The Future of Education (private feed for michael.b.horn@gmail.com)

Cady Ching, CEO of Summit Public Schools, and Dan Effland, Senior Director of Innovation, joined me and Diane on Class Disrupted to discuss Summit’s ongoing transformation from Summit 2.0 to a new, AI-native school model. This is the third and final episode in this mini-series exploring new school models powered by AI—check out our first two on Alpha and Flourish. This conversation explored how clarity around school outcomes and model design enables effective integration of AI. Cady and Dan shared insights into the evolution of Summit’s expeditions, the importance of holistic, purposeful education, and the need for a robust technology infrastructure to scale innovation.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. As a reminder, paid subscribers receive unlimited access to my Delphi.Cady ChingI think what has been really helpful for me is to list the ways that a model is not. It’s not a curriculum, it’s not an LMS, it’s not a schedule by itself, it’s not a set of beliefs or a graduate profile by itself. Those are parts of a model, but a lot of the building that we’re seeing right now is focused on building for parts versus building for an actual whole model. And so the AI-native model is how all of those model elements are working together. And it is not going to be replacing a school model. It’s going to expose whether or not you actually have a model. And I think AI is forcing a lot of school systems right now to get really honest, because if you don’t know what students are supposed to be learning and you’re not sure how they’re showing that or what adults are responsible for, AI just layers on complexity and, quite honestly, chaos. But if you do have the level of clarity of what Dan is speaking about, AI is actually making systems work a lot better, or it can make systems work a lot better.I think the jury is out on the tools that we need and how we can create the tools that we need. But AI really isn’t replacing, it’s revealing whether or not your school model actually exists.Diane TavennerHey, Michael.Michael HornHey, Diane, it is good to see you with some excitement for today’s episode.Diane TavennerYeah, we have a real treat today. We’ve got two of my favorite educators in the world joining us for what I’m sure is going to be just a really interesting conversation.Michael HornWell, and for years, as obviously I’ve learned about Summit from you, direct from you, and yet it’s been nearly 3 years, I think, since you passed the baton, if math is still a thing. And I know from afar that the team continues to be among the most innovative schools in the country and so I know that they continue to think about reinvention, and frankly, you know, what does Summit need to look like? How can it get even better? All these questions for its learners. And so I’m incredibly excited to dig in and learn about what they’re calling Summit 3.0 on today’s show. I will say it’s also interesting to have this conversation because we’re sort of in our model geek out, if you will, at the moment, right? While we’re having this conversation, we’ve had the founders of Alpha School, Flourish on, both of which are designed as AI-native models. And for those who listened to those episodes we sort of created a little bit of a side-by-side, if you will, where we said, hey, Summit is here as this baseline for a pre-AI model trying to do personalization or optimization of each kid’s learning. And we explored what can you do in an AI-native world? How can you design differently? But today what’s exciting, I think, is we’re going to get to dig into what does it look like for an existing model with that orientation to become, quote unquote, AI-native.And as you know, transformation and how organizations reinvent themselves, that’s something I get really passionate about and excited. So I cannot wait to learn from the real-life example in progress.Diane TavennerWell, we’ve got the two perfect people for that conversation, Michael. And so let me introduce you to Cady Ching, who is the CEO of Summit Public Schools, where she was an extraordinary teacher and school and network leader for a decade before taking on that role. So she brings this full spectrum of experience to this next phase. And Dan Effland, who is the senior director of innovation at Summit, where he was also an extraordinary teacher and school leader before taking on this new role of leading for the second time in the history of Summit, the reinvention of the model. And so welcome, Dan and Cady. We’re so happy that you’re here with us and excited to talk to you about the work you’re doing.Cady ChingThank you. Thank you so much. I’m excited too. It’s coming at this moment for Dan and I where we’ve been trying on a lot of language about where we’ve been, where we are today, and where we’re going. So selfishly, this is a milestone for us.Michael HornWell, and I get to feel like I’m jumping in on a team huddle of y’all. Yeah, this will, this will, this will be fun.Cady ChingWelcome, Michael.Michael HornThank you.What Is a School?Diane TavennerDan and Cady, a few weeks ago we got together and you walked me through the thinking and planning you’re doing. And honestly, I was captivated, you know, because I got stuck on it and I wanted to dissect every word. By this simplest definition of school, it’s honestly the simplest definition I’ve ever read of a school. And I wanted to start there today because I really think we always have talked about getting to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And I think you’ve done it with this definition, and I think it’s going to be really powerful in this next chapter. And so maybe, Dan, kick us off. And if you will share that definition and a little bit about how it came to you or how you all came to it in your process and what you think it unlocks.Dan EfflandYeah, happy to. And thanks for having me here. I’m so excited to talk to you all. Yeah, so, I mean, we’ve been working on this for years, right? What is simplicity on the other side of complexity? And I think as we’ve been digging into what does redesigning look like, it became really clear that you have to get down to some foundational elements to avoid designing within conventions and not even really realizing you’re doing it. And so the way we’re thinking about schools is simply, it’s a group of young people. It’s a set of outcomes or competencies. And then it’s a set of resources that help you support young people to achieve those outcomes or competencies. That’s it.Kids, outcomes, resources. And stripping all the way back to that has allowed us then to engage with our community, because all this work is like with students, caregivers, and educators, and go like, okay, what do we really want? What do schools really need to be? With full freedom, we call them dreaming sessions, where we can really engage off the simplest foundational elements and not get hooked by any of the conventions that have existed, you know, for decades or longer than that in a lot of cases.Summit 2.0: Evolution and VisionMichael HornIt’s really cool because you’ve sort of, like you said, you sort of have a conversation around what those end posts, and we can sort of figure out what’s inside the box to get there apart from what’s always been there. But before we go to that sort of Summit 3.0 vision and where you’re thinking currently is, because I’m imagining you’re going to have lots of trade-offs and changes as you go through the design process, but I think it would be helpful to do a quick turn on Summit 2.0. Both to ground, frankly, our audience, but also to set up a question of how things are changing and where and so forth so that we can understand that. And so I’d love, and maybe Cady, you dive in on this first, how would you describe the Summit 2.0 model, which was not only in your schools, but schools across the country? It’s one of the reasons I think it can be called a model, it’s scaled beyond Summit itself, right? And as you think about that, the new model, what is it in the Summit 2.0 that you’d say, we really want to hold on to this? Or where are the things that you’re saying, hey, actually, that’s something we can leave behind or start to question whether we want to change that?The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. As a reminder, paid subscribers receive unlimited access to my Delphi.Cady ChingYeah, thanks for asking this question. I think it’s so important. The reason why I keep smiling when you all say Summit 2.0 and 3.0 is because Dan and I actually got into it a couple weeks ago about if we wanted to use that language or not. And my issue with it was I think it’s really, it serves a purpose because like to Diane’s point, it is simplicity at the other end of complexity. And there is a danger in the simplification of the 2.0 and 3.0 because at Summit, we really think about innovation in two ways. One just being innovation through refinement, which is the day-to-day tightening of the model elements that we’re building on for these larger moments of innovation, which we call innovation for redesign. And so those are sort of the sector-shifting, big model, what we call Big M changes. But I’m going to use Summit 2.0 and 3.0 language today in shorthand.Michael HornThanks for doing it for the listeners.Cady ChingYeah, and so Summit 2.0 really speaks to our personalization era at Summit, where we showed personalization doesn’t need to be a luxury. And we did that by designing cohesive student and teacher experience., and it included model elements like mentoring and skills assessment and differentiation using real-time data, which we enabled through tech. And the tech that we co-built was called the Summit Learning Platform. For me, what I think was most remarkable about what we proved in Summit 2.0 is what you mentioned. It was scalable, and it did scale, and schools were able to implement and sustain the Summit model on public dollars. Which was remarkable. And so we reached 100,000 students, 6,000 educators, and 400 schools across 40 states.And we did it with district, charter, private, rural, suburban, and urban. It was completely shifting the field. And then we normalized mastery-based learning, personalized playlists and skills and habits in a way that now is the foundation and the baseline in so many places that we’re now talking about building these AI-native models on top of. And so to the second part of your question, which I’ll kick off and then, Dan, I’m going to pass it to you to add on, we think about model elements and processes that we want to carry forward into Summit 3.0. In the process side, which is where I thrive, we were successful because we were leading from this intersection of the learning science, community engagement, and technology, and we centered teachers and students at every part of the design.. And we’ve used those same design principles to continuously improve our model since Summit 2.0. For me, I feel like we’re 4 years into Summit 3.0, and we’ve already gotten some really exciting data back about situating us as leaders in the field again around what we’ve built on top of the personalization.In last year, this is our most recent data, we saw that our Summit alumni have some of the highest post-graduation incomes and lowest debt loads, as compared to other top-performing charters. And this is the type of longitudinal outcome evidence we’ve been really longing for. And when you think back about how Dan just defined the system, what that data does for us is it grounds us in that we do have a really strong set of outcomes and competencies that are timeless. Our young people are now achieving them, and we’re letting go of the old technology to create space for AI-reimagined infrastructure that’s going to help us to better allocate resources. And we think our biggest resource levers are people, technology, and time. So that’s really how we’re thinking about Summit 2.0 setting us up for Summit 3.0.Michael HornDan, did you want to jump in there and add some?Dan EfflandYeah, yeah, I think I’ll just like, you know, I think, you know, Cady and I were both teachers in Summit 2.0. We were both school leaders in this, and so we have a lot of really direct connection to it. And the thing that really makes me think about it is like, you know, the learning platform is no longer in existence, but the elements of the model really deeply took root. Mentoring, mastery, what we called habits of success, I think we’re calling durable skills in our world now. Like, I’m fine with it, whatever we want to call it. It’s become ubiquitous. And I think it really helps. I mean, I think it really gives us a sense of a strong foundation of like, we’ve done this before, we’ve built a model that’s scaled and really stuck.And it doesn’t matter if the technology, you know, is stuck or not, because that technology is not the model. The tech model is these elements of how you support kids to master these outcomes with whatever available resources you have are. And so, yeah, I think there’s a point of pride when we think about, you know, what we’re begrudgingly calling Summit 2.0. And then I think there’s a sense of the strength of the foundation to then build what’s coming next.Personalization & Durable SkillsMichael HornIt’s interesting. And we’ll come back to the technology, I know, and we want to circle back to that. But hearing Cady, you described the model, used a few words that I think are really important for people to hear. One of them was cohesive, because I think a lot of the tech efforts right now around personalization in so much of the country are the opposite of cohesive. And that’s why we’re seeing a blowback sometimes against technology, because it’s sort of all over the place and hundreds of things going on at once for a young person with tons of distractions. And you talked about it being grounded in the learning sciences and personalization as a, as a means, not the ends, right? And, and then you have these longitudinal outcomes. And I’m just calling them out because I think people often lose sight of, this is the bedrock, right, of how we build from, and then go from there. And the other piece, and Dan, you just referenced this, the field is now calling it durable skills.I still prefer habits of success. Let me just be on record on that one. But one of the things you all really did well around Summit 2.0 was have incredible clarity on the mission, what success looks like, such that you could measure in the way you just said, Cady. And I didn’t know those stats. I mean, it’s fascinating., and then you had these commencement-level outcomes, right? You were super clear on what does it look like from a, you know, for a Summit graduate as they go out in the wild. And it seems in some ways those commencement-level outcomes have been precursors to the movement across states that we’ve seen in the Portraits of a Graduate. And I do think that there’s some key differences. I’ll hold my editorial back on what those are more because I want your take on that.Like, what, if anything, are the differences and, and between those commencement-level outcomes that you all have defined, the portraits of a graduate that we see states doing, and more broadly, like, what’s the importance of being super clear on what those outcomes are and, and how you’d know, on the other side, if you could speak to that. And I don’t know, I’ll make it a grab bag of which one of you wants to jump in on that.Dan EfflandDan, take it away. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, so our vision has been the same for 23 years. It’s preparing young people for a fulfilled life, really all people. We think of our staff as part of that too. And fulfilled life is in some ways, again, simple. It is purposeful work, financial independence, strong community, strong relationships, and health. And so that’s given us a holistic picture, a holistic point B that we’re always going for.You know, I don’t, I don’t know how I compare it to Portrait of a Graduate or Portrait of a Learner. What I know is it gives us a lot of clarity in that you can’t design a coherent model without clarity of where you’re headed. And that it’s also really important that that clarity is holistic and is not simply a set of academic outcomes. It is much broader than that. And that gives us a huge advantage in this work right now because we’re not spending a lot of time. We certainly talk to our community and affirm, you know, on a regular basis, is this still what people want? Is this still what our communities are after? And it is. And so we can move right to like, okay, how do we get there?Cady ChingThe thing that I would add on top of that is, I loved, Michael, what you called out around the language of a model. I think that at the operator level, and when I’m talking to, to other school leaders, this word is used in a lot of different ways. And I think what has been really helpful for me is to list the ways that a model is not. It’s not a curriculum. It’s not an LMS. It’s not a schedule by itself. It’s not a set of beliefs or a graduate profile by itself. Those are parts of a model.But a lot of the building that we’re seeing right now is focused on building for parts versus building for an actual whole model. And so the AI-native model is how all of those model elements are working together, and it is not going to be replacing a school model, it’s going to expose whether or not you actually have a model. And it’s, I think AI is forcing a lot of school systems right now to get really honest, because if you don’t know what students are supposed to be learning, and you’re not sure how they’re showing that, or what adults are responsible for, AI just layers on complexity and quite honestly, chaos. But if you do have the level of clarity of what Dan is speaking about, AI is actually making systems work a lot better, or it can make systems work a lot better. I think the jury is out on the tools that we need and how we can create the tools that we need, um, but AI really isn’t replacing, it’s revealing whether or not your school model actually exists.Diane TavennerI’d love it if we go back to your simple definition, Dan, that we started with, when we sat down. You use the word package of outcomes, and I was obsessed with that word package for this reason, because you know, maybe I will jump in here a little bit on the portrait of a graduate.Michael HornThe table’s been set for you, Diane.Diane TavennerYeah. And one of our, you know, Summit’s longtime beloved board chair, board member, who honestly is one of the most forward-thinking, I think, philanthropists who launched a scholarship for Summit graduates going into Pathways years ago, like ahead of the curve, you know, sent us a note the other day with a real critique of portraits of a graduate. He was sort of reading about them and was just very, you know, like, what are these people thinking? And I think what he was responding to was a lot of the portraits of the graduate, like, feel very checkboxy and compliance-oriented. Versus this sort of holistic. And I know that’s not the way they were intended.AI Evolution in Education ModelsDiane TavennerThey all have good intentions behind them, but the way they have been sort of brought to life and then communicated and then implemented are what Cady, I think, is speaking to, not as a model, but as like these individual components that don’t have a coherence about how they’re actually organized an organized set of resources to achieve those package of outcomes, if you will. And so I think that what you all just described is at the core of your success going forward and what an advantage you have. And it really speaks honestly to the durability that you’re carrying all of that forward in this next phase, that being, living a life of wellbeing it actually hasn’t changed, right? The elements of that haven’t changed, and that’s what you’re equipping young people for. So, you know, in a recent episode, Michael and I had a conversation, just the two of us, which was super fun, and we were dissecting a way of thinking about school models in three buckets. And I know you are both familiar with this framework, which is essentially that, you know, Model 1 will use AI to make sort of the existing industrial model school more efficient and better. Model 2 will stretch the bounds of that industrial model school with integrated AI. And Model 3 will be AI native, you know, essentially built from the ground up with AI capabilities that are assumed to be at the core. And, you know, as you think about where you’re now going with Summit 3.0, how do you view it in the context of this framework? And, you know, what does AI make possible that wasn’t possible in 2.0 because it was designed pre-AI?Dan EfflandLove this question. And I did listen to that episode. So I’ll start with the model part, and then I really want to get into what AI makes possible and kind of what it pushes us to do. So I love reading like Learner Studios’ 3 Horizons model. I love Bob Hughes’ paper on the 3 models. I find that stuff really, really important for evaluating what exists and really valuable for visioning and for getting into this place of what really is possible. And I think, and that’s really useful. I will say, when we start designing and working with our young people and working with our caregivers and our educators, I actually find it useful to kind of set those categories aside and to ask the more foundational questions around, like, we know where we want to go, we have this clear vision, we have this really simple, you know, conception of what a school is with kids’ outcomes and resources.And now let’s go from here. And when you get into, like, as we’ve talked about, we have a lot of clarity about our outcomes already. We really believe deeply that this holistic model of a healthy, thriving, you know, young person, young adult, adult is going to be durable regardless of the transitions that are happening in our society. But when it comes to the resources part, now we have this whole huge different potential, one, AI being a resource, but also a way that I think we’re most really interested when it comes to AI is how we can use it if we integrate it into our tech stack. Really how, like, with a really robust knowledge graph and really strong data layer, you could be dynamically reallocating resources in a way that just would be impossible for people. You know, like when I used to build an annual schedule, like the primary schedule with our Dean of Operations, she and I would sit in an office for a week with a spreadsheet to make a schedule for the year that never changed, right? Like, it’s just so labor-intensive. But now I think when we think about AI as part of our infrastructure, and it’s kind of a layer in our tech stack interacting with a really robust knowledge graph and data layer, we can start to ask ourselves, like, how do we get the right resources to the right kids at the right time for the right outcome? And really get very, very precise, and also do that dynamically. And I think that then allows us to think about personalization, just-in-time instruction, integrating real-world experiences, ensuring that personalized learning still happens in community and there’s deep human connection that is part of personalized learning journey in a way that was, was not possible when, you know, 12 years ago when we were thinking about Summit 2.0, the technology just didn’t exist.And so, I mean, it’s exciting. I mean, I really think there’s incredible possibility there. And while there’s definitely lots of really cool tools being built, we’re much more focused on the, like, where does this fit as part of our technology infrastructure or our tech stack, because we think that’s, like, potentially a huge lever for transforming learning for young people.Current Applications of AI in SchoolsMichael HornIt’s fascinating to me, ‘cause you just named a number of things that AI could do that I had never thought about in terms of, like, dynamically changing the schedule for, you know, the school and students and, like, there’s some pretty cool things you can start to imagine that ripple out of that. One of the things in that conversation that Diane referenced that she and I agreed to hold ourselves accountable for was to get really specific when we talk to school leaders about, so what’s happening today in your schools that’s actually leveraging AI or is quote, unquote AI native, if you will? And so you all are obviously still in the design phase for 3.0. I use that with trepidation now, but put that aside for a second. Like, today, if I were to, you know, get to be in California again and I was hanging out in your schools, what would I see that’s powered today by something that’s AI native? What is it? What are the tools? What does it look like? What does it do? What are you building versus partnering with? Give, give us a sense of some concrete applications. Anywhere in the tech stack or during the day, that is AI-powered?Cady ChingI think this would be a good opportunity to talk about a specific tool that we’re using, which maybe not ironically is Futre as one model example of what it can look like. And Dan can speak to specifically what it’s looking like in the student and teacher experience. But one of the reasons why I start with speaking about a specific tool is because I think that largely edtech has not— has been really unsuccessful in solving for what we need to operationalize innovative school models. And Futre has been a nice shift of pace for us because it is truly a tool that is building for the child versus fitting a child into a tool or larger system. And I think that the way in which we’re using it with our young people can work in many H2 and H3 model contexts because it’s able to give us real-time data about our young people and then allowing us to build their student experience based on the data that we have about them. Dan, can you introduce, Michael a little bit more to Futre and how we’re using it at Summit?Dan EfflandYeah, absolutely. So Futre right now we’re using with our juniors and seniors, although we anticipate starting younger, in the coming year. And right now, our juniors are really using it to do a lot of career exploration, which the tool excels at, and really like exploring very deeply different possibilities. And then what those possibilities mean as far as what they need to be working on now or experiences they have between kind of their current point A and their future point B. And then our seniors are using it to get more concrete about what really, what is my next step? What does that mean? What is the thing I’m doing immediately after high school? And where does that fit on a pathway that’s not going to be just one step, right? We know it’s going to be multiple steps. And then there’s another thing that we’re starting to do with it. So we’ve had a program called Expeditions for many, many, many years.It is— I think we deeply believe this and will proudly say it is best-in-class career-connected learning. It is. Absolutely. It is the thing when we do— when I do focus groups, when we do alumni data, kind of research, it just comes up over and over again because our young people actually get out in the community or within the school building and really doing what we now are calling real-world experiences. We’ve called them lots of different things over the decades, but we are— one of the things about that though is that kind of like we were talking about, how do we really curate the journey with this resource allocation stuff? Just tracking all of those different experiences, often there’s 50 or 60 choices for students at one school when we had those expedition cycles. We’re now pulling those experiences onto the Futre platform so we can really start to map what students have been doing, what they haven’t been doing, maybe what they should be doing. And then their mentor can take an even more engaged kind of role in coaching them through that pathway. We’re really excited about that.We’re kind of just starting, you know, to pull those on. But I think in the future it’s one of the things that we see that the Futre tool will be really, really helpful with because, you know, young people need coaching as they’re figuring out that concrete next step.Michael HornSo super interesting. I actually have two questions, but let me go to you, Dan and Cady, first. And then I have a question for you, Diane. I’m going to put you on the hot seat. But I think we’re allowed to do that. But it’s interesting. You just said something there in your answer, Dan, which was then the mentor or coaching.And so just like to put a fine point on it, The, like, this works really well because you have a model where there is that function that is meeting on a regular weekly basis, right? And like, so therefore that touchpoint, like it’s coherent again to use that word, but I, I would love a quick update on how Expeditions has evolved because when I think when Diane was exiting Summit, like, y’all were in the middle of redesigning it and I’ll be super honest, like even though she and I talk basically weekly, I don’t actually know the new version of Expeditions. And so, I still have a slide in my talk about Summit that says, you know, like every 8 weeks or whatever, you go off for 2 weeks. And y’all should update us on what’s the current state of Expeditions at Summit.Cady ChingYeah, I’ll respond to 2 pieces. One, with the mentoring piece, that model element does exist. One of the reasons why I personally love Futre is because it takes some of the lift of mentors needing to be the vessel of all career pathways off the human. So when we think about that resource allocation of, you know, people, talent, it’s creating a better, more coherent system for the adult as well, which has been so important because we love to center our teachers as well in the design. And then the Expeditions redesign, it’s been really cool. We’ve been, you know, continuously shifting that program based on what our alumni are sharing back with us, based on how the world is shifting. And of course, AI, as so much a part of our students’ experience today and in the future, has shifted it again. It is non-graded— so this is actually surprisingly one of the most controversial things when we rolled it out to parents— they are not receiving grades on the different career exposure pieces that they try out as they’re with us at either the high school levels or as early as 6th grade in Seattle.And it’s really about ensuring our students get about 9 career exposures between the time they start with us to the moment they leave, because we know it’s really important for them as they develop their identity to see themselves in different career pathways that are all mapping towards high opportunity where they can build their generational wealth for their family. So it’s probably pretty similar in terms of the time allocation. They’re in sort of what we call their core classes for 6 weeks, and then they’re pausing for 2 weeks to go out, usually in the upper grades, off campus. You don’t see— when people come to observe this on our site, they’re not actually a lot of kids in the building because learning happens without walls. Dan, what else would you add as you’re going? Dan is quite literally on an expedition tour currently. He’s at one of our school sites right now, and right after this recording, he is going to go in and speak to our teachers. So what else would you add?Dan EfflandYeah, I mean, I think that’s an important side of it is so that, I mean, one, it’s just, I was still in a school leadership position when we transitioned to this kind of redesigned Expeditions, and I just can’t tell you how powerful the experiences are. I can think of so many stories, so many young people, but like one in particular that a young, he’s— well, he’s probably not even that young now, but he’s 25, but he was a young, young man at the time who was really, really struggling. And this kid was having discipline issues, attendance issues, struggling, like, not necessarily living at home on a regular basis. And we really, we thought we were gonna really lose this kid. And he started doing an expedition experience related to culinary arts. After he did that first one, he did a second one, and then there was kind of a sequence of them where he had, you know, like the first one was kind of like a survey course. It was the community college. It was about 25 kids.Finding Passion and PurposeDan EfflandThen he was able to do one where he was actually kind of shadowing one of the actual culinary arts program college students and learning in a second wave. So I’m having a hard time not using his name, but I’m going to keep it out. But I just loved this kid. And he found his pathway. And not only did he find his pathway and ended up going to a culinary arts program and graduating and now works, you know, like in the culinary arts, you know, scene in Seattle, his attendance improved, his grades went up, his connections with his mentor, with his teachers, with his peers, which were, you know, fraught, got better and better. And he became a healthier human because purpose and passion and having a pathway is essential for all of us. And we’re at a time when, you know, you can read about this everywhere, there’s studies, our young people are really searching for that clarity about purpose and pathway. And when you see it, I mean, it’s just like Cady said, it’s kind of hard, like it’s not a good thing to tour because the kids are mostly out in the community.Dan EfflandBut when you have the privilege of being a school leader and you see these kids over the years and they do their cycles, you just, the impact is unbelievable. So yeah, I just wanted to, yeah—Designing Education for the ChildMichael HornNo, the anecdotes make these things always so much more powerful. And I mean, you can, through your story, hear him building a positive identity of himself, right? And that’s incredible. Diane, something Cady said made me think of it, which is obviously, you know, folks who listen to us know that you’re the entrepreneur behind Futre. I now understand why it was originally called Point B based on Dan’s language and I guess, but she said something interesting, which was like a lot of edtech has not helped the launch of new model design, right? Because it’s been, and that, that’s sort of been obvious to me for why, right? Because the market is schools as they are, and venture capital wants big markets, and right, like, it’s— so it’s, it’s this sort of reductivist thing that happens. But she said you’ve been designing for the child, and so you’ve been able to escape that and I wondered if you just might want to reflect on that, because I imagine it is still hard though, um, because you’re still like— schools are the conduit to the kids. So just sort of like, what’s the advice, or what have you learned, right, through, through navigating that?Diane TavennerWell, I think that I mean, so much of what Dan and Cady have just said is so important. And I think that what, what was one key thing is, you know, I sort of set out to build Futre as an edtech partner that did things differently than what I experienced when I was sitting in, you know, the seat that Dan and Cady are in. And you know, that core value of our company is how we do the work is as important as the work that we do. And so how we do the work is very much co-building with schools and leaders and students. And so, you know, we are out in the field working with students and teachers and people like Dan and Cady literally every other week. So we are literally co-designing and code building what happens. And so what you just heard, that Futre is being designed to help young people build this identity over a 10-year journey. I mean, that’s unheard of, I think, in any sort of tech market.People don’t think about that. We have real outcomes that people are aiming towards, and most tech products just look at what’s something that exists and try to make it more efficient or slightly better. They don’t think about the integration of it, the flexibility of it, how it will be used by the adults. I mean, As an example, they just told you Futre can be used both in individual coaching, mentoring, advising, counseling. It can also be used with groups of students in a classroom, and it’s actually literally designed to support both of those. And I will say the, the inclusion of really supporting real-world experiences came directly from our engagement with our school partners and our students. That emerged as this real need And we were watching people literally running around schools with laptops on their arm and all these spreadsheets and trying to organize. And so we have co-built these elements together.But you’re right, the incentives in the business side of things are not to build this way. And so, you know, like always, we’re going to see if we can prove that wrong and say, no, when you do build this way, you not only get better outcomes for young people, schools and teachers and educators, but you also can be a successful, scalable product.Michael HornSo certainly a more enduring product if you, if you thread that needle, right? So for sure.Cady ChingYeah, exactly. So I think it’s I think it also speaks to why it’s so important for Dan and I to sort of pull together a coalition of the willing with other operators. One thing we haven’t spent— I know we’re almost at time— that much time talking about is how hard this work is. It is challenging, and we have so much to learn. We are not perfect. We are learning every single day. We are constantly seeking out other school systems that have similar visions for education, and we’re trying to learn from them. We’re trying to get out onto their campuses and be in community with them because we know that if we want to build something that’s enduring and lasting and maximizing impact on the number of students in our country, or even globally, we have to build for the students of Summit as well as all students.And I think that, that’s what’s most important for me as I set out to lead some of this work is if it only works at Summit, it’s not good enough. And what we’ve learned about leading change at scale is that we need a shared purpose for what school is actually for, and that belief that it’s possible to build a system for that purpose, which is actually no small feat. And it’s why we’re spending so much time building what I would call a coalition of the willing, which is educators and systems who agree on our common destination before we start building the actual tools. I think my core idea is that beliefs come first, model comes next, and then the tools come last. And when we get that order right, that’s when the scale can become possible.Summit Learning: Model vs. TechnologyDiane TavennerCady, I want to double-click on what you’re saying because, you know, you talked at the top of this about how Summit Learning had really scaled across the country to 40 states and, you know, 100,000 students, etc. But Dan, you also said the technology, the Summit Learning platform was not the model. It is not the model. And the model has really taken root even as that particular piece of technology has gone away. That said, I do know that you both believe deeply that having an aligned core technology that is the infrastructure that sort of I think, Dan, you used the word guardrails, like puts up the guardrails and the support for the model is profound. And I know that you’re in conversation with other folks who’ve done some at learning who are, who it’s taken root for them as well, but are having a hard time really keeping that model intact. And so talk about sort of the need for that infrastructure, the role that it plays and what you think it might look like in 3.0. And Cady, you just said it, no one’s going to build technological infrastructure for a single school or a single school system.And so there has to be this coalition.Cady ChingWe have to create the market.Diane TavennerYeah. And so talk about that because the market generally is not very coherent. And as I sit on the other side, it can be really confusing and hard so talk about how you guys are thinking about that.Enabling Learning Through AIDan EfflandYeah, I think this is something we’ve started to be spending more and more of our time on as we’ve gotten clearer in the work with our students and caregivers and educators this fall. We’ve gotten clearer about where we’re going. There is this need, which is that technology is not the model, but it is, you know, there’s a reason we talk about time, talent, and technology as the big levers with resources. It is a huge enabler. And I think the possibilities with AI as part of that technology infrastructure make it an even stronger enabler. So I’ve already talked about like the idea of like dynamically reallocating resources, which is, I think, I love in a conversation educators here, because I think sometimes it’s not the, like the shiniest thing to talk about, but we know that getting kids the right thing at the right time in the right sequence is often the difference between learning and not learning, between progress and not progress, and between finding that pathway and not finding it. And so, at a high level, when we’re thinking about that infrastructure, we need to make sure that, like, we have a really rich, you know, amount of data.And there’s a lot of work to be done there. Our school systems historically have not put data together in ways where you can create what like a technology person would call the data lake in a way where you can really access that as you need it. And then the next element is going to be a really robust knowledge graph that is not just academic standards. It’s got to be much broader than that. And then, of course, the way that AI would then interact with that to allocate and think about your resources. And I’ll share too, like when we think about resources, I generally think of everything as a resource. My time is a resource, Cady’s time is a resource, our educators’ time is a resource, curriculum is a resource, YouTube is a resource. Anything that can help a young person move towards those outcomes, we think of as a resource, and how can we constantly repackage those and get them in the right order while holding onto the vision? Because I think there’s a version of personalized learning that I would call like individualized learning.That’s not what we’re talking about. I believe this has to happen deeply in community and with really strong relationships and human connection. And so the personalized learning, then it’s actually more complex when you’re committed to maintaining community and relationships, because you’ve got to figure out configurations of young people and not just put everybody separately on a computer they have a particular pathway and so.Cady ChingAnd that’s what we’re seeing, we’re seeing people just run, sprint towards an outcome without doing the diligence. And I think that it’s resulting in a lot of binary. If you’re either tech-forward or you’re human-centered, and there is a way to bring that together and build a model that’s doing both and that’s what we’re setting out to do.Dan EfflandYeah. There’s another binary too, that we haven’t talked about, but we should stamp here, which is this binary of like, real-world readiness or academic foundations. And that we now, we have these camps and like, we’re all about academics and we’re all about the real world. And when you talk to students, you talk to students and caregivers and educators, no one thinks it should be an either-or. That’s the scarcity mindset we’re often in, an area that we engage in educators. And we’re deeply committed that our young people will be prepared with college-ready academic foundations and real-world readiness, which means for us habits of success, communication, collaboration, all executive functioning. That is has a purposeDiane TavennerYeah. One is, as Dan, your story of that student showed, the sense of purpose, which is connected to what my life will look like in the future, really is what drives everything for a young person, right? It’s how they’re forming their identity as they build that vision. It’s what motivates them to stick to the hard work every single day on this journey to get where, where they’re going, and so yeah, I think what you’re up to is really critical. I hope that a lot of schools and systems engage with you to create this demand in the market for this type of infrastructure, dare we say, you know, Summit Learning Platform 3.0 as well. Because I think that it’s really, it’s hard to conceive of a post-AI model that doesn’t have that. That real infrastructure.And I know you all haven’t seen it or found it yet, but continue to make strides in bringing it to life.This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question: what will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving. Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI and education because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learner Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.com.So a good place maybe, Diane, to wrap up.Should we pivot to our before we let you off the hook section? Cady, Dan, we have a tradition here where we, where we talk about something we’ve been reading, writing, watching, listening, whatever it is, not writing, listening to, and eventually I’ll get my verbs correct. But and then, so just often we try to keep it outside work, but we often fail. So, Cady, you want to go first, and then Dan, we want to hear what’s been on your playlist or bedside table, and then Diane and I will wrap it up.Cady ChingYeah, sounds great. I have been— I taught my 7-year-old what it means to brain rot. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term, but where you just sit on the couch and just kind of watch nothing for hours and hours. And we did do a Spider-Man and Avengers binge this past weekend. So that is something I have been watching a lot of. Reading is going to be hard for me to separate it from the professional. I’ve just been really deep in leader succession. I think to do this work, you need really strong talent in leadership pipeline.And so I’ve been in HBR. I check the Marshall Memo every week to see what, what they’re pulling out, to really think about how I’m leading personally, locally, individually, but then also what the sector needs. Dan, I’ll pass it to you.Dan EfflandSimilarly, like the kind of first answer on my mind is just this fire hose of like white papers and podcasts about education and AI.Cady ChingAnd then he screenshots them and sends them to the whole team.Dan EfflandYeah, drive everyone nuts with them. But I do have a more, maybe a more fun one on the personal side. Kind of finally reading the Foundation series, the Isaac Asimov kind of classic sci-fi. It’s honestly about connection for me. My siblings are sci-fi readers and I’m very late to the party. And then my father is retired now, and one of his, it seems like, main activities as a retiree is to reread everything Asimov ever wrote multiple times.. And so for Christmas this year, I got a stack of these really great, Half Price Books paperbacks of all the Foundation novels, and I’m starting to work through them.And we have a text thread about them, and they are, it’s a wonderful story, it’s very complex, and it certainly does also make me think a little bit about the future of our world and AI and, and what, you know, where, where young people fit in that, but it’s also just been a really fun way to connect to the family.Michael HornThat’s cool. Wow.Diane TavennerWhat about you, Diane? Well, picking up on that. So first of all, apparently this is not going to be a novel recommendation because this Apple TV series, I guess, is the most watched at this point. But we watched Pluribus, which was created by Vince Gilligan, who— yes, Breaking Bad. Yes, Better Call Saul. I didn’t watch either of those, but I was a huge X-Files fanMichael HornBack in the day.Diane TavennerOkay. And so there is very much some X-Files feel here in Pluribus. But to what Dan said, and I think Foundation is related, I just find this series to be so provocative in the questions that it’s bringing up and sort of the contemplation of where we’re going as a society and how the choices we’re making each day might affect that and what we actually want. And I will— I told you I would report back my goal. I did finish Ian McEwan’s novel that I pre-promoted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was everything I expected and more.It was just extraordinary. And I did both of those over the holiday. And I will tell you, I feel like I’m sort of in surround sound right now of asking these big existential questions along with everything from what’s happening in the news on a day-to-day basis to all the work in AI. So, but I would highly recommend it. Super provocative and interesting.Michael HornPerfectDiane TavennerPerfect. Crazy. Like, you never know what’s gonna happen next.Michael HornThat’s fun when you can’t predict it coming.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornYeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, so the brain rot theme that you brought up, Cady, I mean, we talk about it all the time with our 11-year-olds, here at home. But I was— this is not where I was going to go at all with this, but I— something one of my kids said made me think of the Animaniacs theme song, if you all remember that cartoon from back in the day, and I pulled it up and showed it, and my wife just dismissively said, this was brain rot when we were growing up. so, there you go. the one I’ll say is, we all went with another family and saw Wonder, at the American Repertory Theater. Many people may know the book, Wonder, which follows the story of Auggie Pullman, a 10-year-old who has Tretcher Collins, syndrome that presents as disfiguration of the face and sort of how going into a school environment for the first time and all the things that it does. And there’s a movie about it as well, but now there is a musical too.And Diane, you will not be surprised, I was crying from the opening number and I kept it up through the whole thing. So it was, I was true to form. That’s a good one to cry over. It was good. I represented well, but it was fantastic. We’ll see if it makes the jump from sort of off-off-Broadway to something bigger, but until then, if you’re in the Cambridge area, definitely check it out. And for all of you, just huge thanks, Cady, Dan, for joining us, getting us to have a peek under the cover of what’s coming next at Summit and the broader— as usual, you all are thinking about the broader ecosystem as well, which I admire so much about the work you all do at Summit. It’s not just our model, but how does our model spur this greater change across education.So huge thanks for joining us. And for all of you listening, keep the questions, comments coming. Diane and I feed off them, and we really appreciate all of you. We’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Michael Horn, education and workforce futurist who focuses on career-connected learning, reflects on last year’s forecasts and makes predictions for 2026. He discusses the slow spread of apprenticeships, rising emphasis on work-based and AI-enabled learning, mounting pressure on traditional colleges, skills-based hiring realities, and debates around regulations for social media, licensure, and ROI-driven accountability.

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 NomenclatureMichael 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 ClassKelly 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 PredictionsKelly 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 ChoicesKelly 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-InKelly 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 RigorMichael 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 ChoiceKelly 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 FutureKelly 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 MichaelKelly 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.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. 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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 HornWelcome 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 HasselGood to see you, Michael.Michael HornAnd 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 WilliamsYeah, you as well.Michael HornI’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 InnovationMichael HornIt’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 HasselYeah, 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 HornAshley, 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 WilliamsYeah, 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 HornYeah, 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 HasselWe’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 HornAshley, 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 GrowthAshley WilliamsYeah, 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 HornIt 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 WilliamsI 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 HasselAnd 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 InsightsMichael HornWell, 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 HasselYeah, 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 HornSo 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 WilliamsYeah, 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 HornSo, 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 WilliamsYeah, I would say so. We’ve gotten it down to about 10 to 50% of what it originally cost.Michael HornOh wow. Okay. That’s meaningful.Ashley WilliamsThe lowest end is that DIY self-driven aspect of it, you know, to where schools can go on and make their own decisions.Michael HornGotcha. 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 ImpactBryan HasselYeah, 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 WilliamsYeah, 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 HornThat’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 EducationMichael HornThe 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 HasselCertainly 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 HornOkay, 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 HasselIt’s somehow we haven’t talked about AI, which seems likeMichael HornWe haven’t talked about AI either. Pull it in.AI and Policy in EducationBryan HasselYeah, 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 HornAshley, anything you’d add to that that we ought to keep our eyes on or be pushing on?Ashley WilliamsI 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 HornAll 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 WilliamsYeah, 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 HornPerfect. 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 HasselThanks for having us. Thanks for having this interesting show for everyone week after week.Michael HornWell, 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.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

John Danner, the cofounder of Rocketship Public Schools and now the founder of Flourish Schools, an emerging network of AI-native microschools, joined me and Diane to share what’s now possible when it comes to school design in the age of AI that wasn’t previously possible. John explained how Flourish is leveraging AI to deliver foundational skills like reading and math through conversational tutors to free up teachers to focus on building relationships and nurturing students' passions and "superpowers.” John pointedly explained how the conversational models can be much more powerful than previous edtech applications. He also talked about how Flourish is working to use AI to provide real-time assessment and feedback on student projects.Diane TavennerHey, Michael.Michael HornHey, Diane. It is good to see you again for our continuing conversations on AI.Diane TavennerYou too. This one’s going to be a fun one. You know, our most recent episode, we talked with Alpha School founder Mackenzie Price. Most people have heard of Alpha at this point. It’s getting a ton of attention. And so what we tried to do there was really move beyond the talking points and the marketing to really dig into the model itself, including specifically how they’re using AI, which is turning into a bit of our quest this season. And so this conversation today is a part of that exploration on who’s building what I would call maybe AI-native school models, if anyone. And, you know, what might they look like? What are they starting to look like? And it’s a really fun conversation today because we get to have a chat with an old friend.Michael HornYes, that is indeed correct, Diane. Today we’re going to get to chat with none other than John Danner. John, for those that don’t know him, has had a decorated career in tech before turning to education, as he co-founded and led NetGravity, the first ad server company, I believe. And after taking it public, selling it to DoubleClick, John went back to school and then became a teacher, and he taught in Nashville for a few years there. And then I think a lot of folks know him because he co-founded, of course, Rocketship Public Schools in 2006, which we, of course, talked about also in our last episode. But Rocketship was a buzzy school for a good while there, marked by its student outcomes, its use of technology, its expansion. And then after leaving Rocketship in 2013, John did a number of other things, including founding an online math tutoring company, creating some very interesting education investment vehicles and more. But I want to skip ahead to his most recent venture, Flourish Schools, which is what we’re going to hear about today.Michael HornSo, John, hopefully I did some justice to the bio, but, welcome. It is always good to see you.John DannerThank you, Michael. Great to see both of you. Long time.Michael HornThis is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. So let’s start with grounding our audience. My assumption is that a lot of folks know Rocketship and what you did there. Far fewer know about the Flourish Schools model itself and what these schools actually look like. So maybe give us the basics, like what is Flourish Schools, how many of them are there today, how big are they, what’s the grade levels, what does a day in a student’s life look like at these schools? You know, paint the picture for us.John DannerYeah, yeah. So we started Flourish about a year ago. We opened our first school last August. In Nashville, one microschool so far. They’re middle schools, so grades 6 through 8. I’m out in Phoenix today. We’re opening a couple more schools in Phoenix next year, next August. And I’d say the reason for doing it, you know, Diane knows this well, like doing schools is quite difficult work.Enhancing Foundational Learning with AIJohn DannerI often prefer being on the software side where, you know, life is good. But, you know, schools are hard work and sometimes you have to do them. I think the big motivator in starting Flourish for me was that I had started a couple of AI companies, Project Read, probably the most notable doing reading, which is in a lot of classrooms. And I just noticed that most schools are using AI in a very supplemental way right now, very much the same way they used edtech. And that bothered me because, you know, in reading, for example, I think there’s a pretty good argument that AI for reading is going to be better than the best human reading teacher within the next year or two. It’s not a long way off at all because teaching reading is really hard. Training teachers to teach that is hard. It’s hard to be patient with kids when they’re making lots of mistakes.And it’s hard to remember everything a kid has ever done when they’re reading with you, right? All of which just is default for AI. So, you know, in watching Project Read roll out and seeing everybody kind of use it, you know, in those last 15 minutes in the class when they were kind of, you know, a kid was done with the assignment and needed to do something else. Like, I was like, you know, that doesn’t seem like how AI should, affects schools. It should be used more strategically. You know, what can AI do, and therefore what do you do with teacher time? I think, you know, for me, teacher time has always been kind of the scarce resource. It’s like whatever teachers focus on is really what schools do. No matter what schools talk about, it’s like, okay, what, what are your teachers doing? That’s what’s going to have the most impact. And so Flourish we, we started with the assumption that what we call foundations, kind of the basic skills, reading, writing, math, are going to be better taught by AI.The way we kind of look at it is if you think of like Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 instruction, it’s really the move from technology as a Tier 2 or Tier 3 product to a Tier 1. So, you know, can you use AI to do kind of tier 1 basic skills and standards-based instruction? And so that was what we did from day 1 at Flourish. We’re 6 months into it now. I would say the lesson learned is, of course, you’re going to have students in any school that like, you know, whatever. We have several special ed, several ELL students they need more time and attention. But during our foundations block, which is an hour long, teachers have time to work with them one-on-one. And a teacher working with a student one-on-one on reading or whatever is like a luxury that like no other school has because that you can’t have them doing that. But when all the other kids are making great progress with AI, having a teacher spend that time, that luxurious time is actually possible.AI’s Impact on SchoolingThe Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.John DannerSo that’s the fundamental thesis is that we can do that in a way that that’s what our teachers are not doing and spending all their time preparing for and teaching during the day. And that allows us to kind of come up with a new curriculum. And I think actually, you know, you guys want to focus on AI and we should. I think the actual interesting question with schools is once you make the commitment that AI is going to do a lot of this basic instruction, then you’re confronted with the now what problem, which is like, oh gosh, what’s school for like moving forward? And I guess that’s, that’s what we’re kind of excited about is we’re in this super serious time of change for students. They’re not going to grow up to a world that we all experienced. You know, my daughter just got out of college. She was a pre-med, but didn’t really want to be a doctor. She gets out in the job market and gosh, there are no jobs.And like all those other things that she learned along the way about hustle and, you know, you got to go put yourself out there and whatever played out and she found a job. But boy, like if you had just spent all your time in school, like learning algebra or whatever, she wouldn’t have done well. So, I think, you know, our point of view at Flourish is we, we talk about 3 things mainly, relationships. So these are middle schoolers. So how do you get along with other people? And we do an hour we call circles, which is really as kind of therapeutic as it might sound, where kids are sitting in a circle talking about their feelings, how other kids affect them, et cetera. And for many, many of our students, I’d say it’s pretty mind-blowing to actually understand how other people are thinking, you know, as you’re talking and saying things and stuff like that. Really powerful.So relationships are a big piece. And then we talk about two others, superpowers and passions. So superpowers is kind of our word for what people have called soft skills. I hate the term soft skills because it’s kind of denigrating in a world of like standards-based instruction. Oh, that’s the other stuff that, you know, makes you a human, but it’s not nearly as important as high school chemistry or whatever. Like, we actually think it’s the opposite now that knowledge is pretty abundant and accessible, like the things that make you human are the more important things. So, do you have agency and curiosity and these other things that make you awesome? That’s important. And then the passion side is really, what do you want to do when you grow up? What are you excited about? What are your big interests? Which, you know, as you know, for upper-income families tends to happen at home.You know, you’re sitting around the table or you go, you know, on a little family field trip or whatever, and kids are discovering lots of different things that they might be excited about. Happens a lot less in working class and lower income families. We’re purposefully mixed income. We took a page out of your book for that, Diane. I think that’s really the right way to do this. And so for our kids who are, you know, working class and lower income, we think like discovering, what the world is and what you might want to be in is super important, especially in middle, so that you kind of enter high school with some idea of like what you’re excited about and some kind of path you might want to pursue. Even if that changes, that’s okay, you’re not just kind of clueless showing up in high school, which, you know, a lot of kids are.Diane TavennerYeah, super helpful, John. You know, one of the ways I’ve been trying to have conversations with people about what these sort of AI-native models will look like or can look like or do look like is I don’t want to have a conversation where we compare what they’re doing compared to like the old industrial model classroom, right, that’s like not useful to me.John DannerWe’ve had that conversation. Yeah.Diane TavennerSo I keep using the sort of Rocketship and Summit because I know them the best of like best-in-class sort of personalized learning models that we were doing the very best we could at the time with the resources we had, and doing a lot of what you just described, right? Like, I’m assuming circles maybe comes out of Valor, which, you know, it has, you know. So like, a lot of that great stuff we were doing before. So what I’m really, and you’ve alluded to this, I think, with shifting Tier 1 instruction out of the classroom model and the AI is doing that. But let’s dig in a little bit deeper. Like, literally, what’s possible today that we just didn’t do 10 years ago and now we can do it? And what does that specifically look like in the model?John DannerI think the big change here is really one from point and click to conversational, right? Like, that was the eye-opener for me, really, you know, back in the ChatGPT moment was you kind of just immediately it became clear that a conversational agent would be able to kind of work through things with a student in so much better way than, you know, kind of what we all did with kind of edtech back in the day. So, you know, we all, we call it personalization, but there’s kind of a difference between a program more or less knowing where you are and what you need versus what an AI does, which is it knows everything. You know, like in Flourish, we more or less pour everything about a student into it. We have transcripts from everything students say. Like, the AI just is all-knowing about what’s happened with that student at the school. And so when it’s personalizing, it’s 100 or 1,000 times deeper level than like this basic categorization that edtech used to be able to do. So I think it’s much more aware of what students need. And I just think the mechanism of talking to a student conversationally is so much better than kind of navigating through a bunch of screens and the stuff we used to do.Diane TavennerSo I’m assuming then you’re building your own. It sounds like you’re building, you called it curriculum, but like that tier 1, because I have yet to see sort of off-the-shelf products that are really, that I would be like, yeah, they’re great. They can do the tier 1 instruction. Talk about what you’re building, what that looks like for middle school kids, you know.John DannerYeah, right. And remember, we’re 6 months old, so anything I tell you is like total work in progress. But, you know, we’ve got good people and we’re working pretty hard on it. So the, you know, the fundamental idea, so I’ll tell you where we started with this and then kind of where we are now. We kind of had this idea that we’d have an agent on our side that was very good at sending kids to the right place to get the right help, right? So kind of like a hybrid between the old ed tech world and kind of this AI-driven world. And we pretty quickly discovered the kind of things that we had discovered at Rocketship, or I’m sure you did at Summit, which is there’s so much friction and stuff involved in manipulating another program. It’s like basically not worth it. And so that probably took a couple months for us to just realize like this is a waste of time.Tutoring via Adaptive DialogueJohn DannerAnd so really the way our system works today is as a student, I’ll tell you today and then where we hope to be in 2 months. So today, the way it works is that we have kind of a pre-assessment where we’re looking for what a student knows. Based on what they know, they enter a conversation with our AI. We often will have a 1 or 2 minute video of like just what that thing is, kind of an old edtech type thing, right? Just because I think a framing is often helpful for a new concept, but that the majority of the real instruction is kind of this dialogue between the AI and the student on like, okay, well, let’s talk about, you know, two-digit addition just for lack of anything better. Here’s a problem, you know, solve this problem for me, tell me how you’re doing it. And then basically just digging in as the student doesn’t get it. And it’s so easy to prompt for, I mean, you know, Zeal, my third company, the math tutoring company, we had figured out all the misconceptions that every student has in math. And so when you prompt an AI with that, okay, here are the 10 likely things that a student’s going to do wrong, when they’re doing two-digit math, it just goes, oh, okay, that’s it, and then it goes deep there, right? So if you think about it, it’s very fluid.It’s very much what a human tutor would do in that case. They’re kind of responding in real time to what that student’s doing and going, oh geez, you don’t really understand how to carry the tens place, so let’s go deeper there or whatever. So that interaction with the AI happens, and then we go out and post-assess. And so the student’s kind of manipulating where they want to go and what they want to do through that process. Where we’re going, where I hope to be in a couple months, is that that’s all, all the pre- and post-assessment is kind of gone. We’re finding that the AI through that dialogue has just as good an understanding of what that student is capable of doing as kind of any formal assessment process. And it’s much more natural to just have the students sit down with the AI, you know, when they start and talk about what they want to work on. And then, you know, kind of the AI drills into that and shows them a video and does things like that.So I think it could feel quite a bit like, you know, a student showing up at a tutoring center and that tutor kind of just working with them. It feels like that’s going to work. But that’s where we’re at with it.Diane TavennerIs that voice or are they typing or both?John DannerWe’re doing typing now. We’d love to do voice. We started there and we really worked hard on it. I would say that the biggest problem with voice for us is that we have never figured out the kind of noisy classroom problem. Very hopeful that somebody does because of the issue, you know, even if you’re off in a corner of a classroom or even outside in the hallway, the AI hears everything. And so it you know, and if you think about it, like when you’re in one of these sessions, the AI hears something and somehow inserts that in the conversation. That’s just weird. It kind of ruins the whole flow.So it’s easier with middle schoolers to do kind of a text-based one right now. But I, you know, what I’ve told the team is I think the main interface for AI will probably be audio at some point. Like it’s just the most natural way. And so as the industry kind of builds better and better models for that, I hope that this problem gets solved and we can go to audio.Diane TavennerThat makes sense to me. And do you then have a knowledge graph underneath that? So even though the students sort of like flowing where it makes sense to them, at the end of the day, you have kind of the macro plan of where you want them to go.John DannerAnd yeah, so we built a super elaborate one for Zeal and unfortunately are more or less rebuilding it now for all of our stuff. Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, as you guys know, the real challenge with AI is often that it’s so good in the moment at these things, but you kind of have to bring it back to reality sometimes. And so, you know, having a prompt that says, hey, pull the knowledge graph and see what’s the most important thing to work on is helpful. It’s kind of like this, you know, savant type tutor that can help a kid in the moment with anything, but kind of loses the picture of like what’s the most important thing to do. So you kind of have to bring it back.And I think the knowledge is the way to do that.Diane TavennerJohn, how does this connect with, I know you’re very committed to project-based learning and sort of that approach, which you know that I am as well. And, you know, it sounds a little bit like what you’re describing. You know, at Summit Learning, we have the playlists where you were doing the content knowledge. What you’re describing, I think, is a stronger version of that and what AI can do. How are you connecting it to the projects? What’s the intersection there? What’s going on there? And are you using AI in the projects?John DannerYeah, the answer to the second is definitely yes. And let’s talk about that in a second. So we have a theory as a, as a school system, that’s probably the opposite, at least the opposite of like my alma mater. I’ve been talking to Bellarmine. It’s my alma mater in San Jose, talking to teachers about that. And, you know, AI is a problem for a lot of schools and teachers, right? Like it’s the cheating and stuff like that. We have basically the opposite approach, which is like, assume any kid can use anything that will help them read, write, understand, research better, and then like uplevel what you’re teaching so that you assume that yes, everybody’s writing is going to be perfect now. Don’t worry about that.That’s not your job anymore. So with projects, you know, the link really is when you’re in a project, you’re trying to apply knowledge to build something to do something. And it’s extremely common to not understand something well enough to do that well. And so you need to go off and kind of research and understand it. So the link that will exist that doesn’t exist yet, which I’d like to see, is foundations lives in its own block right now at Flourish, but we’d like foundations to be accessible kind of basically all the time for students so that that’s the main way that you research as well through kind of an AI interface. So that’s the ideal. Right now what happens is that a student kind of struggles, they go off and use Gemini or something for things. And then we know, you know, the AI knows because it’s paying attention to the project and what’s going on.‘Oh, this student struggled with this,’ and then in Foundation that kind of bubbles to the top the next day. But like, why wait? Like, just make it real time. If a student’s struggling with something, just go ahead and do it. We do have to figure out kind of the, you know, the tier 1 versus tier 2 of this. Like, if a student’s really struggling and they’ve got a real issue and you just wipe out project time doing that, that doesn’t feel right either. So we’re gonna have to figure out like what level of intervention happens if, you know, they’re still not getting it. But certainly at least the tier 1, like, oh, I just don’t know about this, let’s learn more, should happen through that Foundation system, we think.Diane TavennerThat makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Tell me about what the educator is doing in these times.John DannerYeah, I mean, I think that’s the most important thing really is And I know for many, many teachers, the concern is, gosh, well, maybe you just don’t need me anymore or something. And that’s just completely not true. I mean, I noticed this at Rocketship, you know, people go into teaching because they love kids. That’s like, you know, that’s the common thing that you always hear. Some people go into teaching because they want to be content experts, but not that many, at least at kind of elementary and middle, like, it’s still really driven by like, I really wanna connect with kids and be with kids, not like I wanna be the best reading teacher or whatever. And so, you know, when you kind of push a lot of this like content knowledge and instruction to AI, what really happens is a little bit of like what I was describing with tier 2 and tier 3 during that time where a teacher now has a lot of time. So, you know, a lot of the stuff is going on. Project-based learning is nice that way.Building Teacher-Student ConnectionsJohn DannerKids are working on things, which feels kind of like a big Montessori classroom or whatever, where like everybody’s being industrious and getting things done. But like, you know, the question is always, okay, so like what’s the best and highest use for the teacher at that point? So I think, you know, our opinion in general is kind of building trusted relationships is the most important thing you can do as a teacher, right? Like anytime you think about teachers that affected you, it’s because for whatever reason they spent the extra time to kind of get to know you, understand what you were going through, and like became kind of a trusted friend and advisor. And I think buying time back to allow teachers to do more of that is by far the highest value. Of course, interventions and things like that are awesome. Having students reach to do higher-order thinking once they’ve finished a project, all that’s great, but I think it’s all in kind of service of making that connection between our teacher and our students such that the student is more excited and interested to, you know, learn and think with that teacher about other things, you know, especially with superpowers and passions and things like that. Like, we have it, I’ll just brief aside, you know, we have these report cards that have superpowers on them. And so they say things like, you know, organization or self-awareness or whatever. So you can imagine our parent-teacher conferences are pretty amazing because while a parent is like, yeah, I don’t really know much about middle school math and frankly don’t care that much.Boy, when you bring up self-awareness or something like that, they can go on for a long time. And so you have these really deep discussions about these kinds of things and kids by middle school, certainly in high school, they’re not really listening to their parents about these things very much. They’re kind of sick of hearing this. So I really do think schools have a way better chance of kind of influencing how children are doing these things, especially around superpowers and passions. But that requires trust and trust, you know, it’s hard to build. So we think that the best thing for teachers to be doing is kind of like getting into deeper conversations with students and talking to them about like, you know, what their interests are, what they like. And building that in the hope that they have influence over that student’s trajectory.Michael HornWell, so, John, I think this actually is perfect translation into the other thing that AI is doing to free up teacher time for that, which is, as I understand it, at least from, from what you’ve written, is that you have this AI coach that is quite involved in the project-based learning piece of this equation. And I think two distinct ways. So, maybe talk about that.John DannerYeah, I mean, again, work in progress, so I’m not super happy with how it’s being involved right now, but I’ll tell you what I want it to be doing well. So I think that, you know, and Diane, you live this, that the real challenge with project-based learning is there’s kind of like this huge amount of really mechanical stuff that happens in project-based learning, whereas students are confused about what they’re doing, or they’re tired and not motivated, or whatever, and you watch project-based classrooms and like actually like 80% of the teacher time is like walking around doing that stuff where they’re like, come on, Joey, let’s get going, you know, blah, blah, blah. Which of course there will still be some of that, but to what extent can you create a really awesome thought partner that kind of does a lot of those things? Like, hey, Joey, you know, what we need to focus on here is this. Have you thought about, like, you know, kind of re-engaging the way a good teacher does. Because if you can free them of a bunch of that kind of, you know, really mechanical time, I think not only does it free time, it also like kind of frees your mind up as a teacher to kind of think deeper and like look for relationships and, you know, these kind of things that we really want teachers to do. So I think that’s a big piece of what we’re hoping that this coach does. The other thing it really does for us, and you asked about this before as well, Diane, is it listens. So we’ve got mics all over the place, students are talking, it’s all anonymized, but basically the system knows what bucket to throw all the comments that students are making, etc.This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education. Because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learners Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.Teaching Soft SkillsJohn DannerAnd when you think about like superpowers, these soft skills. One of the other difficult things in that kind of curriculum and approach is like, and you see it in kind of SEL-type schools all the time, it kind of devolves into like playtime sometimes where it’s not as rigorous. And what AI can really do there is by looking for evidence of, you know, perseverance, for example, when did the student show that they didn’t just stop, they kind of asked the next question and kept going? Like when the AI can provide those examples in each student’s kind of superpowers report card of those things and the teacher can review it, that is so helpful because, you know, when it comes to like pushing for students to improve in these areas. Teachers really have to know, like, kind of where everybody is, where is John on these different skills, where should I focus. And so helping to provide data so that teachers can do that is, is really, really important. I would say it’s pretty good. Like, here’s one thing that kind of surprised me, we did this like a month and a half ago, the AI assessing these, we have 24 of these superpowers across all the students in the school. And we did the AI-rated students on a scale of 1 to 5, and then 3 teachers rated those same students.And it was only off from kind of the lead teacher by about 10%. So like you know, that to me, that’s like, it’s close enough. It’s kind of like stuff where it’s like, you’re probably right, like a super expert teacher can absolutely do a little bit better. But like, we kind of want to get it to the point where the teacher’s like, yeah, you know, I pretty much trust this. I’ll look at the evidence, but more or less, it says that, okay, like, what should I do about that?Diane TavennerAnd John, that assessment from the AI was just sort of that natural capture of all they’re doing and assessing based on, yeah, to me, like, then assessment is a no-brainer. That should, I think it’s a conflict of interest for teachers to be assessing, quite frankly, but that’s another conversation. But,.John DannerI mean, the other point here, right, is that when you do assessment that way, I think it’s both more valid and stops taking classroom time, right? It just happens naturally. And that’s how it happens in the real world too. It’s not like you sit down and.Michael HornYou go, right, we don’t stop and say, now here’s your time.John DannerYou don’t give somebody a 5-question assessment. 6 months or so. It’s crazy.Diane TavennerYeah, yeah. So, can I just play back to you what I think you’re just, saying, just to make sure I’m getting a real picture of what’s happening or what you are moving towards happening? And you’ve only been at it for 6 months, but you’re making pretty quick progress, it sounds like. So this, like, if I’m a student in my project time, and we all know this happens a lot, there’s some kids who, like, literally, you know, the teacher’s bumblebeeing around, and every time the teacher bumblebees around, maybe I’m productive for that moment, but then the teacher bumblebees away, and then I’m kind of playing or I’m whatever. But AI knows what I’m doing in those in-between times, and so I’m getting some sort of feed or feedback of some sort, and the teacher’s seeing it, my family’s maybe seeing it, of like, hey, this is what’s going on in your time, and so we’re going to hold the mirror up, give you some feedback, tell you like, this is the stuff you could be doing to be more productive. Is that kind of what you’re describing? And If so,John DannerYeah, we’re all going to have that. So this is another thing, like one of the things we think about a lot at Flourish is like, is this different than the real world’s going to be or the same? And I think we all basically need that. Like, you know, if you had a voice that was kind of going like, John, what are you doing? You’ve been doom scrolling. You know, like it’d be pretty helpful, really.Diane TavennerWell, one of the big conversations is about motivation, right? And like, oh, you can’t, you have to like motivate kids to use the technology to learn. But actually, I think you’re flipping the script here and saying like, no, the technology is like literally helping, young people be motivated because someone’s paying attention and they’re noticing what they’re doing and they’re giving them feedback on it. And you know,Feedback and Rewards Drive SuccessJohn DannerThe feedback thing is the important thing. It’s like basically if something’s giving you feedback, like even if the feedback’s not perfect, it’s so much better than not getting feedback. You know, like the classroom where everybody’s got their hand up and they’re just waiting for the teacher to call. Like that’s a bad place to be. So now you’ve basically got this continuous loop. The other thing I would say that I think is just almost for free in this world is, you know, the gaming world has figured out a lot of things that they do when you’re doing a pretty basic task to play the game, and you might not be that excited about it, but like, you know, they’re setting up rewards. We use badges, um, you know, so like an example is you might do 2 or 3 different projects, and by doing those 2 or 3 different projects that was built up to a badge. And so the badge is kind of hanging out there and some other student in the class got it.And so you want it and things like that. And, and those like really kind of basic game things are very helpful at different times during the day, right? Like we kind of all need a little bit of push. We’re very conscious of intrinsic versus extrinsic. motivation. And so like projects are a good example where the default is intrinsic. We want students to be kind of working on that project because they’re interested in that, because they want to do it. But there are definitely times where the AI is paying attention and kind of prompting and even, you know, doing some rewarding and things like that is actually quite helpful for them to kind of persevere.Diane TavennerJohn, I want to talk to you about, I think you’re the perfect person to talk to about this. So one of the things I hear out there a lot is like, oh, the hyperscalers are just going to build this. Like, number one. Number two, most schools and school systems have zero ability to actually build what you’re building. So you’re sort of this unique person because you sit at the intersection of like opening, operating schools and the ability to build sophisticated technology. Is that, are the hyperscalers going to build what you’re building? Like, are you, like, how do you think about the building of the technology here for schools?John DannerYeah, I mean, we’d be pretty happy if the hyperscalers built it, first of all. We’re, you know, so I think that the main challenge over the next 20 years in education is going to be how quickly do we move to a world where students are living in the current world as opposed to the, you know, 20 years ago or whatever. Like, and, and so these basic things we’re doing like foundations, I think it’s important for students to live in that world now. And so what does it take school systems to move towards that world? I know that your approach at Summit, our approach at Rocketship in the beginnings of the edtech world were, hey, let’s just build these kind of basic model schools and hopefully people will come visit and go, oh gosh, you know, that doesn’t look too bad. Like I could probably do that as well. So I think a lot of the point of Flourish is creating this proof point where people can come and see and go, huh, that, that actually works well, and it’s definitely not dehumanizing. I see the teacher interactions with the students as being more human, um, than my classroom. So I think that’s like actually our point, our reason for being is to kind of be that model.And, you know, we’ll build a network and we’ll get as big as we can, but, but really kind of purposefully influencing school leaders, district leaders, state leaders to think about, like, you know, what they could do as well. On the technology side, I’m generally of the opinion that a lot of this will get easier and easier for everybody who’s not at the foundation level over time. I will say, like, there are some exceptions to that. So, like, with Project Read, with phonemes and graphemes. When you’re doing kind of deeper reading stuff, they may get there. I mean, the AIs may know everything at some point, but like there’s not a super strong reason for them to get there earlier. So there are pockets like that that probably will be specialized for longer. But, you know, as a school, it’s just better for us the faster all of that becomes a commodity.And the more we can just, you know, get off-the-shelf stuff, like there’s no real joy in building all of this stuff. And for the change to happen, we don’t want people to have to think about all this stuff, really.Diane TavennerNo, I have to ask about scale because your point that the faster we can get kids to be living in today’s world versus the old world suggests that we need to scale as quickly as possible for that to happen, to get as many kids there. You and I both bear a lot of scars around different efforts to scale both mortar schools and influence type things. This time you’ve gone with a microschool network. What’s your, you had grand ambitions with Rocketship and clearly Rocketship’s great and Preston’s done an amazing job since you left, but it never reached sort of the scale that I think you originally hoped. What is your thinking now? Why microschools?John DannerYeah, I mean, you know, putting it like just putting it bluntly, I think politics killed charter schools more or less. Like, you know, you look at most high-performing charter schools, they tend to look more and more like the districts that host them. You know, they actually, like, I look at RocketShips around the country. They actually look as much like the district they’re hosted by as they look like RocketShips sometimes. You know, it’s like, ‘cause you know, your authorizer authorizes you and they have a lot of influence. So it was kind of like this cool experiment that at the beginning probably created a lot of innovation and then over time kind of has this like bringing it back to the, you know, kind of what the districts are doing. I think that microschools, certainly microschools, are starting in a very different place, you know, where the way I think about charters is the compromise happened right at the beginning. Where we would like to receive public funding and for that we will like to fit into the system.Whereas the microschool movement kind of started with a different point where the stronger position was taken early on when the laws were formed that like these things are independent. They’re way more like private schools than they are like district schools. And of course, there will be some influence from states and others on that, but nowhere near like, you know, what we saw in the charter world where it was like, you know, I remember the story I always tell is Rocketship had specialized teachers for math and reading in elementary school, which was not normal at all. And I was just tortured for years by districts over this. You know, the main thing was like, no, it’s, you know, a student needs one trusted adult, you know, when they’re that age. And if they have two, it’s going to like, you know, all fall apart, which was, of course, total bogusness. But I had to go through that anyway. Like, you know, that was just time of my life spent arguing something silly.Whereas with microschools, you just don’t have to argue that. So I think the big question is, what will be the ultimate, like, kind of political destiny of microschools? Will they get capped in the way that charters did? Will they somehow kind of get influenced in a way they aren’t now? Right now they’re pretty great. I mean, you know, you basically build a school that parents and students love and, and you build the curriculum and the program you want. That’s nice. Something you would have enjoyed, Diane.Reimagining Teachers’ RolesDiane TavennerYeah, no, I mean, it’s tempting. I will say Michael’s always so kind because when we start talking schools, I just take over. So he’s being so patient. The thing that’s coming to me, and maybe this will lead us to wrap up, is, you know, you and I both taught, and were passionate about teaching. And as you start talking about politics, one of the sort of sad elements of that politics to me is I think teachers get involved in kind of, or, you know, blocking some of these changes, a lot out of fear, a lot of out of like but my identity is teaching a classroom of students and writing great curriculum and like doing all, you know, being a hero. And I think what you’re offering is a new identity for a teacher that might actually be more aligned with why they got into it in the beginning, which is instead of judging myself by the quality of my classroom instruction, I’m like literally focused on every single kid learning and growing and, you know, in your words, flourishing, right? It’s such a profoundJohn DannerIn general, I think that professions that go in the direction of being more human, where the human elements are like the differentiator, they’re going to do so much better. So I, you know, wrote a piece on this. I just think, you know, while most parents would not have counseled their kids to become teachers in the last 20 years, I think that conversation is likely to change because I think it’s going to be both a more enjoyable job and probably more resilient to kind of the whole AI apocalypse than most jobs.Michael HornAgreed.John DannerYeah.Michael HornI think that is a good place to part us. But John, I feel like we have like 10 other questions like sitting in our dock that we could have dug in with you. But let’s pivot. This is fascinating. It’s really cool to see what you’re building and hear both the frustrations, but also frankly, the North Star for where it’s going. And one day maybe Massachusetts will have you here. But I’ll pray for now. But let’s pivot.We have this section that we always talk about things we’re reading, watching, listening to. We try to do outside of work. People track us on this stuff. Diane and I occasionally fail. I’m going to fail today. So you can go wherever you want.John DannerSo, yeah. I’m rereading the Culture series, Iain Banks, right now. So my brother works for Tesla and Tesla just, as you probably heard, kind of made this transition where they knocked off the Model S and Model X and are building robots. So he’s building robots right now. So that makes it much more personal to me that like the future is coming soon, and so, you know, I’ve always been a science fiction reader, but, but I think one of the cheat codes in Silicon Valley is like the amount of science fiction consumed equals your ability to be comfortable with like what’s coming. So yeah, culture series.Michael HornGood rec, good rec.Diane, what’s on your list? You said you’re cheating.Diane TavennerSo, I’m cheating, I’m failing today. Sorry. Ted Dintersmith has his latest book out and sent it along. I couldn’t resist. The title is very provocative. It’s called Aftermath: The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won’t Teach You. And, you know, this is really, you know, for those who don’t remember, Ted, like, goes hard on the things we’re doing wrong and really tries to bring public awareness to them. And, I think lots of us have been concerned about how math is taught and not taught and whatnot for a long time.So, that’s what this one’s about.Michael HornI have an email from him in my inbox to send him my address, so I will do it after this conversation, uh, so he could send it to me as well. But, I’m also cheating. I’ve been really interested in, not just how schools start doing new things, but how do they stop doing old things? Like, they are just really bad. And it’s not just schools, by the way. Like, all organizations are really bad at deimplementing or pruning, like, old things that don’t make sense anymore, whether they’re bad habits or frankly habits that just aren’t fit for the current age. So I’ve started, like, trying to read some of the academic literature and just learn about that. And there’s a book, Making Room for Impact: A Deimplementation Guide for Educators, by Aaron Hamilton, John Hattie, and Dylan William. And so I’m just cresting the end of that book right now, and, and then looking at all the healthcare studies that they’re citing.And I haven’t decided if I’m going to read those, but that’s where I am right now.Diane TavennerSo is it a recommend, Michael, or no?Michael HornI mean, it’s, it’s like a, it’s a deep workbook, right, on the topic, um, is what I would say. So like, if you’re a school and you’re trying to work through this, definitely dive into it. I was more interested in like, who’s, who’s thought about, like, how do you de-implement? How do you prune, right? And because there’s just not a lot of conversation except for educators griping about it. And so I wanted to learn more and it was a good starting point. So huge thanks, John, again for joining us. We appreciate it. Really check out his Substack as well if you want to just sort of follow along on the journey, I guess is what I would say. And we’ll watch as Flourish opens two more in Arizona in August and keep up the good work.We appreciate you. And for all of our listeners, keep the emails, notes coming. We love it. We learn a lot from it as well, and it inspires us on our future topics. And so, as always, thanks for joining us on Class Disrupted. We’ll see you next time.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

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 HornWelcome 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 GodfreyYes, thanks for having us on. We’re excited for the conversation.Julia GustafsonThanks, Michael.Michael HornI’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 SchoolsShannon GodfreyYeah, 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 TechnologyMichael HornWell, 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 GustafsonYeah, 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 HornThat’s just pent up over the course of the day.Julia GustafsonYup. 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 HornSuper 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 GodfreyYeah, 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 GodfreyBut 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 ToolsMichael HornGotcha. 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 GustafsonYeah. 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 HornNot the great outcome of the study.Julia GustafsonBut 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 HornSo 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 GustafsonYeah, 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 HornGotcha. 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 GodfreyYeah, 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 ChoiceMichael HornIt 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 GustafsonYeah, 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 HabitsMichael HornI’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 GodfreyYeah. 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 HornAnd 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 DistractionMichael HornMaybe 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 GodfreyIt’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 GustafsonI 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 HornThat’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 GodfreyThank 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.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. 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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 CurtisWelcome 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 FrancisWell, thank you, thank you for having me and I’m really happy to be in conversation with you today.Danny CurtisAwesome. 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 LeadershipAisha FrancisWell, 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 CurtisSounds 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 TechAisha FrancisWell, 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 CurtisVery 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 FrancisIt 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 CurtisWow. 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 FrancisSo 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 CurtisAwesome. 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-OpsAisha FrancisYes. 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 CurtisYeah, 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 FrancisAbsolutely. 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 CurtisLove 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 OpportunitiesAisha FrancisYes, 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 OpportunitiesDanny CurtisYeah, 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 FrancisYes, 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 GrowthDanny CurtisYeah, 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 FrancisYes, 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-OpsDanny CurtisYeah, 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 FrancisWell, 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 FrancisSo 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 CurtisWell, 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 FrancisOh, 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 CurtisAnd it seems like they have a lot to learn from you guys. So really appreciate that openness and all your sharing.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Tom Arnett, researcher at the Christensen Institute who studies how new school models scale. Tyler Thigpen, CEO of the Forest School at Acton Academy who runs learner-centered K–12 programs. They explore whether traditions like Friday Night Lights, dances, and rituals matter for teen identity and belonging. They discuss student-led sports, theater, rites of passage, badges, and how networks or new supports could help microschools scale.

Many in education—and many beyond—are talking about Alpha School right now. Alpha has been featured in dozens of articles in the mainstream and education media outlets. Its leadership has appeared on countless podcasts to explain and dissect its school model and explore the bigger opportunity to rethink schooling.On this episode of Class Disrupted, Mackenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School, joined me and Diane not to explain Alpha School’s model, but instead to dive deep into how Alpha School is leveraging AI to radically rethink the school experience (Mackenzie has joined me in conversation before; you can check it out here if you’re curious). The intent behind this conversation is more on how AI itself is being leveraged at Alpha—from the core academic block to the afternoon spent in real-world projects and life skills development. What’s possible now in school design that wasn’t possible a decade earlier thanks to AI?Chris HeinSo when the school shut down and went to remote learning, we were really fascinated by how quickly our kids adjusted to e-learning and how hard of a time the teachers seem to have with just the basic tools and systems and then how to translate their curriculum to a digital format. But the thing that really jumped at me was my wife and I were having conversations with our kids every day saying, hey, what are you doing?Why are you guys playing video games? Or why you, like, want to go outside and play? It’s midway through the day and they’re like, we’ve already done our work. And we were like, that can’t be right. And so we double checked their assignments and their tests and where they’re at. And it was like, no, they got all their work done in a couple hours. And then it really made Teresa and I question, why does it take them eight hours a day at school if the school is teaching them the same content and administering the same number of tests and they’re able to get through it in a few hours?Michael HornThat was June 2020, and Diane and I were broadcasting during the height of the pandemic, and we were hoping that parents would realize that schools could be rethought dramatically, including by helping people realize that what we tend to think of as, quote, the academics could be done in much, much less time than the six plus hours that kids spend in traditional schools. Five years later, and thanks to a startup school network, Alpha School, the two hour message finally seems to be spreading like wildfire. So with that as a prelude, Diane, first, it is great to see you as always.Diane TavennerIt’s good to see you too, Michael. I’m a little disoriented by us changing up our normal intro, but. But in a good way, change is always good. That take from season one is honestly priceless. It’s taken us a bit longer than we had hoped, but we do seem to be getting some momentum towards some of the big opportunities that we saw in education back then and still are hopeful for now.Michael HornYeah, no, I think that’s right. And I’m glad you’re accommodating my whims on changing the format up on you today. But I am particularly excited because we have on our show today MacKenzie Price. She’s of course one of the co-founders of Alpha School, and MacKenzie’s been on my Future of Education podcast and substack before and we actually both have sub stacks named the Future of Education. We independently name them, so we’re vibing already. But MacKenzie, it’s great to see you again, welcome.Scaling Education with TechnologyMacKenzie PriceWell, thanks for having me. And, you know, it’s so interesting that you tell that story about the way, you know, education was done during COVID And we were pretty lucky because we’d started Alpha school back in 2014. So when the pandemic hit, you know, it happened to be during spring break. So the kids who hadn’t brought their laptops home came and picked them up at school. And we really had a very smooth rest of the school year because the kids already were doing their learning on the computers. And then we just said, you know, afternoons, we’ll just, we’ll, we’ll call it, you know, do whatever you want at home. But what’s interesting is a couple years ago or in 2022, when we really launched our learning platform with the advent of generative AI, we realized, okay, we can actually scale this. We can go beyond just, you know, a local school that’s doing a reasonable job of educating kids, and we can, we can scale it bigger.And we were originally talking about the idea of 2x learning. You know, you can learn twice as much, you can learn twice as much. And even our own families were like, we don’t, we don’t care. Like, why does my kid need to learn twice as much? It’s not a big deal. And we, we’d have like, parent conferences where we’d be saying, hey, if, if your son, you know, hits his, his goals, he can be learning twice as much. And they didn’t care. And then we had this unlock idea of let’s call it two hour learning and say, hey, if your son hits his goals, he can be out of here in two hours and freed up to go do the rest of the things, you know, that he wants to do during the day. And suddenly the parents are like, Johnny, come on, get with it.Let’s hit our goals. And it was that mind shift of, you know, let’s get your academics done in two hours. And as a side note, you’ll learn twice as much, but let’s do that for two hours. And then one of the code names we actually had for our learning platform was Time Back. And we went through a whole process in the last year trying to make sure, what’s our new name going to be? What are we going to call this? And ultimately we landed back on exactly what it is that we’re giving kids, which is Time Back to go do all these other exciting, interesting things during the rest of the day. Because it doesn’t take all day to educate kids. You can not just do academics, but crush academics in a much shorter period of time when you’ve got this personalized, mastery-based tutoring.Transforming Education ModelsMichael HornWell, and I think you’re speaking to, like, there’s many reasons why Alpha has done what many education startups struggle with, which is jumping into the mainstream narrative. And that sense of giving kids back their most precious resource, time is clearly part of it. AI is another part of it. And that’s where we want to dig in with you today, just given the focus of the podcast that we’ve had here. But let me perhaps frame it this way. We now have two school founders on this show, you and Diane, who have each created models that at one level I think look awfully similar in certain respects. If you mix in, say, Rocketship Education or something like that, which was founded in 2006 and is an elementary school model.We can take that and Summit Public Schools that Diane founded and Rocketship and say, hey, a lot of the structures that Alpha Schools has at one level, like a relatively limited block of time on learning academics and content in ways that are personalized for the learners, large blocks of time for projects, a big focus on skill development and habits of success or life skills like growth, mindset, agency, and so forth, those are things that were present in models like that. But then we come to at least one big difference, which is, yes, Alpha was originally designed, as you said, right before the mainstream use of AI, just like Summit and Rocketship were. But Alpha is now aggressively developing AI powered dashboards, AI powered learning applications, AI powered knowledge interest, working memory graphs for students. And so, given our focus on the podcast in this particular season around AI, I just love to dive into the AI parts of the model with you. Even as we’ll say up front, like AI is clearly inextricably linked to the other elements of the overall Alpha model. Pulling them apart is not fair to you all. But just given that we’ve heard so many podcasts with you about Alpha, and we suspect most of our particular listeners have as well, I think digging into that AI question in particular, and this is maybe the framing we can bring to it, which is, what does AI allow us to do today? That was not possible in the best of the personalized models from a decade or two earlier.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.MacKenzie PriceYeah, I think that’s a great way to frame it, because artificial intelligence in the learning science world now is what I believe is like the microscope to biology. It is the tool that is finally enabling us to integrate all of these learning science principles that have been known for many, many years can result in kids learning 2, 5, 10 times faster. It just was never possible to incorporate in obviously in a teacher in front of the classroom model, but even more importantly, even in an individualized adaptive app type setting. And so to give context to that, you know, when we first started our school back in 2014, we knew that we could use apps. So we were using things like Dreambox and Khan Academy and Freckle and Grammarly and Egump, a lot of the apps that were kind of out there. The difference was it was still hard to manage the way that kids worked through the apps. And so one of the things we found is that there’s a lot of what we call anti-patterns that kids will do when they’re using apps. It could be things like topic shopping.You know, they jump in and say, hey, I’m going to go to, you know, I’m a fourth grader, but I’m going to try some fifth grade material just because it’s kind of interesting. Oops, it got hard. I’m going to back out of that. I’m going to jump into some third grade material or I’m going to kind of mess around on this or even more just not engaging with the apps. You know, you could have everything from a kid not even sitting in front of his computer or picking his nose or, you know, just rushing through the explanation and not reading it. And that’s where a lot of the big difference is. One thing to kind of just be clear about, we do not use a chatbot in our education platform. Chatbots in education are cheatbots.And it was interesting. I actually had a big event last week in Austin. The National Governors Association came and toured and we’re learning all about our schools. And I made that comment, you know, we do not use chat bots. They’re cheat bots. 90% of kids are going to use them to cheat. And a couple hours later, there was another vendor who’s basically built a chatbot for education that was like, well, you know, I put him in a, put him in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation. But I think that’s really important to know.And one of the things I really don’t want to see in our education system is we slap a GPT on every kid’s computer and suddenly say we’re an AI first classroom. Right? And I was actually talking to a Stanford professor a few weeks ago who said, you know, here’s the problem that we’re seeing. Educators are using, you know, chat features, ChatGPT to create lesson plans, you know, and do these things. Kids are using ChatGPTs to write their stuff. Professors or teachers are using ChatGPTs to grade it. And so basically the AI is just talking to each other. Right. And we’ve taken the human out of it and that is totally not what we’re doing.So there’s kind of two features that I can go into around how we’re using AI in our model.Diane TavennerYeah, let’s take this piece by piece. MacKenzie, that will be that context is super helpful. Let’s start in the morning block where you’ve already gone a little bit with some of the apps and whatnot. You all roughly have about three hours where students are doing sort of two hours of head down learning that quote academics my language for that is content knowledge. So forgive me if I slip up and use different lingo. And as I understand it, and as you were just sharing, you’re using these apps or adaptive learning products and you named several for us there. But there are some places where you are using apps that, as we understand it, you’ve built for yourself. And this tracks with my summit experience.Our first choice was always to buy quality products. Second choice was to partner with startups or companies that wanted to work with power users. And last choice was to build our own when it didn’t exist. So I’d love to unpack. Where is it that you’ve determined there wasn’t something good enough and that you have literally built your own application and are using it right now? And are those AI native applications?AI-Powered Personalized Learning SystemsMacKenzie PriceSo we’ve definitely had a number of years to test out a lot of different apps, see what worked well, what didn’t work, where there are gaps. And what I would say is we’ve curated over this period of time which apps are best for which grade levels in which subjects. Not all apps are created equal, but to kind of start at the very beginning where we’re using AI, we are using AI to be able to assess what a student knows and what they don’t know. So any student who comes into our Alpha school to start takes an NWEA math assessment. We also do math assessments three times a year for all students and that’s how we’re measuring growth. But what we do is we take the information that comes through that assessment as well as some other initial assessments that we’re able to do with students. And from there we have AI tools that will basically build out the personalized lesson plans that say, all right, here’s where a kid needs to go, here’s how we whole fill, which of course is a very common issue. Even our students who come into us with, you know, A’s on their transcripts, you know, can be three years behind in academic content.Right. Actually we found out students who came in to us this year from other schools, if they had a B on their transcript, they were between three years behind and seven years behind. Which actually shows, you know, grades mean nothing anymore in this day and age. So we take the assessment and we have an AI tool that basically builds that out. So what does that look like?Diane TavennerAnd that’s a tool you all have built internally, is that Time Back?MacKenzie PriceThat’s a tool that we built out. We have built that tool out and that is using standardized third party assessments like Max.Diane TavennerYeah, the results. And you’re ingesting the results on that.MacKenzie PriceExactly. So they build that. So the experience for a student, a student sits down in the morning during their core block of academics and they will log into a dashboard. We have a time back dashboard that a student logs into and says, okay, it’s time to do math. Now in some of our classrooms, kids get a choice of what subject they want to take on first. Other of our classrooms, you know, we have a set thing. Okay, we’re doing math first, then we do reading, you know, then we do language.Diane TavennerAnd is that based on age?MacKenzie PriceDepends on the age. Yeah. And, and so it’s, it’s always interesting. You know, what we’re really working on creating is self driven learners who understand their skill of learning to learn. So like if you talk to some of our fourth and fifth graders, you’ll hear some of them say, hey, I usually will choose to take on my hardest subject first when I’m fresh and I’m ready. Right in our kindergarten and first grade classrooms, you know, that’s more, okay, it’s math time, it’s reading time, you know, and it’s kind of subscribed there. But basically what will happen is a student will go into the dashboard, click on the subject that they are going to take on. So that’s math as an example.And then the dashboard takes them to the app that has been determined is the one that is right for them and what they’re doing. Now when I say right for them, we also as a school have kind of used certain things. For example, Math Academy is a third party app that we love. We think Math Academy is amazing. They’ve been fantastic partners to work with and it works really great for basically third through high school. We were Using another app for our younger students, earlier this fall, we were using Synthesis, which, you know, that’s a sexy app that, you know, parents kind of like, because kids are doing interesting things. We were seeing, though, like, I don’t know if we’re getting the results we want.So we’ve made changes, you know, to that, but they’ll go to the level that they need. So you’ve got a fifth grader who maybe needs to go back and revisit concepts from third grade. You know, they have to hit this fast math, you know, concept, or they’re looking at these fractions or whatever it is. So it takes them to that lesson and they’re doing that. So that’s the first use of AI that we have. Now the second use that we use is the vision model. So what’s happening is we’re using an AI tool that we have built that tracks the screen and is actually watching to understand how is a student moving through this material.So, for example, when they are doing reading comprehension, are they rushing through the article? Are they just scrolling to the bottom of the screen and randomly guessing, or are they taking the time? And of course, you can tell this is a reading article that normally would take, you know, 69 seconds to read. And this kid just answered it within 10 seconds. Okay, now we’re realizing we’re. We have an anti pattern, which is basically an improper use of engaging with the apps. So we’re looking at that in terms of the vision model to see how kids are learning. When they get a question wrong, are they watching the video? Are they, you know, taking time to read the explanation? And then our AI tutor creates coaching for that student.So it’ll say, hey, buddy, we’re realizing that, you know, you’re not reading the explanation when you get a question wrong. If you take this time to go forward, here’s what it would do. And so we’re basically giving coaching. Now. The other thing is, in our schools, we also have our cameras turned on and they are recording the students. So they’re seeing if you know, the…Monitoring and Progress TrackingMacKenzie PriceIf the computer has been, you know, quiet for a minute and a half, is it because the student’s not even in front of their computer, or is it because they’re goofing around with their buddy next to them, what is it that they’re doing? And so it’s able to do that. Now our families have the ability to turn that feature off at home if their students are using that feature at home or if they’re working at home, they can turn that off. But in our schools, we do require that that be turned on. And so we’re able to kind of look at the coaching. Now students will basically walk through each of their core subjects, generally in about 25 minute Pomodoro sessions, and then they’re done with their academics in that two hours. The other feature that we’re using with our AI tool is we can really well analyze and understand how a kid is progressing through the material. You know, what percentage completion are they on each of the different apps, you know, and grade level subjects, things like that.How many minutes do we anticipate? How many weeks will it take before they’re finished with, you know, fifth grade math? If they put an hour of homework in a night, here’s how much shorter that will take. And one of the things that people love about that, not only do our students get to really see and understand, they have a sense of ownership over their academic journey. But of course, parents can log in, you know, every day if they want to, to be able to see what is my kid working on. What, you know, did he hit his goals? And then what. What we’re also tracking in the way that goal setting works is students are getting experience points, xp, to borrow, you know, a term from video gaming. And so the goal is that they get 120xps per day, which is 120 minutes of focused work. That’s one XP is equal to one minute of focus work.And so that’s what we’re working on. And then when you ask about the apps that we’re using, we have built Alpha Math, Alpha Read and Alpha Write are some of the apps that we’ve incorporated into our model. And then we’ve got some other things that, you know, that we’re continuing to roll out. One that’s actually available to the public for free is an app that we’ve built that helps encourage the love of reading, which of course is a difference between learning to read and learning to love to read. And that’s called teachtales.com and you can go to teachtales.com and basically it’s using AI to generate personalized reading material based on a student’s interests that then delivers at the appropriate Lexile level for them.Diane TavennerAwesome. There was a lot in there. So let’s.MacKenzie PriceThere was a lot. I need to work on more short sound bites. Well, I hope that doesn’t get worse as I get older.Diane TavennerWe all have things we need to work on, right? Let’s stick with those three apps that you’ve developed. So Alpha Math, read and write. Are you using those across all of your grade levels? And are they AI, are they adapt, are they AI native, are they adaptive? What’s going on with those apps?MacKenzie PriceSo the Alpha Write is something that we’ve been really excited about and we break this down just to have an idea of how the app works. We break this down with the idea of can you write a grammatically correct sentence, you know, then building onto paragraphs, then building on to essays and working through. And I will tell you, I mean, we had a lot of students, again, A students from their previous schools that come into Alpha. We had high school students who couldn’t write third grade level sentences, like, it’s just crazy how poorly this is going.Diane TavennerYeah, that’s one of the questions I think that comes up is where writing is situated in the model. So it sounds like you’ve got writing in the morning block as sort of a standalone kind of just expository approach to writing.MacKenzie PriceWe do have writing in the morning block now. Our students are also doing a lot of writing in the afternoon. So, you know, for example, they’re writing, you know, talks that they’re going to give for TED talks, they’re writing essays, they’re writing book reflections that are part of our afternoon block, which is our check chart time. So it is a common fallacy that people have of, oh, these students aren’t actually doing a lot of writing. They’re absolutely getting, they get a lot of writing in. But we’re really breaking this down into everything we’re kind of thinking about is what actually works when it comes to educating students. And where have we been doing it wrong? And that’s where I think it’s so exciting to see all these learning science principles that can come up. And you know, for example, here’s another thing that we do during these, the, the core block period.This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education. Because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learners Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.Optimizing LearningMacKenzie PriceWe’re, we’re measuring what percentage accuracy students are at to understand are they in the zone of proximal development. Right. If they’re getting more than 85% of the questions right, you know, then that’s a sign that they’re, they’re in too easy material. If, you know, they’re under 70, it’s a sign this is too hard. How do you make sure that they’re staying in the right spot? And so that’s the other part that the AI tool will kind of say, whoa, hold on here. We’re noticing that there’s something changing or that a student’s not being hit at that right level. The other thing that’s going to come in to play is we’re also going to be able to really take a lot of things around cognitive load theory principles and understand, okay, if a student only needs 5 reps of a concept in order to master that concept, they shouldn’t have to sit around and do 10 reps. And if the student needs 15, they shouldn’t only get 10.So that’s just some ideas of some of the things that are coming in the pipeline that generative AI is going to make really available.Diane TavennerSo two things I’m trying to understand and contrast to pre AI to now that we have AI because a lot of what you’re describing sounds very much like what Summit Learning was about. You know, we built thousands of playlists and young people, they actually had a lot of choices. So we were working on self direction in, you know, they would do a pre assessment, they would know what they know, they would prepare, you know, and study and learn. And then they would take a post assessment, we would assess all the things you’re talking about. So I guess I’m wondering in these apps, is that similar or is AI actually playing a new and different role here? And then I do want to get to the sort of time back coach as well because I realize it’s connected. But, are we using AI in these apps? Are these sort of still adaptive learning apps? Are they?MacKenzie PriceYeah, the third party apps that we’re using are not using, you know, an AI feature and they’re not creating dynamic content. You know that, that is created. This is, you know, The K through 8 Common Core curriculum is what’s, what’s being fed into these apps. Where we are getting to is we are going to be moving in, in 26 to dynamically created content. Obviously there’s been a problem. There’s still hallucination issues. In fact, we have a group of high school students, kind of our, our top honors students who we are testing out dynamic content and they’re able to say, hey, guess what? The AI is acting up here. Like this is totally a wrong question on that.But right now what we’re doing is we’re going through and we’re analyzing every lesson before it’s out there. So this isn’t just like an LLM creating a fifth grade curriculum. We’re still using that. Where the AI tool is really being used is around that vision model. So that’s the biggest difference is that, and that’s part of the reason, you know, if you talk to families who went to Alpha, you know, six years ago, you’ll hear a much more varied experience. Right. We had a lot of families that my kid wasn’t learning.They were goofing around. There wasn’t this connection. Now there were a lot of reasons for that. We didn’t have the motivation model locked in. We didn’t have the high standards, just expectation. But the other big part was it’s really easy to goof around when you’re learning on these, you know, in general on these apps. And so that’s the biggest thing right now is that our AI tutor is ensuring that kids are moving efficiently at the right level and then understanding what the pace is for that and creating basically new lessons that will fill academic holes, you know, and go at their pace, is what I would say. But yeah, if you’re looking at, you know, for example, a math academy, you know, type of thing, you know, that is static content that, that kids move through and kind of work on.We used to use IXL, actually. IXL kicked us off of their platform. They don’t like us for some reason. They literally won’t even tell us, they won’t talk to us. They just say, you’re off. But we had used IXL a lot. And actually one of the things I always say for families that are wanting to recreate this at home, I actually think IXL does a really good job across a lot of dimensions. They were a pretty good app.They don’t like Alpha for whatever reason, but, you know, that’s where we’ve kind of been able to figure out what this is. But I think the other question is, when you talk about things like reading, writing, it’s really helping break down our apps that we built. You know, they’re breaking down into small components. Let’s make sure a student is excellent at this and then build from there. I think in a traditional classroom, having students write a five paragraph essay is not necessarily helpful. Instead, are they really understanding the structure and mechanics of a sentence? Are they understanding what a paragraph should look like? Are they going. And we use really the idea of building blocks in all of the work that we do.Diane TavennerSo does that mean you’ve got under underlying at least the apps you’re building sort of a knowledge graph that you’re, that you’re working with in order? Yeah, I mean that again, fairly. Okay, fairly consistent. Let’s dig into that AI coach or tutor, like you said, because it sounds like this is not a traditional dashboard where young people are looking at Their own data and information. Maybe they are. But what it sounds like you’ve really got is this AI coach or tutor coming in to keep them motivated. I mean, the apps you’re talking about, lots of schools have them, as, you know, lots of schools, they just don’t get the number of minutes, they don’t get the progress. And so is you’re. It sounds like that’s the key.So that is an AI tutor or. But it’s not a bot that you were referencing.MacKenzie PriceWell, it is, but you’re not correct about. Yeah, you’re not correct about that. The AI tutor is not providing the motivation levers. There’s no motivation that’s happening through the apps. The motivation is all through our guides, our human teachers. They are focused on motivation. And just to be really clear, the reason we’re having the success that we’re having and the academic results we’re having is not because of our edtech. Our ed tech is fine, it’s whatever.But there is no magical edtech product that just immediately motivates and makes a guide or makes a student, you know, lock in and be able to learn well, We haven’t built it. We haven’t seen it yet. The key for us is that we have freed up the time of our human adults to be able to focus on motivation. And so that could be everything from, well, from the idea that students earn alpha bucks for hitting their XP goals to, I was just talking to one of our kindergarten guides the other day, and she said, you know, we have kids where when they hit, one of their goals, when they. When they unlock a goal that they.They’ve done, they have a secret sniggle, they have a secret signal, they’ll, you know, scratch their nose. And that signals, oh, you hit a goal, let’s do a silent dance party. And It’ll be a 15 second, you know, the guide is doing the silent dance party, and then they move on to the next thing. It can be individual motivation, you know, models. We had a student who, as a result of hitting her academic goals over a period of six weeks, she earned time in a professional recording studio to record an original song that she had written and was singing. So that’s the whole key. And by the way, 90% of what creates a great learner is a motivated student.10% is having the right level and pace, which is what our edtech tool does. What the AI tutor does, though, it actually does give kids the ability to go on their dashboard and each day and see, okay, I hit my rings, I filled my ring. It kind of looks almost think of an Apple watch, you know, with exercise rings. That’s what it is for each student is, did you fill your ring? Which means, did you get your XPs in that subject? And then they can go into their learning dashboard and they can see at any time, here’s how much I. Here’s how much I hit. We even have a waste meter in the corner that says, you know, you’ve wasted 20% of your time you were wasting by not engaging in the right way or not accurately doing that.Diane TavennerSo the student doesn’t actually, like, engage with the AI tutor. It literally is just powering this dashboard then.MacKenzie PriceWell, it’s powering the dashboard, and then it will pop up and say, you know, it’ll write something like, hey, watch the video explanation. You know, sometimes it’s, you know, going.Diane TavennerIt was like a nudge or something.MacKenzie PriceOne of the things that, yeah, we’ll see is that, you know, we’ll often say to students, you know, often the fastest way forward is to slow down, slow down and read the explanation. So it does that. But here’s what it’s not doing. There’s not some little avatar Dashy, that pops up and is like, hey, Johnny, you’re doing such a great job. Two more questions, and then we’re doing that. It’s not that kind of thing. The AI really is kind of under cover.And it’s again, building these lesson plans and then analyzing and understanding how a kid is moving through that.Diane TavennerBuilding the lesson plans that are in the apps or in the after.MacKenzie PriceYeah, taking them to the right spot. So it’s able to say, okay, we’re going to take you.Diane TavennerOh, by lesson plan, you’re saying directing them to specific.MacKenzie PriceDirecting directly to this math academy. And we put up these basically guardrails. That don’t allow a kid to pop out of Math Academy and say, hey, instead of doing this concept, I’m going to go play over here. I’m going to go do this. And I think that’s a problem in traditional classrooms when people are using apps. They’re given their iPad or their Chromebook, they’re put on Khan Academy, and then they’ve got the ability to kind of bounce around. There’s one other topic that I think is also important, and this is actually a lesson we learned very early on, is the idea of requiring students to do some work each day in each subject. Right.And there’s a lot of alternative education systems that’ll say, hey, if a kid doesn’t really want to focus on math for a couple months, that’s okay. They want to pursue reading. We actually believe. And this was, I’ll never forget the very first year we had a first grade student who absolutely loved math. Loved math. He was at 8th grade level math. And the problem was he needed his guide to read the word problems to him because he couldn’t read and he hadn’t read in like months. And that was one of the early unlocks where we realized, okay, we have to require, you know, time in each subject each day that students are accomplishing, which some, again, some alternative schools don’t do that.Diane TavennerYeah. So it sounds like then, the motivation is highly related to this relationship that young people have, which we know is very powerful. And then just following the directives essentially of the guide and then the technology to do what you’re telling them to do and stay on track.Confidence Unlocks Student MotivationMacKenzie PriceExactly. And then I think the next part of the motivation, kind of the deeper level of motivation is and you know, people often go, oh, is extrinsic motivation bad? And you guys know, there’s all the research that shows there’s not necessarily even that same, you know, intrinsic versus extrinsic. But what we are seeing is that as students become more and more capable, you know, and build up their knowledge, they become more confident and they do get more motivated. They suddenly realize like, wow, okay, I can be 99th percentile in, you know, math, in language, in science, I can do this, it’s not as hard. And so we find that kids, their identity really changes as they start to see that, wow, I’m capable of learning when I’m given the right level and the right pacing and I get motivated to do that. And that is what I think is the really cool unlock that we enjoy seeing when students finally realize this. Like, wow, I can do this.Diane TavennerYeah, definitely. You said that one of the benefits of this approach is you freeing up the guide time to really do the more important things. And as I understand it, one of those activities they do is one to one meetings with the young people in this morning block. This was one of them. Continues to be, I think the most highly rated element of the summit model is the mentoring model with the one to one check ins as a part of that. And over the years we started leveraging technology to enhance those check ins. I’m curious if you’re using AI in any way to support the one to one check ins and, and what that looks like.MacKenzie PriceYes, we are. So we actually mic up the guides during those one to one check ins and then they’re using, you know, we take those transcripts and we’re running them through for everything from what percentage of the time were you talking compared to the student? Right. If you’re talking too much, that’s a problem. How many questions were you asking, you know, versus stating what are some of the things that are happening there. We also actually use that technology for some of our students as well. So an example of that, one of our students in Arizona, he struggles with a growth mindset, you know and he’ll, when he’s struggling in his academic work, he’s quick to say I’m dumb or I can’t do this or whatever. And so we put an AI mic on him and then he and his guide go through daily and analyze how are you speaking to yourself? Were you being kind to yourself? And what we found amazingly is that just him knowing he has this lanyard around his neck that’s listening helps him remember, hey, speak kindly to myself. I can incorporate these growth mindset strategies.So we’re able to do that. We have guides that wear these lanyards throughout the entire day so that they can understand and then get feedback on their coaching. And so, you know, that’s, that’s a great part of it. We’re using AI. We’re very much, our organization is very much on be AI first in everything we do. How can we always take everything to the next level and build that out? And then of course the other aspect of AI, you know, that comes across in our afternoon life skills workshops is kids are learning how to use these tools that are going to help them be successful. So you know, kids are starting to build out and develop these brainless and then build out an LLM. In fact, we actually just had a pretty exciting thing happen last week.One of our students at our high school had built up an LLM around safe teen dating advice and she ran a research study with the University of Texas professor around basically how good was the LLM she built compared to a chatgpt and suburban moms and they just submitted to Nature with that research information. So it’ll be really exciting in the next couple of months. We’ll hear if that gets accepted. And that should be a pretty cool thing. So that’s the other part of this is you’ve got to make sure kids are being equipped to learn how to take advantage of all these new tools that are constantly coming out.Diane TavennerFor sure, for sure. Let’s move to that afternoon block and unpack that a little because I think I hear far less about the afternoon time, which is familiar to me, because also in the Summit model, you know, the self directed learning time seemed to get all of the publicity in the play and whatnot. It was only two hours. It was only 30% of the young person’s grade, but it got like 90% of the attention. So let’s break the afternoon into the K8 and the high school because I think those two are different in your model. Talk about the K8. Yeah, talk about the K8 afternoon, where I understand it’s young people are learning life skills. Is this a project based approach? Who’s planning this? Is it a curriculum? I think, as you just said, students are encouraged to use AI from their side.But what I’m really interested in is how are guides and educators using technology and specifically AI for this afternoon block, the dashboard here. What’s going on there?MacKenzie PriceYeah, this afternoon block is really when our guides are shining in terms of being able to plan and connect and mentor our students. And that’s done a few different ways. So when we think about In K through 8, our students are participating in these life skills workshops that are developing leadership and teamwork, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, relationship building and socialization, public speaking and storytelling and grit and hard work. And so every workshop that is created has to be able to pass two tests. One is, what is the life skill that is actually being taught and how are we going to assess at the end of the six week period whether that has happened? So, for example, you know, we’re in the week before the holiday break. We’ve got test to pass events happening at all of our schools around the country where parents and people from the public can come in and see something that’s being done that the kids have been working on and understanding. Did they learn this life skill? You know, an example that we often talk about because I think it really highlights the idea of how do you learn grit? How do you learn, you know, stick with something when it’s hard? So we have students who participate in grit triathlons. And that could be things like having to solve a Rubik’s Cube, juggling three items for 30 seconds and running a mile without stopping.And when you can see that a kid has, you know, a third grade student has been able to understand, okay, there’s an algorithm and I keep practicing my Rubik’s Cube and I start by juggling scarves and eventually I’m juggling balls and I incorporate atomic habits to, you know, walk and run. At the end of six weeks when these students are able to accomplish that goal. And it shows grit. We also do a lot of physical workshops that build out things like grit, like facing fears. For example, we’ve got a rock climbing workshop and that actually for our kindergarteners, they’re climbing a 40 foot rock wall. And when you watch the difference between a student at the beginning of that six week period, you’ve got a five year old who’s like, I don’t even think I can hold on to one of these suddenly going 40ft up. The only one more amazed by that are their parents, right? Their parents are like, this is amazing. So a lot of physical workshops that are doing, doing things and then the guides will use AI tools as part of building out those workshops. Being able to measure one workshop that we do every year that’s very popular.It’s a communication and basically uplifting others workshop. And the test to pass for that workshop is that kids go into an escape room, you know, one of these, one of these rooms where they have to, you know, solve a bunch of different puzzles and logic things and all that to go. And we mic the students up and we use AI to analyze what percentage of their language is considered uplifting and positive. You know, where are they doing that? We’ll do that in sports activities. Kids will get feedback on their public speaking. They’ll be using AI tools to build graphic novels, to build films, you know, all kinds of things that they’re working on that way. And so that’s a combination of group workshops. And then they also get individual time to pursue what we call kind of check chart independent projects.Diane TavennerAh, so it sounds like then your guides are using just AI, like an LLM to help them plan those workshops. And then are you rubric gradient or just checklist grading?MacKenzie PriceWe’re rubric grading as well. And so we have for each life skills workshop we’re grading, what is the quality of workshop. And that’s everything from, you know, the kids’ assessment of did they love the workshop. You know, we’re constantly surveying parents, kids to make sure that what we’re delivering is right. And how are these guys going? The thing that we’re calling it.Diane TavennerAnd that feedback from the rubric, is that derived from the AI or is the guide doing that? And then is that also incorporated in their dashboard?Iterating to Build Measurable SkillsMacKenzie PriceAll a combination of both things. And I think in a lot of ways what we are constantly doing is iterating. How do we build upon a workshop, how do we make, are we doing each session that kind of comes together. In fact, you know, today again, it’s the last week before the holiday break. We’ve got staff days every evening, you know, after school as we kind of plan and go through what worked, what are we doing to kind of increase, you know, love of school, the learning 2x in 2 hours and then development of life skills. So we’re working through a lot of these types of activities of, you know, how can we make this alpha life core soft skills measurable? Right. How can we understand how to measure these skills versus just kind of saying oh, you know, sure, they’re learning leadership qualities, you know, from, from something. What are the things that we can do to, to kind of build that out?Diane TavennerInteresting. One of the conversations, big conversations, is how AI can and should change the role of the educator. And you all have purposely and publicly redefined the role of the teacher to be a guide. And I’ve been tracking through this conversation. You know what I think some of the shifts are in how you think about teacher versus guide and educator and how AI is enabling that. So let me run this back past by you and see if I got it right. So the guide’s not planning any sort of lectures or traditional lessons and they’re not doing any assessment. They’re leaving that to the technology.They are doing one to one check ins and they’re getting feedback from sort of AI inputs from their recordings and things like that about how they can improve. So that takes time. We know in a teacher’s day if you’re transcripting all of those things, they’re going to an educator’s day and then they are planning the afternoon workshops. It does sound like they’re doing some of the assessment there. And they’re certainly, you know, working closely with the students on the motivation piece and engaging directly with them. And it does sound like that’s supplemented by AI. Did I get that right? Sort of the role of the guide, if you will.MacKenzie PriceYeah, you did get that right. Now there’s one other aspect of the guide’s job, in the morning academic time, in the core time. You know, I think people have this, this misconception that oh, you know, you’ve got a kid, a group of kids that are just staring at computers with no adults in sight. Our guides are there and they’re engaged, but they’re not there to teach academics. So if a kid says, hey, I’m struggling with this, you’re not going to see one of our guides saying, okay, let me, let me show you how to work through this problem. You got to carry the one. Let’s do a tutoring session on this. Instead.They’re going to be basically asking students questions to help them understand if they have used their resources. So, hey, were you able to watch the video? Did you go into the resource library to find another answer? Did you check these kinds of things out? And so that’s where they’re really providing coaching around how to go about learning to learn. Here’s one. I don’t know if you call it an exception, but one thing I will say for our younger students, our kindergarten, first and second, we have not found to this point a replacement for reading than that one to one reading time. So we have reading specialists at all of our schools for our younger learners who are working with students on reading. And our students get one to one pull out time, you know, to be practicing that reading. It’s something critical. We are seeing, you know, certainly some great progress and success around learning to read.But you know, you have to have that time reading out loud with a human. And so that’s the one thing I would say is our guides in our younger levels, we do have certified like reading specialists who are at those schools. And it’s, it’s critical.Diane TavennerWe didn’t talk about the high school afternoon time. And as I think you alluded to, and as I understand it, this is where young people are picking one project to work on for four years. And again, I don’t know if that’s a headline or if that’s accurate. I must say this is an element of the model that gives me a little bit of pause and so I’d really love to underbutt a lot of buzz. So what’s actually happening for high school students for those four hours, four years?MacKenzie PriceYou know, so we have two tracks for our high school. We have what we call an honors track. And the idea of that honors track is basically kids who kind of, you know, want to be sort of Ivy League bound. They’ve got ambitions of going into a top 20 university. And so in that program we’re basically saying, okay, we’ll deliver 1550 SAT score scores, you know, fives on at least a few hard AP courses and what we call an Olympic level Alpha X project. This is a project that is as impressive as being an Olympian. You know, what is it? So an example of that, one of our students who just got accepted to Stanford this past week. She’s the student who’s also submitting her research to Nature.If she’s accepted, she’ll be the youngest female ever and the only high school student in history. You know, to be able to do that, you know, they work on something big. Now during that time when they’re working on these Alpha X projects, there’s no question that you’ll have kids who might, they might decide to change their project 10 times during their four year experience. What they’re really developing is the skill of learning how to go deep into something and become an expert. And so we’ll do things like they’ll go into, you know, two week long sprints where it’s like, go learn everything you can learn about this subject. And at the end of that two weeks, you know, just as often as not, you’ll have kids come out and go, actually it turns out I’m not interested in that. I want to go into something else. And the other thing is these projects that kids work on aren’t necessarily what they say, oh, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.Right. I’m going to go build this out in college or something. But it’s a project that they’re kind of, you know, able to develop and go deep and become an expert on. Now we also have a non honors track at our school and that non honors track is for kids who say, you know, I really love the idea of getting time back to just go do things I’m interested in. So for example, you know, we’ve got a student who wants to get his pilot’s license and he loves the idea of flying planes. Now does having your pilot’s license at age 15 get you into Stanford? Yeah, you know, maybe not, but it gives you time to go develop these things. So a lot of our athletes who want to have time to pursue their sports or whatever. Now what all of our students do, and that non honors program basically is 1350 SAT, which is, you know, top 10%, fours and fives on APs, you know, and time to go and develop the interests that they have. Honors students are spending about three hours a day on their core learning.The non honors track is about two hours of what they’re doing. Kids are still taking AP courses, they’re still doing all those kinds of things.Diane TavennerSorry, you lost me for a second. Where’s the AP course? Is that in the afternoon or in.MacKenzie PriceNo, that’s in the morning. That’s the core academic time is students are taking four years of English, four years of math language or, you know, foreign language, all that kind of stuff. So they’re doing that in the morning. Afternoons are for. For working on these Alpha X projects. And then we do a lot of workshops around life skills for all of our students. So that’s everything from rejection training to giving and receiving feedback, you know, leadership challenges. A lot of things that students are working to kind of build out those skills is what our high school program looks like.Diane TavennerSo in the high school afternoon, there is sort of still a framework curriculum. Maybe it’s not every day, all the days, but that you do have some of these skills that you’re doing in some workshop, being around with students.Developing Projects with Real ImpactMacKenzie PriceYeah, there’s absolutely a framework. And then for the kids who are working on their Alpha X projects, they basically go through different levels, right? So, you know, as an example of the kind of the highest level where basically these kids are getting out and they’re launching real businesses or activities. One of our students, who’s the senior this year, she’s working on getting a musical launched on Broadway. So she actually spends, you know, five, five to seven days a month in New York City, you know, working on recording with producers, meeting with potential investors, you know, doing those types of activities. So she’s kind of been released out into the wild, you know, in some ways to go work on these projects. But the other thing that we have in common is every day our students are spending an hour working on their brain lift. So this idea of whatever the interest they have, they’re staying current on research, what’s going on, and they’re using this brain lift to then build out whatever their LLM and GPT is based on this. They also work on things like creating a spiky point of view.So an example of that, we have a student named Alex who is building a plushie doll that is basically a mental health coach. And his spiky point of view that he’s built is he believes AI can actually provide better counseling to a teenager than a human counselor. Now, that’s a very spiky point of view, right? Especially when you think of all of the dangers on this. But he’s built certain things in his system that he believes are making a successful AI mental health coach. And so the idea is building out these things and being able to learn how to become an expert on using AI to build this thing out. So we have another student who’s interested in creating. He’s a filmmaker and wants to create, you know, his ultimate goal is to create an Oscar winning, winning film.And part of what he’s done is to create basically a spiky point of view around how filmmaking can be done. And he just got accepted. He reached out to a bunch of different podcasts. He got accepted and invited on three podcasts. Now a lot of rejection training going on in there as well, where there’s a lot of podcasts who say no answer, you know, or whatever it is they do. But they’re learning all of these skills during this time. Plus getting the traditional academics that, you know, students in a normal school are getting.Diane TavennerWhere would science labs fit into this model? Or, you know, projects that are in history where we know kids, you know, dates, facts, information is, is based, but you actually need to understand the big themes and trends. Where does that fit in your model?MacKenzie PriceWell, if you take things like science labs. We don’t have science labs. Our students are taking AP Biology, AP Physics, AP Chemistry. But they are, you know, watching great YouTube videos that are exploring these topics instead. We haven’t found that there’s this critical piece of getting kids in a lab doing beaker experiments, you know, as part of what they’re doing. They can watch these things. Now. Kids who are really excited about something that they’re working on, you know, in science can go in and build something out.So for example, we had a student who got really interested in cancer research and epigenetics, and she ended up going out and creating a documentary that’s been viewed over 5 million times around cancer and epigenetics. So we kind of think like everything we do at these schools is taking an interest or a passion that a kid has and figuring out how to get them out in kind of real world experience with things and how they can build. We had a student who loves physics, really interested in science, loves physics. He also went on to become a professional water skier, but he would take physics principles and then work on how he could improve his water skiing times and rope length, you know, incorporating physics principles. So there’s things they do there, things like history, for example. You know, students are taking AP World and AP European and AP US History. So they’re doing all those things. They’re getting a lot of experience on writing, obviously, as they’re, they’re learning on apps, they’re coming out with, you know, fives on their APs and doing very well, and they’re having some connected time with each other where they’re, they’re basically going through some checkpoints at the same time.Where they’re interacting last year towards, you know, basically in April you heard a lot of singing because kids had basically used AI tools to help them remember a bunch of their facts for AP world history, you know, with basically in the, in the same vein as Hamilton lyrics, you know, and, and working through those things.Diane TavennerIs that the College Board’s digital curriculum that they’re using for the AP courses? Yeah. And then, that like joint collaborative time would be in the afternoon. Is that how it connects?MacKenzie PriceYeah.Diane TavennerGot it. Awesome.Michael HornThis season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education. Because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learners Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.Michael HornThis has been super helpful, MacKenzie. Huge thanks. But before we let you go, we have this segment where we, where we get away from the conversation around education generally, although not always. Just things we’ve been reading, watching, listening outside of work if you can. But if not, that’s cool too. So we’ll let you have the first say at it before Diane shares what’s been on her list.MacKenzie PriceWell, I’m sure that I’m going to give you an answer that is not going to be impressive to any of your followers or listeners.Michael HornI guarantee you most of my answers are unimpressive. So go ahead.MacKenzie PriceMy absolute favorite thing to do in the evening when I get time to relax is I love to take a bath and I have a huge television that is mounted in my bathroom in front of my bathtub that is non-negotiable. My husband and I just moved into an apartment a year ago and I was like where is the TV in front of the bathtub going to go? Like I will not move into an apartment that doesn’t have that option. And I got in the bath last night and I was so excited to watch the Taylor Swift Eras documentary. So I am halfway through the first episode. My girls and I, and actually my husband too, we totally bond over that. And then actually later in the evening my daughter’s home from college and we’re watching this show called All Her Fault. It’s like about a kidnapping and it’s the gal from Succession, you know, the redhead from Succession, she stars in it. And one of the guys from White Lotus season one.So I do. We like those types of shows. We loved White Lotus. This All Her Fault. I just watched the Beast in Me. So I do, I sometimes can be known to binge some of these Netflix shows, but I do them in the format of about 35 minutes, which is how long my bathtub water stays hot for. And then I’m out of time.Michael HornAnd then you’re out.Diane TavennerThere you go. Well, I’m totally, I’m totally cheating today. I’m gonna share a novel that I’m going to read over the holidays. My favorite living authors, Ian McEwan. And he has a newish novel out called What We Can Know. And I, I’m literally counting down the days to the holidays and to being able to crack this one open and savor it. I’ll give you two sentences from the New York Times review that make me excited. Quote, it’s a piece of late career showmanship.McEwan is 77 from an old master. It gave me so much pleasure, I sometimes felt like laughing. I will report back.Michael HornAnd you’ll have to report back because I was going to say you just quoted the New York Times, which is an item for later but yeah, so, all right, I’ll wrap with mine, which is MacKenzie, to your point. We binge watched Four Seasons with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. It’s a Netflix. I hadn’t heard of it. It’s like an eight episode first season. There will be a second season based on the cliffhanger at the end. And I would say it’s about three couples, sort of 50s age group is roughly where they are and through trials and tribulations that is hysterical.A lot of predictability and yet still very funny as it went through. So we really enjoyed it and I think binge watched it in two nights. I think so.MacKenzie PriceOh, great. That might be our holiday activity too for some time.Michael HornThere you go adding to your.MacKenzie PriceI love that. I love that.Michael HornAwesome. Awesome. Well, MacKenzie, huge thanks and as always, huge thank you to you, all of you, for listening. Keep coming with your questions, comments and all the rest, and we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

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 HornHey, 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 CurriculumAbdi GuleedThank 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 SridharAwesome. 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 HornSo 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 SridharWhat 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 NeedsAbdi GuleedWhat 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 HornNo, 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 GuleedAwesome. 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 EquityAbdi GuleedAnd 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 SridharAwesome. 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 OptimizationKedaar SridharThese 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 GuleedYeah. 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 HornPerfect. 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 SridharOkay, 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 HornPerfect. 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 SridharAnd 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 SystemsAbdi GuleedYeah, 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 HornOne 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 SridharYeah, yeah.Michael HornShort answer is yes.Kedaar SridharYeah, 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 GuleedYeah, 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 ReceptionMichael HornOkay, 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 GuleedYeah, 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 HornLet 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 GuleedYeah, 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 HornOkay, 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 SridharDefinitely. 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 HornOkay, 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 SridharYeah, 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 GuleedI’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 HornOkay, 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 GuleedSo 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 SridharAnd 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 HornPerfect. 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.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.