Class Disrupted

MagicSchool has emerged as the breakout AI tool in education, with millions of teachers rapidly adopting it. But what’s behind that growth? How exactly does it use AI? And what does its adoption mean for teaching and learning? Its founder, Adeel Khan, joined us to go beyond the hype. https://archive.org/download/adeel-final/Adeel%20final.mp3 Episode transcript: TranscriptDownload

Dacia Toll, Co-CEO of CourseMojo and co-founder of Achievement First, is an education entrepreneur focused on ELA and AI. She explains how CourseMojo supports middle school classrooms, the human-centered design process, classroom examples like poetry scaffolds, and how AI boosts engagement, teacher insight, and scalable professional development.

Matt Pasternak, founder and CEO of Once, builds AI-powered tools and coaching for one-on-one early reading instruction. He shares how a low-tech start grew into software that supports paraprofessionals, uses AI for fluency assessment and highlight reels, tackles kid speech recognition, and trains high school tutors to teach kindergartners.

Andrea Passanetti, co-founder and CEO of Kira Learning and former Teach for China leader, talks about building an AI operating system for education. He discusses consolidating district tools, creating dynamic tagged curricula that replace static textbooks, and enabling real-time curriculum adaptation and personalized learning paths. The conversation highlights scaling personalized instruction and simplifying teacher workflows.

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. https://archive.org/download/summit-2.0-updated-final/Summit%202.0%20updated%20final.mp3 Episode transcript: Transcript_ Behind the Reinvention of Summit Public Schools with AIDownload

John Danner, founder of Flourish Schools and Rocketship cofounder, brings tech and education experience to AI-native microschools. He discusses AI-driven conversational tutors for reading and math. He explains real-time assessment, knowledge graphs for coherent learning, and how AI frees teachers to nurture relationships, passions, and students’ “superpowers.”

Mackenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School and education entrepreneur, explains how AI personalizes learning and reclaims student time. She discusses a two-hour core academic block, AI-driven assessments and dashboards, vision models that monitor engagement, and AI-enabled workshops and project-based high school tracks. Short sentences highlight tech, new school design, and changing staff roles.

Paymon Rouhanifard, CEO and co-founder of Timely and former superintendent, builds AI tools to automate school master schedules. He discusses how AI optimization replaces slow manual processes. Conversations cover time savings, resource allocation, district case studies, integration challenges, and the promise and risks of AI in classroom workflows.

Michael and Diane stepped back from their interviews to have a one-on-one conversation and reflect at the midpoint of their season on AI in education. They dove into the evolving role of AI in education and questioned whether AI is truly transforming the system or simply being layered onto outdated structures. They explored a framework of three school models that Diane posed and discussed the challenges of meaningful innovation amidst existing accountability systems and education policies. From these models, they analyzed how one might expect transformational change to occur in K–12 schooling—through traditional schools incrementally changing and evolving over time or, as Michael and Diane both argued, through fundamental migration away from the existing system. https://archive.org/download/115147-v-1-1/115147_V1_1.mp3 Episode transcript: Transcript_ Reflections on Whether AI is Actually Changing Schools—and WhereDownload

Irina Jurenka, the research lead for AI in education at Google DeepMind, joined Michael and Diane to discuss the development and impact of AI tutors in learning. The conversation delved into how generative AI, specifically the Gemini model, is being shaped to support pedagogical principles and foster more effective learning experiences. Irina shares insights from her team’s foundational research, the evolution of AI models over the past three years, and the challenges of aligning AI tutoring with the learning sciences. Irina closed with reflecting on how these innovations may shape the future of education for the next generation—with a hope for a thoughtful blending of technology with the irreplaceable role of human teachers. https://archive.org/download/115837-future-of-education-deep-minds-learnings-in-developing-an-ai-tutor-v-01/115837_Future%20of%20Education_DeepMind%E2%80%99s%20Learnings%20in%20Developing%20an%20AI%20Tutor_v01.mp3 Episode transcript: Transcript_ DeepMind’s Learnings in Developing an AI TutorDownload