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Mike Flanagan, CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC), joined me to talk about the organization's recent “acquisition” by ETS, as well as its broader work in changing how we measure student learning and represent that to colleges and employers. Could the broader adoption of MTC change the game for how students choose college—and allow colleges to be more diverse, rather than “one-size-fits-all” as many are today? This was a fun conversation where I pushed Mike on a few ideas around skills—and then learned a lot from his nuanced answers. Look forward to your thoughts in the comments.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn, and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to building a world where all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us think through that today. I'm. I'm really excited. It's my longtime friend, Mike Flanagan. He's from the town over from me here in Massachusetts. But we've known each other since I was on the board of the National Association of Independent Schools, and he was running one of the very cool business lines for NAIS, as well as, frankly, all things technology for the organization. But then he became the CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, which was acquired recently by ETS, an organization focused on testing across the country and internationally as well. And we're gonna talk about all of that today. Mike, so good to see you. We're not in person, but it's great to be with you on camera.
Michael Flanagan:
I am so excited. Yeah neighbors first, but, like, this is, what a great opportunity. I really, really appreciate the invite.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I should have added, you're a CrossFit certified coach, as well. So, you know, we've got, like, I'm not that, but, you know, we have certain other things in common, as well, so.
Michael Flanagan:
Yeah, I always have to put that in asterisk on that. I was former. Former coach. Unfortunately, my certification lapsed when my job changed, and I found wound up spending 90% of my time on planes. You know, Crossfit's a great way to be healthy and stay in shape, but if you want to get injured, a really good thing to do is do Crossfit once a month.
The History of Mastery Transcript Consortium
Michael Horn:
Fair enough. Fair enough. Don't do that. Get some regular rhythm, but hopefully not afflicting you. But it's good to see you. Let's dive in. You and I have had a long set of conversations around what the Mastery Transcript Consortium pre ETS acquisition is. We might call it MTC, so you know that's the acronym. But let's just talk about what Mastery Transcript Consortium was at the outset through its history, before the acquisition itself.
Michael Flanagan:
Yeah, I mean, I will say just a preview. It's what and still is, the changes as a result of our new home with ETS, which we'll talk about in a bit are much more about expansion and kind of continuation of what we're doing versus, like, a radical kind of rethinking of it. But to go back to the start, the way we talk about MTC, to educators out there is, to start with a pretty simple premise, which is that we think there are better ways of doing school, right. That the schooling models we have today, for a lot of kids, they don't feel very relevant, they don't feel very useful, they don't feel very engaging. And yet, at the same time, there's all these counterexamples of amazing schools. You talk to them all the time, right? School leaders who are innovators. They're doing project based learning, doing interdisciplinary work. They're getting kids out of classrooms, into the world of work. They're putting kids in teams and solving real world problems, and they're really focused on skill building. And the challenge we had, or the thing that kind of kept pushing us was like, these models are awesome. Why aren't they everywhere? Why doesn't every neighborhood have a school like this? And what we realized, talking to a lot of the same people you talk to, school leaders and innovators, is that what we kind of have is an infrastructure problem. We basically know how to produce this amazing, innovative learning. But all the systems we have to, frankly, keep score to credit and credential that learning are completely yoked, completely invested to old ways, credit hours, academic courses, and GPAs. And so the question is, like, what do you do if you're a school leader and the model you have, like, doesn't map to any of that? And the answer to the question for us was a grassroots effort, the consortium and MTC, the Mastery Transcript Consortium. And what we've built with our schools is, simply put, an alternative credential. It's one that's completely based on competencies and skills and also centers artifacts of student learning, like actual work product, and then combines the two. So you have the best attributes of what we think is a competency based transcript and a portfolio system. And that's it. That's MTC in a nutshell. We've built this system so that kids that are doing innovative learning don't have to translate or water down that learning to have it make sense to colleges and to workforce, but they can actually have a credential and exit ticket that is fully consistent, both in terms of philosophy and design, with all the hard work that the people that started their school are probably doing.
Michael Horn:
Very cool. I think what I've learned and appreciated over time, as I thought about it, Mike, is, is two things. One, by focusing on those folks that either have an innovative model or want to, to your point, you're creating the infrastructure for them to grow, for them to validate what they're doing to be accepted by colleges or trade schools or employers or whatever else, sort of giving them a consistent infrastructure across the school. So it's not just, oh, here's another one off here, here's another one off there. And then, number two, what I think I've come to learn is you're not necessarily in the weeds of my big thing of competency-based or mastery-based learning of we're throwing over seat time, and you get to move at your own pace. What you are more is on the, yes, that would be great. But you're more on the end of that saying, okay, whatever the system is, let us represent what you have mastered in some way that I can then click in and see the artifact of learning that proves you've in fact, mastered that domain, skill, knowledge, whatever it is. And so it's really, the way I kind of think of it is it's like an asset-based report card. At the end of the day, these are the sets of things I can do. And yeah, it may be jagged, but, like, that's a reflection of then who I am as an individual. I don't have to lie about it, right? I don't have to puff up these other areas. How do you think about that exactly?
Michael Flanagan:
I mean, jagged. Jagged and asset together, right? And I think if there's one thing that we spend, I mean, MTC is a nonprofit by design, because if we were a for profit, we wouldn't be able to invest so heavily in advocacy and outreach to higher education. And if there's one place where I think we've had to work very hard to move the needle and change the mindset is folder reading in universities and colleges today is largely done through a deficit mindset. It's how many APs did school X offer? Did applicant y take all the ten APs? And if not, why not? And it's a very weird way of thinking about the high school journey. It has this weird, pernicious effect where the most high achieving kids actually have the most narrowed options in terms of what they study and how they study, because they are basically engaged in a full time exercise of compliance. Like, how do I put the best portrait forward, no deviations allowed, whereas all the best real learning. I mean, 80% of the great stories you tell when you're talking to somebody who's innovated or built something new. All the Clayton Christensen work is like, oh, what comes from failure? What comes from looking at things through totally unexpected ways of bucking systems. And so if you build feedback loops and measurement loops for high schoolers that say, oh, no, we want you to be creative. We want you to take risks, but also we need you to be perfect at everything all the time. No variants allowed. They're smart kids. They know what the actual assignment is.
Michael Horn:
They know what the game is. Yeah.
Michael Flanagan:
Yeah.
Michael Horn:
No, and I mean, I think, look, this should be a huge thing for colleges as well as, you know, I famously earned, famously sitting there watching the closures and mergers of colleges. My argument is, lean into what makes you as a college, distinct. Look for the students who match that profile. And guess what? We don't all have to try to look the exact same, which is the current system.
Michael Flanagan:
One of the things that I, when you're starting new things, it can be very hard to find signal in all the noise. Right. And so I think one of the things that we've learned both in this role and in some of my previous jobs is generally, you know, you're onto something when you see that users on both ends of, like, a performance curve, like what you're doing, or see some value in what you're doing. Right. So for higher education, if I'm in charge, first of all, I want to stipulate that we as a society overly obsess about 20 colleges, and they're very, very low selectivity rates. And that's not where kids actually go to school. You know that better than anybody, written books about it. But since we do, if you are in one of those 20 colleges, you are still, you still have the mandate to yield a diverse, representative class. And the Supreme Court just tied your hands. So they now are saying, oh, you have new metrics. You have different ways of visualizing student capacity and capability in a systematic way. That's interesting to us. We want to have that conversation. So that's not anything MTC did. That's the kind of market shifting to kind of wind up where we already were. And then to your story earlier, the vast majority of enrollment managers at these institutions are actually just trying to find kids, right? So. And right now that the signals we give those same kids when they're wayfinding, trying to find the right, you know, destination, they're very blunt tools. It's like, okay, you have this set of SAT or ACT scores. That means if you theoretically stack rank all these schools, how high up are you allowed to aim? But there's no lateral dispersion. There's no way of saying, but what about fit? What am I actually going to do if I get into one of these schools. And that level of fit, real skill profile, that's where the jagged becomes a feature, not a bug.
Joining Forces with ETS
Michael Horn:
Yeah, that second one, I confess that's where I'd love to spend the energy that. Not so interested in the former, but the, but let's, let's jump in then to the ETS question, because they made the choice. We're now, this is September, so I guess it was June or something like that.
Michael Flanagan:
Yeah, we went, we announced it in the middle of May. Signed the paperwork in early May.
Michael Horn:
Okay, so May. We're now a few months in. They acquired MTC. Why was this interesting for them? How does this fit into ETS strategic plans? Folks who follow the industry know they have a relatively new CEO. There have been a lot of changes at ETS as well. Wrap it in. Tell us the story.
Michael Flanagan:
So, first, what I will say is just for, in case you have any professors of law out there, it's not technically an acquisition, because we are a nonprofit and they are a nonprofit. Legal junkies out there will know that what we did was called a sole member substitution. But let's just say in plain English, we are now a wholly owned subsidiary of ETS. We are one of the ETS family of companies, so we still operate independently. MTC is still its own 501(c)3 but we are absolutely now in this kind of family that has much vaster resources and I daresay, like, grander aspirations. So ETS has been very busy. The ETS that you and I grew up with, Educational Testing Service, has rebranded. It's just ETS now. And if you look at their tagline, they're talking more about education and talent solutions. Amit Savak, who you just kind of name checked earlier or referred to, is definitely leading the organization in a new direction. I have heard him get on stage and talk to an audience of ETS customers and thought leaders and say, hey, standardized testing isn't going to cut it anymore. I mean, that's a very bold statement for him in that role of that organization to make. I think the strategy is that skills are the future. Interdisciplinary skills. If we really want to give targeted supports and take advantage of emerging technologies to give actionable insights to young people when they're in school, to young adults as they traverse high school to college or work, the more and better information we can give them about their skill profiles, the better job they can do of self-advocacy and wayfinding. In what I think we all kind of stipulate is a very complex and fast changing world. The classic compact that you and I had together, which is study hard, sharpen your number two pencil, get to a good college, get a good job. Like, I mean, good luck with that. I mean, that is a, that whole, call it a treadmill, if you want to call it quality, value proposition, has been very deeply upended in some ways for better. I think there are equity stories to tell in finding talent through new and different lenses. But that's sort of the big picture direction of ETS. They're going in a new direction. They're focusing on skills and most specifically in the area of K-12 schooling. They have an initiative, a partnership with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, which is led by Tim Knowles. And I know you've spoken with Tim yourself. Tim's vision for education is to upend K-12 educational architecture. He, like, we believe architecture and infrastructure drive practice. And so if you can move beyond seat time, as he has said many times more eloquently than me, the Carnegie Foundation created the Carnegie unit as we know it. And they're sorry, they're trying to kind of disrupt that. If we can move beyond seat time and we can widen the aperture of what counts as skill development and what we, you know, assess and credential inside of schools, we open up more pathways for young people to be successful. So I never thought I would say this, but we have been working at MTC now for seven plus years, kind of at a grassroots level, trying to be like, seat time, move beyond it, right? Like, hey, expand your aperture, think about skills. So to suddenly have those two organizations be like, no, this is right, this is where we should be going. That was a huge kind of, I guess, wind in our sails and also let us, you know, it was pretty short discussion when we realized just how aligned the senior leaders were of those organizations and our admittedly much smaller team and our senior leaders on board for what we were hoping, the change we wanted to see in the world.
Defining and Codifying Skills
Michael Horn:
So quick question, and then I have a longer one. But the quick one first is when you say the word skills, so many ways to think about what that word means, right? Some people, it's critical thinking, problem solving. Some people think, you know, it's, it's the ability to do a task in a certain domain, you know, and maybe think, you know, show critical things, like lots of different ways to show that. Sometimes it's just applied knowledge. How are you all like, what does that word mean in MTC land?
Michael Flanagan:
Yeah, we are borrowing very explicitly and with a lot of gratitude, the phrase durable skills from our friends at America Succeeds. And so for your listeners out there, please check out America Succeeds. Google durable skills. What you'll see is a wonderful research project where they did a meta analysis and like a data extraction of 80 million different job postings online. And what you see when you look at those is that there's a tremendous consensus about what employers are looking for. Technical jobs require certain technical skills, and I don't mean like STEM jobs, coding jobs, although those certainly do. Right. One job in a bakery, there are technical skills you need to have, like understanding how doughs proof and how to laminate doughs if you want to make croissants and things like that. But there's also soft skills, which they have rebranded as durable skills. You have to be able to communicate and partner well and make this problem solve on the fly. So whether you're in the bakery or whether you're working at Facebook, those durable skills are transferable across those in ways that the technical skills are not. And more importantly, employers are very comfortable, we think, skilling up entry level hires in technical skills that are specific to their tasks.
Michael Horn:
I see if they have the durable skills, they'll take the chance on them.
Michael Flanagan:
They have a much higher bar for their expectation for what we as education leaders give them as product. And so in terms of there being a mismatch between what K-12 is doing and what employers might want, we think it's the opportunity to add more value is in the explicit creation of durable skills. And I hit that word really hard, right? Cause I am a former English teacher. That was my first job out of college. I was a liberal arts major. I majored in English. I'm a huge believer in a liberal arts education. I know my communication and critical thinking. And I guess in some ways my negotiation skills were built around the seminar table. I had no doubt about that. The difference is those were implicit. The compact was go to a school of certain profile, major in certain subjects, and we can trust as an employer that you'll have that toolkit. It'll just kind of happen. Like the secret sauce will just out itself. We're actually saying, no, these are explicit skills. You can see clear progressions. The progressions are backed by learning science. Teams with the capacity of, say, ETS or Carnegie can surface those very explicitly. And when they do that, it's to the whole betterment of the sector for us to be able to use those as yardsticks as we coach and mentor young people through the skill development. So just as an aside, you know, as you know, I spent now the past seven years talking to a lot of very skeptical admissions offices. Right. I'm saying, hey, we want to give you something you've never seen before, but it's going to do a better job. Trust us. One of the best conversations I had was with the admissions team at West Point, because I showed up there and they're like, okay, look, we've read your website. We get it. But honestly, we're kind of into this ranking and sorting thing. Like, we think that's a feature. And what I said, yes. And we probably also agree that leadership can be taught, like, it's not this, like, thing some people have, some people don't. You can. It's a process. And they were kind of like, okay, we found common ground on that. So if they believe that leadership can be taught explicitly that there's ways to do it developmentally at scale, that's sort of the big idea that we're trying to lean into with durable skills and skills for the future at MTC.
Michael Horn:
Stay with me on this, because I think we'll lead into why the ETS partnership probably makes triple sense. But I guess the push I want to have is durable skills, like critical thinking or problem solving. Does it really transfer that much from domain to domain? Because in a bakery, it looks very different from a coding job. Looks very different from me behind my desk podcasting. Like, how do you think about. Or is it. No, we've codified it. And therefore, like, whatever domain you're working in, yes. You got to build up the knowledge base. But as you progress beyond novice, we expect to see this sort of set of behaviors.
Michael Flanagan:
So the easy thing, because it's the right thing, is to just agree with you and say it's more of a matrix than a ladder.
Michael Horn:
Okay.
Michael Flanagan:
There's not a unified model of critical thinking that is domain independent. Okay. But there are versions of that ladder that are optimized for critical thinking, say, in the humanities or critical thinking in the STEM fields. And I don't know how fine grained we can or even should be as we parse those. And I use the we there very loosely. Like, I am not a psychometrician who's going to be making that deliverable for the sector. I'm very lucky that ETS employs, I think, 75% of the psychometricians in America so that we've got the capacity to do that. Now. Smarter people than me will be figuring that out and also working across the sector, you know, bringing into domain experts. So we can have their voices as we build out the skill progressions.
Michael Horn:
No, that makes sense. I mean, I know at Minerva University, the way, and I'm on the board there, the way that they have thought about it is what you just said, which is we create a clear framework for these different, they have different names for them, but these different habits or skills. And then whatever you're learning, like, we expect to see the progression over time that you mastered. And so it becomes a habit that does transfer, to your point. As I move domain to domain, I guess the question there, or the, perhaps maybe I'm jumping to something, but it seems like ETS the partnership rather than just resources. The other thing now it does for you is we can actually create validated measures to say, like, yeah, what you just represented in the MTC transcript, that artifact of work like this, is how we assess it, validate it. And so that's sort of scalable, if you will, across the platform. Maybe there's even a third party way to do that that gets out of the, oh, my teacher liked me and therefore said this project was good.
Michael Flanagan:
That's exactly right. I mean, I think of the....Our moonshot is if you think about why AP's have gotten such traction, right, and why they. It's that there is value in having a national verified, psychometrically sort of stamped, you know, exam that certifies on a scale of one through five that, you know, student is at this level of capacity in Area X. Huge value in that as like, as a premise. The downsides are one time a year, very high stakes, you know, very significant upstream effects on what the curriculum is. And what if you didn't have to compromise? What if you could have a student doing an independent study, a portfolio defense capstone project completely of their own choosing, all the right adjectives. You would want self directed, personalized feedback, you know, from, you know, defending into experts in the community. But you could take the deliverables that came from that and run them through, we'll call it an engine, and get valid feedback about their communication skills or evidence of their critical thinking. And you could do it in theory, ad infinitum. You could run it through that engine as many times as you want. You could take a single high stakes exercise into a formative exercise, and you could take one of the biggest gating factors to the adoption of these exciting models, which is teacher workload. And you could turn some of these technologies into copilots. We're not taking humans out of the loop like, education is a relational, human centered exercise, but if you could have that kind of heads up display. Right. Those metrics on the side that assisted educators took a little bit of the burden off them, but also improved the validity and accuracy of the feedback they were giving to the students. I just think it could be transformational for the adoption of these practices in actual classrooms. And yes, they result in credential, whether it's a mastery transcript or a learning record. The biggest area of pushback we still get with justification is, well, these are really just collections of local assertions by the schools, which, by the way, is what grades are. So that's the current state that we're kind of solving against is grades. But yes, a competency based transcript currently generated by MTC school is ultimately what the school says. So. And we work very closely to make sure their competency models are as. As strong as they can be. We have to advocate implicitly and explicitly on behalf of those models. With higher eds, we have skin in the game and making sure they're high quality, but that's not the same thing as all as being able to say, oh, because we've run this portfolio of work through a process, we can now certify or stamp or put a badge on those things. I hesitate to use the word badge. Let's scratch that. But you can certify or stamp those. To say, no, you can take this to the bank. Means something third party.
The Role of AI in MTC’s Work
Michael Horn:
Very cool. I have to ask, is AI a central component of being able to build that scaled infrastructure in some way?
Michael Flanagan:
I mean, it's not even a yes or no question. It's sort of in what ways? Right. The areas I'm most excited about are thinking about certain kinds. Like, if you think about what a mastery transcript is today, you pull it apart. From a technology perspective, what it really is is an assemblage, a collection of varied artifacts, student work files, meta tagged with a lot of data about skill and skill development and scales and other things by humans. That is a really interesting kind of corpus of data and text to put into a large language model. I'm really excited to see what happens when we have a lot of these flowing into trained models and to see what we learn by doing. The other thing, too, is that there are problems that we face now as a consortium. So last count, we had about 400 schools and districts that were working within the MTC environment, right? That probably means we got about 400 bespoke competency models that are in play. Each of them is kind of built with good intentions and backwards design and community buy in, but that's a lot of different ways of defining communication. So there's two ways you solve for that problem. One is by fiat. Somebody comes in top down and says, no, this is how we do it, which is terrible for change management and terrible from a product and customer perspective. The other is you say, hey, we've looked at all of these in a very analytical, thoughtful way. We've run them through different large language assist models. And what we can tell you is that in all these different models, it looks like there's actually two meaningful variants. If you have communication, you're probably doing it either this way or that way. And we'd encourage you to maybe like choose one of those and try and move towards that. That kind of like AI assisted harmonization, I think is going to solve a lot of our problems in the coming years.
Michael Horn:
Very cool. Very cool. As you were saying that, I was laughing to myself at your earlier assertion again, which is like, hey, grades in English suffer from a lot of the same problems, but we sort of accept it because we've accepted the Carnegie unit and we think we have an understanding of what goes on in an English class. Even though I would argue the signal of grades has been increasingly breaking down over the last several years in particular, always flawed in my mind, but really breaking down in the last few years.
Michael Flanagan:
Covid pressure tested our kind of national and local assessment practices and not surprisingly, found them wanting in areas, as you've, as you've documented, probably better than, better than anybody. No, but I mean, you know, for those of, you know, listeners out there who are less familiar with mastery learning, I could see some of them saying, well, isn't this kind of just standards based grading? And it's that the answer to that is not a no, it's a yes end. Like standards based grading is awesome. It's criteria and referenced. It's very objective. You can look at, you have scales. The difference is you can still do standards based grading and not tinker all that much with the fundamental architecture of school, right? You can still have everything in, like seat time. You still have everything based in like, academic subjects. Not a lot of, not a lot of, you know, moving the needle on sort of what school feels like and is a lived experience for kids. Still better than status quo grading. And that's my point on that. But we think that's a good start. And what we want to do is take the same essential principles, really clear criterion reference scales, but expand them so we can use them to measure new and hopefully more relevant things and create.
MTC’s Plans for the Future
Michael Horn:
The room for that jagged asset base. Okay, so last question then for me is you all are a separate nonprofit still legally, that's how it works. But there's obviously a great deal of integration. What does this look like down the road as you play this story forward with ETS and MTC in the work together? And what's the hope for what this looks like in five years?
Michael Flanagan:
I think you can almost work backwards. And when we talk about this now as a team, we have two big goals. One is to use all the amazing support and the brand equity and the relationships with of our new parent to grow the footprint of what we're doing. Like we more or less, without spending any resources on sales and marketing, just kind of grassroots, have managed to build really good sustaining relationships with like these 400 schools and districts. There's no reason we can't double that in the coming year. And who knows? I would love us to be and say, be available to half of school districts, right, as MTC by 2030. I think, and we're now in an organization where like you talk about having a couple hundred thousand kids and they're like, yeah, it's a good start. So I think that's one thing. The other is anything. When we think about product and we think about innovation, it's just contributing as much as possible to the success and product development of the Skills for the Future initiative. I want to be very clear, Skills for the Future. It is owned by Carnegie and ETS. Those are the organizations. That's their jam. But anything we are bringing to the table that can be used or leveraged in terms of thinking about how you build skills based credentials, skills passport or skills transcripts as Amit sometimes likes to refer to them. And also the fact that we do have, you know, as we work with these five states, that first Skills for the Future that Carnegie and ETS have recruited as co design partners, we also can use the portfolio of MTC schools to get feedback and kind of testing new innovations and assessment and insights. So all of it I think fits together from a product perspective and a growth perspective.
Michael Horn:
Very cool. Mike, thanks so much for the work. Thanks so much for joining me and walking us through where you've been and where you are now and where you're going. Really appreciate it.
Michael Flanagan:
Thank you for, thanks again for the invite. Love the conversation.
Michael Horn:
No, I'm, I've been thrilled to watch from afar and sometimes close. And it's great to see. And for all you tuning in, we'll be back with more stories like this next time on the Future of Education.
Michael Flanagan:
And you can find us at mastery.org.
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Amar Kumar, Founder and CEO of KaiPod Learning, joins Danny Curtis in this conversation! They discuss the growing microschooling movement, unpack what teachers need to feel successful starting and operating their own schools, and envision a future in which districts leverage the power of microschools.
Danny Curtis:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can fulfill their potential, build their passions, and live a life of purpose. I'm Danny Curtis, producer of the podcast and collaborator with Michael Horn on all things learning innovation. And I am stepping in front of the camera here again this week for a conversation with Amar Kumar who is the founder of Kaipod Learning, which is a technology solution and service provider for microschools. Amar, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Amar Kumar:
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Danny.
Amar’s Journey to the Work
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. Well, Kaipod Learning has been such an important player within a microschooling movement that has been growing rapidly and earning a lot of attention. So I'm so excited to have the chance to learn from you about all of the great work that you're doing. And so to start us off, Amar, could you tell us about your journey to microschooling and the founding story of Kaipod learning?
Amar Kumar:
Yeah, happy to. I have been in education for almost 20 years now. I started off as a school teacher where I taught a high school math class in a very high needs school in India. And I discovered in front of the classroom what I think a lot of teachers discover, that you might be planning to teach the pythagorean theorem today, but there are kids who are not ready for that. They're maybe doing math at a fourth grade level, and there are some kids who were way past the pythagorean theorem and they're doing calculus and they're all sitting in front of you waiting for a lesson. That problem of I just couldn't appropriately target all kids with the same lesson plan was really, really difficult for me, and it caused me to want to try things differently, create small groups. I started experimenting in my classroom, which worked to some small effect. I became the principal of the school, saying, I'm going to do this across the whole school. And it all failed because I started to realize that the construct of a rectangular classroom with a teacher at the front and students sitting down all getting the same delivery at the same time, that construct itself is the problem. I wasn't the problem as a teacher. So I left traditional brick and mortar education to do a lot of things in education. Eventually, that journey led me to online schooling, where a curriculum and lesson plans and assessments are all pre-created on a predictable path, and the students move through that at an unpredictable pace. So students get to choose how fast they're consuming that knowledge, demonstrating understanding before moving on to the next thing. And I loved it. I fell in love with that model because I said, this is the future. Every teacher doesn't have to reinvent the lesson plan. The teachers just focus through an online network how to help each child. Loved it. I became the head of product for Pearson's online schools business. And of course, as much as I loved it, I started to also realize the flaws in that system. When students are completely home alone, it can be really difficult from a social and emotional perspective for them. It's difficult for parents when maybe just need some childcare, when the kids should be in a safe place outside of the home. And so I knew that that solution was also incomplete. And when the pandemic happened, like all education companies, I said, what do we do now? And we in Pearson were seeing massive growth of our online schools business.And the families who were in those schools were saying, wow, my child is thriving in an online learning environment. And never predicted it, but, oh, my goodness, like, I would never want this long term because socialization, childcare. And so for me, there was a really important insight there. While the conventional wisdom was, everyone's going to go back to traditional schools, for me, the counterintuitive insight was, but this form of learning really works. So what if we could create small groups of kids who come together socially in a safe place outside of the home, and they're learning at their own pace? So I thought I'd invented a brand new learning model. I was going around telling someone, I've invented something new, until someone said, this is called microschools. We know what this is. And so for me, it was a really interesting sort of bottoms up way to enter this space when I just found this problem that I thought I could solve.
The Evolution of Kaipod Learning
Danny Curtis:
Got it. So, you know, you saw the shortcomings of traditional education from inside the four walls of the classroom, as you said, and also some of the challenges of tech only from within ed tech, and then tapped into this microschooling movement that was trying to get the best of both worlds. And that was a movement that was in the midst of a lot of growth and change. When schools were closed during the pandemic and more parents were sort of entering their students into these small, personalized learning environments, learning pods, and some of which stuck with it even after school doors reopened. And I understand that Kaipod learning is also in a period of growth and change. Could you tell us a bit about how Kaipod looks differently now than when it started?
Amar Kumar:
Yeah. It's interesting because when we first started, we grabbed onto this concept of learning pods, or pandemic pods, as people were calling them, where parents would voluntarily come together, hire a teacher, meet in someone's basement, and the children would be learning in person. And same thing as what I mentioned earlier, parents who were in the system said, wow, my kid is happy. He's not being bullied. He's learning. This is wonderful. I love it. It's the best year of school he's had. But when schools reopen, it's like, why? Why would you do this? This has been great for you. Again, the insight there was, it was a huge pain to organize these learning. It was a huge pain to hire the teacher. So when we started off to your question, we said, we can organize this for you. We'll grab the space. We will hire the teacher. We'll set the schedule. We'll recruit the families. You just pay a membership fee to join. And that model scaled from our first site in Boston three years ago to 16 sites across the country. And so we saw families were craving this model. Families who'd been homeschooling or families who've been doing online schools. And what we discovered is every time we would want to open a new site, we would get hundreds of applications for our learning controls, and then we would get hundreds of families who said, I'm interested in learning about this. So we just knew we just couldn't do it faster. We knew we could never open enough. It's very capital intensive, as you would imagine, to open one of these learning pods. And so for me, I really wanted to bring this learning model to many, many more cities and states across the country. And I said, I don't have to hold the secret. I don't have to be the one that has my name on the building. It can be someone else who opens it. And so I went sort of down the path of franchising, but there's a lot of legal hurdles there. And then eventually we discovered, actually, if a teacher in a community has a lot of passion around creating her own school, she knows the families in that community, she knows the geography, so she knows kind of where the school could be. She has her own how she wants to run it. Why don't we support her to get her dream off the ground? And then once she launches, we can continue to provide that support, and that can be the start of a new business model. So that's what Kaipod is turning into, is we have sort of our core pods. Those are like our innovation sites where we continue to learn and iterate. We work with great kids, we help improve their life outcomes. And everything we learn there goes into supporting our partners. And there are now almost 100 partners across the country who are opening their own microschools. And so I'm sure we'll talk about that now. But that program is called Kaipod Catalyst.
Kaipod Catalyst
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a great segue. I would love to focus in on that work that you are doing to bring new founders into the fold and support aspiring micro school founders in making the leap. And I know you all have been doing a lot of work around it, as you mentioned, and have some big goals around it, too. So could you tell us a bit more about that initiative?
Amar Kumar:
Yeah. The number one goal here is lower the friction to start your school. So if you're a teacher who's got this dream to say, I wish I could have my own school, or if you're a teacher who's sometimes in a staff meeting, like, I bet I could run this place a lot better than those people. If you have those types of attitudes, you should think about starting your school. And when you start thinking about starting your school, you get overwhelmed very quickly, because that's a really big task. And through our research, we've identified four really big barriers for teachers who want to do this. The first is sort of content and knowledge. They don't know what to do.
So how do you build a website? How do you figure out regulation? How do you build, set your price? How do you do marketing? How do you enroll families? There's so many things, probably hundreds of decisions you have to make. Teachers don't have a knowledge base to do that right now. That's the first big barrier. The second big barrier is confidence. Teachers don't have the confidence to say, I am going to be, I'm going to be a small business owner. That's a really difficult transition for teachers to make, but it's really important going to start school. You got to see yourself that way. The third is community. If you're doing this alone, it can be a really lonely journey and a lot of people give up. In fact, 90% of the people who want to do this give up—90%. So we know there's a huge problem where people feel alone in this journey. And then the fourth barrier is capital. You need a little bit of money to get started. It's not tens of thousands of dollars, but it is some money to get a lease, to pay for some marketing materials, to buy curriculum, etcetera. So there's a little bit of capital required.
So these four barriers prevent teachers from starting their schools. And if you prevent teachers from starting new schools, you're not creating new supply. Because the new supply starts, the more demand generates, more and more parents get interested. So this is the problem we're setting outwards. How do you break down each of these structural barriers? Teachers and the catalyst program is very specifically designed to break down each of those barriers. On the content side, you have our entire playbook. Everything you need to know to start a school is in our course. That includes lessons, videos, master sessions, tools that you're going to need, templates like, gosh, I spent like $15,000 on my first staff handbook and family handbook with lawyers. Don't spend that much money with a lawyer. Like just use my handbook. Customize my handbook for your school. It's just like that. There's lots of these templates that the school founder has to build. It takes a month to do it. So we think we can accelerate your journey about six to seven months to get your school off the ground.
On the confidence piece. We provide a lot of coaching, one-on-one coaching, group coaching to help these teachers make that mental transition that I am first, a business owner. I'm figuring out how to build a sustainable microschool for my community. So it serves kids forever and it gives me a sustainable wage. So we do a lot of coaching.
The third is the community itself. Like I said, we already have about 100 founders. We're tracking more than double that this year. So the idea is that you are not alone. There are people on this journey who are a few steps ahead of you. There are people who are a few steps behind you, but you're all moving together to create new education options in your community. And one of the most famous phrasing sayings in our community is don't make this mistake, we've made it for you. Because whenever someone asks, oh, I think, I'm going to buy this, like 15 people will say, don't do this. I bought it. It was garbage. It didn't work. And so it really helps people see how they can learn from each other. And these founders are all over the country, and they're really helping each other because there's no competition. They're all over the place. And so it's a really vibrant community. And our founders helped. They feel so supported. Every time there's a win, the first place they go is their husband. The second place they go is our community.
Every time there's a fall or a hurdle, they come to our community because they want the help. They know there's going to be 15 people who have ideas for them on how. And then finally, capital, which is the fourth. We're working with banks to provide loans. We're working with nonprofits to provide grants. We have access to our own grant that the catalyst founders are eligible for. So we're trying to build all these wonderful supports so that there's as little friction as possible if you want to start school.
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. It strikes me as a comprehensive set of offerings that you all have, no doubt informed by the 360-degree view you got into the challenges of microschool operators during your time or in your role as a direct service provider yourselves. And I love that you are not just leveraging your own expertise and experience in this field, but crowdsourcing, the wisdom of microschoolers everywhere, through the community piece that you're describing.
Amar Kumar:
Our network just gets stronger and stronger as more people join the network, that crowdsourcing gets better and better. And so we're really excited about the future.
Serving the Varied Needs of Microschools
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. And to stay with the alliterative c theme, I'm wondering about another term starting with c customization. One of the great parts about microschools is the wide variety of microschools around the country. Kaipod is plugging into schools with very different missions, different methods, different student populations. And so I'm wondering, how have you all designed your product, your services, to allow it to meet the needs across so many different contexts?
Amar Kumar:
This is great. I think the first thing you picked up on is that the strength of this movement is its diversity. This is the primary reason I decided that the franchise model was the wrong model, or just like the company owned center is hundreds of times the wrong model. Because the reason microschooling will be successful is that they can completely flex to serve their community. They're founded by people from the community for their community. And they're in the community. Right? So I'm sitting in Boston. I have no business telling a founder in Wichita, Kansas, how to launch your school. She knows her community, so then my job becomes to give her a wraparound support and give her the key principles and teach her what would make her successful in her community. So, essentially, we have 15 building blocks of success. Each microschool needs to think about these 15, but the way they adapt them within their school is going to differ. And so, for example, one of them is family relationships, right? Obviously, a great microschool has very strong family relationships. They're not just, we do a parent teacher conference twice a year, but, hey, family member, like, you're getting pulled into the school to support each other, support the other families, support the other kids. Now, for some schools, that dimension is very explicit. There's an expectation that families are volunteering. They're running enrichment activities or field trips for other schools where maybe they're serving a different segment of families that might be busier. There's not an expectation that they volunteer, but there are regular community events. So we don't prescribe how you should do these 15, but we give them guiding principles. We give them the way to think about how their school brings these 15 to life to get to excellence. And so we found through that framework, all of our software, all of our services, all of our coaching, everything can flex to support each founder in their journey. And the biggest proof of that is in our network today. We've got one school in the Bay Area who's charging $30 to $40,000 a year for a very high end gifted student education. That's what that market commands. In the same time, we have microschools in our network who are serving very low income families in Atlanta for less than $5,000 a year. And we, as the network, can and have been supporting both founders serving these extremely different sectors. And so that, for me, is the promise that microschooling diversity is great, and we, as a network, can flex to support that.
Danny Curtis:
Yeah, got it. Accomplishing two very important goals, providing the bones and the structure to stand these things up, maybe more quickly and more easily, and also providing and affording the flexibility to adapt these to different contexts and environments, both of which so important to doing this at scale and making room for the potential for innovation, the enormous potential for innovation of the microschooling movement.
Amar Kumar:
This is the great thing about having teachers start them, because teachers have a million ideas about how to do things better, how to do it differently, for their community. So to give them that flexibility, the bones, like you said, giving them the structure to innovate within is exactly what's right for them.
Founders’ Experiences
Danny Curtis:
So, Amar, I'd love to hear what you're hearing from the microschool founders that have gone through the program, both about the program itself and the experience of moving into the micro school founder and leader role.
Amar Kumar:
I would probably categorize their reactions in three buckets. And the first is we're hearing that the comprehensive nature of compliance support is really valuable to them. They love that they are never alone and that that support doesn't stop once they launch their school. So I haven't mentioned this, but the way the Catalyst program works is you actually don't pay anything to join the program. You don't pay anything for any of our coaching, any of our support, any of our content, because my vision, my passion is not to run an accelerator for schools. My passion is to run a network of really successful schools. So my incentive is to get you to that point that your school is so successful that I'm so happy to be in your network. You're in my network.
So essentially the way our model works is it's free to join the accelerator, and then when you launch your school, we essentially do a revenue share model, like a first student fee model for your school. And so what people love about Catalyst is that it's a full amount of support and we're with them forever. Like, we don't give up or we don't let go once they've launched. So they always feel like they're part of a bigger team. The second thing we hear is this, this phrase that comes up all the time, that this is literally a lifesaver. I think literally is being used a little extremely here, figuratively a lifesaver. We've had founders who've been two days from being evicted, that we've been able to step in. We've had founders who have accidentally signed a lease for a department that wasn't zoned. So we've been able to step in and help them out when they've made these types of unfortunate mistakes. And so I think knowing that there's a national network with connections, with resources, with the ability to help them get out of sticky situations has helped them get the confidence to keep going on this journey. You can imagine it's really stressful for a first time founder to have made a big mistake like that. And so we're there to help them in that. So that's, we feel great when we hear that. And third, which for me is just the most amazing, is when they say, this journey and this program has changed how they see themselves or it has changed how their family sees them. And they use phrases like, I used to be, quote, just a teacher, unquote, but now I built a school, now I'm a founder. And those phrases, you know, it's really hard to be a teacher. Saying just a teacher is not a great phrase. It's a really, really difficult job. But to make that leap and then see yourself differently and see your community, have your community see you differently is just so incredible to see that transition. And these, these people, they just sit up a little straighter. They carry themselves with more confidence, and they tell us that, hey, I was at the grocery store and someone recognized me as, you're the lady who started a school, right? And their daughter is beaming with pride at their mom being recognized. I love those stories. Like, these are people who are creating jobs in their communities. So this is as much of a story of education innovation as entrepreneurship in some of the most disadvantaged communities or with some of the people, these teachers who've been really forgotten, who aren't respected, and now they're taking matters into their own hands to do something about them.
Danny Curtis:
Yeah, I love to hear that. One of the biggest drivers of career dissatisfaction that we hear about from teachers is that lack of career pathway in a lot of traditional education settings, the lack of opportunity for experienced, excellent teachers to sort of grow their responsibilities and their role within the traditional school context. And so it's nothing surprising to hear that that is the opportunity to be a CEO and a leader and a decision maker within their own school and in their own classroom. That that is one of the most gratifying and rewarding parts about this switch. But for those teachers that might be skeptical of microschools or apprehensive to making this switch, what would you say to them?
Amar Kumar:
Yeah, there's plenty of them. I don't think starting a microschool is right for everyone. Like I’ll be upfront about that. But I think the first thing I would say is every teacher deserves more than they’re getting. And I don't think that's a controversial statement. I think everyone of any political stripe would agree with that. Teachers deserve more. That's the first.
The second is asking these skeptic teachers who may be skeptical or apprehensive, asking themselves why they got into teaching. And when I had this conversation in an interview for Catalysts, they often sort of give, like, the rehearsed answer, but then, like, I push, and then I let them sort of sit in some awkward silence. And then it really gets into the real reason, you know, the spark in a kid's eye. Or, like, my grandmother was a teacher, and she inspired me to do it, but now I've lost the passion, etcetera. And so we asked them, why did you get into this? And are those dreams still being fulfilled? And if not, which, unfortunately for the majority of teachers, it is not being fulfilled, then I would say, just start looking at some of the profiles of people who started schools. Believe it or not, they look like you. They have the same struggles as you. If you go to our website, Kaipodlearning.com, you'll see these profiles, you'll see these men and women of all ethnicities, in all geographies, all income levels, all backgrounds, all ages. Who said, I need to take charge of my life, of my careerAnd all of them were. All of them were skeptical. No one wakes up and says, that's it. I've decided I'm gonna start a school today. No, that's not how it works. Entrepreneurship isn't this magical spark that we might see on Twitter or on TV. It is a slow and fearful journey. It's a journey where eventually you say, oh, my goodness, I have to do this. Something or someone is calling me to do this. So if you're religious, that someone or something is God. If you're not religious, that someone or something is your own inside or the fire that's burning inside you saying, you've got to do this. So if you're finding yourself moved by some of this, just read profiles of people. Type in microschooling, type in how to start a school. Go to our website, whatever you want. Just start learning.
Because it might take you three years to get there. It might take you three days to get there. But everyone should. Every teacher should say, I deserve more, and I want to know what I can do about it.
The Future of Microschooling
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. To your first point, a big fan of using the five whys to get at that deeper meaning or those deeper reasons. And on the second point, I can imagine that as microschooling grows in popularity, and more and more teachers are seeing more and more teachers like them developing these schools. It becomes easier to imagine themselves in those roles and taking on that responsibility. And for this last question, as we wrap up, I want you to get your crystal ball out and look five years into the future, and I'm curious, where do you see this microschooling movement going? How is it growing or evolving over that period?
Amar Kumar:
Yeah, I think there's probably two scenarios on how this plays out. The first scenario is microschooling starts to get steam. More teachers are starting schools. More parents are then leaving traditional schools, public or private, to start there, to join these micro schools. And that plan just continues. More and more people leave the system, which creates more demand for these microschools, which then spurs more supply. More demand, more supply. Right? So you can imagine a world where, say, 70% of kids are in a microschool in the next ten years. It's not unrealistic. You might think I'm crazy, but it's not unrealistic. North Carolina today already has 25% of kids who don't go to public school. 25% are already opting out of traditional public schools. That's one state. But it's not inconceivable that across the country, 70% to 75% of kids will have opted out of public school. That's a really big existential crisis for the public school system. It is also an exciting opportunity for education innovation and transformation.
So that's one scenario. The second scenario is public schools see this trend, and they say, we're not gonna. We are going to start competing for these kids. Public schools say, I will not lose another kid to these new microschools, because why? I'm gonna empower my own teachers to create new pathways, new microschools within my district. So I have this really wonderful teacher. She's a middle school math teacher. Everyone loves her. She's got such amazing energy. I'm going to say to her, you now create your own pathway for robotics. A microschool focused on robotics within the Boston Public Schools system. You're still a tenured teacher. You're still in our union. Families still join public school. But now kids can opt into your pathway. And if they opt in and that pathway grows, she can grow, she can add more teachers, and if that pathway dies, then someone else can do that. What a great pluralistic system that would be to build within the public sector. That's the second scenario. Now, which scenario will it be? Anyone's guess. And I think it comes down to how the public sector responds. The way I see it is this innovation is going to happen regardless. Whether the innovation happens by teachers who have left the system or by teachers who are still in the system is the choice of the people who control system. Yeah, it's an exciting vision that you've laid out in that second scenario where students in more traditional settings are getting access to this personalized small learning environment. But obviously, as you have already alluded to, a lot will need to shift or change for that to become a reality. And so, I know I said the last question was my last question, but if you'll allow me one more, I'd love to hear what do you see as those necessary supports or changes that would facilitate or accelerate that future? And feel free to take this any direction you'd like, from culture to technology to policy. I mean, I'm a pretty simplistic person when it comes to this. I feel like there are, when something feels too hard to do, you think about what are the barriers? And there are barriers that sometimes exist in nature, and then there are barriers that are man made. And I think in this case, all of the barriers are man made. Right. All it requires is the political will of a strong school superintendent or school leader, the support of the bargaining units, the excitement of local parents and the passion of teachers. Those are all man made. Like, these things can happen in any school district in America, but those four ingredients don't exist yet. And so the question is, how long will it be until the school leadership, the staff, like sort of the membership organizations like unions, the parents and the teachers, how long will it be until they come together and say, we're tired of losing kids, we want to do something about this. Right? So I think those are the things that have to happen. Am I optimistic? No, but that's for the next five years. It's all really I can see. I don't think it's going to happen in the next five years, at least not at scale. But I do know there are school districts who are thinking about this today. This is not a pipe dream. Some of them are saying, I wish we could do this. What would we have to put in place to get it right? So it will happen in small pockets over the next five years, not at scale. And my hope is that in the five to ten year horizon, you do start to see the majority of districts say, we're going to build this within.
Danny Curtis:
Yeah, well, thank you, Mar, for sharing that vision and the ingredients it will take to realize that vision and more generally, your knowledge and expertise within this world of microschooling, and not only with us on the podcast here today, but with microschooling founders around the country. I look forward to watching as you continue to inspire innovation and facilitate learning across education and just really appreciate you joining us.
Amar Kumar:
Thank you. Appreciate you having me. And to the teachers who are listening, I'm serious, you deserve more. We need to look into what that means for you. We have a new program of Kaipod Catalyst that's going to start this fall. So if this is something you want to think about doing for next year, go check it out. This could be the right, this could be the thing you've been waiting for.
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Fehlende Folgen?
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John Woods, provost and chief academic officer at the University of Phoenix, joined me to discuss how the University is drawing a closer connection between college and career. We discuss steps the college has taken to build career pathways and equip students with the language and signals to communicate their skills. This episode is worth the read/watch/or listen, as all that they’re doing I suspect will surprise you.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and I'm excited about today's show because we're going to get to geek out on topics that have just become more and more of interest to me as we think about where the puck is going in education, learning, upskilling and so forth, which is a lot about careers and skills and things of that nature. And so to help us navigate that conversation, delighted, we have John Woods. He is the Chief Academic Officer and provost for the University of Phoenix. John, thanks so much for joining us.
John Woods:
Thanks, Michael. And thanks for the hockey reference. That resonates with me as a Canadian.
John’s Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
There you go. And we’re trying to make you really feel at home, right? But let's start and make you feel even more at home. Before we get into some of these conversations around skills and careers generally, let's talk about your own career path to the University of Phoenix and perhaps reintroducing the University of Phoenix to folks. You and I got to spend some time together just a few months back and with a lot of the senior leadership team at the University of Phoenix. And it's clear to me anyway that it's a very different place from, say, 15 years ago, say a decade ago. So if it's easy to do, interweaving your own story with how the University of Phoenix has evolved and how you've landed as the provost there.
John Woods:
OK, so real kind of quick backdrop here. I've got a coal miners lamp on the shelf behind me, one of the many things on that shelf. Both my grandparents were coal miners and my parents, neither one of them went to college. I had two older sisters that didn't go to college, so I was a prototypical first generation college student. I was not a very successful student. I tell the story of my mother dropping me off and some upper class students grabbing my duffel bags and me waving goodbye. And that was it. And I was there for eight years. I don't think my parents visited the campus once. I did an undergrad and a master's and went on to do my PhD in higher ed, higher education administration. And I took a real interest in that because of my own experience in higher ed. And I did a couple areas of focus within my PhD work. One was adult learning theory and the other one was academic honesty. And I thought I would return to Canada from the US with my PhD in hand and go to work at a Canadian university. But I had a lot of opportunities in the US and stayed. I worked for about 25 years for adult focused institutions some eight years ago, I was contacted by the University of Phoenix when they were looking for a future provost and lucky enough to come on board there. Coming up on my 7th anniversary, I guess it would be soon and been part of this thing you just described, which is becoming a very different university. When I joined, new owners had recently purchased the university as well as a number of other companies within that same portfolio, and they sold the other companies off. Some of them were institutions in other countries and they really focused on the University of Phoenix, which had kind of a different model when it was publicly traded. There were not only these other companies within the portfolio, but there was sort of a central service providing really help to the different business units, including the University of Phoenix. And what they sought to do was really divest of all the other things and focus on Phoenix and push all the services back into the university to make it a standalone soup to nuts entity. And as well they decided that they were going to make a number of changes to improve the outcomes at the university. I've been part of that journey, which has been fantastic. I really consider kind of to be the capstone of my career, working with working adults.
The Career Optimism Index
Michael Horn:
Very cool. And obviously I think this is going to be a more natural segue than I had even planned with that backstory because obviously now you're making sure the education you all provide is not just academically rigorous, but it's also career relevant. And maybe career relevant is where you all start. And I don't think I have to tell you that it's unusual for a provost at a university to have that sort of focus and that be the portfolio sort of charge, if you will. But one of the things that you oversee each year is the Career Optimism Index. It surveys 5,000 American workers to understand their points of view and their sentiment on the labor market economy and so forth. And we'll be sure to link to the current version of it, the 2024. But I'd love to hear from your perspective, what jumped off the page. What were some of the highlights from this latest installment? Because I will say it was interesting to me that there seems to be a lot of tension in the market right now. That was one of the things that really came out loud and clear, but I'm curious if that stood out to you as much or what your big takeaways were.
John Woods:
Yeah. To connect some of the transformation at the University of Phoenix to the most recent findings in that survey, which I think there's just a wealth of good information in there and I'm glad you can provide maybe a link to it. We presented it to chambers of commerce across the country and a number of different organizations that are really interested in that data. So some good stuff in there. The transformation kind of, of the University of Phoenix included eliminating a lot of programs that we're not tracking to above average job growth projections. So that's where kind of this starts. And only adding new programs that met that criteria for a certain amount of growth that was projected in terms of jobs. And when I laugh a little bit sometimes when people kind of compare the size of the university to what we used to be and say the beleaguered University of Phoenix, which is much smaller than it used to be.
Michael Horn:
What is it right now? Like 100,000 or so?
John Woods:
We're over 80,000, but getting smaller was intentional. So moving away from campuses, because working adults had clearly chosen online as their modality of choice, moving away from programs that didn't track to really good job growth prospects, and then adding programs that only did that, those were big steps. And then probably the next biggest couple of things is we reduced the cost of attending the University of Phoenix in 2017 and haven't increased it since. I think I saw a statistic the other day that, on average, higher education has increased its price at a rate higher than the rate of inflation for something like 65 of the last 70 years. So we really bucked the trend there. And then we skills mapped every one of our programs so that when a student completes a course in their program at the University of Phoenix, they've earned a number of skills. But we clearly signal to them what the three top skills are that they've earned, and that skills mapping tracks from the learning content that they are exposed to, to the assessments they complete, to the data we collect, that tells us the level at which they achieved on those assessments. So how I connect this to what the Career Optimism Index survey tells us in its most recent iteration is that, as you said, not only do we survey a bunch of workers to get their sentiment on their career prospects, but we also, as part of that study, survey a number of companies, and we hear from them as well. And it's interesting to kind of see the points of differentiation between the two sets of populations and their perceptions. Companies are saying it's hard to find people, hard to find people that have the right skills, that they need. Workers are saying that companies don't seem to value professional development as much as they once used to, and companies don't do enough to develop their talent, to keep their talent, to grow their talent, and so that's an interesting, you know, kind of dichotomy, because the, the mapping of our programs for skills, we think, has given our students a language that they can communicate in with an employer or a boss or a future boss or prospective boss.
We've now issued 685,000 skills badges. The badges are collections of skills, and the students can post those instantly with a couple of clicks to their LinkedIn profile or zip recruiter profile. But more than anything, as I said, it's given them a language they can speak in that companies understand. And that skills mapping that took three years to do has enabled us not only to do that badge work, which I think is probably more badges than any other institution is issued so far, but we've also created a set of career tools with that same data. So one tool allows students in their portal to be sent actual jobs that match their skills profile with us. So the data is all connected that way that, Michael, I could send you three jobs and you'd see that you are an 85% match to those jobs, and you could apply or click on a link to get help to apply from us. And we think that's changing the game, because the notion of, I'm going to go back to school, and when I finish, I hope I get a better job, it shouldn't really be that way. The degrees and what people learn should be far more transparent, and people should be able to earn as they learn, maybe change their circumstances, not only at the end, but even as they go. But that can't happen with the opaque nature of a degree where people say, I'm done my second year, can you hire me? It can't even be done sometimes when they've got the degree in hand, because it's not clear what's in the degree. So we think this really can unlock some of that.
The ‘Grain Size’ of Skills
Michael Horn:
Very cool. So let's double click on the skills part of it and the badging and so forth. I'm just curious because sometimes employers have, like, really clear understanding of the skills that they want, and sometimes, as you know, they don't really have much clue, so. And you all have an unabashedly sort of both and approach to this, right, degree and skills, which I think stands out in a marketplace where, you know, a lot of places are all in on one or all in on the other. I'm just curious, can you give us a sense of, like, the grain size of the skills? And are you the one certifying them? Are they third party? And just so you know, the reason I ask, I was with a CLO of a large company the other day, and he was observing, “you know, I think we're sort of overthinking the skills conversation. We're trying to get so granular and specific that we sort of lost the plot,” was his argument. So I'm sort of curious your take and what grain size we're talking here.
John Woods:
Yeah. So I find it really fascinating. When any of these lists are published annually of the top skills employers are looking for, they usually come out from people like SHRM or the big consulting firms. Those lists always have what we'll call soft skills.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, the communication, critical thinking, which aggregates well across all skills and industries.
John Woods:
That's getting somebody who can really function and by their sheer nature being able to function while they're more teachable or trainable along the technical skill stuff. And so we mapped for that, too. And I think that's been really important, those types of things, executive functioning skills, some people call them. They exist in core classes and they exist in gen eds, and we've mapped for them too. So park that for a second, because I think those are really valuable and helpful, making people better workers and more promotable and all these other things. But the mapping we did of all the technical skills kind of took a bit of a Rosetta stone to build that, because the inputs were many and employers certainly wanted input. We have our industry advisory boards made up of companies that gave us those inputs, but we also have programmatic accreditors who say these things have to be in your programs for you to hold our accreditation. And then on top of that, we had all the kind of industry groups that weigh in on these things.
And then you actually had all of the jobs and their definitions from the Bureau of Labor. All the jobs have codes, and all the codes have a number of ingredients baked into them of what the skills should be. So we mapped all of that and saw that we taught all these things in our programs, but we needed to probably simplify to what you said and identify the top ones. So where, from all the source data, where are the things that people are asking for? What are those, the things they're asking for the most? So we rank them, and the top three are most clear, and those are the ones that we make more clear to the student, and it's collections of those that give students badges. Now, on the other side of the coin, to your question, we're doing an awful lot of work with employers, so we can tell employers this on behalf of our students and make them more interested in our grads but we also have some tools that leverage, and I know you wanted to talk a little bit about this today, but we have some tools that leverage AI, which will allow an employer to identify the skills being demonstrated by a group of people within their organization and map that up against. Maybe it's the next level position in that organization, that they've identified the skills for that job, and we can show them what the gaps are. And in that way, we could maybe do some just-in-time training for the people. They've got to be developed into these other roles, which is a lot less costly and risky than bringing on brand new people for those roles, plus more enfranchising for the people they already have to take an interest in their growth and development and show them a path to promotion. So we've actually got a couple of pilots going on with employers where we're doing that leveraging, like I said, some AI tools.
Michael Horn:
I mean, that gets cool, because I think what you're saying is the AI allows you to assess and skill in context, as opposed to pulling me out of my job. And as you also know, critical thinking, we use the same words in every field, but how it manifests in one field is very different from another. So now I can develop that critical thinking skills in the context of the industry I'm working for.
John Woods:
Yeah, and I think, you know, we hear an awful lot about employers and their frustration with higher ed. I think this can really solve for a lot of that. And, you know, I think kind of running parallel to their own skepticism of higher ed and some of the pronouncements some of the bigger companies have made, that they'll hire people without degrees, you know, no degree required, we'll train you. Running parallel to that, in the last year, we've seen 100 institutions either go away entirely or merge with somebody else. We know higher ed is costing more and more. We've seen dozens of institutions announce that they have big deficits, that they have to cut programs and even sacred ground, eliminate tenured faculty roles. So higher ed doesn't have a great brand right now of solving employer problems. And we think the combination of being more affordable and being much more granular, to your words, around what the student is learning and making that connection more clear, that people can speak to what they've got in terms of skills, employers can hear it and understand it and feel more confident. We feel this is kind of a recipe that is, it's time has come kind of thing, especially with what's going on in all of higher ed, as I described.
Reducing Anxiety, Increasing Transparency
Michael Horn:
Well, it's interesting. If you step back from that and you think about the anxiety that you described in the Career Optimism Index on both sides, the employees and the employers, one of the things it seems to me that you're doing is trying to strip out anxiety on all sides. right? We're not raising the price you've held at constant. You're trying to make the skills that you actually learn within the degree much more transparent. So you know where the matches are in the market, and then you're trying to do it within context so it's less of a step away, if you will. And I want to try this one out on you and see how you react. Someone observed recently, actually my co author on the upcoming book Job Moves observed to me that everyone sort of wants to rag on Gen Z for being impatient and looking for the next thing right away and so forth, and he's like, can you really blame them? All we do is sit there yelling at them that their skills are eroding faster than ever. Of course they're impatient to use them and put them to good use.
I'm curious, you know how that lands with the moves that you are all making and the folks that you're serving.
John Woods:
Yeah. And this one hits close to home, too, because I've got a grad, a college grad from, I remember that three months ago who's looking for a way to launch, and I need them off the payroll. And then I've got one in college who's trying to figure out what to major in. And right now she's, she's majoring in psychology and, well, I have to wonder where that's going to go. So we'll figure all that out. But the generation you're talking about, I think they need a better set of tools to navigate a really complex, rapidly changing work environment. And the frustration that they're facing when they talk to employers or prospective employers, I think, is that they're not speaking the same language. And I think the anxiety of folks on the employer side who could hire their way out of this thing can't anymore.
John Woods:
The labor market is pretty tight. Unemployment is pretty low. There's not as much churn as there was in previous years in the market. So just finding people to do the things they need to do is not easy. So I think they got to grow their own people, and they might have to bring more people in at lower levels and have great programs in place to engage and develop them. And the only way they can do that with any amount of specificity or accuracy is the skills kind of map the skills taxonomy, the skills pathway that I think we've sort of tried to unlock here. So we're really actually pretty excited. We can reduce anxiety in both those groups.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And I forgot the other way you're reducing anxiety is by eliminating degree programs that don't have that positive ROI. And I'm going to get the number wrong, but I think it was Third Way that said, over a third of bachelor's degrees - right. - have a negative ROI after five years. I think Preston Cooper's research has shown, like, 25% or something, always have a negative ROI. Getting those off the table and being transparent about it, I think that probably helps a great deal as well.
John Woods:
And those numbers being well documented, if you put that up against the number, that seems to persist. And I wrote it down here for today, the New York Federal Reserve said that people with bachelor's degrees are earning, on average, $60k versus $35k for people without. If you think about that and the negative ROI and a bunch of degrees, it means there's a lot of degrees out there that are really helping people improve or change their lives.
Michael Horn:
That's a great point.
John Woods:
Yeah. And so what we try to, I think, make clear to folks is the degree over the long haul is still an amazing ROI. And if it comes with a couple of caveats, the school that's offering it should be able to tell you our degree because of the network you'll get at our liberal arts college. And another school will say our degree because there's a need for technicians who do HVAC or whatever it is. And we'll say it's our degree because it's practitioners who've done the jobs you want teaching it. And the skills that we've mapped into the programs, into the courses, give you what you need to, with confidence, share what you know, and employers will understand that. So everybody kind of, you know, across this vast landscape, diverse higher education institutions, they've got to have the, you know, the story that backs up what they are selling. And that's some kind of great thing about American Higher Education, is its diversity.
But the stories are being challenged, so you got to back them up.
Educating Employers
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And I love the way you just framed each of those narratives for three very different universities in very different parts of the stack, if you will. Last question for me as we start to wrap up, which is you've talked about growing your own and the reskilling or upskilling that employers have to do. I think that's right. Some people worry, well, will they go to another company. And as Richard Branson, I think, quoted once said, yeah, but what if they stay at yours and you didn't upskill them? So I think it makes a lot of sense. The curiosity I have is you're introducing the skills, taxonomy and language so that people, employers and employees, or prospective employees in some cases, can talk with each other better and make these matches. How much education are you having to do on the employer side? And the reason I ask is, my observation at least, is they do have a pretty good grasp of the core technical skills that are at hand in any given job.
And then the critical thinking, communication and stuff like that. They know it's important, but they don't really know how to measure or assess or like what it really means in their context. And so I'm curious how much education or to get them to buy in, if you will. You all have to do on that with sort of the leadership role you have to play?
John Woods:
Yeah. The interest we've had, when we share what you and I just talked about for a few minutes, the interest is really high. It comes in within an environment of a lot of people talking about skills-based hiring, maybe more than I've ever heard talked about. And like you said, the proof is in the demonstration of the skills, whether they're technical or executive functioning, soft skills, durable skills, whatever you want to call it. I think what we've been able to do is show them how we assess those things, how they can assess those things. I think that will be an evolution. I think we'll get better at that and they'll get more receptive to that. And I think the driver for that is the sheer economics of it. Many of them are already paying for their employees to go back to school as a retention tool because some other employer will offer it if they don't. They want that to make sense for them and for the learner. And making sense means they'll stay, they'll be increasingly more valuable to the organization. So those economics all work far better than we had. X number of positions we couldn't fill for a long time, and they were vacant, and as they were vacant we were hurting from it. Or we filled x number of positions, but a lot of them flamed out of or we hired a bunch of new people at a tremendous cost. We wish we didn't have as much churn and need to do that.
John Woods:
The economic drivers are at least those and many more for folks to be open and interested in this concept, in this conversation. So I think it's for those reasons we've had great conversations with companies and are helping, we think, kind of solve some of this challenge for them.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. So actually I lied. I want to ask one more question about that because it's so interesting. I guess my observation then out of that is like you're basically tagging these skills to a much clearer KPI's so they can understand the ROI with much more granularity perhaps than past education investments they've made. The flip side of that, I guess, is as you're starting to show them how you assess it, can they start building that into their own performance management systems to better show the growth of their employees and where they need to work?
John Woods:
Yeah, I think that's possible. I think in a couple of really far along conversations we've had with companies, we've talked about doing exactly that as kind of follow-on work. Step one would be we have people we can demonstrate, have the skills to the jobs you've got today. Just need to give them that opportunity. We're confident we've got the skills right for what you have. Second part of the conversation, we think we can assess the skills of the people you've got and get them to different positions within your organization, not even maybe with whole degrees, but with courses or certificates. And as you said, the third part of the conversation would be kind of following those people along and being able to measure the actual demonstration of skills that we all kind of bought in and thought would happen and seeing where they go over time. And I think we'll get there. I think AI is going to be instrumental in getting there. There's a lot of way to evaluate different kinds of work product and use inference and some of the large language models to inform what is versus what is not in terms of the work product. So we're excited because that's only evolving and at a rapid pace. We think these conversations can get even better. We're excited about where we are, but we think there's a lot more to come.
Michael Horn:
Very, very cool. I mean, I love the transparency, careers making skills a real currency and lingua franca, if you will, on both sides of. John, huge thanks for joining us and talking about the approach that the University of Phoenix is taking on this.
John Woods:
Thanks, Michael. Enjoyed talking to you and happy to do it again, maybe give you a ere's the rest of the story down the road.
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Danny Curtis, producer of the Future of Education podcast, joins me on the “mainstage” to discuss a new bill introduced recently in the Senate that would increase Research and Development in the Department of Education. We discussed the bill’s potential to spur learning innovation, the demand-side challenges to adoption, and systemwide reforms that can support in addressing those. Danny will be making more appearances in the weeks and months ahead, so I’m thrilled to introduce him to you all here by video.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. I am Michael Horn, and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to a world where all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And over the past year and a half, it's been really fun because I've had a partner in crime on this. He's been largely behind the scenes, although we have bylined some articles together. So you’ve seen his name pop up in different things, different forums, but he has literally been overseeing all of my digital products, all the digital work that I do. He's helped bring up the quality a ton, but he also happens to know a lot about education as we'll get into it in a moment. He's none other than Danny Curtis. Danny, thanks so much for actually coming on the live stage and showing your face to the audience today.
Danny Curtis:
Thanks, Michael. It's great to have the chance to step in front of the mic today.
Danny’s Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
Well, why don't you tell folks about yourself? Because part of this idea is we want you to be in front of the mic a little bit more, either riffing with me, bylining with me, or maybe even interviewing some guests. I know you've done one interview that’s super interesting coming down the pipeline, but why don't you give people a taste of, you know, your background, your experience in education specifically, and workforce issues as well. Before you and I teamed up to start doing some of this work together.
Danny Curtis:
Well, outside the work that you and I have done, Michael, I have also worked in education workforce policy, as you mentioned, at the state and local level, and a nonprofit, all towards designing systems that do a better job of connecting learners to opportunity. And got my start in this work as a high school English teacher in California, where I met so many inspiring people, teachers, administrators, students, and saw incredible work being done and also noticed the ways that that work was constrained by outdated systems. And that's really what got me into policy to try and create that change. And it's also why the mission of the Future of Education, to unlock the potential of schools and students through innovation, why that resonated so strongly with me.
The New Essential Education Discoveries Act
Michael Horn:
Well, I appreciate everything, obviously, and let's dive in. There's a bill that has come up that you called my attention to has some bipartisan support. It's around research, I think. But why don't you give folks a flavor of what we are talking about and why it caught your eye and worth talking about here in the show?
Danny Curtis:
Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a bipartisan bill. I know, very rare these days, that has proposed increases to federal education research and development funding. That was introduced in the Senate at the start of August. It's called the New Essential Education Discoveries act, NEED for short. And it was introduced by Senators Michael Bennett, a Democrat from Colorado, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas. And it would develop a fifth center in the Institute for Education Sciences that they're calling the National Center for Advanced Development and Education. And it would be dedicated to developing, disseminating, investing in what they're calling high risk, high reward, cutting edge innovations in education. And that includes technologies, innovative learning models. And it also proposes some changes to the state longitudinal data system. But for today, we'll stick to the R&D and learning. Innovation specialists have long argued that one of the great challenges of implementing innovation in education has been the lack of research and development and supply stemming from that. The federal education budget allocates only about $2.5 billion to R&D in education, which sounds like a lot, but it's only 2% of spending on education in the federal government and like, two tenths of a percent of total education spending when you take state and local into account. It also stands in stark contrast to the R&D spending in other departments. Like one department that it's often compared to is the Department of Defense with their DARPA fund, which spends $79 billion a year. And so for those reasons, this bill has garnered a lot of interest from learning innovators and a lot of excitement, too.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And I think it's great. Like, if we start putting more research on those big sort of home run questions, if you will, budget behind it, see what we can develop out of it, I think that makes a heck of a lot of sense. Not nearly enough R, as you said, in education. I mean, that's, you know, that's pennies on the dollar when you think about what you just said. And for a sector where so much is riding on it, look, we'd never do that in healthcare at this point, right? We invest a lot in R&D. It's incredibly important. Basic research is incredibly important. Solving the most intractable problems, incredibly important. I think all those statements apply to education as well. And frankly, I talk a lot about personalizing, customizing education. That's akin to precision medicine in the medicine field. But they went through this whole field or movement where they had empirical medicine, where on average, if you have these symptoms, you should do this treatment. And, yeah, it didn't work all the time. But it started to come out of RCTs before they've started to refine it more and more. It's funny. In education, we don't even have the empirical stage often even in place. We don't even know on average often what works. And we're sort of trying to leapfrog into the precision or personalized. We just need a lot more research on a whole host of things, not just science of reading, so that we can get much more precise. I love all of that.
The Education System’s Demand-side Differences
Michael Horn:
The one quibble I have is, and you didn't say it, but, you know, you hinted to it, which is that a lot of people compare this to DARPA, the defense advanced research projects arm that has given us the Internet, you know, GPS. Right. All those things. And I just, I don't love the analogy.
Because in DARPA, it's big, thorny problems you're trying to tackle with a relatively centralized buyer that is also federally funded. Right, as in the military service arms. And if DARPA comes up with something really interesting, you have a buyer that, yeah, I get procurement is broken in the military, but relatively speaking, it's nowhere near as insanely fragmented or idiosyncratic, frankly, as school districts are in America, where we don't only do a very bad job of understanding demand from the top down, frankly, what they’re going to demand, the problems that they think are most interesting are often different from place to place in unpredictable ways. And so thinking that we can crank out something and then theres going to be an at scale adoption, thats the only piece that I would say, like, lets go a little bit easier on that part of the D, if you will. But I still think the reps of basic research leading into something that actually produces a product. Its not just an academic report on a shelf that has a lot of value. I would agree.
Danny Curtis:
Yeah, yeah, you raised some really important points there. And I agree for the most part, not only is the education system far more diffuse, you mentioned the defense has a fairly centralized buyer. And schools, there are about 14,000 school districts around the country somewhere around that. And not only is it diffuse, but many of these school districts, most of these school districts are locked into an industrial paradigm of education that makes it hard for them to incorporate a lot of these innovations and therefore kind of suppresses demand. And there's historical precedent for these challenges that you're raising. In the 1990s, there was the new American Schools federal initiative that had a lot of the same R&D goals as the current one. In the Obama administration, there was the I3 initiative. Having said that, I do think that there are some factors at play here that point to maybe this time being a little different. Post Covid, I think there's a lot of. There's a renewed sense of urgency around supporting students to recover learning and maybe increase openness from that. I also think that the growth of new education AI tools and all of the buzz around AI has created a sense of excitement about learning, innovation. And then in the post secondary front, I think the wave of college closures that we've seen also increases a sense of urgency to try something new. And also included in the bill, there are measures designed to solve for this. There's a lot of discussion about these within the bill, about these innovations being community informed. And the plan for going about that is they would create these advisory panels and they'd be comprised of teachers, specialists, parents, students. And the idea there being that they want to ensure that what is being produced by this new center is solving for problems that exist in schools.And so they're kind of working to ensure that whatever is created there is a practical use for. But I think that stops short of necessarily solving all the demand problems that you're describing. But there is more that can be done at the state, federal, local level to stoke demand as well.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, and in some ways, let's have the breakthroughs and then we could figure out the demand side of the equation is, I think, part of the thinking that I think would be great anytime we can get researchers, frankly, they struggle often to get into districts to do really good research. If we can get researchers into districts with companies, those who can create product, I think that's all to the good, and I think would get me excited. I'll add one other thought, which is we also know that there's another bipartisan bill around research. It's much more around the model providers. Our friend Joel Rose and new classrooms has spoken about this in the past, and I think model providers are super interesting because they can also more readily rethink the industrial model itself. Which to your point, frankly, if you're trying to innovate within an industrial model context, the model can only prioritize those things which perpetuate it, not undermine or overthrow it. And so I think having model providers out there, deeply integrated, maybe frankly, what about an army of 200 lab schools, truly lab schools, not sort of John Dewey reprised, but like real lab schools paired with deep researchers at research universities, were not just the ed schools, but cognitive of neuroscientists, etcetera, could come in and really be playing in an integrated way with all the different inputs there. I think there's some very cool things when you get into really rethinking the model, integrating all the parts in very different ways.
Rethinking All the Parts Together
Michael Horn:
That's where the real breakthroughs, frankly, in any field come when you get to rethink all of the parts together. So, Danny, that Bill starts to get into some of the out of the box providers that have been written about that, Joel's written about New Classrooms, has written about, and a series of recommendations there for how we would start to get that really started as an engine of innovation in America's schools as well. Thoughts on that as we wrap up here?
Danny Curtis:
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the Out of the Box report, so much good stuff in there on how the system can sort of more comprehensively, in addition to this R&D initiative, increase that demand and ensure successful implementation of innovations. And so looking at the federal level, I think there's a real opportunity here to create a grant and introduce funds that will facilitate the adoption of innovations by unburdening districts that decide to take these on of the costs of implementation and so helping them cover some of those startup costs for creating new schools and new classrooms that are going to be implementing new forms of learning, both state and federal level. There's an opportunity to change regulation, open up flexibility around testing and procurement so that districts can implement these innovations to their best ability or to their fullest potential rather. The California Math Framework that was immplemented this time last year stands out as a really good example of that to me. And then at the local level and at the school level, Michael, you write a lot about how difficult it is for an organization or a school to build the classroom of tomorrow while also operating the classrooms of today. And so I think schools can start thinking about creating those separate arms that are dedicated to innovation and dedicated to thinking up new ways of teaching and learning.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, it's a great point. It's a great point. Danny. Sorry, keep going.
Danny Curtis:
Well, I was just going to bring it back to your earlier point around model providers. We've already talked about the diffuse nature of, of our education system. So many districts doing so many different things. It can be really difficult to have your finger on the pulse of learning innovation when you are operating a school day in and day out and doing that difficult work. And so partnering with model providers who do have that landscape and have worked on implementing these new forms of teaching and learning across the country can be a great way to really get the ball rolling and ensure the success of implementing innovations.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, all of that makes a lot of sense. And I think, to your point, and we'll wrap up with this thought, is that as you start to have different arms, different educators coming to the table with space, time, and their only job is to create these new models and then find places for them, that makes sense, right? Asking someone to operate your classroom and innovate in a radically different way doesn't make sense. You never ask pilots to come up with new ways to build airplanes. That's insane. And similarly, I think with schools, frankly, that's true in healthcare, too. We're not asking the doctors on the front line to come up with the vaccines. They're giving input into the vaccines, but they're not actually doing that sort of work itself. That's where the researchers, the developers, et cetera, come together. Same principle here in some ways, like, it's surprising that we think, oh, you know, why aren't schools innovating more? Well, of course they aren't, because they're trying to operate the schools and serve the kids and like, of course you need other people to do it. So great set of points all around. Really appreciate you bringing this bill to the fore so we could talk about it, and we'll look forward to seeing you much more on the Future of Education. And for all of you tuning in, it'll be a relief because you won't just see my mug made for radio on the screen. You'll also get to see Danny. So thanks so much for joining us.
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As the political conversation heats up around the impact of tutoring at-scale and the actual results from all that one-time emergency money school districts received in the wake of COVID, Jessica Silwerski, cofounder of Ignite Reading joined me to discuss the organization’s approach to literacy tutoring. We talked about the science of reading, the keys to Ignite’s success, and how districts are budgeting for tutoring as those one-time elementary and secondary emergency relief (ESSER) funds dry up.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose and to help us think through that today and how we get there, how we get to that promise for all individuals. I'm really delighted that we have Jess Reid Sliwerski. She is the co founder and CEO, most recently of the the literacy tutoring company Ignite Reading, which we're going to hear a lot about today. But Jess, welcome. You have a fascinating education background in general, so we're going to get into all that and more. Thank you so much for being here.
Jessica Sliwersk:
Oh, my gosh, Michael, thank you so much for having me. I feel like I am living the dream right now, getting to do a podcast with you and talk about my favorite thing ever, which is teaching kids to read.
Jessica’s journey to the work
Michael Horn:
Which is incredibly important. And that's why we're both excited for this conversation as a result. So let's dig in. But where I want to dig in is both the founding story behind Ignite Reading, because it came about at a really important time, the country's history, the world's history, the school's history at a challenging moment, but also your own background into that story, because, as I said up front, like, you've had some really neat roles in the world of education. Lots of different organizations, seen lots of different stripes of all of this. And so I'd love you to blend those two together, if it's possible.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Yeah, definitely. I am going to go back in time about 20 years, when I first started my career in education as a classroom teacher. And then I'm going to tell you all of these really interesting steps I had along the way that I believe in retrospect, positioned me to be doing exactly what I'm doing in building and leading Ignite Reading. So 20 years ago, I joined Teach for America on a complete whim and was placed into a fifth grade classroom in the Bronx in New York City after a six week crash course. And it became very apparent to me within my first week of teaching that many of my students still did not know how to read. And over the course of the next two years, I tried everything I could to figure out how to teach them to read. And, you know, 20 years ago, we were just starting to use Gmail. There wasn't a bunch of resources that you could google around science of reading in order to figure this out. And so I was asking everyone, you know, how do I teach my kids to read, and nobody knew how to help me. And so it wasn't until my third year of teaching, when I was a founding first grade teacher at a school in Harlem, that I finally learned how to teach my kids to read. Because it just so happened that that school was using an evidence based foundational skills curriculum. And I vividly remember, Michael, that feeling of going from working with kids who were just learning the Alphabet to then watching them learn to read words and sentences and paragraphs of text. And it was so deeply, emotionally gratifying. And I was also angry as hell that I had gone my first two years of teaching not knowing how to do this. Because what was so obvious to me, even as a baby teacher myself, was that, yes, learning to read is a science. And what I was able to very easily understand was that it was not rocket science.Because here I was in my early twenties, and I was learning to do it, and it was working, and all of my kids were learning to read in first grade on time. And so that was when there was this fire that was lit in me, and I became absolutely obsessed with wanting to help as many kids as possible learn how to read. And so fast forward. Over the course of my career, I've had a really unique mix of roles in education. I became a school leader. I was a K-12 instructor instructional coach with a focus on foundational reading and, you know, the other strands of what lead to highly skilled reading for kids. I was coaching principals across New York City in best practices and literacy instruction. I was a literacy specialist for a network of 22 schools in New York City. And then I accidentally co-founded my first edtech company with a literacy app that I designed with the goal of helping teachers and helping school leaders. And then it was like, oops, I think this is a product, and we now need to build an ed tech company in order to scale this. And that was when I then had my first taste of national impact, which for me, the work has always been about trying to help as many kids as possible. So that was exhilarating. And when I got my first taste of working at a national level, I just wanted more. And I went on to lead a nonprofit called Open Up Resources that publishes high quality instructional materials. And this is where it gets even more interesting, because while I was running Open Up Resources, my daughter started Pre-K in Oakland Unified school District. And of course, being an educator, I was like, oh, I can't wait to volunteer in her classroom. And being a CEO, I had the flexibility with my schedule to make that happen. And I quickly saw that kids in her class, as well as the grades above, were not being taught to read with an evidence based curriculum. So at this point, it had been about 15 years since I had been in the classroom, and I'm just having this moment of like, are you kidding me? This is still happening, even though we know better. And so I started teaching kids to read using a structured literacy approach, and then was very quickly kicked out of volunteering because I was being a troublemaker. This was in a school that was using the Lucy Culkin's curriculum. They were using guided reading. I was told, if you want to be a volunteer here, you must do guided reading.And my response was, you want me to do something that has proven to be ineffective and harmful to kids rather than giving them what the reading research shows their brains need in order to learn to read? And they said, yes. And they said, I'm not going to do that. And they said, then you can't volunteer here.
Michael Horn:
Wow.
Jessica Sliwerski:
And I am stubborn. And I also, when it comes to kids, I fight really, really hard because I think about the fact that I am so lucky to have the education that I have, and it's not right that any kids in our country shouldn't be getting the best possible education. And connected to my story is that I'm also a cancer survivor. And as obsessed as I was with teaching kids to read prior to my cancer diagnosis, having gone through the experience of cancer right after my daughter was born, surgeries, chemotherapy, I learned how strong I am, and I have a deeper appreciation for just how short and precious this life is. And I want to live every day with purpose. And so there's this passion that I already have that is now on completely steroids because of this crucible that I've experienced in my life. So I get kicked out of volunteering, and I'm just like, oh, hell, no. No. And I go to the office that places volunteers, and I say, hey, is there a school I can work in where they will embrace the fact that I know how to teach kids to read? And they said, oh, yes, definitely. And they dropped me in the lowest performing school in all of Oakland. It's in East Oakland, and at the time, had 2% literacy proficiency. So their mentality, I think, was like, okay, troublemaker, go here and see what you can do.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Meanwhile, Michael, I'm like, challenge accepted.
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Michael Horn:
Accepted. Let's do this. Roll up our sleeves.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Let's do this. Bring it on. So I show up in this classroom with this first grade teacher who's in her second year of teaching and is completely frazzled because the only thing she's been given is Lucy Culkin's units of study, and she can obviously see it's not working. Her kids aren't learning to read. And yet, like me, when I was a new teacher, had no other resources, had no other support, and nobody else helping her figure out how to teach kids to read. So in I walk and I'm like, hey, I'm Jess. I'm here to help teach your kids to read. And she's just like, great.
Jessica Sliwerski:
I will take anyone with a pulse. And she's kind of thinking, I'm going to do what like a lot of folks do, which is just sit with her kids and read books, right? I start teaching them.
Michael Horn:
But you don't.
Jessica Sliwerski:
I don't. I start teaching them, and very quickly they start learning to read. And then she's like, what are you doing? I need to learn how to do this. So I teach her, and then the two of us every afternoon are pulling small groups and we're doing differentiated instruction. And her babies were learning to read, and they were learning to read fast, and they were on a trajectory, for perhaps the first time in the history of that school to end the school year reading on grade level.
Michael Horn:
Wow.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Which, when you learn to read on time, which is ideally before the start of second grade, it fundamentally changes everything else about your school and arguably your life trajectory and the opportunities that are available to you. And I was, like, watching all of this happen, it was incredibly, incredibly exhilarating. And then, boom, it came to a screeching halt because of the pandemic. We packed the kids up for what we thought was going to be an extended spring break, and they never came back that school year. And I couldn't stop thinking about them. And my personality is kind of obsessive. And I'm watching, in the meantime, my own child transition to Zoom school. And I'm thinking to myself, this is a disaster, but there's something really interesting about this. And then meanwhile, the teacher I'd been mentoring was like, hey, we're gearing up to go back to school in the fall and be fully virtual. What do I do? And I said, you're going to do exactly what we were doing, but we're going to adapt it to be virtual. And I'm pretty sure your kids are still going to learn to read. And she trusted me and she tried it. And sure enough, within the first month of instruction, we had a crop of data showing, from baseline to progress, monitoring. Her kids were growing as readers.
Michael Horn:
Goosebumps listening to this.
Jessica Sliwerski:
During a pandemic via Zoom in a school where she had little to no support, high population of multilingual learners, high poverty students with IEPs. Every single odds stacked against her and her kids, and they were doing it. And as I looked at this data and I looked at what we were doing together, I was like, there is a model here. What would it mean to create a core of highly trained reading instructors who meet virtually with kids during the school day and teach them to read? What could that mean for those kids? What could that mean for the teachers in those classrooms? Because I know firsthand how hard it is to differentiate and give every child what they need. And what could it mean for catalyzing the system to really, truly embrace the science of reading and all of the nuances that are connected to that. So this was like the genesis of Ignite Reading. And there's actually a documentary film called the Right to read. Have you seen that film or heard about it?
Michael Horn:
Yeah, sure.
Jessica Sliwerski:
So, fun fact that teacher, Sabrina Causey, is the teacher
Michael Horn:
Oh, wow.
Jessica Sliwerski:
And I am Jess, who she mentions in the film, who taught her to teach her kids to read.
Michael Horn:
Oh, that's wild.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Okay, so, fun fact, a little bit of behind the scenes tea. Is that the Right to Read film? And the story of Sabrina Causey is also the origin story of Ignite Reading.
The Ignite Reading model
Michael Horn:
Very, very cool. Very cool. And so there's a couple angles of this that are so important this time, right? Because coming out of the pandemic, or as the pandemic hit, the emphasis on tutoring became a big deal to differentiate instruction, to be able to get kids the right thing that they needed to unlock progress. Obviously, the focus on literacy, science of reading, became a huge conversation across the country, and frankly, how we were ignoring the best evidence in hundreds, thousands of classrooms across the country. And Ignite Reading model really takes both of these things and pulls it together in a model. So tell us how it actually works today.
Jessica Sliwerski:
So, at the highest level, the way that our program works is that we partner with schools and districts to provide live, one to one virtual tutoring that helps kids who need extra support learn to read. Our tutors are working with students specifically to master foundational reading skills, not because decoding is the game, but because it is the ticket to the game. And when you can decode to the point that it is automatic, you don't have to look at the word and sound it out. You can just look at it and nothing be able to help but read it, then your working memory and your brain power is freed up to do the rich work of comprehension. So when you see high stakes testing scores starting in third grade that are indicating a lot of kids are below proficient, typically what's underpinning that is disfluency. And disfluency is caused by kids having gaps in their decoding skills. And so our tutors are working with students one on one every day, virtually for 15 minutes a day. And it's during the school day until such time as the kids become fluent automatic readers. But the thing about our model is that we honor what we know is best practice when it comes to teaching and learning, specifically in the realm of literacy, but that it is so difficult for schools to do on their own because the system is simply not designed to enable them to make the main thing the main thing. And in the design of Ignite Reading, there are five important things that make our model distinct. So the first thing is that our tutors are highly trained and accountable. They are completing over 100 hours of paid professional learning and practicum experience before they're certified to tutor up to 30 hours a week. And then even after they're certified, we are maniacal about ongoing performance management in order to ensure they're implementing with fidelity. The second thing that we do is that we differentiate instruction so that every child's precise needs are being methadone. Kids don't have time to waste. And the reality of classrooms is that there's a vast spectrum of where kids are on the continuum of learning to read. So precision matters. Third, the nature of one on one enables the necessary at bats or repetition that kids need to solidify the code. And while we're all running around talking about science of reading, what a lot of people don't know, but is also core to the science, is that the research shows that at least 60% of kids must have not only direct instruction, but also ample at bats and repetition to create that automaticity. So the one on one provides that additional practice for kids. And the fourth thing is that this human element is so crucial. The relationships that tutors are building with students fosters the motivation to persist. Learning to read is hard for little kids. Humans don't like to do hard things. Look at the number of adults that you probably know who have to hire a personal trainer because otherwise they won't.
Michael Horn:
Work out, they won't do it right.
Jessica Sliwerski:
So our tutors are like personal trainers for little kids, adorable brains, but they're building these caring relationships that then enable kids to be more motivated. They're not going to opt out and try and avoid it because they care about pleasing this human that they are so excited to see every day. And then they're learning these competencies which create more motivation to persist. And it's this really virtuous cycle when it comes to learning. And the fifth thing that we do that is especially unique, and I am really, really proud that this is part of our model, is that we are focused on also building capacity with our partners by giving them a designated Ignite Reading literacy specialist who meets with them at the beginning of the program to unpack baseline diagnostics and every month thereafter to talk about progress and to connect the dots instructionally back to the literacy ecosystem and what teachers can do to piggyback off of our intervention. So these are all like really intentional moves. It is above and beyond what you typically see in this space from an edtech company. And I believe that's because the person at the helm, me, is someone who comes into this with the lived experience of an educator and understands all of the pieces that have to be at play to make this sticky so that we can work together to ensure every one of our babies learns to read well.
AIR study on Ignite Reading outcomes
Michael Horn:
And it's paying off. If I understand, like you have some research a couple years now, I think, worth of research, why don't you share those results about what you've learned, about what it actually is happening in the field, and how you just set up those research studies?
Jessica Sliwerski:
We are actively building our evidence base. And this is really important because, as I've already said, and you've certainly picked up on, I want to prove a point and I want to prove what's possible for kids. And I want to prove that the issue with the literacy crisis in our country is not because kids can't, it's because there hasn't been equitable access to all kids getting what they need.
Michael Horn:
The adults haven't. Right? It's not. They can't.
Jessica Sliwerski:
That's right. And so we have a study that was published last school year, school year 22, 23 by AIR, and it showed that kindergarteners through third graders who participated in a 14 week pilot experienced 20 weeks of learning. And that meant that on DIBELS, they went from 11% on benchmark to 45% on benchmark. And that was after merely a 14 week pilot. Fast forward to this past school year. We have a forthcoming quasi experimental study from Johns Hopkins University that looked at first graders across 13 school districts that we were working with in Massachusetts, and the outcomes are phenomenal. But I can't yet share them, which, of course, is killing me, Michael.
Michael Horn:
Killing you right now, we'll have to.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Do a part two to this.
Michael Horn:
You'll come back. You'll come back.
Jessica Sliwerski:
But anecdotally, what I can tell you about our DIBELS data, because we validate the growth our kids are making with a third party assessment, is that we saw, with first graders in particular, who we were working with, which is the best return on investment. You can close the kindergarten gaps, you can tackle the first grade content. You can graduate them ready to start second grade building knowledge. That being said, heartbreakingly, we work with kids through high school. But in one of our analyses, what we saw for first graders in particular was that our students went from 17% on benchmark in DIBELS at the beginning of the school year to 51% by the end of the year. So that's three X growth right there. And, you know, the. The recovering perfectionist in me and the advocate for kids, advocate for kids looks at this, and it's like, this isn't good enough.
Jessica Sliwerski:
This isn't enough, and how do we get even better than this? So there is a level of continuous improvement we're constantly thinking about. But at the same time, what we have to recognize, the kids we're serving are the kids who historically come into first grade, or whatever grade they're in, already having gaps. And rather than those gaps being addressed and then the kids being accelerated forward, the gaps just widen. So when we're working with older kids, we see many of them still don't even know the alphabet or how to read simple words like sit or mug. So it's pretty significant that we saw three X growth. And then what was even more exciting about that was that the kids who had the most significant gaps when they started with us, for example, not knowing the alphabet, those kids had five X growth in our program over the school year. And this is where we see a lot of tropes in our country around why kids aren't learning to read. And you'll hear things like, oh, well, it's multilingual learners, or they have IEPs. The reality, Michael, is that it comes down to access and kids getting what they need when they need it, when they need it, then honoring the research around how the brain learns to read. And it sounds so simple to do those things. But we know that K-12 education is a very complex system, and that's where the design of any kind of product or service has to be so deeply intentional. And all of this data that we're seeing in our forthcoming study as well gives me so much hope. It tells me that we really are living in an era where if we all put our minds to it, and if we work together, we could actually have a world where every single child learns to read on time, which is ideally before the end of first grade.
Tutoring post-ESSER
Michael Horn:
So let's take this, because you've said several obviously interesting things, but the one I want to pick up on at the moment is we're different from your average edtech company, and I think that's a good thing on a few dimensions, as I'm hearing it from you, I've argued edtech companies can't just simply throw their product over the wall and hope it gets implemented. And they have to be really intentional about thinking about the whole model and the coherence across all the tools being used, which is effectively what you're doing as you build capacity with your partners and really leaning in not just to make sure it gets used, what you're offering gets used efficaciously, but that it coheres with the rest of the activities going on in the building. I would love to hear you reflect on two things out of that one curiosity, like what are the resources for a school district to be able to afford that sort of services? And then the flip side is, we know a lot of the federal aid out of COVID is going away. There's a lot of talk about the tutoring services that have been offered that have in many cases not been implemented efficaciously. They've missed on some key things that you just described, but either way, those might be going away. How do you maintain and grow this service that you're offering? As maybe resources are being stripped away with what I imagine has some resources that are required to be able to provide it.
Jessica Sliwerski:
Really great question. And this is something that when I look across the landscape of Ed tech and particularly high dosage tutoring, you see a lot of companies that are struggling in this moment with ESSER funding evaporating. And we are not in that category. And the reason that we can maintain our program in light of what other companies are experiencing as like catastrophic funding shifts is because we get results. And the results that we are getting are results that schools and districts cannot get by themselves. Even in the most perfect literacy ecosystem, where you have adopted all of the right programs, all of the right assessment tools, you've done letters, training with your teachers, right? You are checking all of those boxes. And the reality is, for a host of reasons, kids will still fall through the cracks. And so Ignite Reading becomes that foundational skills safety net, working in partnership with all of the other strategic intentionality that's at play within the ecosystem. And oftentimes our partners say we are the missing ingredient that pulls it all together. And because of that, and because we are so transparent with our partners about our outcomes, we are self reporting every single month via the Ignite Reading literacy specialist. And they are seeing that this is a phenomenal return on investment for their kids, especially when it is a just in time intervention in first grade versus a reactive RTI situation for older kids when they can see this. And it also aligns with their own intentionality around really, truly making sure all kids have the right to learn to read. They find the money in their budget. So what we're seeing is that many of our partners, in light of the ESSER cliff, are now going into their budgets and they are operationalizing us with more sustainable funding streams. Be that title funding idea, it could look like school improvement funds. Right? The beauty of our model is that there are so many different funding streams that can be strategically braided together, and we work with partners to figure out how to access those funds creatively and to think about, well, what are the other things you're spending money on? And are they working because there's some historic vestiges of edtech products that they've been purchasing that they might be reluctant to get rid of? I see this a lot in education.
Jessica Sliwerski:
We like to hoard.
Michael Horn:
We don't like to prune very much in education.
Jessica Sliwerski:
No, no, not at all. It's like, I remember when I was a classroom teacher and I first walked into my classroom and opened the closet and there were like floor to ceiling materials from the last 50 to 100 years. We don't like to get rid of things, even when they don't work, even when they're not good for kids. But I think what we're helping to create is a new vision for everyone that we're working with and for the market as a whole of what's possible for kids and how best to allocate precious public dollars and budgets to do what I would say is the most important thing we can possibly do in education, which is make sure our kids learn how to read.
Michael Horn:
Love it. Jess. Final word, final thoughts. Where can people stay tuned for that study when it comes out and find out more. Take us home.
Where to learn more
Jessica Sliwerski:
So our website, ignite-reading.com, is the best place to get lots of information and insights around everything that we are uploading to and if anyone is interested in learning more or wants to be part of this incredible movement, they can also contact us via the website. I anticipate that once the study is released that there will be lots of people talking about it. And I cannot wait.
Michael Horn:
Well, I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad it's in Massachusetts where I live. I'm glad to hear that as well.
Jessica Sliwerski:
I planned that for you, Michael.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, yeah. Just exactly right. That was the reason.
Jessica Sliwerski:
And like every holiday that you celebrate all combined into one, it'll be the best gift, best gift, best package.
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Clayton Lord of the SHRM Foundation joined me to discuss shifting from a degree-centric hiring system to one that is skills-based. We talked about how the Foundation is helping employers operationalize this transition, the benefits it accrues to candidates and businesses, and the risks and challenges being addressed to spread its benefits on a broader scale.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think through that today, I'm tremendously excited. We have Clay Lord, he's the Director of Foundation Programs at SHRM, joining us to think about how we help unlock that path of progress for individuals, employees, and their jobs, but also for employers who can get so much more out of those individuals when there's a better match in all facets of how they work with each other. So, Clay, thank you so much for joining us today.
Clayton Lord:
Of course. Thanks for having me.
Clay's Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
Yeah, no, you bet. Your work obviously gets to interact with lots of different individuals, lots of different companies, creating changes in a variety of ways. But just before we dive into that, talk us through your own path to the role you're in now and your passion for it, and how you got to know SHRM originally.
Clayton Lord:
You know, it's an interesting and sort of circuitous story. I've been at the SHRM Foundation for about 18 months now. Prior to that, for about 20 years, I was in the arts and culture sector, working at the local level and then at the national level on a variety of issues that I would now roll up together as workforce issues for the cultural sector in the United States. This sector mirrors a lot of the populations that we work on now at the SHRM Foundation, in that it is generally speaking, chronically economically insecure. It's extremely diverse. It doesn't have the strongest voice as a class when it comes to policy.
I came out of Georgetown. I grew up with a lot of privilege, went to a really good college, and dove into the cultural sector. Through a lot of engagement with different partners, I developed my understanding of what equity meant and my understanding of how I got to where I was and where that was me and where that was the conditions that I was given at birth.
Since then, I've tried to devote a lot of my work and my life to increasing opportunity for folks who are otherwise left out in the cold because they don't work within the same systems or don't have the same advantages as some people do. I ended up at SHRM because I knew some folks who were working there. SHRM is the largest society for HR professionals in the world, with 340,000 employer members predominantly in the United States. The SHRM Foundation is one of the only real loci for driving employer action, particularly through the HR function, to be agents for social good. It seemed like an interesting fit for me as I was trying to navigate from the niche work in arts and culture into broader conversations about workforce and the future of work.
SHRM Foundation’s Skills-Based Hiring Work
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Michael Horn:
Super interesting to hear that pathway, and I love how it's not linear and yet ends up in a place of passion for you. On that topic, over the next decade, you all have set a lofty goal of aiming to transform hiring and advancement practices for 100,000 employers, 500,000 HR professionals, managers, executives, and specifically as part of that, your aim is to shift away from a degree-centric hiring model toward a skills-first model. I'd love for you to talk through what that would look like when it's done and why it matters so much.
Clayton Lord:
Well, it's a great question. The short answer is that it is responsive to the evolutions in how people are being educated and how they're trying to find their way into work. Today, two in three working-age adults in the United States do not have a four-year degree. Yet, three in four job postings require a four-year degree when they're posted. This represents a significant and ongoing mismatch between where and how people are finding their skills, aptitudes, and competencies, where they're developing the things that they can bring to bear in the workplace, and what is required as a first gateway to access a lot of jobs.
Among three focuses that the SHRM Foundation has, one of them is what we call widening pathways to work. It's focused on two sides of that coin. One is around untapped pools, helping employers understand where, when, and how to engage folks who have historically been marginalized out of the job market, including people with disabilities, people who've been justice impacted, people connected to the military, older workers, and opportunity youth (people aged 16 to 24 who don't work or go to school).
On the other side of that coin is skills-first at work. We focus on helping employers shift their hiring and retention practices from being degree-centric to embracing a broader aperture of hiring and advancement that we shorthand as skills-first. This is not to the exclusion of degrees. It's to say that people get skills in all sorts of ways, at various moments in their lives. If they're doing it right, they're learning new skills every single day. All of those skills deserve to be taken into account when you're hiring for a job, which is essentially a bundle of skills.
At the SHRM Foundation, we are making that investment by creating the conditions to help employers, 90% of whom today say adopting skills-first strategies is a good idea, but only 15% of whom are actually saying they're doing anything about it. We aim to move them from agreement to action by offering incremental, measurable, manageable opportunities for change, allowing them to move towards a skills-first mentality that lets them access the full spectrum of talent.
You asked what that looks like. In ten years, if we do it right, we will hit what we think is an inevitable tipping point. Skills-first is the future, whether we do anything about it or not. Those who think we aren't moving towards more people accumulating skills outside of a four-year institution will be left behind. However, we believe there's a way to handle this transition that is less chaotic and more manageable for the world of work.
For us, if we get to that moment, we will have 100,000 employers who have demonstrated that they've moved in the direction of skills-first hiring. We don't think it's flipping a switch, but we will build maturity models to test how employers are doing and how much they've embraced these practices. There are nearly 3 million HR professionals and millions more who touch the hiring function every year. Even a small percentage of those, which we tag at 500,000 HR professionals, hiring managers, and C-suite folks, educated on skills-first hiring and advancement practices, would create a tipping point. Our goal is that skills-first hiring becomes ubiquitous and unremarkable, the default practice that happens all around us. Right now, the default is degree-centered, leaving many people out. Changing the paradigm to hire for the full spectrum of skills, regardless of where, when, or how they were acquired, will open up more opportunities for people and provide workplaces with the full spectrum of talent.
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Barriers to Skills-First Hiring
Michael Horn:
It strikes me that you want employers and companies to hire people who will help them progress, recognizing individuals not just as a bundle of credentials but through the collection of their experiences. This alignment benefits both the employer and the employee, who get to make progress in their lives by matching their capabilities and drives. You started to allude to it; this isn't a switch that you can just flip. What are the big barriers toward moving toward this vision that you see right now?
Clayton Lord:
In our research, there are three main barriers to moving from degrees to skills.
The first is the ROI being murky. The return on investment for a degree-centered practice is relatively well known. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes poorly, but when it works out poorly, the blame is usually placed on the candidate, not the business or HR provider. If you hire five people from Ivy League schools and two of them don't work out, the assumption is that something didn't work out with those two people. If you hire five people from skills-based backgrounds without a degree and two of them don't work out, the assumption is that the HR professional or hiring manager took too big a risk.
The second barrier is around trust, quality, and knowledge. There are about 60,000 providers of credentials in the world and over a million credential options, many of them of dubious quality. There is also an ever-growing number of startups and vendors in this space. Pair that with the fact that knowing how to move from degrees to skills is different from believing that moving from degrees to skills is a good idea, and you have a challenge, particularly for small to mid-size employers.
The third barrier is risk aversion and loneliness. Businesses are naturally risk-averse. When you ask them to take a leap into something new, using language that expresses risk and innovation instead of incremental change, it creates conditions that are not great for business decision-making. This movement often starts with a single person or business within a sector, creating a sense of loneliness and risk. Our goal is to build tools, trainings, coalitions, and resources that tackle each of these challenges by consolidating information, raising awareness of the positive ROI, and creating opportunities for the coalition and community.
Tools for De-Risking
Michael Horn:
Yeah, that makes sense. So let's tackle that risk aversion one. Governments and companies are great at dropping degree requirements, but for HR, mitigating risk is important, and hiring someone with a degree just feels less risky. What do those tools look like that really de-risk this and give them the security to hire someone without a degree but with demonstrated experience?
Clayton Lord:
Well, it's a good question. Risk comes in a variety of forms. We think about the different types of risk at play, such as financial or structural risk to the organization. We're exploring ideas like de-risking the near-term financial obligation of skilling through low or no-interest loans, mini-grants, and consortium models. We've done this in some of our pilots, providing seed money for interventions, which boosts success rates.
Skills-first hiring and advancement are already happening under the proxy of a degree. Every person is ultimately hired for their skills. The current model doesn't allow time to take in the fullness of a person's skills and aptitudes, often reducing a resume to a six-second glance. Technologies are being developed to parse resumes and experiences into skill stacks, matching them with job requirements. This technology allows a candidate to progress to an interview based on their skill stack rather than their degree.
Another risk is personal risk. If a candidacy fails, sometimes the blame is on the candidate, and sometimes on the person who picked them. Over time, we need to deal with this reality. We've identified two main strategies. First, we lack great case studies of skills-first hiring and advancement strategies demonstrating positive ROI. We're working with the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation to create a compendium of diverse case studies. Second, we're investing at the individual level, working with Opportunity at Work and other partners to create a credential for skills-first hiring and advancement for HR professionals, hiring managers, and C-suite decision-makers.
This credential will provide documented expertise, supporting dialogues with decision-makers and boosting confidence in one's ability to implement skills-first practices. The Skills-First Center of Excellence, coming online at the beginning of 2025, will organize resources, provide direct information, and offer certification for skills-first hiring and advancement professionals.
Understanding and Communicating Skill Requirements
Michael Horn:
Makes a lot of sense. You've actually answered a bunch of the other questions I had. Let me ask this one, because it strikes me as a bigger question mark. Employers often don't know the skills at the heart of successful employees. They might know the technical skills, but job descriptions are almost more legal documents to mitigate risk, listing every possible skill. How do we move to skills-based hiring if employers don't understand what the skills should be?
Clayton Lord:
It's a fair question. People use degrees as a proxy for much more than they're actually for. They're doing this because they don't know how to write an accurate job description that reflects the full spectrum of what someone will do. Most job descriptions include core tasks and a catch-all "other duties as assigned."
When advocating for employers to shift from degrees to skills, we ask them to consider what it takes to adequately and accurately describe what a person needs to do to succeed at work. This involves more than just hard skills. Employers often say they can train most hard skills into someone. What they look for is a specific combination of durable skills, plus a desire, aptitude, and positive attitude for the work.
We did a pilot in Arkansas, and many employers said they want an enthusiastic person to show up every day, on time, and sober. They can do the rest. Degrees as a proxy are an unfair way to start that conversation.
There are emerging technologies that help. For example, tools using AI to pull skill stacks from resumes and job descriptions, matching them together, and proposing candidates based on these matches. This allows hiring managers to stay within their comfort zone while expanding the pool of candidates.
Indicators of Success
Michael Horn:
Got it. That makes sense. Last question as we wrap up. In a decade, if you meet your goals, what are the big indicators that will show we've reached this vision of a skills-first hiring environment?
Clayton Lord:
The biggest indicator will be if skills-first hiring is ubiquitous and unremarkable, the default practice. It will be an exception if degrees are in job requirements or if applicant tracking systems lock people out without a degree.
We'll see workplaces with more fluidity between jobs, reflecting SHRM's own experience. At SHRM, we've simplified job descriptions to focus on core skills, allowing broader engagement and fluid movement within roles. This is essential as work becomes more intersectional and evolutionary.
We'll also have our hard metrics: 100,000 employers and 500,000 individuals involved in skills-first hiring. We estimate that skills-first hires, moving from non-degree to degree-equivalent tracks, could result in an average of $26,000 more per year in income, $900,000 more over a lifetime. This would benefit populations historically disadvantaged by degree requirements.
Given the decline in two-year and four-year degree attainment, we need to change or face a significant worker shortage. Some industries are already in crisis due to degree requirements, and they're the most open to skills-first innovation. Our goal is to be proactive, helping the world of work adapt before every industry reaches a crisis point.
Michael Horn:
When the alternative is no human talent at all, employers realize there's a lot of human talent on the sidelines. Let's unleash that talent. Clay, thank you so much for your work in moving companies toward these practices and for unleashing the potential of many who would otherwise be sidelined.
Clayton Lord:
Thank you for having me. This has been a great conversation.
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Phil Vaccaro and Nita Bhat of EY-Parthenon joined me to discuss their work partnering with Arkansas to help the state design and implement its Education Savings Account (ESA) program. They shared the big questions every state must consider when developing and operationalizing their ESA programs and discussed the thinking behind some of Arkansas’s choices. I confess, when I think about ESAs, I hadn’t thought about all the questions that goes into operationalizing them beyond passing the legislation, so this was a very interesting conversation for me. I look forward to hearing from all of you!
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think through how that might work with some new designs cropping up in a number of states throughout the US right now, we have two special guests today from EY Parthenon, Phil Vaccaro, a partner there, and Nita Bhatt, a senior director. Nita, Phil, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to have this conversation.
Phil Vaccaro:
It's great to be here, Michael. Thank you for inviting us to participate.
Michael Horn:
You bet. I'm excited to dig into this because you all did this fascinating work that we're going to talk about in some depth around education savings accounts, particularly ESAs, and their implementation in a state. People might pause there and think, "Wait a minute, implementation of ESAs? What does that even mean?" We're going to get to that and why it's so important in just a couple of minutes. But let's start at a high level. What brought you to this work in education in Arkansas in general? Phil, why don't you start us off?
Phil and Nita’s Journey to the Work
Phil Vaccaro:
In some ways, Nita and I bring a similar background to the work, but I started as a teacher in the New York City school system, worked for the school district for five years under Mayor Bloomberg, and then switched over to the Parthenon team to do this work in education from a consulting standpoint. For the past 14 years, my goal has been to stay relevant from a commercial standpoint, tracking what states and districts are doing, what their top priorities are, focused around system-level change and school improvement. We've seen various waves of what education reform looks like and which policies have been more or less in vogue. Over the last few years, private school choice policies have really accelerated in terms of their adoption across states. This builds on a trend that’s been a long time in the making with school vouchers and the broader school choice ecosystem. We've supported school systems with strong choice environments. This is where we currently are with these new policy initiatives around education savings accounts.
Michael Horn:
Gotcha. Nita, how about you? What's your own story into the work?
Nita Bhat:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Michael. For me, it goes back to how and where I grew up, which was in Miami, Florida. I remember going to four different public elementary schools and high school, applying to and being waitlisted at a bunch of magnet schools, some fairly far away from my house, because my parents wanted me in a specific program or felt some aspect of my schooling wasn't meeting their expectations. We didn't have the right vocabulary for it at the time, but that was my parents saying they didn't want the house they could afford to limit the quality of education they wanted me to get. Fast forward after college, I had the opportunity to teach at different neighborhood and public charter schools in Philly, another angle on school choice. Then, at Parthenon, over the last decade, I've served in some interesting school choice contexts, including in New Orleans, which has really shaped my thinking, where I gained an appreciation for how to design a system that promotes not just choice for kids and families but good school choice. That's what brought me to this work with ESAs in Arkansas.
The Core Components of ESAs
Michael Horn:
Super interesting and an unbelievable background with your parents engaging in that before people thought about these questions in the same depth. As I mentioned, my audience is certainly familiar with education savings accounts. It's something we've talked about on the show, but they're clearly different from some of the other forms of private school choice we've seen historically: tax scholarships, vouchers, even the charter space. I'm curious, in your minds, what makes a funding vehicle an ESA? What are the core components to level set us about what exactly we're talking about with ESAs? Nita, why don't you lead us off on this one?
Nita Bhat:
Rather than getting too technical, I want to take this conceptually. What makes an ESA unique from vouchers is two main things. First, ESAs are being rolled out to serve a much broader set of students than ever before. While vouchers were primarily targeted at low-income families, at least in the beginning, ESAs, in today's avatar, are intended to serve many more students. In some states, any family is allowed to apply, so it's called universal. The second thing is that ESAs can be used for a much broader array of expenses than vouchers. Vouchers typically went from the government directly to a private school to support tuition, whereas ESAs involve the state putting the money into a digital wallet for each participating family, and then they can deploy the money where they choose to, whether it's a private school or to curate a curriculum, buy books, uniforms, or a course at the public school or a local charter school. That's the difference. In terms of why we think they have taken off, the pandemic illustrated that traditional school models aren't working for everyone. In fact, that may be true for a large number of students. Nationally, we see the rate of chronic absenteeism, where kids aren't coming to school, has doubled between before and after the pandemic. Parents and advocates are saying they want to take education back into their own hands.
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Arkansas ESA Program
Michael Horn:
Super interesting. That leads into the work you all did in Arkansas, where they were launching a universal ESA program. Tell me about that experience because I suspect folks like me might think they passed a policy, allocated funding, there's a digital wallet, and boom, you're off to the races. I’m certainly interested in learning how this really works and when we’ve had some back and forth before this, it sounds like it's not nearly so simple as that. It’s much more complicated. Phil, why don't you lead us off and talk about some of the major design choices that go into launching a universal ESA program and give us a sense of the complexity involved?
Phil Vaccaro:
Yeah, I'd love to. To start, it is complex, and I'm glad you're focused on the implementation piece because that is the overlooked factor in bringing these education savings account programs to life. There's a lot involved. There are a number of strategic and operational questions that need to be answered, and you have to build a team with the capacity to implement the work. From a strategic standpoint, one of the first questions a department has to ask itself beyond where it will live within the state. In Arkansas context, it lived with the Department of Education. In other systems, it lives with other government agencies. A big question on the front end is what will you do internally and what will you hire someone else to do? There are a few vendors active in this space that bring primarily a technology solution but can also bring some process around it. Departments need to figure out what to insource and what to outsource. With that knowledge, how do you design a process where the department can work with the vendor(s) on a regular basis to get the work done? The set of activities during the launch of a program can differ from the activities once a program is launched. When we first got into Arkansas, our support for the state is public record. We co-authored a LinkedIn blog post with them about our work. I'm proud that the folks in Arkansas dedicated time to getting the implementation right because we've seen mistakes in other states that have set back those initiatives. Nita spent a lot of time on the ground from day one working with their team on the nitty-gritty issues. You start with a statute and then bring that to life. The first step is a deep dive into the rules. What doesn't exist in statute that needs further clarification? That sets up a number of design choices and operational decisions. I'll turn it over to Nita to talk about some of those.
Nita Bhat:
Sure. There are hundreds of design decisions, and I can't go into all of them. Phil said he could talk about this for three hours, and it's true. I'll stick to some high-level things that both the law had to consider and we had to build on during the design and implementation. First, is around what population do I intend on serving? Is it kids in low-performing public schools? Is it everyone? Something in between? That line of inquiry is usually figured out in the law, and then we build on it. There's a whole layer of questions around accountability. Do I want to measure how students on ESAs are performing academically? How do I want to measure that? Do I want to test them? In what subjects? Are there consequences for providers or families if a student isn't testing well? How long do I give them? How do I use the information I collect? Do I make it public? There are hundreds of questions in that layer. One of my favorites is around financial safeguards. How do I curtail providers from unreasonably inflating their tuition? In some states, the ESA goes into effect, and let's say it's $7,000. The private school had a tuition of $7,000, but after the ESA goes into effect, they raise it to $14,000. The families aren't seeing the benefit of the ESA. They're paying the same as before. That's unwanted behavior. How do you curtail that? There's a layer of questions on what can I spend the money on? Books, tuition, uniforms, great. Sports uniforms? Shoes? Are shoes okay? Can I buy the new line of kicks? No. Is transportation allowed? Can I take an Uber? Can I expense that? Private school tuition fees are allowed, but what about required donations to the church, do I want to allow that with this publicly funded taxpayer money? It becomes very nuanced. Hope you get some sense of how complex it can get.
Design Decisions
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I'm thinking through those and wondering how you parse through them. Let's take some and dig deeper. Let's start with the program's intended audience. You mentioned it's universal, but that implies a level of focus and outreach. How did you work through that question in Arkansas? How much was in law, regulation, and figured out on the ground?
Nita Bhat:
Yeah, great question. I'll take it broadly than just Arkansas. Some states are clear in their intentions, like prioritizing kids in low-performing schools, as Georgia does. Some states are universal, like Arizona and that is where Arkansas is headed. Sometimes states take a middle approach, phasing up to universal by prioritizing vulnerable populations: special needs, low-income, homeless, foster, etc. They might also prioritize kindergartners. In year one, we fill the program with those kids. Next year, we have more budget, and we're going to grow our program a little bit. So we let more vulnerable kids in but maybe lower the threshold slightly. If the income was the most stringent threshold in year one then in year two, we’re going to relax it a little bit. It’s still for lower-income kids but slightly higher income than it was in year one. This year we are going to let kindergartners in again and add first graders. We’re growing and phasing in a way that seems reasonable. One thing that I don’t think people are necessarily thinking of is in these situations the kindergarten and first-grade uptake rate becomes quite high compared to the high-needs population unless you are intentional about it. This is quite logical. We see families with more information and resources are the first to take advantage, applying fast. Once a child is in the program, they’re in. What you see in the out years, years four, years five, years six, and onward... If you're a kindergartner and you're in the program, you could be in the program for 13 years. You could end up with a day where the program is approaching full or is full. Now you have a situation where the composition of the program you have is not all that strategic, leaving new families out. This is something people might miss. We had the benefit of modeling it out.
Funding ESAs
Michael Horn:
Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I'm imagining the keyboard warriors signing up for summer camp. It's the same sort of phenomenon. I'm going to be the first one to get in on that before it fills up. But then it brings up the question that naturally comes, which is around financing and funding levels for these programs. Are they pulling from public school dollars? Are there caps to the funding? How has that all worked out, and what are the major things people ought to be thinking about on those dimensions?
Nita Bhat:
No, this one's great. So Phil and I are district finance nerds. Our head goes there pretty quickly. One of the common criticisms that we hear about ESAs is that it's taking money away from public schools. There's a logic to that, right? The student leaves a public school to go to a private school. The public school loses the money that it otherwise would have gotten for that student. But the reality is more complicated because, in many states, not all students in the ESA program were public school students to begin with. In fact, some of them were always in private school. In some states, we know that most of them were already in private schools. So what's happening is the government is allocating new money towards that student that it wasn't before. That money is usually coming from the state's general fund, which is tax-based, maybe from some reserves, but it's not education-specific dollars. In effect, a state may be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in new money in education, but it's only going to fund a very small fraction of the state's students. Critics will ask if that's the best use of new education funds. That's a criticism states have to contend with if they're designing things this way. Down the road, if your ESA program gets big enough, policymakers may need to ask themselves where that money will come from and if they need to cut funds on the public school side. These considerations need to happen within a broader frame of how much is being allocated to this program and what the caps are year over year, even if it's a universal program.
Michael Horn:
Just stay on that for one more moment. You mentioned the providers that maybe double tuition once they see there's $7,000 of public subsidy coming in. So they still get $7,000 from the families because they were paying it before. Why not charge $14,000 in that hypothetical example? How do you navigate those considerations? Where did you land on trying to curtail some of that behavior? Or is that something that you say stinks in the early years, but hopefully, the market has enough providers that it shakes out?
Nita Bhat:
Yeah, I think that's a good question. Different states have approached it differently. As far as we know, Arkansas is the only one that has put a stake in the ground and said they are going to monitor this and do something about it if they think it's unreasonable. That was a promising place to start. By the way, this isn't happening broadly, and I don't want to overexaggerate the extent to which this is happening. We toyed with a number of considerations for that particular question. Should we be monitoring growth? Should a school provide justification? Should there be a limit they can go up to? Ultimately, we felt if we defined a limit, maybe it's 5% or 10%, we worried that schools would use that as permission to raise to that amount, even if historically they weren't or didn't intend to. Ultimately, we left it as we are going to monitor this, ask for rationale if we see an above-average increase or an outlier, and take a case-by-case approach.
Fitting ESAs in Broader Strategies
Michael Horn:
Gotcha. I assume you're trying to avoid the college tuition behavior over time. Phil, let me turn to you because I'm thinking about how you situate these ESAs in a broader, not just school choice strategy, but a school improvement strategy across an entire state. How do you think about that as a component within a strategy? Where are you landing on helping not just Arkansas but any state think through that question?
Phil Vaccaro:
Yeah, it's a really important question, Michael. One just making sure that the conversations emphasize education savings accounts as one lever of school improvement in a system, whether it's because you're getting more kids into better schools or creating more competition in the system. The notion being that creates a rising tide for all boats. We've seen systems go heads down quickly in terms of implementing the statute. But really, what are they doing to think strategically about how this fits in with other school improvement strategies they're pursuing? How are they coordinating with districts, which have been responsible for supporting a student's learning? In Arkansas, we built into our process a regular cadence around strategic discussions. It helps to map out where the students are, where the schools are, where the lower-performing schools are, where the private school capacity is, and where there are parts of the state without sufficient supply to meet potential demand. Where are there robust charter systems, and how do charter schools fit in with private school choice? There are strategic questions about how private school choice helps in certain parts of the state or where you have many private schools, but they're mostly full. You have to think there will be a percentage of students that benefit from this program, and hopefully, they will have access to a better school or create competition that helps those schools improve.
In places without capacity, how do you provide new capacity into the system? Whether it's through new charter schools, micro-schools, or consortia of home schools. That's a huge strategic question that states need to think about. Also, in coordination with the districts where there's a net outflow of students, there is a funding implication because they are serving fewer students. If that happens to any degree of scale, it changes how that district can serve students. Taken to its logical extreme, it can change the dynamics in which those school districts serve students. You think about this policy in the broader landscape of school choice as part of your theory of change. The LEARNS Act in Arkansas was a comprehensive bill specifying policy change in a number of areas. Where the program lives is important. If it lives with the Department of Education, it has a higher likelihood of staying connected to other strategies implemented in the state. If you give it to other government agencies, you can run a great program, but you must make a concerted effort to coordinate with the Department of Education to consider this policy a lever for school improvement in the broader context of other things that states and districts are doing.
Supply and Sustainability
Michael Horn:
Yeah, you hit on a couple of important things. One big thing I've been thinking about is the supply side. Not just how do you trigger new operators coming in, but do they have sustainable models that will last more than two or three years? A lot of teachers say they'll volunteer for a year or two, but then what? The second question you're raising is coherence with the Department of Education and the rest of the programs they oversee strategy, etc. As we start to wrap up, reflect on that part of it. You began with one big question to think about was not just where it lived—Department of Education may be one answer to create that coherence—but also what are the resources internally and externally, and where do those different things sit that the department or wherever it's sitting will deploy to implement and operationalize this program? Reflect on that. A state launching an ESA going into year two, what are we talking about in terms of effort? Are there off-the-shelf things that can help? How should we think about what it takes to do this well?
Phil Vaccaro:
Yeah, it's a great question. Historically, states' roles in education have been standards, policies, budget allocation, and accountability. They have not been set up to do direct-to-family programs, creating a need for capacity at a level of scale that hasn't existed within school districts. You have to build out a team to do this work. Nita can tell you war stories of all the inbound questions about filling out applications incorrectly, whether they got accepted, or when tuition will be transferred. You can do a lot with FAQs, but people want to talk to someone on the phone. There's real work involved. You can outsource that to vendors, so choose your vendors wisely. Be explicit in the RFP about what you're looking for and the division of responsibility between the host government organization and the vendor. You need to build out your team. Working side by side with your team during the launch period helps build out workflows and data flow to specific places at specific times. You must be very specific about making these connection points. We are reimagining what the state is responsible for in terms of the work they are committed to, not just setting policy but focusing on implementation. This can get confusing with the school districts. Role definition needs to happen upfront to maintain coherence. This is where we can't lose the discussion around strategy and how these levers fit within a state to support school improvement.
What’s Next for ESAs
Michael Horn:
Super helpful. Huge thanks to both of you. I feel like we're just scratching the surface, and I see, Nita, why three hours wouldn't be hard for you to talk about in-depth. Each of these things has trade-offs at any decision point. As we wrap up, reflections from each of you as we move into a new legislative season. I suspect we'll see new ESA programs pop up. We already know Texas is pushing to get that on the radar. We're going to see more of these. Bring us home. One or two things to consider going into the season of implementation.
Phil Vaccaro:
I would say set out a clear list of guiding principles. In Arkansas, we had six guiding principles around empowering parents, expanding educational opportunities, supporting high-quality school options, and so on. It's important to have guiding principles for two reasons. One, when making decisions, it's helpful when you want to develop a coherent program to refer back to your guiding principles and say which of these decision options are most aligned with the guiding principles we set out to accomplish. So being able to have a common reference point I think is important. Two, it helps with communication, so you have consistent talking points. Sometimes systems say the real purpose of this work is X, and someone else says it's Y. Both can't be true, so which one is it? Being clear on the communication piece is important. On the implementation side, these systems are allocating tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to these programs. Take the time upfront to design the work well and put a clear plan in place for implementation. If you're going to spend $800 million, spend $5 to $10 million upfront to consider the strategic and implementation issues. Map out budget possibilities, implications, how it fits with other school improvement strategies, what can go wrong, have contingencies, and dedicate time upfront. It's a high-stakes endeavor for any state. This is part of the Republican platform now, with 17 states implementing it and others in the process. States can't think about this only from their state's perspective. This is a national movement. For the movement to be successful long-term, states need to implement it well so students who can benefit most can access these programs.
Michael Horn:
Super helpful. Nita, final thoughts?
Nita Bhat:
I think that was great, Phil. The only thing I'll repeat is this should be a school choice movement. It's great to create options for kids and families, but let's have them be good options. What do you have to do as a system to ensure quality choices for kids?
Michael Horn:
Nita, Phil, thank you so much for sharing just a fraction of your expertise on implementing ESAs. Hopefully, we can have you back to tell us more findings as you continue this work. Deeply appreciative of you both.
Phil Vaccaro:
Thank you, Michael. We are proud of the folks in Arkansas for their work. I think they've done a great job.
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Cyndi Court, CEO of Tiger Woods’ TGR Foundation, joined me to discuss the organization’s education work. It was an eye-opening conversation, as we talked about different components of career-connected learning and its benefits to students and employers. Cyndi shared stories of student’s journeys through their programs and the Foundation’s plans for the future. I loved her framework to organize career-connected learning as “learning about work, through work, and at work.” Have a listen or read the transcript and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think through how we accomplish that, I am tremendously excited for our guest today. She's the CEO of the TGR Foundation, none other than Cyndi Court. Cyndi, thank you so much for joining us today.
Cyndi Court:
Thanks for having us, Michael.
Cyndi’s Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
You bet. So, before we get into the work of the foundation and some of the labs that you're running and scaling, just tell us about your own journey into the TGR Foundation and what attracted you to this opportunity specifically
Cyndi Court:
Yeah, I'm an educator. I did my education degree many years ago in Toronto, Canada, but I fell in love with the after-school space when my husband and I moved to Tampa, Florida. I love the creativity that happens in the after-school space. I love the fact that we can come alongside both schools and be great partners, supporting schools and local educators, but also come alongside families and provide wraparound services in the after-school space. I've spent the majority of my career with the Salvation Army and over a decade with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The national office for Boys and Girls Clubs movement, I was their chief development and marketing officer. This opportunity appealed to me because of the big differential in what Tiger is trying to do here.
The mission is very clear. It's about empowering young people to pursue their passions through education. We run programs during the day, and we have kids come in from local schools all over Anaheim. While they're getting hands-on creative STEAM curriculum, their teachers are getting teacher education. We have this beautiful 35,000-square-foot facility with the latest technology. It’s not just used after school; it’s used all day long. This partnership with schools and communities was incredibly attractive to me.
Career-Connected Learning
Michael Horn:
That is exciting. What an opportunity. When I hear you talk about it, I always think after school and these wraparound areas are what I would call in our research areas of non-consumption, where the alternative is nothing. You can often reinvent the space and give students opportunities they otherwise never could have. Start to describe that. I know in these learning labs you do a lot of work with career-connected learning and employer-based partnerships. When you're talking about exposure to passions, you are not kidding. There are a lot of opportunities for kids to have those experiences. Tell us about that work and what it looks like.
Cyndi Court:
We've started and actually done career-connected learning by exposing young people from under-resourced communities to careers from the very beginning. Starting in fifth grade, our STEAM curriculum is designed so that kids are introduced to careers available to them. We know that 11% of the future jobs and the 11% of the growth are in the STEAM area. We want to make sure they’re prepared for those. So it’s begun from the very beginning as far as exposure. We do pre and post-assessments, measuring our students' engagement with us. They often tell us in our post interviews that they learned about a career and felt more confident in their skills to pursue that career. Now, we're beginning to be very intentional and target the teen population, which is tough to serve. It's more expensive, and it’s hard to attract and retain them. But we're being super intentional with those high school students. They get exposure through our curriculum and real-world opportunities to meet professionals from different careers in kind of one day career fairs. These career opportunities are where we have professionals come into the learning lab and share what their career path looked like and just expose them to different opportunities.
I'm a first-generation college student, the first in my family to graduate from high school. So I know firsthand, often kids from under-resourced communities don't even know these careers exist. So there's a lot of work to be done just exposing them. We call that learning about work. So how do we help students learn about work? Then we go deeper with them, with pillar three of that program for our high school students, where we help them learn through work. One of our marquee partners is Providence Healthcare on the West Coast. Very large healthcare system, 52 hospitals, and one of the biggest employers on the West Coast They brought their professionals in and gave us a challenge that they’re having around doing community assessments in under-resourced communities in their health system. We gave this challenge to our young people, did a six-week curriculum in the classroom, and they were split into teams to solve the problem for Providence Healthcare asa competition. So they were actually learning through doing the work. They came back, Providence evaluated them, and it was a great way for them to understand some of the careers and actually do the work. They were out delivering healthcare assessments in communities.
The third pillar of our program is learning at work. How can we help them secure pre-apprenticeships, internships, prepare for mock interviews, and build their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, even as high school students? Some careers require college, some don’t. We help them understand the credentials they can pursue. We’re trying to be intentional and wrap around the whole career-connected learning area.
Employers Partner with TGR
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Michael Horn:
That's an incredibly helpful overview. I love the way you've divided it up into learning about work, through work, and at work. I'm curious, you hinted that this benefits not just the students who obviously get this exposure, connections, experience, actual real internships and pre-apprenticeships, and the like. But you started to hint to it that the partners get something out of it as well. Talk to us about the benefits that companies and employers get out of partnering with you all.
Cyndi Court:
For a lot of the companies that partner with us, they are committed to doing good and improving communities, but they also have a business issue. They have a workforce issue, trying to drive a diverse, highly qualified workforce that might stick with them and grow. The employers get a great benefit and we're preparing the students. Some employers are looking at which jobs require a college degree, which ones maybe only require two years, and which ones require just some credentialing. How can they help us get the workforce into those jobs and provide career ladders within their industries so that their workforce is staying longer? It's about how we diversify them, prepare them, make sure they have durable skills. Some people call them soft skills; we like to call them durable skills. How do we help them work as a team, understand work ethic, and be prepared? We want to make sure our students are great employees and help them stick in those industries so they have a career.
Michael Horn:
Makes a lot of sense. Let’s back up a little. There's a lot of points of leverage that you all, and Tiger woods, when he was thinking about this, could have picked. There's a growing amount of research about the importance of career exposure for really fifth-grade, middle schoolers, and high schoolers. Getting them aware of what's out there, building social capital, a lot of things historically the education system hasn't thought a lot about. Why did you all decide this is the leverage point where we want to insert ourselves?
There's growing research on the importance of career exposure for fifth graders, middle schoolers, and high schoolers. Why did you all decide this is the leverage point where you really want to insert yourselves?
Cyndi Court:
It was after 9/11. Tiger was caught in another place, rented a car, and drove home. Driving home, he thought about how to make an impact and change communities. His mom always made him hit the books before he hit the course. Education was important to her. He grew up in Anaheim, so he had a sense of communities without many opportunities. After 9/11, he asked what we could do in the Anaheim community where he grew up to ensure kids can chase their dreams and have a safe place to do it. It came from multiple factors but converged around what a lot of us did after 9/11 rethinking how to do more.
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Future Plans for Expansion
Michael Horn:
Completely. So then talk to me about this. You're in Anaheim with the learning lab and all these opportunities. You're scaling and expanding. Talk about what's coming down the road and where else the foundation will be operating these labs.
Cyndi Court:
I get construction pictures every day now from Cobb's Creek. We're going to Philadelphia. Cobbs Creek is a revitalization of a golf course that has been there that has been a great story of inclusion since the golf course was built. Charlie Sifford learned to play there. So it's a wonderful story of Charlie Sifford and Tiger, and he was a mentor to Tiger. It is a forgotten corner of the Philadelphia community. A lot of students who need a place to go need the kind of programs that we're offering.
So we're going into Philly. We'll actually get the keys on December 11, not that we're counting days, but we'll open the doors in early February of 2025. Then the next year after that, we'll be in LA, just beside Los Angeles International Airport and on a very large campus called Lulu's Place, which is being built. We've broken ground there with a philanthropist named Doug Kimmelman and the Kimmelman Family Foundation. It is a partnership with USTA. Every one of our facilities has STEAM programs, career-connected learning, and health and wellness opportunities for kids to go outside, be active, learn about hydration, and explore things they may not have opportunities to do in their communities. Again, they may not have an opportunity to play golf or tennis in the communities where they grew up.
Michael Horn:
Wow, such a neat set of opportunities. In terms of scale, how many students will you be serving in the next three to five years?
Cyndi Court
In Anaheim, we're serving about 7,000 a year. So we'll be serving as many as 21,000 and are already looking at other markets.
Michael Horn:
Wow. Let's go micro now to individual student stories. I was reading about Sammy Mohammed, highlighted at Tiger Woods's return to competitive golf. What are some of the student stories that stand out to you?
Student Success Stories
Cyndi Court:
One of them is Brandon, who we highlighted in a video on our website, learned storytelling at the learning lab. We really are STEAM, which does include the arts. Brandon got a lot of opportunities to explore photography and podcasting. We have a podcast room. We need to have you come, Michael, and do a couple of things. But Brandon had a great opportunity to do all that and had experiences. Another student, during our Genesis golf tournament in Los Angeles, got to job shadow with the Golf Channel and do media interviews with the Dodgers. It was a chance of a lifetime. There were about 41 young people from the learning lab who got job shadowing that day. Our students are flourishing. We’re looking at our alumni, reconnecting with them, and doing a lot of storytelling because they're doing fantastic things.
Michael Horn:
Now I have to ask because I didn't expect to hear podcasting as one of those avenues and all that media exploration when I was thinking about STEAM. You're right, Arts is obviously a critical pillar of those of that acronym. These students, when they get this exposure. They're connecting with different companies. They're connecting with different mentors. What do they gravitate toward? What are you learning about what careers are most interesting to the students?
Cyndi Court:
We have a great supporter Nick Gross. We use a product that he built called Find Your Grind, which helps young people assess their passions. It’s not a typical assessment of careers but looks at what they’re passionate about. For example, if they love to connect with people, we show them careers that fit that passion. It helps them understand what they're great at and try different things whether that’s an afterschool club or robotics club. They love our drone class, the science of cooking. So we may be putting some great chefs that just understand the science behind what they do, but helping those people identify what their passions. Then try different things on again. If college is required, they know before they even go to college, a sense of their direction. So hopefully, they're not changing majors four times in four years and ending up there for eight years. We aim to prepare them to hit the ground running and be successful in life.
Michael Horn:
Amazing. I'm just thinking about those chefs now in the science of cooking because my wife's in the culinary world, and her chemistry knowledge is way more than mine because she actually uses it. As we wrap up here, anything else the audience ought to know about TGR learning labs helping to shape the future of education and where you all see this impact going as we continue to chart forward?
Cyndi Court:
There’s a place for everyone to help. If it’s not with TGR Foundation or at a TGR Learning Lab, find a place to give back to these communities and kids. Everyone is needed and can make a difference. Check out tgrfoundation.org. Find a learning lab and ways to get involved. We have mentors and a college scholarship program. Get involved somewhere, whether it's volunteering or financially. Together, we can make a big difference.
Michael Horn:
No kidding. I love how you’re prototyping the future for these students by allowing them to try on different career hats. You’re probably teaching the mentors a lot as well as they help these students, and they probably get inspired daily. Cyndi, thanks for inspiring us today and for sharing so much about the learning labs, how they’re scaling, and their impact.
Cyndi Court:
Thank you for having us.
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Description: Michael is joined by Jon Carson of the College Guidance Network to discuss their new AI-Driven tool designed to improve postsecondary outcomes by bolstering high school guidance. The two dive into the tall task facing guidance counselors, the importance of the importance of informed decision making at the end-of-high-school transition period, and the potential of their AI chatbot, AVA, to support students, parents, and counselors.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think about how we can do that better today, I'm thrilled to have Jon Carson, the founder and CEO of College Guidance Network, CGN. Full disclosure, I host shows on occasion for them on careers. I'm delighted that Jon is joining us today to talk about their work and how they're helping individuals, families, and parents better navigate the landscape of post-high school. Jon, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.
Jon Carson:
Good to be with you.
The Why Behind College Guidance Network
Michael Horn:
Let's dive in. You're a serial entrepreneur and have had many interesting ventures in your background. Let's start with the why behind this one, behind College Guidance Network. Why this company? What's its mission, and what does the work look like?
Jon Carson:
It started four years ago with my oldest. He was in the college process in high school, and there were a set of experiences I had that, as an entrepreneur, made me start to dig into how the college and career guidance system works on a large scale. I ultimately came out of that with a much better understanding of how the system fundamentally does not work in some very structural ways. Having worked in edtech for many years, as well as in content and media, it seemed to me like there was a way to solve this. At that time, AI had not yet come into the picture. Now, as AI has entered the scene, it's clear we're in a period similar to 1990-1996 when the Internet started. For us as entrepreneurs, we've come up with a design that can fundamentally change the way college and career counseling is provided in the United States at scale.
Diagnosing the Problems with Guidance in American High Schools
Michael Horn:
Super exciting to hear that. Before we get into the solution, let's diagnose the problem a little bit. In your view, there are some big structural factors that drive the challenges around guidance for high school students. I know you see it in the outcomes: student graduation rates, dropout rates of college are not that great. I think in your view, at least some of that is structural. It starts with the guidance system in place. Talk through what those major factors are in your mind that lead to the brokenness of the current system.
Jon Carson:
You almost have to start with the supply side, which is the colleges. We've got an increasingly complex process that is a bigger and bigger high-stakes financial decision. With that complexity, we have a situation where, unlike when I was graduating from high school and all escalators went up, not all escalators go up anymore. In fact, some go down and can become non-recoverable. That's the supply side. On the demand side, the issue is that you start with a high school counseling department. Those counselors typically have a union contract of about 180-185 days a year. So right away, about half of the year, they're not available. Then you have the next issue, which is the high ratios. I was unable to get a hold of my kid's counselor, and that school is at about 220 kids per counselor. Some schools have 300,400, 600 kids per counselor. It's just not possible. That is not the counselors' fault; it's a math problem. So you have a big access problem. Then you have the issue that counselors typically have their degrees in social work and are being asked to be knowledgeable across a wide range of topics. How can a counselor who talks a kid off the ledge in the morning also be an expert in how STEM careers are unfolding in the world of AI? They can't. Lastly, if you think of this whole process as a metaphor of a car and the kid is driving the car into life, they don't know how to drive the car. They may not even want to be driving the car. They're often distracted by social media. The counselor is in the back seat but in 400 back seats. I, as the parent, am in the passenger seat, wanting to be helpful but not knowing how. The counseling department doesn't have anything for the parents, who are the only other adult authority figure in the car that can reasonably have the capacity to help the kid. If you put all those things together, the system's not working. You talked about the default rates and dropout rates. Burning Glass has just released data that shows that 52% of all college graduates are underemployed after a year. We clearly do not have good decision-making at a very high-stakes point in the cycle. The system is crying for something to fix it, and you can’t do it internally because schools are not going to have the dollars to throw more counselors at the problem. You have to have something else.
Ava, the AI assistant
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Michael Horn:
Super interesting to hear you break that down at all levels, frankly, in terms of how the matching problem starts and the dynamics throughout the system. One of the parts of your solution revolves around AI. You mentioned that earlier, and you've launched this AI solution. Your agent is named Ava, I believe. You're coming to market with Ava, not as a standalone AI offering but bundled with a variety of other elements. How do you think about this AI product strategy? How do you think about AI in this current solution, and how is it woven into what you are doing to solve the challenges you just described?
Jon Carson:
First, I'll just say that I may sound fairly coherent right now, but it has not always been so. When we first started out, the idea was to mimic a company called Masterclass, which had begun producing a very high-end video library around things like cooking and sports. Our idea was, what if you could create a Masterclass for college and career guidance? We began building this library of experts, but it turned out that was not the right answer because not that many people want to walk the stacks. That's like work. That was version one. Version two, the next step was putting a layer of technology on top of the library and turning the whole thing into a personalized roadmap generator for mom, dad, and the student. It was a month-by-month roadmap that included workflow management videos from top experts personalized to you and your kid. The third piece, which we are currently in the process of rolling out over the next two months, is adding the AI piece. Ava, which stands for Another Virtual Assistant, is our AI counseling assistant. Ava's distinctive characteristic is being trained by the content we have across these experts. We currently have just under 300 experts across 110 topics and just under 3000 videos. We've better understood that content equals data, and very high-quality content equals very high-quality data. That's very important in having a quality conversational assistant. If you put together a conversational counseling assistant with a personalized roadmap, personalized text and email nudges, and a year-round live programming schedule of live experts, that becomes a total solution. We think of it as guidance in a box. This allows a school to provide the capability to a family to have access to the best guidance 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. This takes an enormous load off of the counselor's plate, which is important because there's a whole teenage mental health crisis that desperately needs more counseling time. We think this can be a win for everybody.
Michael Horn:
Super interesting. If I understand you right, you're basically saying, counselors, you can lean into your expertise around social work and working individually with students who need the help. We have this breadth of content experts, 300-plus experts, and 3000 some odd videos that allow us to handle the breadth of questions any young individual might bring. My interests might be different from yours, so we have the expertise and content breadth to work with that. You're using the experts to provide the best advice for any given topic and have this knowledge graph that Ava is trained on so that I get the right piece of advice, the right direction, and the right nudge at the right time in my journey. Am I getting this right? Is this how it all comes together?
Jon Carson:
It is. I'll simplify it. We've done a ton of field research, and it doesn't really matter the socioeconomic background of the student or the family. Everybody really wants the same four things, which actually makes it easier from a design standpoint. We want to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why to do it. If that can come from top experts that we can trust and that are credible, then that's the package. It's about delivering what, when, how, and why. To do that, you have to have a conversational capability. That's Ava. You have to have workflow project management. That's the personalized roadmaps. You have to have access to live experts. That's our live programming. And you have to have remind nudges because we're all so busy. There could be a window closing for the SAT registration test this summer. This whole project started because my wife and I barely made one of these within four hours. She turned to me and said, "I just want a plan." This is the plan. This is what guidance in a box would look like for someone navigating a very complex thing they've never done before.
Differentiating CGN's approach
Michael Horn:
I can hear the exasperation in her voice as you tell that story that leads to this solution. Talk to me about the limited budgets of schools, states, and the like, and how they can't just throw money and people at this problem. How does this content-centric approach coexist with some of the software solutions like Naviance or Score? I hear it a lot of times. A lot of states and schools say, "We've already got something." What's your take on how this is complementary and critical to their operations alongside what they think they have?
Jon Carson:
The best way to think about it is software versus content. The software solutions are robust aggregations of tools. There's something to build a college list, do scholarship searches, request a recommendation letter, provide your transcript, and integrate with the common app. These are software tools. The people who work at these companies are typically software engineers. Using my car metaphor, this is the steering wheel that the kid uses to drive the car from A to B. You must have that steering wheel to get from here to there. We are more like the GPS system that helps the family navigate. We are about guidance and content, not software. We do not have a robust software team. Our people come from PBS, ESPN, and Family Education Network. We think cars drive better with navigation. That's our role: to aggregate experts into a cohesive user experience that's not overwhelming, personalized, and complements the steering wheel.
Activating Parents
Michael Horn:
You just said a few interesting things that I want to key in on as we start to wrap up this conversation. You used the word "guidance." You are not the software; you are the guidance. That's a critical piece missing in the depth and breadth we need across the system right now. You have a real focus on parents. Talk about why parents and guardians are the linchpin from your perspective and why this is such an important solution for them. A lot of people think, "Naviance, right? My kid has access to it in the school. They jump on in the career office or the guidance office, put in their scores and interests, and get some lists of colleges." You are providing much more guidance and really helping parents with this. Talk about that decision and focal point.
Jon Carson:
First, we know the current system is not working. If it were, we wouldn't have these massive dropout rates, default rates, etc. Just giving someone a large toolbox is not enough. You have to give them the instructions and navigation as well. Asking a 17-year-old to make this kind of high-stakes decision with all the complexity is asking a lot. Asking them to do it by themselves leads to problems. We can't put it all on the counselors because there's a math problem there. We're running out of options, but there's a really good one: the person in the passenger seat who's going to be either writing a check or co-signing a loan for a lot of money, who's biologically wired to care about the individual in the driver's seat, and who is desperate to be helpful but just doesn't know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why to do it. You have to make it easy for them. They need expert access because they're on the journey as well. Parents are really a linchpin. Jeff Riley, the commissioner of education for Massachusetts, has called them the sleeping giant. They just want to be harnessed. Their anxiety levels are high because they see these issues. As we watch the effects of AI on the workforce and entry-level jobs, it will become even more complex and important that kids are thoughtful about picking their career paths. We spend a lot of time getting experts on AI because we think the future of work is really important.
Parents have to write the check, they care about their kid, and they see their kid is distracted. They want to get it right, but nobody's given them the right solution so they can become that counseling assistant at home. We talk to schools about turning all parents into an army of counseling assistants with a caseload of one or two. That's an enormous amount of capacity that can be unlocked, and you don't have to pay for it because they'll do it because they care about their kid.
CGN's Content Categories and What’s Next
Michael Horn:
That makes a ton of sense. Parents care about this, have a lot of anxiety, and probably spend a lot of time on this. You're helping them be smarter and more secure in decision-making. For parents who may tune in and listen to this, I will say there are great resources to help their kids assume more agency and develop executive function skills so they can take more ownership. There's great guidance in CGN around those topics, not just the checklist of what to do next. It's a much more comprehensive solution, right?
Jon Carson:
We think there are four content categories: college, money, careers, and family dynamics. How do you talk to a teenager who won't talk back? The kid is separating biologically, which is important. There are right and wrong ways to engage that kid. Many parents make the wrong decision by leaning in too much, causing the kid to push back. We try to give parents access to family therapists and experts on teenage phone screen addiction and other issues that get in the way of healthy exchanges between an engaged parent and their kid.
Michael Horn:
Perfect. Jon, how can folks tuning in learn more about CGN and get in touch?
Jon Carson:
Our URL is collegeguidancenetwork.com. There's an ability to request a demo or reach out to us. At the end of August, we're rolling out this combined solution with personalized roadmaps and Ava integrated into the experience. We're excited about the fall pilots we're running. The commissioner in New Hampshire has funded a pilot, and we're excited to have a scalable solution that can change the way guidance is done in American high schools.
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I was so excited when Diane Tavenner reached out to me this summer so that we could interview David Yeager, psychology professor at University of Texas Austin and author of 10 to 25, a new book on youth development, on our Class Disrupted podcast. Together, we discussed lessons on healthy youth development tackled in his book, including the science of mentorship, importance of transparency, and strategies for how to help youth reframe stress.
Diane Tavenner:
Hey, Michael.
Michael Horn:
Hey, Diane. How are you?
Diane Tavenner:
I am well. This is a first for us. We are doing a special summer episode, and for good reason.
Michael Horn:
We are trying to break out of the old structures of a summer break where kids go home and don't go to school. We're trying to break out of that model that we've always done in this podcast and have an important conversation about a book that is upcoming and will be out by the time this podcast is released. So, Diane, why don't you introduce the book and our special guest?
Diane Tavenner:
I'm excited to welcome Dr. David Yeager to the podcast today. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and has a long, long list of accomplishments and works with a number of other learning scientists. I encourage you all to go look at that impressive bio. Let me just share personally that we met about a decade ago, and I have always been such a huge fan because David's work is so applicable to schools, young people, mentoring, teachers, and parenting. He is, in my view, one of the rare researchers who not only has a background in those areas but is deeply committed to making sure his research is actually meaningful and embedded in practice. Over the years, we've had tons of incredible dialogues and conversations about very practical things in schools. He had a huge influence on our summit learning model when I was at Summit. I am so excited for his upcoming book called "10 to 25."
It's all about mentoring, which is a huge part of what I have worked on and focused on in my career. I am thrilled that you're here with us today to have this conversation. David, welcome.
David Yeager:
Thanks a lot. It's great to be here. Diane, I think it was 12 years ago we met.
Diane Tavenner:
Wow, Yeah.
David Yeager:
You were my favorite person. We met at this crazy meeting where we were briefing thought leaders in education reform. The last question of that interview was, "If you could do one thing, what would it be?" Whatever I said, a week later, you're like, "Okay. So we did that thing you said, now can you help us?" I was like, I love Diane Tavenner. She's just gonna make it happen. So I've always been your admirer, and it's great to be on this podcast.
Michael Horn:
It's not just talk with Diane, it is action.
David Yeager:
Yeah, be careful what you say. She'll do it.
Filling in the blanks on youth motivation
Diane Tavenner:
Well, thank you. We are thrilled to have you. I wanted to jump in. This is going to be kind of silly, but I think it's meaningful. Your new book introduces what I would call a Madlib activity. It's like a fill-in-the-blank activity and the fill-in-the-blank sentences. I know you've asked a bunch of people to complete this, so I'm curious about the different responses you've gotten. It starts with this idea: The sentence, "Given that young people are ____, the best way to motivate them is ____." I’d love to know your response to that. Also, what do you normally hear from people when you ask them to fill in those sentence starters?
David Yeager:
Let me just start with the most common things I hear. The most common thing I hear is, "Given that young people are kind of short-sighted, lazy, hard to motivate, not listening to grown-ups," or something like that. Something kind of denigrating. Then you tend to see one of two things. One is “Explain to them why all their choices now are not quite right and why they're not aligned with their long-term best interests or motivate them with either threats or rewards.” So, "If you do this, something bad is going to happen to you," or "If you do this, I'll give you this nice thing." Either bribes or threats. That's the most common answer I see. The second most common answer I see is, "Given that young people are stressed out, overwhelmed..."
Diane Tavenner:
Addicted to their phone.
David Yeager:
Right. Addicted to their phones, recovering from COVID, lonely, in the middle of a mental health epidemic, etc. The best way to motivate them is to remove their demands, chop up what they're doing into tiny steps, help them feel a sense of success, let them feel confident, don't overwhelm them. Basically, make it easy on them to grow up. Both of those internal logics make sense, but neither of them are great. The big punchline from my book is when I started studying people who do an awesome job at motivating young people, even in the most difficult of circumstances, they complete the sentence with, "Given that young people are capable of doing incredible things that make contributions to the world, the best way to motivate them is to inspire them, sometimes to get out of their way, to run interference, so that way things don't derail their ambitions and hopes, but really support their potential to come alive." I like this exercise because it reveals how our beliefs about young people are intimately tied to our practices and how we deal with them. That sounds obvious when I say it, but it's not obvious to most people. They just think, "Okay, the best way to motivate people is the following," and they don't question the fact that that's a choice, and it comes from a belief system, and it's something that could be changed.
David’s Motivation for Writing 10 to 25
Michael Horn:
It's really interesting. I'm feeling jealous at the moment because Diane's had the chance to read the book in advance, and I will read it once it's out. What motivated you to write this book, "Ten to 25?" What was your intention? What's your hope for the book?
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David Yeager:
For me personally, the book comes from 15-20 years of frustration, feeling like the advice I had been given as a teacher and later that I saw in the research literature just wasn't cutting it. It wasn't good enough. I remember being a mediocre middle school teacher and caring so deeply for my kids and wanting to do everything for them and feeling like I never got that kind of inspiring, enthusiastic love of learning, where kids were embracing the hardest stuff and coming after class because they were curious about the topic. Then when I started doing research, I also felt like the answers I saw in the field were very... I don't know, just not useful. It was very abstract and bland and not applicable. We've conducted a lot of research over the last 15 years, and part of the book is, "All right, let's put that all in one place."
I'm often asked about this part of my work. Some people think of me as the community college student success person, others as the purpose-in-life person, others as the youth mental health, and others as the growth mindset. I wanted all the work to be in one place, but the other thing was just an acknowledgment that there was a lot I didn't know, and I needed to go out in the world and find great leaders who were awesome at motivating young people. The book is a combination of the science we've done over 15 years and original reporting on what I've learned from the wisdom of practice, I guess you could say.
The Mentoring Mindset
Michael Horn:
Very cool. I'm curious, then. Diane teased that a lot of this book is not just about motivation and how to spark students, but a part of that is this mentoring mindset, I think you call it. I've certainly bought hook, line, and sinker on the importance of mentoring, but the mentoring mindset is a phrase that is unfamiliar to me. So, what is the mentoring mindset?
David Yeager:
Yeah, the mentor mindset is an approach or a philosophy you take with a young person where you maintain very high standards. You're tough, you expect a lot, but you're supportive enough so that a young person can meet those standards. It's not just saying, "Hey, I have super high standards, you can meet them or not," which often ends up with maybe the top 5% doing well and everybody else struggling. It's not saying, "I care about you, but I'm not going to ask a lot of you," where maybe kids feel supported but they don't grow and improve. The basic mentor mindset is high standards, and high support. It's a simple idea.
Where does that come from? It comes from this investigation of the most successful people I could find in K-12 education, higher ed, academic research, NBA coaching, parenting, management at retail, grocery stores, management, and technology firms. I wanted to look at anyone who's in charge of or relates to someone aged 10 to 25 in any of these domains. What do the most successful people have in common? The answer was this mentoring or mentor mindset. In the book, I describe it and also describe what's the opposite of that. What happens if you don't have that?
Diane Tavenner:
Michael, you'll love it because it is a two-by-two because you always have.
Michael Horn:
You're saying I'm going to feel at home is what you're saying.
Taking an Asset-Based Approach
Diane Tavenner:
You're going to feel very at home. I love the mentoring mindset because it embodies the belief system that I've had for my career, this idea of high expectations and high support. Let's just put names on the other ones that you were describing, David. There's this enforcer mindset which is like you were describing, high expectations but no support, and this protector mindset which is high support but no expectations. One of the things I love in our conversation is you never start from a deficit mindset. You're always an asset-based approach where you're like, "Look, even those other two places have one of the two parts of the equation, so they're halfway there. We just need to get the other half in there, if you will." Say more about that.
David Yeager:
Yeah, I think there are two ways in which it...
Diane Tavenner:
Hopefully, I explained that properly.
David Yeager:
Yeah, it was great. Later on the test, I'll give you a high score. As a professor, I'm just walking around grading everyone. Just kidding. There are two ways in which we try to be asset-based. One is that suppose you're in one of these off-diagonal cases, the enforcer mindset: all standards, low support; protector: all support, no standards. That's coming from a good place and I started to talk about that. Then the second is, as you're saying, reframing those two off-diagonal cases as you got half of it right, so just add the other half. Why do I say they're coming from a good place? Well, I think for a long time people have felt torn. If I'm a manager, a boss, a teacher, a professor, I have a dichotomous choice between being the tough, authoritarian, dictator, kind of hard-nosed person who demands excellence. The negative consequence of that, of course, is kids and young people are crying and feeling debilitated and crushed. Most people don't succeed.
But that is viewed as a necessary side effect of me upholding high standards. You can see how you could put your head on your pillow at night and feel good about that. It's like, "I'm the gatekeeper to excellence and high performance, and I'm doing what I have to do, though it's sometimes unpleasant to uphold the standard for culture or society or performance." On the other side, where you're very low standards but high support, what I call the protector mindset, there too, you can feel good about how you're caring. You love young people. You're putting their feelings and needs first. You're being empathetic. You're very attuned. Those are all good things to feel. The problem is that you're also a pushover and young people don't get anywhere. But it might feel like that's the necessary consequence of protecting young people from the distress of this dog-eat-dog world that they can't possibly succeed in. Both come from a concern for young people, both the enforcer and the protector. They're just a little misguided.
The reason they're misguided is because they're embedded in this worldview we have about young people generally being incompetent. If you think they're incompetent and I have to be tough, well, that's enforcer. It's like, "I need to maintain the standards, and I'm the last defense against the world descending into chaos." That's why I have to maintain rigorous standards. On the protector side, they're incompetent, they're weak, but that's why I have to make up for what they lack by protecting them.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
David Yeager:
So the mentor is like, "All right, let's just take both of what's good from those. You've got the high standards. Great. Add the support. You've got the support. Great. Add the standards so you can have two reasons now to feel good about yourself at the end of the day, not just one."
The Transparency Statement
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah, I love that approach. The book is filled with the science that's behind it. One of the things I appreciate about you is it's not only all the science and research you've done. You are highly collaborative, and you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the other research in the space that everyone else has done. You are very generous in bringing those ideas into the book. We are not going to spend a lot of time on the science here today because we want to, given our audience, go to the practices that you put forward. But I will say for people who want to do a deep dive there, I've listened to the Huberman Lab podcast that you did. It’s 3 hours, and it's an extraordinary deep dive in that space. So I highly recommend that for people who want to go really deep there along with the book if you want to listen. I want to shift us over to these mindset practices. They're particularly profound here in conversation.
Honestly, when I looked at the titles of these chapters and when I started digging in, these are things that Michael and I talk about all the time on the podcast. These are cornerstones of, in our view, what redesigned schools and learning experiences need to be building on, incorporating how they need to function, essentially. We are deeply aligned in our agenda for what learning can and should look like. Let me just say off the top because our listeners will recognize these. We'll start with transparency, which is a really interesting intro. I think you say these go from easiest to implement to probably most challenging. So we'll talk about that. Transparency, questioning, this reframing of stress, and then purpose and belonging.
Again, our listeners have heard us talk about purpose and belonging sort of at nauseam, but we can keep talking. Let's start with transparency because you have this very, very, I would say, easy lift that people can do, called a transparency statement. Tell us about that. What does that look like? How does that get you off on the right foot, quite frankly, in your relationship with young people?
David Yeager:
The transparency statement that I write about is very simply explaining your motives whenever you are about to uphold some high standards and/or provide some support so that young people don't interpret it in the worst possible light. That can be very short. Let's take Uri Treisman, the world's greatest freshman calculus professor I write about in chapter eleven. He'll give students large intro courses in calculus, five problems where they have to find the limit of a function using L'Hopital's rule. The thing is, most kids, when they take AP calculus, memorize L'Hopital's rule, and then they just apply it to find the limits of functions. But the problem is that L'Hopital's rule is not an analytic solution. It's like a workaround.
So it doesn't work. It breaks a lot. He'll give students five problems, four of them L'Hopital's rule won't work for, and one it will. A normal teacher doesn't do that. A normal teacher would think, "You're a lunatic because they're going to cry," basically. Before he does that, he's like, "All right, I just want you to know the reason why I'm doing this is because you guys are preparing to be mathematicians and to think mathematically. I want you to have careers long beyond this class. I don't want you to apply math tricks. I want you to be able to take apart the math tricks, figure out how they work, and put them back together again." He says that before they spend 25 minutes struggling. If you don't, they would be in tears, thinking, "I'm dumb at math. I'm going to fail calculus. I'm never going to be a doctor or an engineer." That's where a freshman's mind is going to go. You have to say something. In a world in which he says nothing and there's crying, tears, and frustration, that's not a great world. The most marginalized students are going to quit first because they're also dealing with other stereotypes about whether they're smart enough, etc. But in the world in which he has a transparency statement, it's otherwise the exact same lesson and the students have the exact same great professor, but it means something totally different in that context.
That's why it's the easiest. You can already be awesome at mentor mindset stuff, high expectations, and high support, and you could be coming across the wrong way to your young people. Sometimes all you have to do is remind them of why you're giving them something that's a little unpleasant. The societal narrative currently about young people is, "Well, I shouldn't have to explain myself, because if they weren't such woke, wimpy idiots, then they would know that I'm here for them." There's a version in which people, adults and leaders, think, "I shouldn't have to explain myself." My answer to that is, look, for most young people, starting at the beginning of gonadarche and puberty until they're in their twenties, that day you're talking to them is the day on which they have the most testosterone they've ever had in their entire lives. That day and the next day when you do something else, that also will be the day on which they have the most testosterone they've ever had in their entire lives, both boys and girls.
That does all kinds of things to the brain that makes them over-interpret things that might be plausibly offensive. That's why their head goes to this crazy place of, "I'll never succeed," or "You hate me," or "This is biased," etc. You just have to explain yourself two or three more times than you think you need to. Not because they're too sensitive, but because the job of a young person is to figure out if they're being taken seriously and respected. Just don't make them guess. Just be transparent.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah. One of the things that comes up in the book is this idea that at that developmental stage, they want status and they want respect, and there's good biological reasons for that. When we are running counter to that, we're creating all sorts of distance between us relationally, which makes so much sense to me. I can just say from my career, I can't tell you how many of the rigorous teachers that I knew purposefully would not have been transparent upfront because they were actually trying to scare kids or create what is essentially a threatening environment because they thought that's what they were supposed to do with high standards. The science is pretty clear that the effect they were having was not the effect that I think they ultimately wanted.
David Yeager:
Right. I mean, I think there's this mythology of the demanding leader that is impossible to please, and it's a little bit ambiguous if you've won them over. In that mythology, you're supposed to leave people you're leading a little bit in the dark for a while and then only at the end reveal that you cared about them all along, but they're supposed to be afraid for nine months so that way you get optimal performance. I 100% remember feeling that way as a teacher. If I tell them too quickly that I care about them, then they're going to take advantage of me. But that's not what the mentor mindset leaders do.
They're super hard, and students are often crying in the first few months of their classes in college and K-12 settings. But they're also super transparent so that by October, or November, students can now trust that when they ask a question, Mr. Estrada—Sergio Estrada is one of the teachers I write about—"Mr. Estrada, is this problem right?" He'd be like, "I don't know. Is it right?" Initially, students hate that. But he says, "Look, I would never deprive you of the opportunity to know that you can understand physics. I care about you too much to lower standards. So that's why I'm asking you the question back. So given that, do you think it's right?" He's got to say that for a couple of months. Eventually, students know that and then they start thinking on their own, and they own their own learning. It saves him tons of time. Later in the semester, they become independent thinkers. They go on to the next course in college and can do well. He's given them that gift of being independent, thoughtful, curious, intellectual leaders, even though it was a little rocky at first because students aren't used to it. But you're not going to get there if you wait till May and they hate you all year. That's idiotic. That's mythology.
Questioning Techniques: Asking v. Telling
Diane Tavenner:
You've led us into the questioning technique. Some of those teachers we're talking about, their class would also look like the professor not giving them any help or any support. That's not what you're talking about. Sergio and others that you profile, don't they specifically have this strategy around asking, not telling? Tell us the dimensions and characteristics of that approach that are quite different from other folks.
David Yeager:
I was really struck by the parenting coach that I followed who is almost always coaching parents to ask questions, not to tell their kids what to do. The similarities between great parenting and great teaching, great tutoring, and good management. The great manager I followed, Steph Akamoto, who was at Microsoft at the time, would do her performance reviews and ask questions like, "All right, how do you think that went?" and so on, get their opinions. Then she would say, "All right, for you to be a top 15% performer on your next performance evaluation, what's a task you could do that's above and beyond that would really impress everybody, and that would be something you would want to do and you want to learn?" Then they would generate two or three ideas. Then she'd be like, "Huh? All right, what are you worried about getting in the way of those things?" An example in the book is Steph's doing a performance review when she was on the software testing unit for Microsoft. They would write manuals that would help the developers know what Windows is doing, for instance. Someone on her team was like, "Well, instead of just testing it and writing the manual, I could go talk to the engineers and fix all the goofy things with the software now, rather than have 20 pages in the manual about how the goofy thing is a workaround." She's like, "Okay, what would be hard about that?" "Well, the engineers don't want to talk to a tester because I'm low status, and the manager is going to be like, 'Stop wasting my engineers' time.'" Then Steph would be like, "All right, would you mind if I contacted the manager and said, 'Get off her case and let her go talk to your engineers?'" "No, that's okay with me."
So they formed this whole plan where her direct report could overperform and do something testers weren't normally required to do. Steph's out... She's not doing it for the direct report, but she's running interference to give her the freedom to be in the room to talk to the engineers. Six months later, her direct report is overperforming as the top 5-10% performer, gets a raise, promotional velocity, etc. But Steph didn't do it for her. That's what I mean by questioning. There's a version of questioning that's not good. If your kid comes home drunk and you're like, "What were you thinking?" that's not an authentic question. What you really mean is, "You were not thinking, and you're an idiot, and you're in trouble. I could not be madder at you."
That's what you mean. There are versions of questions that are just about facts. What I'm really talking about is what I call in the book authentic questioning with uptake, where it's a legitimate question that the person could have a true answer to that, in principle, the asker doesn't know the answer to. Second, where the question builds on some thinking the person has done. I found mentors did that a lot and did it really well, whether it was the NBA's best basketball coach, Sergio Estrada in physics class, Uri Treisman in calculus, or Steph at Microsoft.
Reframing Stress
Diane Tavenner:
It's resonating with me on multiple levels because as I build this new product to help young people figure out what they want to do in the future, this was the cornerstone of our approach. We would ask authentic questions of them and help them discover and explore versus the traditional approaches that kind of tell you, "We have this black box questionnaire or test, and then we tell you, 'Oh, guess what? You should be a firefighter or a mortician or whatever.'" Young people are like, "What are you talking about? That's not me." So very resonant. The next piece is a total reframing of stress. Especially coming out of COVID. Michael and I started the podcast during the middle of COVID and everyone, probably at the time, really swung one direction about, "People are so incredibly stressed."
We have to completely fundamentally change our expectations and our behaviors in response to that stress. I still think there's a belief that young people and kids are so stressed. This is where I think the protector mindset comes in a lot. The science, though, tells us something very different. We should think differently about stress and then act differently accordingly. Tell us about that.
David Yeager:
This was an important chapter in the book because there's a world in which managers are out there saying, or teachers, or professors, "I'm a mentor mindset. Therefore, I have mega hard expectations for you, and you need to suck it up and just deal with how stressful it is." That's not what you see the best mentor mindset leaders doing. They definitely maintain standards. They definitely imply you should stick with it. But they don't tell you to suppress your stress or feelings of frustration, etc. Instead, they have ways of reframing the negative emotions that tend to come from pushing yourself to your frontiers and reframing them as, one, a sign you've chosen to do something important and meaningful. If it was easy, then anyone would do it kind of thing.
But the fact that it's hard means that you are doing something impressive. The fact that you're stressed often means you care about it, that it matters to you, and that's cool to do something that matters to you. Then, second, that those worries actually can be fuel to help you do better. You see that a lot. If you look at great one-on-one tutors or even a good golf coach or tennis coach, they're really asking you to go take on a challenge. In athletics, choose harder opponents, and if it's tutoring, choose the harder problems and try them if you can't master them. Second, that physiological arousal of heart racing, palms sweating, butterflies in your stomach, that's your body mobilizing oxygenated blood to your muscles and your brain cells, and that's helping you to be stronger and your brain to think faster and so on. Most people don't think that way.
They think the fact that I have butterflies in my stomach and my heart's racing means my body's about to shut down, that my body's betraying my goals, and it's going to get in the way. We talk a lot about the science of reframing away from what's called a suppression approach. So classic suppression would be, well, as a parent, "Stop crying. Stop being sad." You just tell your kid to stop feeling the way they're feeling. But as a teacher, what you often see is, "You've prepared. You shouldn't feel stressed. You're fine. You can do this. You should feel confident." You see this a lot. Kids say it to each other, "Oh, you shouldn't be stressed out." It's like, no, actually, you should be stressed if it matters to you and it's legitimately hard. Reassuring you that you shouldn't be stressed is a suppression approach. It turns out if you suppress feelings, they just come back stronger and get in the way. The protector mindset leads you to that suppression approach. You feel so bad that you feel distressed that I want you to get rid of it, and I want to get rid of it either by removing the demand or telling you to push the feelings down, you know, push them away, don't feel stressed, etc. I tell the story in the book about a student of mine who emailed and said, "Look, my mom just died. Most important person to me in the world. I can't possibly do the assignments for the next couple weeks.
I hope this won't make me fail, but I’m just telling you I can't do it." I could tell from the tone that most of my colleagues at UT would either imply that she was lying about it and that she had to prove it or would say, "Just take an incomplete in the class," either to save you the distress or because the teachers are worried about it being unfair to the other students in the class. That wasn't my approach. I had been thinking a lot about this stress approach, and instead my approach was, "Look, let's separate the intellectual difficulty of what you're doing from the logistical difficulty. The intellectual difficulty is you have to do an awesome final project that's very impressive, that hopefully you can talk about in your job interviews, can be on your resume, and that you're proud of. I don't want to take that away from you. That's why you took my class, was to learn new stuff and do things that are impressive. Frankly, your mom cared for you and rooted for you throughout college because you were doing cool, impressive stuff.
So one way to honor your mom's memory is to do a great final project in my class. Do I really care that you do the daily busy work that I assigned? No. That's only there to help you get prepared to do the final project. What I did is I reduced the demands for the logistical stuff, like the busy work, and I was like, just communicate with your group, and whenever you're ready, come back and then do your final project with them. She took two and a half, three weeks off and just kind of stayed in touch with her group, and then they did a fully kick-ass final project. They created this whole AI-based support to help teachers do empathic discipline rather than very harsh discipline. Three years ago, they did this before GPT was released, and then she talked about it in her interview, got this job for a major financial services group, and now is traveling the world on this rotational program, fast track for managers. She immigrated from Africa, is a very interesting young woman of color who is constantly trying to help improve society and culture.
I caught up with her a year later. I was like, "Did I do the right thing? Should I have just given you an incomplete?" She's like, "No. Half my professors told me to take an incomplete, but then I couldn't have graduated on time, and then I wouldn't be in this financial services mentoring program." That's an example where if you have the belief that young people are capable of impressive stuff with the right support, then you start thinking about, sometimes you maintain the intellectual demand or the demand for the work that's truly impressive, but the way you support them is to reduce some of the logistical demands. I think a lot of people mistake those two. They think being a hard-ass on deadlines is what it means to be demanding. But I think it's having people own thinking and contributions. That that's the demand. Deadlines are a means to get there.
Diane Tavenner:
I love this chapter. The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking back because you alluded to this in the beginning, David, but the first two times we met each other were arguably under very stressful circumstances that I would not trade, though. I mean, we were, in the first case, presenting our work to Bill Gates directly, and in the second case at the White House, presenting. If someone had taken those opportunities away from us, I think we would be very regretful. It was stressful. Those are stressful.
David Yeager:
So stressful, but it's stressful in a way where you have to bring your A-game. I think the challenge is to see it as a positive opportunity to perform at your peak rather than a threatening opportunity to fail publicly. When you do the latter, you're still sweating, your heart's racing, and you're worried but doing poorly. But you also are like, all right, let's go. It's like if I'm a good surfer on a huge wave, that's how you want to feel.
Purpose and Belonging
Diane Tavenner:
So, David, with our last few minutes here, we're going to give you the tall task of talking purpose and belonging, which are very significant. I should say the end of your book pulls all of this into whole models and approaches. Tell us the key concept here of purpose and belonging in your work.
David Yeager:
I think that, as you know, 10-15 years ago, those were not concepts people talked about in education reform. It was like curriculum and interests were probably the two biggest things. The idea of a meaningful purpose, that wasn't around. I think Bill Damon's work brought purpose to a lot of people's radars, and I did a lot of the early randomized experiments, but even now, I think it's not as well known. Belonging, for a long time, was thought of as this soft self-esteem boost. Everyone needs a hug from all the world's friends. It wasn't taken seriously.
I think the common thread across the two is that they're super powerful, especially for young people who are trying to make it through the world, having a sense of status and respect. Purpose, because you want to contribute something of value to the world around you. Having a meaningful purpose where it's something beyond myself is depending on me, that's super motivating for young people. A lot of education gets that wrong because they just make an argument about making money in the future or using this lesson plan in a job in the future, or it's a delay of gratification, a long-term self-interest argument. I don't think that's ever really going to work to drive deeper learning. But the idea that right now somebody's depending on you, having mastered something and done a good job, I think that's really meaningful. In an enforcer mindset, you wouldn't think of that because you'd be like, well, they're going to choose the laziest possible way to do things no matter what. The only way we can entice them to do tedious work is through rewards, now, or delayed rewards later.
Belonging is similar in that now that it's starting to get on the radar, more people are talking about it, but it's still misconstrued. A lot of people think belonging is, "I'm going to give you a 'You Belong' sticker to slap on your laptop, and all of a sudden achievement gaps are going to disappear." As I say in the book, you can't declare belonging by fiat. It has to be experienced. One of the big things that has to happen is you have to help young people tell themselves a story of how difficulties could be overcome through actions that they could take. Then over time, they actually feel a sense of belonging in a community. I think that purpose and belonging go hand in hand because one way you know you're valued by a community is when you've contributed something that they perceive as important to that community back in our evolutionary history. I think there's a lot more in the book and there are stories about how you leverage those two to get deeper, more lasting, meaningful motivations rather than more frivolous things like turning education into a slot machine.
I don't think that's going to do it. What's more important is appealing to a deeper purpose, a sense of connection, a sense of mattering, and so on.
Diane Tavenner:
That's awesome. There is so much more in the book. I can't recommend it highly enough. I hope everyone will read it and ping us with questions, thoughts, and what comes up for you. Maybe at some point, we can circle back and do even more on the other pieces when we hear from our readers what they think. Michael…
Michael Horn:
I was going to say the same thing. Just huge thanks first, David. Check out the book "Ten to 25." I got a lot just from this conversation that has whetted my appetite, and I know many others will as well. Let's circle back once we have some more fodder because I can tell we're scratching the surface and you've hit these hot-button topics that, as you said, David, we sort of know there's something there, but the full depth of how it's understood is not there yet in the education field. I appreciate you writing this and joining us.
David Yeager:
Absolutely.
Michael Horn:
For all those listening, we'll be back next time on Class Disrupted. Thank you again.
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Satya Nitta, Co-Founder and CEO of Merlyn Mind, an education AI company that allows teachers to automate and voice-activate once clunky digital teaching tasks, as well as the founder of Emergence, which just came out of stealth mode with a raise of a whopping $97.5 million in venture capital, joined me to discuss how the AI technology in Merlyn Mind untethers teachers from their computers, the new learning possibilities unlocked by that change, and the importance of the practical implementation of AI tools.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. Where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. Today, we will discuss transforming our K-12 system and supporting educators globally. I'm delighted to introduce our guest, Satya Nitta, the founder and CEO of Merlyn Mind. Merlyn Mind is one that’s been on my radar for quite a number of years for its approach to artificial intelligence. We’ll hear how their approach is very distinct from a lot of the hype and conversations around AI at the moment.
Satya, thank you so much for being here. It's great to see you. I appreciate you joining us.
Satya Nitta:
Pleasure to be here, Michael.
Michael Horn:
You bet. Let's dive in. You founded Merlyn Mind back in 2018, well before the current craze around large language models like ChatGPT. Even back then, adaptive learning was a big topic, and AI was frequently discussed in that context. When you started Merlyn Mind, you made an important decision to focus on serving the teacher first. I’d love to hear about that origin story and why you made that decision. What was the vision behind Merlyn Mind?
Satya’s Journey with AI in Education
Satya Nitta:
Sure. Before Merlyn Mind, I was at IBM Research for 18 years. In the first half, I was advancing Moor’s Law, working on chip technologies. In the latter half of my time there, I worked on AI. I got into AI around the time Watson won Jeopardy. I was given the keys to the kingdom around 2012 to 2013 when Watson won Jeopardy. That was a seminal moment when a computer seemingly understood language, complex allusions, and puns, and beat the two best players in this complex quiz game. This was similar to Deep Blue beating Kasparov, and both events happened at IBM Research down the hall from where I had an office.
When Watson won Jeopardy, IBM was approached by various companies wanting to use Watson in their industries, including education. In early 2013, I was given the opportunity to explore how to use AI in education. I had no prior experience in education. I was working on either advancing language modeling. Language models predated large language models, which is the whole chat GPT revolution. I was working on conversational systems and speech recognition, and I thought this was a great opportunity to take AI and do something in a particular domain. I concluded that AI works best in deeply domain-specific ways.
So I spent six months to a year studying cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and learning science. I already had some exposure to neuroscience, especially cognitive neuroscience because of an interest in a branch of computing called neuromorphic computing. So I went back to IBM, and I basically said to them “Look, we can do a number of things with AI and education. We can take the Watson system and build question-answering applications or chatbots across a number of things. Universities can use it to help students who are onboarding get all kinds of answers to their questions. We’re sitting here at IBM Research, one of the places that has really advanced computing, we need to do something foundational with AI and education. When tasked with integrating Watson into education, I drew from the 1957 Dartmouth Conference, where the term "artificial intelligence" was coined. The founders of AI, like Marvin Minsky and Herb Simon, saw teaching machines as a grand challenge. We at IBM Research aimed to build an AI tutor, which was a significant undertaking. I basically said, look, I'm sitting here at IBM research in these hallowed halls where the dram was invented. Moore's law was advanced through Dennard scaling. Watson won Jeopardy. Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue. Much of modern computing has some footprint in this building. I feel the pressure to do something grand. And we need to go after this grand challenge, build a computer to teach. So build a tutoring system.
And I wasn't just making it up. In fact, that mantle of trying to get a computer to teach was picked up by generations of AI researchers. So we were sitting on top of 30 years of work in academia. Scientists like John Anderson at Carnegie Mellon had spent a lot of time thinking very hard about, how to get a computer to teach. What is an AI tutorial?
And I'm going through this. Sorry, elaborate history because I want to establish the provenance of ideas and I want to land it to where we are in this moment in AI. IBM was thrilled with the vision. We spent about five years with a team of 130 researchers, investing millions of dollars to create this AI tutor. Before the current craze on AI tutoring, we had taken all the work in academia and built the first large-scale industrial tutor. Carnegie Learning is another company that's advanced.
Michael Horn:
I was gonna say Carnegie learning. Newton had another... There had been other attempts at it as well.
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Satya Nitta:
Yeah. So we also looked at Carnegie Learning's work and we said, okay, you know, what they did was very interesting. And we wanted to build an even broader approach to tutoring, well beyond something very hierarchical like math and, you know, go into lots of topics. And at the heart of it, what we were attempting to do was to get a computer to build a chatbot that a student can chat within a very natural language. And this is well before chat GPT but with language models of that time. So the chatbot would ask the student a question. The student would respond in natural language. The chatbot would then analyze the response and tell them what they were missing and not give them the response and not give them the answer.
So. And all of all, this is where we published all of this work.
By the end of 2017, I was leaving IBM. I got recruited to go join Amazon, and head an AI effort there. Then I got this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start Merlyn Mind. Some of the major backers in this company reached out and said, we heard you're leaving. What's happening to the team? Would you be interested in starting a company? I jumped on the whole idea. I left with a very key realization, which is, we built a tutor. It worked.
Challenges with Uptake in AI Tutoring
Satya Nitta:
It did something very complex and profound from a technological perspective, much more than anything today's tutors do.
We had elaborate student models and knowledge models. We could score student responses, and we ran into a fundamental roadblock, which is that students weren't using it. We built this for higher ed, and we couldn't get them to use it, despite us leaning in on topics like multiple representations, which are multiple ways to teach a student a concept and put the student in charge. We spent a lot of time thinking about the user experience, but we just couldn't solve the last mile, which is the motivation problem. We couldn't get a student motivated enough to use the chatbot.
And by the way, that fundamental question remains today. Okay, what most people don't answer, don't ask. When you see all these flashy demos of GPT four-based tutoring, are people using it? What's the monthly average use? What's the daily average use? How long are they using it for? Are they sticking with it? I mean, how much have they used it initially? And how much did they use over six months time.
And nobody asked them the hard questions about, is this thing solving the problem of teaching these kids something. Are we seeing an improvement in learning outcomes? So all these things became major questions in our heads, and we finally concluded that the major problem here isn't a technology problem. It was something much more profound, which is, students learn from people best. That the teacher becomes the central fundamental role model, who delivers kind of wisdom and knowledge and serves as a human example of learning for students, okay? And they're motivating the kids. They're giving them examples. They know the kid. They're situating learning within their background. And so we learned the hard way what generations of educators had already known, and which is that the teacher is the central and most important figure and factor in improving learning outcomes. So when we started Merlyn Mind, we said, I don't think we really want to do something impactful. It wasn't about doing something flashy and raising a bunch of money and being in the news.
It was about making a real change. We said the best thing we can do is to empower the teacher, okay? Use AI to reduce the friction, give them time back, give them cognitive space back, allow them to be with their students, and we're far more likely to help improve education than by attempting to replace the teacher.
Which we learned from hard Noah, through hard experience is an incredibly complex problem.
Empowering Teachers with AI
Michael Horn:
So let me pause you there. What you're describing is interesting. There have been efficacy studies on programs like Khan Academy and IXL, showing they work if used enough, but only a small percentage of students actually use them. Your point is that while IBM built a working tutor, it wasn't used. So, you shifted focus to the teacher. How is Merlyn Mind helping teachers today, especially with the recent explosion of interest in AI?
Satya Nitta:
Before COVID, teachers were already using numerous applications in their classrooms. They spend a lot of time at their desks, switching between different educational tools, which keeps them from walking around and engaging with students. We aimed to solve this by allowing teachers to control their computers with voice commands, letting them move freely around the classroom. We developed a system where teachers can use a small push-to-talk mic to control their computers, launch new tabs, play videos, share snapshots, and answer questions without being tethered to their desks.
One automation we developed allows teachers to share links with their class through a simple voice command. The AI takes care of copying the link, opening the email tool, populating the student email list, and sending the link, saving teachers several steps. This untethers teachers, saves them time, and reduces their cognitive load, allowing them to focus on teaching.
How the AI Agent Works
Michael Horn:
So, the AI agent can navigate different apps, bring up lesson plans, and handle various tasks?
Satya Nitta:
Exactly. Our system controls the browser, which is where most educational tools reside. The AI operates the browser like a human, navigating tabs, clicking hyperlinks, launching videos, and more. This technology combines large language models with automation, allowing the AI to perform complex tasks based on voice commands.
Michael Horn:
Can you give an example of how a teacher might use this in a high school geometry class?
Satya Nitta:
Sure. A teacher could say, "Send this video to my period three class," and the AI will handle the rest. It can differentiate between classes and even send resources to specific groups within a class. We're developing the ability to customize content distribution further, but the core functionality already supports significant time and cognitive load savings.
Michael Horn:
Let's discuss the technology behind Merlyn Mind. How does it differ from large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 or Google's Gemini?
Satya Nitta:
Our system does include large language models, but it also incorporates additional technologies. This emerging field of AI is called AI agents. Our system, which has been in development for a decade, combines voice computing, language modeling, and AI agents. These agents can control browsers, perform tasks, and automate complex workflows. While we use our own large language models for privacy and security reasons, the system's uniqueness lies in its ability to perform multi-step tasks that generalist models like GPT-4 cannot.
Growing AI Awareness and Future Plans
Michael Horn:
How has the increased interest in AI, especially with ChatGPT, impacted Merlyn Mind?
Satya Nitta:
The rise of ChatGPT has been beneficial for us. It has made people more familiar with AI, reducing the need for us to educate the market. Now, people understand AI's potential and are more open to seeing how our tools can benefit them. This has helped us gain traction and interest.
Michael Horn:
Where do you see Merlyn Mind in the next two to three years?
Satya Nitta:
We aim to continue improving the teacher assistant and eventually extend our tools to help students. However, we won't replace teachers. Instead, we might offer review tools that package lessons for students to study. Privacy, safety, and security are paramount. We ensure that no data is monetized, sold, or used to train our models. We're compliant with regulations like COPPA, FERPA, and GDPR.
We plan to deepen our large language model capabilities and allow others to build with our models. Our models are designed to be faster, cheaper, and safer than generalist models. We'll continue to empower teachers and eventually assist students, always prioritizing privacy and security.
Michael Horn:
Fascinating. We'll stay tuned to see how Merlyn Mind evolves and continues to support educators. Satya, thanks so much for joining us.
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Jean Eddy, President and CEO of American Student Assistance, joined me to discuss career preparation for young people. We talked about the lessons from Jean’s new book, Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners (buy it here!), including the importance of the middle school years, necessary attitudinal shifts, and striking the balance between passion and practicality. For those who are paid subscribers, I look forward to the conversation in the comments—and Jean and I look forward to sharing more content with you all soon with a new partnership we have in the works! More to come!
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Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us with that journey today, I'm delighted that we have Jean Eddy. She's the president and CEO of ASA, American Student Assistance, a great thinker, great friend, and author of a very important book. We'll delve into many interesting things that Jean is doing. It's titled Crisis-Proofing Today's Learners. Jean, so good to see you. Thanks for joining us.
Jean Eddy:
Absolutely. My pleasure, Michael.
Thank you for reading The Future of Education. This post is public so feel free to share it.
The Ikigai Concept
Michael Horn:
No, it's all mine. Trust me. So let's get into it. It's a terrific book, and for those who are wondering, should I buy it or not buy it? It's a fast read, but it packs so much information in each chapter, reframing how we think about the choices that young people have before them in their lives. But I want to start up front with this concept of Ikigai in your book. Tell us what that is and why it's so important.
Jean Eddy:
Well, I think that the Japanese absolutely got this right, where they were trying to provide a balance to an individual that would give them a full and meaningful life. Ikigai is about helping a young person figure out what they love, what they're good at, what the world needs—which is very important—and what they can be paid for. If you can provide those things over the course of a young person's lifetime or journey, then they have an opportunity to have that successful, meaningful, and happy life that Japan and, I would have to say, other countries aspire to.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. It's such an important concept, balancing self and purpose with contribution to the world and society, and what you can get paid for. So it's not just underwater basket weaving or something like that. Although maybe that's more important in the future. I don't know. But I guess I'm curious, in your mind, when an education system specifically, in a society specifically gets Ikigai right, what does that look like, and how far off are we from that today in America?
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Jean Eddy:
Oh, boy. I would say that we're pretty far off. I'll start with the latter question. I think we are so focused within our systems about all the things that we believe young people need to have. It's really more about the basics and what we need to impart to our kids and less about this whole idea of discovery. I am a real fan of discovery work in that kids are looking for relevance, and oftentimes they can't see it in what they are doing in their classwork. They don't know how it relates to what they care about or what they see. In so much of the research we do, we find that kids oftentimes are even leaving high school without a sense of what they're good at. How is that possible? If our systems were more focused on that self-identification, what am I good at? What am I interested in? And then build from there, we could start to see the kind of change that we need to make in order to have our kids have the United States version of ikigai.
Reevaluating College for All
Michael Horn:
So part of the outgrowth of this focus on Ikigai is, and I think this speaks to the US as well, you have this really strong set of chapters in the book that push back on the college-for-all narrative. I have not been a college-for-all person for a long time, but your book really made me think about it in a different light. A huge part of your point is that when people say everyone should go to college, they're reducing risk for young people. But your argument, and it's really persuasive, is that actually for many people, by pushing them to go to college, we're increasing their risk. While this may seem prescient in our current moment, some people are waking up to this. Just tell us about your thinking about how for some people, college is actually increasing risk, and that's not something that I think has been popularly understood.
Jean Eddy:
Well, a college education is a really expensive endeavor. This is not something that you can ignore any longer when front page news is that some institutions cost $90,000 to $100,000 a year to attend. Think about the young person and their family who says, "We're going to go to college because that's what's expected, and I'm going to figure it out when I get to college." If you have limitless funds, that might work for you; you could stay in college for a number of years and finally figure it out. But I would say most people don't fall into that boat. Most kids come to college and they have some kind of sense of maybe what they want to do, but most don't. They end up either switching majors, which prolongs the time in college and costs money.
But I'm more worried about two populations of kids. The first is they go to college, they can't figure it out, they've stayed there long enough to accrue some debt, and now they leave college. They don't really have a path to how they're going to repay this loan, and they get into trouble early. The other population that I think we need to focus on are those kids who make choices about college being the default, but can't afford it, so they do nothing. That is a huge number of kids in the United States right now. It's something like 5.5 million people who are in this situation. Our society cannot afford that. Look beyond the individual happiness and purpose of those individuals. What about the impact on our society and the number of individuals who really don't have a purpose or a plan?
Michael Horn:
Yeah.
Jean Eddy:
That just breeds all kinds of crises.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Wow. So it's interesting because I think you're right. When we did our book *Choosing College*, we found out a significant number of individuals were going exactly as you said because it was expected of them. They weren't particularly passionate about it. In our data set, 74% of those students transferred or dropped out because they couldn't find a compelling reason to stay there when it got tough, and college was tough. So what you just painted is really significant. I didn't realize, as you said, 5.5 million individuals are doing nothing.
Jean Eddy:
Nothing.
Michael Horn:
Wow.
Jean Eddy:
They're not in school and they're not doing anything.
Michael Horn:
Wow. That's chilling. Yeah, that's chilling. So in your mind, what I think the book starts to do is it starts to say, let's reset this societal narrative around the primacy of college. I'm curious what a better, more balanced set of potential pathways might look like in your mind for students.
Jean Eddy:
Well, I think first and foremost, it is this whole world about exploration and discovery. We've got to do a better job really early on. Our focus at ASA is on middle school because it provides an opportunity for young people whose brains are just hungry like sponges for all the information we can provide. This is the time when they can really become self-aware. And then I'm not just talking about self-awareness; I'm talking about showing them all the possibilities. We just don't do a good job of showing kids what all the possibilities are. The job is often, "Okay, let's get kids through middle school, through high school. They're going to college." It's not about what opportunities young people could have to explore all the options that are open to them. I keep talking about skilled trades because we have young people who have the aptitude and the desire to get into those areas, but we don't show them what's possible how to do it, or the skills needed for it.
Plumbers, for instance, aside from making a very good wage in Massachusetts, many of them have to be entrepreneurs. They need to have a business sense and a business plan. There are all kinds of things about skilled trades that we don't open the doors to our young people to tell them, "These are the kinds of things you need to be successful in these areas." How can someone know if they are suited to a particular job if we don't even show them what those jobs are? We can do a better job of doing that while they're in school.
Starting Career Exploration in Middle School
Michael Horn:
Yeah. So talk to us about that, because this is something you've, over several years now, have opened my eyes to about the importance of this. Middle school is when you all focus. Why middle school? Why is that the critical age when that exploration should start? And are there schools or programs out there that you're like, follow them, do what they're doing?
Jean Eddy:
Oh, yeah, totally. Well, first and foremost, when you think about middle school, not only does it give you an opportunity to work with a young person or to enlighten a young person who has not developed, or bought into what all our other friends are doing, but they're willing to go out and explore, ask questions, and do those kinds of things that can help them figure things out with all those other things bothering them. They are less stressed about what's going on in their world. Then, in just a few years, they're going to be highly stressed because they're in high school and they're worrying about all these things. One of the things I learned early on when investigating when was a great time to start talking to kids about careers is I actually read a study by ACT, and they were talking about the fact that there are certain things kids need to get while they're in middle school so that they can make good choices about what they do in high school. Think about it. These middle school kids have got to pretty much determine, okay, what is it I want to study in high school? It's not so dictated as it once was. If you make the wrong choice about a course you're going to take in high school and then find out later on that doesn't comport with what it is you need for that next step, suddenly you're out of luck. So middle school, to me, is absolutely prime time for all those reasons. Now, I think you've heard me say this a thousand times, Michael. I mean, the national model of how to do this well is in Cajon Valley and, you know, World of Work schools to be able to start working with kids. They do it early. They do it starting in kindergarten, where they have kids discover their talents and abilities, but then they make the courses that kids take in high school, even middle school, relevant so that they can go exploring. You can see all kinds of things to test and try.
Michael Horn:
Yeah.
Jean Eddy:
Now, there are some great schools out there that are doing things, with the CAPS Network, that are basically allowing kids to do hands-on things to discover if what they think they are interested in is actually what they would like to pursue further. We need to start, and it is happening, but it's happening in pockets. There are schools in New York that we talked to. There are some in Massachusetts who are embracing these kinds of philosophies, but it's not widespread, and I would say it needs to be if we're going to impact this.
Resetting Expectations on Alternative Pathways
Michael Horn:
Yeah. So I'm curious, what's the way forward for realizing that vision and getting more schools on board? Right. You're obviously, as you just, named a bunch of really interesting examples. There's CAPS, Cajon, and different schools that are doing some very cool things. How do we, you obviously have a lot of bottoms-up work. Right? You all also have digital platforms out there that allow young people to engage and learn about different career pathways and so forth. But it seems like a lot of this is in resetting the narrative and sort of societal expectations about how we think about these alternative pathways. So I'm just curious, about how we do that.
In your mind, is this sort of a slow-moving until all of a sudden everyone sort of figures it out, or is this a national thing that we need? What's the right way to reset expectations?
Jean Eddy:
Well, one of the reasons why I wrote the book is that this isn't just about a school system or about digital initiatives or pockets of places across the country. This is about a conversation that needs to happen with legislators, with parents, with policymakers, with employers, because this is a problem that we all have to face. When I talk to parents about this, I oftentimes say, how often do you go to a school committee meeting? What is your PTO doing as far as being able to allow various things to happen within your school system and don't. And, you know, parents will say, well, they really don't care. They do care. If parents come in and talk about these kinds of things, it matters. I think, that there are superintendents across this country who have a vision and want to implement it, but they need the legislators around them and the policymakers to allow them to change the systems that they're in and give them the funding that they need. You know, I was really heartened when President Biden talked about the fact that he wants to institute apprenticeships across the country.
But something like that is not only going to take, it's wonderful for the President of the United States to say that, but as you know, Michael, every state has their own set of policies that you have to kind of work through. This is going to be a case of starting, yes, national, but then state by state, which is an enormous amount of work to do. But this is why I write a book. You write books. We talk. As, you know, anybody who listens to us, we talk. And I think through that, more and more people are adopting.
Balancing Passion and Practicality
Michael Horn:
No, that's. Well, I appreciate the vision of where this goes and how it goes. Let me just ask the last question that's sort of on my mind, which is one of those other yeah, but questions, which is, I'm just curious if there's a risk in your mind that for students, we might overindex on interests at the expense of some, you know, other things that maybe are, um, you know, you could imagine, like a bunch of young people, they get exposed to influencers. They want to be an influencer. There are only so many people that can make money as an influencer. How do we get that ikigai balance? Right. So it's not just my interests and yeah, I love it, but also I can get paid for it and it helps society.
Jean Eddy:
The way to do that, I believe, is through work-based learning. It's through opportunities in high school. And I would also say the connections to employers are going to be critical because what you can be paid for is enormous in this context. You know, I keep thinking about the number of times I've had conversations with my grandson when he was just a little guy, big basketball player, loved basketball and had visions of, “I'm going to be an NBA player.” Now, the odds of a kid becoming an NBA player are this high, but loved it and was passionate about it. But along the way, as he went through middle school and high school, now he has come to discover, of all the things that can happen around an NBA player, what that means, and what you can be paid for. So I would not be at all surprised if at one point in time, my grandson said, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do sports reporting or I'm going to go and be a trainer for a sports facility because he's been exposed to those kinds of things.
I think that is where we are going to try and close the disconnect between what you'd love to do and what you can be paid for. This is about exposure.
Michael Horn:
Love it. And the work-based learning and showing and getting people actually experienced in the workforce so that they understand that and build up their social capital, their awareness of what's out there beyond what their parents do and so forth is just tremendous. And it's a terrific book. Again, it's Crisis-Proofing Today's Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World. And dare I say, it's really so that all individuals have this career education, not just some. And maybe it's really more about career education for all than college for all. Is that right, Jean?
Jean Eddy:
Very well said, Michael, as usual now.
Michael Horn:
Terrific. Well, look, thank you so much for the work you continue to do. Thanks for joining us in the Future of Education and keep up the good work. We'll keep an eye on it. For those who want to follow the stuff that ASA is doing, what's the best way for them to sort of stay plugged in?
Jean Eddy:
We're really easy. It's asa.org. Check it out. If you want to get more about the book, my book's also there as well.
Michael Horn:
Check it out. It's an important resource in resetting this narrative. Jean, thanks so much for joining us again.
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Andi Fourlis, Superintendent of Mesa Public Schools in Arizona, joined me to share how her district is reimagining the teaching profession. We discussed Mesa's work on team teaching, its impacts on learning and teacher satisfaction, and the ins and outs of implementing such an innovative change. As always, I look forward to your thoughts. Paid subscribers are able to comment and exchange ideas.
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Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn, and you are joining the show where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can fulfill their potential and live a life of purpose. To help us think through that, today we have a very special guest. Her name is Dr. Andi Fourlis. She's the superintendent of Mesa Public Schools in Arizona. Andi, thank you so much for joining us.
Andi Fourlis:
So happy to be here.
Thank you for reading The Future of Education. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Andi’s Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
I can't wait to hear about your story because from my reading, it sounds like your pathway to becoming superintendent, and some of the formative experiences you had as an educator, have really shaped your approach as a superintendent. Can you share some of that journey with us before we get into the work you're doing now?
Andi Fourlis:
Yeah. This is my 32nd year in education. I'm a career educator. From the time I was a little girl, I knew I was going to be a teacher. This is a dream of mine to be able to support children in so many different ways. I started off teaching middle school and had the great fortune to teach on a team with sometimes as many as five other teachers. I've always worked in a team environment, and outside of my first two years, I realized I needed to have a team. More heads are better together. I've worked in a variety of environments, from low-income schools to affluent schools.
Kids are kids, and the more adults we can put around students, I quickly learned, made me a better teacher and got better outcomes for our kids.
Michael Horn:
It's interesting to hear you say that because it makes a lot of sense. I think people from the outside think educators like to be by themselves, but that wasn't your experience. What really caught my eye and made me excited to talk was a conversation I had with David Schuler, the executive director of the School Superintendents Association. He told me about the work you were doing with the Next Education Workforce initiative. A couple of years earlier, I had Arizona State University's dean, Carole Basile, join us to talk about the work she was pioneering there at the Next Education Workforce initiative. I believe Mesa has been one of the pioneering sites for the team teaching they espouse. Can you tell us about how this work started in Mesa?
Andi Fourlis:
It's such an interesting journey. In 2019, I was a deputy superintendent, and I became superintendent in 2020. People always remember 2020 as a challenging year to become superintendent of the largest district in the state of Arizona. We had to invent and reinvent how we were going to do school, take care of children and their families, and take care of our employees. Throughout my career, I've been a classroom teacher, mentor teacher, and my path to the superintendency has been through teacher leadership. I've always been close to classrooms and understood that the working environment and conditions of teachers must change if we want better outcomes for our students. I've supported teachers as a director of professional development, director of curriculum, and assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. My pathway into the superintendency has always been about supporting teachers and learning.
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I've never been a principal or assistant principal, but I was always in a support role. Through that role, I quickly learned that teachers are not leaving their profession; they're leaving their working conditions. As leaders, we have the ability to change those conditions. In 2020, as the new superintendent, we had to reinvent everything. It was the perfect time to break down the one teacher, one classroom model and revisit age-old research around team teaching. This isn't a new idea, but it's new in this era of education. Over time, we've built everything around the one teacher, one classroom model because it's easy to measure and hold people accountable. In an era of accountability from No Child Left Behind, we started measuring everything, creating artificial structures, and isolating teachers. As a result, our teacher shortage grew.
As a leader, it was easy for me to reach out to Dr. Basile at Arizona State University to discuss changing the working conditions of teachers. We wanted to rethink what teaming looks like and define it for 2020 because it would look different than in the past. With the largest teachers college in America in our backyard and being the largest district in the state, it was a perfect match for us to work together.
Explanation of Mesa's Team Teaching Model
Michael Horn:
Super interesting. Let's fast forward then. You kick off the work, and you're in it now. What does team teaching look like on the ground? How have you changed the structures that isolated teachers?
Andi Fourlis:
We have a simple definition of what a team is: at least two teachers sharing a roster of students to co-design and construct deeper and more personalized learning. Sometimes we shorten it to two teachers sharing a roster of students, but it's far more than that. They share a roster of students to deeply understand their strengths and needs and create opportunities for students to get what they need when they need it. For example, a typical third-grade teacher with 25 kids on a team now has 50 students assigned to two teachers. One teacher could be doing small group instruction with a specific skill or content area while the other teacher works with the rest of the kids. This creates a different learning experience and opportunity for kids. When we talk about teaming, it's not just the teachers. Our definition includes every adult in the classroom as part of the team, not just an instructional assistant that comes in for 20 minutes on Tuesday. We are rethinking how we put adults and their expertise around the needs of students in different ways.
Michael Horn:
That's super interesting. I love how your definition in the district is about making sure each student gets what they need in this new structure. With at least two teachers sharing a roster of students and that personalization, you're singing my tune now. I love this reinvention work. My understanding from David is that this is even more innovative. Not only are you doing this team teaching model and personalizing the learning, but you've also created flexibility for teachers to help keep them in the classroom. Can you talk about that? I'd love to learn more.
Andi Fourlis:
Absolutely. Our larger teams, if there's a team of four, have a team leader who is a classroom teacher with leadership responsibilities. We pay an additional stipend for their leadership duties. They serve on the instructional leadership team of the school. The goal of our teams is to become self-improving teams, constantly reflecting and asking, "What do we need next?" They chart their professional development plans and address needs as they arise. For example, a team I met with recently saw an influx of refugee children and didn't have the skill sets to communicate with their parents or assimilate them into their classrooms. The team leader reaches out to our district office to request the necessary training. This coordinated effort brings resources to the teachers so they can better serve their students.
Michael Horn: Wow. Okay. So now that creates a structure in which teachers suddenly have some authority to actually, when you say co-design, you really mean co-design because they're saying, "This is the set of expertise I need. This is the support we need. The student needs this." How many schools are doing this today? Is it throughout the district? What does that evolution look like?
Adapting teacher roles and school infrastructure
Andi Fourlis:
We have 84 schools, from preschool to high school. We are a comprehensive K-12 unified school district in Arizona. I set a goal that by the end of this school year, at least 50% of our schools would have at least one team working within their school. We've accomplished that goal, and they are all at different places because every team is unique to their context. This is across Mesa Public Schools.
For example, we have a Montessori school where collaboration and multi-age teaming are inherent. They have formalized those roles and what that looks like. But we also have back-to-basic schools, which our community requested many years ago. Teaming doesn't fit their philosophy, so I don't expect that to happen in those schools.
Our goal of 50% is to look at each context, the desires and talents of teachers, and think about where to get started. Some schools started with a kindergarten classroom, others with a fifth-grade team that felt they could work better together. We have 91 therapy dogs across our district. In our teaming schools, therapy dogs are part of the team. They are used very intentionally to support students when needed, and teachers orchestrate the use of the therapy dogs.
We have a feeder pattern of elementary and junior high schools that feed into one of our large high schools with a huge STEM focus and engineering program. We have a strong partnership with Honeywell Aerospace Division, whose industry mentors join our teams within that feeder pattern. They serve as mentors and project coaches. Students will ask their teachers, "Can I please FaceTime my engineer right now?" when they need coaching and support. When we talk about a team, it’s about expanding the expertise within our schools and communities to support student learning.
Michael Horn:
Wow. Okay, so talk us through this. I imagine the Montessori school was already set up for this sort of thing from an infrastructure perspective. But other schools, did you have to retrofit them? How have you made the buildings work? How does that play out?
Andi Fourlis:
What is most important is proximity. If you have a third-grade team, and many of our teams have become multi-age, the students need to be in close proximity because they are constantly moving around, and the teachers are moving around. In some schools, the biggest ask was to be together. They generally meet for a morning meeting, set their learning intentions for the day, check the health and wellness of their community, and outline the day.
A principal requested doors opening between classrooms so kids aren’t going outside to the next classroom. We installed large opening doors with frosted glass that can be propped open during the day. That has been our most needed solution, creating interior doors that allow kids to freely move between classrooms. We have also installed some garage doors at our high schools.
Evaluating the impact on teachers and students
Michael Horn:
Gotcha. Very cool. Okay, so talk to us about impact. What have you seen? How are you measuring it? How are you thinking about the impact so far from these changes?
Andi Fourlis:
Our original intent was to focus on the working conditions of our teachers. We've seen higher retention rates for teachers on teams, longer career plans, and increased satisfaction. Teachers prefer coming to work, have fewer absences, and often don’t need substitutes because the team comes together. If they do have a substitute, it’s generally not for teaching but for other tasks.
Michael Horn:
No more movie days with the substitute. We’re not sure where we are in the learning. That’s really cool.
Andi Fourlis:
One thing we pay attention to is how much instructional time we are capturing. Teachers on teams have higher evaluation scores. A particular study of one of our elementary schools showed at least a 1.5-month gain in English language arts. In our high schools, we see higher Algebra I scores, especially among girls, which we attribute to the collaborative environment.
Michael Horn:
Huh.
Andi Fourlis:
This has to change instruction. If we use the same old boring, non-relevant instruction in a team, we won’t get better results. The power is in teachers working together, each bringing their unique skills and strengths. If you’re on a team, you have a team of experts wrapped around you.
We also have excitement in our Ed Professions courses, our high school career technical ed courses for students interested in becoming teachers. They join a team and do their practicums in a team. Some have a half-day schedule and work as instructional assistants for the other half. They have both a student ID and a Mesa Public School employee ID, building teachers to work in teams from high school.
Michael Horn:
Wow, that’s really cool. I love the point you made about having the best lesson because you have a math expert on the ground in the elementary school, making it coherent with science and social studies. What has been the reaction of parents and students to the changes?
Parents' and students' feedback on changes
Andi Fourlis:
It’s interesting. Parents initially wanted one teacher to call. When they realize their children are on a team, they quickly understand that their child has a better chance of connecting with an adult, even if it’s not the assigned teacher. They see their children have more opportunities to connect and share passions with more adults. We have requests from parents to expand teaming to other grades.
Our teachers stay longer because they never have to do hard things alone. They never call a cranky parent by themselves; someone is always on their side. Parents know the teacher is well-supported, which means they are getting a better product for their kids.
Michael Horn:
Wow, that's a phenomenal set of changes. It sounds like you’re riding a nice wave of momentum at a time when a lot of other districts are trying to find their footing. These changes have really led to reinvigoration across the district. Andi, thanks so much for joining us.
Andi Fourlis:
Oh, my gosh. It’s my honor. I’d love to talk to you more at another time and for you to talk to our kids about their experiences.
Michael Horn:
Let’s find a time to do that. I would love it. Thanks so much for joining us on the Future of Education. For all you tuning in, check out what Mesa Public Schools is doing and stay tuned for next time.
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Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., rejoined me and Diane Tavenner to discuss the world of education philanthropy. Stacey draws from her previous experience at NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation to analyze troubling trends in the sector. I was curious to learn what she and Diane would do differently—as funders and as operators. As always, thanks for reading, writing, and listening—and let me know what you think.
Diane Tavenner:
Hey, Michael.
Michael Horn:
Hey, Diane. It's good to see you.
Diane Tavenner:
It's good to see you as well. I think the unofficial start of summer has happened. I know that because I had a big graduation last week. My son graduated from college, which is quite surreal. It's also the last episode of the season, which I can hardly believe.
Michael Horn:
First, congrats to you and to Rhett on the graduation. It's very exciting news. I can't believe it's the end of the season. We've had the chance to interview many interesting people, and we've particularly enjoyed having one guest back on the show.
Diane Tavenner:
That's true. I'm excited to reintroduce Stacey Childress. Regular listeners will be familiar with her. We originally teamed up for a two-part series on higher education and had so much fun that we decided to do it again for K-12 education.
Hopefully, folks are enjoying those episodes. During those conversations, we had some off-the-record dialogue about a big topic in education right now, and we decided it was an important conversation to have. So, welcome back, Stacey. We're thrilled to have you here. We've covered your credentials before, but today you're really in the expert seat, having been involved in multiple aspects of philanthropy, which is the direction we're going.
Michael Horn:
Hi, Stacey. Thank you for joining us again.
Stacey Childress:
I am happy to be here. There are two things I'm reflecting on now that this is my fifth episode in a row.
Diane Tavenner:
Yes.
Stacey Childress:
One, never say anything to you guys in an offhand way because it might become a podcast episode. Oh, we ought to do philanthropy, and now here we are. I've learned my lesson.
The second thing is, I feel like I've moved from guest to long-term guest, almost like we’re in roommate mode.
Changes in Education Philanthropy
Michael Horn:
We'll see. Diane and I are persuasive. Either way, thank you for joining us. We're excited to dive into this topic of education philanthropy. As you both alluded to, it feels like the water around philanthropy and education is really churning right now. It feels different from how it has in the past. Maybe it's my imagination, maybe it's not. There was recently an article in Inside Philanthropy talking about the changing nature of education philanthropy, which struck a chord with us. Many of our listeners are running school networks, starting education nonprofits, or interfacing with donors. We wanted to dive into this important sector of the education reform movement to discuss how it is or isn't changing and its implications for our sector. Diane, what did I miss before we dive in?
Diane Tavenner:
I think you captured it well, Michael. Just a minute more on the philanthropy aspect. The article did a good job of capturing the feeling. The conversations I regularly have with folks in education, whether in nonprofits or school organizations, or anyone in the ecosystem who relies on philanthropy for their initiatives or operations, there's a real sense of worry, stress, and fear. There's a belief that there is less philanthropy available, and it's confusing what is being funded, if it's going to be there, and if long-term philanthropists will stay in the sector. This is a big conversation happening all around. Stacey, you’re in this a lot. Many people look to you as a whisperer in this space. Is that capturing what you’re experiencing?
Stacey Childress:
Yes, it is. There's a lot of uncertainty. Michael, you asked if these foundations routinely change their strategies every five years or so. Is that what's going on here? We can talk more about that trend, but this feels different. What I'm hearing from people raising money is not just the uncertainty of where we'll head next and what priorities givers will coalesce around, but whether they will stay in this field at all or continue funding at the same level. If you were giving $300 million a year, are you going to pause and then go to $100 million instead of $300 million? That shift pulls a significant amount out of the philanthropy market. If you were giving $100 million a year, are you going to reduce that, and what are the new priorities? The feeling is different. I had a concentrated period of fundraising from 2014 to about a year ago, and it didn't feel like this. We always shaped the priorities of the big givers, knowing they would do a strategy refresh, but we never worried about the money going away. In fact, we were confident we could bring more dollars in. It does feel different now, and I'm glad I'm not a fundraiser at this moment.
Michael Horn:
Well, with that context, but also a bit of sobering context, let's dive into the first question. Diane and I have a bunch of things we want to ask. Can you give an overview of philanthropy in education? What are we talking about in terms of dollars? To the extent you see it shrinking, can you quantify that a little bit so we have a sense of what and who we are talking about?
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Overview of Education Philanthropy
Stacey Childress:
I feel a little exposed. You called me an expert, and I have to say two things about that. One, I have an arrangement with McKinsey & Company as a senior advisor. This is not informed by my work with them, nor does it reflect their views. This is Stacey Childress: speaking personally.
Michael Horn:
But let's put it in context. New Schools Venture Fund, obviously raising dollars and giving, Gates Foundation, you were Next-Gen Stacey, right?
Stacey Childress:
Yes, I was Next-Gen Stacey.
Michael Horn:
Even with the book that Rick and I did, you wrote that incredible piece around the role of philanthropy in markets. So, you've thought a lot about this.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, I have. I just wanted to make sure that I know a lot. So I'm not trying to be falsely modest and say I'm not an expert.
I have expertise in this area, particularly in a very concentrated part of the space. But nothing I say today has anything to do with what McKinsey would say about this stuff. It's not related.
It's been a while since I looked rigorously at the shape and size of this part of the philanthropic capital market for education. I can tell you what I know firsthand and how that may or may not have changed over time. When I joined New Schools in 2014, it was the first time I had to raise money after giving it away. I wanted to understand with a lot of specificity what that philanthropic capital market looked like because I wanted to get more of it for New Schools. I wanted to increase our share of that wallet if it wasn't going to grow.
At the time, education innovation and reform philanthropists were giving a little over a billion dollars a year. So it was about 1.25 billion dollars of philanthropy to things like charter schools, charter school networks, some ed tech stuff, human capital initiatives like Teach for America, new leaders for new schools, and similar projects. There was about a billion plus dollars in philanthropy.
My sense is that it stayed pretty stable the whole time I was at New Schools. Over about an eight or nine-year period, we stayed at about a billion and a quarter as a sector.
I'm talking only K-12 and only the innovation reform wing of funders. Think of Gates, Walton, CZI, Schusterman, Dell, and similar players. There's a kind of an East Coast, West Coast, and some middle of the country folks. That group stayed at a little over a billion, with some comings and goings within, but overall about the same.
My sense is that that's still true. It might have ticked down just a little bit, but I could be wrong about that since it's been three or four years since I've taken a firm look. Even with the pandemic shifts, that's still what we're talking about here.
Now, it sounds like a lot of money, and I don't want to diminish it. It is a lot of money, especially once you're in the billions. The thing is, I learned this the hard way, but it's something you learn as you go.
A big question for philanthropists, whether you're in this sector or any individual philanthropist, is that Gates was and I think still is the biggest K-12 funder of this type. They've stayed in the 300-350 million dollars a year range. So about a billion plus every three years, just Gates, about 1.2 or so billion, 1.5 billion every three years. But the public funding for K-12 education has grown from about 600 to 800 billion a year over the last few years. That's 1.8, almost 2 trillion dollars every three years.
So you match up Gates' billion plus dollars every three years against government funding for schools at over a trillion and a half. It's vanishingly small.
It's a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much. The goal is to create the most impact possible in a sector that has enormous funding and is in vast need of improvement. How do you put those dollars to work in a way that, even though they're small, they have an outsized effect on improving student outcomes, access to opportunity, and those kinds of things?
So it's a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much. How do you get that wedge of innovation capital in? Diane, it looks like you've got...
Diane Tavenner:
Well, Stacey, I think this is such an important point for this conversation because I want to make sure people know what specifically we're talking about. I think you're really zeroing in on that. This conversation is about philanthropy that isn't generally funding operational funds. That isn't to say that philanthropy isn't out there.
There are a lot of individual donors and people in communities who give money to their favorite nonprofit, schools, charity events, and galas. We're not talking about any of that money here. We're talking about a relatively small set of substantial foundations giving specific types of money for specific purposes, not for ongoing operations.
So let's spend a minute on what those grants look like when that money comes in. What do they not look like, perhaps?
So people can be really clear.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, that's great. So, yes, that segment of donors we're talking about funds innovation. Whether it's startups or existing organizations in this ecosystem, they fund innovation—starting something new, creating something new within an existing structure, or radically changing the way something is done.
Innovation capital and growth capital help when you're on to something, have good results, and want to serve more kids, train more teachers, or expand your core business. This kind of capital can help you grow and do more in more places or with more people. The hope is always that this will lead to sustainability without ongoing funding beyond what you receive per pupil if you're a school or a program that gets money through taxes for serving students, or through earned revenue.
If you're more of a service-based nonprofit, you need to figure out who and what you're going to charge to continue operating without a constant philanthropic subsidy.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah, we always call it growth capital. We would call them bridges versus piers. You're not just putting someone in the ocean; you're building a bridge to something sustainable, hopefully new, better, and scalable.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, exactly. The size and time frame of these grants vary.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah, obviously, it depends on what you're doing, but it's rare for one donor to fund your whole need. If you're an operator, you have to think hard about that because you probably don't want that. It sounds easier to get one big check, but it's actually good to have a mix of revenue or investment capital with multiple investors. This dilutes the power and governance of any one investor.
Stacey, you've raised a lot of money too. I like having several investors because it allows us to do what we committed to our donors without answering to one set of priorities or perspectives.
In this space, you're usually looking at multiple donors to fund what you and your team want to do, whether it's innovation or growth. These grants are usually three years.
Diane Tavenner:
Sometimes.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, sometimes they stretch to five, but often it's a year at a time. You do a little bit, get a little more, do a little bit, get a little more, which can be quite dynamic. There are expenses associated with this that aren't necessarily yearly. You're usually investing in people.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
To get good work done, so payroll is always a consideration. It's a good discipline. Three-year grants were common. I had a very small number of five-year grants, which were amazing but hard to get. Very rare. A lot of one and two-year grants.
Diane Tavenner:
A lot of ones and twos. If it's okay, I can put a little shape to this in terms of dollar numbers from my time at New Schools. We launched another fund while I was there. Between 2015 and 2022, I raised 550 million dollars, about half a billion, in seven or eight calendar years. Two hundred million of it was on five-year grants. For New Schools, the other 350 million had nothing longer than three years.
Stacey Childress:
But we only raised that from about 15 donors. I had multiple donors, but still very concentrated.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
Any one of them stepping off would have been a risk, but we kept renewing them for almost nine years. The risk was always there that one of our multi-million, multi-year donors would decide we weren't for them anymore, they were reducing their education spend, or they could do it themselves without needing us. It was a constant process of selling what we were up to and our ideas during the three-year terms because we always wanted to renew.
Diane Tavenner:
I think it's useful to reiterate that you raised all that money to give it away thoughtfully to operators. There are two groups: one raising money to deploy it to operators and another group, like me, raising money from both you and directly from big donors. It's a lot in the weeds, but hopefully, it's helpful to understand what we're talking about. Michael, maybe we should return to you because you're wondering if this is different from the past.
Michael Horn:
I think that's the question. When I was running the Christensen Institute and raising dollars, the Gates Foundation would change strategies every five years. Is the current moment different from other times in the field when we've seen similar shifts, or why are people asking these questions right now?
The Impact of the Pandemic
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, I alluded to this earlier. Let me get more specific about this current moment and the difference as I see it.
Michael Horn:
As you perceive it, yeah.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, as I perceive it. Somebody ought to do a really good analysis of this, an actual bottom-up analytic project to sort this out.
But here's where I think we are. The pandemic was an exogenous shock that threw us all for a loop and put us back on our heels. None of us knew what to do during those early months of the pandemic in 2020, trying to figure out how things would sort out.
You know me. I'm generally an optimist, a sarcastic optimist if that's a thing, but I really am an optimist. I always think we're going to figure this out and things will work out.
During that time, I thought, this will be a wake-up call for all of us in philanthropy in two ways.
One, if we reflect back, are you kidding me that this is really where we are in March, April, May of 2020? We couldn't even get kids learning at home effectively with decent digital content. I was devastated. I was next-gen Stacey at Gates Foundation, and we envisioned kids learning anytime, anywhere, in deep, rigorous, and engaging ways, and that learning should count even if it's not in the classroom.
I still believe all that, but here we were, unable to do that on any kind of scale. There are lots of reasons for it, but I thought this would be a wake-up call because maybe we'll have another pandemic, or at least the mindset shift to anytime, anywhere learning is valuable.
The other thing was, as a philanthropic sector, I hoped it would shake us out of some bad habits, or at least some standard operating procedures that don't serve children or grantees well.
Michael Horn:
Can you give a couple of examples?
Stacey Childress:
I was part of two different coalitions of philanthropists that met often on Zoom during 2020, trying to sort out what we should be doing. A lot of energy and good intentions, but no principles, just staff people. Many were heartbroken, stymied, and frozen because their ways of doing business were no match for what was needed. They couldn't provide the size of grants or the flexibility that operators needed to respond quickly.
Operators needed resources immediately, especially those with a vision for how to respond. Their current budgets didn't allow for it, or they were doing something new and needed the money right away because kids were stuck at home, not learning.
I had off-the-record conversations where people said they couldn't move fast enough or weren't set up to respond quickly. I told them they could, but they had to lead and make the case to their principals or decision-makers. We had to throw standard procedures out the window, at least temporarily, to respond to the crisis.
Some institutions equate time with rigor, thinking a long process means rigor. But often, it means 15 people have to look at something, and it takes months when three people knew everything needed in the first month. Grants could have been made in a month instead of six or eight months.
I've seen this as both a fundraiser and inside the world's largest education funder. Things just take too long, and I don't see that changing. Some figured it out on an emergency basis but have reverted to standard procedures, possibly with new organizational charts and consultants. It still takes a long time.
With these shifts, Michael, people are getting stuck mid-process and can't get good information about what happens next. The staff inside these institutions are unsure of what will happen next, trying to respond to their decision hierarchies, leading to stalled processes.
Stacey Childress:
I know someone working on a multi-million dollar, multi-year grant that should be a renewal. There's no unknown about the grantee or the work, but it's stalled due to internal churn. They need the money last month and thought the first payment would be made then, but now it’s stalled for another six or eight months with no visibility into what's happening.
I feel like I'm rambling, but there was a moment where we could have shaken off standard operating procedures. It was clear that even with good ideas, we haven't funded them at sufficient levels, smartly, durably, or for long enough to get where we need to go. Part of that is about how we do business. Could we take this moment to throw out old processes and reinvent them to be more responsive? We're funding innovation and growth, but this isn't how innovation and growth investing happens in other sectors of the economy. It's just not.
Sorry, I have one more thing to say about the pandemic lessons.
Diane Tavenner:
It's interesting to have this conversation, and it's surprising to me we haven't had it before. I'd love to share what I was experiencing at that time. Michael and I started the podcast because, like you, we were optimistic that the pandemic would create an opportunity. We hoped people would see what was wrong not only in philanthropy but in how schools were being operated, offering a moment for change. And here we are, season five.
Reflecting on it as an operator, everything you're saying is right. People don't understand how expensive it was to survive during the pandemic as a school system. The amount of money we had to spend on tests, masks, computers, hotspots—everything was immense.
I would argue that Summit was one of the best in the country at getting things up and running effectively, just as you described, Stacey. I had to make some tough decisions, extending ourselves and thinking the money would come in. Interestingly, the money did not come in from philanthropy, as it couldn't cover the entire system. It came from the government, which moved pretty quickly, I would say.
One of the challenges is, and I'm a pretty savvy fundraiser, I didn't know what to ask philanthropy for at that moment. We couldn't innovate; we were just trying to survive. We had a lot of money flowing in from the government.
We did have one amazing funder, Arthur Rock, who came in within weeks, giving generously without a team or staff. His money allowed us to set up a mini-fund to help families in crisis, preventing them from being thrown out on the street, and ensuring they had necessities like a working refrigerator or internet access. It was immediate emergency cash for survival.
Stacey Childress:
Yes.
Diane Tavenner:
Thank goodness for Arthur enabling everyone who didn't have internet to have a hotspot within days. But that was it. That was all that came through. Arthur has an interesting way of thinking where he doesn't believe time will give him more information.
Stacey Childress:
And he also trusted you to know the best way to deploy those resources. Arthur trusted me and my team, and that's another challenge. As foundation staffs get bigger, they hire smart people who become experts lauded for their knowledge. They're less inclined to just give the money to someone like you and let you do what you need to do.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
Instead, they take nine or twelve months to put you through a process that yields no more information than they had at the beginning. I'm not insulting the people who work in these places. I have many friends and people I respect greatly. But the institutions and the culture create processes that are inefficient.
Diane Tavenner:
Same with schools, right?
Stacey Childress:
Right. Same with schools.
Michael Horn:
I remember this from over ten years ago. Giselle Huff was frustrated that they would hire people like you and not give you the autonomy to move quickly. It's an organizational issue, not the individuals per se.
The bigger issue I'm hearing is that the pandemic didn't break these tendencies; it exposed them. It created an existential crisis internally where people questioned their identity and purpose, leading to more pause and churn. This indecision has created a lingering hangover.
Stacey Childress:
The hangover is still here. Gates might be an interesting exception, which I'll come back to. Many institutions faced a crisis in the first months of the pandemic, realizing that what they'd spent years and billions of dollars on hadn't made the progress needed.
For institutional funders, there was a sense of, "What did we get for it?" The principals, whether trustees or living donors, were asking good questions but not getting great answers from teams trying to figure it out and not wanting to be wrong. There was a fear of going back to donors like Bill Gates, Mark and Priscilla, or the Walton family with another failed initiative.
Giselle went to the president of the Gates Foundation a year after I was there and asked why they hired me but didn't let me spend my budget freely. I wished she hadn't done that, but it highlighted the issue. What are we waiting for? Who do we think will come up with a better answer? Where's the boldness that created the wealth in the first place?
Shifting Strategies
Michael Horn:
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Let me ask the question this way: I'm hearing from a lot of nonprofits, and I sit on boards of nonprofits, that it's as bad as it's ever been. We've seen a bunch go out of business or be acquired for virtually nothing.
Maybe that's what should have happened, I don't know. But it seems different in many ways.
Another question I have is about the shifting strategies every five years and the churn you're describing. Education is a space where change isn't going to happen across the country in five years. This is a big, complicated 50-state country with lots of challenges that interfere with the operations. It's messy. There's a huge installed base.
Are we guilty of impatience, not just sticking with a good theory of action? Or is something else going on?
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, yes.
Michael Horn:
I didn't mean to ask a one-word question.
Stacey Childress:
No, I know. I was recently talking with someone from one of the large institutional donors. This person joined relatively recently, post-pandemic, and had been an outside observer and fundraiser from this institution. They had an insight that rang true for me: we've got a theory of change for what should happen in the sector over many years, but it's not very rigorous or periodically examined with any rigor.
It's shaped around the personality of the donor and some senior staff preferences. It sounds fine, but then we're applying a lot of rigor at the individual grant level, creating 47-row outcome trackers for 18-month grants. We spend months creating these, and every quarterly call with the grantee digs into line items.
But there's no intermediate view of how the ecosystem around these grants is doing because we're not clear about what those are. We've got four or five areas we're willing to fund, but even then, we're not looking at the portfolio. We're not seeing how individual grants add up to those areas.
So, big idea, not a lot of rigor around developing it, and then intense rigor at the grant level. My time at Gates wasn't quite that loose, but there were features of it, especially the one-at-a-time approach, which isn't true rigor. It often meant lots of people, lots of rows on a spreadsheet, and many conversations, but that’s not true rigor.
You spend five years and have three model grantees to show the principal, but you’ve spent $800 million or more. The pandemic opened up good questions for which there aren't good answers yet.
Gates narrowed its focus to math, committing $1.2 billion over three years. This isn’t an additional billion; it’s their regular funding but focused mostly on math. This narrowing means if you were funded by Gates before but aren't focused on math now, you’re out. This has led to many organizations no longer fitting into Gates' funding categories.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
The downside is if, after three or five years, they can’t achieve what they want in math, then what? We’ve been through system-wide transformation, charter schools, standards, teacher systems, next-gen schools, and now math. If they keep switching every three to five years, what’s next?
Michael Horn:
Right.
Stacey Childress:
If the next cycle doesn’t work, they might consider an exit.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
I know what I would do, but in that institution, now 25 years in, by the time the math cycle ends, they’ll be 26 or 27 years in. Now what?
Michael Horn:
That makes sense.
Stacey Childress:
People worry the "now what" will be an exit.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah, that's what people are worried about, for sure.
Stacey Childress:
And Gates isn't the only one. I use them as an example because it illustrates the issue cleanly.
How Operators Can Help
Diane Tavenner:
Everything Stacey is saying resonates with me. Michael, what I'm thinking about a lot is our conversations about innovation. If we go back to the top of this conversation, this is philanthropy for innovation.
I won't go into the long history we've had of trying to innovate within a giant, decentralized system because that is a massive challenge. What you're talking about, Stacey, is how does anyone tackle that? Clearly, no one can tackle that entirely, so we start to narrow our focus and aim to be successful at something specific.
I'm not going to quibble with focusing on math because, in the work I'm doing now, I see how critically important it is for the future of the workforce and the country. However, that's probably not going to transform schools in the way the three of us want them to be transformed.
This creates a sense of angst for me because most schools in America are just doing the same old thing. They're taking federal, state, and local money and running the same schools, with no real prospect of change.
For those of us who believe change should happen, what are the levers? How does this relatively small amount of money create the change we want?
Stacey, as we were talking through this, you mentioned a list of things you want funders to do. I thought of a list of things I want operators to do—those who want to innovate and raise philanthropy to do it. It's worth spending a moment on that because I think there are two sides to this.
There are things that operators, like myself and my peers, need to do to be compelling and retain capital in our space. If you're not doing compelling, interesting things, your projects aren't going to get funded.
First, I'll call it "getting your conditions in order." This refers to work done by several people, including folks at the Gates Foundation years ago, and more recently, Transcend has partnered with others to define the conditions of an organization ready to innovate. Michael, you and I talk about this all the time. You need structures and mindsets to be able to innovate. Use the available tools to ensure you have the right conditions. If you're trying to get innovation money without knowing if your conditions are in order, you're not primed to raise money.
Second, do you actually have innovations that others aren't working on that could potentially move the needle? You need to understand the field and what others are doing to ensure your innovation is truly unique and impactful. This requires discipline and hard work.
When you do this, you earn trust and face less scrutiny because it becomes apparent that you've done the groundwork. Lastly, I have always tried to see this as a collaborative venture rather than a competitive one. My experience is that many operators fall into a competitive mindset, seeing funding as a zero-sum game. This competitiveness is counterproductive because no one can do this alone. Acting more collaboratively could attract and keep more money in the innovation space and sector.
That would be my wish list for operators.
Changes Funders Can Make
Stacey Childress:
That's very good and definitely rings true. As an operator running a fund and having to raise money, I share your perspective. You mentioned visionary leadership, and both words are important in fundraising—a vision you can articulate clearly and compellingly about what the world should look like if it worked better for young people. Lead on it. Don't wait for a funder to have a strategy you can fit into. Lead.
Spend time socializing that vision with other operators and donors. Donors will follow a compelling vision and leadership. You and I have both seen it happen and have caused it to happen as leaders.
For the donor side, the first thing I wish they would do is just give away the money.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
Remember the fundamental purpose of what you're organized to do and what you're given significant tax breaks for: to give away the money. You're not organized to have internal meetings, PowerPoints, memos, politics, reorgs, and conferences. Those things can help your aims but can also distract from them. Give the money away. That's your whole job, not the coalitions and communities of practice. Those should support moving the money.
It sounds silly, but it's frustrating. Your whole job is to give the money away. Increase, not decrease, your giving now. What are you waiting for? If not now, when? There's not one answer; there are many. Fund them, learn from them. Stop with the 47-row spreadsheet metrics.
Fund the people doing the work, listen to them, believe them, recognize patterns, and fund lots of things. More gifts, bigger gifts, right now. Go. What are you waiting for? Go. Make decisions faster.
You're not going to fund everything. Say yes fast and no faster. As soon as you know it's a no, tell the operator. You can't imagine how much time and energy is spent waiting for a yes.
Diane Tavenner:
And say no fast.
Stacey Childress:
Say no faster. It's not the last day of the process that you decide no. As soon as you know it's no, tell the operator. They spend so much time waiting for your decision, having conversations with their board and other donors, making plans. Time is huge. Tell them no fast. Yes fast, no even faster. If your processes get in the way of that, rip them down.
Diane Tavenner:
Yep.
Stacey Childress:
Do something different and do it now. One of the reasons this animates me so much, beyond the obvious good of getting the money into the field and letting smart, intelligent, visionary leaders and their people do what they can with it and learn from it, is that for donors who have, say, over a billion dollars in net worth, their fortunes are growing faster than their lifetime philanthropic commitments suggest they will get the money out the door.
A few years ago, when I was in a fundraising cycle and was counting on a donor to come in at a certain level on a renewal, I got the sad news. I was trying to get tens of millions and got multiple tens of millions, but not as much as I had hoped. It was an enormous grant, something to celebrate, but I was disappointed because I had planned for more. Silicon Valley is like a neighborhood, and the donors all talk to each other. Many of them talk to me, and I knew that this person was at cocktail parties and other gatherings saying they had a billion dollars in their donor-advised fund at a community foundation because they couldn't find enough good things to fund, including education. And they had just given me multiple tens of millions.
What are you waiting for? When I first joined New Schools and was figuring out the investment footprint before we did a specific strategy, I realized that what we had wasn't working. It was a quiet secret in the field. The theory had run its course, and New Schools had been struggling to raise money for a couple of years. It was time to rethink it.
Someone who was a contemporary of Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, told me that when he first became a VC, he realized something new was coming from closed network systems. It had to do with packet switching and the internet. He convinced his partners at Kleiner Perkins that they needed to fund everything in these nascent categories because they didn't know who would win. They backed great teams and more than one in each category. This humble approach, funding lots of things with a vision for how the industry would change, led to massive financial success.
From where I sat at New Schools in 2014, I felt like we were in a similar moment. We had glimpses of what the future could look like for kids, and our strategy was to push everything onto the table for this vision. Rather than trying to find the answer, we should take a broad view of the space and fund every good team and idea.
Stop thinking that you have all the answers inside your foundation. Most of the smartest people don't work for you. Fund, learn, and fund again. Give the money away.
I wish people would do more with intermediaries. If I were the leader of a foundation with $350 million a year to give away, I would convince my principal to give $300 million to four or five grantees in large chunks, and those would be intermediaries. I would have a staff of no more than 10 people, each managing relationships and helping us learn and adapt. Intermediaries offer leverage, expertise, and nimbleness.
Follow MacKenzie Scott's example: big gifts, unrestricted, lightweight process, fast decisions, little to no reporting requirements. It's not perfect, but it gets the money out the door.
Diane Tavenner:
It is.
Stacey Childress:
Yes, it can be tough to figure out how to get in the pipeline and some transparency issues, but those challenges are far outweighed by getting the money out the door. Let's do it. Get that money out the door. If not now, when? Be honest with yourself. What are you afraid of from going big and visionary and moving lots of resources quickly to people doing important work?
Michael Horn:
Well, Diane, as we wrap up five seasons here with our final episode, I think we finally had our Jerry Maguire moment. It's no longer "show me the money," it's "give away the money."
Stacey Childress:
Give away the money.
Media Recommendations
Michael Horn:
And Stacey, you have nailed it. So with that as a segue, as we wrap up an episode, I've learned a lot from both of you. Thank you both. Let's finish up with some things we are reading, watching, or whatever. Stacey, we'll call on you first. Hopefully, it's not Jerry Maguire, but if it is, we understand.
Stacey Childress:
It's not Jerry Maguire. Sadly, I'm still watching and listening to heartbreaking, disappointing Astros baseball, but hope springs eternal.
A new thing: there's a relatively old, about 10 years old, documentary on Prime Video called The Wrecking Crew. It's a deep dive into a loose group of studio musicians in LA in the '60s and '70s who backed 60-70% of the big radio hits of that era. They backed artists like the Righteous Brothers, the Mamas and the Papas, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys performed live, but The Wrecking Crew played on their studio albums. They were behind so many iconic songs. It's fascinating.
Diane Tavenner:
Well, this is what happens when you have an episode with two of Stacey's passions: philanthropy and music. It's so exciting. I agree with everything you're saying. I hope it happens because I feel like we're at an early 2010-2011 moment again. I hope people jump on and in. No one else in the world is ahead of us yet in redesigning their education systems. We have an opportunity in America right now, and I'm deeply optimistic.
I'm reading an early advanced copy of 10 to 25, Dr. David Yeager's new book. I love him. He had such an impact on our work at Summit. He's an amazing researcher who connects research with actual work in schools. The book talks about a mentoring mindset, a continuation of the growth mindset. It's incredibly powerful and will be out in August.
Michael Horn:
You're going to have to dig in then. That sounds exciting, Diane. I'm glad you're reading it. I'll just wrap up mine. My kids went away for their outdoor nature's classroom for a few days, so my wife and I went to New York City and saw a couple of shows. We saw Merrily We Roll Along, which I highly recommend, and Enemy of the People. Both were terrific.
Like you, Stacey, I've been watching a lot of sports, but the Celtics are having more success than your Astros. I recently finished Outlive by Peter Attia. It was great, with a few new tips, some things I already knew, and a lot of common sense.
Stacey, thank you for joining us and enlivening the last five episodes. We'll see where that goes. Diane, as always, thank you for the partnership. For all of you listening, thanks for joining us for five full seasons of Class Disrupted.
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Diane Tavenner and I welcomed Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., back for our second episode in our two-part series on the challenges facing K–12 education and promising strategies for addressing them. In this episode, each of us made the case for one high-impact reform to address the challenges laid out in the previous episode. We talked about: reforming how schools evaluate and recommend students, unbundling the core education experience, and doing more to instill character in values through education.
Diane Tavenner:
Hey, Michael and Stacey. Wow.
Michael Horn:
You got to say hi to both of us. This is fun.
Stacey Childress:
Hi, Diane. Hi, Michael.
The Two-Part Series on K12
Diane Tavenner:
Good to be back together with you two. This is part two of a two-part episode the three of us are doing together. The premise for this episode started when we did a two-part episode previously around higher ed, and some of our devoted listeners and folks said that they enjoyed it so much, and they encouraged us to do something similar for K12, which we are doing. So this is our second episode, and it's so much fun to be back together with the two of you.
Michael Horn:
Hopefully, our listeners are not regretting that request after listening to the first part, but we're going to be briefer this time. It's our resolution.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, we even wore ourselves out on episode one of this series. So, yes.
Diane Tavenner:
Just to remind folks, if you haven't heard it, part one was identifying the elements of the K12 system that are the core elements and then identifying the problems with them right now. That's all to lay the foundation so we could propose solutions. Since we recorded the first problem episode, we've had some good conversations, the three of us, and really pressed each other about how we wanted to approach solutions. We ran through a bunch of different options. But I think the one we got most excited about, and where we ended up landing, is rather than trying to go through a laundry list of all nine elements. Because it's expansive, if you listened to the first one, you had to hang in there for quite a long time with us. We decided that we would each pick one of the nine to work on solutions for. And it turned out we all picked different ones.
So I think the approach we're going to take today is to make our case for why we would try to solve the element that we're picking, how we might solve it, and what solutions might be in the world already that are attempting to solve it. And in that, is there a way to unbundle it from the others to make it more possible? The other two of us will react to that and see if we have anything to add. Does that sound right?
Michael Horn:
Let's go forward with that as a plan. Diane, you get to go first, so you model what this looks like for us.
Diane's Proposal: Reforming Schools’ Evaluator-Recommender Role
Diane Tavenner:
All right, well, I'm happy to go first. I suspect some folks might be taking some bets right now on which of the nine we chose. I am going to pick what was item number six in our first episode, the evaluator recommender. Let me just start by saying I think there is a huge opportunity. You both know I've spent the last several years trying to figure out what I want to do post-Summit. As part of that exploration, I've been searching for what I think is the greatest lever we have for change in the K12 system. I keep returning, sort of sadly and reluctantly, to assessment at the big level. I am attracted to this category because I think it's a huge opportunity.
I also think it's one of the easier things to unbundle from the rest of the K12 element list. I know that probably sounds counterintuitive to a lot of people because how in the world could you unbundle evaluation and recommendation? But I think with a mindset shift, it becomes pretty doable. Let me unpack three ways that I think we could do that and then share the mindset shift that would have to happen. First, when we talk through evaluator recommender and the element that schools do, they write these recommendations for colleges. There's a huge expectation from higher ed that high school teachers and K12 will put in substantial effort to make recommendations of students. As Stacey pointed out in our last conversation, that's for a relatively small number of students, but it takes up a huge amount of energy and time from people. I think the way to decouple this in K12 is to just stop having higher ed ask for recommendations as we know them, which are these letters. The most offensive part of these questions you have to answer as a recommender would say, "In what percentage of your lifetime experience with students does this student fall? Is it in the top one, top five?" I see you, Michael, leaning in because...
Michael Horn:
This is the worst question ever.
Diane Tavenner:
Worst question. Anyone who knows about the way our brains process will know no one's capable of doing this in any unbiased way. It's got to be the worst data ever. I don't know why people keep asking for it. So, anyhow, I think do away with that. My invitation to higher ed would be to rethink how you're doing admissions because, by the way, you should just rethink that to begin with. There's better ways of doing it. And stop putting this extraordinary amount of work on K12 that is super biased and probably not helpful.
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You're probably not even really factoring it into your decision. What I would offer in exchange is, if you have to do something, do reference checks once you've already decided. Mirror the professional world: once you've already decided that you want to accept this student, if you want to do a reference check, great. Make it a simple, straightforward call-up reference check. I'm sure we all do reference checks regularly for former employees, and it can be very efficient. It would take far less time, it would be far less biased, and I think that would be a strong way to go and a change that could be made quite quickly and efficiently. I think it would be greatly appreciated by K12 on multiple levels and take them out of that role. The next thing is grades. As you all know, I have long believed that teachers should not be asked to both teach and coach and develop and grade their students for external reasons.
Diane Tavenner:
Let me offer how you would provide students grades or feedback if not by their teacher. Step one: technology is actually pretty good at a lot of this, and with AI, it will get significantly better. It's already getting significantly better at this. Put as much on technology as we possibly can. For a decade-plus, we've been doing this at Summit, and there's people doing it all across the country. This is not out of reach. This is totally happening and possible and getting better every single day. Do as much there as possible.
I would argue the only type of grading that teachers should be doing is if it is a combined part of their professional development where they're growing and developing their skills of teaching. There's a whole methodology here, been doing it for 20-plus years around calibrating your scoring and then doing that in a group scoring. The more we have high-quality curriculum, which I expect might come up in some of your proposals later, the more the world is going. You have common assignments that this can be done around, which is a win-win for everyone. You have other teachers who are providing the actual scoring of your students. It makes the whole system better and a learning system. I think those are very possible, doable changes that could be made fairly easily and decoupled from most of the other elements.
Diane Tavenner:
The final piece is around the high school diploma and the transcript. Here, a lot of people are working on a vision where the student is the keeper and the owner of their own transcript. I think this makes so much sense. More and more every day, students are learning from multiple institutions and multiple places. This is such an antiquated notion that you would go to one institution and have this transcript there. If you look at kids' high school transcripts now, they're already including community college and other types of institutions on those transcripts. The mindset shift is that the student is the owner and keeper of their transcript. Again, technology is our friend here.
It can be used to make sure this is validated, true, honest, and that they have the world of learning opportunities available to them that get integrated into the transcript. They control where it goes, who they share it with, and who they give it to. It's very similar to a portfolio model and very complementary to a portfolio. It's just the right way to think about young people and even older people having agency and self-direction around their own learning and how they're driving it, and then what they're sharing with the world. My last piece on all of these things is it focuses us more on evaluating the quality of the work that people have done versus someone else's evaluation of who knows what. That's my proposal. What do you all think?
Discussion of Diane's Proposal
Michael Horn:
Stacey? I'll jump in first, and then you can tee off there. We'll flip the order a little bit. No surprise, Diane. I love peeling this off from the rest of the enterprise. We've talked about this before. I would think about it conceptually almost in reverse order, in the sense that particularly grading and things of that nature should come before the reference checks. When you started with reference checks, I thought, that's a lot harder for colleges to do for 18-year-olds than we might think. But if we flip the order and start with the system where the student is the keeper of their record, they're having their performances and accomplishments validated by a range of individuals—teachers from other districts, professionals themselves—maybe actual projects for companies and organizations.
There's real importance to what they're doing, not pretend, but real. There's an incentive for those professionals to give feedback on it. Using technology to help with inter-rater reliability, making it translatable, and so forth. The application then comes into a college, and they can trust it. They can say, "I'd love a double click on this." You have a team around you of folks that have worked with you. So, I know who to call. When I imagine it almost in that way, then I start seeing how this hangs together even more.
I would offer just one last observation on this. You all know I've long been fascinated with Western Governors University in the higher ed world. They have a whole separate faculty who is trained just in the art and science of assessment. When you haven't mastered something yet in their competency-based model, you don't blame the teacher because the teacher who assessed you does not know you. To your point, Diane, it just seals that thing. They're not evaluating something about you as the individual or a bias or whatever else. They're just looking at the work. We can have multiple faculty members who are trained in assessment looking at the work to make sure it really represents what a great performance does or doesn't look like. Stacey?
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. I like flipping the concept of evaluation and recommendation on its head as well. I resonate with moving to a world where a student is the keeper of their portfolio of learning experiences and the evaluations of those. I wonder about which actor in the ecosystem is the keeper or provider of this different construct. Is it like at Western Governors University, where it's still in-house, but we're staffed up differently in terms of expertise, roles, etcetera? And in the K12 system, maybe think about the system more granularly or modularly. How does this look in the early, elementary to middle school years, and then how does it start to shift in middle school? Maybe it's fully from an outside partner in high school, where we need to see the supply of partners who have the tools in school districts that have this kind of expertise. It doesn't have to be built inside the system. That probably increases the validation, credibility, and legitimacy of the credential as it then goes on to the next steps in education and preparation. Diane, I'm not sure how you were thinking about that, but it's an interesting idea to think about. How does the ecosystem shift as kids get into their teen years on their way to graduation from high school in a way that creates an opportunity to introduce new players, new expertise, and maybe increases the validity and credibility of the signal to the next step on a kid's learning journey. But just wondering how you were thinking about that.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I was going to say quickly, quick clarification, then I want to hear Diane's answer. You raised a good point. Western Governors would be better, in my mind, if it was an external entity playing that role. I think the reason why at the higher ed level we can't get to competency-based education and replace paying for seat time is because no one trusts that the institution is going to fairly evaluate itself for learning. I think they're right not to trust that when dollars are at stake. The more unbundled this can be, the better it is. Diane, you can give the more thoughtful answer, though.
Diane Tavenner:
Well, no, that's super thoughtful and pulling strings from both of you. One of the things I love about this proposal is I think it helps us start to unbundle the role of the teacher, which is something we have all been talking about for a decade-plus at this point. There are people who are amazing at assessment, and they love assessment, and they think about assessment. You could unbundle those roles within an institution. That would be one way. Like you, I like it even better across institutions. When we talk about a common high-quality curriculum, it doesn't make sense anymore for an individual teacher to be writing and developing their own individual curriculum. We should be using high-quality curriculum that is across institutions.
There's a huge opportunity there for people from different institutions to be evaluating on the same projects, the same work, etcetera, across institutions. I do think, and I'm personally involved with a number of them, some I can speak about, some I can't, efforts are underway to build nonprofits and for-profits that have the ability to do these evaluations. The ones that I think are most exciting are on-demand for students and families. No matter where I'm learning, I'm able to go to a place where I can validate the skills I have, the knowledge I have, and the work that I can do. That way, I am not handcuffed to my zip code and the one institution that may or may not be gatekeeping me on multiple levels.
What this does to the psychology for families and students about what's possible, it undoes so many of those negative effects we were talking about yesterday in these other groups where the system is not actually doing what we wanted it to do. We're not going to touch on that particular element today, but I think we are because this is a powerful solution to fulfilling that number nine, that dream, that promise. If you work hard and drive your own learning, there are ways that you can show that and truly benefit from it.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. I love that.
Michael Horn:
Should we dive into the second one?
Stacey Childress:
I think it's probably an interesting segue into my choice, which was number one, just that core education experience. It was at the top of my list. If I had to pick from our 17 or 82 on our list, however many there were. Twelve, nine. So, just to remind folks, this is like, when we think of school, we think of these things, right? It's the core educational experience. Historically, it started with the three Rs: reading, writing, arithmetic, and lots of other subjects have been added over time. It includes the strength and breadth of the academic program and the social learning. It's different than social-emotional, but like, how to be part of a community, what's it like to be in a group, in a class, in a team, your people. It also includes those social aspects of managing yourself.
Stacey's Proposal: Unbundling the Core Education Experience
Stacey Childress:
On top of that, extracurriculars, sports, interest-based activities—all of those experiences we consider part of the education of our kids. We said a challenge with it was often what we teach and how we teach it is not aligned to the current science of learning. What we know about how learning happens and what makes for a good, integrated set of learning experiences, but also towards what end. Our second challenge is a lack of vision and purpose. We have these large cafeteria menus at high school and a broad waterfront of concepts, skills, and topics that we ask elementary schools to cover. But the "to what end" has gotten lost over time as we've added more and more. That was one of our main critiques.
Following our model here, I thought first about whether this core academic function could be unbundled. Diane, you started to talk about how unbundling the evaluation and recommendation piece might open up more opportunities to start unbundling the actual core educational experience.
If you were able to demonstrate your learning outside of the mandated tests at the school or state level, maybe you could have more options for how to get that learning, how to experience it, and prove it to an outside provider. Another thing that would have to shift is policy, which was number five on our list. Policy would have to be in play to create some of the shifts we see. Along with evaluation, funding policies would need to shift. There are efforts in states about this, which can be quite controversial and politicized. But for unbundling the core function to work at any scale in a community or region, along with the evaluation function moving to something external, the dollars would have to come to families. Not just follow students to their chosen place, but actually be in the hands of families to spend on educational services.
These types of programs, such as traditional voucher programs and education savings accounts (ESAs), usually go to a bundled school experience. They are not driving the unbundling of the core educational experience in any way. I am an informed, interested observer, but because these policies are not driving the unbundling of the core educational experience now, it makes me wonder what would have to happen. It also makes me a bit skeptical that these policy solutions will lead to an unbundling of the core experience.
Let me say a little about why I think that is. There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. There aren’t sufficient choices for families to take advantage of in core educational opportunities. That includes the core academic experience and character-building experiences, the social learning aspect. Even if I got my money directly from the state, I don’t have enough options to spend it on in sufficient quantity to choose among them. I am likely to choose a bundled experience that is better than what I had but may not allow me to unbundle.
Unbundling shifts a lot of non-financial costs to families. If I don’t have that bundled experience to go to, I am responsible for putting things together. I might not have the time or interest in doing that, even if I do have the resources. You can imagine other providers growing up that could play that orchestration or concierge role among some online experiences and some local, regional, and state providers. That’s super interesting. The biggest barrier is it flies in the face of our concept of school as the place we go, where our kids go, and where we get everything we need or most of what we need. But there’s something compelling about the idea.
As more choice options emerge in states where there is a financial and policy component, the long-term aspiration of what it could be if we unbundled evaluation, unbundled the money, and had some incentives in the communities for the options to arise based on the science of learning, are clear about what vision they're educating against, and maybe have chunks—maybe I’m not getting reading here and math there and character here—but maybe I’m getting those bundles from a provider and also have options for sports leagues, which already exist. A lot of sports leagues, children’s theater, and those kinds of interests and extracurriculars show much more promise.
What does that hybrid look like? Where we’ve got some bundles validated with the science of learning and an external evaluator? I am more optimistic and less skeptical about that. So, that’s my unbundling piece in the bundled environment. I think we’re seeing some interesting things. Diane and I are on the board of an organization we helped start called Transcend Education. We worried about communities not being engaged in the vision of schooling. Transcend has this amazing process that takes whole communities through to create or unearth the values, wishes, dreams, and intentions of a community against what an educational experience should aim for.
They have built expertise around processes to be on a journey of reinventing your schools and your system of schools in ways that align with that vision, so schools and districts aren’t on their own trying to do that piece. It’s still a bundled experience. The work they're doing in Texas with lots of districts, for example, Aldine Public Schools, which has 60,000 students and 80 schools, and 90% of the students are economically disadvantaged. There’s this beautiful community-wide process with the help of Transcend as an expert partner.
I’d love to see more Transcends, more capacity for Transcend, and more Transcend-like organizations that can work with systems and schools in their communities. We still need more opportunities for school creation. Diane, you know this better than any of us. When you can have that conversation with a community and create a new school that lives into that vision, is based on the learning science, and isn’t trying to do everything but has agreement on the core things they will do across core academics, character building, and interest-based activities, you’ve got a lot more likelihood of achieving coherence.
I am distressed by the reduction in new school creation around the country, both with philanthropy and policymakers. In the last 20 years, and even in the eight years I was at New Schools, we helped enough new schools come into existence to serve as many kids as the San Francisco Public Schools and the Boston Public Schools. These interesting models meet community needs, create great results for kids, and have more ability to do it because they’re not burdened with the layering that has gone on over the last 100 years or 40 years or 30 years. I’ve been talking for a long time, so I’ll pause. But we need a vibrant mix of opportunities so more unbundled services can arise, so districts can undertake this with expert support, and we still have new schools opening up that meet these aspirations and provide examples of what’s possible while serving their communities.
Discussing Stacey’s Proposal
Diane Tavenner:
Wow. There’s so much in there. Let me try to pull out a couple of things. I resonated with all of it. One thing I feel is this tension for families. When we talk about family choice and parent choice, there really is only choice at the bundled school level for the most part. That’s as far as we’ve truly gotten.
It’s like you can either pick a whole school for your child, or you can be a homeschooler family. In that case, you’re responsible for everything. Over here, you still have to curate a lot because the school doesn’t generally work in the summer, so you have to curate the summer. Oh, by the way, the holidays don’t match your workdays. It feels a little more steady, so that is very limited choice in my mind. I love that you’re proposing a more doable choice if it’s on a continuum, something more in the middle of this concierge model, these new entities. I think this is an interesting space for new entities to come into where they have a different mindset.
They want people to be able to assemble what works for them and make that easy and doable, without putting the full burden on a parent. Most parents I know have spreadsheets to try to manage summer experiences alone. By the end of summer, I was exhausted. Just put me back in school, even though it’s 8:00 to 3:30, because at least that’s consistent except every other Friday and the holidays, whatever. You know my rant about this. I love that idea paired with ESAs. These are very controversial right now because they’re happening quickly. I think we’re up to maybe eight.
Michael Horn:
14 or 15 states, I think.
Diane Tavenner:
Okay. Who have these in motion. There’s probably another ten that are working on them.
Stacey Childress:
Texas will likely happen this year.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, exactly. There's a bunch that failed last year, but after the primaries, it will likely pass.
Diane Tavenner:
There are people from multiple sides of the political spectrum who don’t like ESAs and are working hard against them. The two primary arguments are, one, accountability—how do we ensure kids are getting quality education, which we all care deeply about—and two, adult reasons. They don’t want money going away from the system, which is sometimes the largest regional employer. There’s more to it than that. I’m not being nuanced, but you know what I’m saying. They’re not thinking about what’s good for families and kids. These systems are far from perfect. Policy is very difficult to write. I don’t want to throw it out because we have a couple of egregious examples of someone using their ESA money to buy a big screen TV and claiming they were showing their kids learning content on it. Not awesome. That’s not the kind of thing we want. We need to learn how we can help people spend this wisely. We need significantly more supply of good science-aligned options and help for them to assemble those options to really take advantage of it.
I hope we can keep moving forward and make this better versus trying to rip this system out. I think we had this intuition when we said we were only going to talk about three topics that we'd end up touching on many more. What I love about what you said is in this vision, it contributes to the mixing of people, socioeconomic mixing and political diversity, which we’re concerned is not existing right now.
A lot of people get afraid when people want to talk about school choice. They’re worried it’s going to cause more polarization. I think this approach has people doing more mixing because you are picking and choosing and engaging with other people. It goes to that big societal intention and hope of our system if we can stick with it and figure it out. What do you think, Michael?
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I agree with what you just said. I’ll unintentionally come back to this when I tackle my lever. On the mixing point, when you have dollars that can unbundle the school experience in the way described, you lower the stakes on picking the thing. My guard comes down. I’m worried less about the mix of kids around me and the parents. It becomes a more optimal choice for something different now in these different experiences that contribute to what you just said, the different mixing.
I wrote a piece on how we shouldn’t expect a great unbundling right away. In all markets, customers initially prefer highly proprietary, interdependent bundled offerings because they don’t yet know their preferences and customization they want. We don’t have any experience as a society for the most part outside of homeschoolers and increasingly hybrid homeschoolers in picking and choosing and thinking outside of a school frame of reference.
It’s not surprising that you look at the state of Florida with its education savings accounts. The majority of those dollars go to full school tuitions. What’s interesting is if you look at Florida over time, fewer dollars are going to tuition. I had a conversation recently with someone in Utah, and they were seeing the same trend. That’s starting to change. The big thing is now we need the supply side of the market to catch up. We need more good school operators in there.
We need more concierge-type services and more one-offs in the ways we can imagine. What’s exciting is I don’t see a way to incentivize what Diane was talking about in her first point unless we go in this direction. Otherwise, you’re asking a school to somehow pay out money to an external validator. They’re not going to want to lose those dollars. If it’s the kids and the parents saying, "I want to validate that Michael learned how to do X and show evidence of it," and it’s dollars that I get to control in a wallet, it’s greatly preferable to vouchers or tax credit scholarships, which I don’t think accomplish any of what we’re talking about.
Stacey Childress:
So you’re saying ESAs as a preference?
Michael Horn:
Strong preference. I think the other two are not. They do several things wrong. They don’t force me, as the individual, to think about value trade-offs in terms of saving the money for different offerings. When I think about Diane’s vision of separate places to validate what I’ve mastered or learned or accomplished, you can imagine in the professional world, there’s the CFA, CPA. There are longstanding credentialing bodies that we pay for to show mastery.
You can imagine a flourishing of supply-side options that start to do the same thing. Colleges, employers, apprenticeship programs start to say that’s a valuable signal. That’s how we start to get around some of the accountability concerns in the longer run, by this flourishing. We have talked about the challenges with philanthropy in this country. We may find a time to come back to this topic. This calls for real patient capital to seed this marketplace and acknowledge that it’s not going to all come together at once and be comfortable with a messy transition as we get there. Diane gave one example of messy, where there’s going to be some bad spending, as though that never happens in districts today. There will be a messy transition of us trying to figure out how to do this in a way that doesn’t overstress parents and comes together. It’s not going to be an overnight process. It’s very grassroots, what you just described.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, it's interesting. We'll kind of wrap up on this one based on your reflections, both of you. I do want to say I think I might be a little more skeptical than I hear the two of you being about our shared ambition for socioeconomic diversity and racial diversity in the choices that emerge. I often say, if I had more confidence in my fellow man, I'd be a libertarian. If I had more confidence in my government, I'd be a liberal. If I had more confidence in my church, I'd be a conservative. So I actually don't know where I fit on all of these.
I'm not sure. I think where I get a nagging sense that the critics are likely right about this is that I don't know if, left to our own devices with ESAs as currently conceived in the policy frameworks, we're likely to get less isolation rather than more. If I had to lean one way or another, I'd say we're not likely to get more equity. I'm not certain about that. It could happen, but I'm not certain in the current climate and conception. But I do think it's interesting to consider ESA policy provisions that don't squelch their vibrancy and goodness but include some thinking about the great American experiment. It could be an interesting addition to the thinking.
Michael Horn:
It's a great point, Stacey, and I don't think Diane or I want to sound pollyannish on this. I'm putting words in your mouth, Diane, but I guess what I would say, and increasingly have felt, is the current way we're doing it isn't accomplishing it. So I'm willing to take a gamble.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, totally. No, I'm not certain. You guys know me. I'm not defending the status as better.
Diane Tavenner:
No.
Michael Horn:
I think it's an important caveat, though, that you introduced.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah.
Michael Horn:
Yeah.
Diane Tavenner:
I think this is a nice segue into, Michael, the element you've picked to unpack and provide hope and solutions for. But I just want to mark, I feel like the three of us should take an action item out of this conversation so far. We have this privilege of engaging with a lot of, whether they be your students at the university level or young people, at least younger than us, who are very entrepreneurial and ambitious. There is such significant opportunity right now to conceive of new nonprofits or for-profits to create the supply that is so needed here. So I think we should all take, not that we don't already, but even extra care in nurturing and encouraging that type of entrepreneurship going forward. I just gave you an action item, Michael.
Michael's Proposal: Teaching Character and Values
Michael Horn:
The best meeting is one where you assign someone else to work. Okay, so let's jump in. She's good at it. The one that I picked was the character values bucket. It was our second bucket yesterday, and it was, to use Diane's words, more macro than the social bullet that fell under the core education that, Stacey, you just tackled. To remind people, there were three big pillars we talked about yesterday. One was the basic norms and values of living with other people in society together, preparing people for adulthood.
So something we often call habits of success. I've adopted Diane's language on this. Character, though certainly in the now sunsetting Character Lab, has used that phrase to encompass a lot of these characteristics. And then thirdly, being a participating member of a democratic society. The observation I made is that the public school system in many ways got its start around this particular purpose of inculcating, and I'll use that word intentionally, democratic values in the populace. The first question, can it be unbundled? I'll lead with what, in a lot of our worlds, would be the controversial statement: of course it can, because parents are the first teachers. There's that observation, but that's not where I want to sit with my thoughts, because I know a lot of families, and to your equity concerns, Stacey, that's not the entry point.
Where I want to go is a different starting point. Yes, that's part of this possibility and part of the fabric. But what I want to say is, in our conversation yesterday, the flip side we observed is that while there's significant polarization and arguments against certain character education, there's actually a lot of commonality in the populace around what we agree the centerpieces of these things are. I can't remember the exact number I said, but there’s a lot of agreement. It's interesting that in education savings accounts, there's a lot of agreement at the population level that they're popular. It's just the politicians that don't necessarily agree, which is interesting.
My observation is that there are two ways to approach creating a common set of democratic values, civic values, and values of how we conduct ourselves in a society with people we may or may not agree with. One is a top-down approach, almost like the Common Core approach, which aims to get alignment. The challenge I've observed is you get a lot of energy around what’s in and what’s out, and you get a lot of anger on either side that often erodes consensus. The controversial point I want to push forward is that if we took an unbundling approach, very much like what you said, Stacey, in our previous conversation about how each school community comes together and has this conversation around its purpose, and we trust that most Americans have these central values they want their kids to learn, we can get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort. This might be the most productive way to move us forward on these things we really care about in a grassroots way, rather than spending 80% of the energy trying to get the 20% to fall in line.
I get it, it doesn't solve everything, but we're not solving everything at the moment either. An 80-20 rule that takes some of the tension out of the culture wars would be a really important way to go. I think education savings accounts are an interesting way to approach this. I can start to opt into school communities, and I'm going to trust that families are going to make choices where they're making sure that, for the most part, 80% of the population is saying, "I want my kids to understand the promise of the American dream, acknowledge the dark parts of our history, and strive for a more perfect union." These values are integrated into these experiences.
I think this approach will open us up to a lot of innovation in terms of form factors and how it integrates. I really like your observation, Stacey, that we'll rebundle the content with the character as we unbundle other things. One question I'd love you both to reflect on, in addition to the stuff you react to, is that starting with Diane's point, we're going to do a lot for increasing agency in this country. We're going to do an incredible amount, and that's really important to thriving and having people feel better about themselves. I think the two questions we should worry about and think about are coherence among experiences, which goes to the concierge, but also content and things of that nature.
The second question, which has been on my mind lately as we've watched things unfold across college campuses, is how we embed a sense of humility in kids. How do we make sure they know they're still learning and don’t know everything? The one nagging worry I have is when I see so many great interest-based school communities thriving, kids are picking things they're excited about. But when is the thing that says to them, "You don’t know X, and that’s okay"? Are we modeling things that introduce some uncertainty where they get the feedback that they can do, but also the humility to say, "I don't know everything"? I don't know if that's well articulated, but that's the one thing on my mind at the moment. I'll kick it to you all for reactions.
Discussing Michael’s Proposal
Stacey Childress:
Go ahead, Diane.
Diane Tavenner:
Okay. Still processing those questions. As you were talking, Michael, and listening to this whole conversation, here’s what’s coming up for me. First of all, I can imagine what you're proposing, because like Stacey said, Transcend does this work. I did this work with Summit Learning for a number of years. I had the privilege of working with communities in just the type of experience you're talking about. It was fascinating and amazing.
Diane Tavenner [00:51:46]:
Communities really did come together and identify what they thought the purpose of education was. There was huge agreement, and it was a powerful experience. I could imagine this, and I've seen it with Transcend and others. What was coming up for me is we're at a point in time where the public has lost trust in most institutions in our country. Trust in institutions is at the lowest level we've seen in a long time. I hear this all the time, "I don't trust, I don't trust, I don't trust. You don't have my trust. You've broken my trust. Trust, trust, trust, trust, trust." In my experience, the only way to build trust is to do meaningful, authentic work together, which builds trust. People often say, "We have to communicate better to build trust." I don't believe that at all. Communication is important, but it is not the pathway to building trust.
It's truly working together and building relationships over meaningful work. This is such a powerful idea that every school community can do. Every school community in the country is doing some sort of community engagement, whether through their accreditation, strategic planning process, or federally or locally mandated committees of parents that do work. Most of the time, that is not meaningful, authentic work that builds trust. It is box-checking, perfunctory, rubber-stamping. What if we took those existing opportunities and flipped them into true dialogues and consensus-building around what the purpose of education is? What do we actually share together, and how are we going to build that? I think that’s a very doable thing within the existing system that would go a significant way towards the vision you’re talking about and building the trust we need. Let me pause there with my reaction and turn to Stacey. I will gather my thoughts around your good provocative reflection questions.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, and Michael, I want to pick up on your powerful insight about the challenges with top-down approaches at any level, but especially at the national level. They are destined for disappointment. Even though I joked about different political philosophies, I trust people with their own choices, especially parents making decisions for their kids and families. Since I joked about it, I want to make sure that’s clear. What I love about what you said, Michael, is because we trust that, and because we know top-down approaches are probably not going to be all that good anyway, and we're allergic to them as Americans, where real trust is built is on the ground, doing meaningful work together. If we give up trying to get national consensus, we're going to get it at the ground level. Where people are together every day, showing up at school or other educational options, in the grocery store, in their churches, and at community activities, they agree on 80% of important things.
If the locus of shifting to a vision of learning and education that works better for kids and sets them up for long-term community living, self-sustainability, following their dreams, and being strong and productive members of our democratic society, starts where they live today, tomorrow, and 20 years from now, where we actually experience all the dynamism of being part of a pluralistic society and a functioning democracy is in our neighborhoods. I love what you said, Michael. If we ever do have the conversation about philanthropy, I think this is where we miss big time. We're looking for scale and things that can work everywhere, but scale is healthy communities doing strong work together. That leads to clarity about shared values and a vision for how to help the next generation build towards those values. As Michael said, "Yes, I'm capable of everything, but right now, I don't know everything." What are the habits of mind, skills, and habits of success that lead to that possibility at the micro level for every young person, at the building level for every school, at the community level for groups of families in schools, and then it builds up from there without feeling like we have to have national fights and mandates. I think we’ll be much more successful moving from the smaller level to a larger agreement if we're talking to each other in our communities and neighborhoods.
Diane Tavenner:
Awesome. Maybe I'll say a quick word on your provocation around humility in kids. I’ll leave the coherence aside and just say two words: Swiss cheese in the existing system. There’s no coherence given the way it is. On humility, here’s what came to me: the habits of success and the building blocks pyramid we often reference. One of the top building blocks is curiosity. Underneath humility is curiosity. We can cultivate that because it feels impossible to lack humility if you are truly curious. What I see across our country, and it’s not just young people, is a lot of people who act like they know everything and are not curious about other people's perspectives, lived experiences, or what knowledge they may or may not have. As a K12 educator, I believe curiosity is something you can cultivate.
There’s debate about whether you can teach it, but there’s a whole suite of skills around it that curate that approach and mindset. That is where, and I would put that under both of your buckets, core education and values, character education. Working with communities across the country, curiosity often comes up as a value they care deeply about in developing young people.
Michael Horn:
Well, maybe as we transition out of this to our final segment of the show, I'll just say you gave me a lot more faith. Thank you. That was a very helpful answer. The other thing that occurs to me, hearing both of your reflections about the declining trust and faith in institutions and that there’s humility in recognizing we don’t know the individual circumstances of every single community and family. As my co-author in "Choosing College," Bob Mesta, likes to say when he does the jobs to be done research, you can’t imagine someone's job to be done from a kitchen table. You have to go out and shoot the movie of them living to figure out what their circumstances are. There’s no way to create blanket statements or policy that covers all those unique circumstances. I appreciate y'all digging in on this.
Media Recommendations
Michael Horn:
As we wrap up, I hope everyone's enjoyed it as well. We get to return to the segment we know a lot of people enjoy and have even created tracking lists around. You don’t know this, Stacey, but our recommendations for books or things that we’re watching, reading, or listening to. We’ll give Stacey a moment. Diane, why don’t you go first, then Stacey, and I'll wrap us.
Diane Tavenner:
I'm happy to go first. Some folks might not know that I actually lived in LA for about ten years a long time ago and lived in close proximity to the Academy Awards show every year. I used to be an avid follower but have sort of fallen off. This year my husband and I watched all ten Best Picture nominees for the 2024 awards from last year. I have been pleasantly surprised. What a spectacular lineup. There are the big banner movies like "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie," but there are so many gems in that list. We had such an enjoyable time watching all of those films.
If you want a movie list, pick those ten and go through it. It’s hard to pick a favorite. I love "The Holdovers," which provides commentary on schooling and education. I love "American Fiction," and I really loved "Past Lives." It’s such a beautiful, nuanced film that is incredible. It’s a reminder that I don’t think it would be made in America. It’s not a film we would make here. What a gift of a global community to share such a beautiful film.
Michael Horn:
Very cool. Stacey?
Stacey Childress:
Yes. I have not seen "Past Lives," and I'm always a sucker for a movie about a school. So I also loved "The Holdovers." I recently finished the book called "Hello, Beautiful." It’s about four sisters in Chicago. I’m the oldest of four sisters, and the title comes from what their dad would say to them when he saw them: "Hello, beautiful." It follows them from their late teens, early twenties into their early fifties. It’s wonderfully written and beautiful, but it’s also really hard. They are very close, but as they go on their life’s journeys, things happen, and sometimes people don’t live up to high standards. There are breaks in relationships, and then suddenly you’re in your early fifties looking back, wondering where all the time went and missing your family. It was not what I thought it was going to be, and I really loved it. So, "Hello, Beautiful."
Last time you guys invited me on, I was so excited about the Astros. Then the season started, and the Yankees showed up in town and literally punched them in the face, swept them in four games, and they had a hard time recovering. They are off to their worst start since 1969 when I was four years old. I’m hanging in there with my guys, but it is really hard. It’s really hard.
Michael Horn:
Well, you've had a run of success that most places would be envious of. We're spoiled. I’ll wrap us. I love all these. I thought, Diane, you had routinely watched all the Best Pictures, so this was a learning for me. I finally kicked back into overdrive and started reading a bunch of books. I’ll pick out "The Three-Body Problem." It sent me and a few others said I had to read it. Now it’s on Netflix as well. But I read the book first, and it definitely made me think. It made me ponder a bunch of scientific concepts, as good science fiction should. It also freaked me out a little bit. It hit all the points.
Diane Tavenner:
Are you going for number two and three? Because that is a trilogy, Michael, my son’s favorite all-time trilogy.
Michael Horn:
Is that right? We’ll talk offline about how I’m thinking about it. We’ll leave it there. Thank you for joining us on yet another epic episode. We’ll see you all next time on Class Disrupted.
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Inspired by our last conversation together on higher education, Diane Tavenner and I welcome back Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., for the first of a two-part series on the challenges facing K-12 education and promising unbundling strategies for addressing them. In this episode, we outlined the nine roles that K–12 education systems in the U.S. play and the problems schools face in playing each. We highlight the disconnect between current teaching models and the latest in the learning sciences, unravel the operational challenges schools face, stress the importance of intentionally teaching character and values, and more. If we missed anything, please let me know by writing!
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Diane Tavenner:
Well, hey, Michael.
Michael Horn:
Hey, Diane. How are you?
Diane Tavenner:
I'm well. It feels like it's been a minute since we've been together here, but I am excited about how we're coming back together. We are so pleased to be welcoming back Stacey Childress to the podcast. What fun! Great to be here. We are getting the band back together again. For those of you who've been following along this season, the three of us spent two pretty extended episodes talking through the elements of higher education, the problems there, and potential solutions. We did that in response to a podcast by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
We were all pleasantly surprised at how much great feedback we got from our listeners. They loved those episodes, enjoyed them, and wanted us to do a parallel experience for K-12. We couldn't say no to that. So here we are again, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. The last one was quite rollicking, and I suspect this one might be fun as well.
Michael Horn:
I'm glad, Stacey, that you chose to, against your better judgment I'm sure, rejoin us for this conversation.
Stacey Childress:
Listen, I'm thrilled to be here. I had such a great time with you guys last time. I heard some feedback from people I know and some people I didn't know. Through LinkedIn, people sent me messages. That's been happening in the last week, which is interesting. I'd love to do it again. I also just left that conversation feeling certainly challenged but also energized from the quality and dynamism of the discussion. So I look forward to doing it again.
Michael Horn:
Well, we are glad you are back. Go ahead, Diane.
Introducing the Two-Part Series and the Nine Roles of Education
Diane Tavenner:
Michael, I should just say, I guess I'm assuming that everyone knows Stacey, but let me do a quick introduction for those of you who may have missed those episodes and don't know Stacey. Stacey is a good friend of ours and a good friend to education. She has a long, amazing history of being a teacher, a very popular professor at Harvard, and working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NewSchools Venture Fund, and AirDef. I could go on and on about her credentials, but most importantly, she deeply cares about what happens for our young people in America and has always been at the center of what we can do to serve them better. We are super grateful for her rejoining us.
Michael Horn:
Yes, indeed. With that, let's frame the episode today and get into the meat of it. For those who remember the higher ed episodes, we did two responding to the Mark and Ben podcast about the challenges facing higher ed. We reacted to those challenges they identified in the first episode and their solutions in the second episode. For this one, because we are doing it from scratch ourselves, Diane has been willing and generous enough with her time to come up with the core functions of the K-12 system, and I'll put it in air quotes. Right, it's sort of tasked with providing in this country. Diane will go through her list of, I think, nine areas at the moment. Stacey and I might supplement a little, but then we're going to dive into each one. Diane, you'll tell us why you put that on the list and the problems or shortcomings right now. We will withhold solutions and thoughts about how we can make it better until the next episode. With that as prelude, Diane, dive in. Tell us, what are your nine areas? Just give us the overview, and then we'll go from there.
Diane Tavenner:
Great. Thanks to both of you for your comments, feedback, and help in organizing, because, as you know, the original list was very long, and we've done some grouping. There are nine. The first six are broadly related to the student experience and their actual education and learning. The next two are more about the function and role of schools in the community and the local environment. The final one is more about the role that K-12 schools play in America. I think it's fair to say that we're focused on public schools in this conversation. Obviously, there will be some overlap with private schools, but we're here talking about public schools.
Just quickly, those first six include what we're calling the core education, the role of teaching character or values to young people, the role of the school in terms of custodial care (Michael, we've talked about this several times on the podcast), and the security of those young people you're charged with caring for. Number four, we're labeling it a social services agency—school as a social services agency. Five is policymaker. I think this one's interesting to dig into in terms of the policies that schools and school systems make. Six is what we would call evaluator or recommender. We could start with six. There's a big argument about what comes first, chicken or egg.
Nonetheless, those are our first six. In terms of the local community role, the first is that schools and school districts are, in many ways, local government agencies. That's a very important role they're playing. They are also a community hub. Those are seven and eight for us. Finally, we're calling it social reformer in this national role. But I'll be curious as we get into it. I think we might come up with a different name as we talk about it.
So those are the nine that we've landed on for today.
Michael Horn:
It's a good list of nine. I'm not sure I would add much to it. Stacey, how do you think about that list before we dive into each one?
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, I think it's a good list. I can't think of things that aren't contained in those categories. I'm excited to dive in.
Michael Horn:
Let's do it. Diane, why don't you take us through that first one, which is core education? Talk to us about what's in this grouping, what's maybe not in this grouping if that's relevant. Then let's start to go deep into the problems before Stacey and I react.
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Core Education
Diane Tavenner:
Great. I think when people think of schools in the most traditional sense, they think of the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic. This starts there and then grows a little bit. Obviously, over time, it has grown, but it is what most people think of as the most core function of a public school: to teach kids academic skills and knowledge, including reading, writing, and arithmetic. Of course, we've expanded to history, science, second languages, and I couldn't even begin to list all of the elective and interest courses that have come into schools. But there's still that core set of knowledge that is generally tested, assessed, and common across schools.
Then there's also how that is done. Schools are places where lots of people come to learn together. This is not individual tutoring. So, how are you part of a community, a group, a classroom? What do those skills look like? A big part of schools has become extracurricular activities and interests—all of the activity that happens in schools for young people. Regarding core education, which is a little more about how we do it, we have a very significant and robust special education component to our system. This is driven by federal legislation providing supports, resources, and accommodations for young people who qualify for having a learning disability and therefore an individual learning plan. That is a significant part of what happens in the core program now, in terms of resources, people, focus, etc. So that's what's in this bucket.
I started listing problems, and when I was at the micro level, I was getting into hundreds of them. So, I rolled it up to one big problem from my perspective. Thank you both for laughing at me. I would argue that the core education model in America, in the vast majority of schools, is just not aligned with the current science of learning. I would say on two fronts: what we teach and what we prefer to teach, and very much how we teach it and how we expect people to learn. As I went through my laundry list of all the things that were wrong, every time I thought about what was wrong, it was because we're not following the science. You can take this all the way down to the youngest kids. As the country is waking up to, we have not been using the science of how kids learn to read. We haven't been doing that in most of our schools. It's everything from that all the way up to something we are all very passionate about: how you actually personalize learning as young people get older, enable them to self-direct their learning, drive their learning, build those skills around it, and everything in between. I'll stop there, but that's my macro problem.
Michael Horn:
Stacey?
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, I definitely agree, Diane, with that as a way of thinking about an umbrella category for lots of things that we might list in more detail. Alongside that, maybe not always the choices that folks are making in the system and in schools within the system about the academic program and the social aspect of schooling and all the other things you mentioned. There's not always agreement at the community level or, if you think not quite that broadly, at the family level. What's our overarching idea as a community or bundle of ideas that school is for? How do we ensure that what we're doing every day for twelve years for young people, from kiddos all the way through late teens, is driving towards some common vision of what it means to leave our system ready to do whatever's next?
Sometimes there's either ambiguity around that or, where there's more specificity, tensions and disagreements about the end goal. This can filter back through, especially at the high school level, but it can go all the way back through what frame within which we are making choices as a community and a group of professional educators about academic programs, how we're approaching the social learning aspect of school, how much emphasis and what's the mix of interest in extracurricular activities, and how these tie back with a longer-term view of purposes, skills, and mindsets that kids might leave their experience with. I think that ambiguity or lack of coalescence around purposes makes it hard to balance all those things, Diane, on your list, all of which are absolutely functions of school within its core education mission.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say that, Stacey, because my head went one way when Diane was giving the list. I was noting that as you look through the extracurricular or non-core classes in American schooling over the 1900s, it was just an ever-expanding list of classes. The proverbial grocery store analogies were so prominent in "A Nation at Risk," of course, in 1983. At some point, it became, well, actually the definition of school is how much you are learning, which shifts much more to how we teach and learn, as Diane referenced. I would argue that schools continue to expand in scope along the other eight dimensions you listed, Diane, which we'll get into later on.
Another point within core education is that special education has continued to expand in terms of resources and identifying students who need special education. Diane, you spoke passionately and persuasively last season about how our incentives in special education are not around innovation, efficiency, and delivering, but around more resources and a lot of box-checking.
I reflect on that expansion theme. Stacey, when you jumped in, I loved where you went with the purpose conversation. What's the purpose of this education? As you both know from my most recent book, my big argument is that communities need to have that conversation almost tabula rasa. What are we trying to go for here? They don't. Instead, they just accept the four math, four social studies, three or four science, whatever it is, and just accept these structures that have been handed down without getting behind the intent.
So many of the food fights, even within the camps trying to find their way through what the science teaches us about how and what we learn, are because we are guilty of not having an "and" conversation. We're too often having an "or" conversation, talking past each other in some of these rooms, and missing the changes we could make if we started with Stacey's conversation around what we are driving toward and why. Those are my three reflections from this list. At the end of the day, it means we're teaching a bunch of things that don't have a lot of coherence. We haven't given a lot of thought to why we've privileged this branch of math over another one, and we're not following all the lessons from the science of learning. We're not incorporating them or at least trying them out with different populations to learn what works and why.
Diane Tavenner:
Yep. We're off to a rough start, friends, because that's the thing we're supposed to be good at. Oh, all right.
Michael Horn:
Well, then tell us your second one. Maybe we'll surprise you.
Teaching Values and Character
Diane Tavenner:
Okay, here we go. This one we've labeled as the teaching of values and character. I almost hesitate to say those words, but I do think some of this conversation is designed to provoke a little bit. Those are provocative words in our country, as we know. It's confusing to me why because young people are in schools for a good amount of time, as you said, for twelve or thirteen years and for significant parts of their days. It seems logical to me that a school should help them figure out basic norms of being a person and being in a community beyond just the learning side. How are you preparing to be an adult and a participating member of our democracy? When public education was conceptualized, these were huge aims of what we were trying to do.
We could go back in history and talk about some of the ill intentions, such as forcing certain groups of people to adapt to other norms. But at a macro level, just the idea of being a citizen of our community, our country, and our nation, and how you actually do that and become an adult, it seems logical that the school would play a role in partnering with families to help that come about. There are very significant challenges here. I've expanded to two this time, but they're still broad. The first one, for people who've been listening, will not be a surprise: I think it's the college-for-all push. In recent history, we've gotten away from preparing people for careers, employment, and life outside of school. We're so focused on preparing them for the next educational institution that we've lost focus on that front.
Michael Horn:
We're all going to generalize.
Diane Tavenner:
Systematically, right? So, I think that's problem number one. The second one is the obvious one in our current society: whose values and whose role is it to teach these things? These are not small, little bickerings; these are big societal questions, and schools are caught in the middle of them. School systems, using the fight, flight, or freeze analogy, do one of the three. Some are duking it out, some are running away as far as possible, only teaching the three R's, and some are frozen, not knowing what to do. There you have it, category two.
Michael Horn:
Stacey, you get to go first again.
Diane Tavenner:
Great.
Stacey Childress:
I love that fight, flight, or freeze analogy in this context. You're right, Diane. Going back to something we talked about in the higher ed episodes, the original podcast we responded to called this "moral instruction." We weren't crazy about that phrase. The podcasters had a particular point of view about it that we didn't entirely share. I'll go back to part of our discussion there. I grew up in a very religious and politically conservative part of the country and moved back here. I went to high school about 13 miles from where I'm sitting today. These issues are still fraught with challenge.
Part of what I think about this is, I get why it's hard. It's hard because it's very important, and it's hard because of the multiplicity of points of view about which values and whose values. Schools are in the context of our larger political and cultural moment, which is very hard. We know it because we're trying to work through it and bridge it in our own lives with people in our families, friends, and colleagues. Of course, it's hard in schools. The flight or freeze option is not happening because, as I said about college, values are being transmitted, messaged, inculcated, shared, and massaged even if it's not intentional. As you said, Diane, kiddos are in school from a few minutes after they wake up until right before, right as, or right after their parents get home from work. It's impossible for your eight most active waking hours of the day to be values-neutral or values-free.
If you are fleeing or freezing, what you're opting into is almost anything goes until somebody is mad about it. Individual educators and administrators are making almost individual choices about which values they're bringing to bear and which norms they'll prioritize or not in their classrooms or cohorts of students. That's a recipe for more tension and more upset because there's not an overarching perspective. There's not an overarching, even loose agreement about why we might be committed to ensuring that a set of values and some character attributes are prioritized in our experience. This while allowing for plenty of different perspectives and points of view across families, religious traditions, countries of origin, and other factors. Fighting over hot-button cultural issues or freezing or fleeing because it's hard and you don't want to upset anybody is missing the boat both at the micro and macro education levels.
Acting as if it's not the role of schools and educators to provide some underpinning of values, character, and moral reasoning is misguided. You need to filter it through age appropriateness, but we need to be more intentional about it, not less. Lean into it with intentionality and good intentions rather than trying not to offend anybody, which usually offends more people than being intentional about what you're doing.
Michael Horn:
It's interesting to hear you say that, Stacey, because you mentioned age appropriateness. The last time we were recording, you said moral instruction was one of Ben's lists. The thought I had at that time, which has been borne out based on recent events, is that college is too late to build in a lot of these things we want to see students do—having civil conversations across disagreements and recognizing disagreement as a strength rather than a threat. Obviously, there's age appropriateness regarding not introducing content that is inappropriate for, say, a six- or seven-year-old. But I think building these character skills, these habits, what I think of as fundamental democratic values, is incredibly important. And to your word, intentionality—very intentionally. This was the purpose of the public school system. This is why we got public dollars.
Stacey Childress:
That's right.
Michael Horn:
To do this enterprise above anything else—preparing for careers or anything. With all the caveats that Diane alluded to, where it was misapplied and certain groups were discriminated against, the purpose was to knit us into something larger. The debate now is often, should we or shouldn't we, not acknowledging that we are. And then it's this weird pose, like the right being, "Character matters," and the left, for a period of time, was like, "I don't know about that." Now, it's the opposite: actually, it's important, and here are the values we think.
And the right saying, "Wait a second." It's a weird conversation against a backdrop where I'm going to get the number wrong, but 80% of the population largely has a common set of answers for what these values are. That's what is so frustrating. It goes to your first point when we were talking about the core program. If individual school communities came together and said, "What's our purpose? Where's the agreement that we can all get behind?" My wife and I were having a conversation recently, and she said, "Isn't that great?" Or I can't remember it exactly. I said, "I don't know if they should be doing this." She said, "Good point. We ask educators to do a ton of stuff for society that probably overstretches them."
I don't know if it was in reference to the bad therapy book by Abigail Schreier or what. The point, which I learned deeply from you, Diane, is that a lot of these things can be done in the context of academics rather than a special carve-out lesson that's going to offend some group. My fifth-grade graduation speech comes to mind. I remember talking about learning the value of fair play, respecting your classmates, in just the lessons themselves. David had three apples, and I took two. That sort of stuff communicates a lot of this. We pull these things apart in strange ways that provoke fights. As I've learned from Diane, you actually learn it better when it's all knit together rather than atomized. One other quick point, Diane, before you react: you also mentioned the notion of college for all distorting a lot of this, which I completely agree with. It looks like Stacey's going to jump in after this. What's interesting is that I think preparing people for careers, life, etc., outside of school is spot on. That's also a controversial statement.
Many would say it can't be about those material interests or shouldn't be about whatever else it should be about. I'm not sure what they think college's purpose is. They would say it's about something larger, and college represents it. In the backdrop we are in right now, that seems absolutely crazy to me.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. Diane, Michael, I'm glad you flagged that because, Diane, I was glad you named this value in the system that many of us had been working on for a couple of decades—the college for all value and the expectations we were trying to build in for students to see themselves as capable and worthy of being on a path to college. The Ed reformers from 1995 to 2015 had college for all as a driving purpose. I always try to be cautious about this and say it wasn't in a vacuum.
It was in the context of very real national data that showed up in medium and small ways at the state, local district, and school levels, where you had significant gaps in outcomes. If you traced them back, you could see why those outcomes were so different because we developed a great way of sorting kids pretty early, before they were preteens.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Deeply disturbing ways, right?
Stacey Childress:
Deeply disturbing ways. You're either on the path to college, which only a small percentage of you are headed towards, and the rest of you, well, we'll do other things for you. Much of policy in general and different sorts of social issues and reform efforts end up being these pendulum swings. To counteract that undesirable state we were in 30 years ago, we ended up narrowing our focus. We've got to get everybody to college or at least ensure everybody could go to college. It's hard to do all the things on our top six things that we're going to talk through. We're only on the second one. It's hard to do all of them, so we focused on a few things. Let's do reading and math to ensure our kids are ready to take important tests that will make or break this college-for-all path.
When it comes to character or whatever other words we use, it's in service of good grades and doing well on tests—the persistence, grit needed to get to and persist in college. I don't mean to suggest those things are bad, but because we narrowly focused and hyper-engineered an accountability system around it, we ended up in a place where a broader notion of what it means to be a successful human, a young adult who has what they need to choose a path and navigate it effectively, got chipped away. So the three of us and a lot of other great folks we've been on this journey with have been pushing in a different direction or an adapted direction. It does have values embedded in it. That's why I was glad you put it here. Those values affect young people, families, and educators. I talked too much on the last podcast, so I won't do it again.
Custodial Care
Diane Tavenner:
No, it's a robust conversation, and I think we are too ambitious when we begin, but I will encourage us to pick up the pace here on these next ones. Those are two big ones, and probably the rest are as well, but maybe we might not be as passionate about them. Let me go to number three. I'll start with the problem here. No passion here, conflict with the first two elements in many ways. This third one is the role that the school system plays in providing custodial care. If we're going to be provocative like Ben and Mark, we'd say babysitting. With that comes the obligations around protecting the security and safety of young people.
That's two levels at least now: their physical safety and emotional, actually three, as well as their data and privacy. This is as big in the virtual world as it is in the physical world in many ways. The biggest problem here is that people who work in schools, for the most part, don't want to do this job. They don't conceptualize it as their job. They don't like it, and they don't do it terribly well, probably because they don't like it and don't want to do it. Most school people think of themselves as academic teachers, learners, not babysitters or security guards.
I think that's one of the biggest problems. The conflict is that families want and expect this. It's also not done well because the people doing it don't want to do it. I'll stop there.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. You want me to go? You want to stay in our order?
Diane Tavenner:
Michael?
Stacey Childress:
I would say a couple of things about this. I don't have children in our public schools. I see all these videos now. I'm not on social media often, but when I am, I see these videos. If I went by that, I would assume not just our high schools but especially our high schools are in chaos with physical safety concerns. Thinking about the physical safety of kids from each other, and sometimes from teachers, and teachers from students. I don't know how widespread that actually is. I have educators in my family. They teach younger ones, and I do not hear these stories about their schools.
But I see these videos, so there is a sense in the popular consciousness that at least our high schools are out of control. Part of the contributing factor, maybe the biggest driver, is discipline policies. I know we'll talk about policy later, but the approach schools have been taking to ensure good community order in the building has changed over the last decade to think more about restorative practices and ways of building community through tough moments rather than just a punishment philosophy. There’s this tension playing out and who knows where it's headed. It's not only physical safety from outside in, but physical safety from kids, kids from each other. What it makes me think about is school shootings. You know that some young people in my family were high school students in a school shooting in our hometown back in 2018. There's so much to talk about there, which we're not going to, but the idea that kids are a danger to each other.
In my niece's situation, the shooter was a student, an 11th grader that people had known since third or fourth grade. It wasn't an outside threat. That shifted the culture of the community and the school, with kids as dangers to each other. The stakes and incentives that creates around safety result in an enormous amount of community time, attention, emotion, and real dollars. The dollars have to come from somewhere, so they come from something else, probably those things we were already talking about, academics, values, etc. The interplay between physical safety and what we have to do to signal to the community that we're providing safety and what it turns our view of young people into, and therefore, how that affects the culture of the school, is a uniquely American problem right now, and a real one, certainly for the concrete reason of physical safety but also this cultural notion of how we think about our schools and young people. We used to have fire drills when we were kids, and now active shooter drills start as early as they can.
So there's a real issue here. I've already spent too much time on it, but it's a real challenge that our professional educators are facing day in and day out in their communities.
Michael Horn:
I'll try to be brief, but just pulling from that, I'm having a déjà vu moment because it occurs to me the three of us were at an elevator in a hotel about a year ago having this very conversation, and it spurred Diane and me to have a podcast on the issue you just talked about, Stacey.
Stacey Childress:
Yes, folks should go back and listen to that. It was very good.
Michael Horn:
So, with that acknowledgment, the couple of things I would say are, one, the tension in this one seems ironic at this moment in our society's history, between the childcare piece, not having adequate hours or time and availability for the working families of today, and on the other end, chronic absenteeism being the highest it's ever been that I can remember. Those are two things in direct tension with each other. It connects to a couple of things here, which is, it connects to the safety and discipline piece of this. It connects to the formation of character in the second one. It connects to the relevance of the curriculum in the first one, and whether people have passion for this and see a place for it in their lives. That all connects to mental health, which then connects to the shootings.
So these three actually connect in interesting ways. The last piece is this is yet another place where we fight a lot on the edges with each other. One of the fights is the restorative justice, don't discipline versus the zero tolerance policy. A lot of people pushing for restorative justice get lumped in with the restorative view, but that's not quite what they're saying. Like Dr. Becky or someone like that, they believe in consequences for actions and hard lines and limits. They just don't believe in arbitrary ones that have nothing to do with what you just did. Again, there's this third way through these poles that we keep missing. Maybe I'll just leave it there.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah. It's hard not to go to solutions, and it's hard to do all of these in short periods.
Michael Horn:
Sorry, I jumped.
Diane Tavenner:
Right.
Michael Horn:
Let's get to the next one. Because it connects also to these.
Social Services Provider
Diane Tavenner:
It does. It's deeply connected because, quite frankly, a big element of schools' purpose, or at least what they're spending their time and resources on, is essentially as a social services agency. When we go through the responsibilities of most schools and districts, transportation—many school districts run full transportation fleets. Meals—they are serving not just lunch anymore, but breakfast and oftentimes snacks. They're providing full feeding of large numbers of people and some basic health elements.
So, they're testing your eyesight, for lice, and dealing with all of the COVID-related issues. Schools literally turned into clinics. I'm not even going to talk about how I felt when California started encouraging every high school to have the ability to administer Narcan if there's a drug overdose. What more, please? Schools have always played this role, but it's more complex now. They have to connect families and children to other agencies that support them, especially during crises. Let's not forget the role of schools as mandated reporters. It is incumbent upon schools and everyone in them to report if they suspect child abuse or neglect. Some schools now employ social workers, counselors, and school resource officers. So, they're running huge systems that go well beyond just the classroom.
The most obvious challenge here is that these are operationally intensive endeavors. They require a whole set of skills and knowledge that are not necessarily aligned with everything we just talked about. Most people in schools don't want to do these extra jobs. They feel extra, on the side, added on. When you treat jobs that way, without operational efficiency and excellence, they don't get done well, which ends up being this whole spiral.
So, those are the big problems.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. I have nothing to add on this one. I agree completely with your explanation and identification of problems.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I think this is maybe the best evidence of the expanding nature of what we have thrown on schools. Every social ill, it seems, we ask schools to solve. This is where we have thrown another one. I'm not sure they can completely get out of thinking about these things if they're trying to accomplish the first three, which we can get into maybe in the second episode.
So, Diane, why don't you march on?
Policymaker
Diane Tavenner:
Great. A lot of tension there. Number five shifts us to what we're calling policymaker. I think later, I'm going to offer a local government agency. Some people might say, what's the difference between the two? Aren't those the same? Let me make the case for why I have separated them here. When people talk about government, they spend a lot of time thinking about the federal government, less time thinking about their state government, and even less time thinking about county government. We're talking about people in school buildings and on school boards who are literally making policy decisions regularly that have the biggest impact on the lives of children and families. Everything from grading policies, discipline and behavior policies, and health and safety policies. All of those decisions during COVID were made at local school and school district levels, generally with guidance from the federal and state governments.
One of the challenges we had was that they didn't actually tell us what to do. They gave us guidance, and then we had to decide what to do, which basically meant they told us what to do but gave us no cover for doing it. Local people have a lot of power to create policies that impact families. For example, when schools and districts decide to have professional development during the workday, parents have to pick their kids up at noon or whatever schedule. To your point about not being family-friendly in terms of care and things like that.
The problem here is that under any circumstance, good policy is hard to write. I would challenge anyone who has never written a policy to try to do it and see how hard it is. We have about 130,000 schools and almost 14,000 districts. We do not have people who are well-resourced experts capable of writing the best policies under hard circumstances. Instead, you get whatever people think sounds good, and the implications are extreme.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, totally agree with that. The policymaker, the local school district, plus any school-based policies are the biggest policy influence on the day-to-day life of families. It dictates what time people get up in the morning because whatever time school starts, you have to count backwards from that. Wake-up time is dictated by the school schedule and then on from there. We just make it very concrete and embedded in our lives. One of the things that was so hard about COVID, or a thing about COVID that was difficult for families, was just how central school policy was in their family clock and calendar.
Diane Tavenner:
Right.
Stacey Childress:
When you go with what you said, Diane, I totally agree with just how hard it is to make good policy at any level. It's hard, and we ask folks to—well, it's their job, it's their responsibility as board members and educators—to make policies that touch every family with a school-age child in their community without a lot of support and knowledge building. It's very complex, and we have it here. It could be elevated depending on how you want to structure a list.
It does flow through almost everything: grading, course schedule, graduation requirements, all the things.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. I don't know that I have much to add. It spills into transportation or transportation spills into it, and all these things just show how interdependent these are. What I'll observe is that pulling them out and naming them, Diane, in this way is useful because we see all of the complexity and all of the possible areas for breakdown. As you said, people aren't trained to do a lot of these roles, and yet they are core functions that they have been asked to play or defaulted into playing in many cases. With that, let's go into your sixth, which I think is sort of an exclamation point for a bunch of these.
Evaluator
Diane Tavenner:
Well, and it sort of rounds out the student experience grouping. I could have led with this one because then everything sort of falls from it. The role of the school district in K-12 is to evaluate young people—their skills, their knowledge, their character, etc.—and to recommend them for what comes next in their life. This is a profound role that the school and the people in it are playing in terms of the outcomes and lives of young people and their families. This is true in terms of determining the grades of kids, which we know makes a big difference. They confer the credential on them. They make recommendations to colleges and employers. The quality of their school signals to those other folks the type of education that the young person has received and the experience they've had.
Okay, there's a problem with every one of those things. They assign grades, but this is discounted now because of grade inflation. They assign the high school credential, but that isn't valued in our society anymore, so it's pretty meaningless. They write recommendations for colleges, but those are undervalued, partly because it's the same people having to write them over and over again with no time to do it and not a lot of resources. They all start to sound the same. In fact, a lot of people kind of copy and paste, and colleges know that. So those are undervalued. There's this huge, giant role that they're playing, but no one values them playing it. What I would argue is the most important—and this is sad to me—role that K-12 is playing, and this is primarily high schools, is the reputation they have. Colleges and universities have these perceptions about high schools, mostly aligned to the socioeconomic status of the student population, of how good those schools are. They factor that into their admissions decisions. There's this giant, important role that all this time and energy goes to that I would argue is not actually being valued or used in meaningful ways. Big problem.
Michael Horn:
Stacey, would you like to jump in?
Stacey Childress:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think when we go to solutions in the next episode, we can get a little more detailed about how some of these components of this function play out and how we could do it differently. It's interesting, Diane, this last one that you mentioned about school reputation being the signaler, especially to those applying to selective colleges. Then you tie that to the higher ed conversation we had on the last episodes. It's a very small percentage of kids go to a selective college. Even in the college for all concept, it is a very small percentage of institutions, higher ed institutions that fall in that bucket. So then what about for everybody else? What's happening here with this evaluator recommender function? It's a weak signal.
Back to some of the other things we talked about, not very intentionally conceived and organized around outside of compliance. Transcripts have to get created and all that kind of stuff. Like, what's. So what are the use cases for a credential and to what end? And how does that backward map to things we might do in the core education component and then the social component?
Michael Horn:
So, yeah, that's interesting. The compliance observation. When I was looking at this, I was struck by two things. One, Diane, question: Would you put the counseling function, the guidance counseling function here, would you put it in courses? Would you put it in social service agency, all three, because that's something we know schools are tasked with doing. But do it. I mean, we know the ratios are like 400 something to one students, to guidance counselors. But it seems to fall into a bunch of these.
And so this is the one where I thought to mention it, because you have this signaler or helping shape, right, where students will go after in this one. And then I guess the other one that occurred to me was this last bullet that you had as well. I heard Raj Chetty speak recently, and I hadn't focused on this before, but he put the slide up of schools that disproportionately get their students into selective colleges. And I had just assumed. I live in Lexington, Massachusetts. I had just assumed Lexington high School, closer to where you live, Diane, Palo Alto High School. I just assumed that they would be on par, frankly, with the top private schools, and they're not.
And I was struck by that statistic. It's like, basically a title one Lexington high school sort of count for about the same andover. Whoa. Okay. Now, that counts for a lot. And so I thought that was just interesting against this backdrop then that you mention it. And it seems to me, obviously incredibly problematic because it's completely decoupled, as we know, with the actual work that students are, in fact, doing. And the rate of, as Ryan Craig would call it, the distance traveled.
Right. We would call it growth, but of individual students and what that might signal about where or where not would be a good fit for them.
Diane Tavenner:
On the positive front, I think this category is ripe for solutions, and there's a big opportunity there. So I'm excited to talk about it when we get into the next episode.
Local Government Agency
Diane Tavenner:
So that sort of rounds out the experience of the young people. Now I want to shift to two that are more about the local community and the role that schools play there. And so this first one is what we're calling local government agency. And I just want to tick through the role that schools and districts play. So, number one, they generally have elected school boards. So we've got a full election that's going on. And this seated board that holds public meetings and are beholden to all of those public meeting laws and rules and regulations and all that goes on there. I will just quickly say that many superintendents say that they spend literally half their time, this is the chief executive of a school district.
They will argue that they spend half their time managing their board and those meetings. So take that. The next thing that they do at schools and school districts, most of them can levy taxes, they can issue bonds. I mean, these are government agencies taxing the people. Maybe the most important role of the government in the US or the thing we take most seriously schools can do. They also are required for collecting an extraordinary amount of data and reporting it at the local, state and federal level. This goes on and on all year long. It keeps getting bigger and bigger every year.
They are, when we think of this, they are entrusted with significant dollars, state and federal dollars. I was talking to a state superintendent the other day, she, as the chief learning officer, the state superintendent of instruction controls half the state's budget. And that is not abnormal. Most states are spending about half their budget on education. These are significant dollars that these boards and these people are entrusted to spending. Well, thoughtfully, etcetera. And then finally, they control huge amounts of the public land, you know, and it depends on the state and how that goes. But in some cases, they are even the people who perform the tasks of zoning and entitling land.
Diane Tavenner:
This is the role that the city or the state is often playing for everyone else. But, you know, schools can get exemptions and do that themselves in a lot of cases and places. And so massive, massive governmental roles that schools and districts are playing. And as I thought about this one, I just, I think about my experience in schools and how people who do things like this that involve a lot of money and a lot of land, I would argue, and I'm not going to give a value judgment here, but that is more valued by our society than educating people or providing care for children. Like, when we think about who do we think is more professional, who do we pay more, who do we get? You know, it's the people on the side of the land and the money. So if you revere that a little bit more, where will your time and attention go in a system? But to that, in my experience, there's very little connection between the six things we just talked about.
And this part of the house, and there's very few people who work on it in K12. And I contrast that to our conversation about higher ed, where one of the critiques was, we're starting to see like a one for one, an administrator for every student, not so in K12 at all. So you have far fewer people with different areas of expertise kind of disconnected from the mission and the purpose doing all of these functions. That's a big problem in my mind.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. I don't have data in front of me, but I want to push a little bit on that last point you made, Diane. I think this is where a broad brush might smooth out a lot of variability. So what you described, with far fewer people charged with managing, governing, asset, revenue generating, and liability functions, with far more educators, where these fewer positions are paid a lot more. I think in midsize to small communities, that's probably right. In medium to small size school systems around the country, it might break a little bit when you get to the largest school districts in the country. If you look at the 100 or 200 largest school districts in significant metro areas around the country or in those large counties in Florida and Maryland, there are a lot of administrators. You start to get ratios that are closer.
So if you look at the headcount allocation in large systems like that, classroom fair headcount FTEs as compared with non-classroom FTEs, you get closer to that one to one or sometimes even one plus to one. But your point is well taken. Depending on system size, it might look different in most places. What you said, I think, is exactly right. The other contrast I've made is I agree with the way you framed it. As educators, their value in terms of what we are willing to pay and the people who manage this stuff in the school district, that's one comp. Another comp would be, some of these places, like the larger mid-size and the large ones, we're talking billions of dollars of assets in terms of real estate, physical plant, cash debt, all of those things. You're looking at 300 grand for somebody to be the head of one of these systems. That fits in the public sector. But start to think about the private sector. Somebody who's got billions of dollars of assets under management that they are accountable for, then you put the extra, what should be accountability and transparency of it being my tax dollars and yours and yours and all of ours are actually kind of underpaid. Well, I will be underpaid in terms of the kind of judgment, leadership ability, ability to bring people along into some of these, public levees that we need to do and the kind of expertise at the general management level to even know what right questions to ask, of the financial people who are managing all these assets. I can see it both ways. Underpaying educators relative to administrators. Yeah, maybe underpaying some of these administrators relative to comparable jobs in the private sector, managing this level of resources and complexity. I don't know. I could make that case, too.
Michael Horn:
It's interesting, Stacey. I was just thinking about AI as it comes in and perhaps maybe changes some of these dynamics. We want more human-facing roles, and some others can change because I had the same reaction as you did. I think of places like in New York City or Newark, where it's like half the dollar doesn't even reach the school. It gets stuck in central admin and what the heck is going on there? The second thing I had more as a problem because I think this is a good one to identify, Diane, is how many of these places, like the elections are off cycle. Voting is not very high, and yet you realize what a disproportionate impact.
Stacey Childress:
Yes.
Michael Horn:
These places play in our society and they're kind of decoupled from the democracy. Sometimes we hear an argument, oh, I just wish you were out of politics. Well, guess what? When it's public dollars from taxpayers, it's part of politics. We can hate it, but it is. We've done a lot to sort of take it out of the politics, and I'm not sure that that's been a good thing given to your point, the gravity and enormity of some of these decisions.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah. Just to close this one, I've spent a lot of time in school board meetings over my career, and I think it's just so clear, the tension and a charge that I think is an impossible charge where you have, like this school board that is in the same meeting deciding, if an individual student is going to be expelled from a school and considering whether or not they should sell or buy a gigantic piece of land and whether or not they're going to exempt themselves from zoning and then how to spend bazillions of dollars. There's a problem with that. That's what your regular school board looks like.
Stacey Childress:
Absolutely. As you were kind of tying those two things, might want something. Michael was saying, what you just said, Diane. Oftentimes, school board election turnout is in the single digits. It can pop up above that in some smaller communities where there's a lot of, but not much like it's still a pretty low percentage of people in a given catchment area that are actually making these decisions about who is going to do all of these very critical functions indeed.
Community Hubs
Diane Tavenner:
All right, number eight, staying with this community theme, schools are a hub of communities. They are a centerpiece of many, many communities. When you get to smaller communities and rural communities, they literally are the heart of the community in many cases. If we have seen this over time, when anyone tries to close a school, even in a large city, the response from the community is generally overwhelming in terms of trying to protect that school from closure. So community hub is a huge role, partly because oftentimes schools are a very significant employer, a regional employer in some cases, and a union employer. So this is a significant role they play. They also are a huge part of something that everyone cares about, which is traffic. The comings and goings and the traffic are always a big issue around schools.
As we've talked about, a lot of things happen in schools and their buildings and their campuses, everything from they are the polls, polling places in most cases where democracy is where we do go to vote, they host a whole bunch of events for communities and become the place of that. So this community hub is a significant role they play. The problem I would point out here, in addition to what we've already talked about, which is just like mission creep and capability and all of those things, is oftentimes we talk about in schools that adult interests get put above those of students. I think you start to see it here, where a lot of this is much more about the people in the community and the adults who are working there than it is about the kids. Those interests will preempt those of young people on a variety of topics.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. Nothing to add there, Diane.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. The only thing I would say is there's a parallel to higher ed, right? Small colleges in danger of closing in many areas, many of these in rural areas. The argument you hear, we got to save them, is employment, not some deeper community value necessarily, which I think speaks to the dynamic. Not to say that employment isn't a deep community value. It is in service of what, right? So I think that's often a question.
Pathway to the American Dream
Diane Tavenner:
All right, well, let me bring us home then with number nine. Now we're going to zoom way out to schools and back to the beginning, Michael, of maybe the original purpose of them or some of the original purposes at the most inspirational level. Public schools are the way that Americans achieve the American dream. The idea is that every single American can go to school, a good public school, and have the opportunity to achieve whatever they want to achieve. There aren't doors closed to them. Everything is possible. The American dream is possible because of our public education system. I think over the years, we've sort of layered onto that.
People have built on that and added onto that, you know, this is the place where we actually bring socioeconomic classes together in public schools. And this is where we mix as people and as a community. Stacey, you cited the reformers of the last 20-ish years, or we're moving out of that era. We're not sure what's coming next, but kind of Clinton, Bush, Obama eras. Many people I know have often referred to public education as the civil rights issue of our time. So it is that significant and big that the aspiration and expectation of public education. I guess I would start, I would open the problem conversation here with the idea that I think we have a growing amount of evidence that the system that is public education today is actually producing results that are counter to those aspirations I just named. They might actually be doing harm rather than good. The system might be producing those results.
Certainly we can go into depth there, but I will just leave it there for the two of you.
Stacey Childress:
Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a great one to spend a little time on next time. What we might do, what, if anything, we might do differently, going forward here. That civil rights issue of our time was very grand. It's kind of a messianic evangelical plea, I think, with all good intentions. You're trying to mobilize a broad coalition for improvement, change, transformation because many of us believed, lots of us believed, and I think still believe to some degree, that part of the promise of America is that if you work hard, play by the rules, get a good education, anything's possible for you. There's something deeply American about that notion. Even though we've got shifting ideas of what the American dream might be, I think the power of that as a concept is still quite salient. Even though it might be in transition to some updated definition, it's still a very powerful mobilizer. Part of my stump speeches for years was a quote by Barbara Jordan, who said, "All Americans want, what Americans want from their country is just an America that lives up to its promise."
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Stacey Childress:
Which is small and enormous. Then I would say, part of that promise is a free, high-quality public education near you in your neighborhood. That was my kind of some of the animating instinct behind entrepreneurship for education. The ed reform crowd from, as you said, '95 to about 2015, like, we all talked about it maybe in slightly different ways, but it was that chief animating function. Again, it's kind of, as Michael said, back to the beginning of why we ended up with public schools that then became compulsory high schools that then was, like, kind of embedded in this notion. I think there's some critique of this both on the left and the right politically these days. On the right, the grandiose, progressive project of improving everyone all the time is kind of suspect, and on the left, what is the American dream, anyway? Who gets to decide? Are these institutions so kind of rotten at their core from the beginning, in their design that, of course, they're producing these inequities? It's what they were designed to do in the first place.
I think there's contested ground. But, you know, as we said, on some of these other things, I think there's, I won't call it the great middle or I just think most Americans would still agree. Let me say it even differently. I think most parents and caregivers who have children in schools from pre-K to 12th grade have some things they agree on about what our public schools are for. If kids are going to be in school for 12, 13, 14 years, depending on whether they start at three or four years old, kindergarten, there are some things about our country, about our society that we want kids to understand, feel great about, be challenged maybe by some of the tougher moments in our history, and want to work to make those things not true in the future. That there's some role for our schools to still be that kind of aspirational meeting point, great leveler among different socioeconomic statuses, where in this country, you can still be anything you want to be if you show up, work hard, work with others, figure out where you want to go, and our schools should help you get there. I think there is an element of social reformer. I still can't think of a better word for it. There is one.
I just can't think of it. Like reformer sounds, again, it sounds so 1920s progressive, and we're going to technocratically fix everything through our institutions, which I'm not a huge believer in that, on balance. But I still find something very inspiring about the underlying concept here. If almost every young, well, whether it's private or public, everybody except the percentage of kids that are homeschooled, goes to school starting certainly no later than five or six years old, and they stay there until they're 17 or 18, the things that are going on in those years during the daylight hours, autumn means something for who we are as a country and who we could be. So anyway, I'm starting to preach again, so. But it's still, you know, I'm still very sappy about it.
Diane Tavenner:
Yeah.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. No reason to run from that, right? I think the only two observations I would have here are one, when I saw this on the list, Diane, I thought of the zip code, one that you mentioned that everyone should have a great option for them in their zip code. I guess I thought of something different, which is I thought of our broader trends in society around segregation. We know the history with racial segregation, of course, but the bigger segregation we live in with right now is not race. It's one of ideology and political party, and that we, in fact, don't live in districts where we mix with people who generally think differently from us. So we don't have these conversations or are forced to compromise and live with each other at the Little League fields and in the schools, and sort of live up to what Stacey just was sketching. I guess that's the second thing that I've been wondering about a lot, which is, you both echoed the rhetoric that we used to have of the civil rights issue of our time. I guess I've been thinking a lot about what's the causality? Is it actually the opportunity, maybe above, that drives education to be in service of it, or is it the education that creates? I'm sure it's a bit of both. But going back to your original observation, and I'll end my thought here, Diane, is if we're not teaching in line, like, if we're not running an institution set to, you know, fundamentally around learning, we don't have a great what you learn or how you learn it, maybe it isn't actually driving the causality and the success in the American dream we've historically had. So I guess then that's a difficult set of questions. Is it in service of, and that's where we need to be asking our questions, or can it be different and actually drive this in a more positive direction going forward? That I think we all would hope because we all spend a lot of time on it, so.
Diane Tavenner:
Well, that's a good place to wrap today. Thank you both for wading through my list with me. And if folks have hung in with us this long for an extended episode, we appreciate you and hope you will come back for number two, where we're actually going to talk about solutions that are both already beginning and that we see might be possible and opportunities. So thank you.
Michael Horn:
We'll leave it with that. Right. Thanks for joining us in Class Disrupted. We'll see you next time.
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Brittany Miller and Jasmine Walker of the Southern Education Foundation's (SEF) outcomes-based contracting initiative joined me to discuss how this innovative approach, which ties financial payments to educational outcomes, is shaping the future of education funding and accountability. We dive into how outcome-based contracts works across different types of educational services, what sets SEF’s work apart, and why now is an opportune time for districts to get on board.
Paying vendors based on student outcomes has long been one of my big pushes to school districts. It’s among the reasons I get excited by folks like Joel Rose and Teach to One who say they’d be thrilled to be paid based on outcomes. But so many superintendents have always asked me back: how can we actually do this? Brittany and Jasmine give some great answers—and helped me understand why past efforts in outcome-based contracts haven’t worked.
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Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think through this today… I'm excited about this topic because I feel like as far back as 2009 or 2010, after Disrupting Class had come out, I would be on the stump talking with district superintendents and the like, thinking about the importance of mastery-based learning, outcomes and stuff like that. I'd say, well, why don't you sign your vendors to outcome-based contracts? They would all look at me like how would we do that? And I didn't know the answer. So to help us think through that today, I'm tremendously excited because we have two individuals who are doing that on a daily basis. We have Brittany Miller. She's the director of the Southern Education Foundation's Outcomes-Based Contracting Initiative, so literally called the name that we want to talk about.
And we have Jasmine Walker, who is the Senior Manager for the Outcomes-Based Contract Initiative work, and she's done this in Duval County, Florida, as well, which we'll hear about. So, Brittany and Jasmine, thank you so much for being here. It's great to see you both.
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, thank you for having us. We're excited to chat.
Brittany and Jasmine’s Journey to the Work
Michael Horn:
You bet. I'm excited to learn, so let's dig in with that. Before we get into some of the nitty gritty, Brittany, why don't I start with you? Tell us about how you got into this work. I understand that you put some of this into action in a previous position in Denver before you joined the Southern Education Foundation. I'd love to hear about your journey into this work.
Brittany Miller:
Absolutely. Prior to joining the Outcomes-Based Contracting Initiative on staff, I was a district leader participating in our cohorts, which is the way that we primarily teach outcomes-based contracting to districts. In that pilot cohort, Jasmine was my counterpart in Duval doing the same work that I was doing in Denver in that original cohort. What we were doing is we had just found out about all of the Esser financing that we were going to be getting for the district to support student learning recovery. I had just launched a new department, the Expanded Academic Learning department. With that, we had several initiatives that were focused on student learning recovery outside the traditional core instruction. One of those was high-impact tutoring. We had been involved in the feasibility work that happened out of Harvard University originally. I let out our first outcomes-based contracts for mathematics for our students in grades 4 - 12 with a virtual tutoring vendor, where I think it ended up being about 50% of the contract was contingent on meeting agreed upon student outcomes. So I learned a lot about how to reframe that conversation with a provider to focus on what I know best as a district leader, which with an instructional background is not contracting. What I know best is student learning. When you bring that to the forefront of the contract and you focus on what you want to be true for students, it just shifts that relationship between provider and district. Even down to the school level so that we can all be accountable to the same thing and be really clear about that. So then I was hooked and continued to apply OBC principles to my work in DPS until I ended up coming over and. And had the pleasure of coaching Jasmine through her first semester of implementation of OBC. And now here we are.
Michael Horn:
Wow. So, Jasmine, I want to hear your story into this as well. Like Brittany just said, I understand you had done some of this work in Duvall County and it was also around tutoring. Also around mathematics, I believe. So tell us about your journey into this.
Jasmine Walker:
Yes. So I was first introduced to outcomes based contracting by my superintendent and deputy superintendent. They had heard about the work that was being done through the pilot, and due to COVID and all the things that took place there, we kind of delayed. We ended up joining that first cohort of districts that were learning about outcomes based contracting and how to use it as a lever within our districts. Specifically around those Esser funds and how we can use it for high-impact tutoring. During that time, I was the K-12 math director in Duval County. As I reviewed our data, we had a critical concern about how our students in middle school were performing in mathematics, specifically, those students that were enrolled in 8th-grade mathematics. Typically in our district, what would happen is students that were enrolled in 8th-grade mathematics, were actually students who were performing below grade level, because students who were performing at or above grade level, were in accelerated classrooms. As 8th graders, they would enter Algebra 1, where students that were enrolled in pre-algebra, as an 8th grader, their start, and access to Algebra 1 was being delayed. Some made it into Algebra 1 in 9th grade.
Others weren't accessing Algebra 1 until 10th grade. And we all know that Algebra 1 is that gatekeeper course. If you can't get through it, it lessens the opportunity for other areas of mathematics, other coursework, like science, and then, as we look at students later on in life, what they have access to. What we wanted to do with our outcomes-based contract was change what was happening for our students in Duval County. Also have strategic use of the dollars that we were using through Esser so that we were tying our funds to student achievement.
The Nuts and Bolts of Outcomes-Based Contracting
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Michael Horn:
Super interesting, because we know the use of ESSER funds has become a bit of a flash button issue across the country in terms of were they really aligned to outcomes, and there you put it into the contract. So I'd love to dig into what these arrangements look like that you're putting in place. Brittany, you mentioned that 50%, I think, of the agreement was contingent on outcomes, but just talk to us about what these agreements look like. Brittany, why don't you go first, and then, Jasmine, on this one, you can supplement the answer.
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, so the way that we set up the arrangements as district leaders and then how we coach our districts that we work with now on this is, to start with what matters most to the student population that you want to serve. Everything is literally grounded in that initial concept. We do all of that before we open up what we call a rate card calculator, which is the dynamic pricing tool we have that helps districts price the outcomes. Essentially, once the district has decided on the student population and the outcomes that they believe students can achieve by participating in the intervention, then we coach them through putting together a rate card, which articulates to the provider how much money will be available as a base payment for services delivered, more like your traditional contract that you would have. And then the other portion of payment, we recommend at least 40%. A lot of our districts have been pushing that further to be contingent on agreed upon student outcomes. And so those payments are not delivered until after student data is available and you see whether or not students submit the outcomes. So that's, like, at a very base level, what it looks like. But there's a lot of different elements of both technical and adaptive work that goes into making those decisions as a district and then negotiating that with a provider, either via RFP or contract renegotiation, all of which leads to this mutual accountability between the district provider and school to land on those student outcomes.
Mutual Accountability and Continuous Improvement
Michael Horn:
You've both actually mentioned this mutual student accountability several times at this point. Jasmine, I'd love to talk. Have you talk to us about this? Because on the surface, I think when I hear these contracts, I think, well, this is putting the vendor accountable. How are you structuring it so that the district and school and everyone has skin in the game as well in the same way?
Jasmine Walker:
So I wanted to add on to what Brittany said and then go a little bit deeper into accountability. So one of the things that is different, like the big shift in mindset when it comes to outcomes based contracting that districts are having to make, is that they are paying for outcomes and not services. The district is driving the price because they're saying, this is what we're willing to pay for these outcomes. So that is a big shift, even for myself as a former district leader from traditional contractors. I just wanted to share that. And something that we always tell districts is this is like our slogan, if you will. We say, we buy outcomes, not services. And that's how we begin to shift toward that agreement of mutual accountability, because what we want is both parties to have skin in the game.
So when we talk about mutual accountability, especially if we're doing like an RFP or bid documents, the district lays out what are things that they need from the provider in order to ensure that we're working towards meeting student outcomes. But in the same token, these are the things that the district is going to do in order to ensure that the conditions that are needed for the provider to be successful happen. Also in the RFP, the provider can say, hey, these are some additional things that we're going to need from the district to ensure that we can do what we need to do for our services or our products to work. So that's something that is very clear, that's laid out in an RFP and in a contract, so that the contract becomes more sticky, if you will, because you're clarifying what both parties are responsible for. So in the past, district took on all the risks they paid regardless of whether any outcomes were achieved. Now that responsibility is being shared. At the end, hopefully win win situation, students achieve the outcomes providers incentivize for their innovation and the work that they put into ensuring that students achieve those outcomes.
Michael Horn:
So stay with that for a moment. Jasmine, if I can go to you one more on this, which is what happens then, if, say, the district doesn't fulfill their side of the bargain, what's the upside for the vendor or protection, if you will, for the vendor in that circumstance?
Jasmine Walker:
Michael, I'm glad you asked about that because there is something that's built into the contract to support that work as well, because we all know things happen. So there's language written into the contract that says if certain things don't happen, the district will be responsible for not only paying that base payment, but those contingent payments for the students that were involved as well. So, like, an example that I'll use is when we talk about high impact tutoring, in order for students to receive tutoring, they actually have to be at school, or if it's virtual, they have to actually get on the computer. A provider doesn't have control of that. Who does have some control of that is the school. So laying in some language that where a district says attendance will be at 80% and so that they have a metric that they have to meet in order to ensure, again, that they're providing the necessary conditions for the provider to do, to meet those expectations that were laid out in the contract, those outcomes. Additionally, something else that is built in and part of our, a part of OBC that we're very passionate about is continuous improvement. So although we have these mutual accountability mechanisms built into the contract, it's not like, oh, in one instance, this didn't happen.
District pays the provider, you know, regardless, there's checkpoints along the way so that both parties are able to continuously improve on the implementation if something isn't going right, coming together, problem solving, so that we can end up where we want to be, which is achieving those student outcomes.
Attributing Growth to Specific Interventions
Michael Horn:
Super interesting. So, Brittany, let me turn to you on this one then, because I'm just sort of curious how you measure growth and attribute it to a specific vendor, because obviously, and maybe, Jasmine, part of your answer starts to get at this. But we know that, say, math learning, there's a lot of things impacting that child's achievement, not just the tutoring intervention. So how do you think about attributing gains or not gains, right. To a specific vendor and measuring that?
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, it's a question that comes up a lot. My short answer is, we're not there yet. We're still in the process of evaluating this work and figuring out from, like, a rigorous evaluation perspective to what degree is outcomes based contracting really shifting the outcomes for kids?
More generally speaking, when it comes to the specific provider and district arrangement, we are not claiming that it's a one to one correlation that if said student receives x intervention, then it's completely attributed to the provider. Depends on the intervention. It also depends on what else is happening in that child's life. So some of the students are receiving really strong core instruction from a supportive teacher on a daily basis. We have other cases where, unfortunately, you know, there's long term subs in the mathematics classroom, since that's such a hard position to fill, especially when we're looking at secondary schools, in which case, you know, perhaps it is more attributed to the tutoring provider because they're getting the same tutor every day, which, you know, is in some cases the most consistent instruction that we're able to get that particular child.
In either case, the focus is not to demonstrate any sort of causality between the two, but instead to get us focused on the thing that matters, which is student learning and use the research base for that particular product line to name what we think is possible for kids.
And so in the high impact tutoring instance, we know that students can achieve significant growth if they participate in tutoring sessions a minimum of three times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes in a group size of no more than one to three.
There's been plenty of research on this coming out of the national student support accelerator and other entities that we work really closely with to understand the research base and what's possible. And so then what we're coaching the district around is saying, what is our theory of action of what it would take to actually achieve the outcomes that we know are possible from the research base, and then align that theory into practice, by the way, that we set up the arrangement with the provider.
And then what that does is it shifts behavior of the adults in the system to stay focused on what we know can happen for a child based on the research for that particular product line. And then from there, if the outcomes are achieved, yes, the provider gets paid, but what they're getting paid is what they would have been paid regardless of whether or not outcomes were achieved in a prior relationship.
And so there is an upside that we build into the pricing scenario with our district so that they are rewarding the provider should all of the outcomes be met for taking that additional risk. But it's not, you know, a bonus payment of any kind because there's so much money contingent on the outcomes that it's actually part of the payment that they would usually provide to a service provider just for delivering services.
And so anyways, there's a lot of research questions that we're still answering about this, but the biggest thing that we coach our districts around is like, what does the research base on this product line say? What's your baseline data say about your student population? And then how do you figure out what you believe is possible so that we all just get focused on the right thing, even if it's not perfect.
The Response from Vendors
Michael Horn:
It's really interesting the way you're segmenting it, the research based on the product or service that we're talking about, and making sure that the payments or the expectations are in line with what that could deliver. It gets into my next question, and I'd love to have you both comment on it if you want. Brittany, why don't we start with you? But it's around. Are vendors willing to do this? And do you see different vendors willing to do this, say, in tutoring versus textbooks or digital curriculum? What's that conversation look like? Because obviously, it's a very big shift for the vendor, but in many ways, it shouldn't necessarily be a surprising one because I always say, like, in any market, the customer should always be right. Education is this weird one where somehow that has not always been followed. So, Brittany, why don't you share some of your experience with that? And then, Jasmine, I bet you have some stories, too.
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. And to that point, I think that that's something that is, we are always coaching our districts around, and Jasmine and I had to be coached around as well, which is you're the buyer. It turns out you actually have the spending power as a district.
And that is, it's different for us in K-12 education. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's a systems problem, right. It's not an individual district leader or an individual provider problem. It's the system overall. And so what we found is that because in so many cases, the buyer is an instructional leader. And like I started with, I didn't learn how to negotiate contracts when I was going to, you know, school for all of the years, learning about instructional methods and how to, like, help kids learn and how you measure that, right. What I did do is learn how to apply that through the outcomes based contracting work to a contracting process, which then gives me the buying power and the leverage that I actually understand in order to drive student outcomes.
And so taking that world of, you know, the chief financial officer's side of the house and the chief academic officer side of the house and putting those together is new and different for our districts. And it has the power to really transform these agreements with a provider to make sure that we stay focused on student learning. When we think about other product lines, we are constantly doing feasibility work to see where other areas are that we can go into outcomes based contracting. This is very new to k twelve. And so all of our district leaders, when they first learn about this, they're like, I should be doing this with everything. Why haven't I been doing this with everything all along? Right? And our response to that is, we agree, but not yet. Like, let's figure it out step by step. Right? It's new to the marketplace and in more developed marketplaces, like the Ed tech intervention space that we're in now, we see that there's different nuances that we have to pay attention to.
So when we're talking about high impact tutoring as a use case, we had 55 unique providers apply to the different rfps that were released over two cohorts. No RFP got less than ten responses. And all of the districts were able to successfully negotiate a contract and are either implementing services now or have renegotiated and continue to implement services either with the same provider or a different provider.
Making OBC Work for EdTech Contracts
So we have those proof points in place, and we really believe that because of the feasibility work we did and because we worked alongside both providers and districts to understand what arrangement would actually work for this, we've seen so much traction from the provider side where they're definitely willing to do this work. So we're in that same process now with Ed Tech, where we haven't had any rfps released yet, but our template is going out to our districts, I think today or tomorrow for the RFP based on all the work that we've done. And so we're working to develop that infrastructure alongside our districts and providers and make sure that what we're putting out really aligns with that research base. And edtech is a much more advanced and stable marketplace. And so it is different than when we were talking about high impact tutoring in these providers were in many cases growing pretty rapidly in the time of Essa.
We're not talking about a time when districts are really shrinking their budget, specifically when they look at how many ed tech interventions they've put in place over the last several years and thinking more critically about how to really serve students effectively with those interventions. And so we have to think about things like, what's your data interoperability look like in your district? Like, will you be able to successfully share outcomes with your provider? And all of the different metrics that, you know would lead to those outcomes.
What is your usage rate look like currently for that product? Like, what's realistic in terms of what to get to for usage rate if you were to shrink the student population and have a more focused intervention for that group of students.
And so all of those different elements go into what makes it something that providers are willing to consider because of the intentionality around it and that shared risk.
It's not that all the risk goes to the provider. It's a shared risk so that we can really nail down, like, how to arrive on student outcomes effectively.
Michael Horn:
Jasmine, what would you add?
Jasmine Walker:
I would add that I was definitely one of those district leaders that said, I'm going to do this for everything. But what I tell districts now, let's not treat outcomes based contracting like it's a silver bullet. Let's get clear about how we are using our procurement processes as a lever to support implementation of products and services for our students. When it comes to vendors responding, I was one of those districts. I was like, people are going to actually respond to this RFP. I got 16 responses. So there were vendors that were willing to get in, roll up their sleeves, and, you know, help us to move our students. So that wasn't an issue at all, as I think about the districts that we're working with now, now that we're in the edtech space.
Brittany shared that, you know, we conducted a feasibility study. So the people that participated in that feasibility study was both districts and providers, small districts, larger districts, nonprofit providers versus for profit providers, charter school management organizations. So there were different groups of people that helped to inform network. In addition to that feasibility study, we also pulled together an edtech working group, and that group was made up of district leaders and providers to help inform this mutual accountability piece that we talked about to inform what this pricing model was going to look like. Because, like Brittany shared, it's different from high impact tutoring. So we got a lot of folks involved, a lot of different stakeholders to help us to build out what this work was going to look like as we moved into this new area of innovation, like we shared, you know, we're educating districts about this form of contracting, but we're doing it for providers as well. So we just finished a provider series where we wrapped up talking about what outcomes based contracting looks like, specifically targeting our edtech providers so they can become knowledgeable about outcomes based contracting and how it applies to their context. In the fall, you do a little plug.
In the fall, we'll be doing a fall, our annual fall convening where district leaders come from across the country to learn about outcomes based contracting and begin to think about how they can leverage it in their districts. Some of the folks are our alumni. They're returning folks that want to expand and deepen their work in their districts. And then others are just new. They heard about us. They want to learn more and they want to do it this year. We're also going to do. At the end of that, we're going to offer a provider summit.
So we're going to engage with providers, both from the high impact tutoring world, from the edtech world, and maybe even our curriculum based professional learning world, so we can continue to spread the message and educate folks on both sides.
Why OBC Is Working This Time Around
Michael Horn:
It's great. And the fact that you'd get 16 vendors off the top and then start to develop this ecosystem through these convenings and the like sounds incredible. Momentum. I'm just curious a little bit more about the why hasn't this happened before? And when I dug into this a little bit, it seemed like there were some efforts to try this back in the 1990s and stuff like that, and it didn't really work out, and I don't know the reasons why. So I wondered if you can sort of point to what's maybe different now than past attempts to try to put this in place. I'll let whoever, whichever one of you wants to take that can jump in.
Jasmine Walker:
I jump on the first, and then Brittany can follow up with it. But what I would say is the world is different. When we think about how fast, like, everything is starting to innovate, how AI is coming into play, how things are. When I think about the McDonald's that I just saw where there are no people, everything is automated. There's trucks, semi trucks driving down the road with no driver. So I think that this type of contracting is just the right time. I don't think we were quite ready for this level of contracting, maybe in the nineties, but the way that we're going, we're to innovating. We have to innovate when it comes to our buying practices as well. And I think OBC is one of those things.
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, I'll add on to that, Jasmine. I think there's a couple of things coming together at the nexus of this context. And then I'll also speak a little bit to, like, the things that we've learned that are making these arrangements successful. So when it comes to the context that we're living in, right. We have AI, we have declining budgets for school districts, we have a lot of boards of educations across the country saying, what happened with our esser funding? Was it actually tied to outcomes, as you named earlier, Michael? And so with all of those different factors coming into play together, outcomes based contracting has found a way to sit in the middle of that space for the districts that are participating so that they're really able to understand how we can leverage those different elements of the contract in order address all of those changes that are happening.
And the reason that I believe that we're seeing so many districts signing on to do the ED tech intervention work is because they recognize that something's going to have to shift if they're actually going to make good use of technology in the classroom.
It's no surprise that we have really low usability or usage rates for these ed tech interventions that we know can make a difference in a kid's life. But none of them are actually used the same way that they are in a randomized control trial.
So we're thinking about that really carefully and because of the way that boards of education are asking for. What's your evidence that this is actually working for kids? Why are we spending x million of dollars on it? And the district's just having to shrink the budget like, this is a really practical application of those different factors coming together and for the edtech components of that, specifically, when it comes to all of the driverless vehicles and technology that Jasmine was speaking about, I think we have a real responsibility to make sure that as we go down these new frontiers, we stay focused on what matters in education, and that is student learning, period, the end.
And so we don't just collect quantitative data. We also collect qualitative data and go and do empathy interviews with students in the districts that we support so that the provider and district can hear directly from kids about how this is impacting them.
That creates that power and that relationship to stay focused on the student experience and student learning. And so when all of of this different innovation and rapid change is happening, we can ground in one thing, and that's something that we can all measure together and really understand how to get better and better at that as the world continues to change. So that's kind of the context piece. I can answer what our project does differently as well. Would that be helpful?
Michael Horn:
Yeah, I think let's do that. Yeah.
The Southern Education Foundation Difference
Brittany Miller:
Okay, cool. And then, so for the outcomes based contracting project in particular and the work that we've been leading, I think that the difference from what I've seen in other pay for performance models, because we get folks that call us and say, hey, what do you think of this pay for performance model? Is really that the pay for performance in its most traditional sense early on, was really focused only on how to hold the person providing the services accountable and the real shift in the way that we do business and that we've worked with our technical assistance partner or third sector capital that's done this work in various social sector industries is to make sure that it's not just the provider that's accountable, but also the entity that's purchasing the service. And that is different from what I've seen in other models where it still leaves everything up to chance. Because even though it's in the best interest of the district to achieve those outcomes, if it's not something that you're contractually obligated to and payment is tied to, as Jasmine was explaining for the mutual accountability language in the contract, then it doesn't rise to the top of your list as a district leader. You're just too busy. So by tying it into the contract and into payment, putting it in front of your board, it's a lot easier for me as a district leader to say to all of the folks that I'm working with, we actually have to do this because if not, we're going to have to pay for outcomes that our kids aren't achieving. And that shifts the conversation and it shifts the way that we're able to work alongside the district and provider. What happens with funds that are spent
Michael Horn:
It's really interesting. There's two elements there that seem really important. One is the fact that you have those qualitative measures so that you're not getting too, I guess, narrowly focused on maybe one number or something like that, that could get manipulated or something like that. And then second, it sounds like that really thoughtful conversation about making sure that the district is accountable is so critical so that it becomes a priority for all parties. It's not just sort of like, well, we threw it over the fence to the vendor and somehow they'll do magic. I guess that gets into the last question I want to finish up on, which is the outcomes piece of this I think is the most exciting part. Right. If we're really able to align around moving the needle for students, that could be huge.
The second piece of this is presumably the districts can now save resources where it's not working for a given student and then either redeploy those resources to something that is of higher value for that individual or save it for the next year so that they can help that child. I love you to talk us through when funds aren't spent, those contingency dollars that the boost for really being successful. What happens with those dollars and how are districts thinking about that piece? Because that was a question I would get a lot is like what happens to those extra dollars that maybe we had put aside if they were successful. What do we do with those now?
Brittany Miller:
Yeah, I can start. And then Jasmine, feel free to jump in. Yes. We've done a lot of work on the financing side of this, too, because that's the first thing that we've heard from CFOs. If I don't spend my title dollars, they're just going to go back to the government.
So we actually have on our website, it's OVC dot southerneducation.org. We have a section that has a bunch of different tools in it. And under the resources section, there's one that's a federal funding faq. And it goes over what the allowability is for federal funding, like your entitlement funds that would typically be used for something like an outcomes based contract. Now that we're moving into a post Esser era. And what we found in doing some digging is that the language for federal stipulations doesn't actually say that you have to spend within that year. It can actually roll into the next year because all of our title dollars are actually on a three year spending timeframe. And so we go through the guidance for that and what that could look like in terms of being able to spend down those dollars in the future.
Another thing that we've seen our districts doing is thinking through how they can braid funds with some of their general funds as well. And then those general funds are more flexible to roll over year over year. So that's another area of consideration. Honestly, we've heard a lot of concern about this. And to date, we haven't seen anybody actually have an issue with figuring out how to spend down the dollars later. But it is a fear that folks have. And so we have done some due diligence to try to address that, but it hasn't become an issue today. And I think what we have heard more is that it's not just the cost savings of not giving the money to not paying the provider for the outcome.
The other cost saving that comes in is when the kid is actually successful, then they move out of the intervention. And so when you think about that at scale, then you don't have to continue to deliver the same level of intervention to students year over year because they're not actually moving.
So one of our districts in Colorado Springs, in one of the schools, half the students no longer qualified for the intervention at the mid-year point.And so in that case, like the principal was like, can I have spots for my, you know, third graders? No, because my fourth and fifth graders have matriculated out of the program. They don't qualify anymore.
What a wonderful problem to have. I'm sure we can figure out how to spend the dollars more effectively if that's the problem that we're trying to solve for.
Michael Horn:
Well, that, I mean, it's fascinating on a few levels because then you get to a more nuanced understanding of, you know, spending your resources on those who need it the most and being more strategic about that. But, Jasmine, last thoughts from you here.
Jasmine Walker:
So I was one, I had funds left over after my implementation, and what it actually empowered us to do was to expand our work with outcomes based contracting. So we launched a new contract for high impact tutoring the, the following school year, actually, this school year is running right now and using those dollars and added some more dollars to support our students. And we expanded the program actually to now cover 7th and 8th grade so we can kind of catch students a little bit earlier and support them so that we are ensuring that our students are getting that algebra readiness that they need for the future. But I wanted to add another note to that. Duval county actually is, has joined our cohort now for Ed Tech as well. So that work, not only did they continue to work with high impact tutoring, they're actually expanding into edtech as well. So, you know, the chief academic officer, she really saw the benefit of using outcomes based contracting as a lever with these dollars. Additionally, I just met with another district right before joining you for this ca
And something that, like, happened, we, they just, you know, took an assessment. Students just took an assessment so we can measure whether, you know, the outcome was achieved for this period of time. And they actually maxed out their outcome cap. And I was like, wow, what a celebration. You allocated, you know, this many funds to this particular outcome, and the students just exceeded, you know, what you expected. So, you know, that feels good to a district. Like, districts want to spend the money, but they want to spend it on the outcomes, like students actually achieving.
Michael Horn:
Well, we'll say amen to that. And just, Brittany, Jasmine, thank you so much for spearheading this work, not just in the districts you were serving, but now to a much larger cohort across the country and really appreciate the work you're doing.
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Mackenzie Price, the founder of Alpha, an innovative private school network in Texas, and 2hr Learning, an educational technology that has sprung from the curricular model at her schools, joined me for this latest conversation. In it, she explains how Alpha leveraged technology and redesigned traditional school structures to more effectively and efficiently teach core competencies. 2hr Learning is now packaging that model so its benefits can be realized by educators everywhere.
We talked about how schools can use the time freed up to better support students in pursuing their passions and building life skills—something that homeschoolers, Summit Public Schools, and Acton Academy (just to name a few) have long known. But Alpha and 2hr Learning come at this question from a different angle—not just with its branding, but also with its acceptance of traditional measures like test scores. I learned a lot from the conversation, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne, and you are at the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us think about that today, I'm tremendously excited because I've been hearing, I think everywhere, reading everywhere about the school and then school network and now app and a whole bunch of things called alpha schools. And we have the co founder herself, Mackenzie Price, and we're going to get to hear all about it and get a picture of it firsthand. So, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me. I can't wait for this conversation.
Mackenzie Price:
Well, Michael, I'm so thrilled to be here. I was really excited when I got this invitation.
Mackenzie’s Journey to Founding Alpha Schools
Michael Horn:
So I can't wait for us to have a great conversation about where the future of education is headed, because I think you're helping shape it. And so I want to hear more about that. So let's dive into it. What is Alpha schools? What's the story behind it?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, well, I will start at a little bit of the beginning, which is in 2014. I had some background in working on some education initiatives, but I don't think there's anything like being a mom to really bring those bear claws out and say, we need something better. So I have two daughters that are now 18 and 16 years old. But when it was time for them to go to school, we sent them down the street to our local public school. My husband and I are both products of public school education. So for us, that was kind of what we were going to do. But very quickly, I found myself getting frustrated with the lack of ability for much personalization or adaptation to happen for where my kids were. And I would say, after about two and a half years, my oldest daughter and I were having a conversation one day, and she said, mom, I don't want to go to school tomorrow.
And I looked at her and I was like, what do you mean? You love school. And she looked at me and she goes, school is so boring. And I just had this light bulb moment of like, this is a kid who was one of those tailor made, goody two shoe good little girls who was, like, meant to go to school and love school. And in two and a half years, the system had kind of taken this kid and just wiped away that passion. And I'd been really involved in the school district that my kids were at. And I talked to administration. And they said, mackenzie, I understand your issues and your frustrations, but this is like trying to steer the Titanic, and it's just too hard. And that was my cue that we got to do something else.
For me, it wasn't about going to private school over public. It was about, we need a new model of education. And I looked around and I didn't really see anything that was going to address the concerns I had. So I kind of said, I guess we need to start this ourselves. I found a couple other partners who were willing to go forge ahead with this. And we started in a house with 16 kids. And from the beginning, we used adaptive apps for doing learning so that kids could receive kind of a personalized, go at your own pace education. And then that was opening up the afternoon.
And at that point, we focused on public speaking and entrepreneurship. Fast forward ten years, and we have alpha schools. We've got campuses in Austin, Texas, Brownsville, Texas. We've just announced that we're opening a campus in Miami, and then we're launching multiple other schools that are all based on the idea of what I call two hour learning, which is really the thought that, you know, parents, your kids don't need to spend 6 hours sitting in class in order to crush academics. They can learn very efficiently and to mastery in 2 hours. And of course, that opens up the question of, like, what do you spend the rest of the day doing? Because I can tell you one thing, Michael. Parents don't want their kids coming home after 2 hours. Right? They want more than that.
And so what we've done is we've created an environment where kids get to spend the rest of the day focusing on life skill development. And it's been great. And I've got a senior in high school now. So when she finally found out she got into her first-choice college, she looked at me and said, okay, Mom, I can officially say thank you for putting me in your weird school, because it's paid off. You know, it's.
Michael Horn:
That's amazing. I love an entrepreneur solving their own problem and by extension, so many other problems. I'm laughing as you're telling the story for two reasons. One, I feel like I'm living a mirror existence in some ways. I had written, obviously, about all this stuff for years, and then I thought, well, I'll, you know, I'll help turn my school district. We met with a similar set of answers, and, we found an existing school for my daughters. But it's so interesting to hear the coin of entrepreneurship there. I'm also laughing because during the pandemic, Diane Tavner and I have this Class Disrupted podcast, and we said, homeschool families have figured this out in two hours.
What do you use the rest of the time for? And we had the exact same answer. She calls it habits of success. You call it life skills development. So I just love that we all sort of reach the same conclusion as you start to put this stuff into action. I'd love to hear a little bit more, because are you based in Austin, Texas? Like, there are Acton Academies that have similar philosophies? I think so. I'd love to hear more about why start something as opposed to maybe go to other existing options.
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, we are based in Austin, and Acton Academy has been a really phenomenal model. Jeff and Laura Sandifur have been really true pioneers in the alt ed space. So they were very inspirational. And actually, when I was first looking around, their school was so full that, you know, there was no hope of getting in. They had a long waitlist, and we ended up working with a guide that had been trained out of Acton Academy for the school that we started. So a lot of similarities, and I think it's an interesting point you bring up, Michael, which is some of these ideas that we toss around, like the idea of personalized learning, the idea of, you know, kids being able to develop life skills. They're not crazy novels, you know, oh, my gosh, what is this? What are these people talking about? However, when we think about our education system, nothing has been done to address those concerns. Right? And we try these little, tiny, you know, take a bucket of water and try to empty the ocean, you know, solving problems, theories for this.
But it's time for us to really change. And COVID was very helpful in helping wake people up to realize, gosh, the way my kid is spending their day in school is not all that great. And then, of course, the results we've seen post-COVID have been so atrocious. And, of course, instead of catching up, kids are falling further behind, which has been a great thing for understanding that there is so much room for disruption in education, and it's time for us to make that happen. So that's one of the things I focus a lot of my attention on, is getting parents to understand that they can and should expect a better and different experience than the one they had.
Communicating Alpha School’s Benefits
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Michael Horn:
So tell me more about that, because that seems like COVID, as you said, was a catalyzing event for a lot of families and kids realizing we don't have to settle for this. We're seeing a lot more choices out there in the landscape, and yet we're also seeing families slip back sort of into the status quo and so forth. How are you catalyzing people to find alpha schools? How are you getting them excited about 2-hour learning and then all of the rich work that you can do with the rest of the time as your point is making, is that why you're opening so many schools, because the demand is just there or what does that look like as more people find out and you convince them you can do this?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, I think COVID provided an opportunity where again, parents got to to see inside what their school was doing and they often weren't happy about it. Then on top of it, there was so much politicization of whatever that is. There was a lot of politics that went with going back to school. And we were pretty fortunate because our school philosophy is very much, hey, we're here to do two things. We're here to teach your kid great academics and learn twice as fast in only 2 hours. We're here to teach life skills. And by the way, your kid's going to love school, which should be expected, right? I love talking to kids that I meet and I'll ask them, do you like school? And most of the time they say, not really. Or if they say, yeah, I like school, I'll say, what's, what do you like best about school? And you know, 95% of the time the answer is pe, lunch, recess, my friends.
Michael Horn:
Right.
Mackenzie Price:
And to me I'm like, that is such a bummer. We want kids to love the process of learning and becoming critical thinkers and gaining new skills and being challenged. And so what we tend to attract are parents who are also willing to be a little bit more innovative. And they're able to say, yeah, I think my kids should expect a different experience than what we all grew up doing. Right. And the experience we've had. And one of the things that's really interesting about what I love about our model, we don't test kids and admit them based on if they're doing a certain level, we'll take a kid wherever they're at because we know that by providing this AI tutor and adaptive learning, we can raise a kid. So we commit that within two years we'll have kids 90th percentile or above, which I wholeheartedly believe that by 8th grade every kid should be able to be 90th percentile or above in their core subjects.
Unlike so many traditional school experiences where kids kind of get put in a trajectory, and it's like, oh, my kid's kind of an average student, and that's just what they're going to be. And so we get great results. But like in Brownsville, for example, our Brownsville campus, about half of our students come from families with median incomes of less than $40,000 a year. We have about two-thirds of our students are neurodivergent. Generally, a lot of those kids come in under the 25th percentile. For example, our second-grade math class in January 2023 was at the 31st percentile. One year later, on January 24, they were at 84th percentile. And that's the power of providing this one-to-one learning experience.
We can raise the floor of what's possible for kids and explode the ceiling off of what's possible, so that those kids who are able to move at a quicker pace are, you know, the sky's the limit, right? And they do that all so much more efficiently and in less time that then we get to focus on the things that we as parents really want our kids to be able to have. Right? Developing empathy, learning how to communicate, you know, expanding those critical thinking skills. I think that's what we want for our future citizens.
EdTech, AI, and the 2-Hour Learning Model
Michael Horn:
Okay, so this is amazing because you basically, by having a mastery based, personalized approach, you're making sure kids hit those marks. And to your point, everyone can be successful. Unbelievable results. Talk to us about, what is that like? Where is that AI tutor from? What are the apps you're using? What does that two-hour block look like? And how are kids engaging in it?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, well, as far as the 2-hour learning program goes, it is a mix of a few things. We use some third-party adaptive apps that everyone's got access to. Alex, edit that one, please. We use a few different apps that people would know of things like Alex Khan Academy, Ixl, Grammarly, Newsela, you know, a lot of apps that are out there in the world. We've also created some of our own apps, particularly for our younger students, kindergarten, and first grade, where the math and reading apps haven't been quite as strong. And, one of the things we found in the last ten years is that not all apps are equal, and not all apps are equal in every subject, at every level.
Michael Horn:
Right?
Mackenzie Price:
And so part of what we've been able to figure out is at what stage in a kid's k through twelve educational journey is this app really good at teaching this particular subject? And then it's time to move to a different app, or this app works really well, for students who are learning this type of way, and then what we've done and where I'd say AI innovation has come from is we built an AI tutorial that guides kids through this process because unfortunately, edtech has not been that holy grail solution that everyone hoped it would be when it was introduced about ten years ago. You unfortunately can't hand a kid an iPad and, you know, an app and say, let me know when you graduated high school. Right? They'll do all kinds of things. They'll do everything from not even looking at the app to what we call anti-patterns. They'll topic shop, or as soon as something starts getting hard, they'll back out of it, right? Or they won't read the explanations when they get a question wrong. And so what our AI tutor has done is really guide kids to be able to learn how to efficiently use the apps. We also have up the mastery level so that kids are truly, truly doing that. And then we're using constant data in order to find out, like, is this kid taking too long to answer these questions? And if so, is it because they're struggling with this particular concept, or is there a hole from maybe previous, you know, knowledge that they need to get? The other beauty of AI is that what we're able to kind of combine is three things.
The curriculum that we need to teach, the knowledge tree of that specific individual student, and their interests. So you might have a kid who is needing to learn fractions, and he's struggling, and he loves Dungeons and Dragons, and he can now roll a dice game to learn fractions with a Dungeons and Dragons theme, right? And so we're able to kind of cater the learning experience to a kid's interests. You know, we'll see this with some of our young readers. You know, if you're a first-grade student reading at an 8th-grade level, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to be reading 8th-grade content. These kids still want to be, you know, reading about butterflies and, you know, fairies. And so how do we up the Lexile level but keep the content the right way? And that's one of the places where AI has just done an incredible job for that. But the other key to this, and again, the reason that edtech hasn't been this, this magic solution is that it's only 10% of what creates a great learner. 90% of it, in my opinion, is you have to have a motivated student.
Right? And that's part of the reason that when you're putting Ed tech in a classroom and said, hey, go spend 15 minutes a few times a week working on this app. You know, it doesn't really help. We're still dealing with the fundamental teacher in front of a classroom model where kids are all put in the same kind of pace. You have certainly heard that story a million times, and your audience has, too. But we got to find that motivational model that works. And for us, it's that time that opens up for the rest of the day to go do really fun activities. And we have schools, you know, alpha school was the first school that was started, and that school, we do general life skills workshops that are just really fun and exciting. But we're also launching schools.
We have a sports academy that's launching this fall. Where would you guess it? Kids get to do athletics and PE and sports all afternoon. We have an esports academy for middle school students where we use esports and gaming to teach life skills. And then we also have a GT school that's launching this fall where kids will be doing more academically rigorous workshops in the afternoon as well. So you can imagine a world. And this is always a question I'll ask you, Michael. If you were able to do all of your academics in 2 hours a day, what would you have done with the rest of your day? Right. And that's always an interesting question.
Ask adults, like, what would you have done with that time? And that's what I think we need to be building on in the future is, what are those core skills that we teach kids in order to be great critical thinkers? And then what opportunities does that open up for?
Metrics for Mastery and the Role of Adults
Michael Horn:
The rest of this is so cool. And I want to get more into that second block in a moment before we leave that first block, that 2 hours, one quick geek out question, then one slightly deeper one. I think the geek out question is, how do you measure mastery? Like, when you say they're, you know, 25th percentile, they grew to 84th percentile. What's the instrument you're using to measure?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, we're big fans of standardized testing, so we use map testing, and I think that's different from a lot of alternative models. It's so important to have data and understanding. And part of the reason standardized testing has gotten such a bad rap is that schools don't do anything with the results of their tests other than just get a report card. Right. But what you can do is when we take our map tests and we're able to say, okay, here are the many pages of information about what our student knows and what they don't know, and we plug that into our AI system, and then go fill those holes. That's where we can get mastery. And so, like at Alpha school this year, across the board, our kids are learning 2.6 times faster than the rest of the country according to map tests. Our top two-thirds are learning 3.6 times faster, and our top 20% are learning six and a half times faster.
And that's part of the reason that I don't care if a student comes in and they're in the 10th percentile. I know I can get them up, you know, and they can. They can get to where they're above the 90th percentile, you know, in the period of a couple of years. This is truly, I think, what's going to be the great equalizer for education, and it's scalable. You know, one thing that I didn't mention, we don't have academic teachers. We have no teachers teaching. Our kids are fully learning via this AI tutor. Now, what we do have, and it is absolutely critical to our model, is we have adults in the building that we call guides, and their sole job is to provide motivational and emotional support to these students, to help them get connected with their why and get excited about what they're doing, help them overcome challenges when they reach them.And that's what a lot of the rest of the day is.
Creating Coherence Across Subjects
Michael Horn:
It's interesting because I think you do a great job as you explain this. Yes, the knowledge of a student, their background, and experiences that matter. So that sort of checks off the core knowledge camp of the world, if you will. Then you say, and the teacher doesn't have to be the sage on the stage. There's still the guide on the side. Right? So, we can have both of these philosophies in the same camp, if you will, as long as we do it in this mastery-based, personalized way that you've constructed. I guess that gets to the one other question. I'd love you just to sort of think through with me, which is one of the critiques I sometimes hear about.
I don't know if I'd call it a playlist approach what you're doing, but sort of, you know, piecing together. Right. This app is best at teaching this. This one is teaching that we might lose connective tissue or coherence between the ways we teach history or social studies or science or things like that. How do you all get these things to sort of speak the same language, for lack of a better phrase, and create that coherence?
Mackenzie Price:
Well, one of the things that we do is, again, when we're asking kids to get to mastery level on each app, and we have them run through a couple of apps, right? So if they, if they do a first app and they're doing, you know, the math here, you know, 5th-grade math in one app, and then they go to another app and they're doing 5th-grade math, first of all, anything that they've mastered, they'll immediately test out of, right? And so we're understanding that they've got complete completion there, and then anything that they've missed, you know, they're able to learn back. One of the things that's really interesting, is we'll have students come in who are new to our school. You know, we had a, we had a girl who came in as an 8th grader, and she'd been a straight student at her old school, and her parents said she's a fabulous math student and she's great. And, you know, she should be ahead. And so we want her going into, you know, into algebra and 8th grade, you know, she should be a year ahead. And we said, well, we want to just help her understand, like, see where she's really at. And they're like, no, no, we know where she's at. She got straight a's in her last class, and she should be in algebra.
And so we do something called a hundred for 100. And we'll say to kids, all right, here's what we're gonna do. You can get 100% on a Texas star test. We'll give you dollar 100, right? And these kids are like, whoa, a $100 is great. And we said, and here's what it is. You can pick whatever grade you want on the SAR test. And suddenly that kid who's like, I'm in 8th grade student was like, well, you know, can I take a 2nd grade test? It's like, well, not second grade. Let's go to fourth grade.
And what's interesting is they'll go and they'll take that 4th grade test, and lo and behold, they won't have gotten 100% on it, right? And suddenly it helps the parents and the student go, oh, maybe I'm missing some, like, 4th grade concepts. But then we go and we fill in those holes, and that's done really quickly, right? It's easy to go, you know, to catch up pretty soon. Let's go to fifth grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and you can get a really complete picture of what a student knows. And then when we're using these different apps and testing to understand what a kid has. Where we see this at the high school level is our students are still taking the AP curriculum that traditional high schools are offering. They're scoring well on those AP exams. They're getting, I think 94% of our students got fours or fives, which is pretty unheard of sats. You know, the average SAT score of our senior class this year is 1476, which is insane, because, again, you know, shocker of all shockers, when you learn a mastery, you actually, you know.
Michael Horn:
I was gonna say, it doesn't matter the modality so much at the point in which you're demonstrating it, you just demonstrate whatever's in front of you.
Mackenzie Price:
Exactly. And then, you know, our guides are able to jump in and work with the kids to start talking about the project-based side of workshops, which is where you really get that great experience. You know, I believe that, you know, again, you have to have k through eight. Common core knowledge is essential in order to be a critical thinker. But, you know, in today's world, it's no longer just about reading and writing and arithmetic. It's about the four c's, communication, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. And that's when our guides come around with our students, and they can make a lot of what they've learned really come alive through this life skill development. You know, an example of that with one of our high school students.
He is great at physics, and he's learned all of his physics via apps, but he's also a nationally-ranked water skier, he and his guide sit down and they talk about how they can think about physics and use physics to improve his water skiing time. And that's the kind of magic that really comes alive for a student when they're. They're using their physics two knowledge, you know, to figure out how to get a, you know, a better angle on their. On their water ski time. Right. And. And that's when I think we develop a more holistic. You know, I hate using buzzwords like holistic, but it's. It's a great time for bringing all of that knowledge together.
Following Passions and Developing Grit
Michael Horn:
Well, and you build, transfer, obviously, from... We've just done it in the academic setting to a real-world setting, which almost never happens, as, you know, in schools. So let's dig into that second big, for lack of a phrase block where you're really doing those life skills. You're developing them through projects. What does that look like for the community, for an individual student, and for the guides?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah. So the guide's job again… What I would say, you know, teachers in general when they get into the teaching industry, they do it so they can positively impact, you know, young people. They don't necessarily do it so that they can, you know, create lesson plans and grade homework. So our guides are really spending that time getting connected with kids to understand what they like and what they're excited about. And so I'll give you an example of that. We have a student who loves birds, you know, super into ornithology and loves bird watching. And so he has become an expert on that.
He's built a second brain in order to know everything about birds. He's reached out to experts in the field. So he's learning communication skills. He's been able to interview some really amazing people. And one thing we find is that adults are always really excited to help ambitious kids, right? So this kid's eleven years old and he reaches out and says, hey, I'd love to have a conversation about some of the research you're doing based on what I've read. And, you know, the professor, you know, says, sure, I'd love to have that, that conversation. For our youngest kids in, you know, kindergarten, first grade, they're doing everything from learning to swim in the deep ends, you know, and getting that kind of a workshop to starting to code. Doing this, we have a great program where kids are doing self driving cars.
So they're learning coding, they're doing it as a team and, you know, they're getting things. Another one that our second and third graders do, they do a Harvard business school simulation with a sneaker factory.
How to do this. And I always love when these parents will call me and they'll say, it is so funny to see my eight year old come home from school and be like, I gotta figure out how to get my shipping costs down. You know, my profit margins are just not, not high enough. And I think I'm going to have to start using shipping containers instead of airplane freight. But then that's going to cause a problem with my time for inventory. And you're like, that's when an eight year old learning, you know, a Harvard business school simulation is so awesome. The other thing we do in these workshops is we have what we call a test to pass. So it's the idea of like if you're trying to teach a life skill, like, for example, grit, you know, this idea of sticking to something even when it's hard, you know, you don't just hand the kids the book by Angela Duckworth and say, read this book and write a report on it, and that will show you no grit.
So what we do is we hold a triathlon, and at the end of the six week session, what the kids have to be able to do is they have to be able to solve a Rubik's cube. They have to be able to juggle three items for 30 seconds, and then they have to run a half mile. And what's interesting is at the beginning of this session, when we introduce this triathlon, you know, you'll have kids go, oh, I can't do x, y or z. I'm never going to be able to run a half mile or I'm not going to be able to do this. And so we teach them growth mindset, like the magical power of yet you may not be able to do it yet, but if you practice and learn how to learn and get back up and fail and all that stuff, then at the end of six weeks, when these kids are doing their triathlon and they're succeeding, that shows like, hey, these kids have grit, right? They've spent time becoming experts, learning how to learn, you know, again, doing all of those life skills. And so a lot of our guides time is spent implementing and working with these kids on these really fun workshops.
Day in the Life at Alpha Schools
Michael Horn:
Wow. So help us break down in terms of, like, how much of that you know. So you've done your 2-hour learning. You're getting to dive into these projects of interest. How long do you do that daily? Do you see kids staying afterward because they're so excited that they want to keep going? Is this something that's more permeable than that? Like, what does that, what does it look like? It sounds like you might even have professionals coming into the environment to help create these projects and so forth. So that's pretty cool. Absolutely.
Mackenzie Price:
We do.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Give us a story, a day in the life, if you will, of one kid doing this.
Mackenzie Price:
So, yeah, in the morning, our students come in and they do a limitless launch. It's kind of like think Tony Robbins for kids, where the group comes together and they're getting excited. They're planning their goals that they have for the day and how those align with their goals for the week and for the session. And then they go into their two hour learning block. We basically do it in kind of Pomodoro sessions of 25 minutes. They get breaks in between sometimes those breaks for our youngest learners, they might be do ten minutes of work and then you do a 32nd Taylor Swift dance party with your guide and get back into it and the guides, again, are able to work with these kids to help create these self driven learners. They're learning how to use the apps effectively. They're learning how to manage their time and their attention.
They get to have lunch, and then in the afternoon is when we dive in all these workshops. So, you know, they're basically getting, you know, two and a half to 3 hours worth of workshop time each day. And then at the high school level, what this turns into is kids have the time to go work on what we call kind of an ambitious masterpiece project. So that could be anything from. We had a student who raised $350,000 and built a mountain bike park in Texas. He's done great job. We have a student who got really interested in cancer and epigenetics. She just released a documentary called Cancer Foodborne Illness on X.
It's last I looked, has 4.2 million views, and she's been getting national press as a result of it. And this is what you think about. One of our fundamental beliefs is that kids are limitless, and they're constantly being underrated about what's possible for them to do. Kids can do incredible things when they're given the mentorship and, you know, the guidance and the time to go go work on that.
So we see that with our high school students get to do really big projects. But, you know, even our middle school students.One of the checks that we have. We call it a check as part of a check chart, but they've got to be able to raise $10,000 in capital for a business. And we had, you know, a few students this past year who were able to raise money to create a self-help kind of mental health book that they used expert advice, but written for teen girls by teen girls. And, you know, these are the things that are exciting. K through eight, we don't have homework. And so what we do find, though, is a lot of times, kids want to work ahead of time, right? They want to do more, and they're excited about the things they're doing. Fundamentally, again, our first commitment is love of school. We survey our students to find out, do you love school, and would you rather go to school or go on vacation. And that second one isn't quite as high as the love of school, but it is really crazy high. I think it was, like 63% the last time we measured it. They would rather go to school than go on vacation.
Cost of Attending
Michael Horn:
Well, you've created an environment where they can be successful and they can have fun with friends while being successful. So it seems like you have the twin ingredients to motivation. There's just as we start to wrap up here, like, what's the tuition to go to a school like this? What does that look like?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah. So we've been working on figuring out how we can best scale this and get this out to as many kids as possible. So we sort of started with the Tesla business model. Alpha school is sort of the very, very high end Rolls Royce version of private schools. Our tuition is about $40,000 a year. We have financial aid and about 75% of our students are on some sort of financial aid, but they are getting that super high end experience. The schools that we're rolling out this fall are going to be at about a $25,000 price point. And then we're working on getting some charter options. And if we can get charter access, of course that will become free for students.
We're also launching a homeschool program and that's going to get a lower point. So, you know, our goal right now is, you know, we believe in the next five years we're going to be able to get our two hour learning academic program down to like $1,000 a year per kid, which would be amazing. It's not there yet. It's about $10,000 currently per year per student. However, what we're seeing, and two hour learning can also be implemented in other schools.
You know, if someone wanted to start a school off two hour learning or convert, you know, to that, it can be done. There's a way to do that. You are, of course, fundamentally, though, transforming the model of the day, and you're also fundamentally transforming the role of the teacher.
Transforming the Traditional High School Experience
Michael Horn:
So, Mackenzie, one of the questions I often get, or pushbacks, is, this sounds great. Maybe I'll do it for, I mean, it's why Montessori is pretty popular, you know, in early years, but gets less so as you go into high school is, gee, there's prom and sports and band and all these things that my kid sort of wants to be a part of. I get it. On the one hand, like, when I think about my high school experience, the classes were, eh. But I really love the spirit of being involved in all those other things. It sounds to me, though, like you're perhaps more than other schools positioned to tackle this because as you said, you can take that core and then have a sports focused school. You can have a music focused school. You could have, like, these different flavors, if you will, and tackle this.
So I just love you to comment on that and tell you know, am I off base here? Am I miss reading, or how do. How do high school families, I mean, you're in Texas, after all, where this is sort of like, you know, this is a big part of the thinking for high school. How do they react to that and how are you all positioned to handle it?
Mackenzie Price:
Yeah, I think everyone has an idea of what they believe the school experience should be like, and often it's based on what their experience was like. And even the parts that they didn't like, they'll. They'll kind of say, well, I turned out okay. So, you know, what. What we did was good. And I remember when I first got ready to start the school back in 2014, I was doing a lot of reading, and one of the books I read was unschooling rules. And one of the things it said was, we get so used to, like, well, there's certain things that you just got to go through, the rite of passage that you have to go through.
And I it helped me rethink about, like, well, is everything we do really, you know, you have to do it. So what I've figured out in the schools that we run now is, let's take the best of those things. So our school does have a prom, you know, but our school also gets to do these really crazy experiences that, you know, a lot of schools don't get, right. So we've added other things there for you. Take the idea of music. We don't have a marching band, but what we do have is kids who are really phenomenal musicians, who are able to go in and record their own album.
And have the experience of getting to do that. We have one student who's a high school sophomore, and she is passionate about music and singing Broadway musicals. And when you ask her, what do you like to do? She's like, I love Broadway musicals. I like to listen to that. And she is building the first musical that she's trying to get on Broadway that is going to be entirely created and made by teens for teens. And so some of the experiences that she's getting and the mentorship that she's getting from people on Broadway and also negotiating contracts and dealing with attorneys, she's getting a lot of that social experience that we like. We also have a lot of kids who are athletes, who are, you know, able to go focus on their horseback riding or their swimming outside of school. I will absolutely say, though, if you want to be the quarterback on the local, you know, Texas football team, Alpha High School is not going to be the right school for you.
Michael Horn:
Right.
Mackenzie Price:
But if you want to be able to have, you know, a k through eight experience where you're not an over scheduled kid who's having to, you know, you know, go to school all day, then do homework and go to, go to the baseball practice and instead have afternoons to focus on athletics, you know, that's a great thing to get to do. So when I think about a lot of those traditional experiences that we believe kids should have, some of them, I would argue, are not worth as much weight as we think they really were. And some of them can be transformed into really amazing experiences that are, that our students have. So we find also, you know, socialization, this word socialization is something that always comes up and says, well, what about kids who they need socialization? And I look at it and I say, how much socialization is a kid really getting by, sitting in class all day, mostly being quiet? And again, I understand that there's a lot of classrooms and a lot of teachers who are trying to have more engagement in their classrooms. But still, the bottom line is you are sitting in class and there's, you know, 20 plus kids and one teacher, whereas these kids are having to, you know, work in teams and connect with people and, you know, they're having a lot more interaction with, with adults.
Michael Horn:
Right.
Mackenzie Price:
And other kids. That, I think, is where a lot of the really rich socialization comes from. So we find that, you know, very few of our students, you know, miss that traditional experience, with the exception of sports, is a big one.
Michael Horn:
Got it. Well, amen to so much of what you're doing. And I have this diagram now written on my notes, academics plus life skills. And then I have a big heart around it because of the love that you have built in your school communities among the students you serve. Mackenzie, thank you so much for being with us and for all of you following keep posted on the expansion of alpha schools two-hour learning. I am certainly hoping you all come to Massachusetts in the somewhat near future. Hint, hint.
Mackenzie Price:
We're working on it. Thank you so much for having me, Michael. It's been a pleasure. And I love getting to hear all of the topics that you present on your podcast on a regular basis.
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In partnership with the Navajo nation, Aspire Ability is getting tribe members plugged into opportunity. How are they doing it? Investments in digital infrastructure + innovative workforce solutions are a big part of the answer.
I sat down with Aspire Ability’s CEO, John Mott, and head of policy, Moroni Benally to learn how the nonprofit is building access to good jobs through remote work. We discussed connecting necessary stakeholders across sectors, the importance of precise skills training, and the downstream benefits of employment. And we talked about how none of the moves they’ve made would have been possible except for a real bottoms-up approach that rooted them on the ground and in the community.
Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, the show where we are dedicated to a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us think through those qualities today and those aspirations… I'm tremendously excited for our two guests. One of whom I've known for several years, he's none other than Jon Mott, currently the founder and CEO of Aspire Ability. Jon, good to see you.
Jon Mott:
Good to see you. Thanks for having us.
Michael Horn:
Absolutely. And the other is a new friend, Moroni Benally. He is a community manager at Aspire Ability, living with the Navajo Nation and supporting the work of Aspire Ability there. We will talk more about that shortly. But Moroni, welcome. Thanks for joining us.
Moroni Benally:
Thank you, Michael.
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Aspire Ability’s Founding Story and Approach to the Work
Michael Horn:
Yeah, you bet. So let's get into it. Jon, start with you. Just give us the founding story behind Aspire Ability, your journey to founding it, and what you all do now there.
Jon Mott:
Yeah, I've been in higher ed and adult ed and corporate ed for my whole career across working at Brigham Young University, corporations like TD Ameritrade, and edtech companies like learning objects. About five years ago, having gone through all of these different versions of trying to help people get to better career paths, it just kind of struck me. My training and background is as a political scientist. So I've just been thinking about this as a systemic problem. You've got job seekers, employers, education providers, and they don't connect. So that was the whole purpose of Aspire Ability, to try to get better connections primarily between employers and education providers to make sure that educational programs actually aligned with jobs in the job market. We've been working on that in a variety of different ways over the last five years. And, over the last year and a half, two years, we've been focused on working on that problem in a specific community. If you try to change all of that for the whole world all at once, not gonna happen... But if you can work with a community where you can say, okay, in this case, it's with the Navajo Nation, saying, okay, we know who the employers are, we know there are two tribal colleges, we know who the job seekers are. Let's work on getting the jobs more clearly defined so that the schools can provide upscaling paths. Then we can message that to job seekers and get a better alignment between what are often disconnected points in a three-sided market.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, so let's stay with that. Jon, before we go to the Navajo Nation, and Moroni, before I bring you in, I'm just curious because that approach you just talked about sounds like what the sponsor of this series, the Charles Koch Foundation, and I know a big sponsor of yours, the Charles Koch Foundation, would talk about—this principle of bottoms-up, really solving the problem in a specific area rather than imagining a top-down, one-size-fits-all way about it. So just talk to us about what you've learned and what this work really looks like, engaging these three very different stakeholders in what's really a community talent marketplace.
Jon Mott:
Yeah, absolutely. There's been tremendous work done by lots of our colleagues and friends and people we know in this space to create taxonomies of jobs—what are the skills required for job A, job B? And that's really important foundational work in this space. But what we've discovered is, when you get to a specific job at a specific company, these taxonomies in the sky all of a sudden don't matter. It's like, okay, that's nice to know what a cybersecurity analyst is in general practice, but what about here at my financial services company? One of the keys has been getting to the last mile or the last hundred feet. What does it mean—what skills or proficiency level for those skills are required for this job at this company, maybe even on this team within that company? It's that hyper-localization of skills mapping that's become really critical. And then on the flip side of that, how do you help schools see that yes, there is a core foundation of skills for every job or career path, but then there are—you do need to provide some way to at least expose people to, okay, there's cybersecurity, but here's how it's different in fintech versus healthcare versus education, and really helping people make that last mile connection to a job.
Michael Horn:
Just to stay with you for one more moment on that. It sounds like you probably have to get pretty deep with the companies then, because they might not know the answer to that, I'm assuming.
Jon Mott:
100%. You know, we worked with a very, very large company that everybody would recognize the name. They had five postings for the same job at the same time on the same team that were all different. Because what happens? Hiring managers write the job postings, HR puts them up, they get interviewees to come in. But if the company itself can't agree on what the job is, it's pretty hard to tell the school, hey, here's what we need. So we do dig in deep, looking at the documentation for the job, but then talking to stakeholders, talking to incumbents, really helping the employer get aligned around, yes, we agree, this is what the set of knowledge, skills, and abilities are required for this job. And here's how we're going to measure those consistently every time.
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Bringing the Navajo Nation and Aspire Ability Together
Michael Horn:
That's really interesting because the assessment piece of that is tricky. So Moroni, let me bring you in here, because I'd love to get deeper on, you know, let's do the case study, right? What does this work look like in the Navajo Nation and how did the work come about?
Moroni Benally:
Yeah, let's give some background on the Navajo Nation. There are about 175,000 members living on the reservation in Arizona, Mexico, and Utah, but about 400,000 across the country. On the reservation, there's about 50% unemployment and underemployment. We've seen numbers as low as 10% and numbers as high as 78%. And so that's the beginning of, part of the problems we're encountering is just sort of the lack of data. And so these are our best estimates that have gone around. Numerous federal constraints over land, which impedes development and access to housing, private sector, and healthcare. Every year, around 3,000 high school graduates leave the reservation needing jobs, but there aren't jobs. There aren't many jobs on the reservation. Not enough to keep up with what's needed. In addition, one of the other impediments is the lack of housing. So right now in the Navajo Nation, probably half of the people across the Navajo nation do not have a house of their own. Lots of multi-generational housing and so it's over overcrowded. In order to bring back a workforce up to at least this point, to get everyone housed, the Navajo nation needs to build about 35,000 houses just to meet what is currently the demand in the naval nation as of right now. There's a lot of these issues going around, unemployment.
In addition, there are all these other problems that are associated with those in the lower socioeconomic class. A lot of their substance abuse and mental health problems. There's also problems with infrastructure, long distances, people don't have access to transportation. It's a lot of things going on.
So at the time, how we ended up in the Navajo Nation, I was a graduate student of Jon's at BYU a number of years ago. Yeah. Like Jon, I focused on public policy, finishing up my PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle in public policy.
So sort of taking this broad public policy view of, like, what's happening in the Navajo Nation. I was working, as a policy worker for a tribal coalition around sexual assault, and domestic violence. I was working on behalf of tribes with the legislature, and federal government on policies around that. One of the issues with domestic violence that we had talked about was oftentimes a victim of domestic violence can't leave that situation, in part because they don't have a job. That there are financial constraints, and so they can't find a job. That's more pronounced in rural areas.
At that point, Jon and I had talked about that, and we had approached one of the tribal colleges about using Aspire Ability's strategy plan platform application to address that need within that domestic violence community across the Navajo Nation. That was the beginning.
Jon Mott:
I'll just add. This was at the height of COVID. There are a lot of people who were victims of domestic violence, they were now at home all day with their abuser.
Michael Horn:
So they can't escape due to the lack of employment and lockdowns.
Jon Mott:
Right. So that's really where I reached out to Moroni and said, man, you know… because we've stayed in touch over the years and we've been thinking of ways that we could collaborate. There is a crisis right now. Is there something we can do here?
Moroni Benally:
Jon and I discussed the situation, and I relocated from Seattle back to the reservation in late 2020 or 2021. I was surprised to find broadband infrastructure had reached my remote area, allowing me to work from home. This prompted us to leverage the Navajo Nation's ARPA funds for broadband expansion, facilitating job creation and overcoming federal constraints. We collaborated closely with the Navajo Nation president's office to initiate these efforts.
Jon and I talked a bit. I moved to Seattle to do some work, and I came home I think it was, November or December of 2020 or 2021, to the reservation from Seattle. My part of the reservation, that didn't have much infrastructure, was lit up with Internet broadband. I came home, and I thought, oh, my goodness, I can work from home. So I moved home from Seattle to the middle of the Navajo Nation and started working full time with Jon. At that point, we thought, well, Navajo Nation had all this ARPA money, billions of dollars. They had allocated some 500 million for broadband expansion across the Navajo Nation.
And it came to the incredibly rural place that I live, and that's where we sort of…
Jon Mott:
What is it you like to say? You're two hours away from a cheeseburger?
Moroni Benally:
Exactly. So at that point, we thought we could take advantage and leverage this to leapfrog over federal constraints and bring jobs with low capital costs. That was the idea, and that's where we began jumping in within the Navajo Nation. As a result, we've been working in coordination with the Navajo Nation president's office.
We've been collaborating with the Navajo Nation Tribal Council. They're finalizing an appropriation package to support our efforts across the Navajo Nation.
We partnered with tribal colleges, various communities, tribally owned enterprises, private sector companies, and high schools serving Navajo people. We've built a broad coalition and are cooperating with the Navajo Nation on their Navajo Nation Workforce Transformation Initiative. This aims to shift the Navajo Nation towards credential and skill-based hiring.
Jon Mott:
I'd like to quickly add that one of our key allies in this process has been Delegate Carl Slater, a member of the Navajo Council, who has championed our project. But one of the things that we heard loud and clear at the very beginning was, please don't be like all of those other organizations that come in and just try to get some of our money, do a 3 to 6-month project, claim victory, and leave. We knew and, as you know, Moroni and I are policy geeks. We knew that this was not going to be something that you could fix in half a year. Moroni and I planned this as a three to five-year project, and we're 16-18 months into it. if you think about the flywheel effect, you know, we've gotten the flywheel to start moving.
You can imagine how new and just different this concept is for the employers, and the schools. To get them moving in this direction of thinking about skills-based hiring, and skills-based education. So a lot of the groundwork lane has been around some of those key concepts and ideas.
This conversation is sponsored by:
The Impact of Improved Digital Infrastructure
Michael Horn:
I want to reflect on a couple of points before I ask my question. Firstly, your focus on individuals in domestic abuse situations echoes a key finding in our research on why people pursue more education or switch jobs—it often involves escaping difficult circumstances. Secondly, Moroni, your approach to broadband infrastructure reminds me of Clay Christensen's concept of disruption through non-consumption. Essentially, you've created an enabling technology that leapfrogs traditional limitations. I'd like you to elaborate on this. Specifically, which companies are these individuals now able to work with? How does this improved infrastructure aid in escaping domestic abuse situations by reducing the need to travel? People might wonder what this looks like on the ground—how having a job can help someone in a difficult situation. I’ll let whichever one of you who want to take that jump in.
Jon Mott:
You want to go first.
Moroni Benally:
You may know a bit more about the first part of the question than me.
Jon Mott:
I mean, we won't get into all of the minutiae of what it's like to try to roll out a multi…
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Don't worry about the logistics.
Jon Mott:
Moroni is a prime example. He was not able to live on the reservation and work in the field that he was educated to work in and have the impact he’s having before there was broadband. Now he can do that. So if that's the germ of an idea or an opportunity, as broadband rolls out, what we're doing is we're saying, okay, what are the jobs that currently exist on the reservation that can be done hybrid or remotely? There are some of these jobs that have been chronically vacant just because for whatever reason, the employers can't find people who are qualified today for that job. So we're going to these, Moroni mentioned these tribal enterprises. There are businesses essentially, that are owned by the tribe. So there's a gaming and tourism enterprise. There's a tribal enterprise around housing. So we've gone to those entities and said, okay, what are the jobs? We talked about digging deep and mapping the jobs. We've done that. One, for example, is the Navajo Housing Authority which has hundreds of millions of dollars of housing money. They have had, I think it's 25 construction project manager jobs vacant for a couple of years. And, until those jobs are filled, they can't spend this money on housing. So we've mapped those jobs. Now, those jobs are probably hybrid jobs. Some days I could work at home, some days I'm going to, as a construction project manager, I'm going to have to be out and about. But it just unlocks the door to a new set of employees or potential employees for these jobs that didn't exist before.
And I would also add, it also opens up the opportunity for remote education. So, yeah, I want to be a construction project manager. Not only could I potentially do that job remotely or in a hybrid way, but I can do my upskilling remotely as opposed to driving a couple hours each way every day.
Michael Horn:
Well, and that's really interesting because then that's also helping fill that demand, I imagine, for 35,000 more houses that you were mentioning as well.
Jon Mott:
And that's exactly why we focused on that job first because it did have kind of this potential domino effect.
The Role of Employment in Addressing Domestic Abuse
Michael Horn:
There's a lot of research, like Efosa Jomo's work, emphasizing the importance of creating local jobs for community development. Moroni, let's dive into this. How does having a job or being on track to get one help with domestic challenges that someone may be locked in?
Moroni Benally:
Let's back up a bit with what Aspire Ability has proposed and worked on with the colleges, providing wraparound services like mental health support and childcare. Navajo Technical University offers these to staff and students. Part of our proposal is tapping into these resources for working individuals. When a person receives training and can work from home, they earn an income that enables them to break free financially from their abuser. What they call financial abuse, I think, is they're able to break away because they're no longer reliant on that person. And they have then the capacity of other options to find other housing to live in. What that also does is that has an impact on crime. It enables the police officers to focus their attention on other things that need to happen. So there's all these down-the-stream consequences. One of the more significant economic consequences for the Navajo Nation is that for every dollar that is made in the Navajo Nation that a Navajo citizen like me makes. 30% stays on the Navajo Nation and 70% leaks off to these border towns. In part because of all of this underdevelopment and the constraints around it. One of the other downstream effects is that the person who was in that situation can leave that situation. But at the same time, 30% of her spending is now spent in the Navajo Nation, which contributes directly back to the Navajo Nation. That's one extra person spending an additional 30% of their income in the Navajo Nation. We've done some estimates about the potential impact of what 50 employees at $45,000 a year in the Navajo Nation would have.
There are significant consequences and returns for the Navajo Nation in multiple way. But the downstream consequences of positive outcomes for leaving a domestic violence situation is it breaks that cycle of trauma for generations.
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What Has Aspire Ability Learned in the Process
Michael Horn:
Super interesting. I'm curious about the economic implications. How do these initiatives contribute to addressing the housing demand you mentioned earlier?
Jon Mott:
One of the things that we started trying to wrap our hands around very early on was how many vacant jobs are there on the reservation? Because nobody knew. The kind of conventional wisdom was, well, the jobs that do exist are government jobs or public school or Indian health services jobs. That was largely the perspective. We couldn't go to Burning Glass or, you know, Monster because there wasn't a geographic job board for the reservation. We actually had to create one and do a census of what jobs exist. It turns out there are about nine, was our last count, about 3,500 jobs vacant on the reservation, and about half of them are private sector. That has kind of blown people's minds. They're like, oh, wow, we had no idea. So now we're able to look at the distribution of jobs across those and start helping create a strategic plan for the schools to say, oh, it looks like we need project managers, not just here, but across multiple industries. Let's start being strategic about deploying continuing ED and professional education resources. That's, that's one example we just wouldn't have known unless we dug in on that.
Michael Horn:
Moroni, you get the last word on what you've learned.
Moroni Benally:
Going off of what Jon talked about, despite my familiarity with the Navajo Nation, I was surprised by the lack of labor market data collection by Navajo government entities. Our job board has become the first informal data collection mechanism for labor data in the Navajo Nation. Another surprise was the slow tempo of decision-making within the government. Not that they're bad, it's just that they've lacked the training, they've lacked the direction. So as a result of that, it moves very, very, very slow. Then you mix in the local concept of time and their notion that, oh, if we miss this round, it'll come back again next year, so don't worry about it
Jon Mott:
The very problem we're talking about. Many of, what you call, mid-level management jobs in the Navajo government are vacant. So the people who do have jobs, one of the reasons things are slow is because they're doing 27 things at once.
Michael Horn:
Not a formula for success. That's a lot on someone.
Moroni Benally:
Yeah. So for me, I was surprised, even though I grew up here. I worked with Navajo Nation, in multiple roles, and I was a bureaucrat for many years and served in the president's cabinet. I was the head of the natural resources, so I thought I knew bureaucracy until I got to the private sector and tried to engage it on that side, which is a whole different ballgame for me.
Michael Horn:
Both of you, are just tremendous. Thanks for the work you're doing. I'm just struck by the vertical integration you've had to do into places you never would have guessed. Just by being on the ground and starting to fill some of these essential parts of the picture, and what you've built. But Moroni, Jon, and Aspire Ability, thanks for the work you're doing in the Navajo Nation, and thanks for joining us on Future of Education.
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Sustainable, transformational, outstanding, and permissionless.
Each year, the Center for Education Reform (CER) awards the Yass Prize to the school that best embodies these four characteristics. I sat down with CER’s Jeanne Allen (check out her Forza...for Education Substack) and Anthony Brock, the Founder and Head of School at this year’s winner, Valiant Cross Academy.
We discussed Valiant Cross’s personalized, holistic, and career-focused approach; their plans for spreading the benefits of their model; and how the Yass Prize will help. I left with a lot of new insights from this conversation—and hope you do as well.
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Michael Horn:
Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live a life of purpose. Today we get to talk to two individuals who have put that work at the core of what they've been doing for years. I am tremendously excited about this. First up, we have my longtime friend. She's the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform. She's none other than Jeanne Allen.
Of course, she has launched the Yass Prize for sustainable, transformational, outstanding, and permissionless education. We're going to hear a lot about that and more. But first, Jeanne, so good to have you here.
Jeanne Allen:
Thanks, Michael. Great to be here.
Michael Horn:
Absolutely. We also have Anthony Brock, who is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Valiant Cross Academy, which sits in the heart of downtown Montgomery, Alabama. Anthony and I have already established that I owe him a visit at some point to those parts, but it's a private school with a Christian emphasis that serves males in the 6th through 12th grades. We're going to hear a lot more about it. But Anthony, notably, you all just won the Yass Prize, so welcome and congratulations.
Anthony Brock:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Honored to be here. Honored to be the current winner of the Yass Prize. Very interested in the conversation. Thanks for having me.
The Principles and Purpose of the Yass Prize
Michael Horn:
You bet. I'm excited to have you here because if you win that prize, that means you're doing a lot. We're going to hear more about that, but Jeanne, let's start with you. Just thinking about the Yass Prize. I'm sure some of the listeners who tune into this podcast will know of it, but I'm sure some won't.
We, of course, have had some past winners on the show. I'd love to hear from you why this prize is so important right now? These principles of the S.T.O.P. principles: sustainable, transformational, outstanding, and permissionless. Why are those so important and enduring right now?
Jeanne Allen:
Thank you, Michael. I'd like to say that we spent about 30 years at the Center for Education Reform building and demanding that we open up the opportunities for parents, students, and teachers to have access to better opportunities, and new ways of doing business. What we all realized very quickly, even though some of us knew it instinctually for a while, once we created that demand, and once that demand was also augmented and amplified by things like COVID-19, the supply wasn't big enough. We went on a hunt for some organizations that we thought would be temporarily supporting and showing the way for all sorts of other schools to deliver for students post that awful time in history. What we found is that there were thousands of organizations out there that had already been creating, not just during COVID but before, creating new and different opportunities that wanted and needed a way to not scale, but to be recognized for what they were doing. They don't go to those conferences and seminars that everybody else goes to. They don't have time. They're doing the work.
Michael Horn :
They're actually doing the work.
Jeanne Allen:
Yeah, they're doing the work. They don't read what we read because we're all so myopic. It's all we do. We found out that they needed encouragement, they needed a support network. Obviously, money is a huge driver, but what they want is also this information and the movement that came when we began to put them together. The Yass Prize is now not just on the hunt for a handful, but we seek to find, reward, and celebrate education providers of every sector, regardless of profit motive or whatever, that STOP for education.
Valiant Cross’ Road to the Yass
Michael Horn:
That's super helpful. Putting it in the context of the supply-demand imbalance in the country, I think is important because people tend not to think about the supply side of this very much. I think you're right. Anthony, I want to bring you into the conversation because I'm curious on your end, what led you…What steps led you to decide, hey, we're going to apply for this prize? This is something that could help us and elevate us.
Anthony Brock:
Yeah, well, one of the things recently, Michael, I've been talking to a lot of people here in Alabama about is you need to attempt to apply. Don't think that with the work you're doing, it's not worthy, because this time last year, I had no idea that we would even have the opportunity. Like she just said, we're busy doing the work and it felt good to be appreciated. I think I realized how enormous this prize was when I arrived in Cleveland, and I was a little shell-shocked when I walked in because I was just not used to it. I've been a public school educator since 1999. My brother and I started Valiant Cross in 20. Well, in 2014, we did a proof-of-concept year, and in 2015 we launched a school. I'm used to just the run-of-the-mill conferences that teachers go to. The same old, same old, and when I get here and I'm around all these new educational innovators across the country, my vision has been changed forever.
Everybody talks about the 1 million, which is great. Please, believe me, that's great. We needed that. However, just the social capital that I've been able to build through being a part of this Yass prize, you can't put a number on it. We started Valiant Cross in 2015 and I would always encourage everybody to apply for this award.
The Impact of the Prize for Valiant Cross and Those to Follow
Michael Horn:
Stay on that for a moment, because it's interesting to hear you say the social capital that you got from this. I imagine that means everything from the networks of people that can support the work, to getting ideas from other schools that are doing interesting things, to even perhaps being inspired to try out things that you never had considered. Like, what does that mean to you? What are the benefits of that social capital that you gain access to?
Anthony Brock:
Sure. I'm an artist by trade also so I'm a visionary. I'm an artist. I never even wanted to be a head of school. I just wanted to cultivate spaces where young people can thrive and learn. When I became a part of this cohort of Yass Prize finalists and semifinalists, it was full of just the most brilliant, innovative people you've ever seen before.
When you think about permissionless, sad to say, I've been almost in a shell thinking, the work we're doing, we don't want too many people to see it. Because they may come in and say, hey, you can't do this. You can't do that. However, now I'm with a group of people who are saying, no, you need to do more. You can do more. Go forward with whatever that vision is that God has put before you, which for us is educating African American young men. We're in Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the civil rights movement. We're right across from Doctor King's church, the only church he pastored. We’re right up the street from Rosa Parks bus stop. So why do we have to operate inside of a box when so much change came from Dexter Avenue, like the birthplace of the civil rights movement? So now it's, what more can we add to what we're doing with these young men? All our young men, we've had two graduating classes.
They're all either at a four-year college or they're at a trade or vocational school. They're in the military. We have a few who've just joined the workforce right out of high school just through some of the offerings, which we can go into as much as you want. It's just exciting to be on this call and I want to say this, whatever it is that God put in your heart, it's a reason and a reason that he put it there. I'm so happy that I listened to that first call, which was to start school, and that second call, which was to apply for the Yass Prize as well.
Michael Horn:
It's powerful because Jeanne, we travel around the country speaking at all sorts of testimonies in capitals around the country and so forth. What Anthony just said is the truth. Which is that a lot of the most innovative schools have been taught to sort of duck and cover because they don't know when they're going to get shot for doing something that is outside the box that kids need but doesn't fit inside the narrow walls of what we've been told school looks like. It sounds like maybe this prize starts to give them not just permission to do the educating, but permission to talk about it and inspire even more school leaders and school types, that you're going to build a legacy, almost a family tree, if you will. Anthony, out of this, how do you see that part of it, Jeanne?
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Jeanne Allen:
Well, I will say that I think it's also done the same for advocates, researchers, and people who work in the field because they're able to put their heads up and expose what they're doing. They can share and build awareness about what they're doing, which I can say on Anthony's behalf and others, nobody thinks they're doing great things. I mean, it was extraordinary to talk to them during the process, look at their application, or ask questions. At one point in time during the process, as we're whittling down from quarterfinalists to semifinalists, we do interviews with everybody like this. I'd say, well, tell me more about why you're doing such breakout things. And they're like, am I doing amazing things? I mean, I've never met so many, as Anthony said, thoughtful, brilliant, open-minded people who wanted to be sponges. To be honest with you, I'm used to being around a bunch of people who think they know everything. I will also admit candidly that we get into that. I get into that, oh, I already know this is happening. I know it's happening in Alabama. I don't have to go to Alabama. Someone will tell me if I have to know something. Well, the fact of the matter is, when you see the work that organizations like Valiant Cross are doing. Or Melanin Village and Princeton. All around the country, or any number of the groups that are in the cohort that didn't make it in, that are still extraordinary. Then you see it and look at who they're helping, look at what's happening around them, and then you say, why is everyone ignoring them? So, we went to Valiant Cross. We do these road shows after our awards each year, and we did the announcement of the 24 Yass prize at Anthony's school in January.
And the governor, who knows about them, had never been there, and she came that day. But why hadn't she been there? She's three blocks away. It's not her fault, necessarily. Maybe we didn't invite her. Maybe there was no reason. But then again, it is her fault, right? I love her, but let's be honest. I mean, I don't know enough to love her, but why wasn't she and her people right there across the street from Martin Luther King's church? I think to the extent that we're all thinking that someone's going to tell us something good is happening is now we're making it much more of a requirement that anyone in this work start looking at under places. Don't just show up at conferences and think you're going to meet everyone you're supposed to meet, because probably, likely the people, at those conferences aren't nearly as cool as the people doing the work.
Anthony Brock:
Yes. One thing we forgot to add also is right across the street is the Alabama Education Association, which is a very strong teacher union in the state of Alabama. They sit right across the street as well to add to the irony.
Providing a Career-Connected Education
Michael Horn:
We love irony here. We'll leave it at that, but let's get into the work itself and what the school looks like. Anthony, start to give us an understanding of what you've been doing that stands apart. And I guess I want to start at maybe a higher level before we get into this, what the day of the life of a student looks like. As I understand it, you all have been intentional about preparing students for the careers of tomorrow. That means computing, e-gaming, robotics, and more. What does that look like in action? How do you pick these careers? What's the role of partners in that? What does this part of it look like?
Anthony Brock:
Yeah, that's a great question. We are in meetings right now with my leadership team to even custom make that more. When you think about the permissionless part. We have decided to not only have career tracks that we have already, but we also have Cisco networking. Of course, we have dual enrollment with some local universities. We have barbering, we have welding. But now we are interested in putting all our 11th graders on track. The next step to that is to find out what each one of them wants to do by their 10th-grade year and custom-make everybody. The IEP in a traditional school is an individualized education plan, but we're going to try to have that.
We will have that for each one of our young men going forward. If you want to be an attorney, if you want to be a police officer, whatever it is, we're going to custom-make that. That thought process would not have been my thought process right now if I had not seen so many other innovative models. We got to get them out of the classrooms that we've had them in up to this point from 7:30 to 3:15. So not only has the Yass Prize allowed us to take a step back and pat ourselves on the back for the work we're doing, but it's also made us say, hey, let's keep thinking. Let's keep pushing the mark a lot.
The biggest part of Valiant Cross, which I always have to mention the importance of the fact that in Montgomery we have 200,000 residents, and we're averaging about 70 to 75 homicides a year. The most meaningful work we're doing is taking these African American boys and we're giving them hope. That's what we pride ourselves in telling them. Not just telling them but telling them and showing them that we love them, we're going to walk through whatever it is they want to do. If it's college, if it's a military, we want to see them to and through those areas as well. We've created a support system like none other for these young men. It's the amazing work that my staff does every day.
The Valiant Cross Model
Michael Horn:
There's so much there to love. The way you make these individuals feel that and show them that they matter and that their dreams count is powerful. I want to get into then, the actual educational model itself, because I understand you're doing a bunch of innovative things here. We know, Jeanne referenced COVID. We know that the readiness level of students is, frankly, all over the map at the moment as they come into these experiences. We also know that there's been renewed interest across the country in differentiating instruction, tutoring, and all the things.
My understanding is that you all have been successful in that personalization. You called it customization just now in terms of incorporating tutoring and doing a bunch of stuff like that. I'd love you to just talk about what that model looks like. What does a student's experience look like, and what are tips for all the other schools that, frankly, have been struggling to get the tutoring piece right that they could learn from you?
Anthony Brock:
Yeah. Well, the most important thing is the adults that you have in the building. Being a private school, we have the opportunity to sit down with an adult and become a career counselor. Like Steve Perry always says, and say, hey, this is not the place for you. If you're not here for young people, it's not going to work. Basically, Michael, our teachers are staying after hours. They're coming early in the morning to tutor. We also partner with a local tutoring company here in Montgomery, and they provide tutoring through our young men throughout the day. We have a 15 to 1 or less ratio for all our young people in the school.
The next step to that is we're going to be adding a teacher aide in each classroom to help with instruction as well. We just went through a round of applicants, and it's booming at the scenes. By the way, Miss Allen, it's like never before. We have so many young people who are trying to come to school, and it's because they want that individualized touch. Our teachers are going to basketball games, and this is basic stuff, right? But they're doing the basic things at a high level. We're going to basketball games after school with our young people. We're going to church with them. Last week, I got a call to take them to this new whitewater rafting place in Montgomery. I don't have to ask for permission to do any of that.
When you build that relationship with these young people, a lot of them come with thick discipline files, they come with IEPs. A lot of them are behind two or three grade levels when they get there. So everybody's saying, how in the world are you guys doing this? When they come in and see all the young men working, it's about love and high expectations. That's the secret sauce of Valiant Cross Academy. It's about customizing what each one is going to do by their 11th-grade year. The connectivity is the most important part. If young people, especially African American males, feel the connected part that we give them at Valiant Cross, they seem to thrive. We've also created an African American male experience museum at our school.
All of them, all the artwork and the pictures throughout the building, mimics them. There's culturally relevant teaching going on. We believe that if they have a strong sense of who they are in God and who they are personally, then they're going to succeed in life.
Jeanne Allen:
I also have to jump in, Michael, if it's okay to say something that you've often talked about. Even things that are basic can be innovative because they're not being done anymore or in the same way. Being able to think about each individual student every day and what they happen to need is important. When we were there, I'll just add one other thing I noticed, which I love about your educational model, Anthony. You guys were talking about in the hallways, we were walking and touring a couple of different kids and what was happening with them. These are things, again, great schools do this, but we prevent them from doing it by putting too many strings on them and not rewarding it. I walked into every class, and there was music, and the teacher had a headset, but there was different music in every class. And so finally, I had forgotten to ask him, and we saw him recently, and he said, there's data that shows that these students will let you tell them. It was fascinating how much people were paying attention and engaged, and the teacher was calling them out also, by the way.
So, she's got the music. She got the headset. They're doing something, and there's a way that she gets them and pulls them out of what they're doing to reflect. Talk about that, Anthony.
Anthony Brock:
Yes. We do a two-week teacher training on that. The teacher is on stage at Valiant Cross. We don't have traditional desks, so you have to be in shape, first of all. But, yeah, they do have the headsets. They have the music. There are a lot of studies around musical education and what it activates in the brain for young people. We've customized playlists for each classroom.
So, you're getting a different feel, a different vibe, even the way the classroom looks. I didn't go into, when you talk about innovation, Chuck Robbins, who is the national CEO for Cisco Networking. He spoke at our fundraiser last year and he came, and he gave us $500,000 for our programming credential networking program that we have at our high school as well. Every young man has the opportunity to do that. We've partnered with the Redtail Scholarship Foundation. We have about eight to ten of our young men right now. Some have already completed it, but we have about eight to ten in the cohort now working on their pilot's license. Only 2% of African American males are pilots.
And again, we have the barbering credential. A lot of them leave every day to go to Trenum State Technical College to get different trades. Whether it's welding, we have one working on the CDL license. So, there is a lot of innovation going on, but to me, because of the passion that I have for it. My dad passed away in 2022. He was an educator, principal, and pastor as well. A lot of that is just naturally who we are. You want to see young people. If you want what's best for young people, there's nothing that you won't do for them.
So that's why the Yass prize has helped as well because I'm someone who has an open ear. So, when I'm around, I'm a sponge. If it's a best practice that another member of the cohort is doing, I'm going to try to take it. I'm going to use it. I've been talking to Keith Brooks about working with Black and Latino males, and so we're looking at possibly, hopefully, partnering to bring that down here to Montgomery as well. I would love to start a center for urban education where you can come and learn some culturally relevant pedagogy.
Michael Horn:
Wow, that's powerful stuff. That music sounds amazing. And there was just, I saw research coming out around how actually, when we're also in music with each other, we start to synchronize and cooperate, and it's sort of something inside of us, innate, right. Where we want to work with each other, and it makes us more open to ideas and cooperation and building on each other.
Anthony Brock:
Sure. Absolutely. The other part is, that you have to look at the national suspension rates in different states for African American males is pretty high. So, we have an environment of culturally relevant restorative practices as well. We do circles. If they get in any type of trouble, which may just be talking at the wrong time, everything is structured, it's organized chaos in the building. I'll just say that because it may look like things are out of whack sometimes, but we do that to get them up and moving. We do not like to suspend anyone because that's what, oftentimes, young men are used to people giving up on them.
I need you in the seat, and I need you learning. I need you engaged. A lot of that is what takes place on a daily basis. It takes an act of Congress to get suspended at Valiant Cross.
The Valiant Cross Difference
Michael Horn:
Wow. One of the things that occurs to me, hearing you talk is you're a little bit like the fish that doesn't realize it's in water. Cause that's just the milieu in which you're swimming. And so, Jeanne, I love from your perspective, you look at the list of semifinalists and finalists for the Yas prize. They are incredibly inspirational. They're all amazing. What made the work that Anthony and his school doing stand out, from your perspective, what was it that, wow, yes. This is the one that's going to win this $1 million Yass prize.
Jeanne Allen:
After they went through all the judging and consistently came out on top for a variety of different reasons, commentary and scores, you just look and you go, sustainable. Talk about policy. They can operate because they're in a state where there is some, at that time, some small scholarship program. Now, a larger one that's been set up to help schools like that, help so students don't have to go beg. He doesn't have to go beg for funds from everybody, or at least less so transformational. All the things he just described. Outstanding. You talk about students in his area that are getting shot. They're coming from homes where you don't know what they had the night before or the week before or what they're going home to. Yet the education is outstanding across the board and permissionless. You just say the plight of black men in America and the fact that there's someone doing something about that, that wants to do more, learn more, go bigger places, do different things. The sky is your kind of limit. It really kind of all added up. We could say again that Anthony's amazing, Valiant Cross is amazing, and Valiant Cross is the winner. But there are a lot of organizations that fit, and there's something about people who go through the process, stick with the process, and make the argument that we're always shocked when they all come together.
We're like, oh, my gosh. We had no idea they'd be like this. I mean, they get to the accelerator, Michael. What you participated in and they start, hey, can I get your number? That was interesting. I thought that. Wow, I didn't know you went through that. It is that social capital and that networking. We all take it for granted because we're in it every day. But they've made us better people and they've made us think differently and better about our jobs, our work, our goals, and our strategies. And frankly, more accountable because we want to make sure they succeed.
Michael Horn:
Wow. Anthony. My understanding is that winning this is going to allow you all to expand to even more men, black men in Montgomery. You're going to be able to add an elementary school, grades K-5. You're going to be able to start to expand to different states, I think. Talk to us about what this is going to enable you to do and what we can expect in the years ahead from expansion.
Anthony Brock:
Sure. The first thing was, again, the elementary school. We announced the same day that we announced the Yass application that we are opening up our new kindergarten. We're in the process now of finalizing a building which is also on the civil rights trail. We're trying to keep that same model going. That'll open up this fall. We're visiting Jackson, Mississippi, next month. That's one of the places that we're very interested in.
I'm interested in other places, in Montgomery, I mean, in Alabama as well. I'm interested in Tuskegee, obviously, because of the work that Booker T. Washington did that was transformational back in 1800’s. The other part was, I spoke about possibly creating a center for urban education where we can recruit more black male teachers. Most black boys, they grow up from kindergarten through 12th grade, and they do not see anyone that looks like them. So just to have that person and that representation in the classroom will be huge. Also being a center where others can come train, you know, you may not be a black male teacher or black female.
You may be a white teacher who wants to just come learn to train. How do I teach these young people that are in front of me? How can I relate to them? Those are a few of the things, a few of the areas that we're looking at and also, which I have not spoken to Miss Allen about. We are also launching a new literacy center here in Montgomery. We have started building out a new literacy center that will combat tutoring, I mean, mentoring, and the literacy rate over in West Montgomery, which is where a lot of these young people come from. That will allow us to impact way more young people, male and female, than just Valiant Cross Academy. A lot of exciting things, and I'm a full-time college student as well, but we're getting it all in.
Michael Horn:
Are you really?
Anthony Brock:
Yes. I'm working on my doctorate right now and I'm in my dissertation phase, so just keep me in your prayers.
The Effects of State Policy Michael Horn:
I will. I don't wish that process on anyone if I'm being totally honest. I'm just curious. So let's shift to policy because you both have brought it up now a couple of times, and I think this is a nice place to maybe wrap because as you know, Alabama's governor recently signed the Choose Act creating education savings accounts in Alabama. $7,000 per pupil starting in 2025. Jeanne, what do you anticipate this is going to do for innovation and education in the state of Alabama?
Jeanne Allen:
It's definitely going to encourage more people and more groups to expand, to offer students an opportunity. I wish it were bigger. I understand politics and people have to start smaller. But when you look at the numbers in Montgomery and elsewhere across states like Alabama, every state, frankly, we could blow it open. It's all right, we'll get there. But what it really does say more than anything else, is money should follow students. We're not going to rely on private organizations to have to raise money to fund scholarships. Why are we making people jump through hoops when public funding is available for these students who are no longer in the traditional public schools, who aren't serving them? What it does for opportunity and innovation is it allows people to appreciate and recognize that these elements are critical to students.
It shouldn't matter where you go to school, money should follow kids.
Michael Horn:
Anthony, more broadly, and if you want to comment on this as well, great. More broadly, as you think about the education policy context, how it's impacted the work you do in Alabama and the students you serve. As well as how you think about expansion into other states. You just mentioned Mississippi. I'm sort of curious, how do you think about education policy context from what it's allowed you to do and what it might enable you to do as you think about other states?
Anthony Brock:
Sure. Well, the first thing that comes into play when you think about scaling to other states is how are we going to fund the school? Quite frankly, that's how we have to spend almost 50% to 60% of our time right now. The new AESA has passed. The School Choice Act. All these things are allowing us to be able to put our focus where it needs to be, which is on young people. Who better than the parent to determine what's the best place for my kids? I know I'm able to do that because your zip code should not determine where you go to school. I'm excited about it. I think the status quo in education is what's dumbed down education so much because we're not competitive enough.
So it should not be a threat to anyone. If you're educating young people at a high level, you should welcome this. You should not be afraid of young people leaving your school either.
Anthony and Jeanne’s Outlook for the Future
Michael Horn:
Love it. As we just wrap here, so much is singing to me on what you're doing, Anthony. I just love reflections from both of you about where this all goes, how we keep building this movement, how we keep building up supply to match the demand of these learners. As you both mentioned, in places like Montgomery that are clamoring for something else, what are the next steps ahead? Jeanne, why don't you go first, and then, Anthony, you can get the final word.
Jeanne Allen:
I think looking at schools not only like Valiant Cross but all the other kinds of organizations that are innovating and trying to meet students where they are, regardless of space and place. Whether they're micro-schools, private, charter, online, blended, or some name that we don't even know, it's essential that we bottle and market the excitement and the exuberance that's out there right now for making change. What I see today, more than ever before is a pent-up demand that is dying to get out amongst so many more diverse players in every kind of genre that want to get together. That's critical. It's no longer about politics. It's no longer about, I mean, it is for some people, but for the people involved. They are thousands strong in every state and they could completely take over if they just put their minds to it.
Michael Horn:
Anthony, final word.
Anthony Brock:
My final word is, again, I'm thankful for being on this call. Thank you to the Yass Prize for creating an environment for best practices, and schools that are doing things that are outside of the box. I really appreciate that because it gives us all the place. You almost felt like you were an outlier for a while. Or the tipping point, not to quote too many Malcolm Gladwell books, but that's my guy. But, you know, that's what it feels like. I think I look at the Yass Prize as an outlier, and I think that everyone needs to just join and become a part of it. I would like to see people who are, you know, traditional schools, public schools.
I would like to see more of them, to just open up their ears and see what they are talking about. They're talking about kids. Remove the policy. Remove everything else from it. We're talking about kids. I love it because everything I've heard since I've become a part of this movement is what's best for kids. They're celebrating organizations that are for kids. So thank you.
Michael Horn:
Hey, I'm just thankful for both of you, the work that you're opening up, the work that you're doing on a daily basis. I’m really appreciative of you joining the Future of Education and making sure that each child, each student can make progress because that's what it's about at the end of the day.
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