accreditation? Like, are they, like, oh, if you don’t have accreditation. I’m not sure I want to do this.

Tyler Thigpen

They are. Most are, but only to tick that box. It’s not like they know anything about accreditation. There’s like, are you.

Michael Horn

It’s like a question I’m supposed to ask.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Horn

Interesting.

Tyler Thigpen

So it’s exciting to, you know, evolutions, like, you know, Middle States that has created, you know, an accrediting pathway for microschools and some other organizations that have, you know, have thought about it and are doing it. That’s exciting, you know, for flexible pathways for high schools. I think that’s going to help.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Tom Arnett

Tyler, let me say thank you. Because as I think about from a research perspective, in disruptive innovation, you know, I think a lot about, like, okay, what are these little steps on the upward innovation improvement trajectory that disruptive innovations need to go. And you’ve just laid out, like, here’s a whole bunch of things we have to tackle. So that’s. Anyway, I was eating up what you were saying.

Michael Horn

We have a solution for the accreditation, one through Middle States, and now it’s the other. Okay, keep going.

Future of Microschools

Tom Arnett

Yeah. I was going to ask, going back to the very first thing you mentioned about, like, kids wanting to be with more friends, do you think that potentially means that microschools in the future will not necessarily be micro or that there’ll be some version of, like, getting the best of both worlds? Like, I could. I could imagine one scenario where microschools grow and they’re not micro anymore because they grew as a school. Another scenario where it’s like, microschools still say micro, but you find some way to, like, bring together groups of microschools so that you can provide those, like, hang. Have the big group of friends. Because let me be more specific. Like, imagine, like, 20 microschools all located in the same, you know, same geographic hub. And now you can have big experiences, you can run big programs that require that kind of scale, but you still have microschools because everyone’s still part of a subunit that’s small.

But anyway, I’m curious how you think about that. Not just in, like, what is. What is your school doing today or tomorrow, but, like, 10 years from now as this whole space evolves. Do you think we’re going in that kind of a direction?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, I mean, from your research, too, I’d be curious, you know, what you hypothesize.

Where my brain went when you asked, it actually had less to do with the building or the network or the connectivity between schools or even the size of schools. And it had more to do with decision making, power and agency, and whether or not the high school was self paced, whether or not there was freedom. Because I think once the high schoolers live and move and have their being in a space where they can decide, they typically do not want to give that up, even for, you know, the social, the component. Now, some will, but. But most are like, they value that more, it seems like. And maybe it’s because this developmental stage that they’re at, you know, where they’re really valuing that independence and that freedom, and they just don’t want to go back to an environment where they’re having to, you know, listen to whatever and follow whatever.

So that’s where my brain went. And so whatever. I guess my answer then would be like, where the fish, they’ll flow, the school will flow wherever there’s like, agency and freedom, you know, I don’t know.

Michael Horn

It’s interesting, Tom. I think John Danner is the one that wrote, instead of calling microschools microschools, we ought to start calling it the affordable private school sector. I frankly like that because it tags it more with disruptive innovation. And it doesn’t limit us. I mean, Con Lab school is no longer less than 100 kids. It’s like 300 kids. So is it a mic? It’s not a microschool, clearly. Right.

You look like you wanted to get in there, Tyler.

Tyler Thigpen

I did. I just had a conversation before our call today. We were coaching a microschool leader up in Canada, and we were talking about conservative budgeting, you know, as a microscope leader and the COO that I’ve hired, who’s been with me two years, who’s awesome. His experience prior to this was he was in IT in corporate America, and then he pivoted over to independent schools in Georgia. And he’s been at a number of different independent schools as a CFO and COO. And I was so excited about hiring him because he’s seen a lot of different options for, like, as we, you know, become more established, as Forest becomes, you know, even more efficient. And so this thing outlives me and all of us, like, how do we systematize? He’s seen a lot of options. And what’s interesting is to hear his reflections, coming from an established independent school background on the way that we have handled finances and the unique mindsets that we have brought to the table to budgeting, to admissions, you know, to all this.

And it’s very entrepreneurial. He keeps saying that word over and over. He’s like Tyler, I really appreciate the entrepreneurial approach that is being embraced here at Forest. He actually created a document that lists these mindsets that he’s now coaching leaders, you know, with. And I was like, I need to see that document, Johnny. That sounds amazing.

Like, I feel like I might need to remind myself of it, but I’m going to be writing on this soon and putting it out there. But I agree. I mean, and I’ve. I worked in one established independent school back in the day, and I definitely do not run the finances here like we did back there. You know, back there it was almost like we felt like we had, you know, endless money. It’s just not the case. But, you know, we very much bootstrap here.

Michael Horn

Well, you’re speaking to something else, which maybe we end up at this part of the conversation. And we finish up here, which is. So you all are thinking about identity formation. You’re thinking about how to tackle that list of five or six things you named, Tyler that Tom is now going to research around. How do you climb the Y axis of improvement and disruptive innovation, if you will. But you say you coach a lot of these school entrepreneurs and so forth, right? And so part of the thing that I’m interested in is it’s not clear to me that one school, you know, cracks this and magically disrupts all of American education. I think more likely the sector together comes up, right? And we have lots of different options and versions and flavors of what schooling in the future looks like in this sort of affordable private school sector. And you just named it a few times.

Like, that means coaching them. So it means coaching them to be intentional, to be forthright and not shy away from, hey, this is how we do X, right? This is how we think about college admissions. We’re not afraid of. We’re not running from this. This is how we do finances. And it’s actually not something that’s just a product of us being a startup, but it’s actually part of our DNA. It makes us different. And as we, as a movement scale, we’re not going to replicate, right.

Sort of the, the trappings of an Andover or Exeter or something like that.

That’s not the goal here. So. So I guess that’s where I, where I want to leave it with both of you is reflecting on, like, how do we take some of these things that you are doing in an entrepreneurial way? Tyler, how do we take some of these things you’re coaching entrepreneurs on and start to make it more systematic across the field. So more people are saying, like, it’s not good enough just to start that school that serves 30 kids. I also probably should start thinking about, you know, year two, year three, year four, how I start to fill these other voids that are meaningful and important.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah. Resonates deeply, Michael. And our accelerator that we add virtually and in person, it, it addresses these things, it tries to do those things. And, you know, I really appreciate the National Microschooling center, you know, the work that they are doing to, to them, they care deeply about this same, you know, same question. And they’ve put together cohorts of folks that, you know, you know, what I like to call, share ideas willingly and steal ideas shamelessly, you know, from, from one another. But, but no how do we codify that and share it at scale and keep the learning going and continuous improvement. I think there’s still work to be done there for sure.

Michael Horn

Tom, what do you, what lessons can we draw from other fields, you’ve looked at disruptive innovation. Like what should we be thinking about that we haven’t talked about maybe?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, well, to nerd out a little bit.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let’s nerd out. Like, final word here. Got for it.

Tom Arnett

Well, so I spent a lot of time thinking about this concept from disruptive innovation called the Value Network. And Clayton Christensen talked about how the biggest, most transformative disruptive innovations. It’s not just about a new enabling technology or a new business model. You have this new Value Network that exists around those business models. And Michael and I, we had a colleague that used to be at the Institute, Horace Dediu, who he did a bunch of research on, like, why is it that some disruptions happen quickly and some happen slowly?

Michael Horn

I’ll give two quick examples if I can. Right. One was the dryer in your house that was slow compared to the refrigerator, which was fast. And, and Right. And I’ll, I’ll let you go to the punchline, Tom. I won’t ruin that one. But just to give people a mental model.

Tom Arnett

Yeah, good mental model. So, yeah, when you think of like a dryer or I think of like a washing machine is probably even more so. Like, those appliances required changing the hookups in a house. Right. Whereas a refrigerator could just plug into the wall. Houses at that time already had electricity, so they could just plug in. Whereas these other appliances required, you know, a new water line. Yeah.

Sewer line, a new venting system. Like you houses weren’t being built with those things. And so there was like a time, like the transition was much slower because the system sitting around the appliance had to be adapted for the appliance to really make sense and to really be easy and convenient to plug in. And so when I think of school systems, I think it’s kind of the same thing, is that we. There is a value network that sits around conventional schools. Think of like all the teacher prep programs, the accreditation systems, the higher ed system, state policy, like all those things have been designed for nearly a century to fit around a conventional school space. Right.

Building Networks for New Schools

Tom Arnett

And these new models of schooling, they really, you know, one big challenge for them is that there isn’t, you know, tons of teacher prep programs all over the country and policy on all the states and, and higher ed, you know, admissions programs that are all set up that are just accommodated to these new models of schooling. And so I think what’s going to make this slower as a, you know, as a disruptive innovation is the fact that we’re going to have to build that new value network around it. But I think that’s the exciting thing to look for is where do you see people like the National Microschooling center or Middle States as accreditation system, you know, these new things that aren’t necessarily schools, but they support the broader ecosystem like popping up to make it so there’s more plug compatibility for programs over time so that you can just plug into a new value network, a new system as you launch a new school, instead of having to figure out, well, how do we cobble it together with the limited stuff we have right now.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, just two quick anecdotes on that to be my final words. You know, one very promising, exciting as a partner of ours is the Indiana Microschool Collaborative. George Philhauer and Eastern Hancock just in August launched the MicroSchool K12 that has 68 learners. Eight of the learners come from the traditional environment. The vast majority of the others come from homeschool or an independent school. And they’re loving it.

And the school has a number of innovative features. And the children that go there feel like the school was designed for them. Because it is what George regularly says. And that’s the first of what’s going to be many. Right. And so George and his team are really thinking meaningfully about exactly that. Tom. It’s like, how do we provide that? So it’ll be fascinating to sort of watch what gets centralized and, you know, what doesn’t and then the other thing is our institutes leading a project in Georgia where up to 10 districts are going to be over the next three years designing new models that better meet the needs of parents and students who are currently like outside of the system.

And I think a lot of them will end up being, you know, microschools. It could be anything. Could be like an elementary school for dyslexic kids or early college, high school or self directed learning center, doesn’t matter. And you know, to see how they end up shaping and what flexibility they end up requesting, you know, and then what support they need to stay alive. That’s something that we’re super curious about too. But what’s cool to me at least is that like the leaders in these spaces are feeling the invitation, you know, to do something new and more innovative.

Michael Horn

That is a good thing. It occurs to me also you mentioned Mastery Transcript Consortium Tyler. Like that’s another one of these entities that I would love to see focus almost exclusively on this learner centered, self directed space as opposed to the old ground. And I get why they’ve played in both. But I would love these entities solving the problems of this new and being really focused on this value network because I think that’s where the more folks we have focused here, the faster I think this value network will grow around it to scale and grow together. I’ll name the other one. I was laughing when you were talking about all the different ways that people can prove mastery Tyler in your ecosystem. And I just got off a call where someone was like, ah, but we can’t do assessments around like, you know, bespoke things like we just don’t know, like the science isn’t there, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, well you ought to write an article that explains to idiots like me why that’s true because I like, I mean, I think I see lots of examples of that and I can also point to plenty of microcredentials that have no meaningful assessment behind them and are worthless. Right. And so, but I just think, right, that’s another area of velocity of assessment that people trust in some way. And that doesn’t mean Scantron test. That means like authentic, you know, real demonstration of learning through, through some sort of, you know, product or performance or something. Right. And so the more and more though I think we get of that in this ecosystem, the more I think people will buy in and say like, oh yeah, I had a friend who went through that and it sort of starts to spread. I think as we get that and frankly the, the technology platforms, right, that are helping connect demand to supply in these ESA states, they ought to be listening acutely, I think, to the supply side as well, of like, what do you need to grow? It should be in their interest to help the really, you know, the really good providers there get scale and maybe connect to different services and create informal networks and things like that to better serve the demand side.

And so the more listening and cooperation I think we have in this value network right now, to me, all hands on deck because that’s a good way to go up market.

Tyler Thigpen

Well said.

Michael Horn

All right guys, huge thanks for joining us. We would love people to come in on the heels of this and tell us what we got wrong, what other ideas we ought to feature, what we ought to learn from, because I think it’s a really important topic that’s not getting enough air time. And so this is the first conversation we’ve had about this, but it’s one all of us are interested in further in. So appreciate you all and we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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Two of my former students and now entrepreneurs Abdi Guleed and Kedaar Sridhar of M7E AI joined me to explore how they’re using AI to make math curricula more accessible for all students, especially those facing linguistic barriers. Abdi and Kedaar shared their personal stories and the research that inspired them to create M7E AI, a tool that works with curriculum providers to streamline and clarify math content before it reaches classrooms. Our conversation highlighted challenges districts face when evaluating curriculum, the platform’s innovative seven-factor framework for language accessibility, and the ways AI can help districts, publishers, and educators create more equitable learning experiences.

Michael Horn

Hey, Michael, here. What you’re about to hear is a webinar that I hosted for a company, M7E, that full disclosure, I’m an advisor to. It’s two of my former students that founded it. And it’s a very cool AI tool that does something different from a lot of the tools out there on the market. It’s not student facing, it’s not teacher facing. What it does is it works with curriculum providers to take their math content specifically and use the AI with a set of clear rules to reduce the language complexity so that the curriculum is actually teaching and assessing on the math skills rather than some of the language things that might run interference for multilingual learners in particular, I hope you enjoy the webinar that we recorded, find it interesting, informative, and that it sparked some questions for you about how else might we use AI that sort of steps out of the typical notion of just, hey, it’s a chatbot, and where are the applications that might take off that could make an impact in education. Let me introduce the two folks first who have been digging into this problem from both the research and product perspective. First of all, we have Abdi, I’m looking for you on my screen.

There you are, Abdi Guleed. He’s a Harvard Education Entrepreneurship fellow and the co-founder of M7E AI. And we also have Kedaar Sridhar, also a Harvard Education Entrepreneurship fellow and also the co-founder of M7E AI both, as I said, former students in my class. And together they’ve built this company and product that really evaluates these existing math problems and tasks for linguistic clarity and accessibility. They flag hidden barriers that can trip up students and then they suggest, I think, importantly, revisions to keep the mathematical rigor intact, but while making the language and design more equitable. So I’m excited to bring them in. And Abdi, Kedaar, welcome. I want to get into it.

The way we’ll do this is I have a couple questions for you guys up front and then I’m going to sort of give you the stage, if you will, to maybe show what you guys have developed and how you’ve been using it with some curriculum companies. But I think your own personal stories to this, I got to watch it a little bit up close. But for those that don’t know, you tell us your own personal stories about how you came to build this tool. Why did you see it as a big problem worth solving? Because I know a lot of folks don’t even tend to think about these challenges a lot of times. So Kedaar, Abdi, whoever of you wants to take it first.

AI Tool Enhancing Math Curriculum

Abdi Guleed

Thank you so much, Michael. And thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Abdi. I grew up in Norway and like Michael said earlier as well. But I remember very clearly how math content was created and how that shaped my experience as a learner. And a lot of that stuck with me as I was growing up. And then I came to the US as a student athlete in track and field and built a career always around the core theme of using technology to make learning and organizational process more effective. I spent years working with data and AI, especially my master’s program with Kedaar, where most of our work was focused on how AI can streamline complex manual processes.

So M7 education is a natural extension of that work and curriculum creation is one of the most complex and time consuming processes in education. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. And we think AI can dramatically improve both the speed and the quality. And because I personally know the impact of curriculum design, this mission is really, really important to me as well as is to Kedaar. So over to you, Kedaar.

Kedaar Sridhar

Awesome. Thanks for that Abdi. And thank you Michael. And thank you everyone for being here today. We’re excited to chat about what we’ve been working on. So I’m Kedaar Sridhar, also an international student who grew up in Oman in the Middle East. And I sucked at math like it was. I just wasn’t, I just wasn’t doing well.

And turns out a lot of the things and the questions didn’t make sense from a lot of these big publishers, questions about lacrosse which I had never known or played, questions about skiing and I live in, you know, in a very hot country. And like all of these different contextual clues and things that were actually distracting me as well from what I was actually trying to do. Fast forward to, you know, I ended up coming to the US and doing my undergrad at UCLA in computer science. And I ended up in the STEM field. And I think a big focus for me is how can I improve access to that field and to those oriented careers. My career is in product and tech, but specifically I worked as well at an undergrad admissions for UCLA focused on improving access to higher education and then ended up at a nonprofit focused on STEM literacy, digital literacy, AI literacy, helping people bring into more technical careers as well. And, and so this passion, this through line for both of us has been how do we now provide a way for students, for people to access content when the thing that is being tested for is the wrong thing being sort of expressed and shown, you know, people spend more time decoding language instead of actually testing their own math ability in this specific case.

And so with Abdi, you know, our master’s was in learning, design, innovation, and technology here at the School of Education, and we worked across the board, you know, across Harvard, across MIT and rest of the Cambridge schools as well, to continue diving into the space, doing research, and figuring out how do we best tackle this problem, that was very close to both of us.

Michael Horn

So I think it’s perfect, lLifts off, and I love that, well, you probably didn’t enjoy it Kedaar, that personal story of a kid struggling with math. But when I think a lot of people think about AI in education right now, I think a lot of people, like, the thing that comes to mind is chatbot, right. And I think a lot of people are fearful of, like, the student facing chat bot in particular. What I think is so interesting is that you all have built a tool, actually, that is like a couple layers before the student, right. To make sure that the curriculum getting to them. What I think is so interesting, though, right, is before we get to the solution and what.

How AI, you’ve been able to use it to help districts and so forth, let’s focus on the problem first. And where do you see districts, schools struggling most in their current evaluation processes, especially when they’re comparing multiple math publishers or frankly, like the homegrown materials that we see or materials that teachers are taking from other teachers in all of this. Kedaar, why don’t you start off on this one?

Kedaar Sridhar

What we’ve heard and what we’ve also sort of experienced while, you know, speaking to district leaders and just speaking to all the, you know, all the people in the system, right. Whether you’re a teacher, district leader, or part of assessment teams, researchers, editorial teams, or, you know, publishers themselves. There is the core problem of I am a district leader or I’m an instructional specialist or a curriculum manager, and my district has its own needs, right? In my district, I have a specific type of students. Maybe there’s more bilingual students here, or maybe there’s more students that, you know, with a lower average literacy rate or a lot of these other things, but every district has such a different profile, and yet content is sort of dispersed equally to everyone.

And so for something that we’ve been trying to tackle as we’ve gotten into more of these conversations, is how can we help district leaders specifically and districts themselves have visibility into all the publishers that come to them, be able to see which story aligns with their populations, which publisher and material best speaks to. And best shares that voice with the students themselves and the educators themselves. And in general. And Abdi will expand on this as well. There is just right now a very manual process and there’s limited bandwidth in general when looking at how this is best aligned not only with my district and our goals, but also coverage in terms of the broader, you know, the broader ecosystem as well.

Aligning Curriculum with Diverse Needs

Abdi Guleed

What we’ve seen, just to add to that is we’ve been talking a lot with district leaders, a lot with Kirkham developers and editorial teams, with teachers, with principals across the board. And there’s the idea when it comes to district leaders and schools mainly is there’s a heavy reliance on that idea that these curriculum developers know, kind of best. But then there’s this almost sort of like a little bit disconnect when it comes to the diversity of students in the classrooms that is changing dramatically. And we’ve been looking at it from multiple aspects of how can we help build something that could help the district leaders and others to evaluate the content, to evaluate the curriculum and be part of the design process before it reaches their specific district. And again, there are 50 million K12 students. America is very, very large. So different districts have different needs.

And like Kedaar was alluding to, how can you make sure that my district and my students and the community that I’m supporting, how can we make sure that they have what they need in order to excel in their path as learners? So we’ll cover more on that in a few minutes.

Michael Horn

No, no, no, perfect. So I think that’s a good framing of the problem or challenge, if you will, that schools are facing. And with that, I’m going to give you guys the metaphorical virtual stage. I guess these days it is in zoom, but like three sort of central questions that we’ll have you answer. One is briefly framing what you’ve learned from the research and from working with publishers and districts. So one, briefly frame what you’ve learned from the research and from working with publishers and districts. Second, then let’s go to show, but not show and tell. Show, not tell.

I want you to show a concrete demo of M7E on real math problems, what the platform sees that humans might miss in sort of a quick review. And then I think, obviously give us the, this is a tool, a free tool at the moment that schools and districts can use during adoption cycles, RFPs, internal reviews, and so forth. So show us how that actually can be used. So I’ll kick it to you with that framing.

Abdi Guleed

Awesome. Thank you so much.

So I’ll walk through a little bit about the backstory. We touched upon that already, but give you a little bit of background on where we got started, the problem that we’re seeing. And then I’ll hand it over to Kedaar, who can show you how the platform works and how you can take part of it. So as I said earlier, there are. The first problem that we see here is the comprehension crisis. There are 50 million K12 students and 61% of them are below grade level in math. We’re seeing that one in four students are bilinguals. The thing that we’re seeing is that when you’re looking at math comprehension, it’s not just the bilingual students, but also, especially in the United States, where you have zonings and you can have a specific curriculum developer provide the curriculum and content to a community.

Math Struggles Rooted in Equity

Abdi Guleed

And in that community could be, half of it could go to a public school that has less resources. And then the other half could be an affluent community that have more resources, but they’re both getting the same curriculum. What happens is the affluent one will get probably better scores than the other one, even though they are could be bilinguals, but you also have a lot of native speakers that live in that community, which then adds to a lot more, many more, millions of the students that struggle with math because of linguistic barriers, because of the exposure they’re getting to their personal experiences. Like Kedaar mentioned earlier, lacrosse, if that’s one thing, or badminton or whatever it is, if you don’t have been exposed to that or don’t have experience in that, it becomes sort of a barrier to you to solve the math word problems. When we did a lot of research, we found out that this also has been done before us. But we highlighted and we improved upon it, which is the problem is not so much about the students mathematical ability, but more so on the content and the way it’s presented to them. Then when we had conversations with teachers across the United States, we also realized that teachers don’t have a lot of time to scaffold every single student.

We’re talking 20 or more students in the classroom. So what they do to try to make things work is simplify the word, the problems in a simple way to the students, use Google Translator or other methods to help the kids to get through the problem. Again, there’s not enough time for that level of scaffolding. But then this creates more teacher burden, extra work and inconsistent instruction across the classroom. And then when we had conversations with the publishers, we see they spend a lot of time with the editorial team to build the curriculum for that specific state and that specific district. But at the same time, the editorial team is also. There aren’t enough people in the editorial team who have the experience from these different classrooms in this diversity of classrooms that is growing in the United States.

So there’s a lack of scalable workflows to evaluate and revise that content for every single student. So we’ve seen that as a problem in conversation with the publishers and then the districts. One of the most important piece there is how can you as a district leader or person, part of the district evaluation team or procurement team, how can you evaluate multiple different publishers when they’re coming with you with curriculum materials in order to make sure that this content actually fits with your student cohort? And of course you all have your own rubrics. But how can we make, how can we elevate that and try to figure out ways to stress test it before it even hits adoption or any decision making? Our journey started from a product practicum here at the Harvard Ed School. A publisher came with a problem. They have 15 million plus students and they looked at we had this growing 25% bilinguals and a lot more many students that are in the classroom. How can we make sure that the language is not a barrier and are there things that we can do to build and develop so the workflows of every area becomes simplified and more comprehensible? We, like I said, we spoke with educators, researchers, editorial team, district leaders to confirm that it’s a systemic issue. And then we went through 300 plus research papers as well as publishing our own research that came out a few months ago.

And essentially the mission for us as we touched upon multiple times is to make sure that we can remove the unintentional linguistic barriers without simplifying the mathematical rigor. So when we’re saying making it easier or more comprehensible, we’re still making sure that the mathematical rigor is there, but we can use a different language that is maybe more universal and not cultural. So research highlighted that precise vocabulary plus clear syntax equals better comprehension. So our solution, which Kedaar will show you more about, is to evaluate and to revise curriculum language before even reaching the classroom. These are some of the feedback that we’ve been hearing from the teachers across the U.S. again, every student struggling with math word problems, even native speakers. Some of the teachers, because of the not enough capacity, they ask other students to help their friends to see if there are ways to help everyone in the class when they’re not, when there’s not enough time. Curriculum developers don’t have that insight.

That’s what I touched upon earlier in terms of the editorial team could consist of few people, but not everyone has that experience from every single classroom. So what you’re seeing with M7E and we’ll explain what the seven criteria in the M7 is is to strengthen the math content before it reaches the classroom. So it’s an AI powered curriculum intelligence platform to evaluate and revise based on the seven factor framework that we built through this research. And then making sure, like I said earlier, we keep the mathematical rigor and without altering the math, maintaining standard alignment, original cognitive demand and rigor, helping the editorial team from the publisher aspect of it to streamline their workflows but also offering a clear and reliable signal of student content comprehensibility to support adoption. And HKI aligned procurement decisions for the districts and review teams. And then of course along the way they’ll also help reduce the teacher burn and then create something that can scale across the systems upstream. And we’ll see, we’ll show you how it works pretty easy with publisher schools, districts and others. And I’ll give you over to you Kedaar.

Kedaar Sridhar

Awesome. Thanks for that, for that Abdi, for that framing to kick off how we’re thinking about this from a system level. So the actual seven factors that come in and you can see them on the screen here are what we’ve been able to synthesize through all of our research and our interviews and looking across the fields of translanguaging to linguistics, to mathematical language routines to best pedagogy and learning sciences. And a lot of it as part of what we’ve been doing in classes and research labs and sort of associations involved with the Harvard Education School and beyond as well, we figure out that sort of synthesize these seven criteria in order to create comprehensible math language. And it’s all about like Abdi touched upon, removing the unintentional barriers or the hidden barriers, specifically things that were not intentional pedagogical choices. Right. If something is meant to be there, that’s great, but if something sort of slips through and then creates this hidden barrier that can impede student comprehension and learning, that is what these criteria are working on sort of preventing to happen in the first place.

AI-Powered Educational Content Optimization

Kedaar Sridhar

These criteria are then further broken down into 60 to 80 different sub criteria as well, all aligned with, you know, with sort of the latest research and our own findings and interviews in the field as well. To dive a bit deeper, we’ve actually built our own linguistic comprehension model. So this is where, you know, where we see the value of AI. How can we build something that is scalable but is fully based on the research and how we’re able to fine tune this with not just our criteria but also the common core standard guidelines, different state guidelines specifically, as we’re trying to make sure that we have that alignment there. Being able to get live classroom feedback so from our testing on the ground, along with the research that we’re working with, taking in teacher observations, taking in student comprehension, and then being able to sort of iterate upon those outputs as well, getting editorial teams to review our outputs as well, and constantly evaluating if you know that what we’re producing has those benefits and has those sort of increases in comprehension that where you set out to achieve. As we sort of train this, the goal is can this LCM be something that evaluates math content for comprehension and those barriers and identifies misalignments in general with what the actual guidelines and whether it’s grade guidelines, state guidelines and those kind of factors as well there. And then being able to produce that revised content that is optimized for this comprehension, but specifically focus on reducing cognitive load when it comes to things that don’t concern the math part of it or the math comprehension part of it. So I’ll stop sharing the slides here and actually just dive into what we built and the actual platform itself, which is live, which is something that we have educators and districts already employing here. So this is M7E AI.

This is the curriculum evaluation platform that we’ve built here. And the goal is again, as we’ve said before, how can we now provide an easy way for districts to upload sample units, word problems assessments, any sort of curriculum content, sample items that they’re getting from publishers as publishers are making their claims or sharing content as well, and then being able to get a district summary and sort of the high level features, the strengths and the weaknesses of whatever has been uploaded, getting deep evaluation based on the criteria and then even getting revisions that can help support student learning at a broad level as well. So we’ve built this for superintendents, curriculum directors, review committees, you know, sort of school boards as well, anyone that is making those adoption procurement, an evaluation oriented decision specifically. So just as an example, we’ve uploaded an open source math curriculum. It’s grade four fractions and something that you’re able to do, whether it’s uploading a bulk set of files or different sorts of components that I highlighted earlier, you’re able to pick the specific grade level from K to 12 and then even the state standard. So whether it’s California Common Core, Florida Best, Texas TEKS, and we’re working on getting more and more, you know, specific state guidelines in there as well. But most of the country uses the Common Core. And what we found important is actually the learning goals and standards not just for the curriculum, but what are my goals as a district or what are my goals that I’m trying to sort of enact across this, this curriculum as well.

And this is helpful to share more context about the profile of the district or things that we’re looking to achieve in general. So for this great four fractions content, we have a couple of learning goals as well as a couple of standards that align to sort of the Common Core there. And what we’re able to get is a summary report. And I won’t go fully, you know, I won’t read this out to you, but at a high level it’s giving you a snapshot of what actually makes sense in the content you’ve uploaded. What does that linguistic structure look like? What are the main issues and key strengths as well? What I will say, and I can scroll down just for some, some context here is when we revise it, we take an original problem and then revise it based on all of the factors that you saw in that sort of linguistic comprehension model. So in this specific case, you know, here’s an example of two kids that are planning on going for a run, right? And immediately you’re able to see soccer practice, after school activities, these sort of different names as well. And what our goal is, is with testing with students that we were, you know, working on with, they got stuck at, oh, soccer practice, I don’t do that. And also after school activities, my school doesn’t offer that.

Right. So being able to even again universalize what we’re doing across the field here and then making it very simple in terms of they just want to measure these distances, we’re still keeping the students and we’re able to get to the core of what the math problem is asking specifically. And now there is no, you know, it’s still a three part math problem. Comprehension is not changing, but we’ve already removed a lot of those contextual barriers that actually prevent them from comparing a lot of those fractions there. So if we jump back to the District report. We’re now able to see, you know, there are strengths in terms of cohesion and labeling, but really gaps in terms of those contextual references, different formats as well, and you know, any exclusionary measures that might be taking place as well. We follow up with implications for district adoption and review, in terms of how this matters for the guide, how this sort of aligns with the Common Core guidelines for that specific state and what might be helpful in terms of revisions, as if this is something that you’re choosing to adopt as a district.

And then finally recommendations that districts can sort of follow in terms of how to revise, what parts of it to adopt. Maybe there’s parts of it to adopt and parts of it to revise, a lot of factors like that as well. And then that’s sort of the high level overview. And then it’s sort of a deeper evaluation based on the criteria as well that, you know, the seven criteria that we identified earlier in terms of why or why not it passes each criteria and sort of general notes in terms of the main issues that were found. So this is more the instructional design, you know, curriculum developer oriented level, instructional issues specifically, and then recommendations for further improving it as well. So we wanted to give all the context as district leaders, you know, and as curriculum managers in general.

We are trying to create a transparent model that is clearly showing why we made revisions or why we made changes or how we’re doing a lot of this evaluation specifically. And that’s why we’re able to explain all of this. And then these reports can be exported. So at a high level, this is what we’ve been able to accomplish so far with M7EAI. And we just want to be able to help, you know, districts make better decisions and give them, you know, empower them with the tools that can help them find success for their students.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah. And Michael, before you jump in, you asked the question, how can school industry leaders use this kind of tool? So essentially where I think I said in the email as well, we’re offering for free to district leaders and schools to use the platform. The way you would do it essentially is just contact us and then we’ll help you set up and get started and then.work with you from there.

Michael Horn

Perfect. So they can just reach out directly over email from. From that response. Perfect. Okay, let’s go to Q and A. Elmira. I think that they may have answered the role of AI in evaluating this, but if so, I’m going to go to the second question, but if I have that wrong, I’m going to bring you back in. But we have a question around. So the tools aren’t evaluating curricula in terms of pedagogy, like linguistic scaffolds, math language routines, teacher moves and so forth.

Is that correct? And so just I think tighter definition on what, where it is reviewing and where it isn’t.

Kedaar Sridhar

Okay, I can tackle that. Perfect. So we actually. And this is, this is, again, this is just an example here, but in terms of the recommendations, it’s not just the language recommendation, but it’s also pedagogical recommendations and also the formatting of content. So we’re providing feedback on even the images used or the diagrams or anything in that sort of context there. A lot of times our revisions actually end up providing more scaffolding because again, if something’s an intentional pedagogical choice, we don’t want to be eliminating it. We want to be further explaining it at a high level as well. So whether it’s providing visual support, clarifying instructions, providing more scaffolding, those are the things that we’re also looking for in addition to the linguistic side of things, and also checking for math correctness and the math principles there as well.

And sort of what we want to be very clear about what each revision is supporting, whether it matches the learning goals that were put in and the standards, but being also focused on the linguistic side of things, comprehensive wise. Hopefully that answers that question. But we are definitely working to provide more visibility as well into the pedagogical side of things.

Michael Horn

Perfect. Let me ask this next question that is in the Q and A. And then, Christian, I’ll get to you after that. This question has to do with AI mediated personalization. As tools like this become more common, do we risk siloing students’ learning experiences? So take the point about content delivery being responsive to context. Right. Like Kedaar, your observation around, you know, skiing while living in the Middle East. But if most students mediate their learning in this way, you mentioned scaling this technology. Do we risk opportunities for negotiated understanding? Do we lose something important if 30 students in class engage with a given math problem by interpreting 30 different personalized descriptions of the problem? Would it not be beneficial to everyone for students in Oman to learn something about skiing, while North American students gain exposure to Omani racing or falconry or something like that? So I will let you both answer that question or whichever one wants to take it.

Kedaar Sridhar

And just to be very, very. Just to clarify what we’re doing here, we aren’t personalizing for every student. Right. The goal is how do we make content universal across various groups of students? Because this all started with the static textbooks that we were. The publisher came in and these textbooks are published and they don’t have review cycles for maybe it’s four or five years, different cases for different publishers. But how do you turn content that is static, printed, even supplemental digital content to some extent as well, into something that could be understood by various groups of students? Because like Abdi mentioned, an affluent, you know, an affluent area will be getting the same sort of curriculum as a less affluent area. So how do we sort of equal the playing field on that aspect? Abdi?

Transforming Education Systems

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, I think there’s so many products that now are hitting the classroom for teachers, for students. When we looked at the ecosystem, we’re thinking more of if the ecosystem consists of four players: you have the students, you have the teachers, you have the curriculum developers and district leaders. Where can we make a system level change? And we didn’t get out there to say we’ll create a personalized product for students or for the teachers. It was more so when we started with this at the Harvard School, the practicum, the publisher was doing, what Kedaar just said is textbooks, depending on what publisher it is, they review them every two years, every four years. And those are the core programs that students learn. So we’re looking at how can we make you, how can we make the content, these textbooks, more universal so every student can bring their own, can leverage their translanguage and like Kedaar touched upon in order to understand the content in front of them and not let that be a barrier. And if we, we spend a lot of time figuring out what are these seven criteria. It was actually five in the beginning and then it became six and then became seven.

And then we changed what the seven and the six was based on the feedback from the researchers across UC Berkeley, UCLA, MIT, Stanford, etc. And we came to understand that this is something that these seven criteria can be helping across the board, every student to understand any content in front of them. But yeah, nothing very personalized to every student. It’s just across the board, every student should be able to understand any type of math if they leverage the M7 framework.

Michael Horn

One other quick thought and then I want to go in. So Christian, I’m going to come back to you in a second. I want to go to one other question in the Q and A because it streams perfectly. And then I haven’t forgotten about you. Just one other observation, which is this is always relative to the content or standards objective that is trying to be taught. Right. So skiing for Omani students might be something worth teaching, but it might not be part of the math purpose. Right.

It might show up in social studies or something else. And so it’s not to take that out, but it’s to make sure that relative to the objective that is trying to be taught, that we are making sure that we are, in fact teaching that. And then when there’s intentional interference or complexity, you can say, yes, we’re keeping that because there’s an instructional purpose here, as I understand it. I think this goes into the next thing, because this is actually already done a lot with people who write standardized assessments. They have whole teams that are trying to make sure questions are not biased or unintentionally asking something, testing for a different objective than the one that they hope to. And so it goes to Rebecca’s question, can this resource be used to review assessments? So, Kedaar, Abdi.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Horn

Short answer is yes.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, it could be used like. It’s like anything from overall curriculum to teacher notes to any instructional, you know, external scaffolds, worksheets, problem sets, anything that is content based, that is student facing, that is, you know, that is sort of in those different sort of categories as well. And we take a lot of account into specifically, you know, looking at an assessment versus an instructional material. Right. Because an assessment is more in the silo of the student, whereas an instructional material is in the context of a teacher and being able to understand what the teacher’s role in the classroom is as well. And so these are all things that we’re continuously building into the platform as well.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, and we’ll share with the group here. We tested grade four, 17 units, 17 lessons plus four assessments. And we’ll share that after the call is 200 pages long. But quickly you can review and see how the original was and how we revised it and the context around that. But, yeah, assessment can be also used absolutely.

Audience, Partners, and Reception

Michael Horn

Okay, perfect. Let’s do lightning round. We’ve got three questions that I think all connect and then we have two questions that are somewhat different. So the three questions that connect are who’s your target audience? Right. Sort of. There’s publishers, there’s schools and districts. How do you think about them? The related one is: has or would M7EAI ever partner with another established organization with a similar mission? Are you all a for profit company? How would that work? So still. And then Julie asks how has this been received by the publishers? So maybe you can sort of walk through each of those relationships because I think you have precedent on all of them.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, I can jump in, Kedaar. So it’s been received very well by the publishers. It’s been more like almost very surprising that they’ve been very. They essentially love the way we approach the problem because there’s stuff that they’re already working on. And if you go back to the whole story, it started with a publisher coming to us and sharing the issue that they are facing, the challenge that they’re facing. And now we’ve been across multiple publishers in this space and it’s been just received really well and we continue continuing to work with each and one of them.

Michael Horn

Let me give my answer of what I think it is for you guys and then you can correct me since it’s your all company. Yes, for profit, but yes you have partnered with mission aligned nonprofits in particular as a tool to help them evaluate curriculum. You can give some specifics in a second but I think it’s a commercial relationship with the publishers and right now it’s giving this tool away to schools and districts to sort of up level the field and help them ask the question of publishers more, more, more to bring it into the criteria. Is that, how did I do guys?

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, perfect. So yeah, essentially going back to the system level of change, I don’t think that would happen just us working with the publishers. I think it’s like a whole community drive. So working with schools, doing the RCT and then also working with district leaders, seeing the value of it. Working with a nonprofit, working with other organizations. You asked the question about other organizations that are similar. We were absolutely open to working with them as well. It’s more like anyone that’s helping with making the change and improving the comprehension level for students.

We’re for that. Publishers. Yes, there is a commercial piece there, but for schools and districts there’s a free product.

Michael Horn

Okay, let me ask this question. I’m going to switch gears. So there’s a question. Could a homeschool parent or a small micro school use this tool doing math with their child or would it be too time intensive?

Kedaar Sridhar

Definitely. I mean, this is, the goal is how do we now reduce the time that it takes to figure out if content is good and if it isn’t, you know, best serving my child or best serving the students, how can we now revise it to make sure that it has a lot of those, those factors in there, given my child’s, you know, age and developmental sort of persona and, you know, the main, the key learning goes, I want to get there. So whether you’re a micro school or a parent, there’s definitely scope for, you know, uploading, you know, content that you would be teaching anyways or being able to revise it to best meet your child’s needs in that sort of aspect as well.

Michael Horn

Okay, perfect. So then Peter has an interesting question. Can the technology go the other way? For example, could content become very specific for an art school or a ski academy or a tennis academy where young Olympians or similar athletes are being taught? Which is perhaps not something you guys have thought about, but I don’t know, maybe you have.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, it’s. I mean, yeah, it’s not something we’ve necessarily thought about, but it’s definitely very doable. Right. I think it’s very making, you know, it’s. The goal is how can we best transform content to best fit the needs of the audience. Right. Or the needs of the learners themselves and cater to them. So I think in that respect, you know, if the goal is, oh, wow, we actually have a focus now, let’s now shift language to best serve that focus or that content area, that domain sort of area.

Yeah, Very, very doable.

Abdi Guleed

I’ll just add to that. I think it’s very doable. Peter, I think if you, in what Kedaar was shown earlier, we have this specific area that can essentially help the output, the evaluation and the revision. So in the learning space, if you can focus on and say, I am very specifically focused on art school or ski academy or etc. And these are the learning goals that we have for them, then the will take into account that with the standards and then give you the evaluation in a series. So we haven’t done it, but it’s absolutely doable.

Michael Horn

Okay, let me ask the last question and then we’re going to let you guys have the final word as we wrap, which is M7E intended to be used by students with dyslexia, ELLs, other learners with specifically defined needs, or do you see applicability for all students?

Abdi Guleed

So currently, the way we’ve been thinking about M7E is to be used by district leaders to evaluate the material that they’re thinking of in their district, to be used by curriculum developers as they’re thinking of creating new material. But also in the study round that we’ve been doing and still doing, teachers can use it, but it’s not a student-facing product. And it’s also not a teacher-facing product, even though teachers are using it to give us feedback. If you guys remember, very early on we were showing you the linguistic comprehension model that we’re building and on one side of is classroom, feedback that fits into the model to give us feedback on how to improve it, how to continue to develop something that is really relevant to the classroom. But it’s not intended to be used by students or teachers. It’s more for the ones creating the product.

Kedaar Sridhar

And what I mean, what I’ll just add there, in terms of the beneficiary, it is all students, right? The content that we revise or, evaluate, is best, is intended to serve all students, regardless of their linguistic background, regardless of where they’re coming from. Because if we can improve it for some students in terms of these buyers, it actually helps and you see improvements across the board for all students. So that’s the goal.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, so we’ll wrap there. Huge thanks for a series of really interesting, thoughtful questions. Huge thanks to Abdi and Kedaar both for sharing the original research that went into this. And then the practical side of this work as we explored how to make sure that math materials aren’t just aligned to standards where there’s a lot of good work already, but also that students can be able to understand them by getting the linguistic complexity correct and getting away from these hidden linguistic barriers, especially for multilingual learners. But as Kedaar and Abdi just said, for all.

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Lynn Liao and Taryn Campbell from Cambiar Quest joined me to talk about their approach to scaling real-world work experiences for secondary students through micro-internships. This is an important topic because while people like me have been arguing for more real-world learning opportunities for middle and high school students, how to source those opportunities and make sure they are meaningful such that it’s not a burden on businesses and other organizations is a real challenge.

Lynn and Taryn discussed how Cambiar Quest handles this in their partnerships with schools and local businesses to create team-based, class projects that help students develop essential “durable skills” like communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. They shared insights on how the program reduces burden on partnering businesses so that it’s widely accessible, the scaffolding provided for both students and educators, and the strong positive outcomes they’ve seen so far. It’s early in their learning journey as you’ll hear. Highly recommend.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today, I’m delighted. We have two guests who’ve been at the front lines, I think it’s safe to say, of really thinking what that looks like in the current era, current age that we are entering as a society. We have Lynn Liao, she’s the managing director at Cambiar Quest. And Taryn Campbell, the director at Cambiar Quest. And so first I’ll just say Lynn, Taryn, welcome.

I’m delighted to have you both here.

Lynn Liao

We’re thrilled to talk to you. Our mission is so aligned with what you just described.

Michael Horn

Well, it’s going to be a fun conversation because you all, the three of us, had a chance to talk maybe a month or so ago and frankly, I had no idea the breadth of the work that you all were doing. And I think it really answers a key question that I think is so important at this moment in time. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Maybe let’s just set the foundation for folks. And Lynn, I’ll start with you. Just what is Cambiar? What is Cambiar Quest, sort of set the stage for our audience so that they know the organization in which you work and the work you’ve been up to.

Essential Durable Skills for Success

Lynn Liao

Sure. So Cambiar Education is a venture studio that is seeking to change the marketplace for education so that the products and services that truly make the biggest difference for students and educators and parents really succeed. And we know that that is not always the case in how the marketplace works right now. Our goal, our, our big vision is to have a life changing impact for more than a million students. And we do that both by incubating entrepreneurs who are creating these new ideas and supporting their development and growth. And we also direct run programs. So Quest is an example of a direct run Cambiar program. Quest is solely focused on career exploration and development for students, very much in line with what you described your mission is.

So we are really, we have multiple programs where we help students really build the durable skills necessary for career exploration and for them to really be the ones navigating their way to the future that they are seeking. And then we can dive more into the micro internship, which I think is the program we’re focusing on today.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely want to do that. And before, before maybe we jump in that you mentioned durable skills. As we discussed when we had this offline conversation about a month ago, everyone has a definition for durable skills. Maybe ground us in how you all think about durable skills and how they port from one context to another or maybe which don’t and have to be specifically engineered.

Lynn Liao

Sure. I’ll toss it to Taryn just so we make it a three way conversation.

Michael Horn

Perfect. Go ahead, Taryn.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. I think we think about durable skills like, what are the key things that kids need to be able to do to navigate their life? They need to be able to communicate with people that they don’t know. What does it mean to work in a team and to work alongside others? How do you think critically about the decisions that you’re making and understand how to break problems down into smaller pieces? What does it mean to take initiative? Right. And so I think there’s a million different definitions and words for some of these core key concepts. Whether people call them durable skills, 21st-century skills, sometimes it’s pushed into social and emotional learning. Right. There’s a million definitions out there, but we’re really talking about the foundation that really all kids and all adults need to be successful both in school and the workplace.

Michael Horn

And what strikes me about that and Lynn, this may be the perfect place then to start talking about the micro internships is one of the things that I’ve come to is for, you know, kids to really understand how to communicate real world context is incredibly important. Being in real world situations, but also frankly, like to develop agency and things of that nature. They need to know what’s even possible in the outside world. And most of us as high schoolers, middle schoolers, just don’t. So maybe that’s the.

Lynn Liao

Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. So our micro internship is a team based project where students work with a real employer on a current business challenge they’re facing. And what’s different about it is it’s actually embedded in class time. So when you think typically about an internship, a student goes off site. Maybe they’re learning from osmosis, like many of the things you’re talking about. But because they’re very brand new to the world of work, there’s really limited time for a manager to truly support someone at that skill level. So students are picking up things, but they’re not really digging into the skills that Taryn was talking about. So we’ve created a really scaffolded experience where we’re hyper focused on Students building those critical skills.

So critical thinking, communication, collaboration. And because it’s in that work context where they’re directly talking to an employer, it raises the stakes in such a way that it actually really juices the learning. I was stepping back to reflect because we have 30 hours for our micro internship. That’s typically what we spend in an average school year. For a high schooler, it’s about a thousand plus hours. I bet you if you ask an average high schooler, they do not remember anything about most of those hours. And our goal is completely the opposite. We want every one of our 30 hours to be high impact, sticky, memorable.

Learning Through Challenges and Growth

Lynn Liao

And that’s oftentimes where the deepest learning comes from. It’s like context rich, it’s unique, it’s something they, they’re slightly uncomfortable, but we also work super hard to support them to get through that so that on the other side, they’re reflecting exactly what you had mentioned, Michael. Like, they’re able to say, not just like, oh, I worked on some project. Instead they’re able to say, I supported a client to figure out how they’re going to reach more customers for this new product. And I was able to actually take in this really tough client feedback and do a 180 and come up with a new presentation by the end. And I was really proud of myself for being able to do that. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re really seeking, that students can talk about their own competencies, whether that’s to a future employer on a college app or even frankly, just to say it to themselves. Right.

To feel like they have that sense of personal power and sense of agency as a working, working professional.

Michael Horn

Can you talk a little bit about maybe a couple case studies? Right. Just to give our listeners a sense of what kinds of businesses are they working with. It was a pretty diverse group, as I recall. So maybe just a couple examples. And Taryn, maybe I’ll kick it to you for this, to give a few examples, but then also maybe you know that scaffolding that Lynn talked about, like go deep into one of them where like day one, how are you making sure that they’re able to competently do this so that they’re actually getting something out of it.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. So the first thing I’ll say is all of our content is industry agnostic. Right. So we have built it to make sure that there are no technical skills that students are required to have to be able to engage. And so we have worked with really small mom and pop shops like a local ice cream shop that is around the corner where they were trying to figure out, how do I get more of the foot traffic passing by my store to actually come in and buy ice cream, to really large advanced manufacturing firms… who’s trying to figure out, you know what, we have a talent pipeline challenge that we’re trying to solve. How do we get more young people interested in advanced manufacturing? So what does that look like? What insights can students help us gather and synthesize? And so those are two totally different ends of the spectrum, right? One highly technical and industry related, one really community based. And we see engagement from students regardless of the type of project that they’re engaging in. And what we do at Cambiar is we help right size.

What’s the right grain size for a business challenge? We write up a project brief alongside those employers and then they come in at three specific points in the project. So they come in at the beginning to launch the project, live with students. Students get to ask questions based on their project brief and say, okay, who are these people? What are they asking me to do? What do I need to be clarified? Then they work with their teacher. Every lesson is scaffolded. So there is very much a, like, how do I introduce myself to an adult I’ve never met? What does it look like to write a great question to an employer that’s coming in and giving me a business question? They practice it with each other, then they practice it with others to get feedback, and then they do it live. I think another sort of hallmark when we talk about scaffolding skills here is we have a hallmark of the program is that they all have to do, every student has to go and do live interviews with a client or a stakeholder related to their project challenge. So that means they are interviewing adults, students, community members that they may or may not know.

And that is terrifying for students, right? They’re like, wait, what? I can’t text them. Wait, I have to do it in person, live? And so we really break it down, right. What’s a great interview? What does a great question look like? How do we write some of those questions together? How do I come up with my own question? They practice with each other. They practice with mentors and others who push into the classroom. And then they go out and do it live and get feedback. And they’re doing this collectively in teams. And so that’s what we mean when we say we really break it down. We don’t just say, go forth and do an interview and come back to us.

We help them every single step of the way so that the next time they have to ask somebody a follow up question or introduce themselves to an adult, they’re like, oh yeah, I’ve done that before. I know how this works. Right. Lynn, curious if you have anything to add.

Lynn Liao

I think the one other thing I would add, I know Michael, we had talked about the importance of scalability. This is sort of a micro aspect of that. But we really think a lot about what is the skill that we want students to build. And as Taryn was breaking down, it’s around. It’s essentially a form of active listening. It’s maybe not the most exciting thing, but I think most on the surface. But if you think about what it takes to be successful in life, being able to access somebody else’s understanding and knowledge is absolutely critical. And so being able to think on your feet, really take in what are they saying to me or not.

That’s really core. Spending time finding people to schedule interviews, like scheduling and coordination is a necessity, but it’s not the core thing. So in our modeling, part of the right sizing is finding a business challenge that has stakeholders that students can interview that are widely accessible. So that’s one of our screens when we think about it, because sometimes we’ll have a potential client that has kind of a niche product like let’s say it’s a medical service. And it only applies to people who have this certain condition, you couldn’t interview anybody versus we’ll go to somebody like our regional hospital. They were asking anybody under 18 what their most pressing health needs were. Right. So like that, that’s a way that we address it at the front end so students can spend their time on the thing that’s actually the highest value add to them versus something that could end up being a blocker or hurdle for execution.

Michael Horn

I think that’s super interesting. It gets into something else that I was thinking as you guys were talking about, which is like lessons learned as you guys have implemented this. And Taryn, maybe I’ll go to you first on this. But I’m also thinking, not just the lessons you’ve learned, but also how you help a teacher in a school put this into action. Because I think something we’ve talked about in the past is, you know, teachers are really good at their instructional, you know, their content area. I teach ninth grade, you know, math, whatever it might be. Doesn’t mean that I know how to help scaffold a student through these sets of conversations or set them up to build social capital in the ways that you’re all describing.

So I’m curious, like, lessons you’ve learned both to really help this go smoothly and be implemented well and maybe to get the spread up, as Lynn was just talking about, in terms of scalability.

Taryn Campbell

Yeah, I think we’ve learned a lot with each different sort of cycle that we run. We take a look back at our content curriculum and training and say, okay, what worked and what didn’t? I think we have created really detailed lesson plans where we have set the content and then you sub in the different client challenge or business problem that students are working on. And we’ve gotten it down to scripts, if that is what teachers need, as well as accompanying slides. So really, they are only focused on understanding who is the client and how do I serve as a coach. Actually, right to your point, it is a shift from direct content teaching to how do I support students to wrestle through this on their own? Because there is no right answer. And so we’ve created a hybrid training for all of our facilitators that has a pretty condensed, asynchronous component that walks them step by step through all of the materials, all of the coaching stances and coaching moves. It’s essentially a playbook for how to facilitate. And then we supplement that with live facilitation training.

So really, walking each facilitator through, we’re going to go through the exact same activities that your students go through, and you’re going to wrestle with it, and we’re going to do it with past student work products and past client challenges so that they can try it on because it is new for them. And we’ve actually seen pretty awesome results with facilitators who are brand new to teaching, go through the training. And when we look at the scores coming out of their student surveys, we see that students are still gaining at the same rate that other students are. And so that’s exciting to us because it tells us that there is something in our content that has solved for some of the variation in facilitator experience. We’re still working and improving and tooling, tooling up on that front, but it’s really, really promising early signs.

Michael Horn

Well, I want to get to impact in a moment, but maybe a dumb question, which is how many cycles have you gone through? How many students or teachers, businesses have you been working with? Give us a sense of the scope so far.

Lynn Liao

Yeah, for, let’s see, last spring. Oh, Taryn, you might have to help me with this one for I think it was about a couple hundred, about 200. And then we’re on track this school year for about a thousand and next school year we’re, our trajectory is about 3,000.

So essentially.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah.

Lynn Liao

So we kind of like our approach was to go really slow and close with the first spring set. And then we did a major overhaul for the summer, got really strong results and then we felt really ready now to be growing it.

Michael Horn

Well, so you just mentioned results. So maybe talk about impact that you’re starting to see from the program as you’ve gone.

Impactful Program with High Approval

Lynn Liao

Yeah, absolutely. So are immediately like what Taryn mentioned that we do a post program survey right away with kids and have consistently got really strong feedback from them. So with over 90% recommending to a friend, 96% saying that it’s more engaging than the typical coursework. And really importantly, given our focus on durable skills, every single student, 100% of students say they’ve grown in at least one durable skill. But even better, 87% say they’ve grown on three or more. Because we’re really trying to get them to grow in all of these. So that’s really important. I think what’s intriguing as we’ve had and really kind of meaningful to us is that not just right at the close of the program, now that we’ve had a little distance, we’ve stayed in touch with our partners. Another good sign of our impact is all of our partners, our implementation partners, meaning schools after school programs, intermediaries have all continued and most of them have increased their enrollment.

So with that we’ve been able to. They’ve been able to keep track of some of their students, like if their students were sophomores or juniors, you know, versus seniors who had graduated. And they’ve shared that students have said, have retained the kind of what I described earlier that they were. It was so great to hear that there were students who were juniors who did this program in the spring who were writing on their college applications about the experience. Like exactly what we had mentioned, like these. This is what the challenge that I faced going through it. This is what I learned about myself. This is what it means about my skills.

So really good to hear that there’s been retention essentially of the core learnings and students are able to talk about the impact.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Oh yeah, go ahead, Taryn.

Taryn Campbell

Yeah, the other thing I’ll add is we also have client partners who have actually gone forward with student suggestions to implement them. Right. So some of their folks are actually continuing to work with that school and some of those student groups to implement their ideas on how to expose more students in high school to advanced manufacturing to get them excited about it so students get to see the full arc. I was asked about this challenge. I actually came up with a solution that my client enjoyed and now we’re getting to put it into an action which is really, really cool.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s, have you seen any students get internships then as a result with some of these clients and so forth is like. Is sort of their stage two in some cases.

Taryn Campbell

I think that’s the goal, right, is maybe not for every single one. We go in saying that we don’t. That is not part of the expectation. But I will say in all of the ones where I have at least pushed in, there have been students who have followed up with employers say, like, I am interested in helping you run your social media strategy. I am interested in helping you figure out how to connect with more community impact and X, Y and Z strategy.

And often the businesses that we work with are open to those conversations. Right. For several of those that we have that are seniors, where that would have been a possibility. The seniors were like, I wish I had done this earlier because I’m going off to college now and I can’t spend my summer doing this. But that is definitely on our roadmap.

Lynn Liao

Michael, I just wanted to break in. Can I share just a couple student quotes? Because I think this captures what you mentioned around identity and a sense of agency. So this came from. Yeah, two different students. I feel more prepared for college and careers after high school because this felt like a real job where I was held to certain standards like you would for a job. Another student said, I feel a lot more confident because I now feel that I belong in these big spaces. So I think that speaks to what you mentioned at the beginning, which is there’s such a divide between the world of school and just a lack of transparency. It’s just like

A world that’s behind a wall for many students. And this micro internship is meant to give them a boost so they can walk forward into the opportunities you’re talking about. So a lot of their feedback is indicating that they’re having a mindset shift to be much more open and feeling more ready to dive into those next opportunities.

Michael Horn

No, it’s really cool because you’re, the fact that students would feel more comfortable right. In those settings talking to those people, making those connections and then the employers or the clients. Right. If you will on the other side, excited to continue to engage, do this again, implement an idea, whatever it is, in some ways, that’s the end customer. Right. Like, so you’re getting both sides of it. I want to go back to the clients in a moment, but the other question that’s occurred to me as we’ve been talking is how you integrate this in a school. Like, you know, there’s not a ready block in many cases.

There’s blocks for college preparation, there’s blocks for all sorts of things. One of the big arguments that I’ve been making is that middle and high schools need to become much more permeable with the outside world and have a lot more opportunities for real work experience. Because my observation, frankly, is students with means are going to get access to that in a world of AI where we’re requiring several years of experience before that first job. And if you don’t have that, I’m not sure where you get it unless your school does it. But I’m curious, like, where do you, you know, where are the modular interfaces where you find time for that?

Lynn Liao

Yeah, totally agree with what you’re saying. And that’s actually why we fought really hard in designing this is, we wrestled through what to do, because when we think about a scalable solution, I think many in this, like ed take age, think, like, put it online, just package it, and like, roll it out everywhere. And when I think about that, I think the students who have access to other opportunities are going to be the ones who take that online opportunity. So by placing it into a school, it then became incumbent on us to figure out where does it go in school. So we’ve really designed it to be flexible and easy to implement. So it’s 30 hours. It can be implemented however the school thinks it makes sense. So we work with them to kind of think through that.

A typical might be twice a week over, you know, 10 to 12 weeks, just depending on what their blocks are. Some of them have extended them. Some of them do it really, like, in a tight burst. We’re just learning right now, I’d say about, like, what really works best in all varieties of classes. So we’ve definitely been working with different CTE pathways. So it can fit in as an introduction or as a capstone project for some CT courses. It can go into other kind of core classes like economics, financial literacy. We’ve done an English class, we’ve done a Spanish class.

I think Taryn, you maybe rattle off a few others. But, like, we’re pretty open and it’s really just wherever the teacher feels like they can dive in and have like a meaty project based learning experience for students and where the school is seeking a career, a supported career connected learning opportunity.

Michael Horn

Let me ask this question which is let’s, let’s flip to the client side now and maybe, Taryn, I’ll start with you on this and Lynn, jump in. It strikes me that it’s great to say schools need to be doing more real world work. Career connected learning for all. Like all the slogans that I can imagine that I’ve probably written at some points as well. But you all have made the observation several times like, hey, a manager is really busy, they’re not going to be able to give this kind of feedback. Right. And we know that a lot of managers like, I mean take my town offices.

Right. I’m sure there’s dozens of problems that they would love to solve, but they’re like, yeah, I’m not having a 17 year old come in here because I gotta execute against this thing tomorrow. Right. As opposed to train up someone with how to even present themselves at a workplace, an interview on our behalf, et cetera, et cetera. So like talk a little bit about how you’ve reduced that friction. I mean if I’m doing the math right and you have say even with the 200 students that you ran through the program at first, that’s probably like 40 or something different projects that you’ve got going or something like that. Maybe I’m wrong on that, but. So I love you to talk through how you’re enabling so many different clients to work with these projects.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. So we actually have an entire class of students attached to one client and one project.

Michael Horn

Okay, gotcha.

Scalable Project-Based Learning Process

Taryn Campbell

One, it allows the teacher who might be new to this project based learning to this coaching stance. Focus on really understanding one core client challenge and then working with the whole class to scaffold and understand. How do we write these questions? How do we ask our client X, Y and Z? Right. And it allows for the groups to compare against each other how things are going. Every group, depending on who they interview, ends up in a totally different place, which is also very cool. There’s a value add for our clients at the end when they don’t have to sit through the same presentation over and over and over again. They actually get five, six, seven ideas that are brought back to them based on what student teams come up with. And I think one of the ways we make it scalable for local businesses is we say that the all in-total time is about six hours.

That’s inclusive of prep time. Right. So we get on the call, we all brainstorm sort of what are some business challenges? How do we right size up for high school students? We write the client brief for folks. We are working to figure out how to leverage AI to help us do that in the future. But we write the client brief for folks and the client comes in three times. They come at the beginning to launch it live with students. They come in at that interim point that Lynn had talked about to give feedback. And let me tell you, they give real feedback.

Collaborative Student Projects Simplified

Taryn Campbell

Sometimes it puts students on their heels a little bit and then they come in at the end to get the final presentations and to hear what students have ultimately come up with. And so that’s really manageable and really reasonable for folks. We try to work with organizations and companies who have more than one individual. So even those mom and pop shops, if there’s like at least two or three employees that are employed there, so that if there are scheduling hiccups, which we know are all too common in schools these days, there’s always somebody to fill in and come in and do the live portion because we think that matters. And so six hours, people like, oh yeah, I have six hours across two months. I can do that on three different dates. And we’re not asking them to manage the students. We’re not asking them to walk students through the project.

We’re asking them for their viewpoint and their feedback, which they don’t actually have to prep for. Anytime the client has come in, we’ve created playbooks and guides to say, hey, here’s what you’re walking into, here’s what students are doing in their class, here’s what’s expected of you, and here’s a template for how you might structure a conversation with the student so everything feels like it’s plug and play and designed to be really easy for clients to come in.

Lynn Liao

One additional thing on the value prop for the businesses. Oftentimes this right size business challenge is one where the business is in particular seeking youth perspective or perspective of people our students have easy access to. So like the. We’re not purely saying to the business, do this because it’s a nice thing to do for your community. We are thinking do this because it’s a nice thing to do for students in your area, but also because it’s great for your business. You’re getting fresh perspective, you’re getting access to early talent. So some of the organizations we work with are seeking a talent pipeline and want more exposure to students. So like there is a real win for them that’s pretty concrete that we can pitch and make more explicit to businesses too.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Let’s wrap up with this question that’s on my mind which is look, if schools want to learn more, they want to put this into place, right? Like how should they get in touch with y’all? What’s, what’s the process from their end to get this up and running? Because I think that’s the ultimate goal, right. We want a lot more schools, students, local employers engaging in these projects together. So what’s the first step for schools that are interested after hearing this?

Lynn Liao

I think the easiest thing is they contact one of the two of us. We have a smallish team right now, so we’re heavily based in Los Angeles initially, but we’re also in several other states right now. So in Tennessee, Texas, we’re in St. Louis, Missouri, New Orleans. So like just depending on the depth, there’s different places we can go. So they should just like reach out to us. We’re open and like our whole goal is expansion. So if you can find the right size and scale, we’re happy to dive in.

Michael Horn

Perfect. So jump on, Cambiar Education contact y’ all and then go from there. Basically. Terrific. Lynn Taryn, any final thoughts that you all want to make sure we hit as, as we wrap up and then we’ll, we’ll conclude from there. But this is, I, I’m fascinated by a lot of facets of this, so I could keep going, but I want to make sure you guys have the last, last word, if you will.

Lynn Liao

I think the thing I want to say is like we don’t see this as a replacement to a deeper internship or a true job where a student is really diving into something that is aligned to their personal interests and passion area. Because even the way we’ve constructed it, because it’s a project for the entire class, some students are going to be more interested than others. But I do think this experience fills a big gap in kind of the current career connected learning, work based learning offerings that are easy for schools to do because essentially most of those are easy for schools to do because they’re passive. It’s like a career panel or job shadowing. Students just sort of have big eyes and are listening but they’re not doing. So I really do think we’ve worked hard to make this something that is super high leverage. Again, like every hour of the 30 hours makes a difference for students and the hurdles for both employers and educators. We worked so hard to slim down, so it should be very low friction.

So like, maybe this is just encouragement to any of the listeners who are interested in implementing to come talk to us. And like I said, every partner who’s worked with us has wanted to continue working with us and to expand. So that’s probably a good sign that it is meeting that bar.

Taryn Campbell

I think the thing that I would hope to leave folks with is the in person still matters. And I think there’s especially for some of these core skills around communication. You can practice all day with an AI chatbot and that’s great, but unless you actually go out and put it into play with a real person in front of you, it’s all for nothing. Right? And so how do we get kids more of those opportunities to like to do the hard thing? They all drag their feet. They’re like, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this. And then the confidence that you see on the other side where they walk taller and they actually want to keep going to do more interviews and more interviews and you have to stop them. I think that’s that to me is the exciting energy that you see when you do programs like this. And so just really excited to talk to you, Michael, and share the work that we’re doing.

And hopefully this inspires more people to get into the career connected learning space.

Michael Horn

Well, thank you both for the work that you’re doing and frankly the doing of it for students I think is really what’s so exciting about this. And all these skills you mentioned, not the least of which active listening you said, gee, that can be sort of a throwaway. It’s not right. Like we need more individuals in society being able to do that and you all are facilitating that. So huge thanks, Lynn Taryn. Check it all out at Cambier Quest and thank you so much. We’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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One programming note: I will be publishing just one more general update before the end of the year—on Friday, December 26th—which will be free for all to read. I hope many of you are able to unplug for the most part and spend some time with loved ones over the next several days. I’ll be back in your inbox in the new year on Monday, January 5th with an article for paid subscribers. We’ll then get back to our regular publishing schedule. Thanks for all this year—and happy holidays. For now, enjoy this conversation that my colleague, Danny Curtis, hosted. — Michael B. Horn

Danny Curtis sat down with Tommy Hodges, dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education, to discuss the innovative CarolinaCrED teacher education program. Tommy explained how the program leverages a competency-based, micro-credential approach to better recognize the skills that aspiring educators bring from diverse backgrounds, while personalizing their training to fill specific skill gaps. The conversation explores the collaborative design with school districts, the data showing strong retention and instructional quality among program graduates, and the unique advantages and challenges of developing such a program within a large university.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you’re joining the show where we are committed to creating a world in which individuals can build their passion, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today we are so excited to be joined by Tommy Hodges, who is dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education and recently the interim Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences. And I’m so excited to have him on to learn more about the innovative commodity based teacher education program that he helped to create at U of SC called CarolinaCrED. Tommy, thanks so much for joining us.

Tommy Hodges

Danny, thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Competency-Based Teacher Education

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. So I’d love to start just by hearing in your own words what Carolina CrED is and how it’s different from other teacher certification programs in the state.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So Carolina CrED is a broad umbrella with a number of outreach programs. So we’ve encapsulated a number of different entities that are grounded first in community based needs. So it includes the Carolina Teacher Induction Program, which provides induction supports. It includes an alternative preparation program which is really where much of the focus today, I can talk in some detail around the microcredential work that we’ve done there. That is a career changer program that’s predominantly focused on rural regions across the state, but it also has personalized and tailored degree programs that are offered through it. So we see a number of our different outreach efforts in the College of Education having their intellectual home inside Carolina CrED.

And then one of those is the MCrED or the Microcredential Enterprise. So that is something that’s now supporting upwards of nearly 300 aspiring educators across the state. To date, the Carolina Teacher Induction Program has supported nearly 1,000 teachers. And then countless individuals have participated in those contractual degree programs too. So really has these multiple arms of it, one of which being really grounded in the microcredential enterprise and then others of them also picking up pieces of that.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And I want to stay with the model here. Could you talk through a bit, the role that competency-based assessment and education plays within the Carolina CrED model?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I would like to believe that teacher education has always somewhat been competency based, certainly through accreditation. We’re deeply interested in the outcomes that we have for our teacher candidates and their ability to engage in high quality instruction with kids and children in the community. But what I would say we’ve lacked is a recognition of the skills and competencies that individuals already walk through the door with. So we design degree programs as if everyone needs the same kind of thing at the same pace, at the same dosage. And where the competency based learning for us has been a key driver, again through the alternative preparation, where it has its origins, is that we’re able to identify an individual who maybe was a paraprofessional inside the school, or an individual who maybe was a wildlife biologist, a park ranger doing educational programming. Individuals from a multitude of different fields and disciplines, they bring skills with them to the table, that one we don’t need to replicate, but more importantly, we need to harness and build off of to help build out and round out their skill set.

And so when we design the microcredentials associated with our alternative preparation, it’s done so in a way that we identify the skills that an individual already walks through the door with, and then we can in some ways prescribe to them the kinds of things that they need to help build skill gaps around in order to be competent educators. They do that. Some of it’s independently, some of it’s with practicing teachers, and some of it’s with the institution, but all of it creates a hyper personalized experience for the learner.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, that’s a really helpful overview and really excited to dig into a number of different pieces in there. But before we do, I want to go deeper on some backstory. So taking us back to the before times, what were you seeing in the state that gave rise to this idea and motivated action on it? And I’m also thinking if this were easy, we would see a lot more programs like this in other states. What were those barriers or those changes that needed to be made that you were able to overcome in the creation of this program?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, part of it originated in policy. So prior to 2019, there was no mechanism for an institution of higher education to be able to deliver an alternative preparation program or any preparation pathway recommend for certification an individual that was not a degree completer, meaning they had to complete a bachelor’s degree, they had to complete a master’s degree, Unlike other states where they may have like a postbacc certificate that has a certain number of hours. And so we had one hand tied behind our backs up until 2019. And there was a policy change. So we were thinking deeply about what we wanted that to look like. And we had a partner at the time, it was the Center for Teaching Quality. It’s now known as Mira Education, a national nonprofit who had already gained a good bit of ground in competency based learning for the in service space. And through our partnership with them, they pushed us to consider what might it look like if you foregrounded microcredentials rather than traditional three credit-hour courses and a 36-hour master’s degree.

Alternative Teacher Certification

Tommy Hodges

Fortunately, our state department of education was willing to think creatively with us as well. And so we put forward a plan and gained approval for an alternative preparation program for individuals who held a bachelor’s degree almost exclusively outside of education to be able to gain teacher certification at a timeline that was up to them, that it was paced according to their need and according to the kinds of skills that they came in the door with. And then that was approved in February of 2020, which is a very interesting time to try and launch something in the months that followed. So a lot of our beginning thinkings were done in rooms, kind of like we’re in right now, in some sort of a virtual environment with one another, but trying to think through what we wanted this thing to look and feel like. But what we knew from the very beginning was that it was an antiquated model to think that again, the three credit hour course and 36 hour master’s degree was going to be tenable both from a cost efficiency for either districts or individuals, or perhaps more importantly, philosophically about the kinds of skills that individuals entered with. So that’s where we began. What we didn’t really anticipate was the momentum that that would gain inside of districts to engage in learning for their in service teachers. So once they saw the modularization of the program for pre-service teachers who wanted to gain teacher certification, they loved it for their practicing teachers just as well.

So they were able to develop thematic learning experiences. We were able to tailor the microcredentials according to their needs. And then we engaged with some nonprofits in the state that also wanted to engage in microcredential learning. So then it became about supporting organizations in their professional learning in ways that the traditional academic offerings in an institution just don’t afford.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I want to stay with this professional learning piece. Yeah, obviously these microcredentials afford a new way of certifying new learning and upskilling. I’d be curious to hear how are districts engaging with your library of microcredentials to facilitate that type of professional development?

Collaborative microcredential Development

Tommy Hodges

Well, one of the things that we committed to early on is that we were not going to have to come visit our website, type in a credit card number and buy a microcredential and have it scored. That our engagements were going to be at the organizational level because we’re committed to systemic change, not one off kinds of pieces. And so our engagements with, particularly at the school district level, we’re doing a deep dive into essentially a needs assessment around where do they want to take their school, what are opportunity gaps, what are ways in which they want to see their professional staff in the school grow? And then how might we take our existing menu of microcredentials or in some cases help build out new microcredentials that supports the kinds of professional learning that go on inside the schools? Those microcredentials were developed hand in hand with those district partners. In fact, at times we would rely on district expertise to help us develop them and in fact score them as well. So it’s not an enterprise in which the college is simply saying here’s a solution for you. It is a truly interwoven collaboration with those districts and defining what’s needed, defining what would count and be valid for them, and then working with at the state level, ensuring that there’s recognition, the competencies that teachers are developing along the way.

Danny Curtis

So now that we are a few years in, I’m curious to hear what are you learning and what are you seeing in terms of the impact of this preparation program?

Tommy Hodges

One of the pieces that we can look pretty directly at is the staying power of educators who go through this pathway. One of the concerns with many of the alternative preparation pathways that exist right now is that they tend to have individuals who come in for one or two, maybe three years and then they’re back out again, and then you’re having to replace them with yet another novice individual. And we know that the long term health and success of schools and the kids that they serve is built upon having a stable workforce that’s there over an extended period of time. And so again, we’re five years in. But what we see is when we compare the retention of educators who come through the alternative preparation pathways that are more conventional programs, they are essentially the same. We know that there’s staying power with the alternative preparation. We know that there’s quality there because we have the data on their teacher performance as well. And we’re able to make those comparisons in addition to their ability to be retained.

So both in terms of instructional, the quality of instruction that’s being delivered as assessed by school principals, we know that it’s on par with our traditional programs as well as their longevity in the field.

Danny Curtis

With any competency based program, obviously a big part of the challenge is in the certification of learning. It is so crucial and so difficult to identify and validate learning that is happening across very different contexts with very different learning products and evaluate that against a common learning standard. So I’d love to just kind of double click on that process you all are using and hear more about how you’re validating learning within the program.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, so certainly we are doing validity and reliability checks on the assessments that are included there, as well as the rubrics that are included. Multiple individuals score each piece of assessment that comes in to make sure that there’s some consistency in that. But we’re also a part of the microcredential partnership of the states. It’s a connection of states that are invested in this competency based work and seeking to make sure that we’re not engaging in sort of a wild west enterprise where everybody has their own sort of version and there’s not some level of consistency. Certainly we want to retain autonomy. Part of that autonomy allows you to innovate rapidly. But there ought to be an overarching framework for what constitutes sort of a bite-sized piece of learning. How it’s measured and how it’s accumulated and valued.

Personalized Coaching Drives Success

Tommy Hodges

You’d want some degree of consistency across the enterprise. And so we worked with again that microcredential partnership with the states, with four or five other states in addition to our own to help really think through that and create some standardization. So I think that’s helped. At the end of the day though, I think the difference maker in all of this is the extent to which there’s deep personalized coaching. So it’s not just the standalone competency pieces. Is there an individual who’s shepherding that process in an intellectually honest way? Not someone who’s got a full time job? And oh, also in addition, I’ll moonlight as a coach or a mentor, but truly making sure that individuals have dedicated FTE time that they’re providing modeling, coaching, feedback and direction to those novice individuals. At the end of the day, to me, that matters as much as, if not more than, the accumulation of that knowledge.

Is it being directed in such a way that supports that individual? And the only way I have seen in multiple iterations, whether it be traditional teacher preparation or more alternative that I’ve seen that work abundantly well is through robust coaching.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. The theme that I’m hearing throughout is this really deep partnership between schools and the university from identifying the credentials that would be of value in terms of the microcredentialing and upskilling to the shared process of assessment. It sounds like you all have really forged this together with districts as well as your other partnerships.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, it’s truly been a joint venture. And again, it’s not the ivory tower. Swoop in and say, here’s what you need to be doing. We’re the university and we’re here to help. It’s really doing a genuine partnership with those districts to make sure that we’re delivering in real time the things that they’ve identified as a need.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And that leads into one of the other differentiating factors of this program is that you all are doing this out of a large university system, which is different from many other alternative certification programs. And so I’m wondering, what are those different considerations that you need to make within your context that others and other large university systems might be able to learn from?

Rethinking Higher Education’s Responsiveness

Tommy Hodges

Well, I can say at the very beginning, it took a commitment on the part of central leadership of the institution to say, yes, you can do things differently and you can think about this differently, and we’ll support that within our ecosystems. Because quite frankly, higher education as an enterprise is not exactly the most nimble of organizational structures. So I have my concerns with the industry as a whole and the extent to which it has changed the way that it thinks about the ways it brings its knowledge to bear in the service of communities. I think that part of the challenges that higher ed faces today with its value proposition, with some of the threads of anti intellectualism that we see are, are fair critiques, although I think they’re misplaced. They’re fair in the sense that we haven’t exactly been very responsive to the needs of communities and thinking about how we diversify the ways in which our knowledge is put forward to the general public. Our products again are three hour courses and they’re 120 hour bachelor’s degrees and 36 hour master’s degrees. And what if an individual doesn’t want or need that, but they want to engage with the university in a substantive way to help build out skills to either upskill or career pivot, whatever that might be, and how can the institution serve those individuals well? And I think higher ed has a ways to go and being responsive to that because of some of the bureaucracies that exist. But we were given a great deal of space to think and think differently.

So we were able to prop up an ecosystem that allowed us to think nimbly and responsively and then to support individuals as they engaged in that work in a way that was different than many conventional sorts of programs. So central commitment being one of them and then two, I think we harness the power of a team of people who were hungry for doing something different as well. And so I think we had a, we’ve given the space and a coalition of people that really wanted to see it get done and we were able to do that.

Danny Curtis

I’m curious to learn more about what does that space look like in this context. What are the areas in which you were able to gain some autonomy and maybe be more nimble outside of the larger university system?

Tommy Hodges

Yes. So everything from platform LMS to the CRM for gathering individuals and the ways in which we collected interested individuals and marketed to them around possibilities, did matchmaking with districts. So all the platform work, we were able to work in distinct platforms that gave us a level of flexibility that the conventional post secondary platforms couldn’t. And so oftentimes our platforms are ones that are used outside of traditional academia and those have been very fruitful for us, but done so in a way that matches our institutional branding and look and feel. And then we were able to develop a team of individuals to help guide that work that sits a little bit outside our traditional academic departments. And that’s where that Carolina CrED ecosystem comes from. But we also have interface with faculty too, who either help lend their own expertise to that enterprise, help lead it in some ways, or conduct research with the data. So there’s a lot of different intersection points that faculty can have in there too.

Integrating Standalone Systems Efficiently

Tommy Hodges

The danger that you run into, and I said there’s always these tensions, the danger that you can run into when you create something that’s kind of standalone like that is that it continues to stand alone. And then it does. Its knowledge and its experience doesn’t bleed into other parts of your enterprise. It doesn’t learn from others and others don’t learn from it. And so I can say that part of. And it was easier to kind of keep it separate in this first few years because you’re trying to upstart something new and it needs its space. But as it’s began to mature now, we’re beginning to think about how do we better integrate this into our sort of quote unquote traditional way of doing things at the institution and how can we create a more modular environment for every student that interfaces or every individual, maybe we don’t even categorize them as a student here, but every individual that interfaces with the institution. And so I think there’s a willingness to think about that now too.

But certainly in the early days, I would say it was startup-ish and had its independence and had its own sort of ecosystem and support from central administration to do that. And then at the same time, I think now we’re kind of looking for that bleed.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So it sounds like this integration and continued evolution is part of what you’re seeing down the road. What else is in this vision for how this program or others like it continue to evolve?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I think some of the questions. And so I’ll put on my arts and sciences hat for a second and my leadership in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences here at USC and say one of the concerns right now is the liberal arts and the humanities. And there’s some real concern with regards to the value that individuals are seeing in society right now around the liberal arts degree. I think we’re looking at higher education as preparation for workforce in many ways, which can be a good look, but I think it’s a narrow look at what post secondary attainment can afford an individual. I look at it more as preparation for life and civic engagement. And part of that life and civic engagement is employment. So it’s important, but it’s also important to recognize our rich histories, our art, the accumulation of human knowledge across a range of disciplines, and to be able to imagine employment in fields that don’t even exist today.

Liberal Arts: Bridging Skills & Purpose

Tommy Hodges

And what better place to do that than through a liberal arts degree? But again, some individuals are looking at it like this major has a one to one correspondence to this job, which has this income, which relegates post secondary attainment to a very transactional sort of relationship with an individual, rather than this constant sense of becoming an understanding about who we are and who we are in relation to our histories, our cultures and humanity at large. And so I think that for me, the next iteration of this work will be to help individuals see how that genuine core liberal arts degree does in fact help prepare one for the workforce. And so I think if we begin to look at some of the competency based pieces that employers are looking for, and then we marry that with those traditional liberal arts degrees. Now we’re coupling together two aspects of the work. One sort of civic and societal readiness and contribution with workforce and skill based readiness as well. If we can accomplish both of those together through that layering approach at the undergraduate level, then I think we’re really onto something. And so that’s really where I see us headed next in terms of the microcredentials working with industry partners on those.

So those aren’t, again, those aren’t an internal endeavor much like the ones for educator preparation, but we’re really thinking deeply about how do we engage some of our large employers who can give us some keen insights into what they’re seeing with individuals who are coming out and then ensuring that we’re gap filling there and for students to be able to illustrate saliently when they’re in job interviews how those experiences that they had while they were at the university help contribute to their readiness.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So interesting to hear you talk through this, know, tension between job readiness and, and more liberal arts oriented education that has always been present in postsecondary education, but is really magnified by AI and, and other technologies that are accelerating changes in the workforce.

Tommy Hodges

And I would say AI is the perfect example of, you know, key triggers that we don’t predict particularly well that a good liberal arts education is nimble and responsive too, and actually probably prepares one even better than some of the more professionally directed degree programs that we might have on campus.

Danny Curtis

Well, I look forward to watching as you and your team down in South Carolina try and strike that balance and continue to evolve these innovative programs and really appreciate you joining us today.

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Amanda Kocon, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at Edmentum, joined me and Danny to explore how digital curriculum can help scale career-connected learning for all students. Amanda discussed the driving forces behind the shift toward career readiness in K–12 education and emphasized the need to close exposure gaps and lower switching costs for students exploring different career paths. She detailed Edmentum’s recent acquisition of MajorClarity and their partnership with Interplay, which is enabling districts to integrate CTE courses, simulation-based trades training, and comprehensive college and career planning tools. I was excited to dig into how exactly we can scale opportunities for all students to have broad, student-driven career explorations in every district to ensure every student graduates with valuable skills and real career options.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us illuminate that today, I’m thrilled that my co-conspirator Danny Curtis is here because we’ve got a very good conversation teed up today. Danny, good to see you.

Danny Curtis

It’s great to be here, Michael. Always nice to chat with you and especially today because we get to talk about one of our favorite topics.

Michael Horn

Exactly. And you and I wrote this piece, I don’t know, about a year and a half ago at this point, I think, for Education Next, where we said, look, career-connected learning really should not be a “for some,” it’s really a “for all,” increasingly. And I think we’ve also though, been puzzling how do we help schools actually execute on that vision? And we’ve found someone that I think can start to shed some light on that. So I’m excited about this conversation, Danny.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, me, too. We wanted to bring on a guest today that is going to help us think through one approach to scaling up more career connected learning and helping districts overcome some of those challenges that they encounter when they do make the decision to move towards career connected learning. And so we are really delighted to have Amanda Kocon, the chief strategy and operations officer at Edmentum, a K12 online learning provider, join us here today. Amanda, welcome.

Amanda Kocon

Thank you. It is tremendous to be with you, Danny and Michael.

Elevating CTE for Workforce Readiness

Danny Curtis

Amanda, as we mentioned up-front, we along with many others nationwide have been pushing for more career-connected learning in K–12. And as we’ll discuss you all at Edmentum, have a big announcement and have been doing a lot of work there. But before we dive into the work you’ve been doing, I want to start with the big picture “why.” In your view, what is driving this shift towards career readiness in K–12?

Amanda Kocon

It’s the question right now. Right. So if we think back to when Edmentum started this journey of really leaning into career connected learning for all, which is an important part of the story, we started paying attention to what was being provided to kids. So we are at our core a digital first curriculum company. We are a 60 year old plus ed tech company. We’re one of the oldest. We actually started our journey in workforce redevelopment and then focused many years later on the K12 space. But it’s always been sort of part of our DNA.

We have always provided CTE courses and curriculum as part of our sort of comprehensive catalogs of offerings. And one of the things about almost four years ago now that we started talking about was what’s the sort of quality of offering that we have and how do we make sure that the same level of intention and rigor and learning design that is going into our core courses, so think your core four, your electives even, is also going into CTE. And so we started this build out in part to say what kids that are thinking about a path direct to direct to the workforce, whether they stop at college or not. Very few people exit high school and retire. It really is career for all. And so how do we get kids better ready with better materials, if you will? And so that’s where we started the journey. I think a huge part of the why for us was paying attention to the nearly 50% plus of that, like really won’t go to college and how do we make sure that they exit high school with something of value? So that’s when we started really building out our own CTE course catalog that we’ve built out over the last three years. And a huge part of that for us was then beginning to realize that as you think about what’s available, how do we combat, two things in particular, so we had started with like, what’s the curriculum that we need to deploy? And then we said, there’s two issues.

One is a massive exposure gap. Kids actually don’t have a sense of what’s possible. The second thing we really focused in on is what’s the switching cost? So if we move kids, any kid, through a program of study, if you will, where they don’t learn academic, technical, durable skills and they don’t have a sense of what’s possible post secondary, we probably are going to continue to fail these kids. We will exit them from high school, but they won’t actually be future ready or job ready.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, you lay out a really compelling rationale for this movement towards career and connected learning. And now I want to really zoom in on the offerings that Edmentum is providing in this area. You all just made a big acquisition, the MajorClarity College and Career Readiness platform. And there’s a lot to unpack here. But I want to start with the vision behind the acquisition and the opportunity that it represents. Wondering what challenges have you seen districts face as they implement and scale these programs? And what is the role that digital tools and curriculum play in helping them to address those challenges?

Scaling Work-Based Learning Solutions

Amanda Kocon

So I think one of the big challenges you laid out, actually, in the intro, which is how do you at scale, bring sort of the level of awareness, exploration, planfulness, curricular apps and programmatic options and then begin to manage what is the holy grail, which is work based learning for kids, in the middle school and high school arena. We, as I said before, started with what is true to us, which is we could become really good high quality digital curriculum providers. So we’ve built up as a starting place over the last three years, well over 200 semesters of CTE courses that is inclusive of 57 pathways and building. And that was an important starting place for us. But we also knew that in order to land a solution that allowed teachers, educators, counselors, superintendents to think about the programs that they offer and how to do that, not just in one building, but across all of their buildings. And we can get into a little bit why that matters in a second. We needed to actually bring the tooling and the solutioning that surrounds our curriculum that sort of integrates better with what is available in a brick and mortar, plus what we can bring that can be digitally or virtually available. And so for me, the whole vision has been let’s bring these two things together.

How do we bring the workflow, the tooling, the planning, the career exploration starting in middle school and integrate that with the curricular options that are additive, not reductive in a place so that you have truly an interconnected solution of content, curriculum and tooling. And so the putting these two things together, it has been the vision. And so we’re very excited about the acquisition of MajorClarity and putting these two companies together.

Michael Horn

So I want to make sure I’m understanding the different pieces, right? Because 57 pathways, 200 semesters of content is already a lot.

And so that’s like, I think if I’m hearing you right, that’s like the additive we can’t give exposure to learn about X. Here’s a way to do it. And so then now you have the MajorClarity piece of it that it sounds like makes this more integrated. But I want to make sure you’re putting a pin in it, like, how does this actually work for schools? And sort of what differentiates the Edmentum approach from, you know, because this is a hot space, as you know, a lot of folks are doing different stabs on what college and career readiness mean to them. What differentiates this approach with this integration?

Amanda Kocon

It’s a great question. So for us, our ability to use MajorClarity really as the entry point. So I’m going to just take you through the student’s journey. So starting in, starting in middle school. And that is where we have decided to start for now. It doesn’t mean we won’t move down into elementary, but you all know that in middle school is really the first opportunity the kids have to change classes. There is actually truly time for things like college and career exploration. And career exploration in particular, whether that’s advisory or in electives.

We have interesting inventories that allow students to really think about what they are interested in that generates over time, both in that moment and later, sort of a fit score. Here are some things that you might want to investigate. Edmentum has built out elective courses which help students. Actually we’ve done these with America Succeeds. So they embed durable skills. We’re the first ones to bring it down to middle school. We think middle school is particularly important for students as they start to understand what are those work based skills, terms, terminology. How do you think about and understand what it means to develop communication skills and collaborative skills and even metacognition? How do you understand how you learn starting in middle school? As you start to think about what you might be interested in.

When I talked about switching costs, this is a particularly important moment. And the reason it’s particularly a moment for students is the sky’s the limit. We still have plenty of time. If you have a student who’s behind in reading or who needs some help in math, now’s the time we can begin to do some interventions so that they can have the job they really want versus the job later. In high school they are left with right because they only have one or two options at that point. And so we started in middle school with assessment beginning early exploration. As you move through, you begin to think about how you’re planning your programs of study, your academic study, whether you’re interested in pursuing a particular pathway. We have the digital courses to both allow you to do that online.

That includes one of the biggest pressure points we hear from schools is I don’t have consistent CTE curriculum and or I can’t get a CTE teacher. So Edmentum as also the operator of two fully virtual schools can work with districts to ensure that we have a CTE teacher who is available to do virtual instruction, if you don’t have somebody in person. As you move through that, you start to do things like test drive activities so you can get a sense of the day in the life sort of rich video, rich understanding we’re going to continue to build that out. We’re very excited to do more than just here’s a doctor, here’s a lawyer, here’s a veterinarian. But here, when you think about what you’re interested in, what your particular assets and leanings are, are other ways you can think about curating both a program of study and a job. As we move through. All of this is localized to the local labor data and so you’re starting to see what’s available locally. That’s not to say that kids in the future won’t also have virtual work experiences, because they will. But we want to localize it as much as possible as well.

As you move through from a learning perspective, that’s where I’ve talked about sort of the rich catalog. It reminds me, and you guys will appreciate this, of the early days of blended learning where you have to sort of talk to people about, yes, you are curating some experiences which are taught very explicitly by a CTE teacher. You are going to do welding in person. Some of the things that are part of that journey, however, in the early pathways are things that you actually can do in more of a flipped classroom model that you can actually do digitally that kids can do asynchronously. This is one of the places where we have partnered with Interplay, which is one of the key providers. We met with them. They are somebody who really focuses on helping skilled trades employers get employees ready to be job site ready. We brought that down in high school.

Career and College Readiness Pathways

Amanda Kocon

Those have rich simulations so you can get a pathway around plumbing and electric mechanical, early on and get exposure so that you’re actually job site ready. So think about academic CTE programming, which we’ve talked about, as well as the skilled trades, and begin to get some exposure around those things. As you move through that, you then have all the tooling that you would expect out of a college and career readiness. So we’re not asking kids to pick one path or another. We’re actually saying when you’re doing your programming and you’re thinking about your academic planning, we will lead you into a set of tools and capabilities that allows you to plan your college. So which colleges of our interest, which community colleges might be of interest? How do you think about scholarships, fit, application? We integrate with a common app and that sort of set of tooling. And on the career side, you’re able to do technical school exploration, you’re able to focus on work based learning. And ultimately all of this is building a portfolio over time.

So that kids have something of value and that something of value is everything from micro credentials, sort of mini courses that they can take, I think like four to six hours of mini courses that can drop into a resume builder. So they’re beginning to build a resume which I will tell you is as important if you are going to college as it is if you are going directly into the workforce.

Michael Horn

So Amanda, a lot of what you just described, right, is like a broadening of horizons followed by a series of student driven exploration to make choices. Let’s start at the beginning of the funnel because you mentioned the durable skill piece of that and I’m super curious just to have you question quickly drilled into like what do you mean by durable skills? Because it’s a bit of a catch all term and people mean lots of different things and I, I’ll just give my bias up front so maybe you can answer the question, respond to it a little bit is. Some of the durable skills, it seems to me, are more vocation specific than we might admit. Right. And some are pretty generalizable. And so I’m sort of curious how you think about what do you mean about it and which ones transfer and which ones are actually like this is what this means in this context. This is what it means in this other one.

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, we’ve tried to focus, I mean it’s an interesting question both for durable skills and where we’ve tried to focus, even the curricular decisions we’ve made. So we’ve tried to focus, not to double use the word, on those things that are actually durable. And so how do you think about building again it’s like communication. How do you understand what it is to have good collaboration skills, good problem solving skills, good those things that actually are transferable, across not just a job, but across industry. And so we focus there in part because we wanted to make sure we’re anchoring kids on really that understanding of what are the skills beyond the academic skills or the technical skills.

Michael Horn

So it’s more about helping them even recognize what it looks like when you do this. Even if how you do it might change.

Amanda Kocon

How you do might change, how you demonstrate it might change. But to be able to think about how do I understand, let’s say like a communication skill, what good communication skills look like? How do I demonstrate that in my work and how do I begin to build just the recognition of those things so I can build towards that. Similarly, on the curricular side, we’ve actually really tried to focus in on what are durable higher paying jobs. That is where we have focused our energy in terms of there’s lots of providers that can provide other things. But we’ve tried to focus on just from a pure mission and landing what is going to be kind of evergreen in a rapidly changing work environment. How do we think about those things?

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And you mentioned before that you had an eye toward the 50 plus percent who are not going to go to a traditional college. But are you targeting all schools or is it like segmented? How do you think about that?

Serving All Students Equitably

Amanda Kocon

We are targeting all schools. And again, the reason I raise that is because we want to serve all kids. Edmentum has always, as a company that really is about learning acceleration, who does a lot of work in intervention. In particular from elementary school to high school, we’ve often served kids who have been under-resourced from the quality of the resources they get. And so when we focused in on where can we be uniquely positioned, what’s sort of at the core of what we do well? It really is, those are our kids, the kids that need something different. The kids who may or may not go to a four year college, they may go directly in the workforce. They may enlist, they may have other paths. What I would say is, and I know I’m speaking to the converted on this, that is increasingly more and more kids.

Right. Like, and so I think that moment is one we’re working hard to meet. We really do think though that, like informed decisions as early as possible is super important. So with the help of our partners in the school district, not only are we able to say this kid is interested in this and wants to pursue this, and we can sort of tap into that intrinsic, not just extrinsic, motivation. And we use that then to help kids actually catch up. Right. And get ahead and chart that path that we think is possible for all kids.

Danny Curtis

Amanda, you talked earlier about the possibility that opens up when you get students started down these paths at an earlier age. And I agree that you’re getting students to test drive and to be thinking about these potential paths at an earlier age in middle school, there’s a lot of benefit to that. And I think there’s probably a balance to be struck because, you know, career planning is not linear for a few different reasons. One, job markets are dynamic careers. Jobs are always changing. And so developing a static job and career identity in a dynamic job market can pose some problems. And then also students are young and still developing and so their minds are likely to change. And so I’d be curious to hear how you think about building these services and structuring these services when these plans are so subject to change.

Amanda Kocon

We want as much as possible, everything we are doing and how we are partnering with educatives to be expansive and not reductive. And so we’re very focused on, it’s not this career path or nothing, that the job market we are moving kids into is going to continue to evolve and has been. I would say that the pace of the change is actually probably faster than ever. And what I would say, Danny, is that’s important truly for all kids. I mean, to the extent that you can get. That’s what I was talking about a little bit, those two things. So one of them was, you know, what is the exposure gap? Early on you have kids, particularly kids from less resourced environments, not actually even having a sense of what’s possible from a jobs perspective.

You know, I sort of have a running saying, if you go into an elementary school classroom, you will usually hear kids want to be, you know, a doctor or veterinarian or a teacher. And it’s because it’s what they have most exposure to. Right. And as they develop a sense of possibility. I will also say, though, that it is our, I think it’s our duty increasingly in the high school arena to make sure that all kids come out with something of value and they are able to demonstrate why, I think that the soft skills, the durable of the professional skills, which reduces that switching costs. I am, let me just say this. I can do math.

I can do math. I am literate when I talk about academic skills, those help kids learn and relearn. You want these learners to relearn and relearn throughout their life. I’ve got some soft skills, some professional skills. I can talk about those and know what they are, and I can show up with them on a resume in an interview. And I’ve got some technical skills. I actually have a sense and have learned how to acquire and develop those. If we do that, I think we’re doing better when we think about what secondary education in particular needs to look like.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, the breadth of exposure is so important. And I’m also really excited to learn more about how you are deepening experience with this partnership with Interplay you mentioned earlier. You all are partnering with Interplay to create simulation based coursework aligned to a number of professions, specifically in the trades. And so I’m wondering, could you talk us through what the trade prep program is and how it figures into your larger suite of offerings and would love to hear about how it’s scaling access to these professions it’s aligned to.

Skilled Trades Education Initiative

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, this one is in its early days. I would, we like to call this year the day, the year of working really, really closely with school districts on how do we bring these, how do we bring these to life. So there are very few school districts that can set up true programs around the skilled trades for a bunch of reasons including age, right. What age kids can actually get hands-on experience in some of these industries. What’s really exciting is we are bringing down into our sort of pathway the ability to use interplay courses and curriculum both directly with a student, but also to be mixed in with a CTE director on the ground. That allows kids to get exposure both in terms of taking just an overview course of what are the different kinds of skill trades, how do I think about those? What might be of interest? Then being able to go through some of that coursework with the simulations. The simulations are pretty slick.

It was the first company that I saw that I thought really landed it without the hardware. A lot of the companies you need to have very specialized hardware. This you do not. You just need to have a regular laptop. And that was pretty cool. It is also one of the few that is being used as much as it is by employers. Now with MajorClarity, what I’m able to do is connect that workspace learning opportunities. So employers in a place in the skilled trades, you all know that it’s very hard right now to get an electrician or a plumber.

Interplay is coming at that by helping those employers build a pipeline. We’re trying to connect then that pipeline in K12. I was out in a district just a few weeks ago and I asked the question, you know, I spent a lot of years as the head of strategy for an organization called TNTP. We did a lot of teacher work and teacher recruiting work. So one of my favorite questions to ask a superintendent or a head of HR is what’s the hardest thing to recruit for right now? What I did not expect was that the answer was boiler operators. And I said, well, I’d like to hear some more about that because that’s not typically, I hear, you know, special ed.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I was gonna say special ed, Math elementary.

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, exactly. And that was the first thing out of this head of HR’s mouth. And I said, well, tell me more. And he said, they’re all retiring. All of the folks who maintain our facilities are retiring. And I said, well, what about a grow your own program? What if we could bring Interplay into your CTE programming where you could get kids job ready, field ready and we could partner them with some of these folks who are retiring as their work based learning in your school district. And you only have to keep them for a couple years post graduation and then they are amazing. If we partnered this was particularly, you know, we partner with some of the union and the employers in this particular place.

We would be amazing, you would be an amazing path. Not just you know, for, for these employers if you will and for these kids but frankly a path into the middle class because these are very high paying jobs. The other thing to really focus on is these are not, these are not low paying jobs. These are very high, family sustaining jobs. And so you could see their eyes light up like wait a second, I could, I could do something right by kids and get them literally a pretty incredible local job, help fix the pipeline problem that these employers and that the union themselves have come and said like is an issue for these skilled trades. And in the meantime I could have some assistance maintaining my buildings.

Michael Horn

Love it. All right, last question as we wrap up here. I’m curious. You’ve been dancing around in a variety of ways but like how schools should or do integrate these offerings and you’ve talked about the room for electives and things of that nature. But just like maybe impose your own view of what a good integration looks like and what’s like sort of a bad integration right where it’s not maybe a strategic or giving these kids a true view of what college and career readiness that on ramp looks like for students.

Thoughtful, Planful Programming Matters

Amanda Kocon

Listen, I would say a good integration is where we see really thoughtful, it doesn’t need to take a long time, but thoughtful top down programming. You’re really thinking about what’s the connective tissue in terms of the tooling, the insights, the data, the reporting that allows me to understand what kids are interested in, how I get them in the courses and the programs that are of most interest and then how do I get them some work based learning experience. And I mean that for all kids. And that thoughtful programming I think is our best implementations, I would say our poorest are where you’re transactionally trying to solve for a particular program you don’t have in sort of a half hearted way or serving up CTE as just a way to get to graduation. And so it’s a last minute effort versus a planful program. And so I would say, you know, increasingly we’re seeing folks really want to do more planful programming. I do think like anything, implementation and planful programming are often hard to pull off. And so we are working really hard to make sure we’re getting, whether it’s us or somebody else that’s coming in and helping to advise on how we stand these up.

We are working really hard to do that. And if we’re going to really bring the promise of career, connected learning and opportunities for all, it has to be about really rethinking what the sort of job of a high school is at the end of the day and how do we think about landing that in the day to day. It’s not sexy, but it is the day to day planfulness, programming, scheduling that happens with kids.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it seems like it is the question to be asking right now because we see the disengagement and so forth. This seems like a way at that. It seems like a way at the pathways. Like it just seems like a big answer to a lot of problems right now that high schools are facing. So Amanda, huge thanks for coming on and talking about these efforts and we’ll keep a close eye as it continues to develop and you continue to move forward in these different directions giving this comprehensive suite of offerings. So thank you and for all of you tuning in. We’ll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

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Jamie Rosenberg, founder and executive chairman of ClassWallet, joins me to explore the evolving landscape of education savings accounts (ESAs) and the broader push toward education choice. Jamie shares the origin story of ClassWallet and discusses how the company is innovating digital wallet solutions that streamline the flow of public funds to families, educators, and nontraditional providers. The conversation sheds light on the challenges families and entrepreneurs face in navigating new ESA programs, the delicate balance between agency and accountability, and how states can design effective policies that empower both families and innovative education providers.

Michael Horn

I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, delighted to bring Jamie Rosenberg to the show. Jamie is the founder and executive chairman of ClassWallet, which we’re going to hear a lot more about the show. And Jamie and I were in a conversation a few months back with a bunch of others around this growing education savings account space with a bunch of insights that really struck me around the market and how to create a really robust one between demand and supply.

So delighted to get into all of that today. Jamie, welcome to the Future of Education. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you being here.

Jamie Rosenberg

It’s great being here, Michael. I appreciate the invite.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, I’m delighted to learn from you. And before we get into some of the ways that the market is emerging, I, I want to start out with ClassWallet origin story, if you will. You all were founded in 2014, well before education savings accounts was sort of the movement I think that it’s becoming national at the moment. And so I’m just curious, like, what did the company start out as? What was the opportunity that you saw that you felt like ClassWallet can really fill this need in the country’s ecosystem?

Jamie Rosenberg

Sure. This is my second company. So to understand the formation of ClassWallet, let me just share with you how I.

Michael Horn

Yeah, origin story. Good.

Jamie Rosenberg

Yeah, of course. So my personal and professional mission has always been to try to get the dollars as close to children as possible. I started my career as a lawyer, at one point in time was mentoring a student at a nearby school in Miami for mentally and physically delayed pre kindergarten aged children. And during that experience, I really just had a life changing experience and really wanted to understand how I could help children in an educational environment as much as possible. So I started my first company in 1998, which was Adopt a Classroom, which was a crowdfunding platform for teachers as a way of trying to get philanthropic dollars as close to that child and in that learning environment as effectively as possible. So I grew that to be one of the larger education philanthropies in the country. By the time I left, I had raised and distributed about $25 million to teachers in 30% of U.S. public schools.

Education Funding for Children’s Success

Jamie Rosenberg

The origin of ClassWallet germinates from there because in that journey I had developed a way of getting money in a compliant, impactful way as close to that child, and realized that I could help more children, more students by taking that technology and delivering it to the system, the school systems and state systems. And that was the impetus and catalyst to start ClassWallet in 2014.

Michael Horn

And so what were those initial customer relationships like what was the dollar flows funding from to and so forth?

Jamie Rosenberg

Yes. So the initial focus and hence the brand name was really helping LEAs and school districts get their funding down to the classroom more effectively. K12 is a trillion dollar budget, yet teachers spend $1,000 out of their own pocket every year. I mean, it’s just a huge disconnect. So we started out selling to school districts and today about 6% of public school teachers in America actually have a ClassWallet account, almost like a teacher savings account, where they get access to a wallet and can purchase the learning goods and resources they need to meet the learning needs of their students. And then in 2017, we evolved to sell ClassWallet into the state agency space, really solving similar problems for education savings accounts. And since then we have become a market leader in school choice, but have also been used in other agencies like early child care, workforce development, and health and human services.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I noticed that. And before we get to the ESAs, just, just say a word about those other three areas because I think it’s interesting that you get to serve those as well as sort of this core K12 ESA market.

Jamie Rosenberg

The underlying theme is that it’s all the same problem. The challenge in trying to get public money to the right people and ensure those people not only use it for the right purpose, but ultimately have the biggest impact for that program lies in a point of intersection where policy intersects with rubber hits the road implementation and compliance. And our innovation has been able to unlock that friction point and maximize that impact of that dollar. And that applies to a dollar reaching a family for ESA equally as it implies reaching a family who might be getting early child care subsidy or an adult learner who has a grant from an agency to further their career journey. So it’s all the same problem. And our innovation has been able to maximize outcomes of programs across various types of programs.

Michael Horn

Say more about that because I think then as we get into the ESA space, sort of the counterfactual right. If ClassWallet hadn’t existed, I imagine would be we have dollars theoretically flowing from state coffers, to families in a private wallet to spend on education providers, both schools, as well as other options, tutoring and so forth. I can imagine that would have been a very bureaucratic application, paper and pencil, sort of heavy set of things like that. Friction would have been really real. How do you all come in there and facilitate and streamline those dollars reaching the families themselves? What’s the innovation there itself look like?

Jamie Rosenberg

So to talk about our innovation, I’ll give you just a touch upon briefly what existed before our innovation.

Michael Horn

Perfect.

Jamie Rosenberg

So you can understand the impact. So prior to our introduction of digital wallet technology, states really only had two choices, a debit card or reimbursement.

Michael Horn

Yep.

ESA Funding Solution

Jamie Rosenberg

So how does the state get $100 million to, you know, 30,000 families on a debit card? Not only that ensures using it according to the rules, but can get the data it needs. You can imagine how challenging that might be. And reimbursement of course is equally challenging, forcing families to spend their own money and submit receipts. So that was the ESA market prior to ClassWallet. What our innovation does is a digital wallet that gives families immediate access to the funds and allows them to spend those funds within vendors and for goods that the rules of the program are already embedded in the system. So they have agency to get what they need, but also the ease of knowing that what they’re doing and what they’re buying is compliant to program rules.

Michael Horn

So you’re effectively solving the compliance thing proactively. So it’s hard coded, if you will, into the digital wallet and the set of market options that they’re seeing has already been vetted. And you have solved that sort of question in their mind of if I’m allowed to do this, is that a fair way of saying it?

Jamie Rosenberg

I’m saying that we solve an outcome problem, not a compliance problem. The compliance is the root cause as to why programs don’t get the outcomes they want. But what we’ve been able to do is by solving the compliance problem, we create a two sided marketplace and give families access to the breadth of innovation and all the providers that can support that child’s unique personalized learning needs with an incredible powerful market. If that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. So then talk about how many states are you supporting today in their ESA policies out there? Just give us a sense of the market that you all are serving at the moment.

Jamie Rosenberg

We currently serve nine ESA programs and in addition we serve other programs that give money to families but may not necessarily be used for tuition. So they’re not school choice under the classical definition, but they are what I would call education freedom, where families are getting funding from, from state agencies and can self direct how those funds can ultimately improve their children’s outcomes.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And then so you have this fascinating bird’s eye view effectively into these markets that are getting created, the supply side, new school models, tutoring, right, entrepreneurs coming in and so forth. The demand side, families getting comfortable with this option, with using the dollars to get whatever set of services they need for their students. I’d love maybe let’s start on the supply side and thinking about lessons of regulation and policy. And you can go either way, positive or negative. I guess I’m curious what you’ve learned that really facilitates a robust supply side. And then the flip side, what stymies it, what holds it back or gums it up? And as we think about what, what are the right set of policies and regs to really make these marketplaces flourish.

Education Market: Innovative ESAs

Jamie Rosenberg

So first, I would appreciate that what the education market is doing with school choice is in my opinion, leading-edge innovation. It really is. When you really look at the entire scope of government programs, very few ultimately get that dollar into the hands of that beneficiary, that citizen, and give them agency in the manner that ESAs are doing today. So first, just understand that it’s incredibly innovative. My view of the market in ESA implementation, the supply side and the demand side is I really slice it into three pieces. There’s the before, before the family gets that dollar and we call that awareness, activation and navigation. How can we get as many people aware of the program, help them navigate the complexity of the program to ultimately meet the demand that the program has? There’s $100 million, how do we give enough families activated to take advantage of the full program? The middle part is using the money and the third part is the data.

How did they use the money? And how can we quantify the impact? Your question is on supply. So there’s a lot more emphasis on marketing, a lot more emphasis on helping these families who come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, who may not speak English as a first language, who are for the most part taking agency for the very, very first time of their child’s education journey. And I am happy to elaborate on what we and other demands in the market are there, but that’s the dynamics of what sort of creates the demand for the program.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess I’m curious if you want to go demand side first. Right. What really facilitates these families to be able to effectively exercise that agency? And where have you seen examples that maybe are hindering or creating more friction than needs to be done, if you will, given the policy set in place?

Jamie Rosenberg

Yes. So what’s creating more demand is marketing and grassroots efforts. Data will show that families really trust their places of faith and schools. And so we’re seeing a lot more investment in grassroots advocacy, coalescence and coalition among the non-public school communities and the organizations around them that support that ultimately can reach their families where they are. Okay. In addition, air coverage on top to create brand awareness. So I’ve heard of the ESA program three or four times now. I’m hearing it from my pastor or my rabbi, whoever it might be.

And I’m becoming engaged and educated. The second part is navigation. It’s complicated. The policy rules are complicated. So there’s a lot of emphasis on educating those grassroots channels to help those families navigate the complexities and ultimately make the leap. I’m going to apply, I’m going to submit my tax return if I have one. I’m going to submit my individual educator program, my IEP, if I can get access to it. Those are the dynamics that help them get and cross that line and those are sort of the players at a high level and that ultimately accomplish this sort of market demand that we all desire for.

Michael Horn

And are there policies in that space or regs that are creating more friction than is necessary in your view? Are there, are there certain states that are doing things that are great, that are actually making it easier to find that IEP and submit it and so forth to provide the evidence to get whatever dollar flows the family may be entitled to?

Jamie Rosenberg

My opinion is that the policies and the regulations definitely come in many, many different flavors.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Jamie Rosenberg

I would say that the different flavors aren’t necessarily exacerbating friction. You know, at some point in time, if there’s some federated standard, would that ease friction? I think that would be a healthy debate to explore. I think the dynamics of the variation of policies do not necessarily supersede just the quantum leap of taking that decision for the very first time for this family, for this parent, single parent, or two parents in a home, going from a public education, more passive experience, I’m going to, you know, more or less. Sure, right.

Michael Horn

I live where I do and I go, yeah, yeah.

Overcoming Barriers to ESA Use

Jamie Rosenberg

And so if I had to emphasize, you know, what is the, you know, greatest area of friction that I would, you know, really invest in to try to overcome, it’s really creating that, that level of comfort for that family member to, to take that leap. And the variations and the complexities of policies are true, but I believe that they’re surmountable for the most part. And just to finish. For the most part, 70% of families are using the ESA money to send their kid to a private school. It’s not that complicated. Once you get beyond private school tuition, the types of tutors you’re allowed to use, the types of therapists you’re allowed to use, the types of educational goods you’re allowed to buy, that’s where you’re touching upon all those complexities. And I believe that complexity, that friction really happens in the use of funds, but not necessarily serving as a huge barrier to get them to apply for the program, if that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, that does make sense. Before we turn to some of those other providers and thinking about some supply side or the innovative space of what’s called today microschools, maybe it won’t be in the future. I’m curious what the role of ClassWallet is in terms of helping families feel more comfortable with the navigation feel that they have the ability to exercise that agency that they’re giving you. Like what’s. I assume it’s evolved over time that you’re probably rolling out different features or changing the look and feel of the product and so forth to help them feel more ability to find the right option for them and use those dollars. What’s that evolution look like?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. It really comes down to data and relationships. So when a family first gets the funds, ClassWallet’s investing heavily in giving them access to data to make the best use of those dollars. Let’s say you have a second grade child who might have some reading deficiencies. What are other families with children with second grade of age who also might have reading challenges and what are they buying? Would be just one very simple example. Second, ClassWallet has relationships now and have integrated every major education e-tailer in the country. I mean 300 plus of the leading companies have all integrated from Amazon to Staples to Scholastic to School, Speciality, the Lakeshore and many, many, many more, all accept ClassWallet as a form of payment.

So we work very closely with them on how they can present their catalogs in a way that is an active, engaging experience with parents so that they’re finding items that are more and more closely correlated with their needs more easily than just simply an e-commerce experience. So it’s really about data, relationships and tailoring an experience for that family that they can most easily meet the unique needs of their child within that marketplace dynamic.

Michael Horn

It’s really cool to think about what that can look like then from the families navigating this and sort of taking away some of the breadth or complexity to help them find the thing that’s maybe most likely to be the fit for their kid. I’m curious on that supply side because you just talked about the integration with a lot of these suppliers and so forth. One of the pieces I’m curious about is the entrepreneur side of this supply side. Right. We’re seeing a lot of educators across the country leave their roles as public school teachers and so forth, saying, I can create a school. Right. That will better serve. And my understanding, in the early years of some of these places, I think, frankly, before you all were in some of these states, they were saying, like, hey, the dollars don’t flow to me right? Until six months later and I’m sitting out there trying to pay staff or whatever it might be.

There’s all these cash flow questions, friction around that and so forth. What have you learned about creating a robust supply side that supports entrepreneurs and innovative approaches as they come into this market to meet this new burgeoning demand? Or, or not new burgeoning demand, but burgeoning demand now backed by dollars?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. So I’m going to break your question into two pieces. One, how do you ensure that those stakeholders, the needs of those stakeholders are met so they can actively participate in these programs? And then two, how do we support entrepreneurs? So, for example, there are many important stakeholders. So the schools themselves are incredibly important stakeholders. And so one lesson we learned is not only do they need to get paid quickly and effectively, but they need to get paid in a manner that reconciles with their accounts receivable systems.

Michael Horn

Sure.

Streamlined Payment System for Schools

Jamie Rosenberg

So when we, when we first started, we would ACH them, you know, one payment, you know, every day. We then learn from them that they need to reconcile that payment against 37 different students who each have unique student IDs against their bank accounts. So we altered our payment mechanism. So now every school gets a batch of 37 payments with student IDs so they can quickly reconcile against their accounting systems and their bank accounts. Two, we’ve invested heavily in payments, so we actually process payments every 30 minutes. So every school gets paid literally the next day on ClassWallet. So we’ve eliminated all cash flow and all reconciliation issues for one of the most important stakeholders in the ecosystem. Second, we’re the largest payment system to microschools in the country.

Okay. We have facilitated tens of millions of dollars to microschools. As an example of how ClassWallet has facilitated the ease, removed all the barriers and friction for the entrepreneurs in the space who are trying to meet needs on the edges of a traditional school environment, i.e. a traditional private school. So we work with all sorts of those types, whether it be microschools, learning pods, online curriculum that is also learning and tuition. And we have, I would say, facilitated probably well over $150 million of payments just to non traditional private schools, but tuition type programming for families.

Michael Horn

Wow. And as you think about that facilitation and so forth, I imagine, but maybe you’ll correct me, the states also have to like have a lot of trust, right, that you have verified the family is in fact eligible, the dollars can flow like there’s a whole bunch of trust or proof, I guess that as you’ve developed for the states that they’re saying, yeah, like, you know, ClassWallet is good to run with this. Just talk about that evolution of the process in working with the states to create that smoothness between demand and supply that you just characterized.

Jamie Rosenberg

Sure. So first, the state is the ultimate author of the policy. Right. So for example, a state might say the school must exist for two years, hypothetically. And ClassWallet then can implement that policy and, and in the workflow, capture the information from the school during the onboarding process to ensure that it meets the straight criteria, for example. One state might say microschools are okay. Another state might say microschools maybe are not okay, for example. So we have all the flexibility and all the scale to implement policies in a frictionless, highly efficient, scalable way. So once they establish the groundwork and the framework, ClassWallet then can hit the ground running and then execute.

And that’s been one of our core strengths and why we’ve been so successful.

Michael Horn

So you’re essentially taking whatever the policy’s regs are and basically hard coding it so you can quickly verify and you essentially are the agent, right, of verifying these suppliers as yes, you’re eligible to participate in this market. The state, after they’ve created the rules, is letting you run with that. Is that the right way to think about it?

Jamie Rosenberg

Right. And I think a better example of that, Michael, tutoring. And I’ll just give you the three different flavors of tutoring. And generally across ESAs, about 15% of all funding going to families is spent on tutoring.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So one state might require a tutor, have a valid teacher certificate. Another state might require that the tutor have a valid bachelor’s degree. Another state might require that the tutor be a subject matter expert. Okay.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So ClassWallet in state A will require that the tutor upload their teaching certificate and we will validate that it’s legitimate that it is current, we will monitor it, so if it ever expires, we will either deactivate that tutor or give them the opportunity to update it. In state B we will require that tutor to upload a bachelor’s degree, ensure that that’s valid, et cetera. So that’s what I mean, where the state sets the policy, and then we’ve got the efficiency, the scalability and the workflow to onboard. So, you know, in one state, for example, we onboarded 3,000 tutors across the country across that particular state to meet that particular program’s needs.

Empowering End Users with ESAs

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Okay, last question as we wrap up here. You talked about one of the big philosophies that you’ve had, you developed is getting the dollar as close as you can to the actual end user and really giving them the agency over it. As you know, one of the, I don’t know if it’s pushbacks, but concerns maybe from critics of ESAs has been, what if they spend it on stuff that doesn’t make sense for their kid? Right. And so forth. How have you thought about those questions? How have you helped reassure states around those worries that they might have and that you have the right protections in place and so forth? How have you thought about that conversation? That I think comes from a different philosophical point of view, from where you’re entering into it, but you are obviously bridging it all the time.

So I’d love to hear how you, how you talk about that.

Jamie Rosenberg

I mean, that is our core competency and that, that is our innovation. The digital wallet ensures that the funds get used according to the rules. And what is the ultimate balance is among the policymakers is how to provide maximum agency and impact, but also ensure there’s transparency and compliance. I mean, that’s the ultimate, ultimate tug. And what I’ll say is this. For the most part, there’s been very little fraud. You’re always going to have a bad apple or two. What happens is the families are trying to do the right thing, but may inadvertently purchase something that’s not within the framework and the rules.

I’m going to give you a very specific example.

Michael Horn

Okay, great.

Jamie Rosenberg

A family buys a laptop. That’s according to the rules.

Michael Horn

Right.

Jamie Rosenberg

They buy a second laptop, fourteen months later, the rule says you’re not allowed to buy a laptop more than once every 24 months.

Michael Horn

Okay. Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So oftentimes, and I would say it’s about between 20 to 23%, it’s not fraud. They’re not trying to commit fraud. They’re trying to do the right thing. But because the policy and the rules can be complicated just like that slight nuance, they buy something that is just not according to the rules.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So that’s what ClassWallet does. We take a complex rule set, something as basic as you’re allowed to buy a laptop, but you can’t do it every 24 months. And also something is very black and white. You can’t buy liquor.

Michael Horn

Right, right.

Jamie Rosenberg

And everything in between. And we try to help the parent be able to check out with confidence so when they check out, they know, and we can provide them information and data at that point of checkout, knowing that what they’re buying is not only compliant, but also within the rules, so they don’t have to wait for some retroactive reaction. So holistically, it’s been our experience and we’ve processed 1.6 million ESA transactions, we’ve processed close to $3.6 billion of ESA funding since 2017 over the last eight years. And I would just repeat that, for the most part, there’s very little fraud happening beyond what you would intuitively think is the bad apple events happening. But it’s families trying to do the right thing against a complex rule set in which, you know, technology is constantly getting better to help them solve if that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it makes total sense. And I lied because it brings up one last question, I think, I promise on this one, which is, it seems to me you have gained a ton of experience around what that rule set can look like for a state and to advise and guide new states coming into the ESA world about, hey, like these are the big decisions you’re going to face. Let us help you do this and get it up and running quickly. What, what’s your role in those conversations and what have you learned about that?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. I mean, we very much view ourselves as, as a thought partner and not just a software provider. Yeah. And you have to remember these agencies are doing it for the very, very first time. Like what I said in the beginning of the interview, this is bleeding edge innovative stuff. And often these agencies have no experience doing anything like this in this type of manner. So we can help them think through all the what if scenarios. You know, I always use one example.

Navigating Nuances for Public Good

Jamie Rosenberg

Or, you know, sneakers might be allowed. Clothing is allowed. Is that Converse sneakers for $60 or is it Michael Air Jordans for $800? Right. Even the little basic things that you think, of course, would be easy all have various nuances of color. So because we have seen so many different flavors in so many different transactions, we do come in as a thought partner and help them think through all those scenarios and ultimately help them avoid unforced errors. I and everyone we’ve worked with have always seen that everyone is trying to do the right thing. We all align to the same mission is to help children maximize their opportunities and chances of success and we very much enjoy and take a great deal of pleasure in helping agency leaders fulfill their mission which is public good.

We believe in that and so we enjoy that aspect of the work we do.

Michael Horn

Amazing. Jamie, huge thanks for joining us. Huge thanks for the work you continue to do and ClassWallet continues to do enabling what I agree with you dollars following to the point where they’re actually spending and educating kids. So really appreciate all that you’re doing.

Jamie Rosenberg

I appreciate the opportunity. Michael, thank you so much.

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Cliff Maxwell joined me to announce the launch of Vocation, an AI-powered career coach. Built on decades of research, Cliff and I cofounded Vocation with Bob Moesta, my coauthor of the bestselling book Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. Cliff and I discussed how Vocation now brings the process from Job Moves to you with the help of AI—so that you can identify what truly drives and energizes you at work and move beyond traditional resume-based or job title-focused career tools. Cliff shared some early stories of how Vocation has helped individuals. I’m excited that this resource can now be in all of your hands—and we look forward to your feedback.

Links:

https://www.joinvocation.com/

Michael Horn

Excited to be with you, Cliff, as we talk about this new company we have created together, with Bob Moesta as well, called Vocation. It is based off the book Job Moves that we did. We had, you know, over a decade of research with a thousand-plus individuals who had made job changes and started coaching them and so forth. Ethan Bernstein’s class at the Harvard Business School, one of our coauthors pivotal in doing this, and then you sort of looked at this [book] and you’re like, hey, we could create a product out of this. And you were actually one of the early victims, if you will, of our research and tried out some of the work on you and I think it, I think it helped [you]. But before we start to introduce what Vocation is, maybe let’s tell your own personal story into this work and how you got to be here. We’ve been collaborators and friends for I think over a decade at this point. But why don’t you tell it through your own, your own words, your personal story into this.

From Semiconductors to Education Innovation

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, no, it’s so great to, to be connected again here and, and it’s so fun to be building something that, that has really, when I look back, has been a passion project all along but, but now is manifested in some really, you know, powerful tools and research that we can use. But yeah, my career is pretty winding. I started out in semiconductors actually. When you’re 18-years old and have to pick a major, you just go with what sounds interesting and, and I love math and science, studied electrical engineering, but really quickly started to find a lot of passion and energy in other things that, that frankly just didn’t offer. One of which was startups and, and innovation was doing some, some venture capital work in, in undergraduate and, and working with some entrepreneurs in that capacity and was dabbling with start of my own and then also education and teaching. I had never been obviously a K12 teacher, but had taught in various different capacities and really loved just being in classrooms and thinking about how to help people learn. And so when I was struggling with unfulfillment and trying to figure out what’s next, the first time, which was my first job out of undergrad, I stumbled upon your research with Clay Christensen and really just fell in love with the idea of, of how to innovate and make change in education and where that space was going, which is obviously much earlier on over a decade ago and so left engineering entirely, came to work with you as a researcher and product manager, building tools for educators and thinking about that space. And then it was during that time when Clay Christensen asked me to be his chief of staff and help manage everything that he was involved with, obviously with the Institute, but also his teaching efforts at Harvard Business School and his consulting work and was such a remarkable opportunity to meet so many wonderful people, so many, you know, insightful leaders from all over the world, and just exposed me to, frankly, what’s possible when you, when you think, you know, think big and try to help, help people at scale.

And so that turned into business school and then I use that really to think about how to get back into some of the things that I enjoyed, which is startups and innovation. And so I have been at venture capital for the past several years working with early stage tech startups, usually in the AI and robotics and more deep tech space. You know, even that process, you know, you mentioned that I, I connected and was one of your early victims. I was navigating the transition of my own between firms, thinking about what I wanted to do. And you know, Bob Moesta, one of our co-founders, said, hey, we’re, we’re doing some research. We’re working on a process to help you think through this. And that was so impactful for me, I think, just to realize that I could focus on progress and what I needed rather than what was expected or what I should be doing or what my resume says I should do. And so when the research came out last year and I got to see the book and see the implementation of that thinking and that process, it was just a light bulb to me that there’s a huge opportunity to scale those insights to job seekers everywhere who, like me, have struggled and, and tried to get through this question of what do you really want? What are you really trying to accomplish? And so it just started tinkering and prototyping and here we are now, right, building together and it’s been a lot of fun.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, it’s been a ton of fun. And so we’ve launched officially the new company Vocation. I’ll put the link up there for those who are tuning into the live stream as well—joinvocation.com—but Cliff, you sort of alluded to it, how it’s helped you and so forth, and you’ve been a part of it and you read the book and you’re like, this should be a bigger product to help people. talk about what the product is like, what just at its fundamental core, what is Vocation? If folks go to joinvocation.com, what’s their experience going to be like right now?

Navigating Career Changes Effectively

Cliff Maxwell

So we take as a starting off point really the underpinnings of the research, which, you know, many of your followers might be familiar with, which is how can we help a professional who’s in the middle of a potential job change? Something’s off at work, they feel like they want something new. Maybe they’re starting to apply to a few roles, maybe they’re networking, or maybe they’re even seeking out coaches or other tools. And what we try to do is basically give you a process to work through that uncertainty, to work through that fuzziness of trying to navigate what should my next thing be, what do I really want? And so we take you through effectively the research in Job Moves, but in a more consolidated and focused fashion of a multi step process. Each step builds upon itself, gives you a bit more clarity and guidance and direction. Starting with what is your career quest, what is ultimately driving your desire for change? A deep dive into what gives you energy at work and what drains it. So we can really pinpoint the types of work you want to be doing fundamentally. We look at the themes of your career. So we try to help you understand what are the common trade offs that you’ve made, what, what are the common choices that you’ve made that have guided your decisions.

And so that we can kind of stay on brand, stay on purpose. And then we take a user through a prototyping exercise where we look at a whole host of opportunities, some of which maybe you’ve never considered, some of which maybe you think I couldn’t do that, but it gives us a chance to really have a job seeker wrestle with trade offs and wrestle with opportunities and put themselves in the shoes of different places to see where do I really fit. And then the last step of the process is narrowing down and guiding that process to drill down on a role that actually based on all of that discovery process makes sense for you and is going to give you the progress that you’re seeking. And then once you’ve gone through that process, we then have a whole host of tools and resources to help you then put the plan into action. Right? So now let’s go get that job and help you get the progress that we’ve helped you identify.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Okay, so that’s the basic process, that’s the what we’ve talked about, the why, because you’re sort of the why like, and maybe we should make it a little bit more crisply, right? Like we see Literally millions of folks right now frozen in jobs where they’re disengaged, if Gallup is to be believed, like 2/3 or 3/4, right, of the workforce is disengaged, 50% looking to quit. And so there’s a huge amount of dissatisfaction, fear, anxiety in this place.

But there’s like a long, you know, standing industry Cliff, right. Like career coaches and, you know, other places you can turn. There’s lots of job searching tools that are out there right now. There’s tons of AI companies popping up that will take your resume and they’ll adjust it for you and blitz it out to like a thousand different online postings and the like. Right. So, like, why is this different from the typical career tool or the coaches that are out there and so forth?

Traditional Career Tools’ Limitations

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, I mean, I think that if you’ve used these tools. Right. And I’ve used some of these and, and played with a whole bunch of, not just in building this, but also just throughout your life and even in high school, you kind of, you come across career assessments and, you know, things of that nature. I would say that the vast, vast majority of career tools are focused and still stuck, I would say, in a very traditional and narrow mindset of what a career needs to look like. And so they take as a starting point one of two things. Either, number one, what job are you looking for? So it assumes you know exactly what you want and then let’s put in the tactical how to go get that job. And that could be useful, right? Particularly if you know exactly where you’re going.

Or they take as a starting point your resume. Right. You mentioned a lot of resume tools. And again, the resume is just a description of things that you’ve done. And so the best approaches are just to look at the resume and think, well, what’s the logical next step? So if you’ve been in a certain role or industry, let’s just, you know, get you a promotion in that space. Or let’s look at really narrowly but obvious adjacencies to that space and that type of process in my experience. Right. For somebody that is wanting to be intentional and thoughtful about their next move, but is also uncertain.

Right. It’s not entirely obvious what the next thing is. Those just aren’t helpful approaches. Right. Like, number one, if you look at my resume, it makes absolutely no sense. No career tool would ever have recommended leave semiconductors to go work at a nonprofit education.

Michael Horn

Right. Like literally not linear at all.

Cliff Maxwell

No. Yeah, like no one would ever, no one would have ever recommended that. But when you do the work of figuring out who you really are and what you really want, and if you can be intentional about that, you can find opportunities that any career, service or any coach wouldn’t just completely overlook. Because that’s not how people think about careers. Which is what we try to do differently is that instead of focusing on what you want and roles you’re looking for, we start with who are you and what’s actually happening in your context? What are the things that are driving your desire for change, for better or for worse, what’s actually happening under the hood? So that when we understand that, we can guide you in much more thoughtful ways than anything else really, really does.

Michael Horn

So it’s not even just who are you? It’s like, who are you at this point in time with, what are the forces that are acting on you in your home life and like macro. Yeah. In the current job, maybe you’re not in the job, you know, maybe you’re not working right now, whatever it is. But it’s like, who are you at this moment? Is that the right way to think about it?

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah. I mean, just in a word, it’s your context. Right. And so you could have two job seekers who are both articulating the same thing. Let’s call it burnout. Right. So I’m burnt out at work. That means something completely different to two different people depending on their context.

Right. And so you might dig deeper into that and figure out that for one person, it’s actually they really enjoy what they do, but they fundamentally are just burned out. Like the amount of time they’re spending, the sacrifices they’re making, just the way that the work is implemented in their day to day life just isn’t sustainable anymore. And so that’s burnout and that’s a different dimension of progress based on that context versus somebody who feels burned out. But you dig deeper into that and in that person’s shoes, they’re just not fulfilled anymore. Like they actually don’t like what they’re doing. It doesn’t feel fulfilling, it doesn’t feel purposeful. And so they feel drained every day, which manifests as burnout.

But it’s a completely different context, that’s a completely different solution set. And so if you don’t really drill down into the context and the circumstances behind your initial feelings of needing something new, you’re never going to find a job that is going to bring you the progress that you actually need. You might get lucky, but statistically what you alluded to people don’t get lucky. They end up in a job where they’re just as miserable or if not more so down the line as they are now. And so we’re trying to circumvent all the trial and error that happens when people navigate through jobs or think in your words, learn, learn before switching versus learn by switching.

Work, Purpose, and Burnout Insights

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting you just brought up that example I love the burnout, like take, right? That it can mean totally different things depending on like burnout is too imprecise a word. I’ll give you another example. I was having a debate with someone, one of my Substack subscribers, around a post I’d written around how do we think about meaning and purpose with work, right? And one of the statements that I had made with some people, like their purpose is their work, right. Like I, you know, I’m trying to change education and I work at a non profit, you know, focused on education change might be an example of that. And for others it’s like I want to feel like the work that I do actually like moves the needle in some way, right. That it’s having impact, but it might be different from like life purpose or how I get meaning.

Right. I just want to know that I matter, right. And that I’m not just a cog that, you know, even if I showed up, called out six, six days in a row, it would, no one would notice, right. And they said, well, for my purposes that’s sort of the same thing. And I was like, I, I actually don’t think it is because, you know, someone that’s prioritizing the I want alignment, you know, both might be important, right. But I might have to make a trade off somewhere down the line and the person who’s saying like I want purpose to be synonymous with work identity is going to be very interested in like the mission aligned right, organization or something like that.

And they might be okay to take a back seat on, you know, how critical the role is to day to day operations, for example, or vice versa, right. And actually the advice, I think you’ll correct me if I’m wrong from what you’re learning in the data, but I think actually that distinction and burrowing underneath it actually matters quite a, quite a big deal to helping individuals find what would be that next best step and sort of that just, oh, it’s meaning at work is maybe too simplistic an answer to say like, okay, you know, these roles are sort of equal as you evaluate them. What are you learning from the folks that you’re coaching though, and the conversations you’re actually seeing them have with them too?

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, I mean, I think that just to go back to your point about purpose. Purpose, or pick any category of how you find meaning in work, you call it whatever you want. The reality is that human beings are dynamic. They’re dynamic, right? So I might feel like I need it. I really want to feel connected to my work and feel purpose in it in one circumstance of my life. But a few years down the road, maybe it doesn’t matter as much. Maybe it’s all about sustainability and family priorities or other things.

And so we don’t take as an assumption that there’s a static definition of progress for any individual. You know, you could, you could say that I’m a purpose aligned person and I like generally to find work that makes me feel purposeful. But that might not be true tomorrow. You know, that might not be true the next time. You’re looking for work based on whatever’s happening in your life. So we try to be very agnostic to “identity”. And I think that’s where a lot of traditional career tools and services, they try to put you in a bucket and label you as a thinker or a purpose person or a nonprofit. Like they try to put you in a bucket.

But there’s no such thing as a career bucket. There’s no such thing as a career ladder. It’s just you making progress through your life and figuring out what you need at a given moment. I think an example you mentioned, just some stories we’ve had one user speaking of labels versus progress. We had a user who had always worked in startups and viewed themselves as the zero to one founder. Right. And he was the boots on the ground, really gritty entrepreneur type. Right.

And he had built companies before. And so he went through the process. But when he went specifically through the career themes portion of the process where we really tried to understand the why have you made these choices and what’s been happening. And we went through a prototyping exercise with him. What he realized was that he didn’t have to be the zero to one guy. He labeled himself that way. That’s what he thought. That was his identity.

But he started to realize that the themes that were running through his decisions were focused more on impact and helping individuals. And so what he described was a job posting that came up that he in a million years would have never considered, which was to lead like an entrepreneurship program at the local university. And he, you know, working in a university. Right. A lower paying, generally, job at a university. He felt like I never would have touched that as an entrepreneur.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Cliff Maxwell

But when he read the job description, it completely articulated what he was finding out about himself and what he really wanted. And so when he interviewed for the job, the hiring group was like, where have you been all our lives? Like, you were exactly who we’re looking for. This is your job, this is you right on paper and we want you. He basically got hired on the spot and now he’s doing that and he’s thriving. And again, once you peel back the labels you made about yourself, the assumptions you made, or the progress that your resume or the world thinks you should be making, once you really just unpack it for yourself, you can be really authentic and directional about where you’re trying to go.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it’s actually really interesting. Right. Because the other side is also true, which is like career boards that, or different services that perhaps have your resume uploaded and are trying to proactively suggest you for the job. They wouldn’t have found him for that role either. I know this is a different conversation for a different day, but like, they wouldn’t have found him either. Right. To suggest it to that folks or a headhunter would never have thought of him, for example, perhaps because it would look like, well, no, he’s just going to start his next company rather than go to a university.

AI-Powered Personalized Discovery Tool

Michael Horn

Thinking about entrepreneurship. It strikes me as one of the things that’s really, really cool about this product, and I’m super candid. I didn’t think it was possible even with all the advances in AI, but I’ve been blown away with the work you’ve done in creating this, this interview that you have that historically, like, we try to teach people how to do it in the book, but like, Bob has sort of been this guru of giving this interview to really help you understand what’s driving you and what caused you or is causing you to look for a switch and so forth, this interview with the product is like, it feels incredibly personal and like you’re getting to. It’s not like a syncopatic AI, right. That sometimes it can go off the rails and just overly compliment you or overly indulge you. But like, it’s an incredibly cool discovery process. And, and as you said, you’re not static. So I guess I’m just curious.

Like, it seems like this, this is not just a tool for one time, but this is an interview I might come back to multiple times to see, like, gosh, I’m feeling some unrest again at work. I’m thinking about that next step or if I can tweak my current job, can I keep sort of coming back to this tool and having that really deep AI based interview to uncover insights as they change with me dynamically? Because as you said, we’re not static. Is that something that the tool will actually allow for?

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah. So today you can’t really run it through multiple times, but that’s certainly like on the very near term roadmap is what we want to build is a career platform that you can have in your pocket to revisit and to stress test and to learn from whenever you need. And yeah, I mean, we’ve had users cry their way through some of these steps, which is remarkable to me because I think that what I’m learning right as people do this is we never set out to replace anybody. Right. We’re trying to create something that’s affordable and accessible as an entry point and a starting point to really wrestle through and figure out some of these thorny questions. But what I think that we’re learning is that users that go through the interviewing process and just to be clear, every step of, it’s a five step process on the product and every step is like a 10 to 15 question interview, basically.

There’s, it’s not the same set of questions, it’s just a dynamic conversation that flows based on your responses. But I don’t think that people have ever really had that type of conversation before. One, because it’s not easy, but two, because most people just grunt their way through careers and through work and they find their next thing and it’s fine, you know, it pays the bills. And some people are, to be clear, some people love what they do and they’re super engaged and all power to you. But I would argue that most people just work, find their way through careers somewhat meanderingly and in many ways in an unfulfilled fashion. And to finally sit down with somebody that’s like, let’s really just unpack what the heck is going on and just ask some thoughtful questions. These aren’t magic questions, but people have never actually engaged in that type of dialogue before. And it’s been really neat to see people who give feedback to us that like, it’s the most insightful and nuanced discussion they’ve ever had about their careers.

And so the more that we facilitate that, the more empowering it feels to finally get stuff off your chest and finally you have somebody help you work through some of these difficult questions.

Michael Horn

One of the things that you’ve talked to me about is that, and I’m curious your take on this because, and I’ll come back to the people piece in a moment, but I want to lean into the part you said about not putting people in boxes and like, oh, you’re a nonprofit person, right. Or you’re an entrepreneur person and therefore you can’t think about these other roles. One of the things going on right now, as you know, is that there’s a lot of layoffs across the economy in the US. Some people are attributing it to AI, some people are attributing it to more macroeconomic factors, we don’t know. At least half a million sort of real layoffs in like downsizing has occurred this year. We know Amazon’s about to lay off several thousand more, they’ve announced. There’s a lot of this happening in the economy. And people I think feel at the moment a sense of like, I’m hanging onto my existing job because I don’t know if there’ll be something else out there for me. What are you learning about sort of people, you know, through the people going through the process, being able to proactively take charge of their career and still find roles.

Even as AI may be displacing certain functions, it may be changing certain job categories like that, that sort of. Because we’re not the job board. Right. We’re helping you navigate and figure out what’s actually important to you. What, what are you learning through people’s personal experiences as they’ve gone through the process? Or how, how about that dislocation against sort of this AI powered career coach counselor that’s really going to understand what you really want and help you make trade offs?

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s. First, I just want to acknowledge like it is a difficult labor market generally right now. Right. As you described. And so there’s a ton of uncertainty, a ton of confusion and fear. Frankly, that is AI going to take my job or who knows what’s going to happen next? I think that what we’ve seen is that, well, two things. The first is that for some people who’ve gone through the product and certainly Michael, you can speak to this from your research. For a lot of people, it’s not necessarily about getting a new job. Right.

I have to leave and I’ve got to go find something completely new in a different company. For many people, it’s reframing and understanding how can I get the best out of my current situation. And how can I advocate for myself and articulate what I really can do or how I can add more value in ways that haven’t happened? And so we had. I’ll share, I guess, two, two stories. The first is we had, one of our users, their company had a round of layoffs, and she was one of the ones that was spared. And so for a while, she was feeling uncertain, so she was going through the process, and then she found out she wasn’t laid off, which is great. But the company, as a result of a different workforce, had to realign and reorg the team a bit.

Finding Purpose to Thrive

Cliff Maxwell

And so going through the process for herself allowed her to say, oh, these are the things that I actually want to be doing. This is what fundamentally gives me energy. Here are the types of roles or responsibilities that I want to do and I can do well. And so she was able to actually go to her manager at a time of uncertainty or reorganizing of the team and say, look, if we have some flexibility here, here’s how I want to contribute even more, or in different ways. And that led to conversations that allow her to not just stay in the company, but really then thrive in her environment. And there’s so many other stories, but I think that the reality is that for somebody that has been laid off and now, unfortunately, has to go find something new and maybe on some level of time pressure, I think the reality is you’re going to be better off by figuring out where it is that you want to contribute and how, so that when you go and activate your network and when you go and apply for roles, you will stand out and can articulate your goals much more clearly and in ways that are going to help you land a role that’s going to add meaning and purpose to what you’re trying to do.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And it’s interesting. I like those examples you just gave. One thing that occurs to me also is we found that sometimes millennials get a bad rap because they sort of ask for the sun, moon and stars when they’re like, you know, whether it’s control or salary or, you know, how they express the desire to work from home, or it’s a certain entitlement, shall we say, to it. And one of the things we found that I think is sort of echoing is not only like, does, you know, a reframe of their current job, but also like, they realize, actually the one thing I’m missing is, you know, the ability to do a stretch assignment in this way, or the ability, right, to perhaps just, like, one day a week from home would make a huge difference or something. You know, it’s, it’s actually a smaller ask than they think it is, when they can sort of see what’s driving and draining their energy and what’s sort of pushing and pulling them perhaps to think about a switch and when they can express that more concretely with some evidence and data, essentially personal data behind it to the manager and it doesn’t feel like a, they’re asking for the sun, the moon and the stars.

All of a sudden the manager’s like, oh, like we can do that for you. Right? Like we, that’s something we can make work. And all of a sudden it’s not just a reframe, it’s actually like a slight adjustment, if you will, of the job description to actually better fit you right now and also to say like, hey, you are going to make some trade offs. Not everything’s going to be perfect in any job. But are you happy making these two trade offs, say, here so that you get all these perks that are actually pretty awesome about you now and in line with the things that are really driving your energy, is something we found.

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, no, I think that you said it right. There’s. There is no such thing as a perfect job. And I think that often people feel like the job has to hit every single bucket of fulfillment, energy, passion, interest, whatever you want to call it. And it should hit many. Right. That’s the point. That’s why we do what we do is to try to help people find more alignment with those things.

But part of the process is helping you figure out, well, what if, if leadership matters to you and you don’t have as much of it in your day to day, are there other aspects of your life where leadership is manifest and you can feel and find that fulfillment, whether in your community, with your family, whatever it is? And you start to see your life as a function of getting your needs met versus I have to have it all met in the job. And that’s also just been a big unlock. It was for me personally when I went through the process and ended up helping others. It is just separate what your work is versus what your life is and how can we strike a balance that makes sense for you?

Michael Horn

Yeah. All right. As we wrap up, last thing on my mind, which is like a huge push in our book, was that ultimately job searching is a social process. Whether that’s getting leads of ideas that you could do from those around you that you’re weakly connected to, to informational interviews to so forth. I can imagine people being like, you just created an AI tool that’s going to take people out of the process. It’s not how I see it, but I’m curious, like how you would articulate how the tool connects to the real world and helps you connect with people to actually find opportunities. Because I’m still amazed, Cliff, at the number of people that think you get jobs from just applying unmasked to things online and somehow something’s gonna work. And then like, everyone’s like, oh, it’s broken right now with AI.

And I was like, I mean, sure, but it wasn’t working that way before either.

Cliff Maxwell

Oh, it was always broken. That’s right.

Michael Horn

Yeah, exactly. It’s always been broken. It’s always about the people. So how does the tool bring in the people? Social capital, social network, whatever it is that actually helps you find the roles. How does that all work?

Cliff Maxwell

Yeah, so there’s a few things we do now and then there’s things that we’re thinking about in the future which we’re not doing yet, but we would like to. The first is recognizing that a job comes from a network fundamentally. And so once you go through the process, some of the resources and the tools that we give you help you and show you how to activate that network and how to engage and how to ask in ways that allow you to have a directional and focused conversation with whoever you reach out to. I think part of the challenge with networking is that particularly when somebody is in a place of I need a new job or, you know, it’s people say, well, go network, but what does that mean? And they think I’ll reach out to my 20 contacts and ask if they have job openings. But you’ve been in the situation before, having asked, you’ve been asked for help before, so have I. And the first question anyone responds with is, how can I help? You know, and that’s not a really useful directional guidance. I mean, I want to help, but I don’t know where you’re trying to go and what you’re trying to do. And the sharper you are with me, far more focused I can be in actually finding opportunities.

And so we, part of the process is, yes, it’s an AI driven tool to help you arrive at the insights. But then now let’s activate your network in ways that are going to help you add value. So we have that now over time, things we’re thinking about is one, building a network of just people on the platform. So as we scale and we have hundreds or thousands of job seekers on the platform, we can say, look, if you’re looking, if after you’ve gone through the process, what we’ve helped you realize is that customer success in healthcare is your calling. That’s what you really want to be doing. Well, we’ve got five people in the network that do that, that have that job right now. We can connect you and you can start those conversations. So that’s on the roadmap, something we’re thinking about.

And another thing is we’ve had some users go through the product who want to then just talk with an actual coach to kind of get back and forth and get more guidance than maybe somebody that’s in the sector or in the space. And so we’ve started to talk with some actual coaches who coach for a living and who, that is their job, and can we then have them as an after effect, you know, go through the process and now you have a whole platform upon which you can really have engaged conversation with someone more focused for you. So we’re thinking about lots of ways to do this, but, yeah, we’re not blind to the fact that AI is a tool to help you and we’re very committed to not being the thousands of other job boards where AI applies to hundreds of things for you, because that’s just not how it happens. And we want to be a bit more guided in that.

Michael Horn

Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, this has been a great conversation. I’m so excited that joinvocation.com is up live the company’s Vocation. He’s Cliff Maxwell. Cliff, Any other things folks should keep in mind as they go to check out the tool, start to use it and hopefully make more progress in their careers?

Cliff Maxwell [00:31:16]:

No, I would just say be prepared to be asked. If you go to the company and sign up and this first step is free, you can take the first interview for free, but be prepared to be asked some thoughtful questions. It’s not going to be what do you want? And let’s look at jobs together. It’s going to be questions like, when’s the last time you really felt fulfilled? What does that mean? And you got to wrestle with these things, but the more that you can be authentic with it and really reflect on what you need, we can be so much more insightful and help you really find something that’s going to help you make progress. And so we’d love to have all you try it and really excited to help you in any way that we can.

Michael Horn

Awesome. Well, give it a shot, give us feedback and let us know what’s working and what’s not. We’re going to keep tweaking and improving it. I will say you’ve taken what was a very cool process that we built for the book, made it simpler to use and still not lose the insights that I think come out of it. So huge thanks for building it. Huge thanks for all of you tuning in. I’ll do better next time and figure out how to make the live feed actually work on Substack. That’s my bad, I am 99% sure, but I’m thrilled this is out in the wild. Thank you again, Cliff, and we’ll see you all next time.

Cliff Maxwell

Thanks so much.

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Kim Dow, executive director of the Khan Lab School and Khan Schools Network, and Elizabeth Dean, head of learning design at the Village School, joined me for this conversation. Together we explored the evolution of the Khan Lab School, as well as the Village School. We talked about how these schools are designing forward-thinking, mastery-based, and self-directed learning environments, the impact of AI on education, and why collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the network are vital for supporting new educational models. I was interested to hear about the Village School’s goals for expanding into high school and Elizabeth’s view on the importance of fostering authentic experiences and character development for students in the age of AI.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I’m really excited for our two guests. We have Kim Dow. She’s the executive director of the Khan Lab School and the Khan Schools Network. So first, Kim, great to see you.

Kim Dow

Thanks for having us on your podcast.

Michael Horn

You bet. And then we’ve got Elizabeth Dean. She’s the head of learning design at the Village School and the first Kahn School Network partner on the east coast, which we’re going to hear more about today. But first, Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining as well.

Elizabeth Dean

Thanks for having us.

Khan Lab School’s Growth Journey

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. So, Kim, let me start with you. Just Khan Lab School, I’ve been there probably a handful of times over the years, but if I’m being honest, it’s probably been like seven or eight years since I was last there. I was trying to do the math this morning as I was preparing for you to come on. And of course, Sal’s been on the show a few times, but still, I think the audience would love an update. Sort of like just Khan Lab School. We’ll get to the network in a moment. But just like, you know, the current state of it, how many locations do you have? How has it evolved over time? What’s the student body look like? Day in the life students, just give us a little bit of the color.

Kim Dow

Khan lab School is actually going into its 12th year this year, and I’ve been here for about eight years and it’s been quite a journey. And the school, as you know, is a Mastery based school. One of the earlier Mastery based schools, we’re located in Mountain View and we’ve also just expanded to Palo Alto. And so the school has grown over the past decade or so. And so now we have a campus for our lower school folks, and then we have a campus for our middle and our upper school students, which is based in Mountain View. In fact, our middle school this summer we just did some rehab and just moved into the old Khan Academy space. So we have moved from about, which the students love, and so the program has grown from the early days of about, you know, 20 students.

I like to say it’s achieved escape velocity and we now have just tipped over 300 students, which is super exciting. So we often say that we have evolved from being scrappy to established, but not too established. And so we’ve really tried to retain those kind of startup, innovative roots and everything that, everything that we do. But it’s been, it’s been amazing to grow to, you know, a larger school.

Michael Horn

I love it. One more question, Kim, before I bring Elizabeth in. Just—300 students. I’ve always thought of Khan Lab School as a microschool. Do you, do you all still consider yourself as such at that size or like, how do you think? I mean, some of these classifications are sort of silly in some sense, right? It’s more about the educational experience. But I’m just sort of curious how you think about that.

Kim Dow

I think that we have evolved away from being a traditional microschool just partly because of the number of years that we have been around. And I think that moving into kind of being more of a grown up school based on, you know, the number of years that we’ve been around. Some of the things that, you know, are part of our operational elements, I would say are part of being, you know, a larger school. It’s interesting, you know, most recently about three years ago, we also decided to expand the program and we can get into this in a little bit later, but we expanded the model to open a school in Wichita. So we are now three campuses. One in Mountain View, one in Palo Alto, where Lower School is, and a new campus in Wichita, Kansas.

Michael Horn

All right, we’re gonna have to get more into all of this in a moment. But Elizabeth, I want to bring you in because before the partnership, the Village School was alive and well, and has a good history. So tell us a little bit about the Village School, its roots, who it serves, you know, what a student experience is like and so forth.

Elizabeth Dean

Yes, thank you. So similar to Kimberly, we started eight years ago. So this is theVillage School’s eighth year with 12 learners, preschool through elementary school age. And now we have close to 80 learners and we’re pre K through 8th grade. And we’re hoping to launch a high school in the future, which is where our partnership with Khan comes in, hopefully helping us with that, with all of their wisdom and launching a school and growing it to 300 learners. Our school is really built, we have our roots in a self directed learning model and we have a really entrepreneurial founding community. Some of those founding families are still here, really active and have just kind of pushed us to continue to expand and explore.

We’re really focused on self directed learning, of course, as that’s, you know, really where our roots are. But focused on project based and mastery based learning and really wanting to make a school model and a learning experience that is really the future of education. Focusing on those, you know, human skills that are going to be really important as we continue down this road of AI and all things that come with that.

Michael Horn

And tell us a little bit about, like, that founding story with those founding families. You’re all in Northern Virginia, right? So just a little bit about, like, what was the why the rallying cry, if you will, that said, hey, we gotta. We have to put something different together.

Elizabeth Dean

Yes. So I can speak to that as I was one of those founding families before I worked here. So I was a member before I was an employee or I think there’s a famous line about that. But I might be dating myself with that. But you all get it. I see you laughing.

Michael Horn

Yes.

Elizabeth Dean

Families come from really, you know, I wouldn’t. It’s hard to describe. It’s not like they come from one particular background, really, just families that were looking at their current young, you know, their children’s school experience and just wanting it to be more than just fine. And I think something that all families, especially that founding group, really has in common and something we hear every time we take our new families out to a coffee is that, you know, they played the game of school and they either played it really well or they didn’t play it well at all. They figured it out either way, but they wanted something different for their kids. And so it’s really that just knowing that they’re just really wanting something else, which is like what I like to call them, entrepreneurial.

Right. They’re really seeing that disconnect or seeing something that could be better and wanting to figure that out. So that’s really what I feel like brought us together. And we are, we’re located in Arlington, Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C. and we really take advantage of our close location to all things in the District of Columbia that are, you know, take the kids on really great field trips and have access to a lot of really wonderful professionals who are willing to come in and share what they do with our learners. So we’re really. We try to take advantage of our location for sure.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Very cool. All right, Kim, let me go back to the Khan Lab school because that’s also part of your title, Khan Schools Network. Right. You guys started to expand, I think, a few years back, if I’m not mistaken, and it’s global, in fact, at this point. So sort of tell us about that evolution of Khan Lab School into thinking about it as more of a network, if you will. How many partners at the moment? Where are they? What do they look like? And why partner as opposed to, like, just build lots of Khan Lab schools yourself?

Kim Dow

Very early on, I would say. And it’s actually a separate entity from Khan Lab school. And so. But I would say, you know, one of the things that, like, innovative schools in the Bay area and all over the country, everybody gets requests to come and visit their school, especially like Elizabeth, if you’re in a large metropolitan area. And what we were finding is, in fact, we’ve got a visit this morning. I’ve got another visit later in the week. You know, one of the schools is from India, and one of them is from France. This happens to everybody who is in this space.

Building Collaborative School Partnerships

Kim Dow

And one of the things that I found was these conversations were so rich and that we, you know, folks would come, they would spend an entire day at the school, but then, you know, we would sort of drift away. We would stay in touch. You know, we would email each other every now and then, but we really weren’t continuing that relationship and those opportunities to learn from one another. And I would say probably about two years ago, we started thinking that we had gotten some things together about our model. And we have, like everybody else, made tons of mistakes along the way, but I felt that we had learned enough that maybe we were ready to have some things that we could share with other schools. And so we tapped into some of those schools that had come to visit us, and we decided to create. And about the same time, we were creating the Wichita program, Kahn Schools network, and not as a way to franchise Khan Lab school, but a way to really create something a little more organic where we could create partnerships through these relationships with other schools. Not that we wouldn’t create another one or two Khan lab schools in the future, but they have.

Michael Horn

The Wichita one is a Khan Lab school, right?

Kim Dow

It is a Khan Lab school, Right.

But what we really wanted to do was to help facilitate, because we were finding this from folks who were visiting us as well. How can we learn from each other? And one of the things we like to say is be in the lab with us. Right. Because the learning really goes in both directions. And so even though we have, you know, materials that we have shared and that we have codified and we have put up on our Khanschoolsnetwork.org website, you know, we’re really putting them in good shape and then hoping that that will serve as a model for Elizabeth and others then to share some of their best resources. As well.

Michael Horn

So it’s really almost conceptualized like, this. This isn’t like a series of copycat schools. It’s more literally a network where you’re both. You’re all learning from each other as a network would. Is that the right way to think about it?

Kim Dow

100%.

Michael Horn

Super. Interesting. All right, let me ask one more question before Elizabeth. I want to hear your sort of turn on this. I suspect a lot of folks would love to be a partner with Khan Lab School in some meaningful way. How do you decide, you know, who gets to be a partner? Are there criteria around that? Why did the Village School feel like, yeah, that’s a, you know, that’s someone we want to partner with, be. Have they been in the network?

Kim Dow

Well, you know, it’s interesting, we find that folks who are approaching us come with a very specific request. It’s not help us build a school right. And in the relationship and partnership with Elizabeth, it was, we have a K8 program. We’re aligned philosophically around how we.

How our schools, you know, run.

They’re independent entities. But you have built a high school before, right? And help us think about how to build a high school. And so what we found is that folks will have a very specific request, like, help us write a charter application for a mastery based charter school. Help us think about what progress reports and transcripts look like for students who are headed to college. And in Elizabeth’s case, it was, you know, how do we really engage with our community and with our board and all of our other stakeholders and kind of frame, you know, building and expanding our existing program to include a high school? What are some of the things that you maybe did right or did wrong that you could share with us? They’re in the driver’s seat. We’re really just a I would say a consultant.

But the wonderful thing that happens is that as a result of this partnership, I know that Elizabeth and her team are doing wonderful work around curriculum mapping. And so an offshoot of that is we will take something back from that relationship as well. And it’s only by deepening these relationships that I think that these innovative schools, you know, continue to stay regionally, you know, important and distinct. But we’re connected by these kind of core principles of, you know, self directed learning and mastery based learning.

Michael Horn

Terrific. Elizabeth, let me turn it to you. Like, what were you looking for when, you know, why did you say, gosh, this is an important partnership for the growth of Village School as you started thinking about high school?

Elizabeth Dean

Yes. So I think just what Kimberly shared about just collaborating those really important core pieces of our program that we are so aligned on. Right. Like we might not share a governing structure, but we believe in project based, mastery based self directed learning and are trying to build something different. I think we as our school really was excited at the opportunity, especially given our entrepreneurial spirit, to get in on the early end and be an early partner and try to kind of help shape the network as much as we get from it right we could also give.

Rethinking Education Beyond Status Quo

Elizabeth Dean

And really, I think being an independent school that is trying to create a different vision for education and a different experience. Right. We’re not built and we’re not designed as a school to do what most schools are built and designed to do. We’re trying to really be intentional about having a different outcome. And anytime you’re trying to do something different and kind of push back against status quo, it’s really great to be in good company and have cheerleaders even if they’re across the country, you know, thankful that technology can connect us and just having somebody that has gone through it, especially in building a high school, you know, around, we’ve, in our experience, we’ve learned that, you know, people are willing to take a perceived risk on their kids, Pre K through 8 experience. But high school comes with its own challenges and people are afraid to take the risk because the stakes are so high. And so we really, we really want to get it right. And, you know, we’re looking for help and support and cheerleading to get it right and serve the community well.

Our community really wants it and so we want to do right by them. So just looking for a partner in that. And this seemed like a really great, you know, marriage of purpose and values and, you know, just ability to get it done and to help us along the way.

Michael Horn

It’s interesting because that sense of partnership and sort of, you know, we’re in this together with the network. If I’m not mistaken, you all have like, basically, I think India, now the Village School, you’ve got Ohio right in the Heights Academy, and then there’s a proposed charter, I think in Georgia. So, like, what will the work of the network look like? Like, do you have a sense of cadence of how the interactions will go? What’s the sharing of information look like between schools? Because I imagine it’s not just like one way traffic, Chan lab, school hub and spoke. Right. It’s probably also getting to connect with others in the network too?

Kim Dow

Yeah. And I would say it’s definitely early days. But one of the things that’s interesting is that even though there are some public partners, over this past year we have been approached by maybe about 30 different schools that are interested in being partners. And, you know, we are, you know, currently a very small team. And so we have tried to be really thoughtful about taking the time, you know, to meet with each one of them individually to really listen to what people are saying in this space that they need. Most of these schools, I would say, are, you know, either a couple of years old or like Elizabeth’s, they’ve been around for a little bit, but most of them are less than a decade old. But they really have.

I would say they are sustainable in their own community. And I think one of the things that’s interesting to me is that I expected all of them to be small, but they’re not all small. We are partners with another school in Florida which created an innovative mastery based school within an existing school district. And so that was one of the surprises to me, that charter schools, public schools, small schools, international schools. I was surprised by the fact that about a third of the schools who are reaching out to us are in fact international schools. So about 10 international 20 that are around the country. We didn’t even have a website for the first half of the year. So we figured if people were contacting us, they must really want to be part of the network.

Michael Horn

The best marketing is inbound when you’re not asking right?

Kim Dow

So it’s been fun. But I really want to emphasize that we’re not trying to get a lot of publicity, be a flash in the pan, be super fast. We are, I would say, slow and methodical and listening to our partners, trying to be here for the long term. We don’t charge anybody. And so it’s more about, you know, the right relationship and the fact that there is a willingness, I would say, as Elizabeth said earlier, to share back within the network that again, we’re not creating a product, we are codifying things and trying to put them in good shape. So they are generic templates that other people can use and try to connect folks, you know, with, with one another.

Michael Horn

So that reciprocity you just mentioned in high school in particular, because, Elizabeth, I share the same observation. Right. There’s like a lot of parents who are willing to do different things for elementary and middle school for a variety of reasons. Right. And then there’s sort of like, it seems like a gravitational pull of a few things that happens in high school. One is college, but the other is nostalgia. Right around prom, Friday Night Lights, whatever it is, it’s sort of pulls people out.

I just love mastery based learning being such an important part of both of your, you know, school philosophies, designs, etc. I guess I’m sort of curious, like, in the age of AI, right? Like, how does mastery based learning intersect with AI? Is that maybe a bigger rallying cry where people are realizing, hey, since AI can probably do most of the work by itself that is being assigned in today’s high schools, maybe we actually are looking for something different. Just like talk us through that dynamic and maybe. Elizabeth, you start and then. Kim, I’d love your reflections on the same question.

Prioritizing Humanity Over AI Skills

Elizabeth Dean

Yes, yes to all of the above. I really hope that AI is kind of a rallying cry, if you will, because I think at least for us in our conversations, it’s really having us double down on the human part of what we’re doing here, which is like, you know, we always say, one of the things we say in our school community is we care more about who our learners are than what they know. Because we care more about who our learners are than what they know. Especially now that, you know, AI could pretty much ace any test that they’re giving or any of the tests that I certainly took when I was going to school. And I know some of the tests that are still given in my neighborhood, high school, school. So students, you know, my neighbors come asking me for help. I think that, you know, we think that the future really belongs to those who can do what technology can’t. And one of those things that technology can’t do is really teach me about my, like, know myself and my own experience.

They can’t reflect for me on that thing that just happened and so really just doubled, like I said, doubling down on the human aspects of our learning design. And that’s really what mastery based learning is all about. You can’t. I think mastery based learning is really all about those authentic assessments, like assessing to discover, not assessing to demonstrate. So we have really been energized as a team to dive more, even more deeply into mastery based learning. One with, because of our partnership with Khan, but also just because of what we’ve seen and what we’ve experimented with in terms of AI and how it’s impacting what we actually, what do we care about? You know, what’s important here? What’s worth assessing?

Michael Horn

Kim, I’d love your thoughts on this as well. I have a number of questions off of what Elizabeth just shared, but first, I want to give you a chance to jump in.

Kim Dow

I mean, I would say one of the interesting things for us is obviously, it’s a quickly shifting landscape, and the AI that students use today is probably the worst AI that they’ll ever encounter in their academic careers. And so I think it’s worth keeping all of those things in mind. The other thing that I think is really at the forefront for us is that as a K12 school, AI is pervasive not just with our high school students, but down to our youngest students as well. And so what does the ethical use of AI look like? And there is also so much focus, I would say, in school environments about how does AI support teachers, and what can students do and not do, and what should we train students to do or not do, and how important is critical thinking and all of those things that continue to need to be important. I think one of the things that we have also tried to focus on is that what does AI mean for the rest of the school? What does it mean for the administrative team? What does it mean for the operations of the school? There’s a lot of AI Ed. In fact, we’re doing our own summit in a couple of weeks about AI in Ed for teachers. But one of the things we’re trying to make sure also doesn’t happen is that in admissions and in marketing and in our finance department department, that we’re also upskilling everybody on those teams as well. So it becomes more of a community embracing and having thoughtful conversations about, you know, appropriate use.

The last thing I would say is that as a school, we are kind of in this unique situation as being a sister organization to Khan Academy. And so when there are changes in KA or there’s a rollout of, you know, Khanmigo, which is a tool that a number of schools will use, is that our students have kind of this early look, and they are used to kind of trying these things out in collaboration with kind of a software nonprofit. And so I think that we have so many students who are in the driver’s seat of being really early adopters as a result of this kind of synergistic relationship with a software entity. And so I think that has made us look at the kind of school use pretty early on and to think about what’s changing and what isn’t going to change for students and for teachers.

Michael Horn

Well, so let’s dig in on a couple of those things. On the student side in particular, Elizabeth, you mentioned, like, knowing yourself being critical, but obviously, like, you have to have knowledge around the world and sort of like you have to know something to also know yourself relative to others. Like, how do you parse that? What’s your current philosophy? Or where do you think? Like, what will the high school look like as you guys build this? I’m guessing it’s not going to be atomized subjects and sort of 45 minute bells. So, like, what will a day in the life do you think look like for students navigating these questions that you posed?

Elizabeth Dean

Yes. So, I mean, I think it’ll look similar to how especially our middle school runs, except which I’ll share. I think the goal for high school would be that they are, you know, off campus a lot more than our middle schoolers are. They’re off campus quite a bit. But we really want, the vision really is to put young people in the world and have real experiences, not artificial ones. Right, Real experiences. And I’d say,

The balance is always tricky right, is of like, I think a great example would be the project our middle schoolers just finished a couple weeks ago, which was the first project of the year, which was just really all about, like, AI. They wrote a handbook for other middle schoolers on how to use AI. And in order to write that handbook, they had to use it. They had to talk about how they felt after they used it. They used it for all math, writing, reading, you know, civics assignments.

Thoughtful AI Exploration

Elizabeth Dean

They worked in collaboration. They used it on, on their own. Just really like diving in and then taking the time to process that experience. Like, how did I feel using it? Which did I learn? Did I learn more by using it or not by using it or by collaborating with it? Like, really posing those. I feel like those questions were all like, I’m asking about my own life and using AI, so just slowing down a little bit and, you know, not gatekeeping or not, not making it a forbidden fruit, if you will, and just inviting young people to the table to have the conversation about this, this new tool that’s everywhere and impacting all of our lives and being really thoughtful about how we want it to impact our life and knowing that we have agency in that decision.

Michael Horn

Quick, quick question. When they’re interacting with AI, is it Khanmigo? Is it other apps? Is it the large language models themselves? What does that look like?

Elizabeth Dean

I would say it’s all of the above. Some of them, we have experimented with Khanmigo and some of the learners have really great success with that.. And then with some of the large language models as well. So really, they made their own AI chat bots as a part of this.

So just they consulted with some people in the, you know, experts in the real world who work with AI policy. We have a lot of policy experts around us here. Right.

Michael Horn

It turns out one of the things DC does well or poorly, depending on your perspective.

Elizabeth Dean

Yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah. They had some hard questions for those AI policies. They and they got some great feedback on their handbook. And then also just other, you know, young people who have just graduated for college that are using AI in their work, in their daily life, whether it be like using AI, the large language models, or using AI and some type of, you know, backdrop to their career path that they had not thought of, because when they were in high school and college, I wasn’t, you know, really fully developed. So just really connecting them with those experts and, and focusing on that, the processes.

Right. And so it’s not just like the tool, but the whole, the, the experience that goes along with it. So, and that’s, I think we take that kind of approach in all of our learning design, and that’s really the approach that we’ll take with the high school, too, is going out, having experiences, coming back to this, to campus or wherever, to kind of reflect and talk through that so that you really are understanding more about yourself. An experience I often wish I had as a young person in school. But yes, I think somebody I was talking to recently said that in the future, our competitive advantage will be to really know yourself. And I think that that’s, that’s what we’re going for.

That’s what we’re trying to design for.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And it is sort of amazing that there’s no opportunities really for reflection in the traditional high school experience for students and they sort of graduate, not having a keen sense of who they are and where their energy drives from and so forth. Kimberly, let me maybe ask you this last question as we start to wrap up here, which is you mentioned that AI is impacting even the youngest learners that you serve. I think you said kindergarteners. How do you think? And your point is right. Like, this is the worst AI any of them will ever see in their lives. Right. So I’m just sort of curious.

Like, you know, obviously there’s the know yourself. You can build in reflection and sense of metacognition. And so forth throughout the experience. right of schooling. But how do you think about AI preparedness there, especially as the youngest learners are perhaps working with these tools in some cases.?

Kim Dow

You know, it’s interesting, I. And it really goes hand in hand with, I would say, what the teachers are learning at the same time. And I was in a third grade classroom the other day where they were writing short essays, and it was fascinating to me to see how the teacher was really weaving it into, I would say, traditional things, not a traditional approach, but teaching students how to write. But then she would pivot and have them use AI to look things up and then to integrate it back into their writing. And so it was very much a light approach and not now we are shifting to use AI, but it was just integrating it into the fabric of what she was already doing. And I thought that that was really powerful. And so I wouldn’t say we’re all the way down to kindergarten, but I would say that students as young as third grade, you know, are using AI in the classroom pretty regularly.

Michael Horn

And it sounds like the guiding philosophy there is to figure out how do we cooperate with it as opposed to outsourcing cognitive, you know, work to it completely. Is that the right way to think about it?

Kim Dow

Students are not sitting in front of an AI tool, you know, for a half an hour independently and doing work that is really teaching students, you know, the skills, I would say, of how to use AI, as a tool and to be naturally curious about it. And it’s, you know, it’s the same old learning how to learn, which we both do in all of our schools. Right. And really teaching students to build that mindset into their use of AI because it will evolve for them.

Curiosity Enhances Understanding

Michael Horn

Well, and I guess that’s the same thing undergirding the project that you just outlined. Right. Elizabeth, is like if you. In order to write a handbook, I’m sure many schools are writing handbooks without this curiosity. But to have the curiosity of how does it actually work, what is the impact on me? Right. And others in the community as we use it, allows you to write a much more robust, I would imagine, output, but then have a much deeper sense of understanding underlying that, which is maybe the more important part, I would think.

Elizabeth Dean

Yes. And I think it speaks to the mastery based piece. Right. Mastery based learning there’s a big part of that is character development and work habits and deliberate practice. And, you know, that’s a really important part of the experience. Right. So whether you’re writing a handbook on AI or, you know, learning algebra.

Character development is an important part. And I think in this age of AI, it’s really the. It’s what we focused on eight starting, you know, eight years ago was our main focus. And I think just even more highlighting that it’s even more important to us now because of AI.

Michael Horn

Super. All right. Well, I feel like I have scratched the surface of like a million questions I want to dig into with you both, but for time’s sake, I’m going to let you go. This is a super interesting conversation. Exciting to see this network evolve, exciting to see the village school be part of this group. And frankly, Kim, as this evolves over the years, it’ll be exciting to see how big the network grows. What are the learnings that you start to all get out of it in the years ahead.

So huge thank you to you both for joining us and for all you joining us, we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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Deborah Gist of Transcend and the XQ Institute and Victoria Andrews of Getting Smart joined me to talk about their report, “The Public Microschool Playbook: A New Actionable Guide for System Leaders,” a guide for public school districts interested in starting their own microschools. Our conversation explored the barriers districts face and highlighted solutions and real-world examples where microschools are already making a difference. My guests emphasized the importance of community engagement, starting small, and designing schools around the specific needs of students.

For those who have read my book From Reopen to Reinvent and followed my work, it’s no secret that I think many more districts ought to be operating a range of microschools rather than continuing to have a one-size-fits-all mentality around serving students. It seems like a big opportunity to increase student engagement—and by having a bunch of purpose-built and differentiated microschools serving different groups of students yet offering them through the district, you can also imagine still having the best of a big community with other offerings like sports teams and the like that might be a draw. How to do this, however, has been a challenge for many districts, so I was glad when this guide came out. I hope our conversation helps more districts move forward accordingly.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. Something we’re not accomplishing today. But two folks that we get to welcome to our show today, being dedicated to this work for a very long time and doing incredible stuff. So thrilled to have two friends here, Deborah Gist and Victoria Andrews. Deborah, obviously now superintendent in residence at Transcend and XQ Institute, but of course, you were the superintendent of Oklahoma’s largest public school district in Tulsa, your hometown, for many years and of course, commissioner of Education in Rhode island and many other things.

So first, good to see you Deb.

Deborah Gist

You too.

Michael Horn

And Victoria, you’re obviously a partner now focused on professional learning at Getting Smart, but you were the assistant director for an IB school, I think most recently before Getting Smart. So thank you so much for joining as well.

Victoria Andrews

Super happy to be here. Yeah. Can’t wait for the conversation.

Michael Horn

Well, we’re going to dive in because you all were part of Getting Smart Collective, Learner Centered Collaborative, and Transcend coming together to write, I think, a really important report, the “Public Microschool Playbook: A New Actionable Guide for System Leaders.” We’ll link to it, obviously in the show notes and up front, but it’s a really important playbook that encourages districts to get in the game, start creating microschools. And Deb, you’ve, I feel like actually I was in front of you a couple times from when From Reopen to Reinvent came out being like, districts should do microschools. And you’d be like, there’s not a playbook yet to get them to do it. So you guys have written that. Let’s, let’s dive in because I think it’s obviously incredibly critical. There’s a lot of interest in them.

Overcoming Educational Innovation Barriers

Michael Horn

Let’s start with the barriers, though, because you all note in the report that we’re not seeing a lot of district run microschools. You list several of them actually helpfully, but there’s not a, there’s not as many as there should be. So maybe let me start with you, Deb. And then Victoria, you jump in, like, what do you see as the big impediments or barriers that’s holding this back?

Deborah Gist

Well, I mean, I think honestly one of the very first barriers is just awareness and just a recognition of the why and what’s possible and how they could go about doing it. And then once a system leader, whether it’s a school district superintendent or a charter school leader or a leader of tribal schools or whatever the entity is, once they get the bug and they think, oh, I get it, like, I see how this could be such a game changer for my students, my teachers in our community, then you start encountering, you know, some practical kinds of things. And it’s everything from funding, which always comes up. It’s like, how do you set aside the seed funding in the long term, it really should be, but there are some things that people have to work through you. You might run into, depending on the state, on, on most of these actually certification challenges, like, you know, teachers of record and, and how that is done within the state, depending, depending on the design of the school, you might run into needing to figure out, you know, how you count courses, how you count attendance, you know, seat time issues and things like that. Then you have facilities. And again, you know, there are, there are typically in, in many districts.

There’s space available, but it’s figuring that out. And if you want it to be intentionally, which we actually recommend in the playbook, outside of the system, at least initially, you know, figuring that out and make. And then you have to work through, you know, safety concerns and all of the things. So we lay this out in the playbook. So I don’t want anyone to feel daunted by the that we’re talking about barriers right away. It’s. It’s very doable. And all those mechanisms that we touch on that I talked about.

And then you also have enrollment and the procedures and different things like that. All of that is very technical things that can be addressed, I think, helping to lead the adaptive change of helping people to think how. How do we do school differently and what do we have to let go of and what do we need to embrace? Because we all want to serve students for their whole unique selves. But the barriers sometimes can feel daunting, but we can help people address them.

Michael Horn

Victoria, what would you add, yeah?

Victoria Andrews

I would just liken it to, you know, everybody has a dream of owning a home. And you’re like, oh, I’m going to get a house that’s going to be three bedrooms, two baths. It’s like, there are so many different types of houses. There’s condos, there’s townhouses, there’s modular houses. So sometimes it’s just truly, you don’t know what’s possible. And so for a lot of leaders that are leading, they’ve got the blinders on. Deb can attest to this just like I can, where it’s like the day to day, you’re just like, I gotta make it through. And we need to do what we need to do to make sure that the kids are safe and the staff is supported.

And sometimes, unfortunately, innovation is the last thing on our minds. And so not even knowing what are the possibilities to attract different parents to engage students in a different way, just even knowing that this is an option and this is an avenue to do that.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, that makes sense. So I want to double click on a couple of them because you talked about seed funding. That’s one I hear a lot from folks on the ground like, we are stretched as it is running flat out. And to your point, Victoria, like the urgent and immediate, maybe trumps the important in the long term that maybe we should be planning for. How do you go about getting seed funding? And then the other one I’d love you all to address, I’ll just name it. I hear a lot about union contracts or policies or procedures. Like how do you think about batting those down so you can create space for this?

Funding Small-Scale Education Initiatives

Deborah Gist

Well, I’ll start and then this is probably mostly a Victoria question, but I mean, there are resources available. Getting Smart is one. VELA has given out grids and they don’t need to be big. So the seed funding, you know, having led large systems, even though I led large systems that were constantly needing to, you know, cut budgets and figure out how to adjust and so forth, the amount of money that we’re talking about is doable. So it’s about will, it’s about saying like we are, it is worth it to set aside an amount of money or co fundraise for it or whatever it’s going to take to get this going. I think sometimes people think it’s just a tiny, tiny number of students. And, you know, how do we focus on that when we have this much bigger population that we’re serving? But it’s not just about those students. Even though it is.

It’s really about how we are adjusting the system overall. Quickly, on the union question, you know, obviously it varies from state to state and district to district in very dramatic ways. I know from personal experience, but I would say that microschools are about teachers. I mean, this is about helping the union leadership and the teachers that are part of that union leadership understand that this is about respecting the professionalism of educators and giving them an opportunity to work with communities to build the kind of schools that they really dream about. So I think it’s a doable thing. But Victoria knows more about doing that on a day to day.

Michael Horn

You’ve been in the trenches, Victoria. So because you all are getting smarter, funding support, supporting a lot of these. So, talk about that.

Victoria Andrews

We have and what is inspiring is that you see once people wrap their minds around that this is a possibility then you see that like innovation light bulb go off and it’s how can I be creative with the space and the staffing that I have? I think about Canyon City out of Colorado. So they have a microschool and it’s experiential learning and they take the young people on various trips across the country and even globally. And their staffing model is so that they’re on the block schedule. But if there’s an English teacher that one of that English teacher section is with the microschool. So it’s not the hiring of an additional person, it’s just being creative and flexible within the confines that you already have. And so that’s a perfect example of like how do we address, you know, space operations and staffing? What do you have? How can you be flexible? I think it goes back to the point we talked about earlier of just being confined, of thinking like this is the way that we’ve always solved this problem, this is the way we’re going to continue to solve this problem. But it’s like what if you kind of flip things on their head. I’ve seen other spaces switch to a four day school model to accommodate a microschool.

And what are, what are those kids going to be doing on that fourth day, I mean on that fifth day and how do you staff for that? To Deb’s point, you’re respecting those educators as indeed educators and professionals and pulling them into the conversation. There are tons of great examples all across the country of people that are navigating unions and navigating staffing models and schedules and sometimes again people just don’t know what’s out there. And so diving into the playbook, what I do appreciate is that we highlight so many examples that are, that you can still reach out to right now if you’re not clear or if there’s a hurdle that you can’t quite cross.

Michael Horn

So part of that is you also show the payoff right from this and you have this section on the benefits which pretty striking results called out. You had Edge, for example, a district run microschool within Liberty Public Schools in Missouri. You had some cool highlights that I would just encourage people to check out the report, spend some time with it and then you jump. And I think that’s the perfect segue because you just talked about that school in Colorado that by the way, I kind of want to go to now. So I just took a note. Like experiential learning, traveling around the country and world. Yes, please.

Victoria Andrews

Yeah, check.

Michael Horn

Right, check. But the first stage you have in all this is planning and you name some specific considerations. Competency based learning instead of seat time, you’ve got alternative accountability and assessment models. Thinking about the microschools goals and how those line up. Right. Expanding teacher cert. You mentioned that Deb, and a bunch of other stuff.

What’s involved in this planning stage in your mind and like why is it so critical to tackle early up front before you’re getting, before you actually like have a school in mind and you’re starting to actually put in place.

Community Needs Guide Micro School Launch

Victoria Andrews

Yeah. So, I mean I’m so glad you asked me this because this is where I’m working with a community of practice right now. And so many of those leaders are looking to launch a public microschool. The first question is, does your community want it? Because you can have this passion project and it can be shiny and have all the bells and whistles and it can be competency based and PBL and you guys can go across the country and you know you’re helping everybody. But if your community doesn’t want that, then it’s for you, it’s for the, you know, it’s for the adults, it’s for the school board, it’s for that passionate parent. So first and foremost is what’s your why and who is that for? And really honing in and we, not just for public microschools, but that’s something we’ve just learned from microschools in general. They are responsive to the needs of their community.

It wasn’t the ones that were just that cupcake fluffy like oh, I just want to do something cool. Like that’s just what you did, something cool for you and that’s in service to no one. And so we definitely don’t encourage that is really, really hone into your why and you’ll see that at the beginning chapters of the playbook of just like what are you doing? What’s your purpose? And the ones that have a level of sustainability like you highlighted. I was hoping you would bring up Liberty Edge out in Missouri. They, they looked at okay, why, why are young people leaving? What do families want? What are they asking for? And then they build a program that’s responsive to that. And so that’s what are highly, just start off with that why.

Deborah Gist

True.

Victoria Andrews

And don’t be afraid to ask the families because they’re going to tell you. They’re going to tell you where they’re going, why they’re going there, or even the young people, what do they want? What do they want that’s different? And then you can take that information and I don’t know any middle schooler or high schooler that’s going to be afraid to tell you exactly what they want when it comes to their education.

Michael Horn

Fair enough. Fair enough. You have this section that comes after right on the designing and it starts to get into this thing around like don’t make it one size fits all. Really fit the purpose. I’d love you both to talk about that. But also in the context of like, as you’ve, you know, been designing across the country, Victoria, like, what do you see as the biggest opportunities, Deb, when you put your lenses on leadership, like, where do you see the biggest opportunities to start? What populations? What are the whys that really grab communities right now that maybe are tuning out to the traditional options?

Deborah Gist

Yeah, I mean, it’s really endless actually. You know, in the microschool world, you see everything from, you know, Montessori programs for the littles to programs specifically designed for newcomers to more career and tech kind of focus school schools for older students. I mean it just, it. They could serve any group. And I think, you know, as Victoria was saying, just understanding your own community, what the needs are and what is most ripe. Hopefully systems, and not all systems have the capacity to do this, but larger districts, particularly if they’re losing enrollment, they know why they can track where their students are going. So analyzing that data and understanding, like people are voting with their feet, where are they going and why?

And then asking students as again Victoria said, the student, we need to listen to the student voice and engage them in design. So what is it that is keeping them from coming to school, staying in school, being engaged in school, and what would draw them in and excite them? So a microschool could be anything. It could be, you know, arts focus, sports focused. It could be for students with special reading needs or students who are over age and undercredited. You know, it could be any number of things that a community decides is the greatest need that they have at that moment.

Victoria Andrews

Completely agree, Deb. Some of the ones that I really do appreciate are like da Vinci Rise out of California, that microschool is part of a larger network. But they’re focused on those youth that are unhoused. They have to have a flexible schedule. If I’m a parent, if I’m a young person, and this is my second entry point back into school, I might have a kid or two and I might be working full time so that 8 to 5 or 8 to 4, 8 to 3 schedule is not going to work for me. But it doesn’t diminish their desire to want to graduate. It shouldn’t hinder them from getting a diploma or having access to work based learning opportunities or having an internship or an externship. Just because I have these additional responsibilities and if anything that I’m more dedicated because I have, you know, a higher calling to pursue for, so looking.

Designing Education for Diverse Needs

Victoria Andrews

I would say designing with, if you talk to your community and you figure it out and like Deb said, there’s so many reports and the data is there, but truly developing with a fringe in mind. So if you notice that your unhoused population is not being addressed through McKinney-Vento data, then what are you doing to support them? If you see that you’ve got a large amount of students that are coming back into the system or coming back into your learning environment that are newcomers to the United States, how are you supporting them? If you see that you have got a lot of, you know, mobility happening, like just dig into the information it’s there and then design with that population in mind. Does it have to be a hybrid schedule? Are there days where they need to be on campus? Do they need wraparound supports to make sure that they are successful? Do they need to meet with counselors? Do they need to be on an accelerated path? Do they need more opportunities to engage with work based learning opportunities so that there is a pipeline. So it’s not just I get my high school diploma, but what else is there afterwards? So really creating the microschool with those parameters.

Michael Horn

Hearing both of you talk about this and then Victoria, I love that phrase, focus on the fringe. I think it’s a really important one because these schools we’re talking about are like 25 to at most 150 students. So I think a lot of times the district leaders that I talk to, they have a mindset of like, oh, it’s got to be for everyone. But actually you can find these different segments, right, and you could theoretically run several different microschools, I imagine. So I’m, I’m sort of curious to hear you both reflect on, you know, could you have multiple microschools going? One of my observations is that there’s not a lot of focus on high school in the private microschool market.

But listening to both of you, you’re giving a lot of high school examples, actually. So maybe it’s different here. So I’m curious to hear you both reflect on that.

Deborah Gist

Yeah, I mean, my dream as a system leader was the school district I led was an authorizer for public charter schools. And you know, we developed and opened a public microschool in collaboration with a collaborative of parents. But my, but my dream was that we would get to a point where we could have almost a process like that, where community could come and say, this is our idea and we would offer them some kind of support with experts like the folks at Getting Smart or Transcend to come in and support them to get the specifics of the design in place, but to give folks an opportunity to say, oh, actually I know of a need. I have an idea. Whether it’s a student or a teacher or a parent or a business leader or whatnot. That’s one way of saying let’s have a, let’s have a variety of these. Let’s set a goal as a system to say we’re going to have three next year or we’re going to open one. Let’s, let’s pick the one that has the, that is most right.

There are different ways to do this. And it could be that you say, we have a need and we’re going to replicate this model because we tried it. So we’re going to, instead of try to grow it into a big school because that’s sometimes what we think. We think, well, we have this microschool. So now let’s make it a big school. You could say, well, we’re going to, we had this microschool that worked. Let’s have three more in different parts of the city that makes it more accessible to, to other students.

Victoria Andrews

You brought up a point, Deb, in that it doesn’t necessarily mean like, let’s just make a bunch, like, you know, the franchise model. It could be we’re a traditional comprehensive high school and we’re thinking about rolling out project based learning, but instead of flipping the whole system, let’s do a microschool of project based learning. And those teachers that are going to do it are then going to infiltrate the larger school system.

So if you have like two or.

Three years or even a full four years for that, then the likelihood of success will be higher because you’ve worked out the kinks with a smaller group before you launch it with a larger group. And so that’s another way to like, okay, now we’re going to roll out project based learning across our campus, or what did we learn? What are some of the mistakes we made on a smaller scale? I mean, Deb, you know, trying to redo a whole master schedule in the middle of the year literally incites fear in everybody. So instead of doing that small, you know, small test drive, a smaller experiment would be a great way to kind of scale the practices of a microschool.

Deborah Gist

Sort of the Edgecomb model. And then you have the in Issaquah with Heather Taliaq’s leadership,, that’s what I figured in mind, Victoria. But you know, they have a school within a school that Julia Bamba there leads and you know, they’re starting to explore, okay, how do we, you know what, who else might benefit from this model? But it was that, that high school, that secondary school within a school model as well.

Victoria Andrews

And like, let’s be honest because, and I know Julia, we both do very well. She, like, they started off in high school and they were like, okay, they had some challenges with enrollment and recruitment and they took those learnings. Actually, this would be better suited for middle school and pushing it down. So just because it didn’t work in that environment, they didn’t say, oh, microschools don’t work, throw the whole thing away. They took their learnings and they just moved it down to middle school. And I think that’s a great example. They didn’t consider that a failure. They took their learnings and then just moved forward.

Deborah Gist

And I think that’s such an important reason. It’s one of the many reasons why microschools are so important for public systems. We have to be more nimble. We have to be, have the kind of learning experiences where we’re serving a population, and we should be doing this everywhere. But it’s just harder when you have, you know, a thousand students versus fifty students to be able to shift gears. If something’s working, let’s do more of that. Let’s lean into it. If it’s not working, let’s fix it or stop it or whatever that might be to have that continuous improvement built into the system.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it seems like a huge thing that you guys are pointing to, right? This testing and learning, this iteration culture. I’m shocked often at districts that are like, tomorrow we’re all doing this and you’re like, wow, this is going to break in like a hundred ways. We can’t even imagine. Let’s start small before we try to go big. You also have the advantages of a coalition of the willing, not just of the teachers, but also the students who decided to show up. And that gets into the other piece. So you have the planning, designing and then implementing is the third part of this playbook.

And you bring up a lot of interesting things. Talk about launch, sustaining, strong culture, experience, like a whole bunch of things that people should check out. The one that just for this conversation I want to get into because it relates to what we’ve just been talking about is recruiting and enrolling students. Because those are two words that are not like heard that often in district settings because they don’t have to do it really that much. Right. And so recruiting and enrolling students, Victoria, like what, what are the big things to know there?

Victoria Andrews

Oh goodness. As a former dean who had to recruit students for her class, it’s you, you want to make sure it’s not just, you know, Deb and Michael are excellent students. So I want them in my program. But it’s Victoria the knucklehead. Like, hey,is this a good program for you?

Michael Horn

Like, I’m pretty sure you have it the wrong way, but keep going.

Deborah Gist

Yeah, okay.

Targeted Outreach for Experiential Learning

Victoria Andrews

My parents would probably argue not, but you want to make sure that you’re reaching out to not just the students that are going to just say that it’s just a good program, but also that it’s a good fit for. It might be better, you know, that experiential learning program might be better suited for the Michael’s and Victoria’s of the world because it’s more hands on learning and it’s because, you know, they have a mentor that’s in the community that’s going to check on them. So it’s a true village that’s taking care of them. So it’s, I know that like counselors and because again I have served in that capacity. It’s a lot to say, okay, we want you to ask and you know, recruit, but publicize it in a way that everybody is knowledgeable of it. So it’s not this very cherry picked society that gets access to this microschool because that’s a quick way to create more division in a space that’s already divisive. So, what’s the goal? Who is it for? How are you going to make sure that that group is indeed being served by it. Because even if you do create a certain program, but you don’t get those right students in there, they’re not going to give you the feedback that you need.

Like Deb said, to be agile and be nimble and to make those iterations using the design process. So recruiting is crucial. And like you said, Michael, most public schools are not, we’re not excellent at it because it’s like, hey, if you’re on a bus, you’re coming to my school. But when you think about a very specialized program, coaches recruit, the robotics teacher recruits, whoever has an exceptional extracurricular program, they recruit. And so taking that same kind of approach when it comes to a micro, public microschool would be excellent.

Deborah Gist

Yeah. More and more systems are creating, as we did in Tulsa, a unified enrollment system. And then using that enrollment system to help make those matches, to make sure that that access is there, that families easily can understand what their choices are, how to access those choices, and just having the microscope be a part of that overall system. So that ideally you get to a place where, whether it’s a microschool or a comprehensive school. Because even though not all microschools are right for all students, of course. But a microschool might not be right for all students. I mean, some students are going to thrive much more in a larger, more comprehensive school.

And so just making those matches, making sure the access and the awareness is throughout all families and students.

Michael Horn

So this brings us to the last question I want to ask because you have this bigger vision that microschools can really help scale change. And what’s so interesting about that statement though is by definition, a microschool is purposely designed not to scale, it is designed to stay small. But that they could have impact at scale is sort of the argument. And I can see many pathways through which that could happen, some of which maybe would undermine the innovativeness of the microschool, some of which might help the district innovate. I’m just really curious to learn from you all. How do you see impact at scale from following the strategy? Like, what is the pathway to helping every student, you know, have a better educational experience in front of them by pursuing this innovation through microschools?

Scaling Microschool Practices

Victoria Andrews

I think it’s a combination of what Deb mentioned and what I was talking about previously, like those practices that are done in that microschool can be taken to scale, while the microschool itself will stay small and agile. But the practices, whether it is competency based learning, a four day school week, whether it’s an internship program, whether it is whatever that you’re piloting that can be taken to scale. So that would be a way that it could have a larger impact. I think when we, in education, the way, the only way we tend to think about scale is like more numbers, like more, more, more. It’s like, hold on everybody. We’ve kind of seen that that doesn’t always work. But what are the practices? Maybe it’s the staffing model that you’re trying to get a grasp of.

Maybe it is team teaching in that microschool. Maybe it’s partner teaching. So what, what are those specific practices and having the cycles of improvement noted so that when it is taken to scale that you can say, okay, we knew that this was a challenge, this was an obstacle and we can kind of meet it head on. So that’s, that’s what I envision as a key component for implementing and then taking things broader than just the microschool.

Deborah Gist

Yeah, I think, yeah, for sure. I mean you might scale practices, but you might scale the school through replication or franchise, I think Victoria said, or through growth. You might say this is really working and it could work bigger. But there are some microschools that are so specific to a group of students that they just are going to be awesome where they are. And that doesn’t need to be the goal. I mean, the fact that you have a school that’s serving in a beautiful way, this niche group of students and families with a teacher who it’s also perfect for or more than one teacher, that that alone is success and ought to be something that our systems are willing to embrace. But I’m confident that whether it’s a standalone school or, or scaling practices or scaling the model itself, that this is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that is long overdue and that systems really, really need to consider because the way we are doing things now, we all, I think, recognize is outdated and we need to figure out ways we can better engage students and prepare them for today’s world and the world that’s coming in the future.

Michael Horn

Well, they are voting with their feet. So I hugely appreciate both of you, not just for writing this playbook, but then doing the work to help districts increasingly create these options. So there’s more, I mean, more availability, these options for every single kid to find the right school experience that’s going to work for them. So Victoria, Deborah, really appreciate you both and we for all you tuning in we’ll be back next time for more conversations like this on the Future of Education.

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Ethan Pollack from Jobs for the Future and Kevin Mumford, an economics professor at Purdue University, joined me to dive into Purdue’s innovative “Back a Boiler” Income Share Agreement (ISA) program. They defined what ISAs are, talked about how Purdue’s model aimed to make higher education more affordable and accessible, and discussed the findings from new research analyzing the program’s outcomes. Our conversation covered the program’s origins, regulatory challenges, its eventual pause, and what the data reveal about student outcomes, particularly regarding fairness, completion rates, and financial impacts for students from different backgrounds.

One of my takeaways? Based on the outcomes, it’s a shame that the initial momentum behind ISAs in the mid-2010s has stalled. But maybe there’s some hope now on the horizon with better guardrails in place for a resurgence behind ISAs.

Research Referenced:

• Distribution of Returns to a College Income Share Agreement: Evidence from Administrative Data

• Promising New Insights from Purdue University’s ISA Program

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. And you’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And part of that equation is thinking about how we pay for and afford what’s become a more and more costly higher education over time. So to help us learn about and think through some new research about what was a very interesting program to make higher education not just more affordable and accessible, but also focused on real value, in my view, our two individuals that we get to welcome today. First we have Ethan Pollack. He’s the senior director in the policy and advocacy practice at Jobs for the Future, or JFF as it’s commonly known, where he leads the Financing the Future initiative, which explores these new approaches to financing post secondary education. So, Ethan, great to see you.

Ethan Pollack

Great to be here.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. And Kevin, we have Kevin Mumford, who’s an economics professor at Purdue University, also the director of the Research Center in Economics at Purdue. Kevin, great to see you and thanks for being here.

Kevin Mumford

Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So we’re going to get into a bunch of things in a moment, but I wanted to sort of level set us start with the basics because we’re going to talk a lot about income share agreements today, ISAs, as they’re known, and we’re going to talk specifically about a program that was in effect at Purdue, the Back a Boiler ISA program, and a working paper that you published, Kevin, recently. But before we get into all that, I just want to make sure our audience is level set. We’re all on the same page. We know what we’re talking about. I know how I describe an ISA, and I see it as a pretty compelling alternative to a loan, at least on paper for a given individual. But Ethan, you’ve thought about this much more than I have. You probably have a much more concise answer.

So in brief, tell us, what is an ISA?

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Income-Based Student Loan Alternative

Ethan Pollack

Sure. So an ISA is, I think, best defined in contrast to, to what is more the standard, in particular, the standard in the private loan space, where in that latter space you really have fixed payment loans. Right. You have, you know, much more kind of like a mortgage. You’re paying a fixed dollar amount over a period of time. You have to pay back at the end of the, the, the loan you need to pay back the principal and then the interest. And ISA is different in a number of respects, but the main respect is that it is income based. You are paying on the basis of how much you earn.

So students are only making monthly payments if they earn at least a certain income threshold. They’re also making payments that are a percentage of their earnings. So if they earn above that threshold, they may pay a certain percentage. It can be anywhere from a couple percentage points. Some of the short term boot camps were charging pretty high income shares up to 17 percentage points. Purdue’s are much lower. And then the last feature of an income share agreement that’s unique is that it expires after a period of time. So it’s really de emphasizing this idea that you’ve borrowed a certain amount of money and you need to repay it with principal and interest and actually operates almost a little more like an equity investment where you’re paying on the basis of how well you do. And the person that, you know there, the, the entity that gave you that kind of, you know, financing that ISA is going to be, you know, receive a lot more revenue if you do well after graduation, and they’re going to then receive a lot less and they may receive nothing at all if you never earn above that earnings threshold.

Michael Horn

So a couple key things that stand out about that, right? It changes it from paying based on the cost or the expense to paying on the value, if you will, of it. And then there’s some more risk, obviously on the part of the institution as a part of that, it seems. Kevin, then, you know, ISA programs, they look different in different places. Ethan just alluded to that. They have different incentives and so forth. Tell us a little bit about the origins of Purdue’s spin on this through the backup boiler program and its specific mechanics as well.

Purdue’s Income Share Agreement Origins

Kevin Mumford

Sure. It, you know, it came about because of the president we had at Purdue at the time, Mitch Daniels. He had been asked in the spring of 2015 to testify before a House subcommittee. And in that testimony he had kind of a throwaway line about, you know, wouldn’t it be great if the university was doing something with income share agreements? And he got so much sort of press inquiry after that that he started thinking to himself a few weeks later, maybe, maybe we should really do this. There’s so much interest in it. So there was this funny episode where he calls in the head of the foundation and the chief legal officer for the chief lawyer for the university and says, let’s start an income share agreement. And they both were like, yeah, let’s do that. And they left the office, then turned to each other and said, what is an income share agreement? And they Googled it on their phone and the university just kind of, you know, he started the apparatus.

Twelve months later they started accepting applications and they launched the thing. You know, the idea was they’re going to allow it to be available to all majors. And in some majors people earn a lot more and in some majors they earn a lot less.

So they tried to price it according to what they thought the earnings would be in that major. They put all the majors into seven different bins and said if you’re in this kind of high earning bin, then we’re going to charge a lower income share rate. And if you’re in a lower income bin, we’re going to charge a higher rate. And the idea is to try to make it so that it would compete well with a Parent PLUS loan. They weren’t going to try to compete with the subsidized federal loan or the unsubsidized federal, the direct federal loans, but they were going to try to compete with the Parent PLUS because it has a higher interest rate. And the difference here would be, is that a Parent PLUS loan, the parents are the borrowers. Here it’s the student who is taking on this repayment obligation. And you know, there are some protections, like Ethan said, there’s a lower threshold, there’s an upper bound.

Nobody could pay more than originally it was 2.5 times the funding amount. Then it went to 2.3 times the funding amount. So that’s kind of the basic idea though, price it so that people would be paying back about what they would under a Parent PLUS.

Michael Horn

I didn’t realize. I actually did not know that. Yeah, that’s hysterical. I did not know that piece of it even. And then put it in context of like, you know, when this launched. Right. Why was it such a big deal at the time? How did it fit in? Right. With the larger movement? ISAs were gaining a lot of currency as an idea that might be this alternative to loans.

Give us a sense of why this was such an important program.

Ethan Pollack

Yeah, it was a really interesting time. So I was at the Aspen Institute at the time and I remember hearing about income share agreements and both thinking like, wow, these are like, this could be really exciting. This could totally kind of rewire how we do higher ed finance and workforce as well outside of the Title IV system. And also is like, this could also be kind of dangerous too.

Right.

We don’t have guardrails that are uniquely designed for income share agreements too. And there’s A lot of uncertainty as to which laws actually applied to ISAs. And so I was kind of in this middle camp of being really excited about the potential but also then having a bit of concern. But there was at this time, you know, when it was launched in 2016, there was this real interest in ISAs, you know, not just in higher education, but in particular, you know, this was also the rise of, kind of the time of the, of coding boot camps. And you know, with coding boot camps there, there, you know, a lot of the tech companies were feeling, look, you don’t need a college degree, we can, we can just teach you to code. And we know that you don’t believe us. So instead we’re going to take on the risk and attend my coding bootcamp. And if you don’t make above a certain, you know, amount, then you just don’t pay anything back.

Excitement and Backlash

Ethan Pollack

So I think that there was, that was happening in tandem then with the Purdue program. And but overall there was this really, especially when Purdue launched, there was this kind of real kind of boom lit and media excitement around income share agreements. But then there was also this backlash, right. And the backlash had a couple different facets which happy to get into, but I’ll gloss over it right now is just to say that, you know, there was some concerns around consumer protection and there’s some concerns around that this, you know, like any type of financing product could be used in predatory ways. I think that there, that most of the, you know, the actors in the space at that time like were trying to do the right thing. And I worked with, with many of those and in thinking about kind of where good best practices. But there were some bad actors too, right? I mean, you know, whenever you’re kind of, you know, introducing kind of a new product, there’s going to be either bad actors or people who just like, you know, are not fully understanding how this tool can be used. And so it, you know, I think that there was a real push towards using income condition financing, but it was done very quickly.

And, and I think that, and then as you know, what I lament is that the energy was really towards income share agreements for a while and then a few years later kind of was like, oh, I guess that didn’t work. And so it was, it was, it kind of like flamed out very quickly. And you know, this was kind of the origin of, of, you know, my partnership with Kevin was this feeling of like, you know, I don’t think we ever fully like studied this to see whether it actually worked or not. And everyone else just kind of moved on to the next shiny thing. And here we were saying, like, oh, we got a lot of data. We should actually, like, look at whether.

Michael Horn

Well, so I want to get to that in a moment. And you mentioned the controversy. We’ll come back to that in a moment as well, but sort of tangentially related. I think a lot of people think that the program ended because of a lot of the concerns around ISAs and so forth. Kevin and then Ethan, both of you chime in on this one, like, why did Back a Boiler—why did the program pause? What led to that? Kevin, why don’t you jump in first?

Kevin Mumford

Well, I mean, the most basic reason is that the university set this up very quickly by going with the service provider. So the service provider had been the one originating all the contracts. And in 2022, the service provider shut down and, and sold the existing contracts to another provider, but one that wasn’t, wasn’t able to or, you know, doesn’t have a business of issuing new contracts. So the university was in a situation where they said, well, we’re not sure how to issue new contracts, but we’ll continue to service the contracts we have. And I, I think that happening, like, right at the same time as when the president of the university was stepping down. The new president wasn’t opposed to this, but this was also not a champion of an income share agreement. And so the university would have had to, you know, find some other provider or, or set up the, the ability to do it on their own. And, they just haven’t put in the effort to do that.

I mean, I think part of it also was kind of because of the pandemic, and it’s because the university received a large amount of federal funding and to provide directly to students and the students that we’ve been advertising, or I guess you can’t advertise, but been offering this, this income share agreement to. They were the students who had already maxed out their federal borrowing, and that’s exactly who they decided to subsidize with the federal funds from the pandemic relief. And so there wasn’t a lot of demand for it right at that moment as well. And it kind of just contributed to saying, maybe let’s not issue new contracts, although if they were to revisit the decision today, that might be different. I also think a factor is the regulatory environment. There’s still just been an uncertain regulatory environment, which makes entering difficult.

Michael Horn

Ethan, what would you add in there? Yeah, I was gonna say, Ethan, what would you add to that last point? Because you’re much, you’re very deep into this regulatory questions around the status and the legality of ISAs and how they’re governed.

Ethan Pollack

Yeah. So ironically, the same year that Purdue paused was also the year that CFPB signed a consent order with Better Future Forward, which is a nonprofit ISA provider, mainly works with college access programs. And the consent order is they fined Better Future Forward $0 and thanked them for working with them. It took them BFF and CFPB a full year to figure out what is the disclosure for the Truth In Lending Act. It’s just focused on TILA. And so actually right around the time that Purdue paused was the same time that BFF published this, you know, this, this disclosure template that they said like anyone can use this but, but the, you know, the bureau has actually signed off on this as like a way to, to, to comply with TILA. So there actually that was a moment when there was starting to become more clarity. Since then, also California, Colorado had issued, have done rulemaking for the, on their own state basis to improve the regulatory clarity.

And then Illinois, actually just a few weeks ago, Governor Pritzker, signed legislation to kind of improve the regulatory clarity. But the main issue here is that, and what Purdue was really facing was that, you know, the rules governing these credit products were largely designed with fixed payment structures in mind. So you think of something like the Truth In Lending Act, you need to disclose the, you know, the APR, the annual percentage rate, you know, when you are, you know, presenting the loan or the credit product to the student with an income share agreement or even with something like an outcomes based loan. Because these can be structured still within a loan framework. You know, the federal IDR program is a really good example of kind of an outcomes based loan. Right. It’s a loan, but at the same time you’re going to be paying on the basis of your earnings. But if you have a product like that, what is the APR? Well, it depends on how much you earn after graduation.

So it’s really hard to know that when you’re first presenting this to a student, to a borrower. So that’s just one of the many ways in which the existing regulatory framework was really kind of poorly suited and created a lot of uncertainty. I think that in this uncertainty there was then also some criticism. So a lot of ISA providers were basically recognizing that it’s like, look, we’re not sure how to like disclose APR. We’re getting no guidance. We also feel like there’s a legal, you know, there’s. There’s some legal basis for us saying that, like, we’re just not subject to the Truth In Lending Act because we’re not credit. We’re more like equity.

You know, we don’t have principal, we don’t have interest. We’re just structured in a very different way that I think a lot of the consumer protection advocates got really freaked out by that because they, the precedent that there was a, what they saw as a credit product that was financing education that, you know, somehow you could kind of avoid complying with the, you know, all of the existing kind of consumer protection laws. Not all of them, but many of them specifically designed for, you know, student loans. They thought that as just like I saw that as a real threat, and I understand why they felt that way, but it really was just this regulatory uncertainty that was the underlying problem. They also had some concerns around things like what you might call kind of differential pricing or the underwriting. And so basically, if you are charging lower income shares in the contract to either fields of study, their majors, or graduate programs that have higher earnings, you could create some disparate impact.

There was a concern around that too. Again, this was all just theoretical. And, and then, you know, there was also, you know, then once Purdue had started, there were some examples of students that ended up paying more than they otherwise would have under Parent PLUS. Now we can guess why that was the case because they were earning a lot more than the average student. But nonetheless, there was a lot of stories and kind of newspaper and coverage around these specific students who really felt like. I felt like I overpaid. And so I think with that, that was also kind of part of, you know, as.

As Purdue was pausing, I think that that was the broader kind of, I would say, media context in which, in which kind of that decision was made. I can’t speak to, you know, exactly to what extent that was taken into account, but it certainly was something that was prevalent and, and certainly didn’t help the case for trying to really kind of continue this program.

Michael Horn

Well, so I want to dig into the research in just a moment, but quickly, Ethan, just on that because. Well, Kevin, essentially what you’re describing again is consistent with what you said up front, which is it’s really a last dollar program, if you will, of financial aid. Right. It’s not the first dollar competing against federal subsidized loans. And so that had something to do with the crowding out, if you will, from the federal funds that came in at the time. The second thing, though, Ethan, you talked about the regulatory uncertainty at the time. You talked about how it’s starting to resolve a little bit. Give us the, to the extent you’re able, give us sort of the quick snapshot of where do these vehicles, if they were to sort of make a comeback in the limelight, where would they live at the moment? Because this sort of lending classification has always felt kind of weird around this.

ISAs: Unique Loan Classification

Ethan Pollack

Yeah, yeah. So there’s a movement towards, I, I would say momentum towards resolving the question of are ISAs loans? To resolving it in the direction of they are loans, but they’re a unique type of loan. And so, and that, that kind of like solves everyone’s problem where, you know, there’s no claim that this is, you know, something that’s separate, but at the same time that you. So like the, a good example is the, you know, the Bureau’s consent agreement with Better Future Forward where, or the compliance plan where they said you’re a loan. But also they developed a very unique compliance plan for Better Future Forward, taking into account that it didn’t have any interest. And in fact there are certain boxes in the, in the temp, the TILA template that says the interest can range from,you know, in those two boxes from X to Y. And, and the Bureau ordered BFF to just put in NA into both of those boxes.

Michael Horn

Oh, interesting.

Ethan Pollack

Which, you know, if you’re a normal lender, you can’t do. But they, but it was a recognition that it’s like you’re not a normal lender. This is a unique type of product. California and Colorado when they did their rulemaking also reflected these are loans, but these are unique type of loans that deserve some, a specific type of treatment. And then the Illinois legislation that just very recently passed also treats these as loans, but unique types of loans. So I think that’s kind of the regulatory direction that we’re going on.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I can’t decide if NA is better than zero to zero.

Kevin Mumford

It’s using students, right?

Michael Horn

Exactly. So, okay, so now you have this research paper, Kevin, that comes out. We’ll link to it in the show notes. The working paper title is “Distribution of Returns to a College Income Share Agreement: Evidence from Administrative Data.” So this is actual evidence of the outcomes. First give us the origin story. How did the paper come about and what’s JFF’s connection to it? Kevin, why don’t you lead us off? And then, Ethan, supplement anything that should be supplemented?

Kevin Mumford

Sure. Well, I was actually away on a sabbatical when this program launched. I was focused on other research. When I’d gotten back, I read about it and thought, this seems interesting. So I contacted the group at the university working on it and just said, who’s doing your internal evaluation? I’m really interested to see. And they said, man, we set this up so quickly, we didn’t even think about that.

Nobody’s studying it at all. And so I said, well, could I see the data? And they said, sure. And they just sent it over to me. And so I thought, hey, this is great. And in 2022, I had a paper that was about selection into the program. What kind of a student is selecting in versus not. And it’s, again, it’s aimed at a small number of students.

There’s not very many that qualify because very few produce. Students actually hit the federal borrowing limits for those subsidized and unsubsidized direct federal loans. So there’s not very many students who even could consider. But I got data for all the students who were shown the terms that they saw this is what the income share rate would be for me, and then saw which ones decided to take it up on and which ones didn’t, and then looked at why some are doing it and some are not. That paper, I don’t know it, you know, 2022 is right at the time when nobody’s interested in income share agreements anymore. And so it’s. It’s still under review, but it hasn’t been one of these things that everybody seemed super interested in.

Renewed Interest in ISA Data

Kevin Mumford

And so Ethan contacted me recently and said, I think maybe there’s a moment, you know, maybe. Maybe people are interested in ISAs again. And don’t you still have all that data? And, yeah, I mean, there’s still a lot of data, particularly in that first paper there was nothing on who was paying back, what kinds of payments were we receiving? And he just said, I really think people would be interested to see how did this program do financially? I mean, did the university make a ton of money off of these students, or did they lose a lot of money on these students? And, you know, were there students paying back way more or way less than what you would anticipate from a, you know, private loan or a federal loan? And just. He just thought that people would be interested now. And so I’m always interested in doing research that people are interested in reading.

And he kind of convinced me it was worth putting in some effort for a bit on this project as opposed to all the other projects I could have been working on.

Michael Horn

Ethan, what would you add? Or, and, and perhaps also with an eye toward why the research is relevant now in your view?

Ethan Pollack

Yeah, yeah. Well, I’ll start off with that. That, you know, it’s, I mean there’s so many things happening that I think make this research relevant. Not just this research, but the Purdue ISA program. You know, if we had, if it hadn’t launched 10 years ago, I think people would be thinking now, man, we should, we should try to do something like this. Yeah. So the reason is I think a few fold. So, one, your institutions are facing demographic cliffs, right? So you have the, the number of traditional aid college students can be declining about 10% over the next two decades.

They’re going to have a huge drop off in international students too. You know, that can really put institutions in a tough spot. I know you’ve covered a lot of this in your podcast with Jeff, so listeners of both won’t be surprised by any of this. And then of course from the Big Beautiful Bill, a lot of the borrowing limits are going to have really big impact. So I published an analysis last week on GFS website. It found 1 in 10 students are going to be impacted by the caps and they’re going to be forced to either forgo education entirely or go to the private lending market. We know the private lending market has some really, you can get some cheap credit but oftentimes for many students it’s going to be more expensive. More importantly, it’s going to, you know, 95% of private loans require co-signers.

They all do credit checks, require certain credit score. And then in addition to that, it doesn’t have any type of the low wage borrower flexibility that, that the federal IDR program has or that ISA programs have, which is that, you know, if you become unemployed or you just, you, you end up having a lot lower income that you thought that you’re going to, you know, that you’ll pay less and you might pay nothing. Right. But with private loans, with some very rare exceptions, nearly all private loans you gotta pay regardless of what’s going on with you. Right. And they may do the per, you know, some, some deferments that you know, on a case by case basis, but that’s not really kind of like baked into the contract. Right. So it’s not a really firm protection.

And so, you know, we’re at this moment where it’s like, wow, we’re going to have so many students that are going into the private lending market. What types of products are they going to get? Don’t we want them to have types of products that are like kind of like ISAs that are kind of like actually the federal IDR program that have these types of low wage protections and in particular are also more accessible too because we know there’s going to be a lot of students that may just not qualify for private loans because they don’t have a cosigner, because they have bad credit. And ISAs are in particular forward looking as opposed to backwards looking. Right. They care less about the, you know, where you’ve been and more about where you’re going. What’s the program you’re enrolled in, what are the outcomes? And so the Purdue program, for example, it didn’t require a co-signer that was like really important to the model. Right. So for students that were not, that could not access Parent PLUS, then they could access something like this.

Right. So you know, I, I thought like this is such an important moment and like we also, instead of setting up a pilot and then studying it and it taking 10 years, like we just kind of, like we just kind of took a time machine, created the program that’s most relevant to today and then now we’ve got all the data, which is kind of a researcher’s dream. And so, you know, I you know, Kevin and I had talked before, but I kind of was like, we’ve got to get some data out here. Like this is, you know, this. Yeah, I think that people would be really interested in this. And it feels like the Purdue ISA program is now more relevant than ever, you know, both for policymakers, for institutions, for philanthropy, and then for researchers such as myself. And in particular it had gotten, you know, for the criticism. I was really interested to test the criticism because a lot of the criticism and a lot of the claims too, it was all based on speculation, right.

We didn’t actually have the research and I don’t like kind of making claims without a lot of your rigorous research. And so now we had enough data and I wanted to see like, was there any disparate impact? Maybe there was, like this would be really good to know, like how affordable was it compared to Parent PLUS? And so these were the types of things that Kevin and I were then able to, you know, figure out. So I think that Kevin was very much, you know, the primary researcher, and I was the one that was kind of enmeshed in the broader discourse, unknowing, kind of like this is what people would be interested in. You know, this is how it could, you know, your research kind of connect back to, kind of like, you know, to. Yeah. To actually be relevant.

Michael Horn

And so, Kevin, I want to start to get into what you found. Then in the report itself, it occurs to me it’s like an interesting sample of time because you both have some really hard economic times with a lot of job switching in those sample years. You have some boom times in there. So it’s like, it’s a very interesting set of years that I suspect you’re following these students. But talk a little bit about what you were looking for, the methodology, and then the findings itself.

Comparing Student Loan Repayment Options

Kevin Mumford

Well, the basic methodology is to look at the stream of payments coming in from those students that are participating in this program to see how much are they paying back. And then you need something to compare it to. So, you know, what I do is I take a traditional student loan and I peg the interest rate to be the same as the Parent PLUS loan. And say, what would a student have paid back had they been paying back a traditional student loan at that interest rate? And just do the comparison to see are they paying back a lot more, a lot less than they would have otherwise? And I think the time period you bring up is relevant because. Because there’s job switching, job loss, there’s uncertainty. The thing about the income share agreement is that when your income goes down, your payments go down, and when your income goes up, your payments go up. I mean, it’s adjusting to the economic conditions automatically and adjusting to your specific characteristics. Because if you lose your job and you’re unemployed for a period of time because of the pandemic or because of any reason, then the payments stop until you start working again.

And that’s just sort of built in, already. So some of the results might be colored by that. I mean, if this was sort of the best booming economic times ever, payments probably would have been higher than what we’ve actually observed. But what we observed is what happened. And there is, you know, there’s some movement up and down in people’s careers. The data comes in and, and I, I actually do it two ways because there’s a lot of ways to pause payments in this income share agreement. Again, if you’re unemployed, you’re not making payments. And, there are protections in student loans.

They’re maybe not as generous as an income share agreement, but. So one way I do it is I assume on the student loan that you just make every single payment as scheduled all the way through. And the other assumption is that anytime you pause your income share agreement, you would have also paused your student loan. And the truth is probably somewhere in between. And I compare the amount each student is paid and then the amount the university has received. And the amount the university has received is right around that same amount that they would have gotten if it was a Parent PLUS it’s a little bit less than that, which suggests that maybe they’re getting a sort of a less than a 6% internal return. On the other hand, income share agreement payments grow over time because they increase as the student’s income increases, and it naturally goes up over time.

So probably the university’s best payment years are still to come, and they’re not these initial beginning years. So it may be that the internal rate of return is a little bit higher by the time it’s all done, but it doesn’t look like the university made a lot of money. If anything, they probably would have done better just investing in the market. On the other hand, for individual students, the average student paid less in the income share agreement than they would have if they had gotten the traditional student loan at the Parent PLUS rate. But there are a handful of students at the top that paid back much more. So some students hit the cap. That’s they, they pay back 2.3 or 2.5 times the bar the amount that was originally funded. So some students are paying back a lot more, and that’s because those students have very good jobs and are earning really high incomes.

There’s a lot of students that are paying back a lot less, much, much less than they would have. And that must be because they, you know, decided to stay at home for a while. They’ve decided to do, you know, they’re stopping out of the workforce for whatever reason, and then you just don’t make payments while that’s happening. The average student, you know, is paying a little bit less than they would have under the Parent PLUS they’re doing a little bit better. And that reflects sort of the slightly lower rate of return that the university is getting on a whole.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Ethan, before you jump in with some of your takes, one other question that I’m just curious about, Kevin, what was the impact on Black and Hispanic students and underrepresented students, because that was a big question that a lot of the consumer protection advocates were raising. And maybe you pull in some of your 2022 research on this too. Because if, if I’m recalling correctly, one of the speculations also was that some of these students, you know what Ethan just said, that it’s forward looking, not backward looking. True in theory, but maybe you would select out certain students that come from lesser advantage or less academically prepared or whatever it might be. And so perhaps they wouldn’t actually get to benefit from the protections that an ISA brings to the table. What have you found on all that?

Kevin Mumford

Well, I think we’re right to be concerned because it turns out this program has disproportionate numbers of Black and Hispanic students in it. And that’s, that’s probably because those are the students who are maxing out their federal borrowing. And, and, and so it is serving more minority students than the traditional student loan program is serving at Purdue. That said, in terms of the ISA repayment, those students tend to be getting a better deal, not a worse deal. That is just as we look at the stream of payments coming in, they seem to be paying back even, even more or less. Right? Like even less than they would have under the Parent PLUS program in comparison to the, the white student that is a participant. And so I think that, I think that we should be concerned about it because these programs are serving more minority students, but at the same time it seems to be give, offering them a better option, a better deal on average than, than it is for the, the equivalent white student. And that’s really not because there’s anything special that’s, that’s, you know, race or ethnicity focused about the program.

It just has to do with what the earnings look like afterwards. And because the earnings for the black and Hispanic students are a little bit lower than those of the traditional white student in the same program. That’s why they’re, they’re paying back less in this.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Okay, Ethan, I’m curious your takes.

Disparate Impact in Income Agreements

Ethan Pollack

Yeah, yeah, I was just going to add to that. I mean this was always a concern, as Kevin said, I think really well, the concern around disparate impact was very valid. Whether it’s an income share agreement or even if it was just a loan that like any type of financing product, you know, this is why we have the Equal Credit Opportunity act, right. You know, is to make sure we know the history of your redlining and reverse redlining and that, you know, with an income share agreement it creates new potential opportunities to, you know, be violating, you know, fair lending laws and to be exacerbating, you know, you know, racial gaps. It is also the case that income share agreements can do the opposite and can actually, if designed well, can be more affordable. And so it was always this, this thing that, you know, when the Purdue program was being criticized for this, I felt like a lot of the critics had, you were voicing valid concerns, but they were drastically overstating their confidence in it where they were saying that the Purdue program is discriminating or the, the Purdue program or the ISAs.

I remember hearing from some consumer advocates that ISAs are inherently discriminatory. And again, it was all theory based. Right. And so, you know, this, you know, I, I kind of responded to that in 2022, published some research that we got the proprietary data from Leaf, which is a no longer, but was a servicer mainly of tech boot camps. And we did a disparate impact analysis that used the same methodology that CFDB uses when they’re figuring out disparate impact. And we found that there’s no evidence that there was any type of disparate impact here on racial or gender lines, but even still, like, it, it’s the, the frustration is kind of like, yeah, you should be concerned, but like, we don’t know until we actually crunch the numbers. And a lot of the critics just weren’t doing, you know, they didn’t.

And partly they just didn’t have the internal data right, but it should have been voiced as a concern rather than a conclusion. And so this is why kind of on the one hand, whenever we have concerns, we should voice that we should recognize the information we don’t have. Right. And recognize that, you know, we can have a concern without saying that this is bad. We need to wait for the research to come in, but then also we need to make sure that research is actually funded and, you know, it is prioritized and then do the research and then you kind of update your priors. And so, like, it’s really exciting that now we have enough data to be able to say, at least for now, it doesn’t seem like there was any type of, you know, of disparate impact at all, in fact, certainly for Hispanic students, Hispanic students, you know, we’re far more likely than white students to be in the having paid less than having paid more than Parent.

Plus, you know, this comes on the heels also of Kevin’s 2022 research which found that, you know, it looked at the impact of, of the ISA program on completion rates and found that overall completion rates were boosted by about 3 percentage points. But that was. Yeah, it was yeah, 6 percentage points for black students and 17 percentage points for Hispanic students. I think that the black student one may not have been statistically significant. Kevin, you might remember that better, but the Hispanic one was definitely, 17 percentage points is huge. So, you know, like this is a program that also is, you know, clearly benefiting students, you know, in terms of the completion is also more affordable and in particular more affordable for Eurasial minorities and then also is more acceptable accessible too. And we know in particular for black and Hispanic students, they’re going to be less likely to have either a good credit score or have available frontiers either.

Kevin Mumford

I just want to jump in because when you say that 17 percentage points, it makes it sound like it’s unbelievably large. But you got to remember that these students are the most at risk at dropping out. So these are students who, this isn’t about access to the university. This is, you know, they’re a junior or a senior who has now run out of borrowing ability. They can no longer get federal loans. They’ve come to the financial aid office saying, I’m not sure what to do here. And you think, you know, a student might come in and say, I’m thinking of a Parent PLUS, I’m thinking of this ISA. I’m trying to make the decision.

But what about the student that says, I don’t have a parent co-signer, I don’t have a parent that’ll do the Parent PLUS, you know, the private market, the private student lending market, they want parent co-signers as well. I don’t have anyone backing me. So it’s either drop out and go get a job for a semester and then try to come back, or it’s do this ISA. And it turns out the ISA is really, really effective at helping students stay in school. And so even though the university is not making money, I mean, I guess you could say they’re kind of losing money on this program because they’re not making what they would make by just putting the money on your market.

Michael Horn

Sure.

Kevin Mumford

I mean, but they’re getting a huge return in terms of students completing, students graduating. And that’s where the pressure is. I think if this is as a really cheap way to help marginal students complete, you know, universities should be thinking of this not as an innovative finance thing or getting or we’re going to make a lot of money off this. The Purdue experience suggests universities are not going to make a lot of money off ISAs. But if the university gets into it, the advantage is you’re helping a marginal student stay in school as opposed to dropping out to try to get some funding to pay their tuition.

Ethan Pollack

And even with the federal loans, you know with this kind of these new borrowing caps that are now in place, that’s going to be even a bigger problem for institutions.

Michael Horn

Well, I was going to say it probably becomes more important, right. To have these alternative vehicles out there in certain cases. Otherwise completion rates could plummet at the sort of the last mile, if you will, as you’re rounding the corner. As we start to wrap up here, I want to think about or hear your big lessons and takeaways and sort of where we go from here with this research out there. One of them that occurs to me is the importance of the design of these programs and maybe even, like, who is backing the finance. Right. Like the fact, Kevin, that you kept saying these are Purdue’s dollars, it seems like that are part of the program as opposed to an investor perhaps could be an important component as well. But I’d love your, like, wave the magic wand. What would you see done based on this research? What are the big highlights, takeaways, lessons that we should be thinking about?

University Funding via Philanthropic Investors

Kevin Mumford

I just want to say something. I’ll let Ethan take the big picture, but one thing is the university dispersed $20.8 million to these undergraduate ISA participants. And some of that money did come from some investors, but the investors tend to be sort of philanthropically motivated. These were foundations that were trying to see this thing started. They were also not expecting a big return on their money. That, you know, in terms of investors getting involved, I have a hard time seeing that there’s a huge play for this Purdue type of program because the return on investment at this price point was just not very large. What I see is universities putting their own resources into it seems to make a ton of sense because they could be putting it into sort of, you know, scholarship programs or expensive programs to try to keep kids in school. And instead you could, you could just provide this type of funding and they’re going to get their money back.

That’s the idea. I mean, I would love to see more universities try this.

Michael Horn

Well, it seems like a great way to, like an evergreen, if you will, fund that replenishes, even if it isn’t, to your point, as much as you could be earning, if you at least, you know, make back inflation or something like that, that might be worth it. Right. At the end of the day,

Kevin Mumford

yeah, that’s exactly right but, you know, in terms of big vision, maybe Ethan’s got more of a big vision.

Michael Horn

Well, so Ethan, what last word as we wrap up here? Big lessons, takeaways, magic wand you would like to wave and see done with this. Other questions we should be asking.

Impact Investment in Education Programs

Ethan Pollack

Yeah, so, I mean, first, to add to what Kevin said, I do think that, you know, not only institutions, you know, could put their own money behind it, but I do think that this can be a real good philanthropic play as well. So for, you know, for philanthropies in particular, impact investors who may be able to take less than market rate returns, I think the ROI , if you’re talking about a, you know, kind of a social impact ROI, which they’re going to be much more attenuated to, like, that can be really huge because, you know, this is something that can be an evergreen fund. And so they’re able to kind of get their money back, but at the same time they’re able to drive real impacts for students. And that’s something that I think that, you know, in particular, impact investors are always looking for those types of opportunities. And this seems like this is a perfect one for that. You know, more broadly, I think, you know, one of my lessons is that, and, and I don’t mean this as a criticism of, of Purdue at all, but I really love Kevin’s, you know, you know, Kevin talking about how he started getting involved in this is that the, you know, the, the research wasn’t baked in from the beginning. And I think that that’s something that’s not super, super unique. I think that I’ve seen so many either ISA or outcomes based loan programs that are all trying to do this type of kind of pay it forward model.

Oftentimes the research is not at the forefront, or maybe they start the program and then they’re like, okay, maybe now we’ll find a researcher. And I know as Kevin has talked about, if he had been tapped in from day one, he could have designed some more natural experiments to really get some really cool quasi experimental design. And he does do some quasi experimental design, but it was a little more happenstance. And to be able to kind of bake that into the beginning and do some randomization can lead to some really interesting results. And you know, if, if, you know, I think that oftentimes there’s a lot of people have really cool ideas that are really trying to, to build something new and they get really excited about starting to build. But I think what they forget is that if they’re really trying to drive impact, they need to recognize that the way you drive impact is by doing the thing and then having some really rigorous research that shows that it worked or that shows the ways in which it didn’t work so that the next person who wants to build something is able to learn from what you did. And otherwise, what we have is all of these, you know, people that are inspired doing kind of cool stuff, but it all kind of just like dissipates because they do it and then they know that they did it, but it wasn’t able to really scale up. And so it.

It’s really just like a plea for more research from, you know, on the front end. And then for us, you know, Kevin and I would also like to do more research on the Purdue program. There’s so many more research questions that we want to get into too, as well. So, you know, also there’s any philanthropic funders who are out there that want the third piece of artwork. We are available and happy to talk about all of the additional questions. We have this huge data set, you know, we already, they already did the work, and all we need to do is you just. We just want, you know, you know, we can spend some more time to really answer some really interesting questions there.

Michael Horn

Terrific. I love that you guys have invested in that side. It feels like it’s a lesson, and I’m going to call it a lesson in evergreen iteration, because sometimes out of research, we want the headline, did it work or did it not work? As opposed to, okay, what are the lessons learned? How do we keep improving right from there so that the impact over time is actually there? It’s not always convenient, I suppose, for the headlines, but it’s perhaps better for students. So, Kevin, Ethan, huge thanks for coming on here, talking about it. Huge thanks for doing the research, writing it up. You can also check out, Ethan, you had a blog, I believe, on the topic, headlined “Promising New Insights from Purdue University’s ISA Program.” So check that out as well. We’ll also link to it and for all you tuning in, we’ll be back next time on the Future of Education.

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In this episode, Danny Curtis interviewed Jonah Schenker, superintendent of Ulster BOCES in New York, to explore the launch of a groundbreaking new center for career and technical education at iPark87. The conversation dove into the innovative programming and community partnerships at the new center, the challenges of moving beyond traditional, industrial models of schooling, and the vital role of collaboration between educators, industry, and local organizations. Schenker also shed light on broader statewide reforms in New York around redefining student competencies, the importance of starting transformation with empathy and stakeholder input, and how these changes create new opportunities to equip students as designers of a better future.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you’re joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And today to help us think through that, we welcome Dr. Jonah Schenker, superintendent of Ulster BOCES, which is a regional education services district in New York. And I’m really excited to have Jonah on today because he’s going to tell us about the innovative work that he is doing with his partner districts in New York, including the opening of a very new and very big center for career and technical education that’s playing an important role in a larger shift happening in New York towards rethinking student competencies. And so Jonah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Awesome. I’m super glad to be here and actually recording from the new site as we were just chatting about. So I’m happy to be in space with you.

Danny Curtis

So cool. And we especially appreciate you carving out the time right now at time of recording. We are just leading into a new school year. So I’m sure this is a busy time for you.

Dr. Jonah Schenker

It’s always a busy time for schools as we think about opening but, but especially busy when you know, a new 140,000 square foot facility is, you know, just on, on the agenda as something to get opened as well.

Danny Curtis

So yeah, the big agenda item right there. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, I want to dig into that center in a second, but just to start, I’d love to hear about your journey to this work. What brought you to Ulster BOCES?

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Yeah, so you know, kind of the one minute overview, you know, I started my journey in school and I describe it as I was good at school, I knew how to do school. I don’t really recall, you know, what I was really getting at or, or absorbing. I recognize amazing teachers throughout that, but the learning style, the approach that that was always didn’t, didn’t feel right. And so I found myself gravitating towards shop class. I found myself gravitating towards clubs and extracurricular. But again I knew how to play the game. And so I got good grades, went off to college and did about two years and, and then left and spent my second two years of undergrad traveling around the world in an independent study.

Finished my undergrad that way and that was really where kind of the aperture opened up that there are more than, there’s more than one way to kind of get at this thing we call learning in school. Fast forwarding. Started my career at a new school startup in Brooklyn. Spent about five years there teaching. Taught for another three or four years after I left the city in Dutchess County, New York and then began my journey at Ulster BOCES 16 years ago as an administrator, assistant principal, teacher, coach and have worked through the progression of leadership all here at Ulster BOCES. So building principal and director and interim directors of portions of our entity that handle tech and professional learning. Had the opportunity to become the deputy superintendent here and then our superintendent at the time retired and that was the moment at which I had the opportunity to become the district superintendent.

And the district superintendent is an interesting role in a BOCES. One portion of the role is the CEO of the BOCES. So really handling like all the programming that we’re doing and then the other portion is a direct report for the commissioner through the New York State Education Department. And that’s the kind of two way conduit that offers or where we support districts in initiative that is coming out of the state education department and equally as important bringing up voice from the ground floor to help inform the Education department around decision making, policy and things like that. So it’s a different role. I’m very, very fortunate, wonderful board who supports innovation and about 10 years ago in one of my principalships I got the opportunity to start a school, a P Tech school, Pathways and Technology Early College High School. It’s a six-year program and, and that was really where I really began to become passionate around economic and workforce development, around the interconnectedness or the lack of interconnectedness of the entities that need to pull in the same direction on behalf of students if we’re going to really do this work. And that was done in kind of this micro school where we built out that model.

But tremendous amount of gains and I’m sitting here today in a center that represents the scalability of that same vision. And so I know we’re going to get to talk a little bit more about that, but I’ll pause there for you.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah. That connects a lot of dots in the lead up to the present day. That day being just less than a week out from the opening of the new career and technical patterns at iPark87 as it’s called. Could you tell me more about the center and its services and give us a view into the story behind its development?

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Sure. So we run a ton of different types of programming that are student facing. We have a whole other, many other divisions that are non-student facing, workbook but focusing on the student facing career and technical education. So for the most part, students come to us in their junior and senior year as part of their journey through nine through 12 in our district, so in our county, our BOCES works with eight component districts. Those are the districts in our BOCES region. And so many of those students are progressing through the 22 credits and five Regents exams as part of the graduation requirements, which I know we’re going to get to later because that’s shifting as well. And they come up to us for either AM or PM and they’re engaged in career and technical education, automotive, culinary.

Revamping Vocational-Technical Education

Dr. Jonah Schenker

You know, we have, you know, all of the health occupations, a technology class, electrical, HVAC and go down the list, welding and, and they’re getting the technical skills. But also students are progressing through integrated academics as well. So they may be getting some math credits and science credits and English credits, et cetera and career in tech or as some, you’ll hear some people talk about VoTech or vocational tech is in the same kind of dilemma as our traditional education system where we are still very much for the most part operating in this kind of industrial model of schooling. And so we’ve been pushing on that for a decade across all of our programs. What should schools really be? What can schools be? And how do we move out of this industrial model of teaching and learning into something that’s more relevant for the students in order to prepare them for whatever next is. And so kind of going to the site here. The iPARK site is the former IBM site in Kingston, New York. So the story of that IBM, you know, headquarters, last I heard in, in this area of the facility, 6700 employees like you don’t go anywhere in Ulster county and have a conversation with somebody who didn’t move here, have an uncle or a cousin who were like worked here at the facility.

Revitalizing New York’s Industrial Communities

Dr. Jonah Schenker

And again my, you know, like many communities in New York, especially those with those kind of single massive industries that out-migrated, they left and it bottoms out a community, an economy, hope and really has been this for decades this legacy of failure where there had been several attempts to kind of think about how to revitalize this campus. The campus was turned over and purchased to National Resources who really did an amazing job at the cleanup from an ecological standpoint and making the site safe and working through that in partnership with many entities, county government and Environmental Protection Agency, etc and about eight years ago some conversations about like let’s take a look at this and, and some early conversations and some dialogues and again the ground is not always ripe for things to grow. And so that kind of fell short and then we took a break through that little period of time known as Covid and and I had the opportunity to step into this position and rekindle those conversations and kind of went at it with a little bit of a different strategy than prior and began to get steam on this concept. Right. And a lot of that I think is about preparation, meeting, opportunity, but also really the amount of groundwork to engage with our eight districts to see the why and the what and the how through transparent conversations rooted in what’s right for students, what’s right for kids. And so you know that, that took hold and we have become what will be the anchor, you know, for this campus.

The career and technical school that will be here is amazing. I was saying for a while like it’s going to be amazing but I keep reminding myself actually that today about an hour before this conversation our, we had gotten our co from the town some time back but, but our sign off from the New York Education Department and the commissioner came through so, so it’s no longer like when it happens, it’s here and happening and the school is amazing. But, the campus represents so much, is so much larger. Right. It is an ecosystem that brings together county government, industry, two-year and four-year colleges. And really this messaging that I’ve been talking about has been a metaphor. Now we have a physical representation of the commitment of what it takes to really do economic and workforce development which is in turn, that is, skills and workforce gap work.

It is community revitalization work, it’s economic mobility work. So plans here for millions of square feet for other industries to be site-based housing. We know housing and employer and, and future employees are two critical pieces. So let’s not talk about how to solve them, let’s build that. And so this is the beginning, too, a multi-phase project to again do that work. Really, really exciting. And I could talk a little bit about when you feel it’s right about again what’s the next phase in terms of that larger conversation or larger impact because the school is going to be magnificent and it’s going to do wonderful things. But I’m really thinking about how this becomes a model to replicate out because we are not the only community and geography that is facing economic and workforce development conversations as well as this type of revitalization from out migration

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah. I’m excited to get there. Before we do, I want to stay with one point you brought up around the opportunities that being in this space, this larger campus with all of these different organizations around, opens up for partnerships. Because obviously with blended career technical education initiatives, partnership is such a critical component, but also a huge sticking point for lots of places, districts that are trying to start these initiatives. Yeah. So I’d be curious to hear, how are you, first of all, what are you leveraging, what types of programming are you leveraging these partnerships to create? And how are you navigating some of those challenges, different schedules, norms, policies between these types of organizations to create productive collaboration?

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Yeah. And, and I’m, I’m really excited that you kind of asking that question because that is at the heart of either the solution or the dilemma that has been workforce and economic development because it requires efficiency and collaboration. Right. And I always make it a point to kind of do the disclaimer that the problem doesn’t lie with that. We don’t have really amazing people in all of these entities working really hard. The problem is in the coordinated efforts to actually get the work done. So that’s one piece. The other piece is how we define where this work and at what age this work needs to happen.

Before I go into that, because I think that’s really the segue into the model for that is kind of this site and what, what you were talking about, rather like the design principles of this site are based on, you know, height and space and light and inter and intraoperability. So, when industry partners come in here, they’re going to see their hopes and their feedback, their expertise in what the future of work needs to look like. Right. Like, we can’t. I think so often educators are charged with the job of producing students who are equipped to do whatever next is. But we don’t ask those people who are in the realm of next, what do you really need to see? Like, what do you really need to see when this student crosses the threshold to interview with you into a workforce, into a college classroom, into a military experience, into an internship or whatever the list is. We prepare them with a body of school things. And there’s not always an alignment between like what we teach and what is needed.

Which is why we hear we’re not getting employees or students coming to us that are prepared to do X. And it’s very simple. We just got to ask them the question. The piece that you surfaced, which is the private sector, community based sector, isn’t staffed or equipped to navigate the complex system of K12. And the schools aren’t equipped to navigate the outside world. And so all of this work historically is relational. I’m Jonah, I’m the guidance counselor. I have a great relationship with these two businesses.

Building Systematic School-Industry Partnerships

Dr. Jonah Schenker

It’s thriving. I’m getting some students experience, I get another job, I leave, it’s gone. And so our work and our model is about systems and structures, cadence and rituals and routines that are systematic, that move from the relational level down to the way a community acts and performs and behaves as part of their DNA, not in a one off meeting for a task, but how they consistently come together, bringing these entities who have historically had difficulty working together and making it really easy. Right? Like schools need to make it really easy for industries to participate and industries don’t want to do school things because that’s not what they do and schools don’t want to do that. So what’s the complementary relationship that needs to happen? And you know, I would suggest that, you know, as part of that and inherent in who we are is the single point entry for all of this work to happen. Right.

So we are suggesting, and every community and state has entities that they may not be titled the same but, but act as these intermediaries. So BOCES Board of Cooperative Educational Services is designed to get multiple entities to cooperate on behalf of whatever that service is. And so what we’re positioning again is that single point entry. Any child in Ulster county, regardless of whether they’re in our program or not, who needs an internship or a work experience. The industry and community field knows all I have to say is I’m looking for X. We are the conduit to K12 in the schools, the schools don’t have to worry about that. They just say, hey, we have 15 kids who need and we do the facilitation so that entities don’t have to be talking to.

Because an industry that wants to tap into schools here has to navigate eight superintendents, eight school districts, eight boards of education, each with their local context rather than the knowing just being like, hey, we need that partnership is the clearinghouse for all that to happen. And, I would suggest that the same model is true for mental health and the disconnect and access of services. It’s coordination, all right? It’s not, it’s not quality of service. So here we’ll begin to do that work. We’re also thinking about the model. Right there is this age-old stigma of career and technical education. We have those who can do school and are college bound and for those who can’t, we’ve got these other things.

Right. And I would argue that what we need to be moving towards is one skill set and many different opportunities to be able to engage in pathways to get there. Right. And the reason why we define that is because our school system, the industrial model, is built on a single academic pathway. Right. Like that’s the valued pathway. And then if you can’t do that, like we have all of these other options rather than saying all kids can. And here’s 15 different ways to, to connect a passion with a ken, with a pathway that are all going to be yielding a common skill set that we know is going to be critical whether you’re going to college, two year, four year, certification, into the workforce, that same list that we begin to surface.

Integration and Equity in Education

Dr. Jonah Schenker

So that’s exciting work on the ground floor. And you’ll see that we’re no longer going to have the students who are just in the H Vac bubble. We had an industry partner here yesterday and we got a little snippet video from him and he said, yeah, we don’t need just students who, you know, students in H Vac need to know welding and electric. And so you’ll see the proximity of classrooms that used to be siloed, opened up and, and it’s that again, that ability to work cross lines that isn’t, we’re not just saying that it’s present in schedules, it’s valued in space usage and it will be driven by kind of this next iteration and instructional model in this venue, career and technical education. And not that we’re, but it’s no different in our programs that are special education. The model of teaching and learning is different there. The canvas and the experience is just different than career and technical education. But, all of my programs are based on a very explicit driver of how we think about relationships, how we think about teaching and learning and all of that resting on access and belonging and equity and diversity.

Danny Curtis

A lot of really great stuff to unpack there. But especially appreciate this overarching point that these new resources are going to be accompanied by an innovation on the model. Because I think so often schools acquire new resources, bring in new innovations, but, but try to work it into the existing industrial model, as you said, and are disappointed when they aren’t able to produce the results that they’re looking for with these new resources in the old model. And so excited to hear that it’s accompanying a larger rethink. And I know that the center fits into a larger shift happening in New York where the state is rethinking the competencies that they want their students to develop. And I’m wondering if you could tell us about the role that Ulster Boces is playing in supporting his district and working towards that, that rethink of competencies and the timeline of that over the next few years.

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Yeah, so you are absolutely right. You know, New York. Let me kind of go, go back to a little bit of the timeline. We’ve been at this conversation and work and other systems in New York and beyond as well. But, we’ve been at this for about a decade. And again, in 2019, the Board of Regents, you know, put together what they call the Blue Ribbon Commission, a diverse group of stakeholders to rethink what it means to be a graduate here in New York. And in that, 12 recommendations surfaced, the board of Regents looked at those recommendations and charged the New York State Education Department with thinking about what this means. And in between, a little bit of a setback with again, that same Covid period and, and, and they refueled and regained.

But it’s a beautiful document, the process and the product. And so the New York State Education Department took those recommendations and, and and developed what they call New York Inspires, which is a framework that we are currently in that has kind of a planning phase and then three phases after that are based around how those 12 recommendations were distilled down to kind of these four transformations. One of those transformations is the adoption of the portrait of a grad. The portrait of a grad, those competencies you talked about students being academically prepared, creative innovators, critical thinkers, effective communicators, global citizens and reflective and future focus with, with adopted definitions. And that portrait was adopted just, just recently by the Board of Regents. Secondly, redefining learning and credits, learning experiences and credits.

Thirdly, moving to the decoupling of Regents assessments from graduation requirements and moving to a single transcript. So that’s kind of the body of work. And you know, just to, just to take a step back to where you started because it resonates really deeply with me and, and often, always where I start when I, whenever I have the chance to talk with school leaders or school people, which is, I don’t believe that we have an educator or teacher problem in this country. We have fine educators and teachers. We have a container issue that is the container in which we ask them to do their job is tragically outdated and flawed. And I would go as far as to say actually designed to not promote access and equity. Right. And so when you talk about those initiatives, any initiative or ideas or innovation, they are a veneer laid on top of our current foundation which is flawed.

And so none of, none of those initiatives or change work is going to take place when the foundation of school is based on numerical grading, which is designed to rank and sort students, which is an academic school year between September and June, depending on where you are in the country, that’s where it is here. Some start in August where 9, 10, 11, 12 grades stack on that, with requirements at the end of the year. So we’ve defined learning, success, passing and failure between September and June. And if you don’t do it, then you fail. Right? Like, and we can go down through all of these like systems that like school did to us that if we were able to navigate, we did okay. And if not and, and, and you can identify, I can walk into any third grade classroom in the country and identify a child within an hour that’s probably going to be able to navigate the system or not. Right? Because sitting still compliance, is, I mean you look down the drop down menus at that teachers have to give to students on report cards, right? Like you has difficulty paying attention in class, you know, can’t sit still. No, no.

Like the student who has difficulty paying attention in class just needs to move. Like when did we decide that movement was bad? Like so, I mean all of those, all of those things. So the New York Inspire is a game changer for changing that foundation. I believe I love all of the components of it. To me, out of all of the transformations, if we don’t get in transformation to Redefining Learning Experiences, right then we’re going to be looking at the application of all the stuff on how we’ve defined what a learning experience should be based on the model. So we’ve really done our work around thinking about those shifts that need to happen in classes where students are moving from just compliance to working on really meaningful project work to be of service to the community world, changing the audience. And I’m not discounting that content knowledge or literacy or math isn’t important. I’m just saying we need to value how we think about learning experiences as a mechanism to get there.

Empathy-Driven Educational Transformation Plan

Dr. Jonah Schenker

So in this rollout kind of getting around to kind of your final question as a BOCES, we’re charged with supporting districts in thinking about how do you do this work, whatever it might be. And I saw an opportunity in the rollout and what’s needed on the ground floor and before actually what we need to see teachers doing. We need to ensure that our leaders understand how to lead transformational work. And so we have had a long standing partnership with the Stanford D School design thinking, human centric design work, and began to put together not a prescription, but a playbook that outlined a process, a set of tools, questions that are anchored in this human centric design work. So that prior to schools just wanting to do the checklist of what we need to do for this New York inspires thing, they really engage in the needed work up front. That’s the driver to transformation, which is empathy. If we’re going to redesign a system or we’re going to design a system, then we need to talk to the people who we’re designing it for first to make sure that our design is answering the right question. And so it’s this beautiful document that aligns with the phases of New York that again, I kind of, I would attribute to kind of a choose your own adventure.

I don’t want it to be my way or my team’s way or our way. But what has to happen, where there can’t be flexibility is, we have to talk to people now. Here’s a selection of questions that you might ask.

Here’s a number of tools that you might consider. Take pieces of them, invent your own. But like, this is step one. And as we think about redesign a school, if we’re really going to do this work that’s going to be transformational, there’s students, there’s boards of education, there’s community members. There are community members who went through school who have a perception of school based on a single experience in a cafeteria or science class from when they went there. We need to engage them in the process. We have to ask them what went wrong, what didn’t work, right? Like, let’s not just ask the folks who school works for, but more importantly, let’s ask the folks who it’s not working for, what does it need? Because I’m a huge, a huge advocate in the design thinking for when we do design work. We need to design for those furthest from opportunity.

We have an epidemic of average in this country, right? Like everything’s designed around economics of doing the most amount of good for the most amount of people in the middle. And then we need to create all of these, like either enrichments or Interventions to get people back to middle. And it turns out actually if we just consider the design from those furthest from opportunity or what we call the extreme users, right? Like everybody benefits. It’s not a zero sum game. And there’s all those examples of that are used to highlight that, right? Like the curb cut design for mobility, you know, wheelchairs, et cetera. But, it turns out that the delivery person can roll their dolly up there. It turns out the someone who’s wheeling a bicycle, a parent or guardian or mother with a stroller.

Collaborative Education in New York

Dr. Jonah Schenker

I mean, we can go down the list like nobody lost out because we made those. We actually just thought more about making it accessible. And the same is true in all of those examples. So if we take the opportunity to engage all those voices in redefining what school could be, our work is to not come up again with one recipe, but engage with our eight districts, allow them each in their local context to do this work and kind of co-author the story of their community. But equally as critical is bringing those folks back together to share and stretch and tune and reflect together. And as they’re co authoring their individual stories and we’re bringing together, we’re beginning to sew a story together of Ulster County. And if all of the areas in New York are doing this kind of same thing, not necessarily using again, our playbook isn’t the only tool, but it’s a tool. And, and if we’re all beginning to do this work, then Ulster county and Dutchess county and Sullivan county and Westchester county, and we can go down the list, then the story of New York State begins to weave together.

And the fidelity of the initiative as it relates to its intentionality of actually transformation doesn’t come from here’s what you need to do, but it comes through the consistency of how we hold space, how we use process, the questions we ask, tools we use, and most importantly, leaning on that kind of first stage of empathy, moving into ideation and design and prototyping and then scalability, of course.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I love this vision that you’ve set out, sort of starting with the human at the center and extending out to create a statewide change. And so to tie these two pieces together to round out our conversation here, I’m wondering how, as the state changes the container and the districts continue to do this work to reimagine learning in a more human centered way, how does it change the work that you’re able to do at the center at iPark 87 and what new opportunities does that unlock for you all.

Community Mobility and Economic Development

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Yeah. So again, kind of going back to talking about and having kind of fractals of this work, this becomes a hub for people to convene, to take a look at what’s possible. And the playbook that I talked about in, in terms of the transformation of, of school will be accompanied by another playbook that I hope to launch in January around economic and workforce development, around community revitalization, around economic mobility. And, and, and I believe that is the intersection of both of those where a, a new definition of what’s possible lies. When we begin to center here in Ulster county, the 20,000 students. Not, not the adult conversation, but the 20,000 students as the future of this county from an economy standpoint, from a work and economic standpoint, from a hope standpoint, and have school systems that foster and drive that. It is a new model for community mobility.

And so my, my hope and vision. Right. Like I continue to talk to the folks that touch all of this. The work that you’re doing is beautiful, but you’re trying to grow a tree that’s 30, 000 ft up in the air, and you, you haven’t tended to the roots, and the roots are our children. And, and so it’s that. I think it’s that merging that kind of goes into where I’m currently sitting. When we even talk about skills of the future, the skills and competencies and the conversation is like, what are the skills that we need to prepare students to be equipped to, you know, enter and enter this unknown future or the future of work or whatever it is. And, and I’m not talking about it like that in the moment.

Dr. Jonah Schenker

I’m talking about it as what are the skills that we ought to be preparing students to be the designers of a new future? Because I’m not sure that we’ve done our due diligence in taking care of what they’re entering, not entering a political conversation, but the world isn’t well, and so I don’t want to prepare students for this. I want to prepare students to make it better. And they can. And, but let’s get intentional about what those skills are. Let’s value them in space, let’s value them in schedules, let’s value them in time. And again, I believe it’s that intersection of these two playbooks that provides not a prescription, but a roadmap for what’s possible.

Danny Curtis

Well, I think that’s a really good call to action to leave this on. Jonah, thank you so much for sharing about this new model. I’m looking forward to watching it as this new center takes flight and continuing to follow these new reforms as they’re put into place. So, yeah. And good luck on the first day of school. I know it’s coming.

Dr. Jonah Schenker

Yes. Thank you. I’m going to jump out of here and we’ll keep setting up classrooms and get it ready. But I really appreciate the time, the questions and the opportunity. Thanks so much.

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Danny Curtis joined me as we dove into some of the recent education headlines that caught our eyes to explore shifts in K–12 and higher ed. We started by discussing efforts by the Future of High School Network and the Carnegie Foundation to move away from seat-time requirements toward competency-based and work-based learning. Then we shifted to diving into one of my favorite topics—Texas’s multi-classroom teaching model from Public Impact and Opportunity Culture, which enables teachers to earn six-figure salaries without leaving the classroom, and its positive impact on both retaining veteran teachers and supporting newcomers. We then talked about the value of play-based learning, especially in early literacy, and questioned some of the labels and dichotomies that people often draw between different instructional philosophies. Sometimes there are similarities that people don’t see when you crawl underneath the proverbial hood. Rounding out the episode, we analyzed ChatGPT’s new “study mode” as a potential tool for student learning and discussed the complexities and opportunities AI brings to education.

Publications Mentioned:

“The Race to Redefine the High School Learning Experience Is On”, The 74

“How Some Texas Teachers are Earning Six Figures Without Leaving the Classroom”, The 74

“The Science of Reading and Play Go Hand-in-Hand. Schools Must Make It Happen.”, The 74

“Understanding Value of Learning Fuels ChatGPT’s Study Mode”, Inside Higher Ed

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. Those tuning in live, we're trying something new today. We'll see how it goes. It's sort of a throwback to the past, but I'm Michael Horn. You're joining the show where we're dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, thrilled to welcome back Danny Curtis who is head of all things digital for the work that I do and wears a number of other hats as well. Danny, good to see you.

Danny Curtis

It's great to see you too, Michael. Excited to talk some shop today.

Michael Horn

I'm looking forward to it as well. We'll keep an eye on viewer comments if we're able to. But I know that there's been basically, we text a fair bit. We're always in touch on different things. A few articles that have bubbled up that caught both of our eyes. I think it's fair to say that we thought let's do one of these, riff on it, catch up on some of the headlines that may be driving the school year ahead. No matter where you are at this point, schools either started or lurking for K12 students and colleges, those with traditional calendars are back to school.

So this is like a hot topic right now. What's on your mind? Where should we, where should we go? I'm going to let you sort of run the show.

Embracing Competency-Based Learning

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So the first headline to cover today is an article out of the 74: The race to Redefine Define the High School Learning Experience is On is the title. And this is one that covers the efforts of the Future of High School Network, which is a network of schools led by the Carnegie foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that are transforming how we do high school in America. And it's part of sort of a larger effort by the organization to move away from our education system based on seat time requirements towards more competency based approach. And so it gives a close up look at how this type of shift is allowing students in one Houston area district to engage in much richer work based learning through a partnership with a local hospital there. And so obviously some of your favorite themes in there. Michael, what did you take away from this story?

Michael Horn

Yeah, well, a few things. One, obviously we've had Tim Knowles on Class Disrupted right before the head of the Carnegie foundation and Diane's obviously on the board. So this is a group that we pay a lot of attention to. In many ways they're making up for what at the time was a big innovation and now they're cardinal sin, right, of creating seat time as the measure of learning against which students progress and so forth. What I think is interesting about this is that we've seen a lot of, I think reinvention efforts around K8 learning, right? But now high school redesign, that was sort of a theme 15 years ago with the Gates Foundation. But this seems, Danny, to me at least like really interesting for how connected it is to work based learning experiences. And you and I have both been hypothesizing a lot that sort of a career connected learning for all, we've written about this, right, is a critical thrust. And so the way that they're actually creating real partnerships seems to me really interesting.

And then obviously there's a competency based element of this where they're actually looking at progress. I've curious your take on this, but I thought it was interesting that they started with the health system as that employer partner, which I think makes sense because healthcare is one of those places where there's like clear board exams, Gates, right, that like if you can pass those and have clinical hours and practicums, you can go practice. And so competencies that perhaps tie to an industry standard are maybe more likely to get liftoff, maybe more likely to get traction than say competency based or skills based hiring in a space where we don't even really know what the skills are. There's not like an agreed upon set of competencies or definitions or even how to measure them. And I guess that last thought, Danny, and then I'm curious, yours is like really exciting to see this work go through and to see work based learning pulled into the high school experience. Sort of flip that high school day. I think that's a really cool trend that I would like to see, every district in America I think.

What did you take away from it?

Danny Curtis

Yeah, a lot of similar thoughts. I'm excited about competency based learning for a number of reasons in a number of applications, including more traditional academic pathways and what it opens up for personalized learning. But I was really excited about the use case that they chose here, the work based learning use case, because a lot more districts and states are taking the career part of college and career readiness more seriously these days and are making moves to make that happen. But the seat time requirements that are still the status quo in most places are a serious barrier to that, because in this day and age, in this technology landscape, with technology moving faster than most schools can keep up with, work based learning is sort of a requirement for true career readiness in order to have the skills that you need to be job ready, in my opinion. Shifting to that competency based approach not only creates the latitude for students to be off campus and on the job site and working, but so much of the assessment of ability that happens on the job sort of defies these traditional modes of assessment and requires more of a competency based assessment mechanism. And I agree with you. I think that the healthcare, selection of a healthcare example in particular is especially valuable because within that field there are already some of those more competency based signals baked in that you mentioned.

Michael Horn

So you brought up an interesting point, I think on the assessment piece, which is to say in some ways we don't have to assess like granular knowledge and skills that sit below an experience. Like to your point, if someone's working on a, in a hospital, you know, behind a desk, doing whatever it might be, allied health work of some nature, we can assess like, did you do that particular job well right. Like literally more macro, if you will, competencies which could be more widely agreed upon rather than trying to break them down into lots of granular skills and trying to figure out what transfers and whatnot. Like that gets very technocratic quickly. This seems very interesting. Like could you check someone into a health system? Could you help, you know, take their vitals in the beginning, whatever it might be? That seems like something you can measure in a much more authentic way. And it's like authentically valued as well, I would think.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And one thought I have coming out of that is like when you are preparing people for these workplace competencies, the need to put everything on that 4.0 GPA scales is also reduced. And so yeah, these different types of signals and different ways of measuring that that unlocks, I think creates a lot of opportunity in these types of partnerships.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, well, let's leave that one there. What else is on your mind as we go through the carousel? And we'll link to all these in the show notes. So folks getting this as a Substack email, they can check out the original source articles as well.

But go ahead, what's next on your mind?

Empowering Teachers Through Mentorship

Danny Curtis

So the next headline we have here is how some Texas teachers are earning six figures without leaving the classroom. This is another one from The74. These salaries are kind of comprised of two pay bumps. There's a new multi-classroom teaching model where teams of classroom teachers are led by one lead teacher who has demonstrated excellent outcomes typically. And they offer coaching, planning and curriculum development support. And for that, for taking on those increased responsibilities, they receive a pretty big pay bump, $13.5K on average. And then the other source of the increased pay is a Texas state fund that awards additional state funding to districts for each of their high performing teachers. And so this one comes to mind or you know, stood out as important one to be talking about because in an education system where teacher recruitment and retention is a persistent problem year over year, it seems like there's a pretty broad consensus that we need to do some rethinking of the teaching profession and teacher compensation, but maybe less agreement on the best way to go about that.

And so I'm curious, what's your read on this innovation out of Texas?

Michael Horn

I love it. Look, it's from Opportunity Culture group, Bryan Hassel's group in North Carolina, Public Impact. They do some great work there. The author of the story is with Public Impact as well. So it's an oped, but I think it's a great example, right? When you start to have team teaching environments, teachers taking on different roles, they don't have to leave the classroom completely. So we're not moving the talent out. As you know, that was an entire chapter in my book from Reopen to Reinvent that the T in teaching is for team. I think this is a really important part of rethinking schools is really thinking of teams of teachers that are working together with lots of students and able to bounce off each other.

And then there's a really other, you know, this other cool perk of it, right, which is that you can actually raise salaries as well for the, the really experienced veteran teachers that are doing great stuff with kids. I think it's all positives here, I guess, is my take Danny

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I agree. A lot of the focus of the article was around the benefits of keeping more senior teachers in the classroom and allowing them a role that they can sort of grow into that matches their level of expertise. And obviously there are all sorts of benefits that come with that. But I'm also really excited about what this means for younger teachers and teachers that are earlier in their career. The teacher turnover rate within the first two years of beginning the profession is way too high. And as a former beginning teacher myself, I know it's hard to get in front of the class when you're just figuring out and kind of learn the craft in front of an audience, and it requires a lot of support. And so the idea of having a master teacher who's kind of rotating throughout these classes and providing the support in all of these really important, meaningful ways and having some really clear structure around that. I'm really excited about what that means for supporting these teachers into getting to that point where they're the lead teacher and they're the experts.

Michael Horn

So you were teaching in the Bay Area, right, as a, when you first got your start, would this sort of structure have kept you in longer in your view?

Danny Curtis

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of factors at play, but certainly would have made my first year in the classroom more productive and probably a little bit more enjoyable. That first year of teaching, I think is notoriously difficult on a lot of teachers. And so having a person that can be in your classroom there to provide support on short notice is really important. I was through Teach for America, so I had more resources available to me than most. But having someone designated to be there for you, that's actually in the building, I think makes a world of difference. I'm also really excited about what this might mean for teacher training models. We were talking earlier about sort of work based learning, and I think schools is one area where there's a lot of potential here, specifically in teacher apprenticeship programs. Obviously apprenticeship programs are really dependent on having this type of mentor, mentee model.

And so I'm excited about what this means, sort of structuring teaching teams where you already sort of have that system in place, what it could mean for the flourishing of teacher apprenticeship programs and how that and following an earn and learn model can also help defray the costs of getting into this profession. Because for many, it's the salary considerations that can serve as an obstacle to getting into teaching. But for many others, it's also the upfront cost of education. Yeah, just structuring it in this way I think will do a lot to open up avenues to teacher apprenticeship in a lot of districts and states.

Michael Horn

Great point. And Reach University, obviously, and others that could pop up to fill that and create space in the structure, right, for those sorts of teachers. That's a really great observation.

And so it gets a little under my craw for a different reason, which is I think you have this world that has popped up where people have said, quote unquote, “science of reading” is important, right? Phonics, phonemic awareness, like build those building blocks, right? And then as they get older, content knowledge becomes really important to help them be good readers. I totally buy that. And then their next statement is direct instruction is the best way to do it. And when they say direct instruction, they mean like a whole class, one to many model as they're doing that regardless of the fact of like I've mastered maybe, you know, some set of phonics and I'm struggling with something else and you're like racing ahead and I'm holding you back or vice or you know, vice versa and not acknowledging that like if actually I accelerate past certain competencies without actually having mastered them, that's going to be a huge problem in later years, right, when I'm trying to read and so forth.

Rethinking Play-Based Learning

Danny Curtis

The next article we have here is on play-based learning. It covers how play based learning can be leveraged to enhance evidence based reading instruction and covers the positive outcomes that guided play can have, not only on the academic side of things, but also soft skills, durable skills like self regulation, social skills. And it profiles some programs, including one near you, Michael, in Boston. And so this feels like a really exciting development. Learning is more fun and students learn more. Is there a catch?

Michael Horn

Yeah, I don't think so. I know the authors of this piece as well, big fans of theirs, Carly Roberts and Meghan McCormick. What I would say on this is a couple things. One, this article sort of gets at one of my boogeymen, if you will, Danny. And so it gets a little under my craw for a different reason, which is I think you have this world that has popped up where people have said, quote unquote, “science of reading” is important, right? Phonics, phonemic awareness, like build those building blocks, right? And then as they get older, content knowledge becomes really important to help them be good readers. I totally buy that. And then their next statement is direct instruction is the best way to do it. And when they say direct instruction, they mean like a whole class, one to many model as they're doing that regardless of the fact of like I've mastered maybe, you know, some set of phonics and I'm struggling with something else and you're like racing ahead and I'm holding you back or vice or you know, vice versa and not acknowledging that like if actually I accelerate past certain competencies without actually having mastered them, that's going to be a huge problem in later years, right, when I'm trying to read and so forth.

Then you have this moniker. And sort of their point would be, well, look, it's pretty clear you shouldn't have open-ended exploration without like clear lessons. And I would agree with that, right? But I think you can agree with that and reject the notion that it has to be whole class and so on the play-based thing. On the other hand, I'm not sure play-based learning is like the best way to describe what I suspect is going on here. And I don't know, there's nothing quite enough information.

But I guess the way I would put it is if you dropped into a Montessori school, you would often call reading instruction or instruction there in general, people often call it play based. But I actually think it mirrors what we know from direct instruction, but in very small groups, as few as one kid to, you know, four or five kids. And what happens is that the teacher, you know, takes out the materials you're going to be playing with, quote, unquote, shows you what they are used for. So like these are not just for anything. This is how we use them. This is the purpose, right? And actually does the lesson. There's a worked example, right, where the kid goes along with the teacher, actually like working together through a worked example and then the kid practices on the concept or whatever's being learned right, through the materials and quote unquote plays with it. And there's often, in Montessori anyway, some self-correcting mechanism so you don't actually like, you can't just skate by and not master it. There's like a way to check the work, if you will, to make sure that you're really mastering it. And then you can build in repetitions till you really show mastery of that competency standard, whatever it is that you're trying to learn. And so in some ways, I guess like what caught me about the piece was there's like a—we have these labels that we use in education and we try to pit them against each other where if like we peeled the onion back a couple layers, we might see like we're not having the fight I think we think we're having. And there's a lot more common ground. But there is like some nuance and some difference that I believe can create the personalization and, and yes, play right, like agency, ownership by a kid that can really engage them and follow like what we've learned about that works well from direct instruction and quote unquote, science of reading and so forth. And so I guess I'm struggling a little bit how to capture this Danny in a soundbite. But I think the article is really onto something and like we should take it as a pause to peel back the onion and get below these buzz phrases maybe that have become such lightning rods in different directions in the education space. Does that make sense, your thoughts?

Danny Curtis

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is in reality a best of both worlds situation. It's important that people understand that and don't take this bifurcated view of it. I want to latch onto one piece of what you said around the potential for engagement. And I think that that is a really important word in the education world right now as we are in this continued challenge of chronic absenteeism. There's more numbers that came out saying, yeah, the absenteeism problem has gotten slightly better in the last year or so, but it still remains way below or way higher than pre pandemic numbers. And so it's an issue that we continue to struggle with in the education world.

You can't start too early. In fact, I think that relying on or finding strategies like play based learning that fan the flames of curiosity and fun and engagement in students in the early years, it can be a much more effective and probably easier than trying to reignite that spark in that love of learning later on. I'm really excited to hear that this is kind of taking hold in the younger grades.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And it's interesting, right? Like, I think the folks that would be like, full, whole class, core knowledge, science of reading, they would say, like, actually learning how to read is engaging and exciting in its own right. And so maybe you don't need, like, the play and so forth. And to them, I might say, like, I actually agree with you. And why not make it even more engaging with agency around those principles that we know are proving to work more and more for learners. And like, you know, to your point, like, we. This can be a

Both and conversation. And I'll tell you what is disengaging to someone when they feel like there's no chance that they have any concept of what's being talked about at the front of the class. And they have complete, like, I get. And I'm all for raising expectations, but they, they're just like, I've concluded I. I'm worthless. I can't get this. I can't figure it out.

They've checked out completely. Or the opposite that I've quite frankly seen quite a bit as well, where the kids, like, are you kidding? We're doing this again? Like, I mastered this a year ago. Maybe it was at home. Like, I don't know where they learned it, but they're like, this is. I'm bored out of my mind. School stinks. Like, I'm disengaging from that. Why would we even play with that? Like, we don't have to, is the thing.

I think that you're saying, like, we can take the elements of what we're learning from the research and put them into really engaging environments that engage small groups, individuals, where they can really be part of the learning process. And we know that learning is work and you have to be actively engaged to do it. So, like, why would. Why would we ignore that? I think, is your point.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah. No, spot on. And so, Michael, unless you have more on this. I know we had.

But I guess the way I would put it is if you dropped into a Montessori school, you would often call reading instruction or instruction there in general, people often call it play based. But I actually think it mirrors what we know from direct instruction, but in very small groups, as few as one kid to, you know, four or five kids. And what happens is that the teacher, you know, takes out the materials you're going to be playing with, quote, unquote, shows you what they are used for. So like these are not just for anything. This is how we use them. This is the purpose, right? And actually does the lesson. There's a worked example, right, where the kid goes along with the teacher, actually like working together through a worked example and then the kid practices on the concept or whatever's being learned right, through the materials and quote unquote plays with it. And there's often, in Montessori anyway, some self-correcting mechanism so you don't actually like, you can't just skate by and not master it. There's like a way to check the work, if you will, to make sure that you're really mastering it. And then you can build in repetitions till you really show mastery of that competency standard, whatever it is that you're trying to learn. And so in some ways, I guess like what caught me about the piece was there's like a—we have these labels that we use in education and we try to pit them against each other where if like we peeled the onion back a couple layers, we might see like we're not having the fight I think we think we're having. And there's a lot more common ground.

Michael Horn

Let's do this fourth one. I know you've been interested in this other topic, so why don't you bring us. Why don't you talk us through it?

ChatGPT Study Mode

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So there was a recent article Inside Higher Ed on the new tutor function from ChatGPT. It's actually called the Study mode, and I quote here. It's intended to provide a more active learning experience, mimicking the type of Socratic dialogue students may expect to encounter in a lecture hall and challenging them to draw on information they already know to form their own nuanced analyses of complex questions. But the article then goes on to point out that students that are using this study mode sometimes need to sort of prod it to ask the right questions and that actually if you pressure the study tool enough, it will actually just give you the answer. And so I think that there are two questions that come to mind reading this one. The first is, is this a useful tool? And I think whenever an AI tutor like this comes out, you can cue the voices saying this isn't as good as in person instruction.

But to that question, I think that that's a bit off the mark. I think the question that we need to be asking is, is this better than the alternative for many students, which is nothing at all in many instances. And so the increased availability and accessibility in terms of cost for many students to a tool like this creates a lot of value. And are there ways that the technology could be improved for now, certainly, and I'm sure that it will. But on the question of is it valuable, is it a useful tool for students, I would expect that it already is a value and will only continue to get better.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it's a really good point. And you're taking the disruptive innovation lens there, right? Which is better than the alternative. Nothing at all. Don't judge it by like, as a final form factor. It's going to get better. And there was a lot of snarkiness on X around this launch because people were saying, like, I mean, who the heck is going to opt for study mode when they could just get the answer from ChatGPT itself? Fair enough. And I confess I piled on a little bit there as well. But I think if I hear you right, maybe what's interesting about it is like, let's offer it in the same way we offer Khanmigo as a specific app almost right? Like, hey, this is going to help you get better at X, it's going to help you get in the reps, it's going to help monitor and so forth, whatever it is, and coach you accordingly.

And if it's like, in that constrained environment where I can use this app, as opposed to like broadly going on to ChatGPT's app and like opting for study mode, okay, that's one thing. But if it's an app dedicated, this is something we're giving you as a tool, maybe that produces a different sort of use case or something like that. And to your point, better than the alternative, no tutor at all. Maybe that's the right way to think about it.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah, that's my general point. I think you're touching on my second question here, which is, is this the answer to our AI challenge in education where students are able to just get the answer at the click of a button? And I think that the fact that you can actually pressure the Study Tool itself to give you the answer really points out the reality that AI at least hasn't yet been the answer to our AI challenges in education and requires really hard thinking about in this age of AI, what are the skills that students need to know and how can we go about crafting curriculum and assessments that can teach that when they have access to all of this information at the click of a button?

Michael Horn

Yeah, well, to be fair, by the way, I can pressure most human tutors to eventually give me the answer as well. But no, I think you're exactly right. You're pointing to the right thing, which is what are we asking of students? And I think the answer is different at different levels. Right. Like a novice learner, you know, I'm not sure the technology is as useful. I want you learning fundamental knowledge skills. Right. Of a particular discipline or whatever it might be, as you move into more of an expert in a particular field, more of a project.

Right. Application of that knowledge and skills would be super useful. And they're like, I want you using AI, frankly, to expand the realm of what you're able to do. Like, how do you use AI to do something more? I don't know what we'll call that knowledge and skill base, but to me, AI gets the most interesting, I think, as a force multiplier of what people can do and how it works with them, as opposed to, to your point, like, is it or is it not a hack to cheating or something like that? That's been around forever. We'll find lots of ways to cheat. Let's come up with more interesting assignments where it's not cheating, but it's actually using it to do something more that mirrors where we started this conversation, where education actually is getting closer to the way we actually, in fact work. I can't think of an employer right now who would be angry at you for bringing AI to better do what you're trying to deliver for them. That's frankly the expectation at this point, I think.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, totally. And that feels like a really good full circle moment to leave it on. What do you think, Michael?

Michael Horn

That sounds good. And for those tuning in, if you've offered comments, we apologize. We're not getting them in the platform that we have chosen to do this in. We'll be better next time.

Danny Curtis

Still working out the kinks.

Michael Horn

Yeah, exactly. We're still working out the kinks. That's what they say, in Pardon the interruption. Right. We'll do better next time, so we'll keep doing this, but if you've enjoyed the format, let us know. Let us know what you'd like us to comment on or stories you're seeing where you'd love us to just, hey, use some theory, use some experience, pattern recognition, whatever it is, to shine a light on something. We'd love to have that ongoing dialogue with all of you as well. So, Danny, thanks for doing this, and we'll see you all next time on the Future of Education.

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Bill Hansen, CEO of Building Hope, and Raphael Gang, Director of K12 Education at Stand Together Trust, joined me to discuss the launch of a pioneering microloan fund specifically designed for microschool founders. We explored the goals, mechanics, and early learnings from the pilot program, which offers low-interest startup loans to help microschool entrepreneurs navigate financial and facility challenges in the early stages. Our conversation highlighted the critical need for business fundamentals and sustainability within these innovative educational ventures, the vital role of technical assistance, and the importance of building scalable, sector-wide support for nontraditional school models.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. You're joining the show where we're dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And today we're going to have a conversation with two leaders behind a relatively new micro loan program that is designed to support what I'll call the supply side of microschools. But we'll unpack that, I suspect, a little bit as we get in this conversation. Before we do that, let me actually introduce our two guests. We have none other than Bill Hanson. He's the president and CEO of Building Hope.

Bill, good to see you.

Bill Hansen

Good to see you, Michael. Thank you.

Michael Horn

Yeah, absolutely. And then we have Raphael Gang. Raphael is the director of K12 education at Stand Together Trust. Rafael, good to see you.

Raphael Gang

Thanks for having me.

Microschool Program Partnership

Michael Horn

It's great. Yeah, no, you bet. So let's dive in with the mechanics, basics, just so people know what we're talking about. As I understand it, this is the first of its kind fund for microschool founders. It launched with $675,000, I believe, in funding from Stand Together Trust with support from the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, I think. Is that right? And then it's powered by Building Hope and it's essentially a low-interest loan program. And so I'd love to get the basics of this, like what are the loans for, how much are we talking, what's the structure of those loans, how many applicants did you get, how many did you give out, and so forth.

So maybe, Bill, why don't you lead us off and then Raphael, if anything to add, you can jump in on this.

Bill Hansen

Thank you, Michael, and just really appreciate the partnership with Raphael and with the Stand Together Trust. It's really been a pretty intense several months here getting this really, we're calling it a pilot or a demonstration program established to really help us learn a lot about this marketplace and the needs. And, you know, just with Building Hope's history in the public charter school movement, mostly, you know, the biggest barrier has always been both the financing and the facilities, and that is on steroids here with the microschool program. And so really the, you know, I really feel like we're in a learning process here to really, you know, help us validate those challenges that these entrepreneurs around the country are making and to really help solve the greatest needs that they have. And really the barriers to entry, which really have been, the logistics, the housing, if you will, and also just really the startup cost for them.

Raphael Gang

Yeah.

Michael Horn

And so let's talk about the loan itself. Raphael, why don't you jump in there? Yeah, yeah.

Raphael Gang

I mean, we were really excited. I mean, we spent two years looking for the right partner for this. So I would double down on Bill's, the appreciation for what Building Hope has done over the past six months or so, eight months, to build out the loan fund. And it's been a real process and you need a lot of trust and a lot of partnership to do something that's as ambitious and fast moving as this project has been. So, I mean, the loan fund, you know, we put out a very soft request to folks. We didn't do some big major advertising blitz. We went out through a network of partners that we talked to and we said, you know, who is looking for affordable capital, essentially? And we really were looking.

I think Bill makes a really good point there if we were looking to learn about the market as much as we were learning to help founders of microschools. We know that these microschools are out there. We are seeing through organizations like the national microschooling center and vela.org just tremendous growth in them. But we don't really have a grip on, well, what are their finances look like? What does their growth strategy look like? What are their needs? And so I was having a lot of conversations with folks where I'd say, hey, what do you need? And a lot of folks would come to us and say, I need capital. I need money. I need money to get started. Or I'm in my early days of my first few years of operating. I need capital.

Cash flow or ESA programs or voucher programs are coming online, but I need a little cash flow because they're on a delayed payment, things like that. So we really tried to structure the loan fund in a way where it acknowledged the reality of these folks that are on the ground and what their needs are. So we're not asking for immediate repayment of things. We went out and talked to those folks and we said, what's a loan? What's a timeline that makes sense and when should the payments happen? And Bill can talk more about the details of that, but we came in at 3% interest rate, which is a very generous interest rate, as anyone in the finance industry can tell you. But a lot of it was about like, well, we want to see who's out there and we want to learn about them. And so Bill and his team have done an amazing job of collecting that data and now using it to inform what we're doing. We're really excited.

I think we're on track to make about eight or nine loans by the end of the process. We'll probably still have a little bit of money left by the end of it, but I think we're in a really great place, to really get the money out the door. But, but as well, like really inform kind of where we go from here. Does that answer your question?

Michael Horn

Yeah, that does. So that. And you sort of teed up the next question, which is I think you got 53 applicants. So you're talking eight or nine folks will get loans.

Raphael Gang

Yep.

Michael Horn

What are they going to use the capital for? What are those repayment terms? How big are the loans? Like what, what order of magnitude are we talking about here? Bill, you want to take it?

Startup Loan Facilitation for Entrepreneurs

Bill Hansen

Sure. Well, the loans are, you know, probably going to be in the 25 to $50,000 range. And again, these are really startup costs that these individuals and entrepreneurs are needing to get through all of the regulatory processes, all of the onboarding of, of students and whatnot. So. And really the facilities is probably still the, I would say, the predominant need for it. And you know, I just really would also maybe just echo what Raphael was saying about the intersection of philanthropy and you know, we're a non profit organization, but we have, you know, three businesses that are, you know, we're the biggest financial advisor in the charter school business. We've got a nonprofit subordinated lending program, do a lot of work with the credit enhancement program for the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, and really just trying to help navigate, you know, through these processes that they've probably never done before and you know, maybe just with their local banker and so, you know, trying to bring, you know, get the lowest cost loans available to them is really, I think one of the benefits of the partnership with philanthropy and a nonprofit organization involved in the lending business.

Raphael Gang

Yeah, I think we've got, you know, I think we had 258 application or interest forms. Interest forms. We had 100 folks start at the applications. We had 53 full applications that came through the process. And it looks like we'll get to about 8 to 10 loans distributed and they're going to be in that range that Bill talked about. We deliberately really said, let's keep the loan dollar amount low. These are microschools, they should be micro loans, so to speak. And we really felt like we didn't want to be a, we wanted to see how far we could stretch those dollars and really can that money be catalytic, especially at the earliest stages for folks.

But we saw that a lot of the challenges that are coming through with that were, were really about the business practices that founders were going through. There were challenges with facilities. Facilities are no doubt a real challenge that a lot of microschool founders deal with, especially at the front end of their process. But I think a lot of what we're seeing in the process has been the business fundamentals. And how do you help schools make sure that they have the right pricing strategy, make sure that their tuition is actually going to lead them to net income and that they are, they have good accounting practices. And what I think Bill and my team probably have said, we've said this to each other so many times, it's kind of hilarious at this point. But how much this reminds us of the early days of charter schools where there's so much energy and there's so many ideas and there's so many great people that are flowing into the the area. But the challenge of really having good business fundamentals, business practices, making sure that people are doing things the right way so that they are positioned to grow and positioned to scale and aren't taking on lots of credit card debt or taking out their 401ks and things like that, it's been a real learning curve around that.

Michael Horn

Well, so that actually is a question that I'm glad you, you just sort of alluded to that, Raphael, because something that I've observed is a lot of these school founders, microschool founders in some cases seem uninterested or uncomfortable with the idea of a business model and they're not necessarily thinking about sustainability. So I guess my curiosity plays into that, like how did you whittle from 53 applications to the eight or nine that will get it? What's the criteria you're using there? And I guess the second part of the question is why do loans instead of say, grants to these folks that you ultimately choose?

Raphael Gang

Yeah, Bill, I mean, you can talk about the rigor of your process. I think that's actually been one of the things that I think is the best thing about this product.

Bill Hansen

Yeah, number one, we're just very, very fortunate to have a terrific leader inside our organization, Allison Serafin, who is just, I can't even tell you the countless hours she spent. You know, I've actually lost Allison, who is our, she is our executive for all of our business development work. But she also happens to be probably one of the most detail oriented individuals I've ever worked with. And that's just been incredibly important as she's been pouring through these applications. But she also has the boots on the ground expertise of, you know, being in a school, serving on the state Board of Education in Nevada and others. And just really I think has the vision as well of understanding what the capacity building tools and the technical assistance needs are going to be of these schools and really what success can look like with these potential applicants. So even though we have our matrix and our different indicators of success, a lot of this is also just Allison's eyeball to eyeball contact with each of these organizations. And again, I just, I don't want to lose that and you know, what our diligence process has been about, but really just, you know, having that boots on the ground ability to understand, you know, what success, you know, can look like.

And really. And also I would just even say that it hasn't just been your typical banking approval process. I think the technical assistance that, you know, we've even been able to provide in schools, even those that, you know, maybe ended up on the cutting room floor, are still better coming through the process because of the learning along the way as well from what they need as entrepreneurs and small business leaders.

Raphael Gang

Yeah, I think Allison has done an incredible job of kind of, I would say, getting in the mud with the process while still holding, I think, a rigorous bar for what we think are credit worthy applicants. And I think it's that kind of clear as kind of approach where Allison has really adopted this approach. And Bill is, if anything, understating the number of hours when he says countless hours. But like, Allison spent so much time talking one on one with the founders, asking them about their models, getting into the weeds, learning about where, why is this on your balance sheet? Why is this in your budget? How are you structuring this? Why are you doing this? And so it benefits the loan fund overall because I think we now have a much more robust understanding of what the challenges are and what the needs are for these founders. And so we're better positioned as we move forward to provide even better technical assistance and things like that, that. But Allison has told me this repeatedly that there's many founders who ended up not getting loans through our process who at the end of that have said, thank you. Why hasn't anyone told me this till now? And I think that actually gets to your second question, Michael, which is we've really, I, you know, I speak as a member of philanthropy, so it's kind of like. But I think there's a way in which philanthropy can do itself no favors in situations like this, where grants are really great in certain forms of capital to help people start things, to grow things.

It's a great form of risk capital because obviously philanthropy doesn't expect the money back for the most part. But I think philanthropy can get into trouble when it is not thinking about how to create sustainability for the organizations it works with and how to encourage that really at every stage. And I would say, like, I've made this mistake in several partnerships that I've worked on and things like that, where I think we have a tendency to think the money is always going to keep being there. We don't need to have all the details worked out. We don't need to have the solid fundamentals of how is this school, how is this thing going to stand on its own feet at some point? And I think in all of the excitement around microschools and the excitement of, like, oh, look at this really cool environment. Look at this really great founder. Look at this really great community that they've built, I think we have, in certain situations, overlooked, like, well, do they have a viable budget?

Is the founder paying themselves a reasonable salary? You know, I don't think anybody gets into this to make millions of dollars.

Michael Horn

Sure, but it should be a sustainable thing you could do for several years.

Raphael Gang

Yeah, exactly. And so what we saw was, you know, a lot of founders doing great things. They had great families involved. Everybody's excited. And then you look at the business fundamentals of the budget, the cash flow, the reserves, the debt, all of those things. And it was really kind of heartbreaking, candidly, because we really felt like if someone had gotten to these folks earlier and someone had really talked to them and engaged with them and been really clear with them about, like, no, this is what it needs to look like. This is how the numbers need to add up.

This is how to do this. And so Allison has spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of emotional energy, I think, trying to be both this kind of firm, but firm support, I guess, to help founders through this process of understanding really what does sustainability look like for you? And is this actually going to help you. Is a loan which is, you know, just debt, basically, is that actually going to help you to get to a better place as an organization, or is that actually digging the hole deeper?

Michael Horn

Yeah, it's really interesting. And is this the right capital for you? I'm glad you guys are pushing on this and helping because this has been a big concern I've had with the space and sort of thinking of spaces. Bill, I want to bring you back in here because it's interesting to me that Building Hope has really been synonymous, I think it's fair to say, in the charter school space for a variety of school financing options, helping create custom facilities for charters, providing discounted services on and on. Right. And really just making it much easier to launch and then operate charters. So why move into the microschool space now and do this pilot like why that I won't say shift, but add on. Right. Of another sort of service that you all are providing in another sector.

Bill Hansen

Thanks Michael. I, you know, just came here a little over two years ago just really with agreement with our board that we really wanted to build on what made Building Hope special the previous 20 years. You know, we really helped Washington D.C. almost exclusively for the first 10 years of our existence. And you know, the low cost financing, the, you know, capacity building, the technical assistance, the construction side of things. And you know, and I really wanted to help us expand out, I think just the national. And again, I'll go back to, you know, former deputy Secretary of Education. I just really, you know, and I'm vice president of the State Board of Education of Virginia and just seeing the national landscape changing and also being a grandparent of 17 grandkids and going through Covid just looking for, you know, more choices, more opportunities, more just innovation in the sector.

Exploring Educational Opportunities and Innovation

Bill Hansen

And so I really worked with our board to look for some adjacent opportunities for us, whether it's in higher education with historically black colleges or the for-profit charter space or even other private schools. But you know, to me the microschool program, it's a little personal to, you know, I've got, you know, one of my daughters with five kids during, you know, Covid pulled her kids out of school, public school system and started homeschooling them. And you know, she was kind of led through a journey of, you know, cooperative schools and working with some religiously affiliated schools a couple days a week. But you know, really it was wonderful to see her entrepreneurial spirit kind of kick in, but also just the like minded, mostly mothers who you know, were trying to do the same thing. And you know, so I just am really grateful that you know, Building Hope, I feel like, you know, really the first 10 years, the second 10 years, also working with really important philanthropic leaders like the Albertson Foundation where I think we've revolutionized what's happened in Idaho and also in the state of Florida where we administer the School of Hope program there. Really just looking to, you know, take our capabilities and you know, large districts like D.C. large states, philanthropy, and just make a deeper impact across the board.

And so just I actually remember our first meeting, at a restaurant at National Airport. You know, and it just, you know, looking to, you know, these like minded folks that are really trying to change the landscape and to really, you know, help build opportunity for just, you know, and to really build upon the, the national landscape, that's just, I just think it's not going to turn around. I think, you know, we just have got to figure out how can we accelerate and amplify and, you know, the demand if it's out there and really bring, you know, different choices to, you know, families that have very different needs and very different approaches to, you know, how they want to educate their children.

Michael Horn

Well said, well said. So we've said multiple times, this is a pilot you're aiming to learn. You sort of dropped in some of those lessons along the way. But I want to more clearly ask the question, so I don't neglect that, of what are you learning? What are the big takeaways, lessons, anything that surprised you, uses of capital to something else. You know, you tell me what's jumped out. Raphael, why don't you kick us off?

Raphael Gang

Yeah, no, I mean, I think the big learnings have been that this business fundamentals question is really the core. And I think the same way it was the core question for the growth of charter schools. It's kind of the unsung story within the charter school sector is the work that folks like Building Hope did over the last 25 years. People don't talk about it, but it's like, yeah, that's how you build the new building. That's how you serve a thousand more kids here and 500 more kids here and all that kind of stuff. And it started, you know, people see the building and think that the building was the thing. It started with the business fundamentals being great. It started with families being there, but them having a really strong operating model and being clear about how they were going to make it work and how they were going to grow sustainably.

Promoting Sustainable Education Initiatives

Raphael Gang

And so I think that's the number one takeaway for me is we need to really think hard about how we encourage that sustainability on the front end. It's really hard once people are operating and if they're in debt or if they're in a bad lease or if they're in a bad situation around their finances, it's really hard to dig out of that, especially at the scale that folks are operating at. So I think we're really thinking long and hard about what does technical assistance look like in the future and also how do we encourage on a kind of more sector wide basis. And I think this is where thought leadership and some of the work that we're excited to do with Building Hope and the team comes in is how do we communicate what we're seeing? Like, this is what a good budget looks like, this is what a good net income looks like. This is what pricing and tuition models need to be. And there's people that have been doing this kind of work in charter schools and in private schools, right? You've got folks like, you know, Charter School Growth Fund and things like that. And you've also got folks like the Drexel Fund in the private school space that have done great work in both of these worlds around, like, how do you help people start strong? And I think what's really great about this is we now have data, we now have really strong data that tells us what does it look like to start strong and where we go from there. I think the other thing that I would say has been a big insight is that there's clearly demand.

Like people want this and people are excited about this. 250 interest forms, we had a hundred people on the webinar. We've gotten continued interest pretty much every week. We're getting people signing up and being like, when's it going to reopen? When's this going to happen? When's that? So I think we've found, you know, that was a question that I got internally is like, is anybody going to show up to this? Like, is this, you know, like, who's going to come to the party? And I was like, well, I'm not sure, but we're going to find out. And I feel like we had, we had a good party. We had a lot of people come to the party. And I think that feels really validating. And so the question is what? You know, how do we make that a great party where everybody leaves feeling great and feeling like they got what they, you know, they got some good food, they got some snacks, they're feeling bellies full, but they're not waking up the next day hungover, right? They're feeling good about where this thing is going to head.

Raphael Gang

And so I think that that feels really validating and good to kind of build the base of it. And I think the last thing I would say is that, you know, this project doesn't happen without the partners that we have. We had a bunch of partners that came together, the Curry Foundation, Building Hope, our team. But there's a lot of folks that were in this that were doing this work. You know, the Wildflower Schools foundation, they have been operating their own loan fund. We learned a tremendous amount from them about how they operate that fund and what is, you know, what does it look like? So we've been fortunate to kind of build on the backs of the work that Building Hope has done to date with charters and things like that. And so it's about learning lessons, but how do we really take those lessons and apply them appropriately to this very niche kind of group of people who, I think, for a long period of time, have essentially operated outside the needs of, like, actually getting capital.

Like, this is a very scrappy group of people. I mean, Bill's daughter included, right. Of like, you know, it's like, these are not people that call themselves entrepreneurs. They're not people that are like, I'm going to go out and build the next, you know, name your favorite school. Right. These are folks that were like, my kids were suffering during COVID and this is not working.

I need to build something better for them. And they didn't really realize it until after the fact. It's like, oh, there's like, 25 kids showing up at my house every day. Or, you know, we're doing something. Yeah. But to take that and that energy and turn it into a fundamentally sound business, I think that's the kind of head space that we're. You know, I think we're actually talking about really, like, change management. We're talking about changing people's identities of how they look at themselves.

Raphael Gang

Because a lot of the folks we're talking to, they're like, why would I need a loan? I'm not a. You know, I'm not a business. I'm not a. I'm not. I'm not one of those fancy people on Wall Street. I'm a mom who built something for my kids, and it just grew a little bit. And you're like, well, you got revenue in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You're looking like a business to me. So I think that's a big part of it is how do we help guide people through that process of something that's very different and make sure that they're ready for it. Right. We're not trying to set people up for failure. We're really trying to help people. But that's a big change for people to go through mentally and business wise.

Michael Horn

No, that makes sense. So let me ask a few lightning round questions as we start to wrap up here. And the first one would be, you both have mentioned other partners at the table, right? You mentioned Vela. You mentioned the National Microschooling Center. There's Wildflower. You mentioned. There's KaiPod. Right.

That will support entrepreneurs launching microschools. They're all doing different pieces of the puzzle. How does this vehicle fit in with all those different partners?

Raphael Gang

Yeah, I can go. I think we see it as an accelerant for everything that everyone else is doing. We see it as fuel on the fire. Right. Where we're adding a new perspective that hasn't really been at the table to date. Right. Wildflower has been doing it for their own folks. But we want to create something that really influences the sector and says, hey, this is what strong, sustainable microschools, or micro ventures, whatever they call themselves are.

Loan Partnership for Scalable Growth

Raphael Gang

And we chose this to be a loan, not a grant, because we know Vela is doing incredible work around that. And we wanted to do something that was really scalable and that we could grow. And that's why we were looking for a partner like Bill and the Building Hope team, because we knew that it was, you know, I might have my own kids and love, want to send them to a microschool, but I am not a finance expert. And we need, we need the expertise that these folks that the Building Hope team brings if we're going to really make a dent across the sector and make, you know, entrepreneurship available to so many more people.

Michael Horn

And I'm curious, Bill, from your perspective, like, another lightning round question of, like, who else should be at the table, you know, philanthropically? Like, what. What else do we need? What are the missing lanes that you're observing? You've seen lots of sectors, both in K12 and higher ed crest, and either make it or not. What. What other things should we be looking at?

Bill Hansen

It's both, you know, breadth and depth. I think as we learn, you know, it's gonna. We're gonna need to go deeper. You know, we're just, you know, one spoke in the, you know, the wheel of, even in the, you know, financial, operational and services side of the house, and I think philanthropy as well. And, you know, one thing we've learned too, I just think, and again, I really appreciate what Raphael said about, you know, just even the outreach to get this thing launched. You know, we did not run a national campaign.

We wanted to keep this manageable. We didn't want to tip over. We wanted to make sure, you know, that we were able to, you know, get a learning process in place. But, you know, but just a couple of things. You know, I don't think we had a viable applicant out of Texas or Florida, for example, but, you know, Virginia, which, you know, again, my home state is not a very positive charter school state. It's usually in, you know, the DRF category. And, but, you know, it's actually been at the lead here in terms of what we've approved. And I think that that's also going to be, you know, as we kind of dig into this, you know, I think we're going to see some things maybe geographically that, you know, will really lead us to different types of partners and, you know, where we are geographically and you know, possibly as well with, you know, I think there's, you know, just a strong infrastructure of, you know, women owned businesses, you know, leaders that I think that is a key to this sector.

And so I think, you know, there's going to be a lot that we're going to learn that might draw in, you know, those folks that, you know, maybe it's also maybe the SBA or, you know, some federal or state or other type of partners that could come into this. And, you know, just one other area too. I still feel like the regulatory beast out there of what these entrepreneurs have to overcome is an area as well where I think just getting some of that and, you know, Building Hope does that to some extent. But there's a lot of other regulatory and other challenges that are out there that I think could, you know, really attract some other partners to really help bring these and, you know, playbooks and whatnot to, you know, the entrepreneurs out there.

Michael Horn

Amen to that. Amen to that. Okay, last question, which probably just a one word answer, but you may both have a little bit more, which is you've done the pilot. Will there be another fund? Are we going to pony up for more?

Raphael Gang

Fingers crossed, yes.

Michael Horn

Fingers crossed, yes.

Raphael Gang

Yes. That is the goal. That is our goal that we want, we want to see that we want to make this even more available to more folks. And if anything, we want to go further on things like technical assistance, make it easier and faster for people to get feedback and be ready for capital.

Michael Horn

Terrific stuff. Terrific stuff, Bill.

Collaborative Growth: Foundational Years Ahead

Bill Hansen

Yeah, just the same, I just, you know, and again, I think getting the proof of, just to where, bringing other businesses and entrepreneurs, nonprofits, you know, to the table is going to be critical. So, I just, and again, I think the, hopefully the horse is out of the barn on this and, and just, again, if, how we can corral that and marshal the resources and the partnerships to really help us get where we all want to be in the next three to five years. And I do think the next three to five years are going to be really important in setting the foundation for this movement. And so just I agree. I should have just stopped the fingers crossed as well, but.

Michael Horn

No, but it's a critical time. I appreciate the role you both are playing, not just obviously with this fund, but throughout the whole ecosystem as we think about getting the structures in place so that this is not just sort of a small part of the offering, but it's a bigger part of the menu of choices that families have to make the progress that they need for their kids.

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Callie Riley of Cambiar Education, Ashley Beckner of Lemnis, and Matt Haldeman of DCDO join me to explore the evolving landscape of funding mechanisms for education organizations. Our conversation dove deep into the limitations of traditional nonprofit and for-profit funding pathways, as we highlighted how new, creative financing models can unlock greater impact, sustainability, and innovation. The guests shared insights from their respective organizations and discussed the need to expand the “menu” of capital options, especially for nonprofits navigating growth and scaling challenges. I see this as the beginning of a series of important conversations we need to be having—and hopefully we’ll see more of these folks discussing this in other venues over the next couple years.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. You're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose, which we are not anywhere close to, sadly. But the folks that we're going to talk to today are dedicated to helping create that world. We're going to hear more about that. But I want to give a little bit more of an intro than I normally do to these conversations because we're going to be talking a lot about the mechanisms for funding education organizations, both for profit and nonprofit. And as I see it, those mechanisms have expanded in some creative ways over the last several years.

Exploring Nonprofit vs. For-Profit Paths

And yet, in my view, there are still too many limitations from the available funding vehicles that exist that sort of constrain or compel these organizations to act in certain ways that either might not be in their interest or frankly, the interest of the positive impact that they hope to ultimately have. I've written about this before (see here). If you subscribe to my substack, you've read it. But I'm also not the only one who feels that way. And our three guests today are all working to offer different forms of financing in the market to really achieve a variety of aims. And our purpose today is to start to unpack how enlarging the pie for these different vehicles and introducing these different types of funding models can help several different groups. One of those is existing nonprofits in the education space. A second would be founders or entrepreneurs who are starting an education organization.

And they feel like they have to debate between non profit on the one hand and for profit, and then feeling like if they go for the for profit route, that that necessarily implies that they're going to have to take VC money at some point. And then the third, of course, is funders themselves, folks looking to deploy capital and get some combination of perhaps market returns and, or impact, whether philanthropically or through some other vehicle. And our purpose in today's conversation is really to unpack at a high level the opportunities for each of these folks, why the work that my three guests are doing could be exciting, why the status quo perhaps is a little too limiting and, and understand if these visions, you know, if, if what they're painting is so exciting, why isn't it happening quicker? What are the barriers to really realizing them? And I will say all of us, all four of us in today's conversation, we hope that if you're tuning in, if you're listening and you get excited by any of this, or you have questions about any of this that you'll reach out so that we can continue and frankly deepen the conversation significantly. Because I think it's fair to say that we all believe that there are some really exciting organizations that exist today that are doing breakthrough work on their teams that would benefit from alternative capital sources or structures and that there's going to be new organizations to come that could benefit from these things as well. And some folks might be very happy also with the status quo. This is not a sort of anti, it's a how do we enlarge the pie conversation. So with that as a longer prelude than usual on the show, let me introduce our guests. We've got Callie Riley.

She's the managing director at Cambiar Education and nonprofit education venture studio that is focused on student success for all. Cambiar has a goal of enabling a life changing impact for 1 million of the most vulnerable youth through their efforts. They do this through both supporting entrepreneurs to develop, pilot and scale their bold ideas, as well as to directly run initiatives that they do that build entrepreneurship, critical partnerships and innovative communities. So, Callie, great to see you. Thanks for joining.

Callie Riley

Thanks for having me, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. And then our second guest is Ashley Beckner. She's managing director at Lemnis, a public charity that was recently established following the sale of the majority of NWEA's assets to HMH. Lemnis envisions a future of the unlimited learner where every young person can thrive in a time of dramatic change. Certainly describes right now. And they invest in and partner with organizations that share a vision for this future. So Ashley, good to see you.

Ashley Beckner

Thanks Michael. Excited to be here.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, I'm glad to have you as well. And then our third is Matt Haldeman. He's the founder of DCDO, which stands for Dot Com Dot Org. It's a mission-driven organization that invests exclusively in nonprofits. And DCDO recently partnered with Lumos capital to help 501c3s increase their impact by transitioning into a public benefit corporation or spinning out a separate for profit entity. So Matt, great to see you.

Matt Haldeman

Thanks, Michael. Looking forward to the conversation.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And hopefully you all feel that way at the end of it as well. So let's, let's dive in. I actually want, like I said, a bunch of words, but I'd love you to deepen what I just said and in the introductions of each of you and talk really about the models that you've set up or are in the process of setting up and really the mechanics of how they work, who they're for, and so forth. Why don't we go in order of how I just introduced you, Callie, Ashley, and then Matt.

Student Success Through Nonprofit Investment

Callie Riley

Thanks Michael. I'll try to make this as short as I possibly can without all of my normal slides. So Michael gave a great introduction overview of Cambiar and my portfolio at Cambiar is focused on enabling 20 million students to experience directly or indirectly nonprofit-developed, high-quality instructional materials leading to increased positive student outcomes, particularly at the margins. So we're doing this by investing in key nonprofit HQIM developers to demonstrate the impact and increase the scale of their products and services as well as strengthening the sustainability of their organizations overall because we believe they're critical to keeping the sea level of quality high in the curriculum ecosystem. So critical to this has been the development of our Impact First HQIM Accelerator Fund officially launched this year, which has a range of investment vehicles that we can stack to provide long-term, patient, cost-effective, flexible capital to support scaling and sustainability of the nonprofits we support and incentivize key behavior and business shifts. So these vehicles include that we are able to stack operating grants, which use more flexible catalytic dollars to build capacity for newer but essential business operations, exploratory efforts such as early R and D for new products, convertible grants—so used primarily to drive shorter-term revenue, profit growth like new product development, new strategies essential to high growth opportunities, core operational shifts in their business models but with near-term metrics to drive innovation on time delivery and budget efficiencies and then two vehicles to support longer-term plans and strategic initiatives that are essential to impact scale and sustainability. The first is low-interest term loans never above half the market rate with very favorable repayment terms used primarily to fund organizations within their risk adjusted debt capacity. And the second is a recoverable loan so used primarily to fund organizations beyond their debt capacity.

And again, we combine those together. We engage in a pretty intensive strategy —operational financial diligence—with organizations that meet our pipeline criteria. So nonprofit core HQIM is starting an ELA in science right now to assess their long term plans, corresponding to the need debt capacity to create that package that we believe will help them reach their long term goals. And I'd be remiss that I didn't mention, too, that as part of the way we think about our investment package, we're also providing support in the way of complementary research and evaluation investments for all those who we invest in so they can help them demonstrate their impact and efficacy of their products and services as well as technical assistance and capacity building for the duration of our multi year partnership.

Michael Horn

Awesome. Actually before Ashley, you get in just two quick follow-ups there.

I think it's interesting the research piece because that's a huge hole we always hear is right like entrepreneurs, they want to show the impact but they can't. So I'd love you just to quickly double click on what that looks like and then the second one is on the loans that you're offering. You said long-term planning. Long term. Right. Sustainability. Like what are the timelines of those loans typically?

Callie Riley

Yeah, so I'll take it from the loan. And so those are looking at five year loans but not with principal repayment until after that five year mark. And so I think that's critical when we talk about this idea of favorable terms too and below market rate. So right now we're pegging that at 3%. And then on research and evaluation we just think having a strong, incredible evidence base to demonstrate impact of products is so incredibly important and needed in the field. We're hearing more and more of that from systems leaders. And so we are about to actually contract with a common evaluation partner that will work with every single organization that we have in our portfolio to design those research studies hand in hand. We'll have intensive co design, there'll be multi year studies and also allow us to think about trends across the portfolio and what we're learning to share out with the field about what we're learning, what we see and hopefully to really galvanize additional funders to invest more in R and D in the long term.

Michael Horn

Fascinating. All right, Ashley, sorry to jump in there before you get your answer, but I'd love to hear what you all are doing.

Ashley Beckner

All good, all good. I liked hearing it as well. Well, as you mentioned in my intro, Lemnis is a public charity that invests in mission aligned organizations dedicated to supporting this future where every learner can thrive in a time of dramatic change. And our approach in general was formed out of our board and our leadership team's experience running this large-scale nonprofit and thinking about kind of the type of capital that would have been helpful to them over the years to expand their impact. So I lead our Lemnis Collective, which is a specific area of the organization that brings those mission aligned organizations, both for profits and nonprofits, wholly under the Lemnis umbrella through mergers and acquisitions. Our goal is really to provide patient capital, long term stability, operational and strategic support and really allow organizations to focus on their mission, growth, impact and innovation and just be kind of an alternative capital source for orgs that may not fit with or may not want something that, that you talked about up front. The more traditional sources of capital. We're generally looking for partners with between 10 and 100 million in annual revenue, I know that's a pretty wide range.

Nonprofit Growth and Community Impact

Ashley Beckner

And when we're talking about nonprofits, we're really talking about earned revenue and thinking about business models where they want to leverage our capital for investments in growth and R and D. Right. So we're really looking for sustainable impact that we can supercharge with growth and innovation capital. And then from an impact perspective, as we think about the future of the unlimited learner, our team and our board has put a ton of thought and just kind of what we believe the world needs for that future. And one of the key things that we keep coming back to is really an emphasis on belonging and community, really creating that foundational component of holistic sense of well being that learners can build from in order to thrive and then helping learners build kind of those durable skills that stick over the long term as we enter this, well, I don't know if we're entering, if we're in it, but this time of dramatic change.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Again, I'll Matt, before you jump in, just a couple of follow ups. Ashley. One—so the 10 million to 100 million, like just so people are clear, that means not that you fundraised that last year, but that you have like a recurring model that charges customers, in other words, and is bringing that in. Is that right?

Ashley Beckner

Correct? Correct. Recurring revenue. Yes.

Michael Horn

Okay. And then the second question is when you talk about belonging, community, durable skills, is that across the education ecosystem, is that like, like as opposed to HQIM, which is K12 focused, are you looking at a K12, higher ed, workforce, like where do you draw those boundaries?

Ashley Beckner

Yeah, thinking about it pretty expansively. So definitely across K12, higher ed and workforce, when we think about belonging and community and the kinds of experiences and opportunities that we want to support learners with, a lot of where we think we can add value there, starts more in adolescence. So we talk about learners ages 10 to 26. But we know that, you know, many companies and organizations who operate in K12 don't decide that their work starts at the age of 10. So we're really open across that spectrum.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, Matt, dive in. Your turn to talk about what you are up to.

Matt Haldeman

Great. So 20 years ago, I'm a classroom teacher in the Bronx and I'm teaching a 14 year old how to read and we're sitting side by side and we're reading Hop on Pop. And he takes the book and he slams it on the ground and he says, Mr. Haldeman, this is a book for babies. And I totally understood why this teenager didn't want to read Dr. Seuss, but it was the only book I had in my whole classroom library that was at his level. And two years ago, I was introduced to this amazing nonprofit organization called Story Shares that had a library of books to solve the problem. Basically beginning decodable readers, but with themes and protagonists that would appeal to older students.

And I fell in love with the organization. And the founder of this nonprofit had a million great ideas, but she needed capital to make them happen. And so at the end of 2023, we made a deal. I invested in the company and we transitioned to a public benefit corporation, a mission driven for profit. It was about 18 months ago, and today we're about 50 times larger than we were at that time. It's simultaneously probably the best investment I've ever made. And then the impact that we've had, I'm extraordinarily passionate about. And it was such a great experience that I recently partnered with Lumos Capital.

And if you don't know, Lumos, they're a well respected investment firm. And they focus on education, learning, and workforce development. And together we're looking for investment opportunities exclusively in the nonprofit sector. So we're in search of nonprofit organizations that need some unrestricted capital to dramatically scale their impact. So perhaps leadership wants to go after some new products or develop a new product suite. Perhaps they're looking for additional support with distribution, marketing, or to compete with for profit competitors. Whatever the opportunity, we're looking for those investment opportunities, and then our goal is to both invest and then support the organization as it scales its impact.

Defining Funding Model Challenges

Michael Horn

Very cool. Okay, super helpful. Let's dive in. We did a much longer prelude up front than I'm used to, but I think it was really valuable for folks to start to, like, envision what this can look like. But I want to get a little bit into the problem like you, you know, you're all taking slightly different approaches, right, to these questions of different sources of capital, different structures for organizations. And I'd love us to start to like, define what is the problem that in your mind we're trying to solve. I talked a little bit about limitations of existing funding models, but like, let's sharpen that. What barriers do those actually create? And what is the status quo as you all see it, and why is it important to start to change that? In specific, Matt, maybe you lead off on this and we'll work backwards.

Matt Haldeman

Sure, sure. So the way I think about the status quo is the following. I bet somewhere there's a non profit leadership team right now. And let's imagine they're gathered in front of a whiteboard and they know what they're doing is working. And they say, all right, what are our strategies to scale this, significantly scale this? So they get out the whiteboard and they write sources of capital on the top and they write two things. So number one, they write earned revenue, and number two, they write philanthropy and they're done. They're like, all right, those are the two levers we have to really, to really raise capital.

And I think those are two great options. But really, maybe there are 10 options. And included in that list should be debt, joint ventures, mergers, IP licenses, revenue sharing, partnerships, and transitioning to a public benefit corporate operation. For my ultimate goal is to see that list of levers grow from 2 to 7, 8, 9, 10, that kind of thing. And when you talk, you asked about limitations, and when I tell people what I do around non profit investment, they usually expect me to say something like, oh yeah, the for profit model is just better. It's more nimble, something like that. And let me say really unequivocally, it's not. I've seen great performing non profits and great performing for profits, and I've also seen low performing on both sides.

But there are trade offs to both and there are limitations to both. And let me just talk, I'll just name three limitations to the nonprofit model. So number one, unless they have huge amounts of cash in the bank, most non profits can't operate at a loss over multiple years. For example, if you're in a really crowded space and you're trying to offer uber competitive pricing to build out market share, that can be a challenge. So that's limitation number one. Limitation number two is that most of the time nonprofits can't raise large amounts. I'm talking about seven or eight figures of unrestricted capital to finance a pivot or enter a new market or something like that. And then the third limitation is that nonprofits by definition can't give employees a chance to be owners in their own organization.

So at the end of the day, that's what we're looking for. We're looking for non profits where one or more of those limitations is getting in the way of them scaling their own mission.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. And it occurs to me as you're going through those, at least the first two, Callie, you're also like tackling that. So maybe you jump in next and then Ashley come in after that.

Callie Riley

Yeah, I was going to say I feel like what Matt named is also part of what we're trying to solve for. So obviously we're starting with high quality instructional materials, but really we're thinking about nonprofit financial sustainability overall. So we believe that sustainability and scalability, at least in the HQIM industry, requires patient long term growth capital that nonprofits don't typically have access to as Matt named. And it makes competing at scale really challenging. And we see those challenges as coming in really about four forms. One is that growth capital there's nowhere limited access to growth capital or equity like investments to support scale. Typical growth capital has meaningful potential returns to offset risk. Long term patient capital is not readily available to fund the investments needed to successfully scale an HQIM.

The second is access to debt. We think debt is really important. Existing standard market debt instruments beyond working capital lines are just not an optimal fit for most nonprofits in HQIM or I would argue most of the education ecosystem because there's limited ability to generate returns on capital over a short term period. Standard payback periods are too short, market interest rates are too high. I mentioned how we're trying to peg our terms too. The third is around innovation. The ability to drive impact through innovation and timely reinvestment we see as muted like limiting many organizations ability to compete with for profit counterparts.

So that means resource allocation decisions are made without the benefit of long term planning. This one is really key is that we want them to be able to make great decisions with enough time. Right. And creating and scaling HQIM requires a long investment cycle infrastructure. We're talking several years and then finally is around philanthropy. So philanthropy has historically funded projects versus business plans and funding for projects that include innovative product development are absolutely critical. However it doesn't associate or cover the costs associated with scaling and building the infrastructure like sales, marketing, partnerships requires significant capital and time to operationalize and succeed. So I feel like Matt is, we're kind of overlapping here in terms of the problems we're trying to solve from slightly different vantage points.

Michael Horn

Yeah, super interesting. I could go deeper but let's like Ashley, I want to get your voice in this as well.

Ashley Beckner

Yeah, I agree with everything that has been said so far and we'll touch on nonprofits for a minute but since the other folks have shared also we'll dig more into what the challenges I see around the for profit business model as well.

Michael Horn

Yep.

Expanding Creative Funding Solutions

Ashley Beckner

So similar to other folks I don't think there's any like specific problem with the capital tools that exist today. It's more that it's not a universe that is expansive enough for the sector in which we operate. That requires just more creative thinking and in terms of how we fund. Michael, like you shared up top too. I've had more conversations than I can count with impact driven entrepreneurs who ask the question like, here's what I want to achieve. Should I be a non-profit or should I be a for-profit? And that essentially means should I raise grant funding or should I raise venture capital funding? And I think to the things that Callie just shared, right? If you're talking about philanthropic funding, there are some incredible philanthropic funders that write big checks and stay around for the long term. But that really is completely dependent on just the people that are there desiring to do that. There's no mechanism that makes term nature happen. On the flip side, venture, you know, there's, there's companies out there that have raised, you know, maybe a round or two from venture.

They've gotten to a certain point and just the nature of the education sector has driven the growth to stagnate. Certain things to happen that create a condition where they're no longer able to access that additional funding. And so they have options on the table. Yes, there's strategic acquisition, but maybe there's more innovation and growth that's possible there with an alternative capital source. And that's really who we want to be. We want to say that if there's still impact there, like we're willing to get behind it and see what's possible with the next phase following this kind of point of growth or inflection that these organizations are reaching.

Michael Horn

And it's interesting off that, like a couple of thoughts occur to me, but one of them, Ashley, is like there's an implication that like there's something untapped in what they're doing or that they could be doing that's apart from the growth question. But they can't access it because the limited growth and you might even say, hey, it's cool if you stay at the 40, $50 million revenue. But what we're really interested in is unlocking this new thing that you could be doing or something with R and D or something like that. Is that the right way to think about why they would get exciting to you?

Ashley Beckner

Exactly. I mean, I think we're thinking about impact and I don't think that impact only comes in the form of a billion dollar company. Right. Like, let's keep those smaller solutions alive in the places where they make sense. And we can do that. And unlike forms of cap, other forms of capital, our commitment isn't time bound.

Michael Horn

It's super interesting. And Callie, it seems to me like your answer to some of that is, well, we're giving the, for the nonprofits that want to stay as nonprofits, we're giving you an avenue to fruitfully do that. It's not that the for profit structure might be wrong for you, but if you go through the trade offs and you feel like no nonprofit's still where it's at, we're at least creating a vehicle that. Is that the right way to think about like the three of you almost as a menu?

Callie Riley

Yeah, for me, I mean, Michael, I think that's a really good observation and just like kind of stringing us together because we want them to be able to have the right capital to make those decisions and what's right for them ultimately in the long run too. And so we'd love for these nonprofits to stay nonprofit. We think they have incredible value. But if they need to move in a different direction eventually after we, you know, kind of end our very long term, multi year investment, that's up to them. But we want them to be able to make those decisions in the right way.

Michael Horn

And from positions of strength, I guess so

Callie Riley

100% yeah.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So let's talk about what this could start to enable then. And like, so that's the problem space we're living in. We started to allude to some of what this could unlock for these teams. Ashley, why don't you lead us off? Like what, where do you see this could go if we have these different menus on the table for organizations, what could it start to enable that perhaps is not being enabled right now?

Ashley Beckner

Yeah, I don't think we really know yet because the options haven't been there. So I'm excited to see what's possible with these new forms of capital coming to fruition. I think maybe some choices that have been made historically again where companies have either sold to a strategic or the choices that have been made inside nonprofits for how they get to their next step or haven't been made because they haven't had the capital to do it, that if we start to see new access to capital, I don't know that we know what's possible with that kind of shift.

Michael Horn

Matt, let's get you in here. What do you think this could enable? What's your view of it?

Matt Haldeman

Yeah, I think the really unfortunate thing is that, you know, whether it's business or politics or education, the best stuff doesn't always win. Like typically oftentimes it's this question of how much did you fundraise? And that's how we determine who the winners and losers are. Which means that there's all of this awesome under the radar stuff that kind of gets left by the wayside. Like I'll give you an example. I'm talking to a charter management organization and here's what happened. So a school leader noticed an issue in her school and worked with her team to design a solution within those four walls. It works so well that they spread it throughout the entire school network. Now they have this great battle tested idea.

They know it works and the question is how do we really expand it? How do we, how do we really broaden it? And I love what you said about menu. I really like that we did this as a panel. And one of the things, one of the things I live in fear of is that someone is going to hear about what I'm doing and saying that. I'm saying, well, you know, this is better than what Ashley and Callie are doing or better than traditional philanthropy or traditional venture capital. No, it's a menu. You get to decide what's right for you. But at the end of the day, it really is all about mission amplification. Lumos and I haven't really talked a lot about what we're doing publicly, but internally when we talk about what we're doing, we call it Project Echo.

And the idea is that you take something that works, that under the radar solution and it just kind of reverberates out and out now.

Michael Horn

Very cool. All right, Callie, get in there.

Innovative Nonprofit Financing Model

Callie Riley

Yeah. So I think Matt and Ashley have had great answers so far and I guess I'm just going to double down on the idea that like we're really hoping to continue and start this conversation or continue this conversation about what we do around the messy middle right between grants and traditional debt, especially around nonprofit financing. We're starting an HQIM, but we know that these are pervasive issues around any products and service focused organization that are in critical growth stages where they're building earned revenue, they're building new models that will lead them towards sustainability, but they're not there yet. And so the way that we're functioning is similar to an equity investor. We're investing in an organization's long term vision and plan and sustainability versus those specific projects with targeted outcomes. And so we're just excited about this idea that we're a fund that can provide layered, patient, flexible funding options that address current gaps in the capital markets and allow for that long term planning that we were speaking about earlier and to what Ashley was saying too. Ultimately with the fund, the way that our model is, we're willing to share in the risk with our investment organizations. And I think that's really necessary as we're exploring these innovative financing models is knowing that there is risk there.

But it's the exciting kind. Right. Where we're learning a lot along the way with these organizations about what's working, what do they need in order to really reach sustainability and scale of their products and services in their organizations overall.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And it strikes me on the high quality instructional material space that you've chosen in particular, there's been sort of, I don't want to say consensus, but like growing excitement around that space over the last call it five years and maybe a little bit longer, but without probably you all there and some other funders, it's not clear that the organizations would be, would, would be there to match sort of this burgeoning demand that we see for this space. That's sort of my outside perspective.

Callie Riley

Yeah, I mean I've been really lucky to be in a traditional philanthropic organization where HQIM was one of the big portfolios And I spent many years doing that. But we can see that there was something that was needed beyond. And I think there's a really key part here where it's, we ask a lot of times brilliant academic leaders with these wonderful ideas to become brilliant business leaders at the same time they're trying to grow the organizations without the necessary long term capital and other types of technical assistance and capacity building support. And so I'd like to challenge us all too to continue to think, and I think Ashley and Matt are doing this as well. But like, what does it look like when we think about comprehensive support? It's not just the funding. Right. It really is things like coaching, TA, access to other networks that I think the research evaluation work that I mentioned that make all these investments sing ultimately for the organizations we're supporting.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And I'm excited about what you'll learn from that also. Like, where are the limitations in our current understanding and how can we sharpen that as well as we forward? And it strikes me, Matt, like you've started to like answer some of those questions even in the Story Shares, right? Like in terms of like limitations of the existing structure and then like what you learn as you fund that organization, right, to have started to grow a little bit that may have been missing in the traditional landscape. It strikes me from the outside. Let me ask this question, which is as we start to wrap up this conversation, why hasn't this menu existed historically? Like why have we always defaulted into these couple, two, three categories that y' all named at the beginning? Like why isn't the invisible hand working, if you will, and why do you three need to be there to sort of create this? Or are there certain structural barriers that you all feel like you might be fighting against? I don't know who wants to take that first, but I'm really curious to learn on this one.

Ashley Beckner

I'm happy to. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's a longer podcast about whether any part of the education sector really functions with an invisible hand. But setting that piece aside.

Some of it I think is inertia. And, and what we're accustomed to, right there are tools that have been brought into the sector by people who have brought their own experience into that tool from other sectors. And you know, we're coming from the education sector, but we're similarly bringing our experience to the tool that we want to deploy. And I just think in education that there is often a mismatch between long term impact goals and short term investor expectations, like the time horizons just don't match up. And so we're, we're just really emphasizing like thinking about the long term here and, and really thinking about the long game.

Michael Horn

I think that long game is a really important thing because I was reading something else the other day about like divergence, right, in life outcomes and test scores where they don't predict perfectly. And you're like, what's, what's going on there in the divergence? Short term versus long term indicators. We don't have all the things we would like to know. So super exciting. Matt, dive in on, on this. Why isn't it naturally happening?

Private Capital Barriers in Nonprofits

Matt Haldeman

Yeah, so if I think of my specific use case, right. Private capital investment in non profit organizations. If you think about barriers, you got to think about it on both sides. So you know, what is the barrier for non profit organizations that would be open to private capital investment? And then conversely, you know, why are investors who might be interested in investing nonprofits sort of hesitant? So let's talk about the first one. So in the last year I bet I've talked to hundreds of nonprofit leaders and the big issue is that they're worried they can't find investors who are really good stewards of their mission. So imagine a nonprofit founder probably spent decades on a particular mission. That founder doesn't see a penny of any sale or any exit. And so their big question is, you know, are you mission aligned to what we're doing right now? Loomis and I are, we're talking to a non profit organization and we are not the first organization to approach them about an investment.

But the other offers that they received, they just, they didn't have a problem with the valuation, but they did have a problem saying, hey, is this investor going to care as much about the mission as we do? Then on the other side, the reality is, and Ashley, I bet this resonates with you, the space just actually isn't that large. Right. So there are 2 million nonprofits in the U.S., sounds like a huge number. But then you're looking for nonprofits at a certain scale that have a healthy earned revenue percentage and that also are open to this sort of investment. And the space gets pretty narrow pretty quickly. And then the final barrier, which is true to both, is just complexity of the deal. Right.

A conversion from a nonprofit to a public benefit corporation requires substantially more legal and financial oversight in order to really do it properly.

Michael Horn

Yeah, and that's actually what you just said there also the supporting structures you bring to bear to help those nonprofits. I was thinking that with story shares, particularly in light of what Callie, you were saying, like what else can we bring to the table that would help these orgs? But I want your voice in this as well. Why isn't it happening naturally?

Callie Riley

Yeah. So I'm trying to figure out if I start with my agreement with Ashley or my agreement with Matt. So first I'm going to start with my agreement with Ashley, which is just we're in this for the long run, five plus years with the organizations we fund. So patience is key and it requires focusing on the long game. At the end of the day, that's not typically how a lot of grant making cycles work. You know, kind of long typically is like two to three years. Right. And so this is a very different type of situation that we're entering into with these organizations.

Second, it's just really hard work. And what we found when we were developing the fund was that there weren't clear models in the education nonprofit space that combined the various instrument vehicles that we were wanting to use with success based features to utilize. So we built our own. We keyed off of learnings and insights from other smart people in the for profit nonprofit financing space. We identified ways our funding could help mitigate challenges the growth stage nonprofit leaders are typically facing. But that took a long time to build that model and a ton of pressure testing too. To say is this going to work? And then finally deploying these type of stackable investments requires a lot more extensive diligence, especially in the finance side, and frequent ongoing progress monitoring to know how the organizations are progressing against their long term goals. And that's a lot of capacity that's needed.

Philanthropies typically may have capacity on their investments team, but may not actually be structured that way on their program teams. And so introducing something beyond and especially thinking about the kind of the combination of the vehicles is just really complex to do.

Michael Horn

Really interesting. All right, you guys have shed a bunch of light on this. I'm going to throw a curve ball as we just asked this last question, which is actually anything that you want to comment on or make sure we highlight like closing thoughts, sort of choose your own adventure or if in a next conversation so someone wants to take this farther, ask more questions, put more of these vehicles into action. What are, you know, you can tease something that we didn't talk about that you would love to talk about in a future conversation. Take it anywhere you want. Matt, you look least flummoxed by this, so I'm going to ask you to go first and then Callie or Ashley, you can go, you can go back to clean up, if you will.

Matt Haldeman

Sure. So the for profit space is littered with examples of successful pivots, right? Like Microsoft, YouTube, Yelp. These are all very different organizations than the day they were founded. My favorite example is Slack. If you don't know, that company was a video game company that came up with a great internal tool to communicate. The video game failed, but they had this amazing tool and they circulated it and that's now Slack. And here's my question. I can't think of, maybe other

People can, but why aren't there more stories of successful pivots in the nonprofit space? I find that really fascinating and, and a little concerning. Right. And, and that for me is sort of one of my hopes that what, what all three of us are doing, right? A little bit of capital, a little bit of support that allows a nonprofit leader to make a few mistakes, try a couple things, and really hone in on fantastic product market fit.

Michael Horn

That is a good tease. Who wants to go next?

Callie Riley

I'm happy to go next. A little bit more think time. So first of all, I'm just excited to say, like we're on track to finalize our first two investments and so more to come on that. But that's a big deal for us this year. And so while they're not public yet, I just wanted to share a couple of key learnings so far is that not surprisingly, there's a strong appetite for patient and flexible capital in the nonprofit space. And the key is that pre diligence, relationship building, diligence, risk identification, all those things should ultimately all lead to short term and long term metrics that align with the organization's overall long term vision and plan. And we've just learned that the metrics you land on to determine success and will monitor shouldn't feel like a surprise to the organization's leadership.

Boosting Nonprofit Growth and Sustainability

Callie Riley

At the end of the day, it should feel like business and behavioral changes that they also see as good and welcome pushes and driving them towards what we hope are really aspirational goals around demonstrating impact, increasing scale, increasing sustainability. And another thing that I think just came up earlier is that really strongly believe that providing early support to growing and scaling nonprofits, especially in building comprehensive, multi year integrated financial models, is huge. And I'm not sure that's done enough. This is just really important given that most organizations that are nonprofits are primarily relying on grants in the early years. But as earned revenue models, other things come online it gets more complex and it's just a different level of sophistication and planning that needs to happen. So I guess this is my push for any funders that are in our audience around capacity building. This is a really great place to start and a little bit of money can go a long way in setting them up for long term success. And then finally my plug, I guess.

Michael, love to continue this conversation with anybody. It's really great being here with Ashley and Matt and I think we just want to expand the tent of people who are really excited about this kind of work.

Michael Horn

Love it. Ashley, you get to have the final word.

Ashley Beckner

Yeah, great. Three things I'll hit. One, just want to reiterate what came up in this conversation around capacity or capital plus support. So capital alone isn't enough and really we need to bring a lot of support to the table. Two, I don't want people to listen to this and think like, isn't there already a robust set of actors that describe themselves as patient capital? What I would push on as we're talking about the long game is that the patient capital that exists today isn't patient enough for this sector and we need to figure out a way to get even more patient about what's possible while still emphasizing the importance of sustainable impact and then teasing. What I'd love to talk about in the future is just who else is in this messy middle today? I'm sure they're out there, we'd love to talk to them. And how do we bring more people into it because we all have three really exciting models and we're not going to get it done alone. Right.

Like we're going to need a lot more people around this table thinking about what's possible in this messy middle.

Michael Horn

I think that's an excellent couple points to end on. Right. Like having a broader ecosystem that you all can pair up with and braid funding and et cetera. Right. Will help strengthen the sets of options that we're talking about as opposed to one funder doing this thing and or sort of the status quo for a given organization. And the patience piece I think is really important as well because my observation is people love to talk about disruptive innovation. I love it as well. But then like their example is like the Apple iPhone or something like that as opposed to steel which took like 40 years or something like that for disruption to play out.

And I think we should be thinking in like, you know, many decades for education as well. These are not short term structural challenges, these are long term, embedded systems in the fabric of our communities that were there for good reasons at one time. And as they get rethought like that just takes a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of learnings throughout. So huge thanks. A lot of appetite on my end to continue this conversation. Keep learning and pulling more folks in. But Ashley, Callie, Matt, thank you all for the work you're doing and for all of you tuning in.

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Jorge Elorza, the former mayor of Providence and now CEO of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), joined me to talk about why it’s imperative in his view to support educational choices for families. Jorge talked about his own struggles as a high school student to becoming a law professor. He explained why he thinks that Democrats have lost their way on education reform, the role of governors and other executives in setting a bold education agenda, and the importance of innovations that empower families and bottoms-up solutions, such as education savings accounts and microschools—as well as how the concept of choice aligns with progressive values. The conversation was fascinating—and frankly the only downside to it was some Internet challenges that occurred during it. Despite those interruptions, I think you’ll enjoy the dialogue. I learned from it—and as always, you can read the transcript for anything that’s hard to hear.

Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose, which sadly today remains not the case. But we keep working toward it. And to help us think through that, I'm really excited, actually, for this episode because we have Jorge Alorza, who's the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform. When I got into the world of education, DFER was like it. It was something that we paid a lot of attention to, really excited about. And then Jorge, as you'll hear, wrote a series of pieces, actually, that have caught my attention with the ideas expressed in them and given interviews and so forth to that effect that I thought, hey, something interesting is happening here and important that I want to drill into and understand more. So, Jorge, huge thanks for joining me. Welcome.

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah, it's great to be on here. Thank you for having me.

Jorge’s Journey to the Work

Michael Horn:

Yeah, yeah, you bet. So as I started to allude there, there's a lot of substance that I want to get into. But before we go there, I actually want to start with the personal side of your story and namely your own journey and the path to becoming CEO of Democrats for Education Reform. Because I suspect that the path is not one that know from the outside. People would say, oh, yeah, that tracks. You know, law school professor, mayor of Providence, then CEO of dfer. Talk to us about how you see that journey and how it's made sense from your perspective and in your own personal story.

Jorge Elorza:

Thank you, Michael. So, yeah, if I can, of all places, let me start at the beginning. I'm the son of immigrants, and in my household, from my earliest memories, it was always education, education, education. And, you know, I'd love to say, Michael, that I was that kid that always listened to mom and did the right thing, but I was a bit of a dunce, barely graduated from high school. And, you know, one of the most pivotal moments in my life came my high school graduation. So I barely graduated. I found out I was graduating a week and a half before graduation day. And I'm sitting there, all my friends are celebrating with their families. They're going off to school. I had gotten rejected from everywhere that I applied to. My life was going nowhere. And I had one of those moments where I asked myself, what am I doing? You know, my parents had sacrificed so much. I had let sacrifice blow in vain. And I resolved that I was going to do what I could to turn things around. And it was education that turned my life around. I enrolled at community college. That led me. Then I got a scholarship that it got inner city kids into the state school. That's what got me to college. And then from there, I went to law school, and that set me on this track. So education has always been a core part of, like, who I am and what I believe in. And so I practiced for two years as an attorney, and then I became a law professor. I thought I was going to do that for the rest of my life. I was doing the publishing thing. I had gotten tenure, but there was always an itch to keep one foot in the real world. Right. In the world of doing.

Michael Horn:

Yeah.

Jorge Elorza:

And I was literally minding my business when, you know, the opportunity to run for mayor came up. Folks started approaching me, and at first I was not interested at all, and.

Michael Horn:

But then actually pause there for one second, like, why were they tapping you to run for mayor? Because, like, that doesn't just happen unless you're involved in the community and people see something in you. Right.

Jorge Elorza:

I think a lot of different things. You know, my. My background. I also happen to have a very similar profile to the person who was mayor before me. And so people made a connection. And when I started to see the impact you can have to, you know, move the needle in schools, that's when I got really excited. The interest of. Interested in jumping into the race. And so that's what I did. I jumped into the race. And to be honest with you, I had never been involved in politics, so I wasn't sure or I know what I was jumping into. But sometimes you got to shoot your shot, Trust that you'll figure it out as you go. And that's exactly what I did. I got elected, got reelected, and set out to work on a race, including trying to fix our schools here in Providence.

Michael Horn:

Wow. Wow. And then from there, you finished the time as mayor in 2023, I think it is. And, you know, how does the DFER opportunity come about?

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah. So, you know, I got to tell you that when I first became mayor, I can't say that I came into office waving the ed reform flag, because the truth is, I didn't even know what ed reform was. But, you know, my goal was to fix the traditional public schools where 90% of the kids studied. And over time, you know, I. I came to see just the challenges of reforming these large bureaucratic systems. And over time, I came to believe in and embrace alternatives to the traditional system. So that by the time I left office, I was fully waving the ed reform flag and, you know, calling for the entire district to be charterized here in Providence.

Michael Horn:

Wow.

Jorge Elorza:

And so, and so, you know, I transitioned to the mayor's office. I was term limited. And I remember someone sent me the job posting for DFER that I had never heard of. And I mentioned that to my wife who comes from the ed reform world. And when I told her Democrats for Education Reform, she says, what DFER? And her eyes lit out and she said, you have to look into that. You'll love it. And that started the process. I applied and here I am.

Democrats’ School Choice Imperative

Michael Horn:

Amazing. Amazing. All right, so you get there to, you become CEO. And it feels like to me, the landscape in which DFER was operating at the time you became CEO and it's cloud even felt like very different from say, 15 years earlier when my first book had been published, Disrupting Class. How would you describe the environment in which DFER was operating when you became CEO and sort of its place, if you will, in the ecosystem at that time?

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah, it was a different reality. So DFER was created to, of course, always help policymakers policy wise and politically. And so much of how we operated worked on the assumption that Democrats actually wanted to get something done. But when I came into office, I'm sorry, when I took this position, it had been 10 years since there had been any kind of executive Democratic leadership on education. And so in those intervening 10 years, with the exception of Polis, who, you know, I'm the biggest fan of, with the exception of Governor Polis, there was no executive leadership on education on the left. And so, you know, we had state chapter strategy and approach. And I give a lot of credit to the people who ran those chapters within their state houses. They found places of opportunity. But as everyone who does advocacy will tell you, even under the best of circumstances, it's hard to move good policy. But if the executive is not behind it, it's almost impossible to do meaningful change. And so as an organization, we've taken a step back and, you know, we've been engaging much more with executives. Our theory of change today is that executives are the most important policymakers. They are the ones that set the agenda. They provide the policy guidance, they provide the political cover. And we're working with gubernatorial candidates throughout the country, several sitting governors as well. And what we're trying to do is as much as possible, give them political cover where they need it, but also help them see the opportunities both political and policy wise of embracing a strong reform agenda.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, no, it's a really good point. It's the one I hadn't even thought about in terms of the vacuum that had sort of appeared in the Democrats. But you know, compared to 10 years ago. And Governor Polis is a very good example of someone who is still a stalwart, you know, incredible leader obviously on the issue and to trace back to his own professional background right in the space as well. Of course, in that case, I, I want to jump in then to where you've been leading the organization from a policy and, and sort of what do you put in place standpoint. And you've written a few things that I think have turned some heads and, and, and we'll link to one of them in the transcript in the show notes here. It was a piece on the DFER website titled “It's Time for the Left to Come to the School Choice Table.” And I confess as I read it, there were big sections where I felt like I was reading something that I had written before and like I was like sort of feeling a lot of synergy there. And then there were also some arguments around things that I just didn't know anything about before I read it, frankly, in terms of the history of progressives and some of those things with regards to choice. But I would love you, in your own words, to perhaps share the basic argument behind the piece and the thinking behind school choice and aligning Democrats with it more broadly.

This should not feel as though it's what the bad guys want or something that's foreign to our own principles. We stand for choice in so many other spheres. And the reason why I'm a Democrat is because I've always believed that we look out for the little guy. And I've always believed that if you trust the little guy, if you give families at the agency and the ability to make their own decisions, you know what will happen. We'll make good decisions. And so I think choice very much aligned with our fundamental values.

Jorge Elorza:

Absolutely. And before I jump into the piece, I think it's really important to take a step back and you know, this is my assessment of the world in which we live in today. I believe that we are living to a transitional moment of historic significance. And you know, many leading thinkers are sort of converging around the same point that this is a moment of transition. And Republicans have been a lot faster to react to this moment and perhaps have been flat footed maybe the 15 years though after this last election. This idea that I, you know, it's, you know, the, the logic and the assumption of yesterday, we can't assume that they are going to apply tomorrow is, is real. And so I, I truly do believe that tomorrow is going to look different than today. And while I really appreciate that there are organizations and individuals that are trying to preserve some critical aspects of our existing systems, I also believe that it's important for us to look around the bend and start building what comes next. I think that's really fundamental to everything that we're thinking and that we're working on. And so when it comes to choice, we have always told the party that they're out of step with where their base is on choice. And all of the polling data pulls us up. But like Ben Austin recently said, you don't need polling data. It's like it's so intuitively true, right? Of course it is. And what exists today, that never existed in the past was a political imperative for Democrats to approach education differently. So 10 years ago we had a 26 point advantage on education in terms of voter trust, Democrats over Republicans. Today there are a bunch of different polls on it, but we're underwater. It's not a winning issue for us. And so in this new reality, you know, the truth is that with, with, with voting groups that have drifted away from the party, I'm talking about working class, Black and Brown. This is yet another 80/20 issue that Democrats are on the wrong side of. So I believe that there is a political imperative that exists today around embracing forms of choice that just didn't exist in the past. We never paid a political price for it previously. So with all that said, you know, we're out to make the case that, you know, there's nothing to be scared about with choice. And I think it's really important for Dems, you know, forget what Donald Trump wants [...] Let's come up with our own proactive education agenda. And you know, when I think about choice, we're talking about empowering communities, empowering parents. There's nothing more progressive than that. You know, we're talking about bottom up innovation. This isn't just about the demand side of things where you enhance families purchasing power so they can send their child to a private school. It's also the supply side. We're seeing this in places that have well established ESA programs. These rich ecosystems of bottom-up, community-driven, startup-style innovation in the form of microschools, unbundled learning, you know, start to take hold. That's all exciting and those are all things that appeal to left of center sensibilities. And so this should, this should not feel as though it's what the bad guys want or something that's foreign to our own principles. We stand for choice in so many other spheres. And the reason why I'm a Democrat is because I've always believed that we look out for the little guy. And I've always believed that if you trust the little guy, if you give families at the agency and the ability to make their own decisions, you know what will happen. We'll make good decisions. And so I think choice very much aligned with our fundamental values. And I'm excited about, you know, continuing to make the case and connecting with others who feel the same.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I mean, that notion of trust, agency, and then the ecosystem you're unleashing on the supply side, that, that all resonates with me. I want to come back to it in a moment. You mentioned the politics side of it, which I think is a really interesting point, and it cuts a number of ways. You talked about the, the changing poll numbers for Democrats. You talk about in the red states where they've passed education savings accounts laws that progressives actually, I think, arguably are taking more advantage of microschools than are the conservatives in, in, in, in many cases. Right. And they're really excited about it. You talk about, frankly, what, what I've felt is that in some ways, if Democrats don't embrace choice the way you've just articulated, it could be akin to the Southern strategy that Republicans had In the Nixon era that turned off black and brown voters for several decades. In some ways, like, it could be that sort of big mistake. I'm curious if you see that similarly, or am I overstating things perhaps there?

Today there are a bunch of different polls on it, but we're underwater. It's not a winning issue for us. And so in this new reality, you know, the truth is that with, with, with voting groups that have drifted away from the party, I'm talking about working class, Black and Brown. This is yet another 80/20 issue that Democrats are on the wrong side of. So I believe that there is a political imperative that exists today around embracing forms of choice that just didn't exist in the past.

Jorge Elorza:

So I do believe that Democrats have begun to pay a political price for being out of step with their own base on education policies. And that's something that we have to take seriously. The working class, while the working class, they relied disproportionately on government providing them options to grade schools. And so I mentioned my own family back, my family background, the time I remember. Education, education, education. If we're talking about these communities, these voters that are drifting away. No, they disproportionately care about education. You know, it's only, it's just smart politics to align, you know, to align our policies with what, with what they want. But it's not just political, it's also policy wise. It's hard to make the case that what we've been doing on education is delivering for families. Yeah, I say it all the time. Providence today, if you can believe this, to name Providence, only 2.4% of high school seniors at traditional public schools can do math at grade level, 2.4%. That's indefensible. Every Democrat should be outraged, yet we just don't see the sense of urgency around it. Providence, frankly, is no outlier. The same situation is repeated in city after state. And we just need a different approach. We need new ideas. We can't be afraid of them, particularly when, you know, in my opinion, there's nothing inherently conservative or Republican about choice. In fact, I think it's deeply progressive.

A Full Vision of Choice

Michael Horn:

Yeah. So let's get then into this where you just took it, which I think is right on the substance. Right. Which is, and you really do embrace a full vision of choice. In the article you listen to yes, charters, but education, savings accounts, microschools. And it seems to me it really fits nicely into an abundance agenda that's gaining some steam on the Democratic side at the moment. But also from an innovation perspective, it just seems to me like we're going to be unleashing forms of schooling and reaching students with all sorts of personalization and supports that we can't even imagine at this point. If we, if we continue to follow this down, how do you see it playing itself out and what, what's, you know, what are you most excited about I guess on that menu, if you will, of lots of choices starting to come down the, down the pipeline.

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah. What I'm most excited about is you know, the factory model of schooling, very top down, literally to standardize, not meant to meet the birth and individual needs of every child. And you know, it was designed to efficiently rank and sort and over the years we've just sort of accepted this year after year to the point that it's become unquestioned tradition. But education doesn't have to look that way. It can look very different. It can indeed be bottom up innovation. We don't have to wait for, you know, a bureaucrat and central plumbing to, to innovate and come up with a new idea. Let's open it up so that people can start new and different schools. So this microschool movement, and you're 100% right that most founders of microschools, they're, they're likely Democrats, they're likely, they're likely progressives. And you know, they're designed from the outset to meet particular needs, diverse needs of that community. So I love this idea of being bottom up also inside the classroom. It doesn't have to be one teacher and X number of kids, every child. We don't have to move them along in age based batches like we do on an assembly line. Let's try new approaches in the same way that, that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson mentioned in their book, you know, in the later chapters they, they stress a great deal about how the left in general we have under an accelerating progress and the only way that you get good at innovation is by innovating and trying and by, and trying and by iterating. And so we've, you know, we have, we have inherited A very sort of stodgy, very rigid system that of course has stagnated. Has stagnated because that's how it was designed. And I'm just so excited about bringing a dynamism to it of innovation, of iteration and, you know, one that is designed from, not to rank and sort and about instruction, but to customize it and personalize it for every child. I can't think of anything more progressive than that.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, you're singing from my playbook when you talk through all this. And I think the iteration point you bring up is a really good point too, because the suppliers that are coming in today, that's not the end state. Right. They can keep getting better and spiraling up. And if we empower families to choose, they can keep pushing them to get better and better and meet their needs and help them make progress as well. I'm curious, like, so that bottoms up energy contrasts in some ways around what used to be the accountability conversation that was more top down. Right. And so I'm just sort of curious like about how you're thinking about accountability and regulations perhaps for different parts of the ecosystem, you know, ESAs and microschools say versus charters versus districts.

Fitting the Pieces Together

Michael Horn:

Because I, I know you're thinking a lot about outcomes and transparency as well as part of your agenda. It's not all innovation. And so like how does this all fit together in your mind? Or do different parts of the system get different types of outcome based regulations or. No. Or just help me learn about how you're thinking about that puzzle.

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah. So this is definitely a challenging space I think that we're all trying to sort through right now. So I think of it in a bifurcated way. I think of accountability with respect to traditional schools. And with traditional schools, accountability means a lot things. It means testing, means data systems, it means holding to the accountable holding students. It means a lot of different things. But when we mean education, I remind that we've been working with governors and gubernatorial candidates throughout the country. And what we stressed is what we'd like to see is just a sense of urgency, right. This idea that low performing schools have been allowed to exist without any push for meaningful reform for years and in some and some occasions for decades. That is unacceptable. And we think that there is a strong appetite, strong thirst among the electorate for someone to come in and just call a spade a spade and show that that sort of like moral indignancy that this is unacceptable and we have to do better. And you know, a lot flows from that. You hire accordingly. You, you know, put them to come up with solutions accordingly. But it really has to come down we to build that and the top source of where accountability for the traditional schools come from. So when it comes to innovative models, I think accountability and the more we sort of box people to various ideas approaches that and put a map and so I think that a really Republican state, frankly that's all slightly different. They're all, no one can say, you know, we have landed exact. But as we advise Democrats, I think it's really important that we look at this through the innovation lens and ask ourselves accountability is certainly important. Let's look at it and the impact that it will have in either stunting or liberating educators ability to innovate in the classroom. Because I think that the steps that are going to transform our traditional schools it comes through it's accountability. And so let's just be conscious that we don't inadvertently stand in the way of the innovations that will lead to the next educational breakthroughs.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, no, and, and in many ways I think to what your point is like true innovation which I define is only when you actually create value for someone. Like if it's just something new, doesn't create value. I don't count it as innovation. That's just stuff. Right. In many ways that actually introduces accountability because it puts that pressure on the system where know families will vote with their feet. I think if it, if it is or isn't serving them and to your point around trusting them, that's a big piece of it. I guess the last question as we start to wrap up here, I'd love you to. So you, you've laid out like a robust set of ideas around the ecosystem we ought to build. And then in the beginning you talked about the political side of it, the politics of, of empowering executives and helping them buy into it and be champions for this. So maybe connect the, the strands now, right. Like this innovation agenda. The executives and the governors throughout the states. How do you start to empower them to make this their vision, give them the air cover they need to start advancing this and, and hopefully frankly like get some ESA laws and some microschools going in some blue states and make it, you know, not just not toxic but like politically exciting to do it.

Jorge Elorza:

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of different ideas and thoughts there. The first is that, you know, we've been, you know, there's going to be 38 gubernatorial elections in the next 15 months. And so we've been reaching out to gubernatorial candidates, building relationships, getting to know them and what we're noticing is that there's a new generation of Democrats that are lining up to run for governor. And more and more we're seeing that they want to lead on education, literally don't know what to do. This is not enough on them. It's really, there's really a function of our party not prioritizing it or thinking deeply about it over the last 10 years. And so there's a void and as much as possible where we're trying to fill that void, we do the outreach. You got to establish trust, build relationships, all of that human stuff. And as you go, not only provide policy guidance and messaging guidance, but also as much as possible, help them see a world of opportunities that comes out of this. And I think that the real sort of transformational, exciting opportunities don't come at the, you know, this policy or that policy level. They come at the, at the systems level. Can we imagine a different system and how do we shape that system to, to advance our priorities? Last thing that I'll say is I think this is really key. Key. You know, we believe in public education. Public education is a, not a particular set of institutions. I think that too many people on the left confuse the two or confuse means for ends. Public schools are one of the means that will help to create an educated populace. There's just no evidence and no, you know, there's a credible case that can be made that you can only create an educated populace through this mechanism. You know, we should be open. This is an abundance approach, you know, outcomes, orientation to whatever means help us accomplish that, that goal of having an educated public. And more and more we, you know, we want not just governors and executives, but our party to see it that way. That you know, education is a goal that we can all. Public education is a goal that we all should all be behind. But the means and how we accomplish that goal, we should be open to whatever moves the needle for kids.

Michael Horn:

Amen. You have me so excited, I can't tell you. I would love to be helpful as you continue this forward. And I'll end with a quote that you had in your piece which was Americans are looking for something different. And yet our education policy has been dominated by establishment thinking. More money to do more of the same, top down mandates, centralized bureaucracy, and insider political alliances that disregard the interests of families, educators and communities. This has to change. I think those were really good words, Jorge. So appreciate the work that you're doing and the passion that you're bringing to it and, and just I, I hope you'll keep us posted as you continue to do the good work across the country.

Jorge Elorza:

Thank you, Michael. Appreciate you.

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Jessica Gelman, CEO of Kraft Analytics Group (KAGR), and Hillary Casson, CEO of UP Education Network, joined me to discuss their partnership designed to connect middle school students with real-world professional experiences. The conversation explores why early exposure to professional environments is crucial for student growth, details the logistics and structure behind successful school-company collaborations, and highlights the mutual benefits for both students and partner organizations.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we're dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I'm delighted we've got two very special guests who do very interesting work in their day jobs and have come together in a very cool partnership that we'll get to talk about. We have Jessica Gelman, she's the CEO of Kraft Analytics Group, and Hillary Casson, who is the CEO of UP Education Network. Hillary, Jessica, great to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

Hillary Casson

Thanks for having us.

Jessica Gelman

Yeah, pumped to be here.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let's, well, let's start with a lightning round just to introduce you both to our audience, the organizations that you both lead. I don't know how many of my listeners will be familiar frankly with UP Education Network or the Kraft Analytics Group. So Hillary, Jessica, why don't you give us a bit about your respective organizations, what you all do so people really can get a sense of the context and a clear idea of the day to day mission of both. Jessica, why don't you jump in first?

KAGR: Data-Driven Sports Engagement

Jessica Gelman

Sure. So, KAGR, we work with sports organizations predominantly on helping them use data and technology to engage and understand their customers better. So at our heart, we're like a data warehouse. So integrating a bunch of different insights about who the customers are and helping with machine learning models and some AI and data integrations. And then we also do a bunch of consulting and some of our clients who the audience might be interested in include everyone from the NFL to the NCAA to NASCAR to, you know, the, I guess here in Massachusetts, the Patriots, obviously. And we spun out of Kraft Sports and Entertainment about nine years ago. So that's kind of the what we do. And it's obviously very data rich and STEM focused.

And I would also just say separately, but connected to this conference or to this discussion. I also co-founded and co chair the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Yeah, very cool. Which people love. Let me ask you this question before I let Hillary get in there. You just said the connection to the Patriots and Robert Kraft, obviously, but how did you get to be CEO of such an interesting organization and such a cool job?

Jessica Gelman

Sure. Well, I've been working with the Kraft family for 23 years. They created a role for me right out of Harvard Business School and I was running many parts of the Patriots business operations and we were using data to again, better engage Patriots and Revolution fans and then, in short, it was very analytically heavy. But I partnered with the Krafts on the creation of KAGR. The original concept was 11 years ago, and then we officially spun out nine years ago. So I think just like from a data perspective, maybe just to share, we touch today over 75 million sports fans across our data warehouses. So, again, the growth of the business and where we started nine years ago to where we are today is something that we're really proud of. And then I'll speak, of course, to the diversity within our leadership team and across the organization and why partnering with Hillary is something that's so important and near and dear to us.

Michael Horn

Well, perfect transition, Hillary. Take it away. Tell us about UP Education Network and your own journey there.

UP Education Network: Revitalizing Struggling Schools

Hillary Casson

Sure. UP Education Network is an organization that manages and runs schools and partnerships in partnership with districts. And we were founded essentially like a restart organization that partnered with districts to propel schools that had been stuck at some of the lowest achievement levels and percentile levels. And we've done that across the state in a number of different regions. And we are different in that we do partner with districts to prove that public school can and must work for every kid. And we're different in that we intentionally really serve communities that have been distanced from resources. Our student need level is a bit higher than your average district, school or charter school. And we commit on behalf of the districts, but even more so on behalf of the families and students, to really propel those schools so that they have an amazing school in their communities that sets kids up for a life of agency and purpose and freedom beyond the time that they're with us.

We started in 2010, and now we have two campuses in Dorchester and serve 1300 kids ages pre K to 8. And our schools, one thing I love about our two schools is that they're walking distance from each other. So we really have a huge impact on this community, in particular. I have, similar to Jess, have been kind of a lifer at up. I started, I moved just because I was so taken by the mission. I moved from Baltimore to help found one of our schools.

Michael Horn

Oh, wow.

Hillary Casson

And, yeah, I didn't know anybody up here, and I was like, I want to work there for that mission and purpose. But I've been here since, that was 11 years ago. And I was an assistant principal, then a principal, and then I was coaching the principals for the network. And now I'm in my second year as CEO.

Michael Horn

And you mentioned the student base is, you know, perhaps lower income, more diverse than a lot of the districts or Charters in the area just give us a sense of who those students are.

Hillary Casson

Sure. The first thing I'll say about our students is that they are just like amazing and so immensely capable and the communities that we work with are so asset rich and phenomenal. But from a demographic purposes, about 93% of our students are coded as high needs, according to state designations, compared to, you know, about a 70% average for charters/public. There's a little bit of variation there, but. And about 40% of our students are language learners, so actively working on building their English proficiency with even higher percentages having a first language other than English. And then most of our students are low income.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Super helpful, yeah, super helpful I think to give us a sense of who you're serving. So in the last year, as I really understand it, like UP education network in existence for 15 years, but you have started to make a very big push to help students get far more experiences with companies in professional settings out in the real world, so to speak. So perhaps before we get into the specifics and what that looks like, just tell me about the why behind that push. Why did you conclude that this was going to be really important?

Preparing Students for Life

Hillary Casson

Sure, I think it was. First of all, it's been so fun and such a privilege. But in thinking about why do that, I really believe that in my position or in any educator's scope, is you're really required to think about how do I set this human being or this group of human beings up for success long term. I believe that the purpose of school is to prepare folks to have a life of agency and freedom and to choose their own path. And ideally that path allows them to, you know, get a living wage, you know, build a family if they choose to, etc. And so what I know to be true, both from life experience, as a person who grew up in a very rural area that had very limited access to opportunity and sight lines, and then also as an educator that we cannot stop preparing kids just at academics. And don't get me wrong, like academics are absolutely essential. Like if we don't at baseline prepare kids academically, we've failed.

And that is not the only thing that kids need to be successful. And I think you look at any person who has attained success and how I'm going to say that is that they're able to feed their family, make choices, have leisure time, things of that nature. There is more happening for them than just academic success. So just thought a lot about, like, what does it take to break down silos and build those skills that help folks long term. And to me, a lot of that is like providing kids sight lines. And so we were like, wow, we are in Boston. Like, what an amazingly asset rich area. Let's get kids exposure, experiences and all along the way help them feel really good about the process.

So that's kind of like the why at a macro level.

Michael Horn

Perfect. Well, let's get into the what before I bring Jessica in and how they started KAGR started to interface with this. What did you create for students? I know you started to create these partnerships with companies so that they would get that exposure, connection, awareness, sight lines. But what does it look like on the ground over the course of a year? What's that student's experience like?

Hillary Casson

Sure. And I have to shout out my colleague and CEO Mike Bauer, who is like the real powerhouse behind the work and made so much of what I'm going to talk about come to life. But in terms of what it looks like, we have essentially like three phases to our process. But I'll speak to the middle first, and that is the experience with the companies. And I very intentionally choose the word experience because Jess and KAGR and all of our other partner companies really do an experience with our kids. So at KAGR, our kids got a chance to look at fan profiles and think about how could they market to these different fans to get them into the arena more to see more games. And they really like problem solved and worked through it as a group and came up with promotional packages that they could then market to these specific fans. They're not sitting and hearing a panel or listening to a lecture.

Experiential Learning Through Company Partnerships

Hillary Casson

They are doing work that is reminiscent of what actually happens at these different companies. And that is a very intentional thing because not only is it more fun and more engaging, but they build a ton of knowledge about the places and they build so many skills that they may not even know they're building in the moment, such as ability to iterate, collaborate, communicate. But that's really a very intentional thing on our part to make sure that the experiences have those elements as well. And then before they go, they research a bit on, you know, who is KAGR, for example, and like, what is market segmentation. So they're not just like, whoa, I'm struck by these terms that I haven't heard before. We give them a little bit of an access point and then afterward they do a reflection on like, what did I learn? What did I like, what am I taking away from this experience and how that's looked this past year is that each homeroom is partnered with a company and has an in-depth experience like that. As we look to the future we're looking to a bit of increase for seventh grade to have two experiences in our eighth grade. We're hoping this year to have it be a multi touch point so that they're also get with one company so that they're able to really build relationships which we know is so critical for social capital.

So it's been so fun and so awesome but again our amazing partner companies have been critical and then Mike Bauer who's one of our staff people here and bringing that to life

Michael Horn

So it'll start to deepen and so forth. Jessica, let me turn to you and bring you in here because when Hillary up education Mike, they first reach out around this partnership idea. I'm super curious like your thoughts. Like I could imagine you saying sounds great in theory but how are we going to find time to have middle schoolers in the building? That sounds a little disruptive or I know exactly how to build this, let's get going, or maybe it's a little bit of A, a little bit of B. But I'm just sort of curious your reaction and then how it sort of played out.

Jessica Gelman

Well, I mean first I need to give full credit to the KAGR team that really led this initiative starting with Alex Freeband, Lissy Harris and Lauren Paquin. And there was others like Molly Murphy and people who dedicated their time. And I would say that our kind of giving back to the community is really focused on supporting people from historically underrepresented parts of the sports ecosystem. And I'll just like we believe very firmly that comfort with analytics and technology can be a great equalizer in supporting, you know, more, more of a meritocracy. So that's just like a starting point and I think even from like the perspective of me as a female leader of a technology and analytics company in sports, which is obviously multiple things that are, I was going to say.

Michael Horn

You're hitting a unicorn there,

Jessica Gelman

Very male dominated, but I, but I, but I think the, the, the differentiator or thing that has enabled our organization to have such impact and influence across sports is that we are helping people think differently and we are attracting into our organization people who care about this mission that Hillary and Mike are spearheading. And so it was more when you know Mike, this is the connection to Mike. So big kudos to him. He reached out to me. Now Mike was one of the student leads of the Sloan Conference. I think like a decade ago.

Michael Horn

No way.

Jessica Gelman

Yeah.

Michael Horn

Wow.

Jessica Gelman

So he reached out and obviously certainly didn't know all of the different things that we already do within the community. But the, but sometimes like this was not one that we would have known about as an example. And I think our relationship and knowing him honestly, I think it's the 20th anniversary of the Sloan conference this year and I think he may have been in like the fifth or sixth year, so like a long, long, long time ago. So to me, knowing him and his like views on the world and his care and what he's about and then knowing, you know, what our team and what we care about and the representation also that we have at KAGR, which is also different, like we do have a strong, you know, broader representation, I guess I would say. And I think that it's really important for young people to see people who look like them to and to be able to aspire. And then of course, yes, the context of sports and something that maybe they have or haven't experienced. And incrementally like our offices legitimately look at Gillette Stadium. These are things for middle school aged kids.

I just reflecting back to my own time many, many years ago and what things like that might have done. I never had the opportunity to have that experience. But the concept of see it, be it is really powerful. So I couldn't emphasize and want to support the mission of UP more. That said, it was our team that really was passionate about it and made it come to be. And I think the impact and awareness for everything that Hillary is leading is something that we really care about and want to continue to support.

Michael Horn

Well, so I want to dive deeper a little bit on this point because as Hillary and I know each other, something we've talked about is particularly as the use of AI grows and changes of nature of, work is going to become more unpredictable, rapid changing, et cetera. To me, the connection between school and career actually becomes more and more important than it even has been. Giving students real world experiences, connection. Hillary, you mentioned social capital with professionals like incredibly critical. I also think it's important for companies as you think about pipelines and so forth. But what I guess I've observed, Jessica and I love your take on this and then Hillary as well. It does seem to me that there's some friction in there for companies, as in like you have here and now, to deliver on, you know, projects for clients and things of that nature. Taking time out to have a student who might, you know, benefit a decade hence from, you know, is sort of a, it takes you a little bit off the pathway, if you will, in the immediate term.

Obviously it's a good long term mindset, but there is some friction there and I guess I'm just curious how do we have to reduce friction to create more of these partnerships? So it's not, you know, IP claims all the good ones, but more schools can have great partnerships with companies in the area. What does it take on behalf of the school and company to make these things possible? Jessica, why don't you dive in first about it and then Hillary, just jump right on in after.

Jessica Gelman

I mean I think one of the biggest hurdles is transportation and being able to get to the locations. And it was actually one of the biggest things that I thought about, worried about because they're based in Dorchester and we're in Foxborough and so that was something that I asked about immediately and they had a solve on there. They had thought it through already. And so I think once I knew that that big hurdle was crossed, my thinking and expectation is like, okay, they know what they're doing. This isn't going to be, we're going to just have to deliver the solution. There isn't going to be the incremental hand holding or helping them think through what I would call are the tactical operations of doing. And that's really important because as you're saying, time is of the essence. It always is.

One of the things I love about the 20 something generation that again in early 30s that was really spearheading it on our part, the millennials, if you will. This part of engagement is so important to them too personally and recognizing kind of the opportunities that they have had and wanting to affect and create change. So I think it's a combination of for UP education, finding the right type of organization. We're a small organization, you know, we're only 75 people. So undertaking something like this is a big, it's big and it is significant. But knowing that the partner that we're working with recognizes that, I mean honestly appreciation is important but also is going to take out some of the friction as you kind of alluded to on the very operational components. Like we don't want to feel like we need to be overthinking food and you know, all of those different types of elements.

Michael Horn

Sure. Hillary, I'd love your perspective on this about what schools can do to make this an easier yes for companies and maybe so we've just heard about the logistics. The other aspect that strikes me is like meaningful experiences that you alluded to, right, where you're doing work either that's actually helpful for the company or, you know, sort of simulating what one would do. But that can also be its own set of distractions. I could imagine for a company to like sit there creating stuff that middle schoolers are not going to be immediate contributors on all the time. So how do you think about that?

The Role of Education Partners

Hillary Casson

Yeah, it was a bit of trial and error at first, but what we kind of think about and have tried to lean into is the idea that it is our entire job to look ahead to the future and kind of and think about like, what do we need to do today to prepare kids for tomorrow. So, you know, us dedicating a bit of time and resource to this initiative felt really true and core to our mission. So that is kind of a thing that we can bring to companies and say like, hey, we would love to do this with you and we'll try to do as much of the work as we can to make this an easy hopefully yes for you all. And that to Jess's point includes like the logistics. Right. But also includes like, hey, we really know our kids and we really know the types of experiences that will be worthwhile for them and engaging for them. And so we have a team here at UP, spearheaded again by Mike, that helps to design the experiences and takes a real take, really takes the pen on that. We get ideas from the companies for the most part and then we'll create something that will iterate on with the companies.

We basically say like, let us do the lion's share of the work in creating an experience that both matches what the company's bread and butter is. But also we'll meet our kids where they are and hopefully result in an experience that makes everyone feel like this was really meaningful. But if another place or space were to try to scale this, I think you need a person or a team that's going to say, I will ensure that KAGR or whoever you're working with hopefully has a good experience, finds it easy to work with us. I'm responsive, I'm reaching out to them to make sure that, you know, we have everything we need. Everything smooth. And I think that team was really, really necessary for us. And part of the team was leadership at the network and then part of it were school folks. Having those school based champions was helpful as well.

But I have found that that helps decrease friction is like making it light as light as possible.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So last question for you both as we start to wrap up. If that's like the playbook for what schools need to be thinking about what makes a good employer or company for this. Right. Like, what's the other side of the bargain? Hillary, maybe you go first on this, and Jessica, you can wrap it up of like, I imagine not every company would be able to do what KAGR did to take in however many middle school students and give them an incredible experience over the course of the day.

Fostering a Caring Company Culture

Hillary Casson

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the main crux of it is a culture and some sort of ethos that cares about this. And I think a lot of companies do have that and, and really run the spectrum in terms of types of work that they do. But if your company or organization has people that, like, care about doing good, I think that's a huge check right off, right off the bat. And then beyond that, I think it's folks that are willing to, you know, at any level. We've often found a real sweet spot at like, not the very, very junior people, but like, maybe that middle level that are able to give like a couple meetings and then, you know, work with our team. Hopefully not too cumbersome, but a squad of folks that are able to connect a few times and then the best case scenario is something, and Jess spoke about this, that kids can connect to in some way. I think we'd all be surprised at how much kids can connect to and grasp.

Like, I think some people would be like, oh, our company wouldn't be good for that because we're too XYZ often. I think we can make it. But the obvious and easy yeses are a place like KAGR where kids are like, wow. It has the wow factor when you walk in. I mean, who doesn't want to go to Gillette, right?

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Hillary Casson

Also, they do work that had kids. I'm like, oh, yeah, I've watched sports or I've thought about, like, what type of fan I am. I think that's the optimal partnership type. But I do think there's a. There are more folks that couldn't be a fit than can't be a fit.

Michael Horn

Jessica, I'd love your take on this because I'm hearing your company with 75 people, that touches 75 million. I think you said sports fans, like, that's all. That's a high leverage on individuals there that you're getting out. So, like, to have the capacity to bring in a bunch of middle schoolers and I imagine a longer run. Like, you know, we'd love to see these partnerships with high school students, et cetera, et cetera. Like what's the playbook on the company side to make this work?

Jessica Gelman

Yeah, I mean, listen, we've been doing programs like this. We do get requests from high schools. We do get requests from colleges. We host a program in the fall. So maybe this is like an indication of what organizations are ripe for it. We host an organization called. Or, sorry, an event called Koding with KAGR.

Empowering Women in Tech Community

Jessica Gelman

Coding is with a K, but it's a collaboration of data in the next generation. And we invite. Obviously, Boston and Massachusetts are rich with colleges, so we invite all the local women in analytics, women in tech, down to our offices. 75% of our executive team is women. And we host a series of case studies and Day in the Life with our engineers, our data science, and our consultants. And so my point here is that we are doing active outreach to the community. Middle school is certainly younger, but I think for the audience and the importance of reaching this audience, that's something that we really care about. And it was a unique opportunity for us to be able to kind of embrace and engage with a school that size, age, and desire to come down, because it can be.

Honestly, a lot of the lift is just the back and forth communication of timing and things like that. But I think a predisposition, an organization that has a predisposition for doing things like this, which, of course, we have.

Michael Horn

Very cool. I'm excited to share this conversation to my daughters because I think this is going to inspire them on a couple fronts. But look, I know this is like the beginning of a partnership that could go into a lot of really cool ways. And it sounds like there are plans to deepen the connections for the students and create even more experiences over the course of a year. I'm excited to see where it goes. I hope as it evolves, y' all will come back and tell us about it. And just huge thanks, Jessica and Hilary, for the work that you're doing.

Hillary Casson

Thank you.

Jessica Gelman

Thank you for highlighting this.

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Don Soifer, CEO and co-founder of the National Microschooling Center, joined me to discuss the Center’s latest comprehensive report on the evolution of American microschools. We explored how microschools are growing in size, serving a wider age range, and increasingly enrolling students with diverse needs. We also delved into differences between microschools in states with and without Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), the significance and challenges of accreditation, business models and funding, and the dynamic, adaptable nature of the microschool sector.

Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there today, I'm delighted that we have a repeat guest. We don't always have repeat guests on the show, but Don Soifer is someone who I hold in very high regard and so I'm just delighted to welcome him back. As a reminder, he's the CEO and co founder of the National Microschooling Center. He's been in and around the changes in innovation in education, several waves of them, for a few decades at this point.

And Don, I won't go through everything, but it's just, it's really good to see you, man. Thanks for joining.

Don Soifer

Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Microschools Evolving, Serving Older Students

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, and look, in May, you all released at the center your latest analysis of American microschools. It's a 40-page report, so we will not get into all of it today, but people should visit the National Microschooling Center, check it out, see the findings. But there's a lot in there that I wanted to learn more about personally and shed light on. And so I thought where we would start is this. And it seems from the report that the nature of microschools themselves are evolving. They're getting a bit bigger, it seems particularly, I think when you zoom out of the microschools that are really homeschooling centers, they're starting to serve older students as well, which I think is pretty notable as I think you, the stat was 84% of microschools serve kids age 5 to 11. But now 52% of the universe, if you will, of microschools that you surveyed are serving kids ages 15 to 18, which is a much higher population. And it seems like a big sea change because, you know, for a while you would hear, oh, microschools works great for elementary, middle school, but a lot of kids, you know, they want to go back to traditional high school because they want Friday night lights, college, whatever it is.

And so I would just love your commentary of like, what's changing across these dimensions that's maybe leading to this evolution in the size and the ages of who microschools are serving.

Don Soifer

Great. Well, thanks. So I think first of all, it's important that this is the biggest, deepest, widest research on the sector to date. So we interviewed 800 microschools in all 50 states. So hopefully this is the closest thing to a representative sampling of what's going on out there yet. And I think the other, the other point I think that's worth reiterating is that microschooling is not a new thing that somebody smart invented during the pandemic. Right. What we're doing is updated by a lot of what we now know about pedagogy and the way children learn and all sorts of great additions in this golden age of digital content that we work in.

But microschooling is something that's been going on for a very long time, right. Reporters often ask, and I say, I don't know, maybe the first microschool was maybe the book of judges, but that feels very western centric. And obviously when Slate Blackwoods came across the prairies on trains, one room schoolhouses were taking off. So for sure. So, so what is, what is, what's happening now as we move maybe from left to right on the adoption curve? In some communities, there are definitely places and we're out in the country all the time, and there are definitely some ecosystems that microschooling has gotten more common, more people are aware of it. The people that track things like terms in Google searches will tell you that there are more people in south Florida or some spots like Mississippi or Kansas or the greater Atlanta area where more people are aware of microschooling. We've been doing it for longer.

We see some shifts in who's participating because more people are aware of it. So there definitely is some evolution of the sector that we're seeing. And part of that comes from the fact that the kids we had in microschools, many of them did start during the pandemic, but they're getting older. And microschools, we've seen a trend in homeschooling for year that homeschooling may get a little bit more boring and standardized when kids get to high school because parents don't want to mess up. They want to make sure the kid has the opportunity to play in a NCAA Division 1 sport. And so they're going to sort of collapse, you know, high school is complicated.

It takes more confidence with the subject matter. And we generally see families, maybe, you know, this is the golden age of digital content, but families, when they get to high school might be more inclined to draw all of their content from one particular provider in the name of it being accredited and that somehow helping them with their future options. So high school is more complicated, for sure. But more and more microschools are getting into tackling it, and we're seeing some real evolution over there and it's some really inspiring models and some, some really, you know, they're really learning from each other and it's an evolution of the sector. I think it's a good example of one.

Serving Diverse Student Needs

Michael Horn

Well, so I, let's stay on this because I think the other thing that jumped out to me about these schools and who they are serving is that a lot of the students are former public school students. A lot of them are in the median income bracket, it looked like with nice distributions on the low income and higher income. But a lot are sort of squarely in the middle, at least self reported. It's pretty diverse. And then this, you had 74% of microschools of these 800 that you surveyed report serving children with neurodiversities, 46% with other special needs, 63% of students who came to them two or more grade levels, excuse me, two or more grade levels below their quote unquote age, and 50% who've experienced emotional trauma. So look, you were in the charter school world well before I was. But as you know, charter schools were often accused fairly or unfairly of not serving students with special needs. It seems that this, that charge can't even get lift off here from based on what you're learning anyway,

Don Soifer

Thanks. You touched on some of my very favorite findings. Microschools are more likely to serve kids from slightly below or significantly below the average income in their area than above. More kids come to microschooling from traditional district operated public schools than anywhere else. And coming from homeschooling is a somewhat distant second. So microschooling and we do very well toward the fragile end of the income spectrum. We do very well with families with a child with neurodiversities or other special needs. So microschools are not a school choice play. They're taking off in the blue and the purple states every bit as much as in the red states.

And there are some slight differences you see in trends there. But microschools are not about partitioning privilege. I mean when you read about pandemic pods in the New York media, you know, during the shutdowns, there was a real cause for concern. Are these things any good? Are they equitable? Are they what they are intended to be? Where we're really seeing as this movement takes hold and, and grows, that we're looking for kids that were not thriving in their prior schooling setting and the population in microschools and the very, you know, the, the beautiful diversification of the kinds of models that we're seeing in microschooling really gives every kid an opportunity to thrive. And the examples that you gave are some of my favorites.

Michael Horn

Well, so stand that, because I actually didn't realize that or I didn't pick it up from the report, which is that some of the trends might be different in the blue and purple states compared to the red. And I guess the reason I'd love you to just spin that out a little bit more is the red states tend to be where the education savings accounts have passed for the most part. Right. And we know that very progressive families actually take advantage of those and love them. So it's not really a political issue. But in terms of where the laws are and enabling some public funds to support microschooling, it's more in the red states, it seems to me. So how are the trends different? And I don't even know.

Would be different in terms of who they're enrolling or scope of the schools. What does that look like? That's different.

Challenges in ESA States

Don Soifer

Yeah. So first I should clarify that just because a state has an ESA doesn't mean that microschools are able to participate or that families can choose microschools. The details of policies matter. And a lot of the time those details get decided at the 11th hour as part of a compromise. And let's face it, school choice programs in this country and the broader schools of choice experience are much more traditional and larger. And the programs are really written for those schools because those are the largest stakeholders who are at the table when these conversations are happening. So when we look particularly at microschool trends in ESA states where families can choose microschools to participate, usually one of the hurdles, one of the major hurdles is accreditation. Like in Iowa, which has an ESA program.

But the limit on the available accreditation bodies is such that it's very difficult for, you know, an innovative small learning environment. Maybe something that's particularly innovative, maybe something that's a truly child centered learning model that would deny that they even have a curriculum. It's just too much of a challenge to get that approved for accreditation in Iowa. And there are good people working on that and they're making some progress and that's great. But when you look at the states, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, to a, to a small and growing degree, what are the trends that are any different? I think that, Arkansas, I think that in a sense, a lot, some of those are going to be predictable. If a microschool or any entity is required to take the state standardized test to participate then that's a factor.

And we see that in ESA states microschools are more likely to have maybe more standardized curricula or the structure of the microschool is going will include more norm or criterion referenced assessments than other states. I will point out though that we have plenty of microschools that we heard from in the ESA states that do not choose to participate in the ESA program for various reasons, but including that the hoops that they felt like they would need to jump through for compliance with the program's requirements were just not something that they wanted to do and that they were able to serve the, you know, the communities that they wanted to serve without being part of the ESA program. So that's part of it too. But we do see trends that a lot of them are quite similar. Right. And we need to also accept that, let's face it, the, the cultural fabric of not every community is the same. And you don't need me to remind you that, you know, the culture of a community in Maricopa county in Arizona is probably different than what we're going to find in Fort Myers beach or the Gulf coast of Florida. Right, because Floridians, right, or Arizonans, just different folks.

And microschools really like nothing meaningful in education as you know, well, happens in a vacuum. And microschooling sectors evolve really in response to two major drivers, the local demand and interest in their community and also the frameworks in which they need to operate in their state. And those I think really explain the major differences we see, you know, along with many similarities in the trends in microschools in ESA states versus other states.

Michael Horn

That's interesting. So let's move to accreditation. That was something that was on my mind to ask. It seems like most of the schools in the sample are not accredited today, but interestingly enough, most of them would be interested in microschool friendly. And that's an important qualifier, microschool friendly accreditation. Why is that? Like, what's the underlying motivation for why they want the accreditation? Is it because they could, you know, get some of those ESA dollars if that's state requirement? And so they see the writing on the wall. It does seem like there's also a trend of more recent ESA states writing in these accreditation requirements or is it something else entirely?

Accreditation: Compliance and Value

Don Soifer

So microschool leaders tell us that they're interested in accreditation for various reasons and some of these are compliance with, you know, again, to be eligible for the ESA program interstate, it might be required. So, that is part of it for sure. But there are other reasons that leaders who, you know, most of the time, we know that microschool leaders are experienced educators in other sectors, most commonly licensed public school educators. So they may see value in an accreditation process that can add value, add to their program that they can learn from in this complicated world where, you know, families have dual custody and you might have one parent that's very interested in your microschool, but they have to sell it to other folks. So something that's convincing, that shows it's a valid third party accreditation is approval. A good housekeeping seal of approval is a value. And in other states we have, you know, regulatory pressure is such that Mississippi is a good example of a state that the Department of Children and Services that oversees child care programs tells you that they will not hassle you if you can show accreditation as an elementary or secondary school. And companies like, frankly, Google for Education is one that will only make their tools available to an accredited microschool, which is something that hopefully the market is going to fix.

But these are all sort of different reasons than just regulatory compliance.

Michael Horn

That's crazy. I didn't know that.

So Google literally, it's like a requirement because they want to give these tools away for free to schools and they're like, so if you're accredited, we know you're a school. Is that like the sort of simple minded idea?

Don Soifer

You know, and I don't think it's, it's a slight deliberately to, to microschooling. They just need to know who it is that they're working with.

Michael Horn

An easy way to just sort of check that box.

Don Soifer

I guess that's right. I mean, in so many places people don't want to get in the business of deciding if an entity is any good or not, so they just make a natural deferral to accreditation because it's sort of been the gatekeeper standard in this country for factory education for a long time.

Michael Horn

Interesting. All right, so I want to talk business model next for what you're learning around microschools. Median tuition, as I understand it from the report, is $6,500 in currently operating microschools. The average of the mean cost is about $8,100. These seem pretty affordable, Don. They're priced around the level of ESAs in many cases also. But I'm just sort of curious as like, is that a coincidence? Is it strategic? It does seem from your survey data though that I'll point out that a lot of folks are actually still paying for these schools out of pocket and not using ESA dollars. So, help us understand pricing and how maybe it is or isn't changing from past instantiations of the survey.

Don Soifer

Yeah, so obviously microschool founders want to have their seats full. And so many microschool founders are highly interested in serving the kids who need it the most. So I really don't know if I could name a single microschool that charges full freight of tuition to every single family that they serve. Most microschools are still on mostly a tuition based model. And again, we're starting to see some innovation. I mean our own microschool was a public private partnership where we got taxpayer dollars from a city's appropriation, you know, and operated in a library and rec centers that have government funding that can bring new resources into a microschool. And sometimes YMCAs and boys and girls clubs and community nonprofits will be partners in the microschool so that there are resources that are available that can help the founder not have to rely exclusively on families tuition because they don't want to be in the business of, you know, partitioning out privilege. They want to give these opportunities as broadly as, as they can.

But on the other hand, you know, microschools, I would say are in terms of the productivity of the sectors, the way that they are measured. Public education in this country has a relatively low rate of productivity, you know, which includes both how much you spend and how much you achieve by your own metrics where microschools tend to spend a lot less. You're right. The median cost to educate one child in a microschool is $6,500. And you know, there's so much that goes into that. Right. If you have more kids in your microschool in May than you did in September, the number of kids goes into the denominator. And it's hard to necessarily always track, but we always encourage microschools to keep track of that particular number.

Some microschools will not require everybody to be on a full time schedule. That some microschools, especially if you're serving families that follow the homeschool requirements in your state. And again, most of those, many of those families are not going to be traditional homeschool families. They're going to come from much more traditional learning settings like public, you know, district operated schools. But if you can give families those flexibilities that can, you know, then your tuition can be prorated. And we've seen, you know, a kid coming two days a week and the parent get renting an apartment closer to the microschool and what they save on gas lets them afford a third day a week in the microschool. That's not atypical for what's happening. So again it's a response to what's in the community, what's available in the community, what the resources are and you know, and being scrappy on both sides of the financial ledger so that this can be a good viable product that meets families needs but that's also affordable to the families is one of the ways we're seeing the sector evolve.

Sustainability Concerns

Michael Horn

I think for sure it's interesting and it's some, it touches on something I've long been concerned about as you know, which is the sustainability of these models. Like you know, will microschool be there in five, 10 years? And, and to be clear, some folks have, you know, have told me that for that to really happen we actually need to get certain schools up to maybe 50, 55 kids for it to really be sustainable. And it, and on that though, it seems like you have, you know, interesting data around founders taking salaries, that a quarter are not actually taking salaries but the average even counting for that is around $50,000. I'm curious though, and I don't know if you've done this analysis but if like you take out the centers serving homeschoolers from the data set, like you exclude that, does that change what you see at all? And, and the reason I ask like if I'm a center serving homeschoolers for some of them, my bias, and you could tell me I'm wrong, but is like sustainability over more than five years is actually not the goal like it, you know, they just maybe wanted to do it for a few years, maybe their own kids, personal mission, whatever and then they're going to like keep on moving. But maybe there's other schools that feel, you know, microschools that feel more like we're trying to create something sustainable here for the longer run. And my guess is that the founder's behavior might look different there in terms of salary - do I take it? Dollar amount, maybe number of kids they even serve and stuff like that. Do you see any difference along those lines?

Don Soifer

Yeah, I mean it's such a panoramic scope of things that come into play here. For sure you're right. More than a quarter of microschool founders don't take a tuition. It's very common in microschooling. More than between a third and a half of microschoolers, microschool leaders have kids of their own in their microschool and that's part of it too. If you look at microschooling as literally take moving schooling out of, you know, the, out of an industry that teaches in buildings that are on average 50 years old in this country and cost $50 million and what, what a, you know, as you, you know, you sort of mentioned, I was a charter school authorizer in some of the most high performing cities in the country. And there's something that you see in that sector I always refer to as the charter school half life phenomenon, where seven years in, if your founding families have moved on and if your founding leader has moved on, is that entity really the same quality as it was when it first started? In microschooling, we give a stump talk that says dynamism is the new sustainability, that if you're running a microschool and you do it for five years and your kids have moved on and are older now, and you've served kids and given them great options for five years, and microschool leaders are quite responsible in the way that if they were to close or move or start a new microschool or maybe they'll, you know, whatever it is that they do, get on with their, with their lives, then they're going to, you know, work with other microschools in their area to ensure that those kids have a trajectory that they can continue. But I think that we're seeing a model that dynamism and the opening and closing and maybe a microschool leader goes on to start a new microschool.

That's high school ages, their own kids get older or whatever reason, they get on with their lives. I think the human capital of this movement is coming from a more dynamic place than it is in the factory school model that evolved in the 1950s, where it's just a different kind of sustainability as a sector than we see in traditional public schooling.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Okay, well, so then, last question as we wrap up here because, and again, folks should check out the report. There's a lot in there. And staying on this funding question, because a lot of schools in the report said that their biggest pain point is funding. And I guess I'm just curious, like, as you think about the biggest barrier or, or challenge for supply, the supply side of this, of, of this world, is it like funding to start up the school? Is it funding for ongoing operations? Like, what do they mean when they say the biggest pain point is funding? And how should we be thinking about solving that?

Don Soifer

Yeah, so it is both capital and operating revenue, and about a third of the microschools that we talked to in the study are pre launch microschools. So if you look at the sizes that we're talking about, I think on average we find it takes between 17 and $25,000 in startup costs to launch an independent microschool of about the average size that we see. So who can do that? Right. People can borrow it from family and friends, which is a self selecting group. We see experienced educators liquidating portions of the 401k and pay themselves back in year three. But we've seen some really interesting programs. I think what Building Hope and Stand Together are just standing up as a revolving loan fund specifically for microschools. I think that's going to really help if we can see that proliferate. Different versions of partnerships and seeing employers or community nonprofits getting involved because you know, occupancy costs, facilities are the single biggest ticket item in your microschool.

Sector Growth Factors

Don Soifer

So as we as, as these, you know, as, as interest grows, as the sector gets more momentum, I think we're going to see new vehicles take place that can sort of help with that. And once we solve the access to startup capital or solve it to some degree, as, you know, as school choice programs proliferate, that's a thing that helps too. Philanthropy is broadly starting to get more comfortable with microschooling and the better, you know, and this is the golden age of digital content. And some of the really cool AI models are quite pricey right now. Maybe one of the very best is a program operated by a fantastic set of microschools in the Austin area that can cost $10,000 a kid, which is out of the price range for most of the microschools in our sector. But I think the market will take care of that. So I think we are seeing a sector that is growing in response to a lot of different factors and the more growth we see in the sector, I think that a lot of these things are going to find solutions that are on their own or handed to them by an evolving marketplace.

Michael Horn

Well, you've given us a really cool snapshot, Don, of a dynamic market, as you said, dynamic sector characterized by dynamism. And you're part of that. So just huge. Thanks for joining us. And for all of you tuning in, check out the National Microschooling Center. Keep an eye out for the analysis reports that they're doing. If you're interested in getting involved in the sector, they've got great resources to help founders, to help operators, really not just like navigate the early innings, but navigate it all through the life cycle of a microschool.

So, Don, keep up the great work. Really, really appreciate you and thank you for joining me.

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Macke Raymond, the program director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution’s Program on U.S. K–12 Research and former director of CREDO, joined me to discuss the need for a new “operating system” in American public education. We spent time diving into the recommendations from the Hoover Institution’s recent report, “Ours to Solve Once and for All,” which calls for reimagining the roles of federal, state, and local actors to foster a more adaptive, innovative, and student-centered education system. According to Raymond, given the massive changes at the federal level since President Trump took office, now is the perfect time for this rethinking. According to the report, it’s vital we prioritize incentivizing educational mastery, minimizing rigid mandates, cultivating a dynamic, responsive education workforce, and offering safe learning environments, all of which should start from the grassroots up. Have a listen and let me know what you think in the comments.

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Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think this through, today, I think we have a repeat guest, if I'm not mistaken, Macke Raymond. She's the program director for Hoover Institution's education work. She was the director of CREDO for many years at Stanford University, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes. And with the Hoover Institute Institution's Education Futures Council, together they put out this terrific report, “Ours to Solve Once and For All, Securing the Outcomes Our Students Need. “That's probably more introduction, Macke, than you need because you've done so much in the world of education.

But first, good to see you. Thanks for joining me.

Macke Raymond

Oh, it's wonderful to be here, Michael. Thanks for inviting me.

Accelerating Change in Education Systems

Michael Horn

Yeah. No. So you wrote this really provocative note to me that sort of. I had written this piece for my substack and Forbes about how disruption of schooling might finally be possible in the world of education savings accounts, because for the first time, families might feel like they're losing out if they aren't exercising their choice in sort of the savings accounts that come with it. So there's this sense of value that's been overlaid with certain states moving in this direction. And then you wrote me and said, well, not only that, but we've been arguing, right, for this new operating system, really, the foundational principles of how education operates in this country, and seen states as sort of the lever against that. But this I'll let you describe in a second. But these changes at the federal level maybe have actually accelerated the timeline over which the recommendations and the thought we had put into that report have become even more relevant quicker than we thought that they would.

So maybe you should lay out the premise because I probably just did a poor job and sort of give us the context for what the report was arguing for in terms of a quote, unquote, new operating system and why the current moment, in the current context perhaps is conducive to that.

Macke Raymond

Well, first, you did a beautiful job setting this up, so thank you. The clarity of your introduction is really helpful for all of this. So we've known for a long time that the current way that K12 public education operates in the United States isn't getting the job done for lots and lots of students. And we would also argue the entire system itself continues to not produce graduates and product that is actually internationally competitive. So we've known that for a long time. We also know that a lot of what we've tried to do to improve education has not worked. And based on some earlier work at the Hoover Institution, we dug into what was behind that. And one of the important conclusions there was that we have created a system that is phenomenally capable of resisting change.

It is intransigent in really, really important ways. And so this brought us to the question of what would it take to actually have a public education system—federal, state and local—that really was capable of adapting, was capable of innovating, was capable of disrupting where it was necessary in order to make sure that students were getting the kinds of academic and non academic preparation that would set them up for success. All, all the things that we want for our kids. How could we think about the system as itself as a lever for doing that? And so the Education Futures Council was brought together to sort of ponder that question. And the conclusion that the Futures Council members came to was that the way in which decisions were made and executed in K12 from the federal and state and local levels were actually a big, big deterrent to effective operation and effective impact on student learning. And that led to then, okay, what would be a better approach to thinking about what we call the operating system? So we're not calling for a different curriculum, we're not calling for a different staffing model. We're not talking about a longer school year or a different school model. We're really talking about how do the institutions themselves work on their own and work together.

And the Futures Council report, “Ours to Solve Once and For All,” posits that there is a possibility of reorganizing what happens at the state and federal level and at the local level in order to create a much better environment for creating conditions for positive learning for students. So that's the purpose of the report. We in a million years would never have expected what we've seen in the last six months. Our initial thinking after the publication of the report, which happened last October, before the election, we thought we were talking about a three to five year timeline of very carefully building a coalition of both advocates and policy leaders to basically try to enable some of these kinds of changes that the report called for. And then the inauguration happened. And within a very short period of time, it became clear that the field of play at the federal level is open for the kinds of disruption that might be possible in order to advance this more productive conversation about the institutional arrangements. You could think of that as a new federalism that we're advocating for. And the conditions have softened at the federal level to the point where this could actually be a constructive conversation.

Michael Horn

I want to dig into a bunch of those parts. Maybe first for the audience, let's lay out, like, as you all see it, what would be the pillars or commitments, I think is the way the report phrases it, of the new operating system. And what would the different actors, local, state, federal, what would be their responsibilities, if you will, in such a system? And maybe once we have that understanding, then I have so many questions for you. So let's start there.

Macke Raymond

We have a limited amount of time, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. So we'll do our best. Yeah.

Macke Raymond

All right. So every single enterprise, whether it's private business, whether it's a social service agency, whatever, they have to have a few operating essentials in order to function. And we call for those as operating essentials for the new operating system. They involve being very clear about what the outcomes are that you want to achieve. And so the report is calling for a broader definition of student success and new measures in order to reflect whether or not we're making progress on those. Second part of that is a regular system of measuring how students are doing. Certainly coming out of the pandemic, we collectively as a nation, care a whole lot more about what students know and can do than we did before. A bad way to get that gift, but I think we can leverage that and move that forward.

And then after a measurement system, we have to be candid about the fact that there's a broad range of performance in the system in schools that we have to acknowledge. If we're committed to making sure that every single child gets the preparation for a life of opportunity, then we have to have accountability. It doesn't have to look exactly the way that it has for the last 25 years, but accountability definitely has to be part of the system. And finally, it sounds like a no-brainer, but we really have to create and assure that there are safe learning environments that are conducive to both instruction and learning. And that's not a trivial thing. So the current debate about cell phones in classrooms, the whole problem of school security, whether it's digital or physical, plays into that. We have to make a commitment that schools are environments in whatever way they actually roll forward.

Decentralized Education Policy Reform

Macke Raymond

They are environments that are safe and conducive to learning. So those are the operating pieces. The commitments are that we need to change the way in which we do business. And over very many years, like 40 now, 45 years, what's happened is that we have created a very strong top down directive process for setting education policy. And it doesn't make sense to us that that should be the case. We have huge variation across the country in terms of what local conditions look like and what learning environments look like across the country. And so having somebody who is from a very remote perspective choosing typically a one size fits all solution and then wondering why it doesn't work across all the settings that it's tried to be adopted to, and then blaming people on implementation infidelity doesn't make sense to us. So we're looking for a different approach to building capacity so that there can be a regular culture of adaptation and innovation towards student learning.

So not local people reinventing the education process, but that they are capable of understanding what new tools are available and putting those to good use. And if that's the place that we want local folks to be comfortable and proficient, then the rest of the system has to modify to make that happen. And so that suggests a different role where we're actually saying the learning environment is the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. So we're not top down, we're supporting up. And that means that the role of local agencies and state agencies and the federal agencies have to understand what they are good at and what they can provide. That would be a constructive contribution to this new approach. And that speaks to being a whole lot clearer about what does work and what doesn't in particular environments. Capturing that information, making that information available to local actors in a way that's really constructive and useful and practical.

It means that we want to know at a more continuous level how schools are doing and create incentives so that schools are facing conditions that align adult interests in getting better themselves with the improved outcomes that we want. And clearly this talks about a different attitude on the part of adults from the top to the bottom, that these are all now opportunities for really thinking differently about the professionalism of the work and how we cultivate and support that over the lifespan of individuals as educators and as other actors in the system.

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Rethinking Education for Advanced Manufacturing

Michael Horn

So let me try to make it like, present an example that feels very different from what we've had and help us fit this into the framework or not, I guess so at one level, let's say I'm in a particular region, advanced manufacturing is a big employment outcome that has different competencies and skills and knowledge base, Right, that are, that are important for students. And we could pick our flavor of Advanced manufacturing. But just stay with high level for a moment at the local level. I think what you're saying is like we would say these are the student outcomes that we want to see and we'd have a professional teaching force that reflects what it looks like to educate students to be able to do those things. And if I hear you right, the role of the state and even federal would be less like dictating did you hit a certain test that everyone has to hit? And more helping us have tools to measure, perhaps have tools to understand which jobs are in demand maybe and what and like research basis of therefore these are the skills taxonomy,

Someone might want to learn, you know, in demand fields or we see a shift in supply demand. Therefore your outcomes might want to change. And so it's more informed into that. Tell me like, start to edit that, where is that right and wrong?

Macke Raymond

So I think you're on the right track there, Michael. We think that there are really strong outcomes that we need to be unapologetic about, but I think we need to be a lot looser on means on the pathways to get there. And let's face it, even in today's landscape, there are schools, there are districts that are already doing well. There's no reason for us to start trying to shape their behavior. They know what they're doing and we should not have a heavy hand on that. We should say you're able to demonstrate that you're having strong learning outcomes. We should back off where the emphasis and the attention is necessary, and I think better placed is on helping those communities where the learning outcomes are not as strong as we would want them to be and that they want them to be and help them understand what the right combination of success elements could be for them.

Again, we're not expecting people to go and innovate on their own. We're not expecting people to on Sunday night build new curricula for their classes for the week. We think that there is enough good stuff out there from successful districts, from successful teachers, from the research that shows us what works. We just don't harness that in a way that makes it easy for folks on the ground in local communities, in local districts, coaching local school teams. We don't make it easy for them to say we need to do something different. Here are five things that we know work in communities like yours. Maybe you want to take a look at those. Like it's sort of like a most favored nation kind of approach here at the local level.

But the state and federal opportunity here is to build the capacity to bring those exemplars of success and set the cultural expectation that if you're not meeting the same ratchets in communities like yours are able to hit, then you've got work to do and let's get on it.

Collaboration in Education Support Systems

Michael Horn

So it's almost like the, it's not a good joke, but the thing that I often say, right is like you don't have doctors building vaccines in medicine, right? Like that's crazy. You have, you have a separate set of companies that are doing that then supplying the doctors, et cetera. And essentially what I think I hear you saying is like, yeah, look, there's textbook companies and assessment companies, but actually there's a lot more that goes into teaching and learning that federal and state can be using its resources, whether that's consultative, advisory, connecting or maybe even building alongside, like to help support efforts on the ground. And that might be your school district, it might be your micro school, it might be your charter school. Forget about the form. Its point is on the ground getting support from other players that are able to see across geography or patterns or things of that nature. Is that getting even closer then?

Macke Raymond

Yeah, Michael, I think you're really zeroing in on this. I mean, we know that there are tremendous forces of change happening across the country and we're not putting the right emphasis on preparing local districts for the kinds of changes, local schools for the kinds of change that they're going to face. And so in addition to moving away from a top down regulatory mandate approach, we also have, I think, much more value in the system that we can harvest that states, for example, could be operating the development of some of these knowledge bases. I mean, one of the things that I've talked about for years is something that I call the institutional commons, where states have the data to identify what the best 4th grade math teacher is in the state. Why don't they set up some kind of an incentive system so that that teacher is open to sharing their full set of resources and that that's packaged in a really easy way for some other 4th grade math teacher to go get. Why don't we harvest: here are great ways to set up community based learning opportunities. And here are 12 different models that have been successful around the country so other people can learn on what are the right processes.

But also here are some models that we could just flat out adopt?

Michael Horn

Right and just take rather than reinvent the wheel. Or we might say, gee, it needs modification because our population has these sets of resources or these, you know, future aspirations are different here for whatever reason or something like that.

Macke Raymond

That's right. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of new learning horizons that as a system we need. We know that there's a huge R and D function at the federal level for building new measures and metrics for assessing this broader set of outcomes that we want. It doesn't make sense to have 50 states doing that work themselves in parallel. It's a huge fixed cost to do that. So that's an obvious place where the scale and the scope of a federal initiative would make sense. But there are places at the state level that do make sense, like being able to say this works well here is something that states ought to be really interested in getting behind and I think with a little bit of encouragement and support in the way in which we establish the new federalism, that's going to be a very fruitful path forward for state agencies.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I imagine it could link in with workforce development agencies at the state level that's seeing data trends of hiring is actually increasing here therefore right in a local district's not going to necessarily have the time or capacity to absorb that themselves.

Macke Raymond

Yeah. I'd put one other thing on the table there and that is that we have across the country a number of really wonderful examples of almost every single piece of this new system that we're talking about. We don't need to start from scratch to create the conditions. We have positive examples of a relaxed regulatory environment. The charter school world shows us what that looks like. We have great opportunity to redefine what the outcomes are we want from kids from the portrait of the graduates and these new workforce development models that span high school and post secondary. So it's not like we have to go all the way back to zero. What we have to do is we have to be smart and coherent and intentional about setting the system in a direction that allows for these kinds of changes to occur in the system so it better serves students and families and communities.

Ed Reform: Accountability and Growth Trends

Michael Horn

A couple things that spurs for me and I'll try to take them in sequence, but I guess the first one is, and you can correct me if this is wrong because you are way more expert in measurement and tracking student learning than I will ever be. But the sort of the narrative I think of ed reform over the last, let's call it eight years maybe has been like, okay, student achievement grew during no Child Left behind era. There was a lot of friction in that accountability model. But we saw growth 2011, 2012, somewhere around there. It starts to taper and actually fall off even before the pandemic is the consensus around accountability weekends. But what I think the story doesn't tell is that actually a lot of that growth was also driven in the late 80s and then through the 90s, before the federal government sort of solidified some of this stuff through state action. And so I would love you to just reflect on like, sort of people who say, whoa, wait a second, if we decentralize too much, isn't that going to be that sort of led to some of the Common Core conversations, as I recall.

And I think I hear you saying that might not be the only way to look at it. And so I'd love you to just to sort of help us navigate that conversation around what's centralized versus decentralized.

Macke Raymond

We have relied on states for the most part, to define what the outcomes are that we want and the learning standards. And I think that that is an appropriate exercise at the state level. If you look at the learning standards across the states, and it's an ugly project to undertake, so I wouldn't recommend anybody who's sane to do that. The learning standards are pretty consistent. What you might argue is that we have piled on more and more learning standards that are making the whole thing chaotic. I would point to Indiana, where they went through a very unsexy process of being very, very intentional about reviewing what are the critical standards that we absolutely have to have. And what came out the other end was a series of very, very deliberate learning standards that were scaffolded beautifully from early to late public education that lent themselves to a much broader set of engagement with other learning experiences and tying into some of the workforce development stuff that's very top of mind in Indiana right now. We know that can happen, and we think that that's a right place for it to happen is at the state level.

Having said that, I think there's always a role at the federal level to advocate for and to protect student groups that we know from state level data are not getting a fair shake. I think there is a complete justification for protecting vulnerable populations with federal standards and an expectation then that we would measure and pay attention to that and potentially intervene with additional pressure if that has to happen from the feds. If in fact some student groups are not getting the same kind of shake. I mean, that was the origin of the civil rights activities to begin with. We have vulnerable populations of special ed. I would also say we're in an era now where students are differentially vulnerable in terms of their status as legitimate students that come from a variety of origins. But I can see that this would be an area of ongoing concern. So yes, I do think that there is a sort of a bottom line protection of individual students and their right to an education that has to be federal.

It's part of our sort of constitutional commitment and our democratic fabric that we believe everybody has opportunity and should be prepared equivalently. So I like all of that. I do think that there are lots and lots of cross state opportunities that exist. There are models for schools that are coming up both through the traditional district realm and through the charter school realm and charter management organizations that set the tone for potentially national models of schools and potentially national networks of schools that we don't think about today, but we ought to be open to because they can set such a high bar for student results that they ought to have some kind of a recognition that says these are exceptional schools. Exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges within states, their exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges and additional autonomies. But also these emerging national networks and constellations of schools, if they're stellar, then we should be able to allow local schools to affiliate with these networks and not stand in the way of that. And that doesn't mean you'd give up local control.

It's just that they have a membership option that says quality could come from outside the local area, it could come from a national federation of schools, and we should encourage that if it's really high quality.

Michael Horn

And so in terms of the federal role right now, it seems like I hear you saying, on the one hand, I'm just thinking about some of the tensions here. Like it seems like on the one hand they've said we want states to lead, so that's an opportunity. And maybe frankly, it's an opportunity for experimentation because we don't know exactly how this new operating system should look. But two, I also see like a bit of a potential retreat. I know it could be a reset, but it also could be a retreat on some of the research functions that the federal government's traditionally done. And so I'm curious, like how you're thinking about what's opportunity, what's vacuum, what's threat, what's, you know, how do we drive this forward in line with this vision right now?

Decentralizing Decisions

Macke Raymond

Well, so a sort of a rule of thumb that I have been using in my own thinking and in the conversations that I've been having is that decisions should be handed down to the lowest possible level where you have high quality and scope at the same time. And so with, with all the good intentions of lots of the federal programs that grew up over the years. There were a lot of things that were happening that didn't have to have a federal footprint on them, that actually could have been handled effectively at the state level. And so that part of the reset, I think, has some positive upside to it. The things that I think have to stay at the federal level are clearly the national assessments of what students know, because that's the truth, that's the light of truth across all these state systems. And we can't give that up. The second thing is I do think that there are a new set of federal priorities for research and development and I want to stay away from the R and D umbrella because that constitutes a different set of things. There's a role for federal involvement in R and D.

But here I'm really specifically thinking of undertaking specific programs of research on new measures, on new assessments, on emerging practices in light of AI and all of these tectonic changes. There are things that the federal agency has line of sight on that also scale best at the federal level. And so I do have a sort of a wish list under my blotter on my desk about what that might look like. But I also think then that continuing the attention on vulnerable populations and using this moment to instead of be mandate focused and regulatory focused, use this moment to cultivate a kind of capacity building at the state level, is a phenomenal moment that I really hope we don't miss. And I really am anxious to see that that becomes part of the ongoing commitment to public education that we have as a nation and that it has a strong presence at a national federal level.

Michael Horn

As we start to wrap up here, let's stay on that vulnerable student population piece because one of the things, as you know, I'm super intrigued by these education savings account states, it shifts accountability in my mind to the parents, frankly, themselves, but a real concern, and I grant it is like in a world where we are thinking more deeply about high quality instructional materials, coherent sets of background knowledge right across discipline to turn people into really good readers and things of that nature, if someone's experience specifically from a low income background becomes more fragmented, maybe they lose some of that connective tissue. How would the federal role be to really be using its scale to sort of spotlight that, find trends that you might not be aware of and help local actors, I mean, even down to an individual student. Or is that overreach? Or is it more like identifying trends and building capacity? Like how does that all shake out? So we maybe use the benefits of choice, but don't lose some of the negatives that can come from incoherence.

Charter Schools: Challenges and Incentives

Macke Raymond

Frankly, this is a moment that actually happened in the charter school world. As networks of charter organizations formed into charter management organizations and communities had larger shares of their students enrolled in both charter schools and charter management organization schools. We faced some of that, that there was an incentive on the part of new entrants to really zero in on what their sweet spot was and be careful about what the protecting the brand became important. I'm not saying that charter schools shed students because I don't think that happened. Our data never showed that that was the case. But there was always the incentive that there were students that were going to be very difficult to serve and that the expectation and the incentives were set up to keep those in the public sector, in the district public schools. I worry that as we proliferate the number of choice paths that we have, that we're seeing, we have the potential for seeing something similar and that if we have different standards of performance across all of these models, that we are in fact inadvertently going to be creating tiering of outcomes. And it's not clear to me that putting parents as the final arbiters of quality is going to be as successful and productive as many of the choice advocates think, unless we can tie that to very clear understanding of what the outcomes are that students have to have in order to be successful and real transparency about how these individual models are delivering on that.

So I see accountability evolving to stratified accountability. That's very clear about what the channel is that students are pursuing for their education.

Michael Horn

And so just staying with that for a moment, I'm just trying to think how practically that looks. In some sense it's like an asset based view of the world of like maybe, maybe a local community concludes this branch of mathematics is not important. We don't think for our future, fine. But it's going to be reflected in that you're not showing mastery of that. And then someone might flag that and say, hey, just want to make sure you're aware you're not preparing your students for fields that take advantage of this branch of mathematics. And maybe that's an intentional choice, but. But we want to make sure it's transparent.

Empowering Parental Choice in Education

Macke Raymond

Certainly transparent, but where there are lots of choice vehicles, you could imagine that a district would say, you know, collectively we don't really need physics, let's just say. But it turns out that somebody really wants physics for themselves or for their child, then the ESA piece can kick in there and say, no, no, no. You know what? I'm going to customize this with an ESA because I really want physics for my child. The problem is a lot of parents don't know what they really want for their child in that level of specificity. And I think that's a state function to make sure that parents are actively informed and can easily exercise their wishes for their kids and transact in a larger choice environment in a way that's productive for their kids.

Michael Horn

So in some ways that's what like Amy Guidera was doing in Virginia, I think around reading of making it super clear to parents, hey, just want to be clear. This is where your kid is at from a reading level perspective. This is the curriculum. We think that. I can't remember how far she went, but I think it went fairly detailed into this may be why the gaps are there. So that parents built a level of information that they wouldn't have otherwise had and they didn't have to go seek it. I think that's the other important part of it, if I remember.

Macke Raymond

Yeah, you're right about that. A related example, Michael, is that underperforming schools and districts in Louisiana were given a menu of high quality instructional curricula and material that they could choose from. Right. They still had the power of choice, but they couldn't stay in a position of inferior production. And so I see that as part of the sort of new accountability work that I think is a natural part of the new federalism, helping states develop that kind of capacity, that kind of information, and making sure that that connection to students and their future is a solid one for everyone involved.

Michael Horn

Really helpful. Okay, final thoughts. Things that we ought to keep an eye on as this ball continues to move. I'd love your thinking along that.

Embracing Change in Education

Macke Raymond

Well, I'm gonna end with throwing you a rose. That it's probably a very old rose at this point because it goes all the way back to disrupting class. That the models of disruption that you called for before were so in the context of the system that existed at that time and the environment were so radical. But guess what? The world has grown into your scenario. And so I just want to say I think this is an era of phenomenal change. And the question is whether we let the change happen at us and to us or whether we grab onto it and make that change work for us. And so want to thank you for all the years of talking about the fact that this is a natural process and that we should get there. And now that we're here, really hope that we can work together across both political spectrum and across geographic boundaries to really create the system that best serves our kids with that kind of approach.

Michael Horn

Well, the best thinking being done in that system is from the work that you've done. So huge thank you for coming here and talking about it, but for putting out the report. For those that don't know, if you just Google Hoover Institution and Ours to Solve Once and For All, you will get that PDF report. But there's also a really cool on The Education Future Council.com site where you can get the report as well. There's also a video around it, an AI generated podcast. There's a lot of resources that we have just scratched the surface of, so check all of those out for sure. What else should they follow?

Macke Raymond

Well, I think the best thing they can do is just follow along, paying attention to what the public debate is and be ready to jump in because their voice is going to be extremely important.

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On this episode, Ulric Shannon, Executive Director of the Surge Institute in Chicago, and Kyla Mathews, principal of Epic Academy High School, join me to talk about the controversial issue of banning smartphones in schools. While acknowledging the negative impact of excessive phone use, both guests argue against blanket bans and instead emphasize the importance of teaching responsible use and engaging students in setting digital norms. They discuss how cell phones can serve educational and social-emotional purposes when integrated thoughtfully, highlight the real-world challenges of device access in classrooms, and stress the importance of fostering trust with students and parents.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I am Michael Horn and you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And as we figure out how to do that, we do so right now against a bleak set of statistics, if you will. We have a mental health crisis among teens. We have rampant disengagement and chronic absenteeism for many high schools. And social media, which is often accessed through smartphones, has been a leading suspect in the cause of this. And the result from all that is that states and many districts are banning smartphones in schools in a variety of ways right now across the nation.

Nuanced Phone Policy in Education

Now, I'll put my cards on the table. I've been arguing for a more nuanced position rather than a blanket ban from on high, where educators have the power to ban phones in their classrooms when it makes sense, but they also have the power to use them when it will advance an educational or engagement purpose. But it does feel at the moment like there's a tide against any nuanced positions in this country in general, I will say. And yet we have a couple educators joining us today who I'm thrilled to get their perspective because they have also found a nuanced way through this conversation that I'm really excited and eager to learn from. So first we have Ulric Shannon. He's the executive director of the Surge Institute in the Chicago region. Surge is an organization dedicated to cultivating black, brown and Latino leaders to transform education. And then we have Kyla Mathews, who is a principal of Epic Academy High School, which is a charter school in Chicago focusing on college going for its graduates.

And Kyla is a Surge fellow at the moment. So, Ulric, Kyla, great to see you both. Thanks so much for joining me.

Kyla Mathews

Thank you for having us.

Ulric Shannon

Yeah, thank you so much for having us, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. I'm excited to learn from you on this topic, but let's, let's get right into it, right? 21 states, I think at latest count, I believe, have passed laws restricting regulating cell phone usage in schools. We have the author, John Haidt, who's on the warpath with his best selling book advocating for a lot of these laws and so forth. Kyla, you run a school that's one to one device school. And as I understand it, you have been arguing that these folks have it wrong, that a blanket ban doesn't make sense. So at a high level for right now, help us understand why that's been your position.

Kyla Mathews As a Principal of Epic and a former assistant principal of a large urban school and a parent of a generation Alpha student. People can't think that a broad brush of no cell phones is like the way to go. But what we're learning is that the children that we service right now have not ever not had a phone in their hand. And so being mindful of your audience, being mindful of who you service, you have to be clear about that. And so that's why it's not the right way to go to ban the cell phones without any clear communication expectations and a buffer or filler to replace something that's a part of people's lives.

Michael Horn

So I want to dig into that and a little, a little bit more. But Ulric, maybe lay out your perspective first because you're working, as I understand it, not just with Kyla, but with lots of school leaders in Chicago. What do you see? Because I'm hearing that a lot of educators are really loving these bans. Once they're in place, they're saying, thank God someone else made the decision for me. In effect, what are you seeing on the ground?

Ulric Shannon

Yeah, I think there's a number of things that are at play here. I think districts are under a lot of pressure, right, to improve academic outcomes. And so they see that as phone bans as a quick fix to that. Right. Like we need to have like deeper conversations around that and actually engage students in that 1. 2 I would say that schools, at the school level, they're responding to a growing concerns related to classroom distractions, cyber bullying and student mental health, as you talked to earlier. And we have to admit that the pandemic accelerated that. Right.

The use of technology. Now educators are actually seeing how constant student interaction or phone usage can actually undermine their attention and their community connection, which is also important inside the classroom. So I think if we look at different levels within the education system and the structure, I think people are just quickly responding because there is some urgency around the preparedness for our young people to go off into the world, whether it's academically prepared, socially prepared, and a number of other things. And, you know, cell phones can sometimes feel like a little bit of a distraction, maybe a lot of distraction, and the root of a lot of just, you know, teenage or young people issues because they have so much access to each other. So I think it's just a quick response to a greater outcome, some good intentions, but maybe some poor outcomes.

Michael Horn

Well, so, so stay on that because. So I think what I'm hearing, Kyla, right from you is phones like they're with the kids. Whether we like it or not, they are the tableau. Ulric, you're saying, if I'm hearing correctly, like, so there's sort of a snap reaction, we'll just take them away and somehow solve the problem. I think a lot of educators are saying it does solve the problem, like, you know, behavior seems better in their schools and classrooms and things like that. So help me understand like why this might not actually be the right answer. And Ulric, maybe start with you, like why, why is it just that a snap reaction rather than maybe attacking the root cause of what's going on?

Student Involvement in Phone Usage

Ulric Shannon

I think we have to recognize that. I mean, I think Kyla spoke to her earlier, like they had phones in their hands since they were born, right? And phones can actually be a lifeline for students navigating complex identities and social environments. And so it can be kind of a coping tool for students. But like I said earlier, we must understand the why behind the behavior and not just try to control it. And we know that research says that excess usage of phones and social media can actually increase anxiety or in comparison to disengagement. But I think if we can actually bring in students into that process, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. They can actually co-design some of those norms with students. Maybe it's creating a tech-free zone or structure breaks, informing some digital literacy courses that can actually support healthy usage and boundaries of cell phones.

I think there is certainly things that we can do, but I think maybe some of the capacity issues within buildings make that a little bit of a challenge when you may not have all the bodies and resources inside of your school to actually tend to those needs and a loving and and caring way that you would like to have inside of your schools.

Michael Horn

Well, so Kyla, let me go to you there, like what are you doing, right, to reset this? What's a better way forward in your view?

Cell Phones in Education Debate

Kyla Mathews

I [agree with] everything Ulric just said because we have to be clear whether the cell phone is a distraction or not. And we also have to understand from a youth's perspective that if I release my cell phone to you, am I trusting you as a person, as my teacher? And then secondly, what are you going to replace with my level of entertainment if we want to bring in the social media part? But I have an antidote to this discussion because a number of my staff members who do not have cell phone issues, they just realize that they can capitalize on their age gap or the non existent age gap, like they're Very accepting that cell phones do exist, but I'm going to teach you how to use it responsibly. Even being really specific in a history class the other day, last month, part of an evaluation, part of my popping in a teacher was clear with students about why Twitter is not a good source for information and it created a healthy debate with students. So, now we're not arguing about the phone and being distracted by the content or my teacher isn't accepting of the way I receive information which actually bringing it into the conversation and having a debate about why primary sources are still the way to go.

Michael Horn

So in that case, Kyla. Right. Like it's sort of an entry point into a broader conversation, it seems like. So, so, so part of the job is like, is that part of the answer that teachers, I mean it feels like we asked teachers to do a ton of stuff today. Do they have another responsibility on, on, on their, sort of on their desks, if you will, or is there, you know, is this part of something bigger?

Kyla Mathews

Yeah, the hurdle, I think and, and just talking with teachers, talking with students, I think two challenges come up for us. One, because I do think I'm a teacher of teachers, so I say to us one is that you don't want to be in a power struggle with students about their personal items. So it's not about the physical phone. Right. But for some students and families it is about the physical possession. And so you want to make sure that trust exists, that this is not about the phone. This is about. At our school we prioritize XYZ over phones in classrooms.

Right. So we're clear about the academic expectations, but also we want to promote face-to-face interactions and socializations in the academic setting. Post-pandemic, everything was, you know, we're virtual right now. And so we want to understand that we are trying to get back to this human side of education that makes this industry extremely different than other industries. So if the phone is a distraction, just naming those things with families, they understand that why better than oh yeah, we're just a no cell phone campus. It's zero tolerance. That doesn't help families make decisions for their children. And then secondly, kids want to know that if you take away my entertainment, will this lesson be of my benefit? Whether it's interesting, whether I get something cognitively, they just want to know what is the exchange rate.

And I think us as educators, we have to be clear about what, what I have to offer you, what we are going to engage in in the next 50 minutes or 35, because you can have a brain break and then we'll pop back into our lesson. But there's a level of bartering that has to happen because you acknowledge that the cell phone is not going anywhere. What I have to offer you with this primary source may or may not be. It may be the better option in obtaining information. And this face to face interaction that we're having at school is definitely the way to go, especially between 8 and 3. Please and thank you.

Michael Horn

Well, so stay on that because I think there's like two things that you're sort of arguing there. Right? Number one, so we can take away the cell phone during school hours through a ban, but like kids are still using them at night, you know. Ulric, you were mentioning like a lot of the bullying and stuff like that that's happening off school hours. Right. And so like we're sort of band aiding a few hours, but maybe not addressing the larger things. And you know, does homework get done if they still have smartphones but haven't figured out how to use them responsibly, et cetera. And then I think the second thing I hear you saying is, you know, reality is what reality is, we're in a world where there's a lot of instantaneous gratification. And so we've got to figure out how to be more engaging and worthwhile for them to make that exchange willingly.

I guess maybe full stop for both of you is like, is that, is, is that the right starting point for the argument? Am I, am I understanding correctly on both sides? Ulric, why don't you jump in first?

Ulric Shannon

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think both of those ones are absolutely correct. I think one, we can't ask or expect young people to do things that the adults cannot do. And so we have to recognize how we play in those classrooms or buildings as well. So they see us on our phones all day, they feel like a double standard. Right. And it's probably not a much different challenge from what parents have to go through at home to get a cell phone or an iPad away. Right? We give it to cope, right.

They need a little bit of quiet time, maybe we need a little bit of quiet time. We give them an iPad, we give them a phone, they can go about their business. But when it's time to punish, taking away that phone is a little bit of a challenge. And so I think Kyla's absolutely right. When we think about like this daily power struggle, it's not for me just about taking away from teaching time. It's also damaging relationships. And we Know that that is a critical piece to get any type of whether your lessons are extremely engaging or are less engaging. If I have a trusting or real authentic relationship with my educator, with my teacher, with my leaders, I'm going to be in that classroom.

I'm going to be in full attention. Right? Because I'm knowing that it's like your lesson was intentional and I like you. Right. But I also think there's this piece where a lot of schools love to have events that say, like, we're going to have parenting training. One as I think that is a little bit disrespectful to parents because it's like, are we already putting ourselves on a pedestal that we know more than you? And it could be around cell phones, it could be around anything. But what I do that in the space of schools is that teachers need more than just rules. They need the training, they need the support, they need the leadership that centers trust. And so if we're not providing them with some common training, some common language and common actions, then if one class was doing it but the other five are not, you're never going to get the type of culture that you would want in your building, regardless if you're banning all cell phones or not.

So you can't, like, while you can ban the cell phones, you can't necessarily ban or change the behavior. It just pushes it underground. So I think those two points are absolutely right. And I just think we need to elevate the space of our collective learning, maybe in some unlearning to really be able to support our young people in classrooms when it comes to cell phones, which is, I think, a very small thing and the grander thing that our young people need.

Michael Horn

Well, so curious off that. And Kyla, let me come to you on this question, right? Because the Twitter example you gave earlier, I bet some people listening who are for the blanket bans will say, well, you could have had that conversation anyway with phones banned. So I think the natural question then is like, are you finding use cases where you're actually using the phones in classrooms themselves to engage in educational purpose? Like, what do phones do well that maybe traditional technologies or books do not do well? Is that part of the conversation too, or no?

Kyla Mathews

Yeah, I think the biggest piece that we are discussing at my school and in all the years I've been an administrator has been around like discussing the cell phone piece. It's like this healthy balance of using phones responsibly. There is an algorithm of your searches and social media will give you what you've been looking for. Right. So if a teacher is very clear on students on how to search and use the Internet to search for information, the algorithm will perpetuate more and more information. So that's one way that has been healthy in a ninth grade English class. But again, to my point, teachers are committing to bringing students closer with something that they value, but also teaching them how to use it responsibly and then countering that with, you know, hardcover texts at the same time. So there's like a healthy balance.

Fostering Community and Responsible Technology

Kyla Mathews

And then the other piece that, to Ulric's point about teaching parents about their students is also bringing parents in that we are partnering with you around just a bigger, a bigger issue with students detaching from community, detaching from primary sources because of an individualized device. And so that's why the broadband is not the way to go. Bring people in closer about why the importance of other ways to get information is just as valid. And we can also be responsible with this phone. What we've learned too on the bullying side is that you got to teach kids how we do school. And if we prioritize academics and our community as a collective, like how we want to exist at school, teach that and normalize it, students will acquiesce. They won't have, first of all, there'll be less bullying issues, but there also be less instances where students will pull out their phone as instead of going to get a trusted adult. And so that's what I've been able to do in these last three years as principal of Epic is raise a culture of we are all responsible for one another.

Even for example, in my announcements in the morning, I ended with take care of yourself and one another. I get that from the nightly news. But that's what's being said to adults, so why not say it to children, right? So we just have to be mindful of that healthy balance with devices we but then also being very, very clear about what we want to accept in our school.

Michael Horn

Go ahead, Ulric. It looked like you were ready to get in there.

Ulric Shannon

No, no, no. I think I was just asking.

Michael Horn

No worries.

Ulric Shannon

I was asking myself, what are we actually teaching to do? Right? If cell phones are not going anywhere and technology is just moving faster and faster. And so to Kyla's point, you just have to find ways to integrate that into your everyday work in the classroom as well, whether that's projects and polls or digital portfolios. I think there's a number of ways to integrate that because the technology is not going anywhere. And if we remove that from students, we're just pushing them back even further because they will have to use cell phone or some other, you know, innovative device of the future. A teleportation device. It could be at one point, right, but if our young people are not comfortable with using it, they're just gonna be light years behind at the rate in which our world is moving in the next 20, 30 years.

Debate: Phones vs. School Devices

Michael Horn

So, that's a good departure point I think for the next question that I'm curious about, which is like a lot of folks will say, well you know, like Epic is a, is a one to one device school. There's laptops, right? Some places have Chromebooks everywhere or tablets or whatever else. Why not ban the phones? Because those are the personal devices. Hearing what you just said, Kyla, right, About, you know, personal property is a conversation. But you know, but it gets rid of the social media. Like we can do the polls and the engagement and the lookup like on tablets and laptops and stuff like that. Ulric, what do you see around that? Like are there specific cases where like actually the phone is just like the right device to do the educational thing we want to do? What are those use cases look like?

Ulric Shannon

Absolutely. I don't know when the. I always ask a lot of people, when was the last time you actually been into a school and been into a classroom? And a lot of people have not been in a very, very, very long time. So they're speaking from a far distance. But I think that these things. Have you ever seen a group of 12 year old try to get a Chromebook out and everyone is not charged and they're not working and we're trying to plug them up and we're trying to find the one that works and we're trying to get them to log in. We have lost 30 minutes of instructional time trying to do that. When I could just say pull out your phones.

I can guarantee you the phone is charged. I can guarantee you it is always charged. And they can jump on the same website just as fast. They can scan a QR code. They know how to do so many things so fast. There could be a TikTok class or a Snapchat class or group for the class where they're able to get information super duper quick. Utilize a Kahoot to collect data in real time from their students. Like do you understand the assignment? Yes or no.

And that allows the teacher some real time data. Definitely just using your phone as opposed to asking a group of kids to find that Laptop. And I can guarantee it in a lot of schools, the screens are broken, they're not charged, all the things I've listed before. But I've seen that in classrooms where teachers and students are comfortable utilizing their phone, they know the purpose and the intent. And if you do that with such routine as a previous third grade teacher, they will do that even when you're not there. They will know when, how and what to use their cell phones for if it's routine. But if it's not, then that's going to be a challenge.

Michael Horn

Kyla, you were smiling there. I want to hear your take.

Kyla Mathews

Yes, again, I oversay everything Ulric just said. That question about have you been in the classroom? Is so valid. The other piece I would add to, though, is the safety component. So back to the power struggle. Many schools, there's a perception about many schools. And we are also evaluating on how well our students feel safe at schools. With the University of Chicago's five Essential Survey, there's direct questions about school safety. And if parents question the safety of their neighborhood, their school, the cell phone definitely cannot get taken because that is my access to my child.

Right. And so that normally is the discussion, that's normally the argument of parents, I need to be able to get to my student, to my child. And so when you build relationships with families, with the community, with students, and understanding that we are safe here, all of us are, that kind of comes off the table when it's time to talk about cell phones. But I did want to raise that as a talking point for the next level conversation. That'll be an argument for sure, the safety concern.

Michael Horn

Well, the safety one, I think is a big deal because chronic absenteeism that we're seeing, it's for multiple reasons, right. Some of it has been disengagement because they're not sure the purpose, but some of it is around safety and things of that nature. So, and I think the argument has been that phones are actually increasing the chronic absenteeism because they're increasing the disengagement. But I think I hear you saying there actually may be the key to increase engagement or at least increase.

You know, my sort of sense that my kid will be okay or that I can reach them when they're in school. So help me understand what that looks like. Like, are you finding that phones actually, rather than increase disengagement, are actually increasing engagement?

Phones: Balancing Access and Safety

Kyla Mathews

Yeah. So phones, again, to your point, just being a broad brush or just an easy thing to blame is the issue. Right. But when it comes to the safety piece, I know post pandemic like immediately transitioning back to schools, families were worried because we all were trying to figure out how to re engage. And the way to my student is I can call them directly. When I was in class, when I was in school a couple years ago, you would have to call the main office or the secretary would have to call into the classroom. But now with that immediate access to your child, especially in the high school level, parents want that autonomy at the same time. So we have to honor that in some sort of spaces.

Right? But if parents, again, trust the learning community, students understand that the bartering between my phone, my cell phone usage and the engagement of your lesson, then it becomes less of a debate and therefore you won't have to be so drastic, as in all being all campuses.

Michael Horn

Last question as we wrap up here, and I'd love you both to sort of take a stab at this one, which is someone told me, you know, Michael, you're just sort of crazy here because, like, we would never have allowed fax machines and telephones on people's desks, you know, when we were, when we all were in school, not to date me, but. Right. And so, like, that's the equivalent of what when that phone is there. And so you just mentioned that the parent can reach out directly to the kid on the one hand, see the benefit, on the other hand, wow, that means anyone can. They can be connecting with lots of folks. And that argument is really would you have had a fax machine sitting on someone's desk back in the day? How do you think about that conversation? What would you tell that individual to sort of reset their mind around that?

Kyla Mathews

Well, as a principal, my biggest thing and what I tell my staff is that my job is to set the conditions so you can do your job the best way you can. And so if you need a fax machine on your desk, we'll get you a fax machine on your desk. And I also have phones in each classroom so that we don't have to go to the teacher's lounge to call families. Right. For any reason. So I say all this to say is that if we are going to make the learning environment conducive for this generation of students, to your point that technology is not getting weaker, it's getting stronger. Why don't we learn how to empower ourselves and students on how to be responsible with all devices while we have them in our care? That's my plight..

Michael Horn

Ulric, your take.

Ulric Shannon

I love that. Kyla. I think we're certainly aligned here. Our job is not to make school harder, not for the adults in the building and not for students. And so our job every single day is not just a third grade teacher, but also a special education teacher. Every student has individual needs just like every adult. And so, yes, if you need this inside the building, you need this support in order to make your learning experience much more enjoyable and you feel much more successful, you're growing in confidence. Then if that is the fax machine, if it is any other, a major copy machine, whatever it is that you may need.

Student Thrives with Computer Accommodation

Ulric Shannon

And I'll close with this story, I have one student who folks told me it's going to be a real, real challenge to get him in the building, to get him to pay attention, to do anything. And this student who is probably now out of college, the only thing he wanted to do was use the computer to do his work because he was so caught up on his pencil penmanship that he would just erase and erase and erase like every day, all day. And this was a student who ended up with all A's in my classroom, even with the IEP, one of the highest performing students in my classroom. And it's because teachers just wanted to make it so much more of a challenge and say, well, he needs to learn how to write well. You know, doctors have terrible penmanship, but they're your doctor, right, and you're okay. And if he just needs this computer the same way that some child just may need a cell phone just to feel a little bit more comfortable to do that work there, why not provide them with the resources they need if there's no need to do the fight, if the grades and the performance and expectations are being met, why pick that as your battle?

Michael Horn

Good way to, good place to end it. I think the individualized support for each student so that they can succeed, which is the goal. Kyla Matthews, Ulric Shannon, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate the insights and the wisdom from on the ground. And for all you tuning in, we'll be back next time on the Future of Education.

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Tyler Thigpen, CEO and head of school at the Forest School and Acton Academy, joined me again to discuss the powerful impact that my mentor, Clay Christensen, and his theories of innovation had on Tyler’s practical approach to education leadership and innovation. We dove into topics such as identifying and developing capable leaders, designing for sustainability, integrating around a Job to Be Done, and shaping organizational culture through problem-solving.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. You're joining the show where we're dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. Today we've got a repeat guest, that happens every once in a while, but generally not like this close in proximity to each other. But we've got Tyler Thigpen back. He's the CEO, head of School of the Forest School and Acton Academy. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

We talked a lot last time about how he's the CEO of the Institute for Self Directed Learning in his book about that topic, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. Tyler, did I miss anything? Good to see you. How are you?

Tyler Thigpen

You didn't miss anything. Great to see you. I'm doing really well and happy to be chatting about this topic today.

Lessons from Clayton Christensen

Michael Horn

Yeah. And so I wanted to bring Tyler back because I thought the conversation we had was fantastic. And literally, like a few weeks after we had recorded that, he came out with this piece on LinkedIn titled 8 Game Changing Business Lessons I Learned from Clayton Christensen. And of course, as you all know, Clayton Christensen was my mentor. The ideas he learned literally changed my life and how I view the world. And Tyler, I guess I, like, I hadn't internalized that you had had some similar experiences taking Clay's class when you were in the EDLD program, I think at the Ed School at Harvard. And so I just thought, well, for starters, like, what. What moved you to write the piece? And maybe macro level, talk about the impact that that Clay had with you or when you got to interact with him and sort of that moment in your life

Tyler Thigpen

Totally. And my experience with Clayton, you said, changed my life. And even though I didn't get as much time with him as I think you probably did, I would say the same thing. Just an incredible experience. The first time I led a school, Michael, was back in 2011, and I had read the Innovator's DNA and was very compelled by that. And then my team and I started an innovation diploma for high schoolers. Really centered around some of the characteristics, you know, the questioning, the networking, the experimentation, you know, highlighted there in Innovator's DNA. But I didn't know Clayton. It wasn't until I went to my doctoral program that I heard about this legendary course called Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise, which I know you know very well.

And I got lucky enough to get him in class and really just rolled up my sleeves and tried to take from it as much as possible. And it really that was 10 years ago, and it's been, you know, my work as a CEO since that time. How many times I have, you know, thought back and reflected and looked at notes and reread theories and tried to apply things. It's just remarkable. It's really almost more than any other business framework that I've come up with. And so that's really what inspired me to write the piece.

I was at a dinner with one of your colleagues, Thomas Arnett, and was sharing some of the same story with him, and I realized I haven't really synthesized my own reflections and thinking. And so I'll put it in a LinkedIn article. And I did, and it was so helpful. And I actually teach it to my leaders as well on my team, and we continue to benefit.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Very cool. And I think you got a lot of feedback on that article. So maybe we'll start not David Letterman style completely, but at the bottom, number eight, and then we'll work backwards number eight. You had identifying and developing capable leaders. And I'd love to know what that means to you, because, like, I think a lot of people would say, well, like, everyone's looking for leaders. You talk to a venture capitalist, they invest in, you know, entrepreneurs. Right? Like, what does that mean? And how did Clay help you around that? Or what's the problem that it helped you solve for?

Tyler Thigpen

Absolutely, Michael. And again, I welcome your feedback on any of this because, yeah

Michael Horn

But I'm super curious what this one meant.

Rethinking Leadership and Hiring

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, I mean, this was one of the most provoking ideas that I encountered with Chloe. I actually disagreed with him at first. I was given leadership opportunities at a very young age, professionally, like 21. I had a boss that just really believed in me. And so I had this bias around leadership that's like, as long as you have a few certain qualities, you can do anything, you know? But Clayton's very provoking point was to think through, okay, for the roles that you have for your organization, for it to really, you know, grow and execute and learn at a high level. What are the kinds of experiences that this individual is going to have to face? What are the kinds of experiences, therefore, that we would then look for in their previous life, you know, leading up to that point, whether in their personal or professional life, that would have given them the sorts of experiences to be able to navigate them once they approach this new task. And so it really impacted my hiring, honestly, Michael, I just started to really think meaningfully about the competencies required for Each one of our different roles at the school and then backwards design from that and then in our interview questions and interview performance tasks, start looking for team members who had done those kinds of or similar experiences, you know, in the past.

And, and really, honestly nobody, because we're our school and our organization is, you know, trying to build something that's new and innovative. So it's not like anybody's really gone to a school for exactly the roles that we have. So if anything, you know, doing this process with folks as they, as they apply for us is. It helps see where they are going to be ready to hit the ground running and then where they may need some support, you know, early on. So that's been key for us for hiring for the last number of years.

Michael Horn

And for those who are interested, I think he calls it the Right Stuff Theory. Right. The schools of experience, if I'm remembering, and it's from Morgan McCall's work, High Flyers Developing the Next Generation of Leaders. And I think we may have had a similar, like, sort of disagreement with it initially. Actually, it'll be interesting to compare notes on this. My recollection was like, when Clay introduced this theory to our class, my pushback was like, well, if you're always looking for someone who's had experience, like, you never actually bring someone up into the next rung because, like, you're looking for, like, it's a truism in some ways. How do you develop? And I guess the nuanced understanding I developed over time of it was like, actually it's the opposite, right? Like the argument is, you know, you're looking for a CEO of a startup venture or something like that.

You don't go to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to fill that because their experiences are actually in large environments of how to get stuff done and things like that. And you'd be better off finding someone who maybe hasn't had the C level job, but had the experience of navigating and operating in a similar small environment and getting, you know, learning how to pull resources and get experiences done. And now you're giving them sort of that next ladder, if you will, on, their progression. And, and so in some ways I, I started to think of it as like, actually it's more pro development than I thought. It's just you have to sort of understand experience and like, context in a deeper way than maybe I had. How does that resonate with you?

Tyler Thigpen

It totally resonates. And I, I think too, he helped me see that if you, I mean, yeah, there's a good chance that if you've got someone who succeeded in an environment, they're going to succeed in another environment. But that's just what it is. It's a chance, you know, it's a bit riskier. Whereas if you need someone to deliver on the promise of this new role in this context, then there's going to be a greater likelihood for success if you look for that level of alignment. So you use the word nuance that. I totally agree. It's a bit more nuanced approach.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Okay, so let's go to the seventh one then. You had, you had understanding business models and designing for sustainability, which is interesting because like his class, as you said, legendary class. Building and sustaining successful enterprise. World's worst name for a course ever. But Clay was like consumed with sustainable success, right? Not flash in the pan. Success was like super core to who he was. So, so how did, how did this, how does this manifest and what you do day to day?

Strategic Growth Planning Variations

Tyler Thigpen

Well, and this one, I don't know if in your mind this one is closely connected to the discovery driven planning. For me it sort of is. But basically the way this impacted me was when I was outside of this context, it was like, okay, when designing the performa for our organization, that five year projections, you know, having multiple different versions, all of which are sustainable, but you know, one would be a fast growth, one would be moderate growth, one would be slow growth. And it included all the resources and, you know, processes, priorities, and we'll get to that in a minute, I think. But it essentially there were a few markers that I sort of said, like, it's got to make this amount of profit, this percentage of profit, you know, year after year. Otherwise that tells us, you know, this is probably not a sustainable business model. There are a few key restraints that need to be considered. Like if we're getting this kind of funding for a short period of time, that really shouldn't be a part of the annual operations funding sort of thing.

It just needs to be sustainable. And so I would tell my parents and my team of our schools early on, I would say we're building something that hopefully is going to live hundreds of years beyond us. And so allowing those constraints to help with decision making both around growth and staffing and what we would purchase and then continually looking at that for, from a budgeting standpoint, you know, every month has just been crucial, you know, and I do think like the sector in which I'm trying to lead at the moment, you know, micro schools and education, you know, institutes, there are some great examples of some incredible ideas out there, but it's not exactly sustainable and it's just very, very hard. But it requires a level of, he helped me, you know, really up my game in terms of the discipline to like make sure that this, this has a long term plan for it.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So it's interesting hearing you say that and I'm going to change my plan of how I ask you questions in a moment because of the way you just went into that one. But my observation on the micro school sector specifically is that far too many educators come into this with noble intentions. They start something and they basically they do the opposite of designing for sustainability. They say, I'm not going to take a salary for two years or whatever else and then we'll figure out what happens to the school afterwards. So like it's almost like a, I want to break out, I want to do this noble thing of creating this purpose driven, tight, community for learners and I'm sort of not going to worry about the sustainability question.

Supply Challenges and Strategic Planning

Michael Horn

And, my big fear is like the supply is going to keep slipping if, if we have that mindset, that actually not thinking like a business is doing a disservice to those communities that they stand up. And, and so it, I hadn't linked it to the Discovery Driven planning until you just said it, but I think it's right like the big thing that I tell people that I think Discovery Driven planning is different from Lean Startup or some of those things out there which, which are sort of derivative off Discovery Driven planning is Lean Startup has a little bit of like a, throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Discovery Driven planning is like okay, no, no, let's start with what's the end in mind. Like you know, Stephen Covey. Right. Like begin with the end and then like okay, what has to be true and what are the key assumptions in the model that we need to be thinking about now? Because otherwise it's, it's game over.

Right. And, and I think we're not having enough thought on the supply side at the moment in this space is my observation at least. I'm curious how that resonates for you.

Tyler Thigpen

It does. The, for, you know, I heard it said a few years ago, like how an organization starts is kind of like really hard to get out of, you know, over, over time. And I've seen that in this sector as well where you know, maybe the cost of tuition, for example, Isn't priced right. And folks kind of get locked in to that and then it ends up not being, you know, sustainable. Whereas discovery driven planning just. It invited me to say, okay, you know, here's the goal and the priority and here are the assumptions baked into what I think is actually going to happen. And then let me put in place these milestones to, to pressure test and double check those assumptions and see if they're true. And I did this.

And then by the way, often, sometimes they were, but most of the time they were not. And so like having to pivot, right? I mean, one of the. Our school is diverse by design, like economically, you know, racially, age, religion, gender. And I made a few early goals around that and made some assumptions around how that was going to happen. And sure enough, you know, three, six and nine months in, realized this is not working out. And so the pivots that we made there early on were so beneficial and so crucial. And had I not known about this process, I would have just kind of been doing that lean startup, you throw stuff on the wall and see what works versus being a bit more methodical about it, you know, and seeing what the market is demanding and what is actually potentially sustainable for the long term. So, that's kind of been our process.

Tyler Thigpen

I mean, even, even when we started the school, Michael, you know, I sort of, I was, I, I think it's going to be this much, this much demand for the environment. And it ended up, you know, after looking at the first milestone, it was way more, you know, so that some of the pivots were like positive pivots, you know.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

And then some were like, oh gosh, we've gotta, you know, invest, we've gotta add more resources, you know, or we've got to change some processes in order to, you know, arrive at this priority that we have. But, but, but pivots is really what it led us to. And pivots that were crucial.

Michael Horn

Yeah, and it's interesting cause that's number five for you. And so that's what this is. What I realized is like, we actually probably should back up to number two on your list because two through seven really build off each other. So two, you have the assessing capabilities, resources, processes, priorities, which really became, I think over time, the business model framework. Those of us of a certain vintage think of them as separate, but I think for most people, sort of it melds into itself. But talk about this RPP as it's affectionately known, or when I was there, it was RPV it was resources, processes, values back in the day. So these things evolve. Right, but talk about what this is and how it was useful to you.

Simplifying Alignment with Logic Models

Tyler Thigpen

Well, the way I make sense of it, I had done a little study on logic models in the past, and this just was almost a simpler, more, an easier way entry point in for me and my leadership team to help think through alignment in order to achieve our mission and our priorities being that last P. And then so based on those priorities, what are you the processes that we need to have in place, and then what are all the resources that need to go to it and even within our organization. So our organization has three separate components, and then each component has different projects. I use RPP at both the organizational level as well as the departmental level. And it helps me figure out teams. It helps me figure out, you know, policies, procedures, processes, and systems that need to be put in place, that need to outlive all of us in order to bring some of these goals to life. So an example would be we just did a micro school accelerator for leaders across the U.S. independent and public schools, and we just stood it up out of nowhere. And I used RPP to do that. It was like, okay, well, what would be the goal for the size team that we;re, cohort that we're inviting to this? What are therefore the processes? And then what are the resources from our organization that we can pull together to pull that thing off? You know, we. Our online school is another example. We're pivoting to. To be responsive to what we understand, you know, demand and parent feedback to be. And again, using RPP to do that and making staffing changes and making processes changes.

And now we have three online offerings instead of one. You know, as, as an example. And even after school, I mean, what's interesting is now that our nonprofit has land and has facilities, it's like all of a sudden our resources have kind of gone out the roof. And so that actually thinking about RPP made me think, oh, you know, are there other priorities that we ought to consider because of this new resource that maybe is underutilized in some ways. So, like, we're actually thinking about after school now, which we've never thought about before, but we have this great place, you know, this great resource that's just not being used in the afternoons and on the weekends.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

So now what's the team and what's the process? And RPP is, you know, it's big for me there too.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. And then I guess it translates into the business model and sustainability Right. Because what do you need to bring in revenue wise to make that, to actually be effectively leveraging that resource that is underutilized to your point, that. But you have in your control. The other piece that comes out of RPP directly and it's in your piece as the number three is shaping organizational culture through new challenges. I love this theory as well. It's Edgar Schein from MIT who sort of originally documented all this work. And then in my telling, really processes and priorities are where culture really manifests right in an organization.

But I would love to hear how you, how this has been helpful to you?

Tyler Thigpen

Michael, this was also very provoking for me. I used to think before this experience with Clayton, I used to think that, you know, if I hired the right people who were like a culture fit and if I was charismatic enough to sort of, you know, broadcast that kind of culture and celebrate the things that we wanted to cultivate, that would be enough. But Clayton's theory was so provoking, you know, based off Shine, as you're mentioning, was like, actually if you introduce a problem to the group, then that's going to have a very formative, you know, impact on the group. And so I remember the first time I led a school, we, I did this. We created basically an unschooling experience. And our staff had never done anything like that. And kids had a ton of choice and voice in what they were doing. And all of a sudden our entire team was confronted with this, you know, experience of children having decision making power where they previously did.

Transformative Feedback and Empowerment

Tyler Thigpen

And it completely shifted the culture. You know, in my current context, you know, my staff, a lot of my staff that I had hired had never done, you know, feedback, sort of 360 feedback with one another before joining my team. And so I introduced a new problem which was like two by two by two feedback, you know, where, okay, before, you know, you come to me at the end of the year to give me feedback and receive feedback, like, go talk to two other teammates, you know, and give them feedback and receive feedback. And then, and that was just a major, you know, culture shifter for us. We have another, again, some of my educators had come from environments that were more teacher centric, where learners had a lot of control. And so one of the problems that we introduced to the environment was, okay, there's gonna, we're gonna create an entire day for the learners where they make the rules, they sign their name to the rules. We have it at a campfire.

You know, it's this problem that our entire Team staff are experiencing, and all of a sudden it's shifting their hearts and minds to like, oh, the, this is really the learner school, you know, more than anything else. So now as a leader, I mean, I still think about hiring culture fits and, and, you know, really celebrating things I want to cultivate. But now it's like, what problems does our team need to be introduced to, what challenges, you know, and that'll form us?

Michael Horn

It's interesting when you, when you bring that up. I write about this a lot. And it takes like three paragraphs out of a chapter, right? To be like, find a problem, put a team around it. Then, you know, if it works, have them repeat. If it doesn't, try different processes, et cetera. Sounds so simple in theory. And, and yet it's actually really freaking complicated if you think about that, right? To just do what you did. Okay, we're gonna have a day where the kids are making the rules.

What do we start to build out of that? What problems does that introduce? Right? What does that mean for us as teachers? What are our roles? Okay, how do we actually now start to codify what we've done that has worked? Right. And repeat it over and over again? Like, these are not actually, they sound easy, but they're actually really freaking hard in reality. Yes?

Tyler Thigpen

Yes. Amen. And, and what I found helpful to sustain the complexity of it was stand up meetings with my team every day, basically little scrums, you know, like, literally.

Michael Horn

What did we just learn? What are we going to keep doing? What are we going to stop doing, sort of stuff.

Tyler Thigpen

Exactly. And, and how's everybody doing? You know, we have, you know, and just checking in and, and iterating in the moment. That brought a lot of camaraderie too.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I can imagine. All right, so number four, you had integrating around a job to be done. This is one of my favorites. But why didn't you give the basic notion of what it means to integrate around a job to be done?

Aligning Education with Jobs to Be Done Theory

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah. My understanding, traditional marketing endeavors, look, try to sector out and section out different users in the marketplace and then speak to them versus jobs to be done theory, which sort of says, like, okay, you know, we humans have some goals in our lives and we are hiring different things in order to achieve those goals. And from a very human centered, empathetic, design thinking standpoint, you know, what, what are those jobs that we, you know, are hiring others to do for us? And in my context, it's parents and caregivers, they're hiring schools or they're Hiring, you know, learning communities to do certain jobs for them. And there's some great research out, you know, by your team and others around the jobs to be done specifically related to alternative schools and that are sort of non traditional. And, you know, we took that feedback, in addition to the feedback we were hearing from our own community, and we said, okay, this is typically what we understand now. Parents, caregivers, in our context, are hiring folks like myself and my team in order to do. And so we looked at that, we talked about it, we discussed it, and then we sort of said, okay, does this align with the processes, you know, that we have in place? And also, is this what we're celebrating and reporting back on? And so we actually aligned, Michael, our report cards and our progress reports on this.

Michael Horn

So, like, that's interesting.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, jobs to be done, you know, for alternative schools. One of them is, for example, when I disagree with decisions at my child's school and I'm feeling unheard, help me find an alternative that will honor my perspective and my values. You know, so us understanding a family's perspective and values and then reporting back instances where we see their children, you know, living those out in our context was a part of the report card. You know, another one is when my child is unhappy, unsafe, or struggling at school, help me find an environment where they can regain their love for learning. So one of the first things our report card talks about is, are they loving learning right now? You know, and what are they loving learning specifically? And so I think and that it seems like that resonated. We got great feedback on our revised report cards as a result of that.

Michael Horn

Well, it's interesting, just thinking out loud, two things. One, to swim with you, which is the outcomes, right are defined by the job and the circumstance and so reporting against that, super interesting. And sort of helps front and center, like, how should we evaluate whether we were successful or not? Let's do it relative, right, to why they came here. I think it's really brilliant. The second thing is I.

I also think what gets very interesting for an organization is when people with multiple jobs to be done are coming to you and they're actually in conflict with each other at some stage. Right. So the one that I'll use is sometimes, like, okay, I'm not solving for academics. You have it here, right? Like social, emotional learning, super important to me. Sort of that balanced educational experience, whole child, whatever you want to call it. And then that first one might be around the perspective and values. And you can imagine sometimes those swim against each other. Right.

And so one of the things that I say is helping. You know, when you should fire a customer and tell them, like, hey, this is what you're optimizing for, and we are not optimized for that. So rather than like, have this song and dance about how we can serve you, let's have an honest conversation and help you find a better spot where you can make progress. And it's actually better for your school culture because you don't have someone that's like, sort of pushing against the grain. It allows you to better double down, if you will, on the resources, processes, priorities you're optimized around. You're also helping that family do better for them given their goals. Right. You're not asking them to somehow swim against the outcomes that matter to them.

And I think one of the challenges that I observed that I think micro schools could really help traditional districts with is like, we're trying to pack these families in and say, like, your kid should do, like, be striving for the exact same thing as this kid. And, like, that's just plainly not true. Micro schools can maybe allow us to create a broader community, but not have us all swimming in the exact same direction, if you will, when an appropriate, you know, a different goal is appropriate for a given kid, if that makes sense.

Tyler Thigpen

It totally makes sense and resonates. And. And it's scary when you start saying no to a family, you know, at the beginning when you're trying to prove out, you know, the business model.

Michael Horn

Sure. You just want to attract anyone at that stage. Right?

Tyler Thigpen

Totally. Yeah. That's the temptation. Right. But. But we actually have on our website, I don't have it memorized, but we have a page on our website and it's close to admissions that does just what you said, Michael, which is like, this school is for X, Y and Z sorts of families. If you are A, B and C sorts of families, love you, see you, you know, you probably want to go, you know, somewhere, somewhere else. And then what's interesting is I've tried to get even better as a leader at introducing people to our environment with that.

So when they're going through the application interview process, I've identified what are, like, the eight or nine most common struggles that parents have. And I'll. I'll lead with that. I'll be like, hey, awesome, just know that you're signing up for these struggles. Like, I, as a dad, I'm struggling with everybody's struggle. It's just a part of who we are. But we want those struggles, you know.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

Why? We want those struggles. And, and you're right. If they get into it, because sometimes they get into it and not really appreciate it, then there's a couple. I mean, we could sort of fire the customer, if you will, or, you know, and this may be connects.

Michael Horn

Like on the front end, you're trying to make sure that they don't make a mistake.

Tyler Thigpen

Right.

Michael Horn

Which is better?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, ideally for sure, but they still can get through. And then, and then I think another option though is helping them outsource that, you know, that need that they're trying to hire it for.

Michael Horn

So that one is interesting. Right. Also because I think I love the way you grounded in the struggling circumstances. Right. That they're experiencing. I also think, incidentally, that's the best way to market like anything is to like ground yourself in someone's reality. And, and then they can be like, oh, that's what I need. Right.

And something you just said there, I think is, is a good point, which is the advice I often give people when they're trying to pick a school is I say, like, what are you solving in your family already for your kid? And what, like, what is a school going to solve for you that you can't or don't have the desire Right to solve for your. For. For your kid? Um, and it's a way to help them realize, oh, like, you know, school is doing this lane for me, but like, you know, after school sports is doing this one for me. And then like, I do this with my kid. Right.

And, and I don't need it to do every single thing for me. Which I think is where you're going with that.

Preparing Children for Independence

Tyler Thigpen

It is. And the, the older I get and longer I've been in this work too, like inviting parents and caregivers to consider, you know, their, when their children are 18 and they quote, unquote, launch, you know, in a traditional sense from their home, you know, what do they want to be true to them? What sort of qualities, competencies do they want them to have and exhibit? And then where are they getting practice at those things from the youngest ages, appreciating that really no single learning environment is going to be able to meet the expectations that they have for their children. But if parents and caregivers were to fully shoulder the responsibility for making sure that their learners, you know, their, their children get the practice in some environment, you know, putting the puzzle pieces together, if you will, you know, it's sort of. Which, which puzzle pieces do you want to you know, choose for that and allow us to help you think through it and, and, and, and ways in which we can add value, but also just be honest about the ways in which we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna add value. And I think that, like you said, I think that's helpful too. Yeah.

Michael Horn

And it sets expectations. Right. And, and, and it sets culture, I think, for a community. I'll just say one other thing and then I'll go to your number one reason as we start to wrap up here, which was the other thing that I've learned through Job Moves is helping people make trade offs is really important and it's not settling. Right. I'm not settling for all my kid's not going to have access to this. It's like, okay, my top priority for the school is this, I'm willing to trade off on this. And then you being like, okay, and you can get that elsewhere.

Right. Or you can get it not now, but in a couple years that will become a thing. Right. And sort of realizing that trade offs are things you make so you can, you can get the thing you most value or most prioritizing at a given point in time and seeing it as like a value creation step for a family as opposed to a. I can't get that. Geez, what, what, what, what good is this school if it doesn't do everything for me?

Tyler Thigpen

That's powerful, Michael. And I think in the micro, the schooling context too, for parents and caregivers, it's, it's so relevant because there's just so much that could potentially be learned and so much that we parents kind of project on learners, you know, as something that's being crucial. You know, what immediately comes to mind is math learning. You know, I mean, there's such an interesting debate about, you know, right now, what math conceptually, procedurally needs to be learned before graduating from school and for what reasons. And the safe default, you know, sometimes fear based posture that parents, caregivers take is like, well, do what I did, you know.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah, Algebra, calculus, that's the way. Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

And I'm like, do you know how to do those problems right now? And are you using them in your life? And you know, but, but talking about the trade offs is, is exactly, I think, the right way forward. Because if we do, I mean, listen, if we want to do deep, deep math learning, we can, we can facilitate that, but just realize it's going to take a lot of time and it's probably going to take this amount of time and we're going to lose, you know, real world learning or collaboration or, you know, self awareness or whatever it is that, you know, whatever else we care about.

Michael Horn

No, I love that. And for those who think, sorry, this is going to be a plug off the topic. But for those who think that, oh, I learned to think critically through algebra, there are plenty of ways to think critically about the world. And I'm not sure the way we have traditionally taught algebra, we're actually building a transferable skill around critical thinking. So little plug there. You probably don't disagree with me. Number one, you have this notion of humility over ego. You pull from Jim Collins to introduce the idea.

But maybe talk about how Clay brought this home to you and how it's manifested in your work.

Ego-Free Role Model

Tyler Thigpen

Well, I just. He's probably in my top three humans on the planet that was a role model for this. And I just saw him respond kindly in, in class at a, you know, sort of high stakes environment, the Harvard Business School. And I saw, you know, learners give challenging, pointed questions and I watched him, you know, respond with questions with a non anxious presence, with a kind tone. And then at the end, you know, the very last day of class, he talked about, he was like, you know, my, my wife and I strive and my children strive to be known for our kindness, you know, and you can't go wrong. And I was like, oh, well, that makes a lot of sense because I experienced him that way and I just. Because he's come up with these theories that really live outside of himself and he's just been very observant about the world and which. That is just the definition of ego free.

You know, it's not about him and what he's trying to grow for his own kingdom. It's about observing what is happening in the world and how can we serve others and what works along that journey of serving others. I think for me, you know, right now we're ending up our year. And I've just met with all my leadership team. They've all given me feedback about my leadership, you know, and I just summarized it before this call actually like the pluses and minuses and I just need to take myself. I mean, I need to keep myself in it so I can grow. But like, it's like, hey, Tyler, as a leader, these are the ways in which I need to grow. These are how people are experiencing, experiencing me on my team.

Growth Through Humble Leadership

Tyler Thigpen

And, and I can really, I stand to grow from this. And I think that's important for organizational leadership because we just don't learn as quickly if we keep our ego in it, if we're not humble, if we're not willing to see the failure and learn from the failure and learn exactly why from the failure. In fact, I even on this point, Michael, I revised our exit survey this year for our families because I was like, I really want to understand even more deeply when families leave, like, why are they leaving? You know, it's not about me or my teammates. Like, they have some goals. I want to understand what those goals are, and those are outside of myself, you know, so it's not about me or, you know, so. So that he was very impactful and helpful for me in that.

Michael Horn

That's really cool. And I always think it's like a really good role model because he loved to be wrong, because it meant he learned something. And that was part of that humility, I think. And I always felt. I don't. I mean, you went through the class once, I got to go through it three times, you know, once as a student, then twice working for him. And I always felt badly because he, people didn't get to see how the theories changed or evolved.

And I'd be like, all right, man, he got serious pushback on this last year and look at what he's changed now this year. Because even though he sort of debated, asked the questions, et cetera, he actually was like, oh, wow, this is not quite right. Let's evolve it. And I always thought that was such a cool example that unfortunately the students didn't always get to see because it was something that was happening over time. And as a student, you're there for a moment and then you're graduated into the world. But I had the same experience as you.

Tyler Thigpen

That's cool. I didn't know. I could imagine that that was the case, but I didn't know that. And to see it from your vantage point would be really fascinating. And I mean, he to me, what you're saying is he sort of did his own discovery driven planning process on his own theories.

Michael Horn

Good way to put it.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah.

Michael Horn

And he used his class. Right. As a way to like, he loved it when he got pushed back. I think sometimes the criticism I would hear of him is some students would say, well, he's so wed to the way he's done it. And I was like, but because he's asking questions and to defend it, because that's how he's going to realize, oh, wow, there's a flaw here. Let's or there's an anomaly or whatever it is, let's sharpen it even further from what I just learned, which I always thought was really cool. That humility to learn from anyone he interacted with.

Tyler Thigpen

So cool.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Tyler, huge thanks for coming on sharing some of these insights and frankly, like for those running schools, I think there's a ton to learn from here. Not just the micro school community but everyone who's running schools top to bottom. There's a lot of lessons here I think. So hugely appreciate what you continue to do as you've wrapped up your traditional academic year for a little bit. Just, just huge thanks to you and the community you've built.

Tyler Thigpen

You're welcome. And thank you for the conversation and for all the work that you and your team do to advance these. Super, super helpful for all of us.

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Dave McCool, founder and CEO of Muzzy Lane, joined me to discuss the role and potential of AI in creating dynamic, role-play simulations for online learning. Dave shared the journey of Muzzy Lane, from its early days developing history games for schools to its current focus on enabling educators to easily build their own customizable, auto-graded simulations across more than 100 higher-education course areas. Our conversation highlights how recent advances in AI have transformed the process of authoring simulations. It’s now much faster, more accessible, and more engaging for both instructors and learners.

I highly recommend you don’t just read or listen to our conversation; watch it because Dave gave a live demo of the use of AI to create simulations. Show don’t tell, as the saying goes.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we have a special guest, Dave McCool. He's the founder and currently the CEO at Muzzy Lane, which basically creates dynamic role play simulations in a variety of fields. We're going to learn a lot more about it, but simulations have been an area that I've been very interested in for a long time in the world of digital, online learning and so forth for its ability to frankly create more real world, real life learning experiences for individuals. Dave, welcome. So good to see you and thanks for joining us.

Dave McCool

Thanks for having me here today, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah, so let's dive in maybe, because I think simulations have taken almost like a, you know, level up, if you will, from video game land. Right. With AI over the past few years. But let's go back a little bit further than that. Just the founding of Muzzy Lane. What was the big idea behind it? How's the company evolved? Who are sort of, you know, who do you serve right now? Where are these simulations and where are they hitting learners at the moment?

Dave McCool

Perfect. Yeah. So the big idea is a great place to start. So I'm a software engineer by background and so when we started Muzzy Lane in early 2000s, we had an interest in games and simulations, looked kind of at the landscape and saw education. More digital transformation was happening in education and just felt as a software engineer is like, this is a great place for games and simulations. It's a great place for deeper, more complex interactive software that can really get at better learning experiences and better assessment experiences. So that was really the big idea. 2002 was a very different time than today.

So, you know, we went through a lot of iterations trying to find the right formula. You know, the first half of the company's life was really, we created and released history games into high schools and colleges called Making History. People who use them, love them. Not as many people use them as we had hoped in education at the time, but that series lives on in the commercial space on Steam, so it's still available today. Did a lot of work with publishers. Really kind of most of our work's been in higher ed over the course of the company's Life. A little K12 and a little workforce. But I think for us the big turning point for us was 2014 and 15, the Gates foundation, they gave us a research grant because they'd made a lot of investments in games and simulations for learning and hadn't been getting the results they were hoping for.

So they wanted us to study the market, which was interesting for us as sort of startup software people, to do a research project.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I was about to say, how did that, how did that land for y' all?

Dave McCool

It was good. We. It was a period. A colleague of mine, Connor Ryan, came in and was running the company at the time while I was running the tech transformation we were undergoing. So he had a good experience that we didn't with that. And so we. It was a really great experience.

We produced a 40-page report which is still available on our website.

Michael Horn

What did you learn? Like, what were the headlines from that report?

Dave McCool

I still remember the headlines today. And it was because they were, they were humbling really for us. It was high awareness of games and simulations among instructors and administrators in university, especially online. But all sorts of logistical challenges with what they were being offered. Things were generally too big, too inflexible. Don't disrupt my course became the thing we heard most commonly. We see the value in what you're doing. I'm not rebuilding my whole course around.

Michael Horn

You, but I wanted to fit in as a module as opposed to. To I have to rethink 10 of the 13 weeks or whatever.

Dave McCool

Right. So it still has to be a scale that fits with my course that fits with my learning objectives, like time. Like I don't have enough time to spend on that particular part of my courses that this game is going to require for me. And they wanted to control the content. They didn't want to have to go back to a developer constantly to get changes made and updates made. And then kind of the basic ones were it has to run any device in a browser, on a phone, including had to integrate to the LMS, which meant LTI integration. And it had to meet WCAG 2.0 AA Accessibility Now 2.2, which again, these were not things people. We came kind of from the serious games and the games for learning side and we were kind of like, oh, games are great and you're going to adjust to get those benefits.

So anyway, we were doing a tech transition at the time anyway, that's when the authoring tools came out and we said, let's just go all the way down to we're going to start putting these tools in the hands of our partners, teach them how to use them, make it as easy as possible. And that's really been the business ever since.

Michael Horn

Super. And so what higher ed programs specifically? Like, when you're talking about the simulations, where have you found the most traction? Are we talking like nursing and it's almost VR like, or are we talking negotiations? Like, there's a pretty big range of what these can look like. Where, where have you found the most traction?

Dave McCool

Yeah, I think so. We, when we thought about the tools, we thought about how to help people build their own simulations for learning, we thought a lot about ROI, because when you were building specific games, like we built for principles of Marketing, we built for intro Spanish, we built for operations management, but you're building one big product for one course area and it's hard to make that money back. It's hard to make that work financially. So what we wanted to do is build templates that were as broadly applicable as possible. So we wanted to make content forms that you could then fill in with what you needed for your course area and hopefully those would travel pretty broadly. So we're in over 100 course areas in higher ed. Business is probably the number one by usage overall. But a lot of nursing, a lot of medical fields like medical assisting, a lot of the humanities as well.

So we're in language learning, we're in sociology, psychology, crisis counseling, social work, all those kinds of places. And the role play format of the multiples that we have really has become the most popular one just because it does travel really well and it really fits a lot of what people try to do.

Adapting Games for Education

Michael Horn

And so the, and it sounds like the secret became, okay, we're going to give up our adherence to what a serious game needs to look like or what the ideal version of it is. I'm sort of reminded of the Greg Toppo book, I think the game believes in you, right, where he sort of said there's this clash of like these very big learning goals that serious game designers have as they enter the education space. And like, these are not your words, but these are his, as I recall them, was like, you know, sometimes schools can be a little more transactional in the knowledge and skills that they're trying to get across to students. And so, you know, you may lose sort of the organic nature, right of a game or simulation when put into the container of a class. But it sounds like you were able to take the market's message, make that change and, and give more power to educators to create these role plays. Am I understanding that correctly?

Dave McCool

Yeah, you are. And it's funny because you're I'm. I'm flashing back to all those. Yeah, yeah, and Kurt squire and Jane McGonagall and like all the people who initially sort of had this movement. And a lot of the challenges were created by this clash of cultures between what is a game for a lot of people? Game is voluntary. It has to be fun. What is learning? Some people learning is very different from that.

We're trying to figure out how to fit into the learning environment, push them. Like, we didn't want them to just not change anything because that's not helpful, but. But not impose criteria that are incompatible with what their goals were.

Michael Horn

So talk to us then about, you know, how that's evolved in terms of the product and how do educators create simulations fit for their course now? How do you help them? What, what, what do those authoring tools look like? It seems like a lot of variables and still could be a lot of work if not done well.

Dave McCool

Which is a very good point. So, yeah, so from fall of 2015 was when the platform came out until a couple of years ago, it was a pretty, just sort of a steady, steady workflow for us. It's like, how do we keep making these tools better? We did do custom tools for some people, partners, you know, for example, Western governors early on was, hey, we want to do a pandemic simulation for our masters in healthcare administration, where you run a trauma center during a pandemic. Ironic. That was 2015.

Michael Horn

I was gonna say that turned out to be prescient, sadly.

Dave McCool

But yeah, yeah, but really mostly just finding, you know, great fielding input from customers. How can we make this better? How can make the learner experience more engaging? How do we give you more flexibility to meet your goals? I think for us a big thing is auto assessment was always a big requirement from the market for us. So the tension for us was always, how engaging can I make this and still auto grade the experience? Because a lot of times you're working with online universities, they don't have the ability to grade open response type things. So that was sort of the challenge. And I think that was really just steadily grew and got up to about a million students a year being served. So it was nice. Again, like I said, mostly in higher ed. And then two years ago, really AI, it came out before that, but we were not sure what to do until about two years ago.

And that's really been the newest phase, which has really been. That's been pretty exciting.

AI: More than Just a Chatbot

Michael Horn

All right, so let's talk about that enabler in terms of like, what does AI allow you to do that you couldn't do before? Allow the people that you're working with, your clients, customers to do that they couldn't do before.

Dave McCool

So two really big things. So when we first, when ChatGPT sort of burst onto the scene, all of us, I think, like everybody else were like, oh, wow, this is really, really great, or it's going to make it so that no one needs what we do anymore. We weren't sure which. And the first few, first year or so of looking at it, we thought, well, everything felt like a chatbot, right? Everything sort of felt like, where do we put a chatbot? And we were like, well, we could put it into a smart chat, a roleplay sim, or we could put it in the corner and you could ask it when you got confused, but nothing felt quite right. And I think what, what really struck us a couple years ago, maybe more, 18 months, was instead of thinking about AI as a chatbot that we could put somewhere, we thought about AI as a resource that we could use. So what's AI? It's a big knowledge base of maybe all the world's data, I'm not sure that you can ask questions of and get responses. And we said, well, how could we, starting from roleplay, simulation, what we do, how could that make what we do better? And we really came out with two use cases that we immediately dove in on.

One is we said, what if we could teach it how to make simulations in our format and then provide that to our customers? So, you know, we and everyone else is already using ChatGPT to brainstorm scenarios and stuff. And you're doing a lot of copying and pasting from your chatbot into your tool, whatever tool you're making your content in. We said, let's move, remove that step. Let's just teach it directly how to make our stuff. We're AWS hosted, so we are able to integrate it directly into the platform. And just say, you just start talking to it and you say, I want to build a scenario. Here are my learning objectives, or here's some source material to start from. Walk me through a process that gets me to a fully testable scenario.

So that was one and that's the market has loved that.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I would imagine. I want to come back to that in a moment. Keep going.

Enhancing Learner Experience with AI

Dave McCool

Yeah. The first full version of that came out over Christmas, over the holiday of 2024. And the other was how do we make the learner experience better with this tool? And that was a little more challenging at first and then we finally just said what's the simplest thing we can do? It's like, well we have a, the roleplay simulation has a variety of question types. The usual suspects, multiple choice, fill in the blank, categorize. We said, what if we had an open response question type where instead of using multiple choice in a scenario you've analyzed data, you're talking to a coworker, they ask you a question and you just have to answer. And then what we can do is then use the AI as sort of like a fuzzy logic natural language processor back end to say hey. Michael asked David this, David said this back.

Here's the rubric here. The learning objectives we're tracking. Give me what Michael says back to David, grade David's response against the rubric and give me a rationale for the grading. And so that came out at the same time and that's been really cool too because now you can be much more authentic. Like one of our university partners said, I saw your journey before. It's really interesting. But it was sort of selected response. I saw open response and I said I'll do that changes everything because now it's a constructed response.

Now I, in a scalable auto assessed way can respond in my own words. I can, you know, put my mental model out there and you can, you can, you know, grade that well.

Michael Horn

And it's interesting on that second one. In some ways that also brings it more to the serious games origins and that there's something more authentic I would think about it that's possible. Maybe I'm making the wrong leap there.

Dave McCool

But no, I think that's what we talk about. It's more engaging and it's more authentic. And one thing we did along the way is also we added text to speech and speech to text so that you could actually speak your response. You don't have to type it anymore.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So I want to come back to the first one, but one more question. Can you use AI also like, or maybe this is a couple years off to start building, you know, graphics or like, you know, things that are more immersive or engaging simulations as well and maybe make, you know, there's this been this world of virtual reality that's been five years away for 20 years now. But maybe it becomes more possible because the authoring of these environments really goes down in terms of cost and time. What's your take on that?

Dave McCool

I completely agree. We in the authoring era have really backed off from VR, AR and 3D work which we had done in Our previous custom days, partly because our guardrails were authorable by non technical subject matter experts and accessibility. So those were so kept in that, in that box. We're now doing a really good job of generating with AI all the stuff in that box. What's about to come out from us next is generating images. So there's a lot of images and multimedia in our things today. Building those. And then our next thing is to look at, okay, can we build a 3D scene in, in AI, can we rig 3D characters? Can we create characters that can walk around and interact with each other? So I think that's next.

But that's like we've tried to be really disciplined about staying in like here's what we do really well. 3D and VR definitely has a place. The cost of production and the complexities of deployment mean there are places that's not well suited. So we sort of so far staying where we are.

Michael Horn

No, that makes sense. And so then this ties back into the number one use case around enabling the authoring right to explode in some ways along your guidelines. And I assume that's something I want to let you elaborate on a little bit because I assume anyone can create a simulation, but to do it in line with instructional goals, learning design, not overloading the learner, accessibility, et cetera. I assume there's a bunch of guardrails you all have created over time or rules by which content is created that you know, you don't want a faculty member or if it's at Western Governors, right. Like a centralized instructional designer to have to deal with all that complexity. You almost want the AI to just hard code that in some sense.

Designing for Balance and Structure

Dave McCool

Yeah. It's funny, most of our programming on that part of the product in the last year has been prompt engineering and system file work. And you know what we realized immediately we do not want, we didn't just want to put an AI interface in front of our users like you said and ask them to try to make this. It would not, that would not have gone well. And I think what we constantly, the balance we're trying to find is between how much to let the AI go versus how much to keep it structured. Because like, especially with universities who've reacted really positively to this, a big part of it is they can get the thing they need out of this easily and quickly. And before they could either spend a lot of time and money to get the thing they needed or they could get the thing they didn't really need quickly.

So it's trying to find that middle ground of like, give me your learning objectives, give me your goals, give me your activity purpose. Like is it a formative assessment? Is it a homework assignment? And then I'll guide you through this sort of, we call them playbooks, this playbook process of saying here, here are the steps to get to something usable and here are the ways in which you can kind of vary along the way.

Michael Horn

Last question on this, because you've talked a few times about using it for instruction, but also the assessment inherent in a simulation. Are all the simulations that your customers, universities creating, do they have both of those goals or some, you know, inherently assessment based and some are inherently instructional? Maybe formative assessment based? Like what, how does that work? How are simulations used? Maybe talk a little bit about the use cases of simulations within different courses in terms of their instructional versus assessment purposes. And can, can an assessment, or excuse me, can a simulation serve both?

Dave McCool

Yeah, to answer the last one first, yes, it can serve both. And I think for our entire company history, the challenge has been like, when are we teaching? When are we assessing? Like games? You know, the big picture promise of games for education is that they instruct and teach at the same time. But that isn't always easy to put into an environment that has other stuff happening. So our customers who do all those things, you know, McGraw Hill is a big partner, they do a lot of homework assignment work. So you know, it's a graded homework assignment, but it's not really an assessment in that sense. We have partners who use them as formative assessments, as checks for understanding. So like, you know, the end of each section or module, you might, you might take one that they're using to figure out if you've moved on and you understand or not. And then I think to the other extreme, we've got Education Design Lab, which is a partner in the durable skills space, is using it actually as summative capstone assessment to award credentials.

Michael Horn

Oh, that's interesting. And to show durable skills. It's because if you're, I'm going to make this up a little bit. But perseverance or something like that is one thing. If you can show it in a, you know, a self assessment which is extremely unreliable, but if you can actually exhibit that behavior in a situation where you suffer a setback in a simulation, maybe you can exhibit growth over time on that. Is that, is that sort of, or.

Dave McCool

You know, critical thinking is a good example that's easy to explain to people. You know, you, you, you role play someone in a job who's analyzing data, working with co workers and trying to apply critical thinking techniques to solve problems. Like you're, you're presenting these challenges. You're the produce manager at the grocery store. They want to put a kiosk in your section. Should you do it or not? You have to analyze data, interact with stakeholders and then there are skills, you're exhibiting things like distinguishing facts from opinions, providing thoughtful analysis, identifying core issues.

Michael Horn

So yeah, and so within different subjects, I mean you could in some ways simulations, particularly with the scalability now of AI, I imagine could actually uplevel the quality of assessments trying to get at these things from the multiple choice sort of short answer land to something much more immersive, context based, etc.

Dave McCool

Yeah, yeah, because we've got, I think we've got kind of the uncanny divide right now between how good can an auto graded assessment be or how authentic versus how authentic can a human administered assessment be? There's a big gap there today and we're always been on the side of the auto created, pushing it towards the human. And I think AI really helps you move that bar quite a bit.

Michael Horn

That's really interesting. All right, I know you're able to actually show maybe something, but I would love to show our audience some of what this looks like on the ground so that they can really feel what these simulations are.

Dave McCool

So my plan here is to do sort of the cooking show version of demoing where I'll show you the first few steps in the process of building something and then I'll jump to something that was built with that same process worked all the way through. I'm in our tool right now. This is an activity. So footwear impressions that I created earlier today, I'll go into the editor. So what I'm going to do here is basically this is the use case of creating a simulation, homework assignment simulation from a lesson plan. Okay, so in this case I had previously uploaded one of our favorite lesson plans of late, which is this Texas,, so the Texas CTE standards has a course called Forensic Science and there's a lesson called Footwear Impression. So doing footwear impression and analysis is part of doing Forensic Science.

So I've uploaded that lesson plan previously to the call starting. I can come here and I can say this will be a homework assignment. And then what we have is this eight currently this playbook called Create Activity and it's an eight step process. You can see them on screen right now. You could start at step four if you already had learning objectives and you didn't need those extracted from source material. So some people come there. But let's just sort of start. We'll go,

Step one and what we do at each step is we pre populate the prompt which then is combined with all the system text work we've done under the hood to get back the result for this step. So in this case it's going to analyze that document and suggest the learning objectives that my activity should have. And people do have the ability to sort of edit and play around with these as they go along.

Michael Horn

It's the cooking show thing. I'm supposed to say something witty here.

Dave McCool

Right.

Michael Horn

And pops up with the. Yeah.

Structuring Unstructured Data

Dave McCool

And I think what's interesting about this is, you know, someone said at ASU + GSV last week or a week before. This idea of AI helps take unstructured data and structure it. And this has been kind of an amazing realization for us as we've gone through this process is that you, you talk to the AI in natural language and then it does sort of software program things. And so it makes sort of the trying different things, experimenting getting to your goal a lot easier because you don't have to. There's no. You just try it. Right. So I can say, all right.

So there's what it suggested. Evidence, classification, characteristic analysis. So there are the ellos it suggested. If I go to step two. Okay, gradient learning objectives, let's say so.

Michael Horn

You can carve out an exception.

Dave McCool

I can say sometimes it'll suggest something that doesn't work well in the simulation format, accept evidence, documentation. So I say go. So it will go through those, it's going to add those to my activity. So we can say agree. All right, there it is. If I pop over here to the objectives. There they are.

Michael Horn

Oh wow.

Dave McCool

So like this already would have been a lot more work in time for someone one of our customers existing. And then what we do is we go to step three.

Michael Horn

In some ways this makes it way more self-serve. You all are doing probably less on the back end to help them through.

Dave McCool

Yeah, one of the realizations that hit us last year when, when people started actually using this in our customer setting. Actually now some of those activities are live to students was we realized that they never had to learn the tool. They never left this page. They just worked through these steps, played the activity, maybe made some changes which you can do here as well and then they were done.

Michael Horn

So does that lower cost increase output? Yes, yes, yes.

Dave McCool

Yeah, it's lower cost, it's faster output. I think the most important thing that we've noticed is it takes it from not possible to possible. Like we always say, better, stronger, faster. But we're really in not possible to possible.

Michael Horn

And so that's interesting because you had mentioned non consumption to me when we were trading notes about this. It's almost like people who would never have ventured into this space all of a sudden, hey, I can do something and get it, get it up and running.

Dave McCool

Yeah. I mean we have thousands of universities using our product indirectly through partners who've built for them. But it was always, it was always more challenging to get universities, except say if you're Western governors to take on that task themselves. They are building lots of courses. But they always felt the simulation hurdle was a little too high. And this has really changed that for them. So I ran step three, which was basically to create a story and some characters. So if we go over here and look, we'll see now we have characters that have been created.

So Dr. Maya Rodriguez. And then we get these personalities which are really cool because this is how the AI knows how to, how to speak in this character's voice. And I could edit these if I wanted to, but I just won't. Sure. For time.

Michael Horn

Sure. Yeah.

Dave McCool

Now just do one more step before I jump over to the other side. So now this is kind of the build out a story. So I could say build up the story, blah blah blah. I want to modify that. I'll just let it go. And then, you know, five would be create all the materials, create all the data that's going to support this story so that I can ask you challenging questions. Six would be create the questions. Seven is create the activity feedback.

And eight would be create the intro screen. And now we have a full activity.

Michael Horn

Here. It's generating right now. And so we're gonna. And then you're gonna jump into that activity now.

Dave McCool

Jump into that. The one that I built earlier. Yeah.

Michael Horn

Perfect.

Dave McCool

So we can see this. So city crime labs, unusually busy, string of high end home burglaries. That's everyone on edge.

Michael Horn

Early premise. Yep.

Dave McCool

Right. So there you go. So that's the story. So let's pop up one that was already made and see what the student would see.

Michael Horn

I'm just imagining Carmen San Diego back in the day could have been created in, in five minutes. Yeah.

Dave McCool

It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, so you saw that like I just did half the process in about five minutes. It probably would take another five to the other four steps. Yeah, this one I added a few images to. So I Added another maybe five or ten minutes after that process. But in this one, I told it I want it to be in an art museum. So here we go.

There's a priceless Botticelli sketch has vanished. Your expertise is needed. Here's what you're going to do. Here's your role. I'll come in, set my character.

Michael Horn

Yep.

Dave McCool

Here are the people I'm going to work with.

Michael Horn

Wow.

Dave McCool

Alarm at the museum. Pricessles Botticelli has been vanished. I come up with Dr. Rodriguez to see what's going on. Okay. So we come in.

Michael Horn

And so this could be also the speech. It could be a variety of modalities to interact with it as the learner.

Dave McCool

Yes. Yep, yep. So, yeah, they can voice or not voice. Authors have that choice. And we have as well. I'll turn it off for just a second. Sure. Yeah.

AI as Time-Saving Collaborator

Dave McCool

So. So this data you're seeing on the right here, all AI generated. Created the whole story, created all this data for you, all this dialogue. So I think two things about that. One is that it saves a tremendous amount of time versus an instructional designer or subject matter expert having to do all that, but also provides a collaborator. And, you know, we all work better when we have someone to talk to about the thing we're working on. This actually works pretty well as someone to talk to when you're working on this, which is interesting. Not something we had really thought of beforehand.

I'll just show you what the open response.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let's see it. It's interesting. While we're waiting to come up, I think of all the times I've seen stuff like this that has been super engaging because of the storyline, but how custom and expensive it's felt.

Dave McCool

Yeah. I mean, just a use case here is like, if you really love this pedagogical experience, one of the use cases in the AI is you can say, move this to an auto body shop, move this to a mall, for example, and it can do that. But let's see here. Let's say I think blood seems like a good thing. I might say I think the bloody footprints will be the most useful because they might show us the perpetrator's blood. That was my thought, actually. That's what I thought the right answer might have been when I did this the first time. It turns out it's not.

Michael Horn

I was going to say, are you. What's your criminal forensics background? Interesting. Okay, Right.

Dave McCool

So what's interesting is. So that what Maya just said there was completely generated off of what I said.

Michael Horn

Yep.

Dave McCool

And then the grade, which I got, which I think I got, oh, I got zero out of four. I didn't do very well at all. But then here's the kind of like, hey, here's why you got the score you got. So I think it's really important that learners understand that and also that they can challenge it. So when this is delivered as part of an LMS assignment, there's a challenge opportunity for them to say back to the teacher and the author, hey, I think I should have got...

Michael Horn

This is how I was thinking about it and blah, blah, blah.

Dave McCool

Yep, here's what I was thinking and here's why that should be good. Yeah, so that's, that's the basic experience. You know, you can see over here we've got score categories that are being tracked. There's a feedback screen at the end which gives them a bunch of feedback which we're now generating with AI. But again, just trying to keep making it easier to create these very sort of targeted, authentic experiences for learners.

Reimagining Online Course Engagement

Michael Horn

I'm just blown away. It's interesting. I remember the first online course I ever had the chance to take was I'm going to date myself, 20 some odd years ago when I was, you know, enrolling in HBS. And I don't know if you guys actually helped create it, but it was a stats class and it was all simulation based and I'm just imagining like I thought, geez, if everything could be like this, it'd be amazing. But the other thing that occurs to me is you can also vary the format through this much more easily as well so that you keep it a little bit unexpected, you keep me on my toes. I don't, you know, one of the problems sometimes I think with online courses is yes, it's at my pace and path, but it becomes a little monotonous and predictable perhaps and I sort of the thrill of novelty wears off. There's that opportunity, I would think with this as well, to sort of vary what my interactions are like and learning experiences are like.

Dave McCool

Yes, absolutely. And I think the whole idea is agency. It's really putting you in an active role, not a passive role. Like you are that person. People are asking you questions, you need to react to them. You need to analyze that information and try to decide what the right course of action is as opposed to just consuming the information.

Michael Horn

All right, so as we wrap up here, what should we keep an eye on for in this space? If you put that Gates foundation funded researcher view back on. So not just Muzzy Lane, but just the world of simulations in general, where do you think this goes? Now with AI over the next five-ten years?.

Dave McCool

I think you touched on it earlier. I think more broadening the applicability of these across more areas. There are places like say HVac Training which really need a physical environment. They need 3D stuff. So pushing those AI boundaries to build those 3D assets for you. But I think simulation in my view really should be part of any real online learning experience. And I'll sort of make just a little plug for our AI principles because everyone has to have AI principles. For us it's three, it's to get learners thinking more, not less.

And you could see from that open response I had to think harder than if I had a multiple choice there. To increase academic and contegrity, don't decrease it. And I think again those active learning experiences are harder to cheat on. And third is we're really focused on making the online component of blended learning better, not replacing the in person instructional part of online learning of learning. So I think what we'll see is more complex, more interesting interactions, more subject applicability and just generally just more whether it's us or anyone else. Like there should be simulations as part of every learning experience. They are a great, cost effective way for you to practice, makes you better prepared for assessments, better prepared for in person apprenticeships and internships and all those things. So that's what we'd like to see.

Michael Horn

Beautiful. Hey Dave, thank you so much for joining us. We'll check in with you in a few years to see how that is bearing fruit. But really appreciate the work you all continue to do.

Dave McCool

Great. Thanks Michael.

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Jeff Livingston, founder and CEO of EdSolutions, joined me to explore the rapidly evolving core curriculum market. The conversation traces how the once-static, “big three” publisher-dominated landscape has fractured because of shifting state adoption cycles, politics, digitalization, and the emergence of new competitors. Jeff explained how the dynamics have shifted from national dominance to regional markets, with digital tools enabling customization and lowering barriers for new entrants. The discussion also covered the impact of organizations like EdReports, new forms of patient capital, and the increasing importance of quality over pure scale or distribution.

Michael Horn

You are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I am delighted. One of the folks that I've known for many years in the education space who I think is smarter about the curriculum market in all facets of that word than anyone I know is Jeff Livingston. He is the CEO and founder of EdSolutions. Jeff, you've had a long history in that curriculum world, and then now you keep tabs on it and give the market state for everyone and help them think about it. I'm just delighted you're here. It's good to see you, buddy.

Early 2000s Textbook Market Dynamics

Jeff Livingston

Thank you so much. Michael, you know that I am a longtime fan of yours and of this show. Delighted that I get to be on it with you to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is how much the curriculum market is changing. You and I first started talking about it. It's, you know, it's finally changing.

Michael Horn

It's finally changing. That's a good intro, right? Because, like, if we're going to actually help unleash student achievement potential and so forth, what they learn, the content they're receiving is important, it turns out. And as you and I know, like, I think when we first met, it was a GSV, if I'm recalling correctly, you were at McGraw Hill at the time, and I had published Disrupting Class from McGraw Hill, and you were like, this is still a static market, but we see these pathways. And yet the refrain I was always getting was, okay, yeah, there's a lot of noise in the supplemental space, et cetera, et cetera, but core curriculum, basal curriculum, right? Like, the Big Three doesn't change, will not change. And it's changing. But maybe give us, like, the history a little bit, like, who are the big three? Where are they now? Because that's changed a little bit as well.

Jeff Livingston

Let's not name when that was, when we first started having these conversations, but a while ago, say, early in the century, the big three, which, to be honest, Michael was four in those days. But we're fundamentally talking about Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I say there were four because Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt were separate companies at that point, but they dominated all of core curriculum market all over the country. Because what drove that market even more in those days was, was big, large cycle, state adoptions in Texas and Florida and California. So you had to get on the list. You had to make sure once you got on the list you had sort of the marketing and distribution might to compete and only the giant companies, publishers really did in that market. And you know, let's, let, let's talk about the sort of economics of that market, right? When there were four players, you built your program to get 25%. If you got your 25%, everybody got a bonus.

If you got 35%, everybody got a lake house. Right? That's the way this world was. Plus big states like Texas would tell you years in advance how much they were going to buy, what they were going to make their decisions on. You could plan to finance your product development like clockwork. There were big players. Every once in a while a small player might emerge and do a little something and then one of the big ones would buy it. That's the way it worked in those days. And that concentration was reflected in the marketplace.

What's also interesting in those days, Michael, is that there wasn't a lot of really good information about what was actually in the market. The education market was unusual in that way. So at any given point in the early 2000s, at least two, sometimes three different programs were credibly saved. We have the market leading math or, or ela.

Michael Horn

Well, and Jeff, quickly help us understand, like when they're making those claims are they sell like elementary, middle, high school, all of it combined. Like how are they cutting these things?

Skewed Statistics

Jeff Livingston

So you could, you cut it to make yourself look the best. And all the information was self-reported to organizations like the Association of Educational Publishers or AEP, the association of American Publishers Education Division. So you just sliced it the way you wanted to and you could simultaneously be telling the technical truth and you could be directly contradicting somebody else who was telling the technical truth. So you just knew that the big ones, the big companies dominated in one or another kind of. Now what's also important is that the market is such that if you were one of the big publishers and you stumbled and got significantly less than your 25%, suddenly there are three, right? You couldn't make the big investments and not get.

Michael Horn

And that's because of the way scale economics work. Large fixed costs of publishing books and guides.

Jeff Livingston

Guides and so forth, salesforces, all of that. If you made the bet and didn't get your share, you were in trouble. And if you got significantly less than your share, you were really in trouble. Hence there's a company called Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and not a company called Harcourt Houghton Mifflin. Right. It's just, you know, they stumbled and you just couldn't stumble in that world. But what's fascinating is that today it's really, really difficult.

Michael Horn

So let's fast forward into today. Like what? Maybe let's start with those, the three remaining and talk. Because obviously Pearson had a change there as well. Talk about what's changed among those three, and then let's talk about how the entrants have sort of maybe made those changes.

Jeff Livingston

First, let's talk about a change in that market structure. The adoption calendar was sacrosanct. You knew that everybody in Texas was buying math at the same time. You had a sense of how much money they were going to have to spend. It was sacrosanct. In recent years, Florida stopped a math adoption in the middle and started over. California should be in the second year of its math adoption, but it's barely started. That certainty is gone.

And because that certainty is gone, the certainty of financing these big investments is harder.

Michael Horn

What killed that certainty?

Jeff Livingston

The big states and some of the small states fail to understand where their power came from. It came from a combination of having everybody buy at the same time and the certainty. So if California was definitely going to buy in, you know, 2023, everybody could plan for that. When it definitely became kind of maybe then you couldn't plan anymore.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And was that because of politics?

Jeff Livingston

Politics. The politics. The changes in what is considered high quality curriculum, all of that changed such that even the big states are not as certain as they used to be. The process is not as geared towards people who have big lobbying forces, big sales forces and maximum balance sheets. It's not as geared towards them anymore such that now there are some people who. When you and I first started talking about this, nobody would have mentioned that. Now you have to mention. So I think in terms of math, because it's kind of a math cycle.

Texas is doing a math adoption. California is starting one. Florida is going to be doing intervention math here really soon. So I'm thinking in terms of math and. Let's do that. So the first time you and I had this conversation, long, long, long ago.

Michael Horn

My hair was a little darker back then. Yeah.

Jeff Livingston

Yeah. Nobody said Zearn. Nobody said Amplify. Nobody considered Curriculum Associates a major player in those days when I had hair and yours was darker. Right. It could be in those days, but now you can't really talk about the math market without talking about players like that.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So we got Zearn, Curriculum Associates, Amplify. I guess you'd have Great Minds in that list.

Evolving Regional Math Education Markets

Jeff Livingston

Probably Great Minds with Eureka Math, Illustrative Mathematics, lots of places that you just would not have, would have not entered this conversation 15 years ago that you can't have the conversation without now. And I think that's important to think about. Here's the other thing that's happened in this market, and this is, let's call this more a deep cut, Michael. It used to be a national market, now it's a regional market. So by that I mean that the leading math program in the west might barely make the list in the Midwest. And only the south really has the level of concentration that we used to see in those places. And that's because they have more of these state adoptions. And if you win big in a state adoption, you have a lot of market share for a long time.

But HMH Go Math, in addition to EdSolutions, I'm a proud founder of the Center for Education Market Dynamics. I don't run the Center for Education Market Dynamics, but I did help to get it going. And they have some of the best data right now. They did a really important study at the end of last year, 2024, which I think is the most up to date data on this, that said HMH's Go Math had the highest market share in the west last year. It was number two in the south, but number five in the west in the Midwest. Right. And was this that weird? You know, and what, what's happened is that regional dominance has replaced national dominance in this market. Right.

And where you are has a lot more to say today about what programs you have access to than it used to. Because what happened in the old days is you built a program for California or Texas or occasionally Florida, and then you modified it a little bit for everybody else and that was good enough. There's no. That is not how it works necessarily anymore.

Michael Horn

And is that because of the standards. I guess there's a couple things at play, but the standards have fragmented across these states. Politics makes something that's palatable one place not palatable another place. Digital changes the economics of this. What, what all the, all those things.

Jeff Livingston

But my gut tells me that that last one is most important.

Michael Horn

Okay, right, let's dive into it.

Jeff Livingston

So even way back when it made sense to do a South Carolina social studies book, right? Because South Carolina was an adoption state, you can aggregate enough, you could figure out how to make those economics work. An LA County Social Studies book today would be less expensive than a South Carolina Social Studies book was 15 years old, right? And around mathematics or around ELA, you can be a lot more specific as to what you were serving without having to get lots new printing presses and hire new people there. And this is even before anybody has figured out what generative AI is going to do.

Michael Horn

Right? And dramatically lower the cost of content creation.

Embracing Generative AI for Cost-Cutting

Jeff Livingston

It has to. Now I have, you know, I have been leaning into generative AI. I have been asking all the smartest content creators I know to show me how they're using AI to drive down cost for a couple of years. And I still haven't had anybody who I trust as a curriculum developer at scale show me exactly what they've done. But I'm starting to see it now. I've had, you know, people who work out of garages in Palo Alto show me what they have done. I'm like, okay, call me when you built a reading program, right? But there is no question to me that when I was publishing the kinds of things that we would outsource to India, some of those things can be outsourced to generative AI for even less than we outsourced them to India. And with more and more programs, more and more digital, I don't have to print new things if I do something specialized.

So everything is cheaper. So what that means now is that a not for profit company like Zearn can be competitive in every single way in the supplemental meth market with a McGraw Hill or an HMH in terms of putting product out there. Now, HMH and McGraw Hill still have an advantage in terms of distribution and salesforce, but not in building the program. It's not nearly what it used to be. And that means that people have more choices and they begin to make different choices.

Michael Horn

So I want to stay on this one now because that's interesting to me that obviously digital means more customization. One of the things that you said is that these players, I think they all started as in the supplemental market. They're starting to gain steam in the core curriculum market as well. There's some changes there. That means in terms of purchasing behavior, in terms of the importance, I suppose of salesforces and, and go to market and stuff like that. How has that side of it changed to let these folks in?

Jeff Livingston

What's interesting is if we had had this conversation three years ago, the overall nature of it would have been the same, but the intensity would have been different. Right, Because ESSER happened when suddenly there was all this money for lots of districts to try new things, especially digital things. That got a lot of things started that didn't happen before. EdReports has emerged in core curriculum like math and ELA as the clear signal of quality. I say all the time to my friends at EdReports, it used to be my job to persecute the Christians, as it were, that it was my job to make sure for a while that EdReports was not the standard. But you know, the fourth time a big city superintendent said to me, we're only buying EdReports Green, the battle was over. I was a convert, you know, called me Saul of Tarsus, you know, immediately I'm a comfort. And EdReports has raised the quality, set the standard.

But it's also made it clear since that other people can meet it too, right? And I think that. But the money in response to COVID allowed for more curricular experimentation, allowed for more small companies to last longer so then they could get to the point that they could compete with the big. There's also a new kind of capital in the market. I think it's important to talk about a really kind of patient capital that is impact oriented. You know, you and I both have friends at places like the Emerson Collective and like A Street, which are for-profit oriented in this kind of investment, but really dedicated to a set of impact principles as well and extremely patient.

Michael Horn

And that's an important piece. Right? They don't have 10-year funds that's much more evergreen will support you. Even Curriculum Associates before they went the PE route, the owner, right, Rob Waldron, famously had the 30-year contract.

Jeff Livingston:

Exactly, exactly. And that is a different thing because what used to happen is say 15 years ago, you and I wanted to start a big publisher. We might convince somebody to fund us such that we could compete one good time in one good market. But if we stumbled, we were done. Nobody ever heard of us again. Amplify can stumble in California and still live in Florida because they've got some of this patient capital there. And great minds can stumble and still live. Those are new things, right? You don't have to get it right completely the first time in order to be a real player.

Shift in Publishing Capital Dynamics

Jeff Livingston

If you've got the kind of patient capital that can keep you in the game, and that is something that's not, that wasn't there before. Plus one more thing. If we had had this conversation 15 years ago, all of the big publishers were independent, were independent companies, public companies. Today none of them is. They're all private equity owned. And so they have responsibilities to pay back the loans that were taken out to buy them, that restrict their area of movement too. So you've got upstarts with patient capital and traditional dominant players with less patient capital. And, the result is finally the dominance that used to be experienced by those big players is, is, I mean, nearly gone as dominance, but certainly under threat.

Michael Horn

Well, so maybe let's stay there for a moment, which is if you look at HMH, McGraw Hill, Pearson, I guess Sage. Right.

Jeff Livingston

Savvas.

Michael Horn

Yeah, Savvas.

Michael Horn

Wow, I just messed that up. We'll leave my mistake in. And so, you got those big three, right? Where like what are we talking about in terms of market share for those players? What do you, you know, forecast for their, for their prospects?

Jeff Livingston

So, you know, it's hard to answer that question because we're in the middle of a big math swing and anything I say today.

Michael Horn

could be totally different in a year. Yeah. Okay.

Jeff Livingston

I think the way to think about it is, remember I told you that it's more regional now than it used to be. It used to be a national kind of a thing. Only in the south in math, in core math, does any one program have 20% or more. Right, right. Only in the south is anybody even that big. So the field is much bigger that one in the south as I recall at this point is Envision Math. Houghton Mifflin's Envision Math is slightly above 20%. And the last things that I have seen from the center for Education Market Dynamics, nowhere else is it even that high.

The dominant market player is between 15 and 20 in every other region, whereas 15 years ago there were three above 20. One of them might have been above 30 in the world. So they just don't dominate the market anymore.

Patient Capital's Role in EdTech Disruption

Michael Horn

One of the questions I'm curious about is all the ones with patient capital that you named. I think maybe one exception, but I think most of them started in the supplemental market, built up a good book of business on top, and then they had the revenue plus patient capital, could invest some in creating a full core curriculum. Is that the story? Is this a disruption story in terms of like we met the EdReports bar and now we're lower cost with digital, like what's the value prop and what's the story?

Jeff Livingston

So I don't see people necessarily competing on cost yet so much as competing on quality. What the Amplify’s and the Great Minds of the world say is our math program is better than the big publishers programs. And here's why. And here's what EdReports said about ours. You can read what EdReports said about theirs. And here's what EdReports didn't say that we also think is important. And obviously the big publishers can make that argument too. But now everybody can really gain access to that.

Now eventually somebody's going to do it on price, too. But that's not what I'm seeing in the market yet. It's not price. It is who's got the best math and for who. Right? So someone is going to say, we are better for Spanish dominant immigrants in California than these other guys. Here's why. And if they beat that architect successfully, they're gonna win.

Michael Horn

Right? I know there's a lot of criticism building of EdReports of. It talks about the alignment, but maybe not the research or. Or that sort of segmentation that you just did there.

Jeff Livingston

EdReports is a revolution that has been good for this market, there's no question. But the claims they make are very, very carefully calibrated. Right. This is what we're measuring for. You can read the long form, you can see it. Out in the real world. People in the market assume that it says more than it does. Right.

I have had conversations with big city superintendents when I say things to them like, so how do you know that your core reading or math program are culturally relevant enough for your students and teachers? Oh, EdReports Green. And I'm thinking, I promise you nothing.

Michael Horn

That ain't saying what you think it said.

Jeff Livingston

That's not what they said. They're not making that claim. So the market is evolving in that way, and other measures of quality will emerge. EdReports is kind of table stakes. It's about stakes standards. It's about the quality of the underlying curriculum. And it has done a great many things. It's also begun to layer on some ELA supports and some other things, too.

But it has established the foundation that there are definitions of quality that can be defended, that can be measured, that can be put out in the world. And I think that is a great thing. That has been a leveling function for this market. Right. All before when I was at McGraw Hill, I could say, We're McGraw Hill. We've been doing this for 150 years. We know how to do this. Trust us and only us. Now people are saying, don't just trust them.

You can trust us, too. Look at what EdReports said.

Michael Horn [

And there's a third party in the market that helps it.

Jeff Livingston

That's right. That does help a lot.

Michael Horn

All right, so let me ask you this question as we start to wrap up here. I could go on for a while picking your brain, because I'm learning a lot.

Jeff Livingston

You know I could go on talking, so.

Michael Horn

I know, I know you can. But let me ask this question. As you play it forward, as you look at the market right now, what do you think the makeup of it might be? I mean, I get it, it's dangerous, but let's talk more generalities. Five, ten years, something like that, maybe. Like, are certain players going to drop out of this market?

Jeff Livingston

What I think, I think that there are too many big core curriculum providers in the world for this market to sustain long term. Not all of them are going to survive the next five years. What is revolutionary is that I think some of the ones that might go away might be some of the big publishers. The combination of the big publishers having impatient capital in the form of private equity and so many of the upstarts having patient capital means that you don't automatically say that a newer arrival like Amplify isn't going to survive, but an older company like McGraw Hill is. There's no reason to say those things. This is going to be a good old fashioned capitalist slugfest and we'll see who emerges. But I gotta say this. If you're one of the traditional ones and you don't emerge as top two in California or Texas or Florida, I think it's hard to see you're surviving as a big player now.

It is, it's really big stakes and the capital is impatient. Right? They're not gonna, they're not gonna give you more money to do that. They have a limited view of when you need to start working. And so I think this is an exciting time for the market there. Now I don't know who's going to stumble, but I think somebody's gonna stumble. And I think this is going to be a fascinating time for the market. Now I will say this too. When I was at McGraw Hill, there was a joke going around.

Future of Publishing and Education

Jeff Livingston

How do you announce that you are going to retire soon? You let somebody call you a publisher in public. So I hear my friends at the traditional of publishers, content creators, learning companies, whatever the euphemism of the moment is saying, Jeff, we're not in that business anymore either. That's not what we do either. HMH of today is not HMH of 15 years ago. McGraw Hill of today is not McGraw Hill of 15 years ago. And Savvas of today isn't even called what Pearson was called 15 years ago. So the old model is gone, new models are emerging. What label is going to be on the dominant models? That is what I think is going to change that more and more digital, more and more specialized, more and more coherent, more and more focused on more and more individual students and student populations needs.

I think that is what's going to dominate and it's an exciting time for me because I think the curriculum is getting better for the kids. We're getting better options and the game is being played for the right stakes. Who is going to do better for the kids? Not who has the biggest marketing budget, who has the biggest salesforce, who has the best lobbyist.

Michael Horn

Well, so that's promising. I want to actually ask you one more question because you went there. Something that I am seeing and I'm curious if you are, is of course there's a big and you would know more than me. So let me say that there's a big move to the high quality instructional materials content, making sure that there's coherence across the curriculum. Right. So what you're doing in social studies reinforces English Right.

Like more of this stuff. All well to the good. I'm a big fan of it and it seems like part of that HQIM, if you will, high quality instructional material market. There's a little bit of this push against the personalization that is possible in the sense of we're all going to be lockstep scripts for teachers. We're all doing this and I see it in some classrooms that have adopted digital curriculum. And I'm curious, like your take on that. Do you see that? Is that. Is that just a part of this? It's not the whole thing.

We're going to blow past this because. Because I'm really worried about it. I'll say that, like I, I feel like you got some whole class people who, I get it like it. We weren't really personalizing before. People weren't changing instructional models, gave it a bad name and the quality wasn't that great. But if you get the quality better and coherence to your point, like, you know, Jeff, if I can adapt for your background knowledge and you know where you're coming from and to get the point across, I'd be an idiot not to do that based on the learning sciences.

Jeff Livingston

Michael, I understand the fear, but the combination of the technologies and the higher quality means that a whole lot of things are going to be tried and we're going to know what works. Now, this podcast is not about how we're going to know what works, but.

Michael Horn

A big question at the moment. Yeah. As we're recording it, we have no.

Jeff Livingston

Idea who used to track what works.

Michael Horn

As we're recording it. We have no idea.

Adapting Education for Diverse Students

Jeff Livingston

Yeah, right. But a lot of things are going to be tried. Some teachers are going to try to individualize for 28 kids. Some teachers are going to try to, as much as possible, keep the whole class together and moving, and we're going to see what works. I'm excited about it, and I'm excited about it in large part because students who look like me were rarely the ones who were considered the norm and had things tailored to. And now students who look like me or students who speak the language that is spoken in my home at least half the time have a shot at being the focus in some places, and we'll see if that works better. I think it will work better.

Michael Horn

Well, that. That's exciting. Right? Because the economics have changed where you can make money targeting. Targeting. Wrong word. But marketing to, like, creating products for.

Jeff Livingston

That's exactly right. Here's though, here's the other side of that, and this is kind of a little bit going into the AI portion and we can have that conversation another time. There are engineers who, in education technology, are building for themselves and their kids, and they liked learning but hated school and found their teachers an impediment. And some of those engineers are trying to engineer out the humans who kept them away from their experience. They were weird when they were in school, and they're still weird. Most people are not trying to engineer out the humans in their education. So we're going to do too much.

Michael Horn

and then that'll be a thing also.

Jeff Livingston

Yeah, right. We're going to do too much of that and pull back. I don't need every problem set in algebra 1 to know that I grew up Black and Baptist in South Carolina. I do not need that every single time. In fact, I need to be a part of a community that I feel a part of and I feel seen in. But I want to know what other kids are learning too, and I want to do that. It'll take us a moment to get to that point because people are really focused on just giving Jeff what he wants all the time, every day, just that, and then everything will be great. I don't think that's.

That's true. That's the other social construct, you know, better than anybody else. People want that, and the programs will reflect it, the choices districts make will reflect it. And ultimately what works best for kids will reflect it too. So I am glad that we have disrupted the old system that was much more monolithic, that 1,000 flowers are blooming and that we're not. We don't know that the roses are going to win this race. I think those are good things because this uniquely American mixture of competition and pedagogy in the education space, you know, you go anywhere else in the world and there's a national curriculum, there's not much competition. I actually like this unique American competition and what it can do.

Emerging Math Education Innovations

Jeff Livingston

And we're going to see over the next few years, especially in math, we're going to see it do its thing and we're going to have very different conversations. We're going to say, did you see Jeff and Bubba's Algebra 1 program come out of nowhere and take 10% in Florida? What are they doing? And that is going to be a beautiful thing for the market as the market is finally in a place to absorb it and help kids. As long as we don't burn the house down in the meantime, I think we're going to be very happy about the choices that are emerging.

Michael Horn

That's why you are the man. Jeff Livingston, founder, CEO of ED Solutions, thank you so much for joining us and shedding light on a market that is at last changing in a dynamic way. Really appreciate and all you tuning in. We'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

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Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools and now a venture partner at Equal Opportunity Ventures, joined me to talk about her own unexpected journey to venture capital and how she’s found reasons for hope and optimism among entrepreneurs. We also discussed EO Ventures’ unique thesis for accelerating economic mobility through market-driven solutions and highlighted some of their investments. Rhee also reflected on changing attitudes toward work among young people, which I found very interesting—as well as the importance of measurable social impact.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose, which unfortunately is not the world we are living in today, but to help us think through how we can better get there and talk about some of her moves to do so. I'm delighted. We have a very special guest today, Michelle Rhee, venture partner at EO Ventures. And I'm sure many of you know her as the former chancellor of Washington, D.C. Public Schools, of course. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. Great to see you.

Michelle Rhee

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Michael Horn

No, I'm, I'm, I'm delighted to talk about, frankly, this new chapter, relatively speaking, of your career with EO Ventures, a venture firm that supports some really interesting entrepreneurs and portfolio companies. Maybe let's start there. Just what is EO Ventures and talk about your path there. Because obviously after you left D.C. Public Schools, you started Students First, you had a long run there, and then have taken a couple other steps. But I think people would be curious why venture capital and why into this step?

Michelle Rhee

Absolutely. So it's been a circuitous path. And certainly if you had have told me, you know, two decades ago that I was going to end up being a venture capitalist, I would have told you that you were crazy because this is not sort of the obvious next career choice. But, you know, so I, after D.C. Public Schools, I started Students First, which was a political advocacy organization focused on education and education reform. And after spending a few years at Students First, I actually left the education arena completely. I really felt like I was not being helpful in the education conversation because it had, in my opinion, become so polarized and divisive. And I really felt like me being in the conversations was not helping.

So I completely left education. About a little over four years ago, I co founded a tech startup with a colleague of mine and it was called BuildWithin. And it was not in the education space. It was actually in the workforce arena. BuildWithin is a software platform that helps employers to start and manage apprenticeship programs. So even though it wasn't in education, there was sort of a very obvious connection into workforce development and so stayed with that company for a number of years. And that was my first foray into like startup land, which was so different from anything that I had ever experienced before.

And I was super fortunate in that my co-founder, Ximena Hartsock was a serial founder. And so she kind of taught me the ropes and made sure that the organization and company was being set up well. But after that I left BuildWithin and for a little while was just kind of living my best housewife life for a few months. And then got a call from Roland Fryer. So Roland and I had known each other since my DC days. You know, I met him when he was a 27-year old newly tenured professor.

Michael Horn

Say newly genius tenured professor.

Michelle Rhee

Yeah, exactly. So he was the youngest black tenure professor ever at Harvard at the ripe old age of 27. And that's when I met him. And he sort of, he had called me at the tail end of my time with BuildWithin and he's like, I didn't know you had a startup. Like I have a venture firm, we want to write you a check, you know, that sort of thing. And after I left BuildWithin, and he was like, that's great because now you can come on board and join us. And I said, doing what, sir? I don't know anything about the venture capital world. And he's like, we just raised $100 million third fund and we'd love you to come on board and run a fund within the fund that is focused on education investments.

To which I promptly said, no, thank you, I'm out of education. I love being out, I never want to get back in. And I said, well, maybe something having to do with workforce development. He was like, sure, come on board, do whatever you want. Yeah. And it was, that's such an odd thing to say, but it's very on brand for Roland. And then I talked to Bill Hellman. So Bill is the co-founder of EO Ventures and he spent 35 years at Greylock, 15 of those as managing director.

And I had not met Bill before. And so in our first conversation together, I said, I don't understand why you want me for this job. I said, I don't know anything about investing, I've never done it before. Surely you can find somebody who's more qualified than me. And he said to me, he's like, you know, yes, there's venture stuff that you're going to have to learn. He's like, but it's, it's, you know, you're smart, you can figure it out. He said, really this is a business about picking people and you know how to do that. And I just found it so interesting.

It's so refreshing. That somebody with the storied sort of, you know, career in venture like, Bill would think that an old woman like me could learn how to do something new and do. Do it well. Right. So I was intrigued by both of them and, and their confidence that I would be able to do this. And so I was like, all right, I'll.

I'll give it a shot. And so I'm. I've been doing this for about 10 months now, and I have to say that I love it. I. Absolutely. Every job that I've ever had, I always knew that I was doing, like, I'm just, you know, doing good for the world. Right.

And hoping, hopefully making it a better place. But this is the first job that I've ever had that is genuinely so much fun. And every day I wake up and I almost feel guilty. I'm like, are you supposed to have this much fun when you're working? So it's been a fantastic experience so far.

Michael Horn

That's amazing. I'm. I'm sure this is off. This is with my Job Moves hat on at the moment. Like, what about the job is really lighting a fire under you that you wake up every day energized, and I've got to keep doing this. Like, what are the sets of things you get to do that you're like, wow, this. This is really energizing me.

Michelle Rhee

Well, first of all, on day three, being on the job, Roland had me sit in on the board meeting of one of our education portfolio companies. And I came out of that meeting, I was like, oh, I need to talk to him about this. I need to introduce that person. And I came out of the meeting and I was like, I guess I have to do education stuff. And Roland was like,

Michael Horn

Hook, line and sinker.

Optimism in Education Innovation

Michelle Rhee

Yep. Yeah. So I, you know, I am in education, but what I have found to be sort of most fascinating about the work is that I got to a place in education, quite frankly, where I had become a curmudgeon. I was like, you know, what? We actually know in this country what we need to do, and we just refuse to do it. And I don't know that anything is ever going to change. And so I was pretty pessimistic about what the possibilities were to fundamentally change the education landscape, the public education landscape in this country. And I find that now, I mean, what better job could you have that every day I get to meet with people who are pitching me and they feel like they're going to change the world and make it a better place through this idea that they have. And you know, sometimes I'm like, love the idea, not sure about the founder.

Sometimes I'm like, oh, amazing founder. I'm not sure about the idea. Right. But every now and again I meet people who I genuinely think, oh my goodness, like you could seriously change the game. And it's just incredibly inspiring and it has turned me into an optimist again.

Michael Horn

That's awesome. I mean, I think that's the. It's interesting. You're probably in a very similar place to me at the moment in terms of outlook on K12 education, which is kind of pessimistic about the changing the existing system. But I see all these things coming from the outside and the entrepreneurs and I know you all have Kaipod learning in your portfolio and it does make me optimistic about this movement that's growing on these fringes that's sort of outside, if you will, the traditional discourse of ed reform. And so I'm sort of curious. You have Kaipod learning, like what's the basic hypothesis certainly behind that investment, but maybe more broadly in the fund. Right.

Like what sorts of things are you guys looking to back?

Michelle Rhee

Yeah. So the thesis of the firm is that market forces can significantly accelerate the economic mobility of the populations that we're focused on when done in the right way. So as long as a company aligns with that thesis, we're sector agnostic. We have portfolio companies in housing, healthcare, govtech, fintech, education, workforce and, and more. And so. And we also have something called the social money multiplier. This is a model that Roland came up with which basically allows the firm to, to, to put real sort of measurement around are the investments that we are making are, are they having an impact on society that, that we would hope so.

Kaipod: Empowering Microschool Movement

Michelle Rhee

Kaipod is an investment and a portfolio company that I have had the good fortune of getting to lean in a bit on. And for some folks, I think they'd think, well, microschools, how much impact could they have? But I think that when Amar and Roland first met, Roland really first of all loved Amar because he's amazing founder, but he also saw the potential for the microschool movement to not just sort of be relegated to the fringes of oh, these are people who would normally homeschool their kids, et cetera. They really together saw the potential to serve a broader population and specifically our target population of low income folks of color. And that has 100% panned out over the last few years with Kaipod. But I was fascinated because Amar invited me onto a webinar that they had for people who were interested in starting microschools. And what I have found really interesting is that there are a ton of educators out there, teachers who for whatever reason have become frustrated by, you know, I don't know if it's working in a district bureaucracy or you know, or they're just looking for something new. They've always wanted to be an entrepreneur as an example and have never really been able to figure out how could I make the leap from education into entrepreneurship. And KaiPod and microschools actually enable people to make that transition.

So I was on this webinar with all these folks, many probably the majority of whom were educators, teachers who were thinking about making the leap into starting a microschool. And it was really just amazing to hear from those folks, hear their stories, to kind of see them struggling through like do I want to take this kind of risk? Right. Because in many ways educators aren't always risk seekers. Right. Some of are very risk averse people, but having the opportunity to move into something like this but where they can really leverage their expertise and their experiences and their knowledge base but actually, but do something different and allow them to kind of control their own destiny. Right. It was really encouraging to be on that call and to see so many people who were interested in that. And I think this is, you know, oftentimes I always tell people that folks in this country are looking for like the silver bullet solution.

The one thing that's going to change public education and face public education. And I don't think it's ever going to be one magical thing. I think it's, you know, instead of one 100% solution, it's probably 50 2% solutions. But I really feel like the microschool movement could play a big part in this. So that's one of the reasons why we're super excited about KaiPod.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you're echoing a lot that gets me excited about them as well in terms of bringing in and I think it's something that people don't understand how these schools are started by educators. Like right. They are on the front lines, they are sick of what they had and they want something different in many cases. And so this is a way for them to do. So what else are you all in the education portfolio or are things that you are excited about at the moment that get you excited about the entrepreneurs or ideas that are coming your way?

Michelle Rhee

Yeah, so super excited about a few of our portfolio companies. One is called EdLight. That is a company that is really focused on utilizing AI to analyze student work and be able to sort of take that analysis and feed it back into the teacher and the planning process. So, very excited about that. We have a company that we're incubating within the firm called Manta. And that is a data analysis platform that school districts, charters, nonprofits, foundations are using. And it's basically like having a data scientist in your pocket. And so all of this sort of data analysis work that has consumed lots of organizations, a lot of their resources and time now is like made incredibly easy.

So we're excited about that one. And then, you know, we as a firm are really focused on workforce development and knowing and seeing all the data about the fact that young people these days, fewer and fewer of them think that college is for them and they think they want to go straight into the workforce. But we think there is a lack of really sort of defined career paths out there. And so we're very excited about Stepful, which is another portfolio company of ours and Stepful started because they, they, they started training phlebotomists. Basically what they did was they took what traditionally was a two year like community college program and they condensed it into four months. They made the vast majority of it asynchronous and virtual so people could, you know, do their job at Starbucks during the day, come home, make dinner for their family, put their kids to bed, and then sort of do their coursework in the evening. And it's, it's been exciting for us because they are taking folks who largely before were like in these minimum wage service industry jobs through four months.

With Stepful, they are learning how to become phlebotomists and nursing assistants and pharma techs and then moving into these jobs where they can get a starting salary of say $70,000 a year. So it's great in terms of their economic mobility. But what Stepful has figured out, which a lot of boot camps and other folks couldn't, is they really have these unbelievable relationships with employers, hospitals, labs, doctors, offices, et cetera. Right? Everybody needs a phlebotomist. And so you're pretty much guaranteed a job when you finish the Stepful training. And so that has been an amazing portfolio company for us. And we're really trying to figure out could that model be replicated in other industries and for other specific job classifications because it's been so successful. The employers are thrilled, the participants are, are, are really happy.

And you know, from a business and investment standpoint, we couldn't be more thrilled.

Michael Horn

That's super interesting. And frankly, I mean, all the workforce development stuff is interesting in that you did the apprenticeship built within as well. And you're. I was just on a conversation around this that, you know, the number of high school graduates going on to college has dropped significantly down to 62% at last count from a high of roughly 70. And the interesting thing to me is that we don't really know what those individuals are doing. We don't have narratives around what are they finding pathways and so forth. And so it's sort of a lot of one off anecdotal things, but we know apprenticeships probably are part of the solution.

Again, to your point, there's not a silver bullet here either. I'm just curious, like your sense of, as you think of the map of things that could help those individuals, what else are you excited about in that workforce development space or maybe churning over that we ought to keep an eye on?

Michelle Rhee

Yeah. So, I mean, I learned this when I was at BuildWithin that, you know, this notion that kids are going to go to school for 16 years and learn, learn, learn, and then suddenly they're going to go to work and do right. It was such, it's such an antiquated notion. First of all, there are so many new job classifications out there right now that there are no, you know, university kind of programs of study. Right. That would link to that. And, and so as educators, we know actually that the most effective way for someone to gain skills and knowledge is for them to be learning and doing kind of simultaneously. And that's what the apprenticeship model allows for.

And so we saw that firsthand at BuildWithin and In. In occupations that people wouldn't necessarily think. Right. When people thought about apprenticeships when we first started Build within, people automatically thought, oh, this is like trades. Which is, you know, they utilize the apprenticeship model, which is great. But, but there are, I mean, through BuildWithin, it was, you know, medical assistants, it was teachers going through teacher apprenticeships.

Evolving Perceptions of Work Among Youth

Michelle Rhee

I mean, there was just such a broad range of professions that were well suited for the apprenticeship model that people just didn't really think of. I think though, you know, as we think about the workforce development space at Build within, one of the things that I. We're sort of noodling on, which is interesting, is that I think that people are missing the boat on just how young people are thinking about work generally these days. I think it's very different. We have another portfolio company called JobGet and JobGet is sort of like the job sort of placement site for the hourly wage employees. And one of the things that the JobGet folks told me was that a lot of people come onto the platform and they say, I want to work on these days in, during these particular shifts. Right. And they don't really care a ton about like, what the, what the work is.

Right. They want it to fit into their lifestyle. And it's clear that those folks, like, they need income, right. They got to pay the bills, they gotta have something to eat. But I think there's also something else out there that is, you know, more meaningful to them that they want to spend the majority of their time on potentially. Right. And I don't think that us old people have really dug into this and really understood, like, how is the next generation thinking about work? And you know, is it just work is a means to, you know, survive and have the money that you need to put a roof over your head and food in your mouth versus I think when we were younger, we thought, oh, you have to have a job that you feel passionate about and that you love, you know, going to every day, that sort of thing.

Like, are those notions changing? So I, I want to make sure that we as a society are not like missing the boat on that because is that going to impact things like, you know, worker productivity and like, motivation? And how do we, how do we make sure that people, you know, don't see their passions and their work as two different things? I actually think it's important for those things to be married.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it's super interesting you bring that up because it's something we found in the research for Job Moves as well. Right. Which is that for some people, purpose is met through work, but for other people, work is a conduit for them to get purpose in their lives, not at work. Right. And so it's sort of funny. I think you're right. It's like a dichotomy for those of us who want all those things to converge in neat ways in their lives, as certainly I have as well. But it's definitely a shift.

Balancing Social Impact and VC Returns

Michael Horn

I want to shift with the remaining time we have. You know, Roland Fryer, you mentioned social impact and I'm sure he's the one that came up with the formula to help you all think about that and measure it. I'll never forget when I saw him at Milken years ago, at this point, probably 15 years ago or more, and he talked about the heart test in a mocking way in education, can you feel the good we're doing and saying, no, we have to measure this. And to be brutally honest, I'd love to hear you reflect on how that works,you know, actually measuring impact from the companies you all invest in squares with the returns as a VC firm that you're looking for. And what are your investors, you know, the limited partners, like what do they expect on the other side? Do you guys have longer time horizons? Are you playing with that so that you sort of get out of the unicorn or bust mindset of some VCs or how do you balance these two sides of the equation?

Michelle Rhee

Yeah, it's interesting. Roland has a very specific point of view on this which will not be a surprise right because we only will consider an investment in a company if they are impacting social mobility and economic mobility in some way. Roland always says, like we are not double bottom line investors because he believes that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes that makes people think, oh you, there's a trade off to be made here, right? Sometimes sacrifice your financial gains because you want to, you know, have that impact. And he sees the work that EOV is doing as no. The first hurdle is are you going to move economic mobility for our populations? Right. And because the answer to that has to be yes in order to qualify for an investment. He's like, we are single bottom line investors and that single bottom line is the economic returns. And we're just then, so we drive at those.

Social Money Multiplier Impact Model

Michelle Rhee

And because of our thesis, right, we know that the impact is going to be there. But we, you know, as you would imagine with Roland, he's very, he's very disciplined about making sure that we're, we're measuring everything. So that social money multiplier is a model that he came up with. It's like, how much are we investing? How many people are being impacted by this particular company and in what, what way? Like how, how, what does that multiplier look like for this particular company given what they are doing? And so our portfolio companies are required to set targets around SMM to report against those. Right And we look at those just like we look at that metric, just like we do all of our other metrics in the company. So, you know, I think that for us, Bill and Roland very much think that when founders are taking on some of society's biggest and most intractable issues with the right solutions, you are going to you know, you don't have to compromise. You're going to see those incredible financial returns and the impact is going to be there as well.

Michael Horn

Love things that break trade offs because that's when we have opportunity in the world. So Michelle, huge thanks for joining us for talking through the work, for doing the work that you are doing for getting sucked back in a little bit into the education world although maybe not in the fractious policy craziness that divides and actually with the entrepreneurs that just putting their heads down making an impact really appreciate it.

Michelle Rhee

Absolutely and thank you for everything that you're doing. I think talking about this work and making sure that we're encouraging more people to start and found companies is critically important. So thanks.

Michael Horn

Well I hope everyone takes a look at EO Ventures website and checks it out. If you're an entrepreneur and you're making an impact in this way definitely, definitely reach out. And Michelle thank you and for all of you tuning in we will be back next time on the Future of Education.

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Lukas Barwinski-Brown, CEO of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, joined me on this episode. For those who don’t know, Lang Lang stands apart as one of the premier pianists in the world.

Lukas shared his unexpected journey to leading the foundation and discussed its mission to ensure that music education is accessible to all children, regardless of their background. Lukas emphasized the importance of music education in developing children's cognitive skills and potential and highlighted the foundation's goal to create a lasting impact on both young musicians and communities in need.

And you’ll be really interested to hear just how they set up the program so that children can be part of a group but learn at a personalized pace. That’s something that will ring a bell to those who watched this past episode of the Future of Education where I used music to illustrate the absurdity of our lock-step traditional school system.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there today, I'm delighted we have Lukas Barwinski Brown. He's the CEO of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. If folks don't.

In my humble opinion, Lang Lang is the greatest living pianist at the moment. And Lukas leads the foundation and it is just a thrill to have you. Lukas, thanks so much for being here.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Thank you very much for inviting me. I am very, very honored and very happy.

Michael Horn

Well, I am delighted as well as listeners know, I was an aspiring pianist at one point, so I love highlighting music education. Before we get into the work of the foundation, I would just love to hear about your own personal journey to the work. You know, how does one get to become president of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation? Not that this former pianist is jealous or anything like that, but I would just love to hear about your journey.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah, the journey was practically my life journey. It was very, very full of surprise and very unexpected, to be honest. And the, the same, the same way I, I, totally unexpected. I practically, am, I landed here in the USA and everything has started, I think I will say around 25 years ago when I met Lang Lang and as a head of Universal Music in Austria, so I was running Universal Music in Austria, classic and jazz and, and I met this young guy, nobody know him. He was like, this was not the Lang Lang from today. This was really a different Lang Lang. Very young, very, very inexperienced. And we became really a very close friend. And this friendship practically was cherished, you know, for many years.

And, one day, I will never forget this, this was my birthday. And he came to celebrate my birthday with his mom in Vienna. And she was, all the time, half of the dinner, he was talking with him, his mom in Chinese and using all the time my name. And so I was like, what the hell is going on? Why, what are you talking about? And he said, please, can you come to New York and run my foundation?

Michael Horn

Oh, wow.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

And yeah, this was like, this was my reaction. Exactly. Wow. And we spoke very, very often about the foundation before and I was always pushing him to do the foundation because, I think and I believe that foundation can be really his very big legacy. And you know, and then unexpectedly, he asked me to run this. And as crazy as I am, you know, I quit my job, I sold my house and I move over the ocean and, and came to New York. And without no experience and not knowing really what I am going to do.

And then I decided to exactly create this foundation together with him so that everybody will understand what we are doing. Especially I will understand what I am doing. And this is how this was the beginning and this is already 15 years ago.

Michael Horn

Unbelievable. So I want to get into the work itself. It's obviously very authentic to who you are, to who Lang Lang is, to his wife is, I might add, professionally. The quote that you all have is, we believe that all children should have access to music and music education regardless of their background or circumstances. You all work across geographies though we'll talk about the US perhaps in a moment, but also Europe, China. So tell us about the nature of the work of the foundation itself.

Music Education's Essential Impact on Kids

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah. The mission is not only the slogan. It is exactly what we believe. And we believe practically and we are working on this and believe every day. And we believe that music education is really very important in children's lives. And also this is what I try to emphasize that music and learning music and music education is not just the hobby. It is not that we are teaching those kids how to play piano or how to sing or how to play guitar. We believe and this also scientists, scientific already proven that the children who are exposed to music and music education the brain is totally different constraint than the children who are not.

And so saying that those kids who are in our programs and we believe that we prepare them for the better academically life and as you probably know, our programs are in very disadvantage neighborhoods and we are going to those who need those program. So saying that we believe that we kind of like we are opening a better path for the future for those kids to, to, to finish the school and to, to, to go to the colleges and to make the better education for them.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And I love this. Not only changing the brain, but also developing, you know, executive function skills, et cetera, right through music that pervades the rest of their life. Is the foundation is the work that you do in these communities. Is it you giving grants to music educators or is it you all running specific programs? How does it work on the ground?

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

The grants will be the easiest way and we don't like the easy way. We created programs and the main, two main programs are practically addressed to totally two different groups, groups of people. The one is the education program which we call Keys of Inspiration. And this program is supporting the public Title One schools in the across the country. And the second program is kind of like 180 degrees on the other side is the Young Scholars program in which we are supporting the super talented kids, the, I am always saying, those, you know, 10, 11, 12 years old who practically can play already with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

So, you know, so those two diametrically different programs, you know, practically are, cover the 360 degrees. Because here you have this, the kids in needs and here you have those, those talented. And both groups are really, you know, very important for us. So asking, answering your question, no, we are not giving grants in either of these programs. So what we are doing, for example, for the Keys of Inspiration, it is also the most expensive program in the foundation. We are bringing to the school a piano lab. So when I create this program, I was thinking, how is this possible that the entire class of 30 kids can learn piano? You know, piano usually is one to one, one professor, one kid. Otherwise, you know, the professor will make the suicide after, you know, 10 minutes of everybody are bumping on the pianos.

Right? So I was like thinking, you know, how is this possible? What, what can we do? How is this? Because we cannot of course making this one to one piano lessons in the public school schools. So I was thinking about how I learned languages. I was going to the piano, to the language labs and everybody, you know, the entire class was sitting with their headphones that they were learning the language and they said, this can be exactly the same way with the piano. And I contacted Roland, the very, you know, fantastic piano producer, and we were discussing this and they said, yeah, this is a fantastic idea. Why are we not doing this? We can build a piano lab where 30 kids are sitting front of the keyboards and everyone has own and they are connected to each other. They have the headphones and they can play. And this will be exactly the one class get the piano lessons in one hour. And this is how we created practically the Keys of Inspiration.

And when we are supporting the schools, we are bringing the keyboards, we are bringing the headphones, we are bringing the benches and learning materials and books, etc. Etc. We are also giving the support for the teachers and we are making the teacher training. And I think the biggest difference between us and you know, Michael, everybody in America has a foundation, right? So there are millions of foundation. But the biggest difference between us and those millions is that we are in the curriculum of every school. So we are not after school program, we are not preschool program or Sunday school program. We are exactly taking seriously as math, science or history. So this is, let's say spending what we are investing in the school.

And one of my co-worker, he made a calculation which I practically never did it, you know, and maybe this will be interesting for you. So Dan, who is also a teacher in, in one of our schools in Boston, he said, you know, did you think how much value you are bringing to the community with your piano labs? And I said, I, you know, I hope a lot, but, but I never make the any calculation, right? So he said to me, listen, average cost of a piano lesson is like around $50, right? So when you are going to get the piano lessons, you are paying, grab the 50 bucks. And so in the school, in the public schools, they have a 36 weeks of instruction, right? So average in our school, let's say today, because of course we are progressing. So in the time, in the few years, you know, the entire school is learning the program, let's say we are taking the first three years of the program. We are talking about 400 students, right? So he made the calculation and he said okay, $50, 36 weeks, 400 students, it brings you to over $600,000.

Michael Horn

Wow.

Foundation's Community Impact

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

So this is, this is the value which we as a foundation are bringing to the community, to the school community. And of course we can make this even further. And when we say we have now 100 schools and as you know, the $60 is almost like $60 million annually, what we are bringing practically back to the community. So what the, this is the value of the program. And so this is how our grants are working. The same is with the Young Scholars. The Young Scholars. We are taking those kids and we help them to develop the artistry because of course they are in the fantastic schools, they have fantastic piano teacher.

But yesterday for example, I spent the entire day watching the master classes which we organized here in New York. So we are sending them to the festival, to the competitions. We have created piano academies in Beijing, in Cleveland and in Cambridge where we are sending all those kids with, and you know, to, to make the exchange with the best professors of piano, you know, which you can get it. So this, this is the money where we are spending. We are not giving the 500 in the hand and say what you want, but, you know, I think this is much more important.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So I, there's a number. I'm buzzing with numbers of questions right now, but I want to stay with the let's do the Young Scholars program first. Just. It's interesting to me because when I was in middle school, I competed in an international Chinese music competition. And there was a young Chinese woman who blew us all away in the competition. And then I remember my grandparents being so blown away by her that they sponsored her to come to America and study at Juilliard through the rest of the time. And so I have a lot of excitement, I guess, for what you're doing for these people.

Are, are these individuals, when you identify these young scholars, these talented people, are, are, you know, are they from the same demographic as the Keys for Inspiration or is it anyone when, when you find these people and send them to these incredible academies?

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

This program is open for everybody.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah, the program is open to everybody and it's open for the entire world. Yeah, it is open for entire world. So every three years now I have extended. Before it was two years. Now I extended to the third year. So every three years we are opening the application process practically for everyone. Everyone who is not older than 16, 17 years old can apply. And you are sending the two videos.

The one video is where you are playing and the one video is when you are talking. So we will know also, you know, your personality. You know, and then we have agreements from very esteemed professors like, you know, we have professors from Juilliard here in America and Cleveland Institute of Music. We have professors from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. We have professors from Royal College of Music in London. So those professors, they are practically selecting the finalist.

And, now we have created also like three halves which we have the Asian, Asian students, you know, like China, Japan, Korea, when we are doing with them. Then we have the, you know, European and they had like the rest of the world, we have here in the States. And, and this is, this is something what makes me very, very proud because, you know, like when I know those kids when they were 10, and we have a lot, a lot of alumni. And now, now I see that the guy is 20 and play with the orchestra and then winning the festivals and, and next week, one of my really, like, son, he's calling me dad, you know, Clayton Stevenson, he's getting the, the, the Medal of Excellence in, in, in, in Washington, D.C. you know. So this makes you so proud, you know, and they are finishing Curtis and Juilliard and Harvard and Columbia and you know, playing all over the places. And, it is really very rewarding program.

Educating: A Rewarding Experience

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

It's very rewarding. And, and then you have, on the other side, you have, you know, you know, those elementary school kids, you know, and when you are going there and they welcome you and they are so proud because they never see the piano from close and you know, and they are starting with one finger, you know, and, and then next year you are coming to the school and they play already, you know, maybe with one hand or with the five fingers, you know. So this makes you really, this is exactly, you know, Michael, my entire life I was working in corporations. I was working, you know, in Polygram probably you know, Polygram from the previous times, you know, the biggest, you know, record company. So Polygram, then Universal, then Phillips Classic, you know, etc, etc Virgin. And I was making somebody more richer and richer. And now for the first time and as you know, since 15 years I am giving back and I feel so rewarded. I feel so happy when I'm going to those schools, when I see my young scholars and, and, and you know, this is something what I never thought I will, I will witness and this makes me probably so very happy person.

Michael Horn

So I want to dig in now to this Keys of Inspiration program where you've outfitted these piano labs with Roland. I have a Roland keyboard right over there. I love the electric instruments that they make. It's a beautiful piano sound. The question I would love to know is, I mean you're building the curriculum. They have the headphones on so they're able to play. What does the class look like? Are they able to move at their own pace as they, someone perhaps masters, you know, two hands before someone else masters, you know, just the five fingers. Do you give that kind of personalization? Are you helping teachers learn how to do that?

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yes. So this year we switched from Roland. We switched to another company. Okay. Which I found it which produced the Smart pianos. So this is kind of like, like step up of this what we did, you know, in the past few years. So the One Piano. This is the name of the piano, the one Piano.

The Smart Piano has integrated also a software. So now our classroom looks really like from 21st century. And I think kids are love it because you know, now kids are probably much more advanced than we are with all this telephone and play games and everything, you know. So now that every piano, every instrument has also a screen. And the screen is connected automatically to the piano. And in this screen you have already the software which is practically an animated curriculum which we have created with Royal College of Music in Toronto. So it is kind of like because they are kids, we are going to the second graders, second, third, fourth grader, you know, they are kids we want to make and this is practically the philosophy of Lang Lang. And he wants always to make happy children learning the piano.

So he wants to make this happy moments when you are coming to the piano labs. And by the way, the program in China, here we call Keys of Inspiration. In China they call this program Happy Kids. So this is exactly the philosophy. It is like the kids are supposed to be happy when they play, when they learn. They don't know even when they learn and how they learn. They learn, right? Because learning by playing. And this is exactly, this is what we want.

Of course it is very serious curriculum. Of course they are making the progress. Of course it is, you know, it is learning the music and of course this, learning the theory and you know, and this is what I said. I'm always saying they don't need to, to, to play Bach and Schumann. You know, they can also play, you know, John Legend and Beyonce as long they know how to read their score. You know. So this is, this is, this is exactly the, the, the, the, the case. And, now they are sitting in this room.

Music Education Visualization

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

It is a beautiful, you know, like picture when you are coming and you see those pianos with the screens and then you have a main kind of like, like conductor is that the teacher and the teacher is connected to every single kid and he see and he heard or she heard the progress of the, of the kids and you know, and you can individualize, you can say Michael, you play this because I heard that you struggle with, you know, with the half note. Right? And then you know, Mika, you know, will play for example, something different because she's already a little bit farther than Michael. Right. So they can, they can also personalize this. And of course you can also you know, make kind of like little bit show and you take the headphones off and you can play entire class.

Michael Horn

Wow. Yeah, so you learn a little bit of performance then.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, and the kids are very proud and very, you know, they even with, with one finger. But they are very happy, you know. You know they play you know like.

Michael Horn

Well, they're making progress. It's a beautiful thing. Let me ask, let me ask this question. Yeah, let me ask this question which is. Um. I think I read somewhere that the classes, you all say that they should be twice a week or something like that. Is that what you've done in places like Boston? And how, how can we make that everywhere? Because at least when I grew up and my kids school, right now I remember music class was once a week. If we're being honest.

We didn't really learn much. It was more about exposure. It wasn't really about the learning. How do we, how do we get to where you all more systematically across our schools?

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

The two weeks is of course a dream and I, I'm. I'm very, very proud because most of our schools have a two weeks program. So you know why we started and why program, right? It is because the, the first and you know this, the, the best. You know, the first what is kicked out of the school is the music. When the principals, they have the choice, you know, sport or music or something, you know, they will always choose the sport, never the music. So this is why we say, you know this is really. It is a lot big need here in the country. And I realize not in the, in this is not only the, the you know, the America, you know situation this practically everywhere.

And so to you know, I have a very big sentiment to, to Boston because Boston practically was the birth place of Keys of Inspiration. And I tell you that very, very short. I was warning you that I'm talking a lot.

Michael Horn

No, this is great.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah. So you know, when we decided and we were so excited, Lang Lang and I that we want to go to the public schools in you know and, and bring our program and, and, and, and teach the music. Everybody, everybody laughed us out. Everybody. This was not even the best friend. Everybody said that we are crazy. And they said, you know, you are Chinese, you are Polish, Austrian. You don't know what you are talking about.

You know. You know the public school system in America is so complicated and, and you know, every principal is like the king of the kingdom and you know, you cannot do anything with them. Forget it. Why you are not making some, you know, claps or whatever. You know, the kids maybe on Saturday can come and, and I look at Lang Lang and I said hell no, I don't want this. You know, we have this. No, I want to go to this, to the public schools. And then I was in Boston.

He has a concert in Boston. And I met people from Boston Arts Academy. And, and you know, and Mr. Hold and you know, and, and I, I told them, I said listen, this is my dream. This is a piano lab. You know, we can build a piano lab. This will be crazy. You know, this entire class is learning this with headphones.

And they said we love it. And they connected me with Orchard Garden. Yeah. This was our first schools in Boston, you know, public school, you know, elementary school. And they install also a piano lab in the public. In the Boston Arts Academy. And this was for me, Michael, the moment when I started to believe in this program.

Global School Support Expansion

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Because I said when one school got it and, and making, then I will go and I will do really a lot. I, I, there's no. Nobody can, can stop me. And, Ariela, my education director, she said me, you know, two days ago that we just achieved 100 schools in America. You know, we support hundred schools. So, this is, you know, it makes me really proud about this, and I'm really very happy about this. And, we have 150 schools in China and we have now expanded the program to Europe. And so practically when you.

And I'm always the conservative, you know, mathematician, I'm always taking only that the first three years. I'm not, you know, some of the schools they have already programmed for 10 years or for the eight years. So you can multiply this. But let's say today on, on Friday, you know, over 180000 kids learning our program in different schools. So you know, from the first school in Boston, you know, to those school across the countries, it is something very special.

Michael Horn

That's wonderful. Well, one of the times when you were in Boston, this is where I live. So I'm gonna have to come with you and, and see this in person because it just sounds amazing what you've created and frankly it sounds like a model not just for music education, but in terms of the progress and delight for kids that all of their classes perhaps could learn from and take some tips from how you've built this curriculum for each individual child and teacher and support them all. It's really something.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Yeah, yeah, it is. And you know, it is showing you also that you are on the right path. You know, it shows you there is a need. You know, somebody I remember a few years ago was asking me why we have only, let's say, 80 schools and not 800 or 8,000. And I'm saying. And I answer, and I said, listen, you know, the program at least cost me $50,000 per school, right? We are bringing every equipment. We are bringing, like, 30 pianos, etc. Etc.

I said, if I will do like other foundations are doing and bring one keyboard to the school, I will have already 5,000 schools.

Michael Horn

Right? But the impact would not be what it is.

Lang Lang's Music Education

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Exactly. This is not what we wanted, you know, so some, Some other foundations, they are, you know, they bring one guitar to their school and they said, oh, we support music, right? But, you know, this is not what we believe, we at the Lang Lang foundation, we believe really that it has to be a genuine, you know, genuine teaching.

This has to be really taken seriously. And this is how we believe in this program.

Michael Horn

I love it. Lukas, thank you so much for coming on the future of Education to describe not just the commitment, but then the actual impact and the depth of that. And I think you've created a model that I hope a lot of folks learn from, and I'm excited to spotlight. So thank you so much.

Lukas Barwinski-Brown

Thank you so very much, Michael, for inviting me. And if you want to have a, you know, talking companion, I am always for you.

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Mike Goldstein joined me to talk about the evolving landscape of education savings accounts (ESAs) and the experiences of families utilizing them. Goldstein, who has been researching the reality for families on the ground in states like Florida and West Virginia, shares insights into how different types of families—those in reactive situations looking to escape traditional schooling and proactive families seeking enrichment opportunities—are navigating this space. The discussion highlights the challenges these families face, such as navigating systems with varying levels of friction and finding appropriate educational resources, and touches on the potential for future innovations in guidance and AI to assist parents in making more informed educational choices for their children.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we've got one of my favorite folks in the world of education, if we can call it that, none other than Mike Goldstein. He's a repeat guest now on the podcast. Mike, as many of you may know, founder of MATCH Charter Schools back in the day, did some really interesting work overseas, helping stand up a network of schools in Africa. And we may get into all sorts of things, but in the last several years has really been, Mike, I'm going to say, tinkering with a lot of innovations on the ground around what schooling could look like. And in different realms of the equation of K12 into this thing we think of as college or launching into careers and so forth.

Like, you've been playing a lot in the design and innovation space and thinking about what's the reality on the ground. And then most recently, he's been a fellow at the Pioneer Institute here in Massachusetts. And you got to do a bunch of work, Mike, I guess looking at, let's put it this way, like educational choice, not just even school choice, by a lot of measures, it's growing quite a bit. Education Savings Accounts, universal in many states. Now we can talk about what that means or doesn't mean. You've been looking at, like, what's the reality on the ground for a family trying to figure out, hey, I have $8,000 in a bank account earmarked for education. Where do I spend it? What do I want to use it on? Am I homeschooling, microschooling, unbundling, all these terms we use in education wonk land.

What have you been learning on the ground? Maybe let's start there and we'll see where it takes us.

Mike Goldstein

Yeah, great to be here. Six miles south of you in Watertown, Mass. The weather's unbelievable down here.

Michael Horn

I'm just jealous.

Mike Goldstein

Yes. So listen, great to be here. And yeah, Jim at Pioneer said, hey, we're interested in, like, what are the stories underneath this very fast expanding education savings account. And so I was looking at states like Florida, you know, $8,000 per year per kid. West Virginia, $5,000 per year per kid. And as you know, and probably many of your listeners, your podcast listeners know, the typical family with an education savings account just takes that eight grand and gives it to their local private school. That's how they're using that money. So 90% of the families have a very conventional and easy to understand expenditure here.

It's like, all right, it's either paying my tuition or cross subsidizing my tuition. What's more interesting and wildly varied is if you are a homeschool family and you can take the eight grand or the five grand and spend it without any underlying private school tuition that you have to pay. Right. And so those were some of the stories that I was trying to capture for Pioneer, finding these people, talking to them, how do you blow the money? How's it going for your kid?

Michael Horn

So like these are almost the blank slate families, right? They're not enrolled already in a previous tuition driven school of some sort. It sounds right. Like they're sort of coming into this with a much more blue sky. What do we use this on? And perhaps intentionality of why they want to use it or what they're trying to escape from or whatever else. Is that fair?

Mike Goldstein

I'll give you, I'll share two kind of concrete stories that will resonate, I'm sure with you and your listeners. So you know Daniella in Arizona, Katie and Tiffany in West Virginia. These are classic aspirin, meaning we feel pain as moms. Our kids were enrolled in the public schools and it wasn't going well. I had this mama bear moment. I pulled them out. And so in that case, they're responding to I'm a homeschooler, not for a religious reason, but because I don't feel my kids needs were being met. And sometimes the critique is more social, like kids being bullied, doesn't have friends, doesn't like to go to school.

Sometimes the critique is more academic. My kids are struggling to learn stuff where I don't even think the school is serving even their median kid well. And so then they're like, I gotta figure out how to do this on my own. That's one type. So that was one part of the story. The other was what I would more say are vitamin parents, meaning their kids. So Mariana and Andrena are twins. They came to the US from Venezuela.

They're moms, they live near each other, they each have a few kids. Their kids were doing fine in public school in Florida. It's just that they're like, our kids are little. I think we could do better. Like what if we homeschool our kids and then we can use these education savings accounts much more for enrichment, you know, like, let's get them some bass guitar lessons. Like, my kid wants to do the rock climbing gym, and my other kid's really into soccer at an elite level. Like, we could send them to the academy with some of this cash. And so those are, like, the two types of stories that I think are likely to increase those choosing homeschool over time.

Because it's not like a moral or religious driver of homeschool attendance. It's much more of a vitamin or aspirin to a secular education experience.

Parental Decision-Making Shift

Michael Horn

So both of those are interesting. I think the first is probably more. I don't know, familiar is the right word, but what people might expect, right? Like, my kid's in trouble. This is going nowhere fast. I gotta get out, put an array of services around them. The second one sounds like maybe I'm gonna stereotype in a different way, but like a complacent, previously complacent family that all of a sudden says, hey, we could do something different here and get a lot more for our kids. Maybe let's tackle that one first and, like, tell us what that decision making looks like. What did you learn about how they're making choices? You just said they can spend money on soccer academies and bass guitar lessons.

I mean, those sound fun. I'd like public funding for that for me. What does that look like? What's the conversation at the dining room table like for them?

Mike Goldstein

So I think they were kind of. It's like two sisters evangelized a little by the third sister, this kind of like, hey, we can do this. And I think they're both professional. They're themselves well educated. And some of the vibe here, Michael, was, hey, I'm already, like, working from home, and my Saturdays and Sundays with my kids are pretty pleasant. These are kids with, like, pretty high executive function overall. If you kind of get them started, you know, they're age appropriate.

I mean, these were younger kids, but, like, you know, they get started with their book, and they can read for a while, and they get started with the math, and they can, you know, take a run at it or, you know, just kind of go to mom or dad with like, I need a little help here or there. So not sort of saying it's, like, easy per se,

Michael Horn

but it's not like an all hands on deck. I have to be babysitting my kid.

Mike Goldstein

Yes.

Michael Horn

Eight hours. Right. Totally pulling them tooth and nail through this.

Mike Goldstein

Right. And I think that Covid, of course, sort of woke people up a little bit. This what you were calling, like, a complacent family. It's like the kids are doing fine in school, we got no complaints. They're like reasonably happy to go to school and they have high grades on their report cards. They're liked, they have friends. But it's like, huh, this is like a big chunk of childhood that's pretty boring. It's like, why does this need to go from 8 to 2:30 when I feel like we're getting this roughly done from 9 to 11 am and sort of like they're actually learning a little more, you know, much more compressed time and therefore whether the kid is converting the afternoon just into like let's ride our bike and play outside with our friends, parents are

Michael Horn

Like that's good. Or let's kind of go deeper on more structured kind of enrichment type things. That's good too.

How do they make choices with the money? Right? Like I'm really interested in how social networks play a role in helping them inform. Are there tools though also in the ESA, you know, world that is helping inform them? Like how are they deciding and choosing where they're spending the dollars versus using their own expertise perhaps and so forth. What does that look like?

Mike Goldstein

It's an interesting kind of mess that varies a lot state by state. So this is, it's a pretty fraught area. So each state as you know, has a different software vendor who's running the back end of this education savings account. And I think that overall they're pretty good at the first job, which is make sure that you're not spending state monies on crazy things that are going to become front page of the paper type scheme scandal.

Michael Horn

Let me, let me pause you there for one second. Like what counts as crazy? Because I suspect some people are like, wow, bass guitar lessons. I get it, it's educational. But for some people, that's crazy. Some people, they're like, yeah, amen. Like where's the line on that?

Preventing Misuse of Public Funds

Mike Goldstein

Okay, so you're right and I'm going to try to organize it this way. Would, would everybody, including the most advocate oriented type purse. It is, you can't be spending it on buying laptop computers and then reselling them out of a van so that you know, your home is making money. You can't hire grandma for $8,000 and put her on the payroll. Like there's certain types of use that is much more, I think more like borderline fraud or actual fraud that we see in some other public, you know, like housing vouchers, other things. So job one is like the unquestionable 99 out of 100 people would agree this isn't okay. Then there's this next level of turf where you and I might, for the sake of discussion, have a healthy disagreement. So I might be more on the side of like, well, schools offer music, public schools offer music lessons, public schools do trips to D.C., public schools do a bunch of enrichment type things where they're using public monies to pay adults to do stuff to give lessons to kids. And I would say, why couldn't the homeschool, in my opinion homeschool family use that? Each state calibrates that tightness a little bit differently. Like how much enrichment versus not Mike G. might have a very wide latitude. If you can show it happens in any public school, you should have the right to do it as a homeschool parent would be sort of my rough rule of thumb. Other people are like, no, we want narrower scope of activities and there's a reasonable level of policy disagreement we could have there. So okay, so that's like the starting point.

But the next level is that these software providers and the state treasury department that runs this, have different skills in how much friction they're going to set up for the basic ability to buy and the basic ability to get reimbursed. And so in West Virginia, if you look at these homeschool moms that are on Facebook, nice people literally just trying to get like $300 reimbursement for a science kit they bought. It's a friggin nightmare, like page after page after page just every day. So I'm on these Facebook groups. And by the way, that's probably the number one source of information for these families is peer to peer on Facebook. I think that's probably the top platform. How are you doing this? Other mom chimes in 'here's what we did' in the comment section. So there's a lot of that and these states vary quite a bit in their ability to execute this.

That wouldn't drive a parent crazy. And you know, so unfortunately sometimes like the school choice people, I would say you should get a lot more, if you're an advocate of school choice and an advocate of these kinds of education savings accounts and homeschooling, you should probably flex a lot harder on making this friction a lot lower without losing like, without drifting into scandal world where you lose the productive friction.

Michael Horn

Sure, sure. No, that makes sense. Okay, so they're using Facebook. They are a variety means to find out the funding. What did you like, what was surprising to you? Or insights about their experience. Before we go to the first archetype that you, you laid out that you think other people are not getting about their stories about how they're navigating this world or sort of things that surprised you. Aha's that you had as you dug into these stories.

Mike Goldstein

So you mean for like the vitamin parents?

Michael Horn

Yeah, for the vitamin parents. Before we go to the trouble, get me out of trouble parents.

Enrichment vs. Academic Market Challenges

Mike Goldstein

I feel like the people that were more vitamin parents. It's the market for experiences for your kid, the general market, however you educate your kid, you and me, anybody in greater Boston, if you want to buy music lessons, got a lot of good choices. You want to buy certain sports type opportunities, you got a lot of good choices. I think that's a healthy, well developed market because it's so used by the private sector that it's not that hard to find good bass guitar lessons for your kid. And so I think you can navigate the enrichment side pretty well. And these parents are less likely to need the academic enrichment stuff, which I think is a harder market to navigate because here's why. Most of the tutoring, in my opinion, that's available, let's say, for math, is geared more for tiger parents whose kiddos are at the, you know, and as you know, as a provider in this space, like kids at the 80th percentile whose parents want them to be at the 90th percentile. The skill of those math providers in helping a kid who's at the 20th percentile is very low.

It's not their target customer. Whereas everybody has sort of the same, like, your kid's new to bass guitar. We start with that kid. You know, like, it all sort of starts at the same place. Whereas they're not starting with a kid who took guitar for four years, hasn't made any progress, is super frustrated, like you might have with a reading or math skill type thing. And so that's why I think the vitamin parents, they have a pretty good experience with these education savings accounts.

Michael Horn

Okay, so it sounds like you're foreshadowing that the story might be different with the help me get out of trouble parents, but maybe I shouldn't jump to that conclusion. Tell me what you learned.

Mike Goldstein

Yeah, so I do think one. I remember Tiffany in West Virginia was telling me, you know, they're getting information from a wide variety of sources and they're trying to sort it out solo in a way that strikes me as challenging. Like if you're new to the space like, you're not from K12 World. And Tiffany herself had been like a teacher, public school teacher, an administrator for many years. So she wasn't even new to the space. And she was like, well, one thing I learned about my kid pretty quick that I did not know, is his phonics are pretty bad. And, like, I kind of knew, but he was kind of coping. And then I heard, you know, the podcast Sold a Story, right? The huge sort of mothership activator of a lot of phonics stuff.

She's like, oh, my God, this is what's going on. I'm a little embarrassed as a professional educator to be saying this is going on in my own home with my kid. She then was able to find in West Virginia a pretty skilled old school phonics, I know what I'm doing lady. And so her kid has been responding pretty well, and she's using the education savings account to pay for that. So at the time we recorded, that was like a pretty good purchase. And I think she had substituted away from what had originally sounded like a really cool class online, like Chronicles of Narnia, lLet's go deep. It's like, wait a minute, I don't think that's what my boy needs right now.

And sort of made a good adjustment and made what sounded to me like a smart purchase. But if you look again at these Facebook threads, you see a lot of sort of desperate, these are invariably moms, it's like 95% of the communicators about homeschool are moms saying, kiddo has a problem. I tried X, it didn't work. Now what? And the thread is just a whole. It's like 20 different random ideas. There's nobody who's able to.

Navigating Education Savings Uncertainty

Mike Goldstein

It's not like, yeah, you have your pediatrician to take a whole bunch of different competing ideas and synthesize it in an expert way. What is not yet well developed in this market, it could appear, because Education Savings account, like, who knows? The guidance that's available is not particularly strong. And the mindset of the moms is mostly like, I'm supposed to be able to figure it out by myself in a way that you would never do with medicine or law. Like, in theory, you could represent yourself and you can like, oh, we got into a fender bender and now there's a letter and we're being sued. I guess I could read it all online and figure it out, but who would ever do that? You got to call the guy and be like, we're being sued, it's fender bender. I don't understand my insurance. What do I do? And then somebody sorts you out.

There's very little of that , remember, the ethic of homeschool that you've covered for so long is not that it's much more like we're the pioneers here. We figure it out and we ask each other. But really, you're asking people who themselves, as homeschool moms, they have like a sample size of like two or three kids. It's not like they have a hundred use cases. And they know what works well in what situation. They extrapolate from their own kid.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So I want to stay on that for a moment because I'm curious how you see the market evolving or what your prediction is around how the market will evolve or maybe should evolve. You can choose which one you want to do there. One of my hypotheses is that the back end systems actually need to start helping people navigate this more meaning not Yelp, but more prescriptive recommendation engines to help point you in the right direction if-this- then- that sort of things. And my instinct has been, yes, certain states have tried to legislate guidance into it, but I think more likely there's a market that gets borne out over time. If the volume actually gets high enough where you actually might pay for folks to help you navigate or even diagnose where you are, you may think both of those are really dumb. And so I want to know what you think.

Mike Goldstein

So I agree with you in the long term. And the question is how to build the bridge. So an interesting thing that came across in West Virginia, for example, they had just changed vendors from vendor A, which was doing fine, to vendor B in this kind of way, where the vendor B promise was to build what you said with AI, not only have they been totally unable to build that, they broke the whole basic reimbursement system. Right. In other words, if you look 12 months ago, you don't see the Facebook thread of West Virginia homeschoolers filled with like, how do I get my Hope Scholarship thing? So they sort of shot for the moon and came up super short and sort of broke the underlying almost functionality. I would say the following. Yes. In the long run.

And where you see, for example, AI work. Well, a good example is radiology readings. Right. We both know that. And it's like you had all these skilled, very well trained doctors for a while who created this base of expert knowledge. We've looked at 5 million x rays. We've pretty correctly diagnosed most of that, now the AI is going to vacuum all that pretty good content up, and now it can do that as well or better. Right? Now, nobody has done that.

Years of having the MD read the X ray and give expert opinion. So it's sort of like what the AI is trying to vacuum up is a whole bunch of random and hodgepodge moves like, oh, let's change curriculum. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's, there's nothing. It's all noise. It's really, it's like, you know, so, you know, garbage in, garbage out situation. If you were the king of school choice and you wanted this in the long run, your intermediate step would be to manually inject and finance expertise into the system to help a lot of families build the loop. Like, how do I prove we're actually helping the families? Let's have competing groups.

Mike Goldstein

Look at satisfaction. Try to measure improvement, whatever those things are. You build that through the human thing. Before then you would say, okay, now I'm going to use the AI to replace the human, to make it more, you know, affordable, et cetera. We don't need it to always be that.

Michael Horn

Do you think then it'll be through mandates that mandate, that guidance function, or do you think it'll be its own organic market where people say it's actually worth spending, you know, 500, a thousand of dollars of the ESA for someone to help me navigate this world or come up with the bespoke package for my kid?

Mike Goldstein

I mean, I don't know, it's possible to me that in four years we'd be saying this is a broken market that nobody's been able to figure out because the barriers to entry are not high. But the barriers to like, providing good advice for 500 or $1,000 are high. Like, it's not a great, you know, unit level if you're going to really spend time with a family. And so usually when we see education services like that, it does go to, you know, like, you think about college admissions counseling, like, I don't know, either you go to the local high school counselor for nothing or you're paying, you know, $500 an hour for

Michael Horn

$ 8, 10, 12,000 by the time you're done with it.

Mike Goldstein

Yeah, totally, Right. So it would eclipse the whole amount of, so that's why there are places. And again, there's like false starts. So it's not like a open. Nobody's done anything. So for example, in Florida, there are already a whole bunch of people that are homeschool certifiers. So it's typically like a teacher and at the end of the year in Florida, you're supposed to send in some kind of proof that your kid learned something.

How do you do that? You pay 75 bucks to some nice teacher who set up shop as one of these certifiers. And, I don't know, they talk to your kid for 10 minutes and then they give you the letter. And so it's. That one is just meeting a weird function of the state. Right. Florida's getting no actual benefit from this, but they get to say, well, we certify that everybody does something reasonable. But what that means is there's all these latent people. So I asked one and I was like, I asked her, well, if somebody gave you a thousand bucks instead of 75, could you actually meaningfully evaluate the kid and then meaningfully help? She's like, oh, yeah, I would love to do that.

That's what I thought I would do. Nobody wants that. But so some of these are like, you know, it's like classic. How do you build a new category? You know, you watch Shark Tank. It's like, duh, you're trying to build a new category. That's a challenge because it creates a whole bunch of additional consumer education that might not be in the interest of financial interest of any one firm, because once you build the market, then everybody else can enter it. So it's more, I think it's more, it might be more of a philanthropy problem, possibly, than a market will solve it itself problem.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Okay, let's switch gears on one to two other topics. One, I'm super curious. Like, we got folks like you, Kerry McDonald, others in Massachusetts who are really interested on these on the ground stories. In her case, she's often profiling the entrepreneurs behind the microschools here. You've gone to the families, right, Consuming all these different bespoke education solutions. We don't have any prospects in Massachusetts, of which I'm aware that move us in this direction. Maybe you'll tell me otherwise, like, you know, sort of what's driving this curiosity of pioneer others here in Massachusetts?

Education Choice: Red vs. Blue States

Michael Horn

And, and I don't know where the question leads, but I'm curious to hear you pontificate there. But I guess the other question is just to get political for a moment. It does seem like there's a red state strategy at the moment in this country of a lot of education choice and yes, a lot of progressive educators participating in those states. So it's not super political in the state, but the state right. Tends to have a political leaning. The blue state strategy at the moment, I'm not sure what it is in this country, but it's not this. So like, where does this go? Like we're going to have over 50% of students eligible for some form of universal choice pretty soon. Is it going to grow?

I don't know. I'd love to just hear you blank-spoken on this because I'm not quite sure what the question is, but it's something I'm curious about because I think it's interesting we're interested in it here.

Mike Goldstein

Yeah, I would say so. I agree with your basic read. I don't see, you know, a ton that's likely to happen in blue states, but at the margins, you know, there'll be some interesting stuff. Like I interviewed rather a guy in Denver, Colorado, sort of blue purple state without his embark microschool. But yeah, the path for a red state governor, table stakes is clearly now you have to have kind of a school choice strategy. And so if you're interested, like you and me, broadly speaking, I guess I'm like, oh, I happen to live in Massachusetts and I think there's a lot of kids, like my kids who go to the public school down the street are doing just fine. And in all the country there's a lot of kids in public schools who do just fine.

But there's a lot that are struggling. And unfortunately in our home state, nobody's going to do anything about that. In these other states they're going to try. Maybe they'll put some wins on the board. They'll probably put some losses on the board. I'm interested in that. So I sort of think like I happen to live in Massachusetts, but, you know, I can get to other places.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So let's understand this. Okay, last question as we wrap up. Big insights, things that people are missing, things that surprised you as you dug into these individual stories that you'd say people need to understand this. What would you list under that?

Mike Goldstein

Yeah. One of the things that you and I have talked about before is how do you measure learning? And should you try to measure learning for a homeschooler?

Michael Horn

Yeah. Or for bass guitar.

Measurement Challenges in Education

Mike Goldstein

For bass guitar. Right. For any of these, like public expenditures or an easy way to hold that at bay is like the measurement seems to have made things worse off in a number of ways sometimes. So we're both, you and I are measurement nerds. We love that. And yet we can acknowledge the other side of the argument that even if you could solve the technical issues around, for example, it'd be cool to know what is math and English achievement like if your kid went to public school in grades three and four so you got a sense of their annual progress and then happened to shift to homeschool for grades five and six, like, did the learning rate accelerate or decelerate? It'd be cool to know that. There's a bunch of technical issues with that that are probably solvable depending, asterisk, but who wants to know that? And it's sort of like since you and I are more interested in like, what's the kid side of this, what's the real life experience and how do we make that better. But a lot of the political decision making is much more tribal.

School Choice Debate Nuances

Mike Goldstein

So what you and I would expect is people that are in favor of school choice would be like, I'm not interested in that question unless I know it comes out on my side. And the blue tribe people would say the same thing in the other direction. And what Patrick Wolf, the scholar, you know, has sort of written even recently about school choice is, look, you know, it's pretty close. You're not going to see large gains in academics from this per se, if that's what you were hoping, like these breakthroughs where the kids make skyrocket in their literacy levels. But you're not going to see these big blow ups like perhaps school choice opponents would prefer to see because then it makes the case that we should just keep the system as it is. And so I think there's ways, interesting, challenging ways to go at that question. I'm sort of fascinated by that. I know you are too, but who would sort of organize that, fund that? What would be the purpose of it all? Kind of interesting questions here.

Michael Horn

Gotcha, gotcha. Super interesting. Mike, thanks for coming on and talking us through what you've been learning. And as you continue to go down this path and designing for these individuals, whatever you choose to do, come back on and keep us posted.

Mike Goldstein

Awesome. Great to be with you, Mike.

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Matt Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Wildflower Schools joins me to delve into the origin and growth of Wildflower Schools, a network of microschools rooted in the Montessori philosophy. The network now boasts 72 schools across the country. Kramer shares his insights on how to create environments that empower teachers as leaders so that their unique qualities and visions shine through. We also discussed the role of technology in enhancing educational practices; the significance of small, personalized educational settings; and how Matt thinks about fostering growth of the network while maintaining the space for individuality among students and teachers alike. I loved the discussion, for example, of one of the Wildflower schools located on the west coast of Puerto Rico that is housed in a local special education services program and has developed a version of Montessori that is focused on kids with neuro differences. As microschools continue to grow, I found this conversation fascinating as Wildflower blends the benefits of a national network with schools that are led locally and rooted in the community.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there today, one of my personal favorite people in and around the world of education, we have Matt Kramer. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Wildflower, which we will hear more about shortly. It's a Wildflower schools, or a series, network, if you will, of microschools that have been sprouting up like wildflowers dare I say. They have a Montessori philosophy at their heart. And I will stop talking and describing it there because Matt, welcome. It's so good to see you. You're gonna tell us a lot more in a moment.

Matt Kramer

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Michael Horn

Yeah, absolutely. So you’re in your 10th anniversary of the founding of Wildflower Schools.

Why don't you tell us your origin story for like, how it all came about and progressed to the point where you're now, you know, 72 schools, I think, around the country and continuing to grow pretty rapidly at this point.

Matt Kramer

Sure. Well, let's see. The first brief stop in the origin story is that I was a Montessori kid and, and I also have ADHD and couldn't sit still. And my first tour through pre Montessori schools didn't go very well. Spent a lot of time during recess in class making up for my inability to sit still. And luckily for me, we moved to a new city and my parents found a Montessori school for me. And you know, for the first time, school was largely a positive event.

I, you know, then fast forward when I was the president and CEO of Teach for America for a decade and helped bring a lot of people into the world of educational change. And as we did that, I saw a lot of just extraordinary people make the choice to go into all sorts of different settings across the country, in different cities, different charters and non charters. And at Teach for America, the thing that we would say to people on the way in is that this is a really challenging environment you're going to go into, and your job is to rise to the occasion to transcend the limitations of the situation, to be a leader. And the truth is, some people really were able to pull that off. Some people really weren't able to pull that off. But a lot of people in the middle were just ultimately worn down by the challenges and limitations of the situation. The, you know, their leadership sort of comes into a hard face off with the, with the system that's really designed to suppress leadership. And I had been thinking about this question of, well, what would it look like to have an environment in which actually leadership was supported, where like teachers actually could bring all of their capabilities.

And I was sort of toying with that question when I met this guy, Sep Kamvar, a professor at MIT who, coming at it from a different angle, he had been an entrepreneur, he'd sold the company to Google and he had risen up to the senior levels at Google, as head of personalization at Google, you know, back in the day. And he, you know, in that role, he had bought many, many companies for Google and brought in these entrepreneur teams and sort of had the same observation in that space that I had had in education. Like you bring in these extraordinary, they're clearly extraordinary, right? They've created their own companies and it's so good that Google wants to buy it. And then they get inside of Google and you just watch it crush the life out of them. And so he had this thought of, you know, he had a two year old at the time. He thought of, I'd love to create a school where the teacher's feeling, the teacher's experience and therefore what the teacher can project, is more like the entrepreneur and less like the person who just got bought by the behemoth. And he created the school in Cambridge and then, and then a few more that had this, that had this quality to them where every time you talk to a teacher, you know, the schools were tiny. They were like two teachers, 15, 20 kids, one room that's like the whole school.

And when you talk to the teacher and ask them, why are you here? What are you, you know, what brought you to this moment? They would tell an origin story that was like an entrepreneur was like somebody who had started a great charter that you might see. They had a great entrepreneurial, social entrepreneurial story about what brought them there and exactly what were they trying to do. And as I went from school to school, which is really like classroom to classroom, every single one of them had that same, like this is my thing, energy to it. And when I saw it, I was sort of hooked. I was like, ah, here we are. This is a way to bring together my personal views about child centered approaches to education and the lessons I had learned about the role that teachers can play in creating really extraordinary experiences if you create the right setting for them.

Michael Horn

So there's a number of places I want to go there. And I'll, I'll say, I think you and I probably started talking around 2015, 2016. I'm probably going to get my dates wrong. But, uh, it was early in the life of Wildflower, and then you were super generous. It was before the pandemic, I want to say, 2018 or thereabouts. And you spent like a whole day with me, taking me through, I think, three of your sites in Massachusetts, both to explain what y'all were doing at Wildflower, but also to help me understand Montessori education more deeply. So maybe let's start on that side. I want to spend most of the conversation on the Wildflower side.

But Montessori education itself, you just mentioned child-centered education. Everyone has different definitions of that. I think there are a lot of misimpressions around what Montessori education itself is and how it aligns with, you know, you sort of get these food fights in education, direct instruction versus inquiry-based, and you're like, actually it comes together really nicely as an and in Montessori. And so, like, how do you describe what Montessori education at its core is about and sort of its extensibility, if you will.

Montessori Education Philosophy

Matt Kramer

Yeah. So I think the big idea behind Montessori, you know, thanks to Maria Montessori, who, depending on who you ask, was either the first or the second female doctor in Italy 120 years ago or so, the sort of key idea is that people sort of come wired from the factory with the blueprints for their own life in them, and that our role as educators is to just sort of help them through the process of bringing that to life, bringing themselves to life, creating the person that they're going to be. And the way we can figure out what works is by watching kids, you know, And I think one of her observations was kids of loosely similar ages, you know, sort of three year wide, bands of kids, watch them as they, as they make choices about what they want to do when they're sort of given freedom and learn from that about what the development characteristics are of kids of an age. And so Montessori, so first sort of the big idea is like this responsiveness to the natural developmental patterns. And then what she did is she started with 3 to 6 year olds for local idiosyncratic reasons in Rome. She started with a group of three to six year olds and spent a lot of time watching them and developed this theory about what kids of that age are drawn into, what helps them develop and designed a curriculum around it. And I'll say a few of the features of that three to six year old curriculum, which is what Montessori is most famous for, but it goes from 0 to 18 now. But some of the features that 3 to 6 year old curriculum were first of all, the kids should have meaningful freedoms to move around, to make choices about what they work on, to make choices about who they work with, etc.

And the reason there is first, because of what she found, what her philosophy developed about the stuff that's already in the kid being such an important part of what we're trying to accomplish. And second, her empirical observation that choice is a very powerful lever for engagement. If people get to pick the things they do, they are interested in them intrinsically, even if it's the exact same thing somebody else picked. We don't like people telling us what to do. And in particular kids don't like adults telling them what to do. And so on the one hand, a pedagogy that is focused on using the power of kids' choice to engage them in things and all the subtle instincts that kids have about what is worth doing that might not otherwise come out, like I'm bored of this because I now know how to do it. That should be a signal about it's time to do something else, not a signal that we should like tell the kid to get in their seat and sit down and be quiet.

And then the second part of it is the idea that there are better and worse developmental experiences to choose. And she spent a lot of her time during the early development of Montessori empirically trying out, well, what if we tried to teach the kids one to one correspondence, the idea that the numbers line up with the number of beads and that you go from one to two, not one to three. She spent a lot of time thinking about ideas like that and trying out different ways of teaching them and slowly refining it in the set of materials that does all the different skill areas that you want kid to build on. And because they refined this for so long, they got a lot of subtlety into the system. As one example I give people in a Montessori classroom, all of the little drawers and trays have these little knobs on them that are about the size of an eraser for a pencil. And the reason why they're there and they're that exact size is what she found, is that kids actually have the ability to write by moving around letters like little Scrabble tiles before they have the ability to write on paper. And it's actually a muscle control problem that prevents them from writing on paper, not an ability to form words with letters. And that you can actually accelerate the development of the muscles for holding a pencil by having them keep squeezing things about the size of a pencil.

So it's just sort of like a second thing she just slid in there on the side. Because they spent like 30 years developing the materials. And so the frame of Montessori is like on the one hand, kid choice, on the other hand, this carefully developed set of materials that were developed by watching what made what sort of helped the kids learn stuff. And then a framework for teachers that says your job is not to be the main presenter to the class. Your job is to facilitate the connections between the kids and the learning environment and materials that are around them. And as you do that, we are going this is I think one of the funny things people don't know about Montessori, it's actually a scripted curriculum. The teachers go off to Montessori training programs and they literally memorize the introduction presentations for every one of these hundreds of lessons and materials.

And they sort of check out on them one by one. Like you present the lesson, reading the script out of your memory to an instructor who's like, okay, you're ready to do this particular one. And they go through that all. And the reason why, again back to Maria, is she realized if you didn't put the teachers on a script, they talked a lot longer. They spent a lot of time sort of like wandering around. And whereas if you gave them a script, you could keep it down to like a three sentence introduction. And what she found is the length of the introduction was really not like a long winding introduction was really not helpful for kids, like locking in on the thing and deciding to explore it.

Three sentences was about right. And so that's sort of Montessori. You know, as you get to the older level, kids, what kids needs evolves. And so 6 to 12 year old Montessori is following a slightly different theory of the environment and the case of what they do, but it's also in the case of like, well, what do 6 to 12 year olds need? What do they do naturally? And how do we create an environment that works for that and it just keeps on going up.

Michael Horn

Yeah, and I will say it, I mean it's known for the children house years, as you said. But like the LE and UE lower elementary, upper elementary experiences for us have been even more magical in many ways because it also builds right on itself through those materials and the connections that are made from abstract or, you know, what's concrete to abstractions and things of that nature. It's been pretty cool to see. And I think the way you described it is interesting also because it, it sort of, if people can get over that first objection wherever they're coming from on the world of priors, there's like an answer for it. Right. So if you believe too much choice is bad. Well, you know, scripts and constrained choices. Right.

Like, and really thought out curriculum materials is an answer for you. And it turns out every lesson has a direct instruction component. So we got that right. And then, you know, if you believe it's too regimented so forth like the incredible choice that is brought to bear in a daily and weekly basis and then the executive function skills that people are developing, these kids are developing is just extraordinary as you're going through it.

Montessori and Project-Based Learning

Matt Kramer

Yeah, I think one, you know, to look at the elementary years, I think one of the interesting things, you know, there's, I think there's a growing number of project based environments, especially at the, you know, at the preschool level. Maria Montessori's work has substantially influenced the rest of preschool over 125 years. And at the elementary level, you're starting to see more of that too as you see more choice driven situations. But generally it's project based is sort of mostly what we mean by choice or child centered at the elementary level. And what you see in Montessori, that's a little different. But actually personally, I think is sort of inspiring when you think about it, inspired when you think about it for a minute is Montessori treats all of the first through sixth grade as actually one big project. And they refer to it in a slightly culty way as cosmic education. And the goal, the project is for a child to understand the world around them and to find their path through it.

What, like, what are they going to what interests them? What's going to draw them towards being an adult, which is like on the other side of this journey. And so they, this starts out in elementary, in Montessori with these five things that are called the great lessons that are like dramatized stories that the teachers tell the kids. You know, one of them is about the formation of the universe and earth and planets. One of them is about the emergence of life. One of them is about the emergence of human beings. One of the story of communication and one of the story of math. And each of these are these involved detailed stories that sort of give them a sense of like, how does this huge thing, like when I look around the world and I see mountains and streams, how do I understand it? That's story number one.

Right. And so, and then the kids are drawn into picking things to do out of the things that are triggered by that. So, you know, the kid. I'm really interested in the piece about the solar system and why the planets don't spin away and the teacher will guide them into a research activity for that. And so the projects don't like get rotated. We don't have like a monthly project like, okay, now all the kids are going to do this. Like we have a six year project and then we just keep helping the kids connect to it again and again and again.

Michael Horn

That's a really good way of saying it. And it's not something. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but it also helps handle, again, I think a lot of the objections you hear around project-based learning when it goes amok. Right. So. All right, let's move from Montessori at a moment. So you sort of chose that as the organizing philosophy, if you will, for the Wildflower Schools. But then you have like a fairly decentralized model of educator led created schools that are spawning themselves like wildflowers a little bit across the country.

So talk us through the organizational model and some of the decisions that you made there and how that reflects the network that you now have of 72 schools.

Personalized Education vs. Standardization

Matt Kramer

Yeah, well, I, I shared at the beginning that sort of philosophy which is like, how do you, how do you think about creating an environment in which the teachers total experiences, passions, beliefs about the world, which all of that is energy fodder for the creation of a great humane educational experience. You know, I think about, when I think about big schools, of course there's a lot of great big schools, but when I think about big schools, there is a premise problem, I think, which is that if you need to get 20 or 30 or 50 or whatever teachers to teach the same program, that program can't have very much to do with the individual teachers. Right. It sort of has to be made generic to be a curriculum. And you know, God forbid, when we're talking about a curriculum that is statewide or countrywide, then you really have to sand off all the edges.

Michael Horn

A lot of lowest common denominator there.

Matt Kramer

Right. And if you believe as I do that actually the stuff that makes a teacher unique is actually the most exciting stuff. Right. It's the thing like when you think about your favorite teacher in your life. Usually it's the idiosyncrasies about that person that are the memorable pieces. And so, for me, it's the entrepreneurial spirit of the teachers, the space in which that can come out that's sort of the essential idea. And in a lot of ways, it connects to the theory for kids. Right.

Like, the theory for kids is that there's something good in them and we create the right environment to help it develop and emerge. And, you know, back in the day, when Maria was doing her work, that that journey sort of ended at around 24 years old. You know, neuroplasticity for adults was not a thing 100 years ago. She sort of thought you were a fully formed adult, and then you were like that way for the rest of your life. But we now know that that is not the case. Right. We now actually have learned quite a bit about how people continue to develop. They continue to become things, become new things over the course of their life.

And teachers, in that sense, are actually a lot like kids. They're in a process of becoming, too. They have things that are inside of them that you can't reject and think you're going to turn them into something they're not. They also have the capacity to adapt. And so that really is like the idea in Wildflower is like, how do you create a Montessori for adults space where this is a prepared environment for people. Montessorians, who want to create schools that reflect everything they've learned and everything they believe and everything they are as full participants

So that's really the idea. And. And what we do, you know, in the process of starting schools are what we say to people is, on the one hand, this all the schools in the Wildflower network are going to be authentic Montessori schools. So your school that you're going to create is going to be that. And on the other hand, that does not say everything about what your school is going to be like. Montessori is sort of like one dimension of the total, total experience of being in the school. And so you see these other things that are the teachers, like life lessons, life experiences that show up. I'll just, you know, a few examples of them. You know, you and I were talking earlier about a school in Boston, Roxbury.

Yeah. Before we hit record. Yeah, Roxbury Roots. Yeah.

Matt Kramer

Yeah. And. And that is a. It's an absolutely beautiful school, and it is an authentic Montessori school. And you go in there, if you know what you're looking for, for Montessori, you're like, ah, this is Montessori done right. But also the school's founders had a vision of an Afrocentric culture in a Montessori school. And this just comes out in so many ways when you're in the program.

Intentional School Environments

Matt Kramer

From, you know, the, you know, somewhat trivial things about just like art and decoration to the vibe and the schedule and the food and the like, it all comes out and you just feel like you're in a space that is intentional, it's coherent. And so I would say cultural alignment is like one dimension that you see in schools, but there are a bunch of others. There's a school on the west coast of Puerto Rico that is actually housed in a local special education services program and has basically developed a version of Montessori that is focused on kids with neuro differences. And they, you know, and in their particular case, they take kids with a very wide variety of, sometimes very intense, different styles of learning. But because of the heritage of the teachers and the site, building a very one on one individualized program fits with the way they see the world. You know, another, another example is we have a school in Indiana called Montessori Field. And it's basically an outdoor school. It's like set into a nature preserve and they never go indoors.

And you know, and, and you look across network, there's 72 schools and there's dozens of themes and really 72 individual implementations using those themes that come up. And they just, they reflect the teacher answering the question of what is it that a school that includes all of me in it, what is it that a school like that could do that would be wonderful for children, wonderful for families, wonderful for community? Not like, what is the generic answer to that question then? How do I get myself to do the generic ideal, the platonic school concept. It's like the one with me in it. What's that one look like?

Michael Horn

Yeah, and there's a real color to your point. Right? It's not Montessori frozen in time either. Right. There's some evolution there. There's bringing you. It's. But it's still distinctly Montessoril every school that you go into are these.

So each of these are educator owned, is that correct? Or like what's the structure?

Matt Kramer

The schools themselves are non profits. Okay. And Wildflower, the whole is a nonprofit as well, but they're sort of tiny little nonprofits, like one or two rooms, 20 to 50 kids, two to four teachers, is sort of the typical size. Each one's a nonprofit, and the teachers are the co executive directors and the actual leaders with kids every day. And that's sort of one of the core implementation thoughts about, like, what does it look like to create environments in which the teachers can do this? It's, you know, we don't have a lot of rules. We put a lot of authority in the hands of the teachers.

But one of the rules is the people who make the decisions for the school and the people who spend all day with the kids have to be the same people.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Matt Kramer

And the reason why is we don't think. We think there's something massive that gets lost in translation when the expertise of a teacher has to get packaged up and turned into something for a principal to make use of, or the wisdom that a principal's acquired, making hard choices has to get, like, retranslated back to a teacher, and they have to understand and embrace that experience. We just think that translation is too complicated. You need it to happen inside the head of a single person so that the teacher can, you know, I think, you know, we've all spent a lot of time in schools. You know, like, for example, one of the, one of the big challenges in school is the fight over class sizes. And in every school I've ever been in, there are economic pressures that lead the principal to want a few more kids. And there's other factors that lead the teacher to want a few less kids.

And that tug of war is like a permanent feature of school life. And in Wildflower schools, it's not. And it's not because those two forces don't exist. The same forces exist, but the teacher's got both of them inside of them. And so they're thinking, what are the pros in the context of my program of having a few more kids in the classroom, what does that do for me and the kids? And what would I do with the money and how do I feel about all that, and what are the downsides of that? And let me weigh it all and decide what I think is best. And there's no communication problem. It's just like, you know, it's the parts of me. And they get to sort it out and figure out what to do.

Michael Horn

It's really cool because it's a personal trade off. Then let me ask you, so the core organization, if you will, the spine, the wildflower schools that you run, what's the role of that within the network? What's the relationship between these small microschool that have spawned out across the country. What role does each play?

Matt Kramer

So we think of ourselves sort of as a membership organization that the schools join and are part of. Our particular role. I guess there's probably a few things that we do for the network as a whole. One of them is we support the process of new people entering the community and starting schools. And so we have this thing, it's called the school startup journey. And it's basically, you know, again, it's like a Montessori prepared environment for adults. It's basically like a Montessori space for creating space, not physical space, but like space for creating a school. It's sort of structured. And, you know, we have.

We walk people through it. There's, you know, they don't have to do it in exactly the order that it's laid out. You can move the pieces around and do it the way that strikes you as right. But it's a structured way of figuring out what your school is going to be. And it has two points in it where you get advice from people who have already been through this, starting Wildflower schools, once, sort of at the end of your visioning work and again at the end of your planning work. And the teachers are, you know, they're sort of designing their program, and then they stop, they pull back, and they.

And they share with this panel of folks what they're up to. And the panel folks gives them advice. They don't have to take the advice, but they do, because these are wise people who've been through this. And, you know, unless it's somehow the panel doesn't appreciate something really important to the teacher, in which case they don't take the advice, but they incorporate what they feel they should, they revise their thinking, and they eventually turns into a school. That whole process, the tools, the support, the advice process that are. We support all that. We help them get access to financial resources and technical experience, et cetera.

You know, mostly we know things like how do you create a school in this community? And what are the rules? And all that stuff. And so we help them with all that. We help them by providing it once the school's up and running, we provide an ongoing suite of supports, tools to be helpful to them. And it's, on that one, I would say it's a fine line we're walking because there are things. None of this happens in a vacuum. And our American context teachers have largely heard the message that their work is not very important and that they should mostly follow the orders that they're given.

Empowering Teachers with Budget Management

Matt Kramer

And teachers come to us acculturated by that set of messages. And so one example of a thing that we sort of do in a way that I think sometimes strikes people as funny is if you ask the Wildflower teachers, do you want to have control over the finances of your school or would you prefer if Wildflower would actually run the back office for you? The wide majority of them would say, we'd prefer if Wildflower run the back office for us and we don't do it. And the reason why we don't do it is we have concluded that there are subtle lessons you learn from doing your, from managing your budget, about trade offs, about how much money you can invest in things, about which programmatic things should be considered reasonable to try out, and not reasonable, try out this subtle stuff you pick up about that from owning your own budget that you just cannot get another way. And so rather than create the back office that sort of everyone kind of wishes we would do, instead we create a bunch of tools that make it possible for people, most of whom have never run a small business, most of whom are not administrators by background,

Michael Horn

And won't necessarily want to, to your point.

Matt Kramer

Yeah, right, but, but who are going to need the lessons learned. And the, and the power that comes from understanding something essential is like what the money is for and how you use it. We create tools to make that possible. And then the last thing we do is we, I would say we sort of hold together the fabric of the network, right? In a decentralized environment, people are relying on other people to do certain things that align with the community's values and standards and the brand that we share, things like that. And so, you know, we basically create the environment to like make sure that that's true. We get people together, we gather them all in person so that they can learn from each other and things like that. So those are the sort of main roles that we provide. And you know, if we do a good job of it, we are both making it easier for them and also not, not changing the fundamental feeling that a teacher has.

You know, I use this as sort of my personal test of whether we're doing it right is if a teacher has a thought in the afternoon about something that could be done better and they go home and sleep on it, can they implement it in the morning? If the answer to that is no, if there's a staff meeting required or approvals required, we've done something wrong. Right? The cycle is supposed to be observe, learn something, sleep on it, implement the next morning. And as long as that stays true, stays the case, then we're doing what we're supposed to be doing in terms of the facilitation of the network.

Michael Horn

Very cool. I have like a million questions based on things that you've said that I want to ask, but I want to keep it to some reasonable time. So I'll do maybe a little bit of a lightning round and then maybe a couple other probing questions and then we'll wrap. But on so, you know, you're 10 years old, right. Talk to us about the state of Wildflower if you will. What's been the impact? Where's the growth? Yeah, let's start there.

Matt Kramer

We've got 72 schools now, up from one a decade ago. There are a growing number of them that are operating as like micro charters.

Michael Horn

Do not just micro, private, like microschools that are private?

Matt Kramer

Yes. The original ones were pre K and they sort of made themselves accessible to low income families. We serve a diverse group of families in all of our schools, made themselves available to families who couldn't afford to pay preschool tuition by the use of child care subsidy programs, which are different in every locality in America, but you know, follow some similar patterns. And then we created K through 12 schools or you know, first through third, third through fourth through sixth grade schools and those can't access child care subsidies. And so we needed a system that would allow those to be intentionally diverse too. And so we created an idea of how you could run tiny, tiny charters. And we now have five charters in Minnesota, New York, D.C. and a couple in Colorado.

We just got approved actually for our first charter in Ohio and we have eight other charters that are in development in other places in the country. And then this was less true 10 years ago, but it is increasingly true now. More and more states have ESAs or vouchers or some other school choice type program. And a lot of our schools at the elementary and secondary level use those programs. And so, you know, back to your question of like, where's the growth? I think that, I think there has been real energy. The pandemic was a factor in this, but post pandemic I think has continued to show the secular trend here. There's been real energy both from families of wanting to do something that is more customized and more adaptive to their own kid. And there's been more teachers who have sort of seen the, oh, this is really, it's hard to be myself in these big systems and I would like to try something where I can bring more of myself.

Empowering Passionate Teacher Leaders

Matt Kramer

And I think that pattern has been you know, that pattern is a secular one and we are seeing energy behind it. And, and the schools sort of pop up everywhere, geographically, I guess, is the last thing to say. You know, at one point we put energy into whether we would like grow in specific locations. And what we've learned over time is the secret sauce of this is the teacher leaders. And so when somebody comes to us and they have a vision for a school that they want to create that reflects their learnings about the world and a community that they've lived in, that they want to create it in, and they're like, they've got passion to do this. It doesn't matter where they are. We should help those people. And so that's where we see the growth.

Michael Horn

It's interesting because I think a lot of people tell the story through the parent, student demand side. But you're right, educators are demanding this as well. And it's been through this conversation. Right. The student journey and the educator journey come together in these schools. It seems one of the big hypotheses that you had when you started, and I'll try to get this right, was that the ed tech world had misfired by trying to create student facing tools, and that the most powerful place technology could actually be an aid was as a, basically a boost to teachers to better observe students and understand what they needed when they needed it and so forth. Did I get that summary right?

Matt Kramer

I'll add one edit to it.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Okay. Make the edit first.

Matt Kramer

Yeah. Which is, I think to me that the core thought for edtech is that the tech should follow the curriculum, the pedagogy. So if your idea is you're creating a tool that is basically a math facts drill tool, a child facing iPad app is a perfectly good way to replace the old paper and pencil drill tests that we did when I was a kid. Like, you know, even in Montessori classrooms, we had a stopwatch and a worksheet filled with little one digit addition problems and you see how many of them you could do in a minute. Right. An iPad's a great replacement for that pedagogical thought.

Michael Horn

Right.

Matt Kramer

But Montessori's pedagogical thought is about children's choice in an expanded environment. And when you put an iPad in front of them, it narrows the whole world down to that little experience. You can't have the expansive world of choice that way. And I think technology offers us things that we can do that reflect that more open, expansive, real way of engaging with the world, technology can help that too. But it's a different kind of technology.

Michael Horn

Well, so it's interesting, right, when you say that, because the argument I've made actually is Montessori has tons of technology. It's just not digital technology. And so your example, the iPad there makes a lot of sense. Right. It's actually one more tool in a suite of bead cabinets and all sorts of things. Right. That students can use to learn whatever, you know, they're struck by or what's on their plan or whatever at the moment.

So. But you were talking about building technology specifically to aid teachers, I think, in the observation work. What have you learned about that? Where is that work at the moment?

Matt Kramer

Yeah, I mean, it sort of emerged out of this thought at the beginning. Montessori teachers are trained to observe the children carefully and they have this whole note taking, observation system where they make note of what the kids are doing. And it's sort of the data that that leads to, the equivalent of lesson planning of Montessori is like, what do the kids do? How engaged are they in it? What things seem to draw them in and what things seem to pull them out? And like, you make notes on this. But if you talk, Montessorians all learn that process in Montessori training school. And then if you talk to the Montessorians and if they trust you, they will tell you that it is an overwhelming task to try to keep track of what all the kids are doing any fraction of the time. And so you have to make massive approximations of things. And the more you are making approximations of these things, the more it is an intuitive data set rather than observational data set.

Data-Driven Montessori Teaching Tech

Matt Kramer

The less Montessori is a data driven pedagogy. And the data drivenness, you know, that goes straight back to Maria. It's like core to the case. And so what we said is, well, what if we could teach computer vision to look for and make note of all the things that the Montessori teachers are supposed to be looking for? And so this was, you know, this was 10 years ago we set out to do this. A lot of the technology has matured substantially since then. But at the time we were, you know, basically saying, can you teach a computer to recognize when a kid sat down with a piece of work and how long they worked on it and how concentrated was that work, and then when did they put it away and those sorts of things and then produce it all for the teacher so they could have a robust data set on which to do again their Montessori equivalent of lesson planning. Of which things am I going to introduce to who, which day next week? And you know, who do I need to reconnect to something because they seem like they're bouncing off of the material as opposed to getting engaged in it. And so we built this, we built a prototype of it.

We piloted it in five of our schools. It's really quite amazing I think in that way it's a proof of concept for this different thought about technology of if you have a pedagogical model that involves the children having broad freedoms in the real world space, can you still use technology to capture something really important about it? And the answer to that is yes, you can. It has been very challenging to figure out how to fund or I'm going to use a dirty word here, commercialize this technology. I mean, it's nonprofit for us, but still the same sort of general phenomenon. And because there's a lot of R and D work in getting things like this to work, it involves like custom hardware, you know, in these pilots you have like these little ultra wideband sensors that are tucked into the tongues of the kids shoes to keep track of where they are and what they're interacting with. And so, you know, we did all this sort of thing and, and it's sort of complicated. You got to get over some threshold before it's useful enough that anyone wants to try it. Like they don't want to try, you know.

Matt Kramer

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you got to do that. But it's sort of not the normal way that ed tech develops for the most part. For the most part, the edtech models like create a, you know, minimum viable web front end that does something and show that the kids are interested in it and then you upgrade, upgrade, etc. You know, it's not a high R and D field in part because it's not a field with big home runs generally like the, the net, you know, there's no equivalent to like Uber in edtech. And so, so, you know, we just found it's really hard to figure out how to do it.

And so we recently actually paused the project. And you know, I actually, I'm a real believer in it. So I hope someday we find a way to breathe new energy into it because I really do think the future of educational classrooms at the preschool and lower elementary level does lead you down that path. It leads you to think like actually we don't want the kids 100% engaged in computers. Their brains are not ready for the abstraction from reality that that type of environment creates. But we do want to know what they're doing and we do want to be able to be data driven, responsive. Not just by, you know, giving them a test every now and then, and then, you know, presenting new material based on what they do and don't answer on the test. And I think that, I think the world is going to want responsive, smart classroom designs that enable that.

Matt Kramer

But I think we just are not quite there yet.

Michael Horn

No. Super interesting for those listening. If you want to help on this, this is a good way to get engaged. Shameless plug. But it's also interesting because I think a lot of the tech first first microschool networks that have also popped up over the last 10, 15 years, a lot of them have come back to the same observation about younger kids as well, that a more Montessori physical environment makes a lot of sense developmentally. And then as kids get older, more and more of the work or certainly sort of learning the core knowledge or skills can be done online and then right the, the abstraction becomes more possible as you age up. Let me ask, do you have time for two more questions if we keep geeking out? Okay, so this may be a strange question, but you're like 10 years of students served.

Matt Kramer

Yeah.

Michael Horn

How do you think about outcomes and what you've done for those students? Like how do you all think about that as a network and what, you know, as impact from the student side. And I say strange question just because like it's not a test that shows you this or things like that. But what do you all look at?

Matt Kramer

Well, it's a really good question. For most of Wildflowers history, the overwhelming majority of the kids we served were preschool and kindergarten age kids where there are some standardized tests out there. But I think they are particularly weak, especially for when we're talking about three year old kids where like the basic brain structures that we refer to as intelligence in older kids and adults, those are actually not settled in 3 year olds yet. Like they have not formed yet. You can't measure them until they exist. And so a lot of our history we actually use assessments in especially as the kids get older, both ones that other schools are used to. I mean especially for the kids above third grade they're taking state tests if they're in either a charter or a voucher state where they require tests.

But even in the, you know, kindergarten, first, second grades, we're using things like NWEA. But we also Use other measures like Minnesota Executive Function Scale as a test of, you know, basically kids ability to manage their own thoughts and choices. So we've tried a bunch of things. I would say my comment on assessments is I sadly think we're not there yet. I think the thing that we really want and I, somebody recently told me that there is a new thing that Stanford's been working on that actually might be really good in this one. What we want is a tool that can be used for an assessment of a kid's learning on early literacy and early math where when you get the results back, as a teacher, it tells you what you need to know to think about that kid's education. It's sort of the same standard that you would ask for if you thought about sending a kid for a special ed related review. Like we're going to have this kid evaluated for ADHD and you bring a professional in and they would observe, they would write a bunch of notes down, that observation, the output of that observation is the thing you want to try to figure out what to do next. That has to me that is the standard for assessments of academic things. It has to produce the guidance to the teacher about what comes next. And I don't think we meet that standard most of the time. I think the sampling methodologies lead you to be like, oh well, it's more accurate at the level of a whole class that it is at the level of an individual kid. The level of individual kid. It often tells you the things you feel like you already know. To me that's unacceptable.

And we can't, we're not going to get assessment data that we feel good about using in the Broadway set of ways you could use assessment data until we clear that threshold. So I would say for most of Wildflower's life when we're talking about the really young kids, we have not cleared that threshold. And so we've been mostly like on a journey to figure out how to do it rather than to be really excited about it. That said, you know, we do use NWEA results. We just saw the ones for our New York charter come in. They were really strong, you know, so they're fine, but they don't, they don't feel, it doesn't feel like a good measure what we do in the absence of that, and this is a controversial thing I would say what we do in the absence of that is we put a lot of faith in parents to understand whether things are good for their kids. And we ask them what they think of the kids' experience and we ask them whether they would recommend it to a friend.

And we put a lot of trust in their ability to say what is in their interest and in the interest of their kids. Because in the absence of having a more reliable, objective measure of things, we think they're the people who know best. And you know, we asked the net promoter question and the net promoter scores for Wildflower families are in the 80s. And I think that,

Michael Horn

And for those that don't know, that's really, really high.

Matt Kramer

But yeah, it's about as high as you can get in terms of their enthusiasm about the schools. And it reflects the fact that the school experience for kids is really bespoke. Right. Like kids do not have the same experience when they come to Wildflower. The beauty of a 20 kid school is the teachers can actually think with the parents, with the kid. What does this kid need for this to be the experience that will help them become who they're meant to be and deliver that. And turns out that's mostly what families want. They want an educational experience that reflects who their kid is and what they want.

And they want somebody who loves their kid and takes care of them. And in our environments we can do both those things.

Michael Horn

All right, last question. You're 10 years old now, still growing, you know, several school openings a year, as you said, starting to do more elementary school, as charter and ESA have become more and more viable, on top of the three through six age three through six that you were doing 10 years from now, where do you think you all will be?

Matt Kramer

Well, yeah, I think it's a great question. I don't know the answer to it. We've been growing at around 20% a year for the last few years. So last year we, you know, the school year right now, 13 new schools. We're thinking this coming fall, maybe 15 to 20 new schools. And you know, like a lot of sort of network type designs, it sort of grows in that like proportional way. And so, you know, if we can do our part, right, if we can do the part that's about making sure we have the resources available to make startup grants and startup loans to schools, making sure that the tools get better, making sure that we're continuing to put the invitation out into the world to educators that this is something that they could think about doing and being helpful, my anticipation is that we will just keep on growing at the sort of clip and you know, as you do compound 20 a year over a period of time, it starts to get to be a big number.

You know, when I think about, like, how many Wildflower schools could there be in America? Like, how many kids. Would it make sense to have an environment like this available? I mean, listen, kids need different stuff. I'm not proposing that we have a Wildflower school for every kid, But I would not be surprised if Maybe this is 20 years, not 10 years, but like, I would not be surprised if there were tens of thousands of schools like this, you know, and it may not eventually all be Wildflower. At the moment, there aren't a lot of networks of decentralized microschool concepts growing very quickly. There's sort of only a few of us. But I think there's something powerful in the idea of really small schools, especially for the younger age kids and, you know, some degree for the older age kids too, that, you know, was once the way of things in America. We let it go for reasons that I think, looking back on, it turned out not to be persuasive.

They were persuasive at the time, but. And I think I don't see any reason why things won't migrate back in that direction. So that's, that's what I think our job is, is to create a set of tools in an environment in which if the, if, if it is meant to be, that there will be tens of thousands of these, our job is to make it possible.

Michael Horn

He's Matt Kramer, CEO of Wildflower Schools. Check it out online. Wildflowerschools.org Congratulations on 10 years. Thank you personally for the time you and many of your team members have spent with me teaching me, but also for supporting my own family and just really appreciate it. And for all you tuning in, Check it out, learn more. And we'll be back next time on the Future of Education.

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Tyler Thigpen wears a lot of hats. He’s the co-founder and head of The Forest School: An Acton Academy in south metro Atlanta; co-founder and head of the Institute for Self-Directed Learning; an instructor and academic director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education; and the coauthor of a new book, The Playbook for Self Directed Learning, which provides strategies for transforming traditional schools into learner-centered environments. Tyler joined me to talk about innovative educational models that emphasize self-directed learning. We discussed everything from what is self-directed learning to the nature of his school and from the general philosophy underpinning Acton Academy more generally and his insights into how traditional, existing schools can take his advice to create more self-directed learners. We also talked about why high schoolers might be interested in microschools in this day and age—including why his kids have been. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on our conversation. Leave us a comment.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there today, I'm delighted that we have a very special guest. His name is Tyler Thigpen. He is known as the head of schools at the Forest School and Acton Academy in Fayetteville, Georgia. We'll hear more about that shortly.

He's also the co founder, executive director at the Self Directed or excuse me, Institute for Self Directed Learning. Going to hear more about that as well. He guest lectures occasionally at Harvard University. I see him in my neighborhood every once in a while. He's also the academic director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. So you wear a lot of hats, Tyler, welcome.

Good to see you. Thanks for being here.

Tyler Thigpen

Thank you, Michael. Delighted to be here. Happy to have the conversation and yeah. Wearing hats as you. As you do. As well, as we do.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Well, as it is. Right. But you also are the author of, a coauthor I should say, of a brand new book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. A Leader's Guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. It's out from Routledge. It's on Amazon.

Check it out. We'll drop a link into the show notes and we're going to talk about that as well. I have one caveat. I've bought the book. I own it on my Kindle. I have not yet read it. I'm behind. So you're going to teach me a little bit as we go.

But where I want to start with you, actually Tyler, is with the Forest School and, and Acton Academy because I'll just say, like when I first heard about the Forest School and Acton Academy, I was like, this is the coolest mashup I have ever heard of in my entire life.

It's like outdoors, which I'm a strong believer in getting out into nature and then the personalization and aspects of owning your own learning that Acton Academy is known for. And for those that don't know, Acton Academy is a network loosely held, I guess, of microschools. Several hundred around the world at this point, use technology to help learners sort of follow the hero's journey as they progress through each year. But I want to hear it from you, like, what is this school all about? I have been dying to get down there. I have not seen it in person. I want to know how you blend technology and personalization of an Acton school and forest school, like that sounds magical and maybe mythical.

Tyler Thigpen

I love that. My answer may surprise you, actually. So what I really love about the forest schools around the world, and there are a subset of folks, families, caregivers, educators, you know, who've built and create these schools. You know, the love and engagement with the outdoors. A lot of, you know, very hands on, project based, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary stuff that, you know, kids are just engaged. I mean, a lot of forest schools, kids are outside, the vast majority, you know, of the time.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it's amazing to watch.

Tyler Thigpen

Incredible. The reason we, and we have, we share a lot of commonality with those schools. So, you know, being outside, in fact, our learners designed our school and they did an architecture quest like four or five years ago and it got built, we moved. We've been in a year and a month. It's incredible. And it includes massively large windows, which were very expensive. It includes a courtyard around which the school sits. This was all choices of the kids.

And they're spending a massive chunk of their time outside every day and learning in nature. And then we exist in a really interesting town where we have connectivity to walking trails and a forest. We're right next to the forest, but we're actually not a forest school. We founded in a town that was called Pinewood Forest and it was right next to the largest movie studios in the United States, Pinewood Studios. It's now called Trilith, the largest movie studio in the world. And by that point we had already had the name for school. So we didn't change our name to be Trilith, but we are in this really interesting place that is kind of a hub for creators, makers and storytellers. So the mythical component, the mysterious component, is definitely there because of being in the ecosystem of innovation and storytelling.

Interestingly, US Soccer just moved its headquarters five minutes down the road from us. So that's providing a really fascinating sports and competition component as well. But yeah, if you were to mesh up the storytelling, the love of outdoors, definitely the transdisciplinary projects and interdisciplinary, the choice, the hands on learning, that is very much our vibe and very much in line with the Acton Academy model where kids, the goal is that each person who enters our doors will find a calling that will change the world. And similar to forest schools, we have guides, you know, rather than teachers, and there's no homework. And we have studios instead of classrooms. And you can go at your own pace. And it's mixed ages. And so in that way it really is kind of mythical and magical.

Learner-Driven Environment

Tyler Thigpen

And honestly when folks visit us, Michael and I do hope you come. When folks visit, one of the most frequent comments we hear and I feel it on a day to day basis is they feel like I can breathe here. You know, it's not a sort of super rigid high environment. There's a lot of learning to live together, going on a lot of exploratory play, a lot of passion projects. And because it's self paced and mastery based, you know, it's very learner driven. So it's not top down where you, where the kids feel like they're on edge, just waiting on the, you know, the adults to tell them what to do. So it's a cool vibe. You know, nothing's perfect but it, but it's, it's really, it's really beautiful and it's a labor of love for me because my kids have been there.

I've got four kids, my oldest daughters aged out. My three boys are still there, one of them is a senior. So you know I get to hug their necks when I go on campus.

Michael Horn

So it goes all the way through high school. Give us the sort of the tale of the tape, you mentioned U.S. soccer is nearby so give us the stats if you will for the school. When, when was it founded, how many students, how many guides? You know, sort of the picture of what, of what we're talking about.

Tyler Thigpen

Yep. So the Forest School and Acton Academy founded in 2018 with 31 learners, today and that was grades roughly 2 through 8 and today we are 162 learners. We are at capacity that's pre K3 through grade 12. And so we've graduated a number of alumni know out into now the marketplace as well as colleges and universities. And it's diverse by design so we're trying to maximize economic, racial, age, gender, religion, school background and learning differences, diversity. We want to show that self directed learning works for all kids and staff. We have about 16 full time staff there and then we during COVID launched the Foreste school online which has kids from three out of four US time zones.

Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, China, Mexico. My head of schools in Thailand, that's about 50 learners and it's middle and high school and it's the most geographically diverse school I've ever been a part of. It is super cool to have the learners empathize with one another and the cultures and the different value systems and challenges and opportunities that they're all navigating so those are our two schools. And then like you said, we have the institute and that's sort of our version of scale, to be honest. You know, a lot of leaders in our space, when they think about scale, they think about more schools and more kids. But for us, we think about research, we think about leadership training, educator training, we think about sector change initiatives and consulting, you know, to really push against the ocean and help move the sector more towards, you know, learner student agency.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Okay, let me ask this question then. How did you choose to be an Acton school when you all started up? How was that choice made?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, we. It's interesting. My background is actually a traditional district. I taught at Georgia's largest public high school for a number of years and was a leader there. I co-founded a charter school that is nature focused. It was built off the idea of. Do you ever read Richard Lou's Last Child in the Woods?

Michael Horn

Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

Founded off that idea, you know, so, I mean, that really should have been called a forest school as well. But it's Chattahoochee Hill Charter school, a great K8 environment in South Atlanta that's still thriving today. And then I worked at a few independent schools, Mount Vernon in north Atlanta, and then the Forest School. But when we were collaborating, really, Michael the, with the leaders of a new development, you know, down here in the great state of Georgia, we still got a lot of space and some, you know, developments that are happening. And so we really build a trust building relationship with some leaders here. And they really wanted a school that would fit the neighborhood. And so I started just pro bono consulting with them to help them think through options, you know, district options, charter charter options, independent school options.

Choosing Educational Models for Kids

Tyler Thigpen

I just so happen to have children that I was looking for a high school for. And so the stars kind of aligned and we, you know, I was working at Transcend, a national nonprofit at the time and was familiar with a lot of different options and models, you know, public and private, to consider. And so I just brought all the models to the table with this group and, you know, they're not steeped in education. So they asked me what's my opinion. You know, the district option was great. We have a great relationship with the district here, but it's just going to take a long time. And they weren't really open to, you know, a new version of that in the ecosystem. Charter, you know, the charter constraints I'm very familiar with, we just didn't feel that we'd be able to be as innovative as we wanted to be.

And so we went with independent because of nimbleness and because we were going to have a public purpose and be a nonprofit. We thought that was a good speed and could be appropriately innovative for the kind of people we wanted to attract to the neighborhood. And we went with Acton. When I heard Jeff and Laura Sandifer, the founders, say on their video, we believe that every child is a genius and can change the world. I was like, I think that too. I wonder what their school model is like. And so I did a deep dive. And they're just lovely, people in the network are awesome people and a lot of parent entrepreneurs who have skin in the game with kids in their schools.

And, you know, early on, Jeff and Laura said, they said, you know, we feel like we figured out about 15% of this learning model and we feel like the founders and the network are going to figure out the other 85%. And I really took them seriously. And I was like, this is a place to, you know, join as well as play. And so I pitched that to the town developers and showed them some of the videos and talked about my vision for it and, and they, they cut a check, you know, for our founding funders.

Michael Horn

Amazing.

Tyler Thigpen

That first morning.

High School Microschool Challenges

Michael Horn

Amazing, amazing. A few different directions I want to go. But let me start with this: high school. Because when a lot of folks talk about the micro school movement, broadly speaking, high schools, where a lot of people sort of, I don't know if squeamish is the right word, but like, they get, they're not sure it's going to grow into that. Here you have a high school, you know, you're sending your kids through it, right? And, and I think the criticism, you know, it probably as well as I do, right. That bundle of other things, right, that creates the high school experience, is that something kids really want to forego for a smaller environment that's more bespoke, perhaps in, in all definitions of that word. How have you thought about that? What have you learned? What have you seen in terms of high school and micro school?

Tyler Thigpen

It's a great point, Michael. And obviously a ton of your work is connected to that handshake right between the high schools and the life's next steps. And high school is my bag of donuts. That's been the vast majority of my career. I worked, I'm actually an ordained minister. I worked with high schoolers as a full time minister for years before I moved into education. And then I taught at Georgia's largest public high school, served as high school principal. And so most of the bulk of my experience was with the high school model in general.

And so it was less fearful to me. A lot of the microschool founders that I'm familiar with, they just have less connectivity to it and there's so much to learn. It feels a little bit overwhelming. Not so for me. It felt very empowering for me. And I could see in the even very innovative high schools I had led that were teacher centric before, I saw some of the gaps and flaws and ways in which to kind of really change it out. So I felt bullish about that. In terms of what's being offered.

You're right. I mean, it's a trade off. And for some families, you know, it's not worth it to move into a smaller environment. You know, for some learners, it's not worth it. They want the friends, you know, they want Friday Night Lights. I mean, American football is a social institution in our nation, especially the south in Georgia, but we're actually part of a sports league where our learners can actually participate in American football with neighboring schools.

Michael Horn

That's cool.

Tyler Thigpen

We have a team. And because we're learner led, we say to kids when they have an idea, we're like, all right, if you want to start something, you got to get a critical mass of people to help do it with you. And then you've got to have a parent volunteer who can help. And that's how we got our boys basketball program started. Last night, we literally had our parent player end of season scrimmage. I'm happy to say that we won, the parents by three.

Michael Horn

You're hanging on. Yeah.

Tyler Thigpen

My son did block me like two or three times during the night, though, so I was humbled. And then, you know, our girls volleyball team got started that way. An environmental club gets started that way. Dungeons and Dragons club gets started that way. And frankly, I'm okay with those programs even dying over time because it is learner led. I mean, if the learners lose a will for it, you know, we'll.= move on. And then the other thing I've noticed in, you know, in independent schools and working with them, and not just independent, but, but also public schools, millennial parents these days, you know, tend to, instead of, you know, paying for a larger chunk of tuition so that the school has and offers all the services they want to be able to do with their funds, what they want to be able to do.

Michael Horn

More à la carte.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, à la carte. Right. So the fact that we have a core tuition that covers our operations and then they can, you know, bespoke choose what they want to do. They seem to like that model, you know, at least for now. So that's kind of how we're overcoming it, you know, but that's where we're at.

Michael Horn

Very cool. What, what is the tuition, out of curiosity, because that's always been a hallmark of Acton, is affordable also.

Tyler Thigpen

It is. Right now it's 12.9, $12,900 for the year, which if you look at, I mean, Atlanta has a very competitive independent school market that is very reasonable. And, and what's more than that is that more than covers the cost of our operations. Most independent schools, you know, in the United States, year after year, have increased the rates of tuition over and above the rate of inflation. And so it's priced a lot of families out. Yeah, we have sliding scale because we're economically diverse. We make use of our state's funding program, it's a tax credit program to be able to raise funds for lower income families to provide financial aid, financial, financial based, you know, scholarships for them. And that, that really works well for us.

And we don't have, Michael, an annual fund, which, you know, it was a learning moment for me when I moved into the independent school sector at one point. You know, it's just a common thing for a lot of private schools to have an annual fund and raise money over and above tuition. We don't have one and God willing, we never will. You know, that's my commitment. So.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because an annual fund can be quite exclusionary to some of those families that cannot afford right above and beyond. So it makes sense. Let me ask this question then. You lead the Institute for Self Directed Learning, your new book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. Self directed learning is a big part of the Acton model as well, building learners who are self directed over time.

How do you like, tell us about how that journey is? Do you know of, of helping learners take ownership over what they, you know, what and how they learn and so forth. And where's the autonomy and where are the guardrails and scaffolds perhaps?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, great question. So the way we define it is self directed learning is happening when learners are. It's not alone. It's not learners sort of off in a cave.

Michael Horn

Doing this is not autodidact by yourself. Okay.

Tyler Thigpen

Totally, totally. Which would be a Legit critique, know, self directed learning. But it's, it's when they're in the context of a community of peers, you know, trained educators and caring adults. But they have a ton of choice. They get to choose the process, the content, the skills, the learning pathways, you know, the outcomes of learning. And, and they're doing it in service of finding a calling, you know, that will change the world. And, and what we've been trying to do is study that pathway.

Phases of Self-Directed Learning

Tyler Thigpen

So we do have a, through our institute, we have a peer reviewed study that our head of research, Dr. Caleb Collier, he's got a PhD in self directed learning he put out that describes four phases of the pathway of a self directed learner. The first phase, you know, very familiar to all of us, just building the desire for learning, you know, making sure that kids feel like they belong, they are safe, they're having their core needs met and then they see relevance in their learning, you know, which is not to be taken, you know, for granted by any stretch. But that's just phase one. You know, phase two is when learners start to go into advanced player mode by instead of choosing to do something easy and, you know, just amusing, they will choose to do something challenging. So instead of, you know, watching Netflix on the phone or talking with their friends, they're going to choose to do a challenging task where they have to learn and they experience the learning pit, you know, know, and, you know, hitting that brick wall and feeling that frustration. That's phase two. We call it resourcefulness. The third phase we call initiative, which is where learners are now not just starting to, you know, solve problems, they're actually finding problems, you know, and they're seeking them out and they're making their plans, they're setting goals.

They've got a structured process for, you know, setting their goals. At our school, we use smart goals and whoop goals, you know, wish outcome, obstacle path, a great, a great protocol for goal setting. And that's, so that's initiative. But then that's not it either. Phase four, and this is, you know, ninja mode, this is, it's persist, right? It's where regardless of whatever struggle comes their way, they're going to be resilient, they're going to overcome it and nothing's going to stop them from learning, you know, and so we, we care a lot about that pathway. We talk about that pathway a lot. We invite learners to consider where they are on that pathway.

We invite parents and caregivers to consider where they believe they are on that pathway, and their children. And then we think through like what are the different guide moves, educator moves, mentor moves at each one of those phases, you know, but that's the end goal. And typically Michael, I mean, as you would imagine, like when we share that pathway with education leaders across the U.S. I mean, they very much resonate. Oh yeah, that's what we're trying to do. You know, regardless of the subject, they all want to get there.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I'm curious. My observation of a lot of the Acton’s that I've been in is it's a really neat blend of self direction on the knowledge or foundational knowledge, maybe put it through the technology and then in pursuit of these bigger goals and the projects and sort of the larger arc of the year. And it does a really good job of balancing like for each kid, some of the things that maybe people would worry about. Right. Of Michael's only going to study underwater basket weaving, which doesn't have a lot of, you know, outside applicability.

What have you learned about some of those questions in the institute? And then let's start there and then maybe we can transition in the book.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, we've learned about how to systematize that for sure. I think, you know, which for us and other Acton’s and I think other competency based schools who hold similar approaches, you know, it is making a very transparent process even at the beginning of each year to say, okay, what are the skills, knowledge and competencies that the learner is going to encounter and strive to master over the course of the year? You know, the way we do it is we present that to the parents, caregivers and learners at the beginning of the year and ask for their feedback. Say, is this right? You know, and then what do we want to add, subtract or change and then what are your goals in terms of pacing for finishing that? Right. And then, and then let them, let them go. And then as guides, we hold them, hold them to that. So we keep the onus on the learner. So it's not our time frame, it's not even our goals.

We're just the coaches. Yeah, yeah, facilitators. And then, you know, you'll have some parents who care a ton about not just the foundational skills, but even bulking that up even more and making sure that the foundational skills are super strong. And then you have the opposite end. You have some parents and caregivers and learners who are like, yeah, we don't really value that. As much. And. And then we want more exploratory components or we want more electives, you know, and the cool thing about having a guide instead of a teacher is you can facilitate that instead of, you know, direct instruction, it's.

It's managing the quality of learning through multiple channels. You know, I think in the young ages, they're still heavier on direct instruction. You know, we happen to have, for ages 3, 4, 5 and 6, they're in, It's a Montessori environment.

Michael Horn

Yep.

Tyler Thigpen

Which definitely includes, you know, some direct instruction, but some letting go over time. Our second, third grade is still pretty heavy direct instruction. I think we found that to be crucial. And then when it starts to get into grades four and above, we've learned that's when you can really wean learners off of that direct instruction. But what's so important is making sure our guides and staff know different facilitation protocols to help learners, you know, reflect and self assess, and then making sure the learners grow in their own ability to assess and self assess, you know, their own learning and then their peers learning as well without that's kind of a missing.

A missing piece for all this. And they can be just sort of adrift and not, you know, not know what they're learning, what they have learned, what they need to learn,

Michael Horn

Where they're doing it, et cetera. Yeah, exactly. Makes a ton of sense. And sort of the gradual release, if you will, through the ages so that they can have more agency and choice because they know more of what's out there, also makes us, you know, makes sense, I suppose. I'm curious. Last question before we transition the book, I promise. But I'm super curious to ask you this. When I hear people talk about direct instruction, I think a lot of the mental model they have is one teacher, 30 students.

I'm telling you the information. My observation to your point is, in a Montessori classroom, direct instruction is absolutely happening. But it's like one on one, one on three, one on four. Occasionally, you know, we do certain lessons right that involve everyone, but it's. It's like a much more varied direct instruction. Let me show you.

Now you try with me here. Now you do. Right. Sort of release. And that when your students get older, as you just described, they're still sort of getting direct instruction in the sense of, like, from computers or, you know, like. Right. Like, it's not like they're not learning content or engaging with a demonstration of how to do this thing that I think is important and I'm trying to learn.

And so it sort of gives lie, I think, to one of the weird dichotomies we've constructed in education. You can tell me I'm crazy and I'm wrong, but I'm just sort of curious your take on that framing.

Tyler Thigpen

I totally agree, Michael. I think it's a great observation to me when I think about where direct instruction can go wrong is when the teacher structures it such that the teacher really is the sage on the stage, you know, and that the answer, the content, the expertise, the assessment, whatever has to come from that individual, you know,

Michael Horn

and so it's all dependent on that person now.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Rather than, you know, the teacher is facilitating, you know, facilitating the learning. And I was actually with a group of superintendents, principals in Ohio last week. We were talking about this and I just sort of off the cuff mentioned the fact that, like, what I've observed and what I have done myself. So I'm confessing here as a teacher, I mean, like, we can get addicted to, you know, the dopamine rush of explaining something to a kid and them getting it and us being.

Feeling good about ourselves, you know, and be like, yes, like, thank God my.

Michael Horn

Yeah, the magic moment is cool. I help facilitate that.

Empowering Learners Through Self-Differentiation

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah. My existence is worthwhile because I explained it to them, you know, rather than letting them, you know, productively struggle and wrestle with it and. And different. Helpfully differentiate ourselves. And I am using a term there from family systems theory, self differentiation, which I think can be really helpful here, where the teacher appreciates the fact that, like, the job of the learner is to learn and that cannot be forced, you know, and to help support and create the conditions, the inspiration, the incentives, you know, the structures, the milestones, the celebrations, all that. But ultimately it's a win not because the learner got it, because we explained it, but the learner got it because they came to it on their own, because you cannot take that away from them, you know. And, you know my parents.

I love my parents. I grew up with a lot of. A lot of. A lot of commands, you know, a lot of. A lot of direct instruction. And it came from an unbelievably great place. But it wasn't until I was outside of that environment, you know, as an adult, as a professional, where I started to appreciate the benefits and the power of coming to things on your own, discovering them on your own.

You know, people are so, in my opinion, I mean there's so we all have thoughts, you know, we all have feelings, we all have a will and plans that come from a beautiful, beautiful place. And so structuring the learning such that it really appreciates those things and creates space for them to be explored and developed. It's just the way direct instruction. If it's only that, you know, it doesn't provide for a lot of the plan making that a young person be doing. It doesn't plan, it doesn't allow for a lot of the like sense making and feelings working through the feelings, you know that, that I think learner centered schools are really latching onto.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Okay, let's turn to you the book now, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning: Leaders Guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. Why did you write the book? What are you hoping comes out of it? Yeah, and I should, I should mention it's not just you. Caleb is a co author who we mentioned. Amber Bryant, Brittney Toles. It's the four of you who have come together to do this work.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, and that's an important point, Michael. Those are dear friends, also parents of learners at the school. Two white men, two black women who we've been working together for the last seven years and we all bring our different backgrounds to this work and you know, love our community and together have sort of tried to with our team, broadly, you know, figure out what works, what doesn't work. And we have, we have pivoted so many times, you know, and so this is our attempt at sort of capturing, you know, some of that learning here. And, and so yeah, in terms of the book itself, you know, what would be, what would be helpful to riff on?

Implementing Educational Principles in Schools

Michael Horn

Well, so I know that each chapter sort of lays out strategies, right for how to put these principles in place in a school. I guess I would love to hear, you know, is this something that can really be done in an existing school or do they need to have Tabula Rasa to create something blank slate? Like how, how do you think about that? Because that strikes me as one of the biggest questions facing the country right now is do we actually believe this will come from the emergence of a vast diverse array of new schooling types or do we think we can actually move districts and existing schools to embrace the principles you're talking about?

Tyler Thigpen

Yep, I'd love to, I'll address that last point last I think the, are you familiar with the book Teach Like a Champion from Doug?

Michael Horn

Of course. Yeah. Doug Lemov.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, massive you know, for the listeners, a massive, you know, power, powerful book at a moment in history in education that, that a lot of really empowered and inspired a lot of educators and, and you, you know, I've read it and had used some of the techniques and really I use the word techniques because it was, that it was a book of techniques. It was like a playbook that you could tick it off. I'm going to do this. And it was to really manage a classroom to get learners focused on a discrete standard. And I do think the techniques did an effective job of that. I think we see our book as a companion to that for a different purpose. It's techniques for learner centeredness. It's what are the techniques adults can do to create responsibly, the space for the feelings, the plans and the thoughts for learners to take hold of their own learning.

So that's why we did it. And you're asking what we hope to do with the book now. Maybe all of us will have rose colored glasses. We do think it's possible. And so we speak in the book to both public and private school leaders and educators, you know, public school leaders who are, and educators who are dealing with the constraints of a standards based environment and private school leaders who are dealing with the expectations of parents and caregivers, you know, for you know, life's next steps. Some, you know, college prep environments. And then of course there's that both of those things exist sometimes in the other sphere as well. But you know, the process that we've explored and have discovered and continue to work with districts on is we have identified sort of principles that are true about learner led classrooms and learner led schools versus teacher led classrooms and teacher led schools.

Shifting to Learner-Led Education

Tyler Thigpen

And that, that's actually the different outline of our book. And we kind of, and their examples are like in a learner led school the learners are typically doing the choosing, whereas in a teacher led school the teachers typically are choosing things and there's a whole host of things they're choosing. Another example is in a learner led school, learners are doing the assessing for the most part or they're being assessed by experts or by peers. Whereas in a teacher led school the teachers really are the ones who are doing the assessing. And so it's, it, it's a different set of spectra on, on those, along those lines. But what we've done with districts, which is more of a, it's not a let's blow up the model and start something new. It's like, let's slowly work towards this is you've gotten with teachers in public school settings, in teacher centric settings, and we've taught the principals and we've inspired them to take a lesson that they're going to do next week, you know, and say, okay, now that you know these principles and here's the lesson that you have in front of you. What's one thing you can do to make it more learner led, you know, or what's two things you can do along these spectra? And which one did you choose and why? And then share that out and they share it.

And now go try it. And they'll go try it. And you know, usually it goes really well because learners are amazing. And you know, when they're given the choice and voice and agency, they will take it. And even when they make poor choices, if the natural consequences are in place, they'll learn from that. And so teachers come back and they'll share about that experience. And of course, if they're sharing about this experience in the context of other educators, then, you know, they're sort of stealing ideas shamelessly from one another, which is great. And then, you know, teachers.

And then it's rinse and repeat, do it again. And so teachers will take another lesson and just make that a little bit more learner led. And then as they do that over the course of a year or so, really we've done partnerships for multiple years at districts. They get better and they sort of as a default, they're building their muscles at making their classrooms or their departments even more learner led, even more learner centered, where kids have even more agency. And then at some point we'll stop them and we'll ask them, okay, what are the barriers? You know, like what. What are you encountering perceived or real that is stopping you from doing more? And of course, they're incredible at naming barriers. The teachers are. And when you have leadership that's on board, leaders will listen very, very carefully to those barriers.

And then they'll get together and they'll say, all right, what can we, you know, what barriers can we completely remove? Which ones can we tweak to make it easier? And then which ones can we just. We got to keep. But we can help them navigate around. And then the leaders and teachers have that conversation. And in our experience, when, when a district does that, the ball really can move, move forward, but it's playing a long game. You know, it's having a lot of courage. You know, it's having some skills in change management, for sure. And so a real deep belief in the trajectory.

So it's not, it's not for everybody because not everybody's there yet. But our book aims to be that thing that one can take off the shelf, open up and be like, okay, this week I'm gonna do this.

Michael Horn

And so super practical, super down to earth. Maybe as we wrap up, are there places, district schools, independent schools, but existing schools that you're like, excited about, that you'd say, you know, check out this place because they're doing this one thing that's really cool and you wouldn't believe it if I didn't tell you it existed.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, absolutely. So we worked for years with Pike County Public schools in Georgia, Rural district. Former superintendent Mike Duncan, who's state superintendent of the year, he was there for, you know, over a decade, which that's a part of it.

Michael Horn

You know, that's right. You need continuity. So we're all swimming toward this goal. Yeah, right.

Tyler Thigpen

You know, they, they took a stance around, you know, moving their educators towards the role of a guide in a public setting, you know, unapologetically, enthusiastically. I'm thinking about there's another school, I'm touting Georgia schools while I have the opportunity.

Michael Horn

No, go for it.

Tyler Thigpen

North of Atlanta, North Hall High School has this math department led by this guy called Jason, who has got a real switched on team there. And you know, one example of how they've made it learner lead is this one teacher at high school level math decided to, at the beginning of a unit, give all the kids in that classroom all the standards for that unit and give them all the resources that they would need, both human and material and online and say, all right, you've got six weeks. I'll be here if you need me. Go. And let them prove mastery in their own way. And sure enough, they did, you know, and now he's doing it over and over. But those are the kind of, I think, examples I'd highlight. But again, what's true about those is you've got leadership that's on board and, and stay and hanging around. You know, you've got courage because there's pushback always, you know, when change happens and, and you've just got folks who have rolled up their sleeves and are committed, you know, for the long haul.

Celebrating Self-Directed Learning Guide

Michael Horn

Well, and that is a worthwhile goal. We will leave it there. But Tyler, thanks so much for coming on. Congrats on the book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning: A leader's guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. Something worth aspiring to. Appreciate the work you're doing on the ground online at the Institute and now with this book. Thanks so much.

Tyler Thigpen

Thank you, Michael. Great chatting with you. And all the best.

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Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd, and Ben DeGrow, Senior Policy Director of Education Choice at ExcelinEd, join me to delve into the evolving landscape of educational choice. Our discussion centered on the uptick in states implementing educational savings accounts (ESAs) and the various questions surrounding their implementation, specifically academic accountability, financial safeguards, and effective program management. Levesque and DeGrow discussed the need for a balance between broad policy frameworks and practical regulations. I keep learning a lot from these conversations around this fast-growing space of choice and personalization—and hope you all do as well.

Michael Horn

You are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through this pressing set of issues today, I'm incredibly excited. We have people I've worked with for many years, looked up to for many years, who are going to lend a lot of insight on the topic of educational choice in particular, but they could talk about so much more. So first, Patricia Levesque, the CEO of ExcelinEd..

Patricia, great to see you. Thanks for joining.

Patricia Levesque

Thanks for having us.

Michael Horn

And then Ben DeGrow, the senior policy director of Education Choice at ExcelinEd., Ben, good to see you as well.

Ben DeGrow

Thanks. Great to be with you.

Michael Horn

I've been looking forward to this conversation since y'all reached out on the topic of educational choice and the contours of that conversation and the really interesting debates that are going on right now around implementation as so many states dive into this world in a much more meaningful way over the last several years. And before we get into those conversations, maybe let's just like zoom out, high level. Patricia, let's start with you. And then, Ben, jump in. Look, a lot of states are moving, you know, not just into school choice, educational choice. We see education savings accounts getting a lot of attention, a lot of movements toward universal choice at that.

There have been movements, I think, in Tennessee and Texas in recent weeks. There were setbacks at the polls in November. What's your current assessment if you just look high level of where we are in the world of education choice and this movement, broadly speaking, and perhaps maybe a little bit of forecasting, where you think we will be by the end of the year?

Patricia Levesque

Sure. I'll start by saying I think we are in a great position in educational choice and opportunity for families. The best that we've been in my 28 years working on this policy. Right. And Michael, me just start by saying the way you introduce this podcast, the mission of this podcast is like the mission of private school choice or educational choice. It's giving families the ability to find the best education fit for their child. So their child, because we believe kids are individuals, they're very unique, and not one system or one school is the right, best fit for every child. So empowering families with that opportunity is what we.

What we like to do with policy. And we're in the best position on that, in the country that we've been in as long as I can remember.

Michael Horn

Ben, what would you add in terms of where we are at this moment and maybe give us a sense of how many states have moved into different, you know, really embracing real choice at this point?

Ben DeGrow

Yeah, I think we're at a real major inflection point. I feel like every year we've been saying this is the year of school choice for several years and every year it just seems to be more true Than the year before.

And I mean at ExcelinEd we cover a whole gamut of choice in the public and private space. But we're just going to hone in on private education choice. We're not talking more than 30 states that are offering at least some students either a voucher scholarship or tax credit scholarship from USA and we're coming up on just over a dozen states that are offering all students, regardless of income, regardless of background, access to funds. Personally, we dive into the nuances of that. It can be, you know, how much funding is available, for how many students and so forth. But with states like Tennessee passing, in Texas, we're on the verge of having the majority of students, the United States eligible for private school choice, which is something we hardly could have imagined five years ago.

Michael Horn

All right, so with that as backdrop, lot of momentum in this direction each year sort of surpassing the previous one as you said,Ben, let's flip to implementation from the outside. I will say there are a surprising number of debates around how to put these various policies into place in the states. Let's maybe start with accountability. Patricia, you wrote what I think remains the most nuanced and thoughtful take about accountability. I use it all the time on the stump with this continuum between sort of district run public schools to public charters to full on educational choice options and how we think about accountability and transparency mechanisms in each. Just take us through your logic on that and how you think about the accountability conversation right now.

Academic Accountability vs. School Autonomy

Patricia Levesque

Sure. And let me put a finer point and say we're really talking about the academic accountability, right? Not fiscal or health, safety, general welfare, things like that. And so we get asked often, how can Excelined have a position where students in the public school system should have to take a state test and there should be accountability or grading of public schools. Yet in private school choice or education choice, we advocate a more flexible norm referenced assessment model. And the answer to that is that there is a continuum of accountability versus autonomy. And so if you think about the ends of the spectrum, you have at one end a home education parent using their own funds to teach their own child. Right. And we would say there should be a very, very light touch of the state in that interaction between that parent and that child.

From an academic accountability standpoint, the other end of the continuum you have the traditional public school system, which is the default system. It's the compulsory system. It's the system that is federal, state and local taxpayer funded. It is a system that has taxing authority and, and sovereign immunity protections. Right. It is the big muscular system that the state needs to ensure learning is going on. Right. That kids are learning how to read and do math because the state or another government entity is compelling you to place your child in that system and telling you which school to go to.

Florida Scholarship Program's Academic Balance

Patricia Levesque

Right. And so there's a vested interest in the state ensuring there's some academic accountability in the system. If you move along the spectrum to publicly funded private school choice, and I'd put that right about in the middle of the system, what is the right balance between academic accountability, transparency and autonomy of the school? And so I would point your listeners to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It is the program that has been in place the longest of all the statewide school, private school choice programs has served more than a million students and for 23 years only served low income students. So you have the largest, longest running program targeted for at risk kids that has had 13 years of solid academic outcomes. So by looking at norm referenced assessments, we can see that the students in that program are learning just as well or better than in many years their low income public school peers. We saw the Urban Institute do one of the longest, largest studies of 85,000 matched kids and saw incredible outcomes.

Post high school college going rates, college completion rates. So if the largest, longest running program has good outcomes, what does that program doing? How do we know if that program has the right balance? And I would say you look at parental participation, private school participation and outcomes which we just talked about. And if you look at the Tax Credit Scholarship program, it was always oversubscribed. There were always more parents every year that wanted to get into the program. And there was a very good balance of private school participation. So 80 plus percent of private schools in the state of Florida chose to participate in the program. That's very different than in very heavily regulated programs like the Louisiana Scholarship program where barely 30% of the private schools chose to participate. Right.

So you have strong parental participation, strong private school participation and good outcomes. Those to me give you three green check marks that that what that program is doing has a good balance. And that program is norm referenced assessment on the students you're participating with, the results reported back to the parent so they can see how their own child is doing and data reported back so the state can see how is the program doing as a whole. So we know that the taxpayer funds are being used well, and that's a really good balance.

Michael Horn

Ben, if you want to add anything there, I guess the one question I have is the reason norm reference instead of, say, criterion reference or something else? Because we really want to understand the counterfactual. Is that the reason for that? Because we want the comparison.

Testing Flexibility and Accountability Guardrails

Ben DeGrow

It definitely helps because while a lot of lawmakers want to see that direct comparison between their scholarship students and their state public school students, what a norm referenced test offers is the ability to compare with a national sample of students so we can have some credible measure. But it also allows schools to choose tests that more closely align with their curriculum. So they are actually offering, you know, genuine options and alternatives for students and inviting participation for these schools into these programs. So it is less of a deterrent than mandating the state test as the sole instrument. I would also add, when we think about accountability, the evolution from the traditional volunteer scholarship into the ESA has put an added emphasis also on the need for fiscal accountability. As we think about what kind of guardrails do you need to put in place as families have more flexibility to spend money on things beyond just private school tuition, but also an array of goods and services. And every state, as I set up an ESA program, has to think through these things. And part of the work we do in implementation and our ESA administrator network and areas like that is to help states which are already, the administrators are already very focused on making sure those guardrails are high is to help them balance that consideration with the need of families who are driving the creation of these programs, and that's probably an area we can delve into more.

Michael Horn

Well, I think that's a perfect launching point, right, because that's one of the big conversations. Maybe let's start like where these ESA programs even live and how you manage them and how you help families access the dollars and their set of choices. We see, you know, Step up for Students in Florida. We see Odyssey in other states some places the Department of Ed is trying to do this work directly. How do you all think about where these programs live and who manages them?

Ben DeGrow

It's one of the first and most important decisions to be made when crafting An ESA policy and one that gets easily overlooked, especially in the early days. State lawmakers, policymakers would think, well, we just obviously put this in the Department of Education, right, because it's an education program within our ESA administrator network, which encompasses about 20 states. And we bring these program managers in to share best practices, to share technical resources with one another, hear the same common issues and concerns that they're dealing with. We have representatives from Departments of Education, we have Departments of Treasury, we have agencies that oversee that some states do, the higher ed financing authorities. And we also have nonprofit organizations like you referenced, Step up for Students, Children's Scholarship Fund and most recently ACE Scholarships. We have over time come to see that these nonprofit agencies are probably the preferable option to run them because they're not only mission driven, they get involved in this because they believe in the power of opportunity and choice for kids and families. We also have the flexibility to adapt to the needs as these programs scale up. That includes personnel decisions about contracting out to review expenses or other things along those lines.

So flexibility, mission driven. We like to see nonprofits, but we'll work with all agencies and help them work on focusing on that student centered, customer driven approach.

Michael Horn

One of the other things that this then raises the window is right, what can you spend on how far afield, right, how wide you make the sets of choices? You talked about balancing the desires of parents with the state's concern. I imagine some of what Patricia was talking about in terms of what's the participation of various providers is also an interesting data point. And thinking about getting that balance right, what's your own take around how flexible and how much freedom you give families to spend on whatever they want, that connects to education? And then my assumption, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, is the further afield you get out from the topics that a norm reference test would measure, the less relevant those sort of external markers become. And it's more about the parent understanding. Did my child make the progress I had hoped for?

Ben DeGrow

I will say we again, we would always want to focus on making sure that we're trying as a lot of our ESA administrators that we work with, their goal is to try to get to yes and help serve parents needs and make sure that they are getting the services, the goods they need. Whether it's curriculum, whether it's tutoring, whether it's a therapy for a child with dyslexia or autism, transportation to an education program. Every state has a lot of the same allowable expenses, but every state's a little different in the nuance and what's allowable and what's not. And that starts in the statute and it comes down to the level, how it's interpreted at the agency that's administering. So lots of challenges. We would say do the best you can to get to yes, but I recognize that you need clarity for families. So if you're going to set up guardrails, and you should set up guardrails.

For example, if a child needs a laptop for educational purposes, how often should they be able to purchase a laptop? Do they really need one every year? And an agency could say, well, we'll allow one every three years, for example, to make sure that families are balancing that the vast majority of families are legitimately working to help get goods and services to their child that they need. And so really the agency has to police the boundaries of those, that small percentage of people who might want to misuse the system. But we want to make sure that all those guardrails are in place that focuses on helping families get to the yes.

Patricia Levesque

And Michael, I would add to that. I think Ben was focusing on, you know, those kind of discrete expenditures that are maybe some of them are on the periphery. I would like to point out too that what private schools are eligible is also, you know, an actual difference of opinion in some states, there are some recent states that decided, well, the way that we're going to ensure that it's a real, for real private school is the schools have to be accredited. And what that essentially does in many states is cut out half of the supply that exists in the state or even the opportunity for some of the newer types of models like micro schools to be able to participate. Whereas what you see in a state like Florida is that there is more of a checklist of. Here are the 10 things that we want to see to ensure that you are private school to participate.

Ensuring Accountability in Education Policies

Patricia Levesque

We want to see background checks on the instructional personnel and we want to see that you've gotten your fire inspection or your health inspection or your radon inspection. There's more of a list of health, safety, general welfare, financial, you know, accountability type of provisions. And we do a site inspection and then, yes, you're eligible to participate. When we work with states on policy design, before it even gets to the bill passed and you're implementing, we would encourage states to be broader in the types of entities or institutions that can participate. It'll bring a healthier marketplace into existence in your state and actually give families more opportunities and options and there's still again a balance. Right? I think you're going to hear us say that word often. How much do you open up the market? How much do you have to do you narrow the market? So there's quote accountability. I think there's a good healthy balance in all of these things.

Michael Horn

So let's actually stay with that, Patricia, because what you just raised in thinking about that balance, it suggests that maybe there's another principle as states are starting to look at this, which is, and I want to check myself here, but in the policy itself, start broad, don't over prescribe, but know that when you get into the regulation there's a good deal more work to be done. And that's where you know, figuring out where you're assigning the, you know, what, what entity is going to manage this, the guardrails you're going to put up, striking the balance. Is that how you would think about it? Is like start broad and then sort of hone in on, on the finer details as you get into the specifics of operationalizing. Or is there a better approach as states are looking at these various policies right now in your, in, in both of your view?

Patricia Levesque

I agree. Broad is better for the, especially the places and the institutions and the tutors and the therapists that you start broader so that you have a lot of opportunity out there for families. I think what we would also say is ESAs are not brand new creations anymore. Right. They've been around for a while. You have a program like the state of Florida where there's 500,000 students that have been awarded for next school year either a full ESA or what some people call micro grants. Right. It's just for transportation or just for reading tutoring or, or math tutoring.

But that's a lot of information and data over multiple years on what you know, different policy prescriptions make it easier for families to access as well as give whomever is the, you know, administering agency enough guidelines so that they know how to administer the program well and that goes to not only just what kind of schools, but what's the window for parents to apply? What is the order like it, I think states that prescribed specific time frames of this student gets eligible on this date before this next group. All of those add administrative challenges to getting a program off the ground or making it parent friendly. Right, family friendly each year as parents have to enroll or re-enroll their child.

Ben DeGrow

I would concur. I mean there's definitely always a temptation to write legislation that can become too prescriptive. But at the same time using that word balance, you do have to include some level of detail to identify the categories of things families can spend money on to demonstrate legislative intent. And once you get down to that next level, that's as Patricia was suggesting, the administrative challenges pop into place. For those of us who've worked in the field of policy for length of time, we always talk about how there's a gap between what's written on paper and what gets put into practice from the implementation. Now I don't see anywhere where that's more true than ESAs. We created programs that originally were designed to serve students with special needs or learning challenges. In Arizona and Florida, the earliest programs, really around the principle of giving families the ability to customize, recognizing that each child is unique and has individual needs.

And so trying to define exactly what families can spend money on in statute is impossible. And you do the best you can to kind of identify and categorize those things. But as you get down from statute into the program rules and then to the policy handbooks and then the actual day to day decisions as they review expenses and things, it has to be a way to find that individual child's means within clear, consistent, transparent guardrails. And that's. It's an ongoing challenge. But we're seeing states grow in this area and get, and get better at it over time.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And so I guess the principles don't sort of cut off the ability to tick and tack and get it right from the get go. Start with some models that are already out there that are pretty proven at this point. One of the pieces that's getting a lot of conversation right now is around the funding piece at the moment. There's, you know, it moves beyond special needs students to universal choice. There's been a lot of conversation about, well, it says universal choice, but a lot of these programs are not funded such that they could serve every single student in the state. Or there's a lot of double funding. Right.

Where we continue the funding flow to districts. We have a separate line item in effect around the ESAs that are getting created. How do you think, you know, a state getting into this should do it? Is there a right way to maybe baby step and then grow into this? Is that an evolution or is it get it right from the get go? How do you both think about the funding piece of this and how it should be set up?

Phased Approach to Education Funding

Ben DeGrow

There's no one perfect script or roadmap for states, but there are some good principles for states to consider as they're going down this path and, and lots of factors are going to help determine it. Even for those who want to make the opportunity available to as many students as possible as soon as possible, we recommend states, you know, step back and think about the fiscal impacts and the administrative challenges. So phasing in a program over multiple years is something several states have tried, and that usually just means phasing in the eligibility. So in year one, you are only including students up to a certain income level or students who previously attended a public school or otherwise limiting, you know, maybe the, the amount or the number of slots available. We don't want that to deter the ultimate goal, which is to create a system that's open to everyone and a system that creates a fair, equitable funding for students regardless of which path their families choose for them, even if it takes three or four years to get there. The other thing we're looking at more and more seriously is helping states think about. And some states are doing this to some degree, but most states have a lot of work to do is serving the students who bring like, low income challenges, learning challenges, and helping to fund them at a rate that's right,

Reflects that to make them more, you know, palatable, to have more options to, to access private schools. But also they may need more services along the lines of tutoring or just support navigating the system. So building that phase and plan, building an equitable system are two of the things we help states think about.

Patricia Levesque

And I would say over the long run, you need to contemplate where do you want to be 10 years from now? Right? Do you want to. I think Florida is one of the few states where the funding is built into the funding formula. So when the legislature meets, they're basically funding the public school and educational opportunities in one funding formula. And it's based on estimates of, you know, how many students are going to be in, in each of the different systems. And it's more of an automatic process where in many states it's a line item that has to be adjusted every single year that you're in a legislative session. And I think those, it's not that those are bad. I mean, I think it's wonderful that that's the way programs have been able to get off the ground. But if you really want to have a system where it's going to grow based on where parents decide and how the systems evolve, it probably needs to be more of an automatic type of formula that's Set up what Ben talked about in either system, in the public system and in your choice system, students that have higher needs, low income students or special needs students should generate more funding, whether they're going to a public school, a public charter, or taking a scholarship with them to a, to a private opportunity.

Those types of things are going to be really important to have built into your, your funding streams and how you think about having the program work.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it strikes me that it allows for scale, Right, organically as demand grows in either sector, I guess in either direction, but particularly in the choice one. It also occurs to me and Patricia, I'd love your take on this, that Florida, because of just the number of years of choice that you all have had. Like if I think back to how Florida Virtual School got started back in the 90s or early 2000s, if memory serves, it got written, I think into the state funding formula in like 03 or something like that. But it was still like a hold harmless double funding for like some number of years, I want to say. And so maybe that's like a baby step in Florida just because of the experience in years that has been able to really move to that full fledged model that you'd want to see ultimately. Thoughts on that?

Patricia Levesque

I do think started small and slow, you know, very, very small. Right. The first private school choice in the state of Florida, that was called the Opportunity Scholarship Program, only for students in failing schools. I think the first year had 42 students in it. Right. The first in Florida, special needs voucher. The first year only had two students in it because it was, you know, assigned to one county. But then the programs grew, the eligibility grew, or the region grew, or allowing a student to stay in the program if they met initial eligibility requirements.

All of those things allowed the program to grow slowly. And so what you see in Florida is a really mature ecosystem. I think for other states that are going from zero to universal in one or two years, they might have more hiccups like normal things like how do you make sure the private schools feel comfortable participating and receiving public funding? How do you communicate? How do parents find out about these programs? A lot of those things. There, there, there's going to be a lot of really heavy lifting quickly for implementation. And that's what makes, I think, the work that Ben does, having a network of mature ESA administrators and the very young new ones learning and sharing with each other. What are those best practices? What do you have in your handbook? How do you define what we sometimes refer to as gray area expenses. How do you treat them Arizona versus how do you treat them Florida? And it can really educate a new administrator as they're having to make some of these decisions quite quickly in order to get a new program off the ground.

Michael Horn

Ben, maybe just talk a little bit about that work and what it looks like on the ground. Right. And for those unfamiliar with what you're doing with those states and how they're supporting each other, just to give a view of, as Patricia just said, to rapidly, right, gGet these programs off the ground. When you know it passes in legislature and a couple months later you expect to have something up and going for families.

Ben DeGrow

Yeah, it's a venture that takes a lot of humility and cooperation because no state has really mastered this and completely figured this out. But as Patricia is suggesting, some states are more mature in the things they've learned and are able to share those lessons with others. So we work through something called the ESA Administrator Network, which ExcelinEd created back in 2020. And we're now up to 20 states participating in any, any state that's kind of overseeing a complex parent directed spending program. Whether it's a full fledged ESA where families can use their funds for private school tuition and or these other education expenses, or we have a handful of states that operate micro grants or supplemental ESAs that are smaller allotments where families can just spend on certain services. There's a lot to learn so we come together multiple times a year with the group and share our learnings and have them share formal learnings in these settings. And just a lot of conversation.

Resource Sharing for Program Implementation

Ben DeGrow

The feedback we get is all the conversations that they have with each other during the off program time is where they get a lot of value out of it. But we also try to keep in touch with them in multiple ways. And then we collect the technical resources and documents and things that it takes to get these programs off the ground. Whether it's contracts with vendors, RFPs to help secure the vendors, whether it's handbooks for parents and providers and marketing materials and half a dozen other things. We collect and share those resources with new states, especially as they're coming on board, and we try to give it to them in small doses to help them think about the next step. We also came up with an ESA implementation guide drawing on the wisdom of our some of our veteran states and leaders. And we use that as well kind of highlight the steps, all the steps you have to think about to get from we pass the legislation to now we can start a program and there's a lot to think about and a lot of lessons that we are continuously learning alongside them.

Patricia Levesque

I'll give you one specific example. I won't name the state. There's a state that had a brand new ESA and the administrator was really concerned and said we're going to need to delay the launch of the ESA because we did an open call for providers, vendors to get signed up and we, and we only had a handful of vendors signed up. We can't launch the program if we don't have vendors signed up pre approved in the system. And it was really helpful to have another state that had one year of implementation already under their belt to be able to say don't worry about getting vendors or providers pre approved. The parents will bring you the providers. Right? The parents, once they choose a school or a tutor or wherever they want, they'll make sure their provider gets into your system. So it was really reassuring to have that lived experience of that, you know, one year more mature administrator giving the new one kind of that reassurance. Don't worry about that. When you're, you're fine, you're fine.

Michael Horn

It's a great story and I love it also because it shows that, you know, we don't have to have all the answers from the top, the bottom. Right. The parents, the actual demand can, can bring us the supply if you will, over time as well. Last question, maybe as we wrap up here, there are several other areas I know we could geek out on and work through. The other one that I've heard come up in a few different ways recently is around financial safeguards and specifically like curtailing providers from unreasonably inflating their tuition. And on one side you have folks saying like, hey, and I literally just heard this anecdote about a provider in Florida actually being like, I'm raising my tuition by 7K or whatever, you know, the amount of the ESA because now I can, there's, there's public money. I'd be foolish to just leave that on the table.

And then some states that have said look, if we see a price hike like that, we're going to take action. You know, that's not okay. And others being like it should work out in the end because if you're talking about an esa, it's effectively a wallet. And so parents, you know, supply, demand can sort of take over over time. And maybe they do that in short term, but over time. Right, it should rebalance. How do you guys think about that conversation and where states ought to land, because it pertains directly to the ultimate thing around how do we get supply and really participating supply right in, in these marketplaces?

Inflation, Tuition, and Scholarships

Ben DeGrow

I'll take, I'll take the first crack at it. I think one of the lessons we take away is, well, first of all, there might always be isolated operators who will try to do that. If you look at the larger data trends, what we see in Florida, for example, is more correlation between rates of inflation and tuition than we do the advent of scholarship program or no scholarship program or universal access to scholarship programs. There's basically two effects that work and this is why we push states toward a more open, competitive model. There's, of course, the subsidy affect you talk about. As you give families more access to funds and they have more funds to put in the marketplace, it can encourage providers to raise the price. But there's also competitive effects that can offset that. So if we, if we set up a program like Florida or Arizona or Utah, New Hampshire, a lot, much of these states where families can use the funds not just on a narrow set of private schools, but a broad marketplace that includes private schools of different varieties, as well as micro schools and hybrid options and homeschooling and customized services.

The more competition you put into the market, the more it deters individual providers from trying to game the system. So there's never going to be a perfect solution. But an open approach like some of these states are doing is one way we see to really to address that problem.

Patricia Levesque

Yeah, I would agree with Ben and just say that we hear those anecdotal stories, right? There's one school here that's going to immediately raise tuition to eat up the full amount of the ESA. But the only state where we have a lot of data over many years is Florida. And so looked at 11 years worth of almost 2000 private schools and looked at their, their actual tuition increases based on the data, and we looked at the average increase each year and then looked at the prior 12 months of inflation data, and it's exactly what Ben said, is that private schools really, you can see their tuition increases are very much in line with inflation. The other thing that when we talked with private school operators in the state of Florida and asked about what's going on with tuition, this is what we're hearing from lawmakers. And they pointed out something else really interesting, which is in the state of Florida, at the same time lawmakers have been increasing educational opportunities through universal ESAs, they've also been purposefully putting billions of dollars into the public school system to create higher minimum teacher pay in the public school system. And so the private schools have been saying the only way we are, we're losing teachers to the public system because their salaries can be so much more, because taxpayers are funding, right, greater teacher salaries in the public system.

The only way we can be competitive and keep or recruit teachers is to increase tuition, because that's probably primarily how we fund teacher pay. So it's really interesting. A lot of the states that are doing ESAs for parents on one hand, are also doing increases in minimum or starting teacher pay, which distorts the market a little bit as well.

Michael Horn

It's interesting and it makes me think sort of in the higher ed world also, right. In terms of title4 federal financial aid, but those can only be spent on colleges and universities. It strikes me that the other thing that's unique about the space is it's not just a private school option, but I could be going to a micro school for two days, tutoring for two days, some menu of services, and sort of the fragmentation of that can actually really be, I would think, a downward price. And then as you said, Patricia, at the same time, sort of competing with, with the public marketplace choices for teachers in terms of where they're teaching. It's a very complicated landscape to almost overthink as a policymaker.

Right. And when you look at, even in that Florida data, even though you're looking at averages and average private school tuition increases each year, you can see also by what percent of private schools didn't raise tuition at all in a given year. Right. And so, and what is the base that their tuition is starting out from? So, a Catholic school that was only charging $3,500 a year. Right. It looks like a huge tuition increase for them to just do $1,000 increase, but it's still half of what the scholarship amount is or what the average is. I think it becomes really risky if policymakers want to put in artificial caps that could have such a different impact based on all the different range of providers and really can't take into account historical increases or what was the base that you even started from. All of those types of things will only depress the vibrancy or the ability to have a really vibrant market.

And we have to recognize that there is still a governor on all of this, and that's the parent. The parent knows how much their scholarship was awarded for. They know what the private school tuition was before the scholarships came into effect, and they're going to be pretty upset at the private school where they thought that they were only going to have, you know, the delta of what they were going to have to cover was only going to be $1,000. And now it's not. You know, there's parents actually are quite vocal on this stuff with policymakers and with their private schools because now they have the power, right, to be vocal on behalf of their child.

Michael Horn

A lot of checks and balances built in there. I think that's a good place to leave this conversation. It's been a whirlwind through a lot of issues that get a lot more complex that you all are working on on a daily basis. I know, but just really appreciate it. I think one thing I will also take away from this is not only is there not a one size fits all kid, if you will, there's not one size fits all suppliers. And so to have a one size fits all rule to treat them has some pretty big downsides. And same place on the academic accountability conversation, really understanding the context is very important as we think about putting policies in place. So, Patricia, Ben, really appreciate your time and the work you continue to do.

And for all you tuning in, we'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

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James Rhyu, CEO of Stride Inc., joined me for a thought-provoking conversation in their 25th-year of operations. Rhyu shared his journey from accountant to CEO of Stride, Inc. He emphasized the importance of viewing students as customers. We then delved into the potential of online learning to overcome stigmas and serve diverse student needs, including safety and flexibility for those struggling with their mental health. We also explored Stride's investments in technology and career skills, as well as personalization.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there, I'm really delighted that we have James Rhyu, the CEO of Stride Inc. For those of you that don't know, you may remember Stride's former name, K12 Inc. Back in the day, when I got in this world and co-authored Disrupting Class, K12 was the big player on the block, if you will, helping to think about how digital learning could really open up opportunities for individuals that had not had it in the conventional school system. The company's continued to evolve quite a bit, rebranded as Stride, has a number of offerings. We're going to get into all of that and more because this is Stride's 25th birthday, if you will. 25th anniversary. So, James, thanks so much for joining me and having this conversation.

James Rhyu

Thanks for having me, Michael. Appreciate it.

Michael Horn

Yeah, you bet. So let's just start high level because I suspect people tuning in will know some of the history, but maybe not your history. And so tell us about your own path into becoming the CEO of Stride.

James Rhyu

Yeah, sure. At first, I would say this is the first time I've ever been CEO of a company. So I'm still sort of a rookie at the job, you know, learning as I go. You know, I mean, I started as an accountant, you know, tell people the only real profession I guess I'm really qualified for is accounting. I was, and I was probably average at best at that maybe. But, you know, so I sort of obviously said, then I came up through the finance, you know, end of the company. And I always like to tell people I was not a very good student. I was sort of a C student and, you know, so running an education company, I don't even know if it's a bad thing, but I take us maybe a slightly different lens to running the company.

Having been sort of not such a great student, I've never been an educator, which again, I don't say necessarily think is a bad thing, but it certainly puts a different lens on how to run the company. I think, you know, the education system in this country hasn't produced, I think, the outcomes societally that we want, probably. And so I think coming from a different angle or a different perspective, you know, has some benefits, I think, you know, so anyway, So I came to the company 13, 14 years ago and I came on the financial side. I was the CFO. I had come from previously that to that I was with a company called match.com. I think a lot of people have heard of Match and I was very fortunate to be there when we started this little app called Tinder and sort of helped sort of explode online dating. And I always say that it's somewhat relevant that experience because people maybe of my generation remember, but a lot of people don't remember it, online dating used to have a huge stigma to it.

Like it's now very commonplace and you know, you don't really have a lot of stigma associated with anymore, but it used to have a lot of stigma associated with it. And I think online learning or different modalities of learning, certainly different angles to take at education, they have some stigma associated with it. And I think the ability to overcome that stigma is one of the things that I think is important for Stride, certainly, in K12. And I think that you know, just like in online dating, it can produce amazing results for people if we can overcome some of that stigma. And so I was a CFO here for a number of years and there was some CEO transition. And you know, most, most companies go through like sort of succession planning. And about a year before, more than a year, almost, probably almost two years before I became CEO, the then CEO at the time, who's a mentor of mine, Nate, continues to be a mentor and friend of mine, he approached me on behalf of the board and said, would you consider being the CEO? And I actually said no for a fairly long time.

You know, like I said, I was an accountant. I was very grateful to have been the CFO. You know, a lot of accountants don't even get to reach that professional summit, I guess, and, and I just never thought of myself as a CEO. I really thought of myself as a finance professional. And it took some number of months before I sort of convinced myself to throw my hat in the ring for the job. And obviously I ended up getting the job. I think what the board saw at least, and you know, I'm now four years into the job, hopefully they continue to see is one is I have a real passion for the job. Meaning, you know, and I really consider this job a job where irrespective of the company, we have a set of current and potential future customers.

And our job, my job is to try to meet the needs of those current and future customers. And I think that will in enure great benefit for our shareholders and stakeholders. And so really that's sort of how I view my lens to the job is really sort of a customer focus. And I say that very specifically. And in this company, when I became CEO, I really, I'll say it sounds weird, but I introduced really the word, the term customer into this company. And I think, I think largely it should be introduced into the education vernacular more broadly because, and specifically In K through 12 education, you know, we think of them as students. That's fine. And by the way, you know, they are students, but they're also customers.

Rethinking Education as Customer Service

James Rhyu

And I think if we thought of them in that way, you know, the establishment of K through education has long thought, I think of their customers largely as an entitlement. And structurally there's a reason for that because you've got one school in a geographic area and that school really has dominion over the students in that area. And so you didn't really have to work for your customers in a way, right? They were an entitlement to you because you live in that area and historically you live in that area, you go to that school and that's still sort of pervades today for 90 plus percent of the population in the country. And so you can see why that framework established this entitlement sensibility, if you will. But in most other aspects of our lives, we want to be treated as customers. And the reason we want to be treated as customers is because when you're treated as a customer, there's this, there's a sort of two way dialogue, if you will, it's not always explicit, but you know, there's this push-pull of what's best for the customer. What does the customer want? What does the customer need? What outcomes does the customer want? Right. Like if you're running a restaurant and you're a dietitian running a restaurant, you may be like, okay, well I know what's best for the customer. You know, low calorie, high protein, you know, low fat, right.

Michael Horn

We're cutting out those sugars, we're going to get the right oils, et cetera, et cetera.

James Rhyu

Yeah, but if you listen to your customers, your customers might say, you know, actually the reason I eat out is because on a special occasion or whatever, I want to indulge maybe a little bit, or I want to try something that I can't make at home or that's different for me or whatever. And maybe health isn't the most important thing in that circumstance. And as the customer, you know, restaurants listen to that and obviously you have this wide variety of offerings and choice that enables what customers want and the outcomes that are important to them. And I think that's really important. If, you know, if you sort of put that lens on, on education, then you have some different perspectives, I think maybe than historically we've had. And even when you think about, you know, and I know you're probably going to maybe get into this further along, but you know, if you think about the outcomes that people want and you think about my restaurant example, I don't know, like a lot of the educators and people are going to say, oh, you know, but you know, eating is different than education. Of course it is. They're all different.

Every customer experience is different. But I would argue health is pretty important and education is pretty important. So, you know, we're talking about, I think, comparable outcomes, you know, healthy people and educated people, you know, and I think that if you think about that sort of analogy, sometimes what the customer wants isn't actually a healthy diet. And in our country, if we listen to our customers, unfortunately a lot of families aren't in the position where the most important thing to them is getting an A and going to Harvard. Sometimes the more important thing to them is survival, is actually the high school diploma which allows them entree into a job or a field that requires a high school diploma that helps them put food on the table for their family. So the outcome often that we think about is, oh, well, you know, you have to get good grades maybe. And of course that's important. And of course learning is important.

I say more importantly, learning is important and learning skills is important. And hopefully real world skills that you can apply later in life are important. But in some families' cases, I think we have to remember that the grade, and particularly high achieving grades, A's are not always the most important. And I think again, just taking that lens of like, what does the customer really want, what's important to the customer, how can we deliver for that customer is really important. And so go, sorry, I know I drifted a little bit, but going, yeah, this is helpful. Yeah, yeah, about how I got into the job. So, you know, like, whatever, I, you know, I almost begrudgingly accepted the job because I thought I could take a little bit of a different lens to what we're trying to do and expand how we think about our customers. And I think that sort of was important to me.

Michael Horn

Yeah, well, I want to lean into that angle because I think there's a few things there that you said that, that I just want to key off on one sort of, you labeled yourself. And I don't know if it's true or not, but as a C student. But it certainly gives you a window into the people that are not being well served by the traditional system, maybe being taken for granted. Maybe they are motivated by other things. Right. Engaged by other things.

From our research on what customers want and motivation and so forth, I don't think there's anyone who's unmotivated. They're just not motivated to buy what the system is offering.

James Rhyu

What family doesn't want their child to succeed, I mean, in whatever. However they define that.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.

James Rhyu

However they define it, they want their child to succeed.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And I think that's a big thing. And I guess let's follow that energy because as you know, like one of the big criticisms, I don't think you're hearing it as much at the moment, but certainly five, seven, eight years ago in the field of the virtual schooling in particular, that you all helped define that landscape was that large numbers of students weren't being served well. You could look at student outcomes on test scores and things of that nature and make certain assertions. And then people had different explanations for what's going on. Right. They ranged from, oh, you know, virtual schooling isn't good for folks to, oh, some of these companies maybe are not investing enough in teacher professional development or you know, the teaching experience to, uh, what else was there? You know, something, you know, things around the curriculum and stuff like that. Right.

And so I'm just sort of curious. You've made the point that individuals, when, you know, and families, when they come to a virtual school specifically, you know, their top priority might be help my kid get out of a bullying situation. Right. This is no good right now. And yes, we want them to learn, but we just need to get them back on course right now. How do you think about those as competing with, say, the learning outcomes that critics like to point to? And how do you think we ought to be measuring it?

Politics in Education: A Concern

James Rhyu

Unfortunately, I think sometimes we let politics creep too much into our education system, and I think it's really unfortunate political agendas, you know, when I hear people talk about the, the education system and the students in, in terms as if they're like the afterthought, you know, because there's this other agenda here that's more important. I think it's troublesome to me, I would say. And, and by the way, all those critiques that you mentioned, I'll also say I think many of them are fair. Like, I think also, like as a society and as a company, I don't think we should be. I don't want to lean into that sort of political dialogue where, okay, well, now I've got to figure out, I've got to frame the way to like say it in a way that make, you know, sort of like subverts what they've said or end runs what they've said. Like, the reality is we're certainly not perfect.

I think that there's a lot of things we can do better. A lot. I mean, the list of things we can do better is actually longer than the list of things I think we do well. Frankly, I think that again, the customers that choose our types of programs. You mentioned an element of a category. I think that's a much broader category, which is safety. Right. Bullying is an aspect of child safety that parents are worried about.

Gun violence is an aspect of it. There's a lot of aspects of child safety that, where virtual learning is for that family, that customer, that's the most appropriate choice. And I don't think that we should be dictating to those families what's the best choice for them in their particular circumstance. Now I also think that while the criticisms of this company have often been fair, I think that some of them are not completely accurate. And I also think that they're often being levied by the same system that I could easily say .

Michael Horn

Throw the aspersions at it as well.

Investing in Teacher Development

James Rhyu

You know, they have some of the same issues, I think, you know what I mean? So, you know, so I think sometimes it's a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black and, and that to me feels more political than it does so like figuring out what we can do for, for families. We've invested more in the past. I've been the CEO for four years. We invested more in the past four years and in any other four year period in the history of the company across whether it's, you know, our teacher professional development or, you know, new curriculum or new technologies or new platforms. And I think that a lot of what we try to do is also invest in things like the professional developments. Maybe teach professional development is one example where, you know, the, the in person model of, you know, the district professional development days where, you know, the kids get off and the teachers come in, you know, they have people come in and when I talk to teachers a Lot of them say that the subjects aren't often hitting the mark, the day isn't well utilized often. So what we've tried to do is actually invest in an online teaching platform that gives teachers some empowerment to maybe choose the types of professional development they want. You know, not everybody maybe has to do the same thing.

Michael Horn

So their own choice to break out of the one size fits all sort of way.

James Rhyu

They may know better where their areas of improvement are and what they need to sort of lean into and what they're struggling with in their classrooms or you know, whatever the situation may be. And so some of our investments are more towards those types of things than maybe, you know, trying to do it the traditional way. So again, some of the criticism may be fair, like, yeah, oh, they don't do it a certain way. That actually true. Maybe we're taking a different angle to it. And by the way, maybe that angle isn't even perfect yet. Maybe that angle, it has a lot of room for improvements still. But, I do think taking maybe a different lens to them, some of these things is important and I think those are a lot of things that we're trying to invest in.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Let me ask you this because that's obviously the virtual school conversation, but over the last decade plus really you all have become a much larger company with larger suite of offerings from digital courses for students to career options or career connected learning options and things of that nature. Just like how do you all think of, you know, when you think of what Stride Inc. is today? We've obviously been geeking out in the virtual school portion, but how do you think about it and the portfolio or suite of things that you all offer?

James Rhyu

Yeah. So I think about it just in terms of what's the market we're really trying to address here. Right. And to me the market is the 55 million K12 school age kids in the country that may or may not want something different, by the way, I think many families are actually very satisfied with their situation. But I think that the way that the established system works has probably evolved less than most other sort of large scale categories, if you will, in the country. You know, whether, whether it's, you know, retail or entertainment or you know, whatever it is, it's evolved less. And so I think Stride is a company that really is what we're trying to do is see how can we improve the overall customer experience and outcomes that they want, those customers want across the landscape of 55 million students.

And that is everything from, you know, we're investing now in a, not just a curriculum, and we've been investing in curriculum for a long time, but the platform to deliver the curriculum that allows for just, you know, a little more easier, more intuitive experience. You know, if you can think about like a Netflix type of experience, you know, where, you know, it gives you recommendations based on what you know, what you like in, in an educational sense. More of like recommendations maybe on what you need, what your sort of next step is in, in there maybe a little bit working away from the traditional like chapter 1, 2, 3 of a textbook and more, you know, towards an engaging type of, of experience. I think it's a little more in line with what the customers experience in other parts of their lives as well. Where, I mean, of course, just like I guess everybody else in the world where, you know, we're, we're really thinking about how to invest in AI. I mean, you can't sort of, I think, say anything these days without at least mentioning it. I think our approach to it's a little bit different in the sense that AI, I don't think is actually the answer.

I think including elements of AI in an overall user experience solution is more the answer. You know, you've been in the industry probably around the industry a lot longer than I have actually. So you know, how long have we been talking about like personalized learning and, and how like really today after we can talk and by the way, you know, there's been, you know, tens of billions of dollars of investment in VC money that have gone into education company. How personalized is the actual learning today in schools?

Michael Horn

Not super personalized at all.

James Rhyu

I mean, if you, if you really walk into a classroom, right? I mean just walk into any random classroom and you hopefully you can't just walk into any random classroom.

Michael Horn

Yeah, but when I get to visit and so forth. Yeah, for sure.

James Rhyu

But if you just walk into a random classroom, I mean, I happen to, I live near a school and I have a dog and so I walk my dog actually around school and I, you know, I'm interested, I peer in, you know, there's windows, I peer in, I look. The personalized level of learning that is happening is not, I think, what we thought would happen 15 years ago. Right. And so. Well, how can you personalize learning? I mean, you can't put 30 teachers in a classroom. There's a teacher shortage. I mean, you were barely putting one teacher in every 30 person classroom, let alone, you know, putting 30 teachers in I mean, that would be the real way to personalize it. Right. If you, if you sort of think.

Michael Horn

About the tutor for every child. Yep.

James Rhyu

Right. You can't do that, though. So as much as I know some people really don't like the technology in the classroom and technology taking over education. If we're really going to personalize learning, I think, I do think we have to do it through technology. But I don't think it's just, oh, AI. You know, then everybody says AI. I don't think it's just AI. It's, you know, if, imagine if the student goes into the classroom and the first thing that they, you know, they turn on the computer and the first thing they see is some prompt, though, that says, oh, good morning, Michael.

James Rhyu

How are you feeling today? I mean, that, that little level of personalization, by the way. I mean, if you go, if you're, you know, if you live in a rich place and you know, you're really wealthy and you send your kids to private schools, the private schools, the first thing they do is the headmaster stands out. The school greets every kid, good morning, how are you doing today? Right. That's the first greeting those kids get. Right. And if we can make that part of the opening of every day of every student through technology. And by the way, Michael may say, you know what, I was up late studying for an exam or I was up late watching the super bowl or whatever they were doing. I'm a little tired.

Engagement Through Personalized Learning

James Rhyu

And if the interaction could be, oh, well, in that case, why don't we just take three minutes, watch this video and get up and stretch a little bit before we get into the lesson. That's personalized learning and it has nothing to do with education yet, by the way. Right. But I think that personalizes, and again, that's a more customer centric view of learning, I think, than what maybe the educational norm would suggest is about personalized learning. Right. Because we do know that a kid who's more engaged learns better. And by the way, a kid who can pay attention better is going to be more engaged. By the way, a kid who's tired needs to get, you know, some blood circulating to be able to do that.

So I don't see. There's nothing wrong with having that engagement through the computer. Get up, stretch your arms a little bit, get, you know, get your blood flowing a little bit. Now let's dive into the lesson. And when I say technology and thinking about your customers, it's more those kinds of experiences I think we can bring into the classrooms. And those are the kinds of things that I think Stride would like to invest in and help that experience for those customers improve.

Michael Horn

No, it makes a ton of sense. I mean you're preaching to the choir on a number of fronts as you, as you may know. But among them, as my wife likes to say, when she visited our kids current school and she saw a kid in the middle of a lesson pop up, go outside, run around, take three laps and then get back in. And she was like, what was that? And they were like guess he chose he needed a brain break. And she was like, we're going here. So, I totally dig that example. I'm curious because you all are servicing a lot of curriculum.

There's teacher professional development. You're helping in some cases change the structure of classrooms in traditional schools. You have the virtual school. You've also invested, I think in some career training platforms. You purchased Galvanize right before the pandemic if memory serves correctly, there's a whole bunch of chatter about how coding boot camps are no more or they, they crested and they fallen. I'd love to hear a little bit about the career connection of what you all are doing. And the reason I ask also is just to put my prior out there.

I think we have, in an effort to not lower expectations for kids, we have sucked out the connections to careers and the building of social capital for basically everyone to the detriment of helping people find reason to engage in many cases with the learning and explore and be prepared for the world. So I'm sort of curious how that has filtered in and where things are.

James Rhyu

Yeah. So years ago, before I was a CEO, we strategically saw an opportunity in the career space and specifically in the K through 12 more high school, obviously high school, middle school type for careers. Because you know, and if you think and just put sort of, I'll say career learning, the name we use aside or whatever. But like skills, you know, I think that's really the, really the thing that we're after here. Right. Is providing students the ability to acquire skills at younger ages that are useful in real practical ways post high school graduation. Right. That's, that's the real objective.

If you think about like what we're really trying to do right now in some, in some instances I think that can be a direct correlation of acquire a skill or set of skills leads to maybe a certificate, that certificate leads to a job. And therefore after high School either you don't want to, you're not well qualified for your financially can't afford college, you can go out and earn, you know, a standard of living that can support your family. Right. And I think that's really important, at least strategically for us is to, is to really lean into those skill development side of it. And I think on the flip side of it, I think some people are maybe critical that it's trying to maybe de-emphasize, you know, going to college or the college experience and things like that. And I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think it really has to do with whether a child decides to go to college or not.

Here's one thing we categorically know. Most kids who go to college don't use their college major in the job that they're in. Right. So either way they're going to have to obtain skills for some career that they're going to pursue. And I think the earlier they can acquire those skills, it's going to be better for their lifelong professional journey. And so whether they go to college or not, whether, you know, whether they go to a four year college or a two year college, whether they go right into the workforce and later go to college, there's so many permutations of this. But I think the base level, and by the way you're seeing now led by I think tech companies, but sort of more broadly across industries, companies that are really doing away with the four year college degree requirement and you know, really prioritizing skills and, and I think that that's a trend that's already started. I think it accelerated a little bit during the pandemic.

Enhancing Student Skill Acquisition

James Rhyu

I think it's going to continue to persist. And so our view is that we want to be able to offer those skill acquisition opportunities for students starting at younger grades. Virtually all of our programs now have that opportunity. What I'll go back to where we started with some of the critiques of us, which is I think what we haven't done, so those are available, I think what we haven't done a good enough job of is really ensuring that the holistic view or the holistic support necessary to really enable those students to embrace that we haven't done yet a good enough job of. And I think that's sort of where we'll make some future investments is, you know, they need better guidance and you know, traditional guidance counselors, they usually are focused on, okay, so what credits do you need? What college do you want to go to? And what credits do you need to go to that college? And you know, I think, and if that's what they want, we should provide that to them. But also, I think we should supplement that with, hey, also along the way, you know, if you're interested in cars or, you know, maybe you should take some things in mechanical engineering or whatever.

We know, whatever the thing is, you know, the boot camp specific stuff. We did buy a couple of companies in that space and they were bad acquisitions, unfortunately. I think the, like when we were looking at that space, there was virtually nobody in the entire industry that was making money, by the way. It was entire industry that was losing money. But they had a lot of sort of fanfare and popularity. And we happen to own and operate one or two of the only profitable companies in an industry tech elevator. And there's been some, I think, broader market shifts moving away from those programs. I think the other CEOs that I've spoken to that are participants in that space have all said, you know, volumes are down dramatically.

I think, you know, what they publicly say, maybe what they privately say are a little bit different. But I will tell you that our volumes are down dramatically. I don't necessarily see a recovery, I think because the, I mean, say AI again, but I mean, AI, I think, has at least in the psyche of a lot of people, suggested that maybe those types of jobs, and particularly at the lower levels are not going to be needed as much. And I think that's probably directionally right at some point. So, you know, so I think there's a shift in the marketplace and I think that we got that sort of bet wrong in where that was headed. So shame on us, I think.

But I think that broadly speaking, there's still tremendous opportunity in skilling kids, whether it's through the boot camps or not, or particularly in computer science or not. I think that's sort of the secondary importance. I think the primary importance is kids need to get skills. They need to get skills to give them job opportunities. And we, and I think our country needs to do a better job of focusing in on that. And I think we're going to continue to invest in that. I think it's really important. And I think parents, and if we get it going from a customer perspective, customers want that for their kids.

Educational Choice and Parental Priorities

Michael Horn

Yep. That's where I was going to wrap up is like, as you think about, you know, 25th anniversary Stride Inc, you all have a number of, you know, irons in the fire, if you will, different priorities you've named here. What are you hearing from parents? Right. As we, I think it's fair to say in many states we're shifting to more and more, not just school choice, but educational choice. I think the next few years we'll see a continuation of that for sure. Many of the parents I talk to, I agree, they're fine where they are. And many of them are saying, I'm not relinquishing this choice at this point, but what are their priorities that you're hearing at this point as we wrap up this conversation and how that may impact what Stride Inc. focuses on over the next however many years?

James Rhyu

Yeah, okay, so I, I'm hearing a lot of the same things you are, by the way. I think the research supports it. I think, I saw research recently said something like upwards of 70% of families have considered at least some alternative. But I also hear safety continues to be a big concern for parents. Again, that sort of broad category, whether it's bullying or gun violence, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Mental health is a big concern that I keep hearing from parents. I mean, our customers.

Michael Horn

Stay on that, stay on that for one second because, like, the mental health thing is being so pinned on technology right now. How does that interface for you guys? You're obviously not a smartphone app company, but I'm just sort of curious. Yeah. How do you think about that?

James Rhyu

I don't want to comment on the root cause of our mental health issues in this country because I'm, I actually just don't have the expertise to, and I don't have enough data to really, frankly, to synthesize, to really understand it well enough. But I do know that an increasing number of families that are in programs that we help manage state mental health as an issue with their child. An increasing number of the children themselves are stating mental health you know, and I say set up as a broad category.

Michael Horn

Sure, there can be any number of things underneath.

James Rhyu

Exactly.

Michael Horn

But the point is they're coming to you.

James Rhyu

It is an issue. And I think part of the reason that virtual learning is very attractive for families that have some of these issues is sort of some of the flexibility. Right. So if you have some mental health issues, maybe you can't deal with some of the structure, or maybe you can't deal with some of the social interaction, or maybe you can't deal with the rigidity. And so the flexibility that's offered through virtual learning, sometimes it just, it helps families deal with some of those issues. And, you know, whether they're because of technology or not. Again, I don't really want to delve into that. I think that the reality is unless the government steps in, which, you know, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, but unless the government steps in and regulates the use of technology for children, which by the way, some countries are doing, the use of technology is only going to continue to increase unless the government steps in and regulates it. So while we may have differing opinions on whether it's a good or a bad thing and kids should be using technology or shouldn't be using technology, the reality of our customers is they are using technology and in increasing ways. And whether the result of that is some of these issues or not.

Michael Horn

You take them as they are,

James Rhyu

They're also using it to help with some of the solutions.

Michael Horn

Got it. Super interesting, James. Just a fascinating conversation. You guys are touching your hands in so many of the cutting edge things. But I think I'll take away from this the voice and intent and motivation of the customer and personalizing around that being two major thrusts as we as, as you all continue to go into this next chapter of growth for Stride Inc. Fair to say,

James Rhyu

Absolutely see you in 25 years. We'll do it again.

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Andrew Clark, president of yes. every kid., joined me to discuss the current landscape of educational choice in the United States. The conversation delved into the rise of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), specifically their widespread adoption and impact on public schooling and education spending. Clark shared insights from his experiences as a lobbyist and argued for the popularity of universal ESAs and the importance of ensuring their successful implementation. The discussion also touched upon accountability within the schooling system, potential pitfalls, and the importance of empowering families to make educational choices.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live a life of purpose as they define it. And to help us think through what that looks like and how we get there, I'm delighted that we have Andrew Clark. He's the president of yes. every kid. We'll learn more about that and their vision for how we advanced truly this learner-centered future in this conversation ahead. But first, Andrew, great to see you. Thanks for being here.

Andrew Clark

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, you bet. So, like, before we dive in, right. And talk about the work you do, just like think it'll help folks to understand the journey you've taken into this conversation around educational choice, specifically working in education along with the work of what, yes. every kid. does, which of course, it's a 501c4 organization. You don't see those quite as often in education. We see a lot of C3s, so we'll dive into that in a moment. But your purpose really is unleashing the extraordinary potential of every kid by treating them with dignity, empowering them to make decisions for themselves and give voice to every parent, student and teacher who shares that goal. So love to hear your journey into that work and what that work itself looks like.

Andrew Clark

Yeah, of course. So, yeah, 501c4 is a lobbying organization and I am a lobbyist by nature. I'm not an education guy at all. And I like to say education came looking for me. I didn't go looking for it. But the way that that happened is I was working in Arizona, working on state budget issues, and at the time, ESAs were being hotly debated. So there was a small ESA program in the state, one of the very first that have ever passed, in fact, the first. And the debate over the expansion of that program had people thinking it was going to go to the ballot and be a big fight.

Andrew Clark

And so people were asking if we'd be willing to fund that initiative. And I just didn't know a lot about education. And so we started doing a lot of research to see if that was worth getting engaged on because the implications of education spending are significant on state budgets, as you know. And in doing that, what shocked me is when you put together what I'd consider, the more classically Democratic arguments about education and the more classical Republican arguments, the public essentially rejected both arguments pretty soundly.

Michael Horn

Say more.

Andrew Clark

Yeah. So, you know, the traditional argument from Democrats has essentially been public schools are grounded in the community. They just need more money. Right. And if I can just have more money, they'll be fine. And you know, public's great with investing in public education, but they don't think that's the end all be all and they don't think that things can go unchanged. Whereas the Republican argument was essentially like, hey, public schools are terrible and they just need a whole lot of competition. That competition is going to force excellence and test scores and that's what we want.

And the public is dubious on test scores and they don't like the kind of competitive nature of it. Like none of that really resonates either. And so put those two arguments up against each other, there really wasn't any constituency being like, yes, that's what I want.

Michael Horn

Super interesting.

Innovative Policy Strategies Needed

Andrew Clark

To me, that was eye opening going, how do you have a space in which the two competing ideas are both unpopular? As a lobbyist, that's a really weird phenomenon. It just made me say, hey, I think what's going on in this space actually doesn't make any sense. And there's an opening to do something much more innovative and novel that people will actually enjoy. And so that's kind of what led to ultimately starting to run some experiments on different types of policies that we could talk about. But I can give you two examples. One of the things I saw early on is if a program in education was universal versus being low income, it was way more popular with the public, like 35% more popular. And essentially no advocacy group was working on that to the degree that I would have expected. And so I was like, hey, why don't we start working on bills that are universal and just saying, if it's a low income bill, we're just going to reject it.

We're just going to be opposed to it, even though we support more freedom generally. And as you can imagine, for a lot of school choice advocates, that irritated the crap out of people. But I'm like, I'm going to reject your bills. That was novel at the time. And there's a couple other policy areas like that where I just over index to saying like, why don't we just do things that people like and that make good economic sense and good educational sense? And let's just bank on the fact that if people see benefit in it, they're going to vote for it, they're going to re-elect people that do that and that's going to have a more transformational effect than advocating for something people don't want. Which sounds intuitive, but it was relatively novel at the time. And that ultimately led to me working with some other people and together we all created yes. every kid. And that's what we do. We just lobby for laws like that and try to get them in place.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. And you do the work beyond Arizona now it's nationwide, right?

Andrew Clark