Sal Khan and Amy McGrath Speak on the Newly Launched Khan World School

Welcome to the future of education. I'm Michael Horn and looking forward today's conversation because on today's show we have two people, both of whom I've known for many years in the world of education, but I think until recently did not know each other. And full disclosure, I've served as advisors to both their organizations at various points. But I'll bring up to the proverbial main stage, if you will, Sal Kahn and Amy McGrath. Sal, of course, at the Khan Academy and Amy of Arizona State University's prep digital offering and their online school. And just tremendously excited to see you both and as you have partnered and been announced over the last couple weeks, the Khan World School, which Sal long sort of, I think a brainchild in your head and now coming to fruition. So before we get into the partnership part though, between Khan Academy and Arizona State University and what that's going to look like, Sal, I wanted to start with you and just get a sense of, you know, really why a virtual school and what is your vision for what this will be and what this will look like as it gets off the ground.

Yeah. So, you know, a lot of folks here might be familiar, you know, Khan Academy, mission free world class education for anyone, anywhere. And as Khan Academy has grown and scaled and we're trying to make it easier for students either inside or outside of classrooms to engage in personalized mastery learning, there's the question of, well, what could the actual school system look like? And some folks know in 2012 I wrote a book called the One World Schoolhouse. The last third of the book kind of reimagined what education could be given what the world needs and given tools like Khan Academy existing. And it talks about things like mixed stage learning, students being able to learn at their own time and pace, having real agency. If you use technology well, it can actually unlock human to human connection, even challenging that that learning has to be bound by time or space. And it's one thing to write it, it's a whole other thing to implement it. In 2014, we started an in person physical school to play with these ideas called Khan Lab School out here in Northern California and Silicon Valley. And that since has grown to a full K12 school. It's been very successful and it's a lab school. We're continuing to push the envelope there. But there's always been a view of like, okay, that's great that Khan Lab School is showing an example and hopefully it will prove to be more and more of a lighthouse and there might be future con lab Schools that are in person. But how can we reach students all over the world who need this now? And the pandemic has clearly accelerated that. Obviously, almost the entire world moved to some form of distributed online learning. The unfortunate thing is it was a very different quality and. And to some degree, might have even given a bad name to online learning in certain cases. But I think based on what we know we can do with Khan Academy, there's another not for profit I helped start during the pandemic called Schoolhouse World, which is leverages peer to peer for tutoring and for certification. So leveraging tools like that, given the experience we have from Khan Lab School, it's like, well, why not try to see if we can create an online high school that has all of these principles, personalized mastery learning, but then leveraging technology to actually unlock human to human connection. Let's show the world that we can actually create a. A virtual high school that can do all of these things, even challenge the notions of competency, learning versus seat time. And I give you credit, Michael. I was just chatting with you. I don't know, it felt. That feels like yesterday, maybe it was like five or six months ago. I was like, you know, we want to do this for real now. Who should I talk to? At least for advice? We need to. And you're like, well, talk. Talk to amy ASU Prep. And I was like, okay, I'll talk to Amy. And I would talk to Amy, and. And Amy and I were having this conversation about. And there's this vision document that I circulated to both of y' all about this Con World school. And by the end of the conversation, Amy and I were both being a little coy. We're like, well, do you want to do this together? And here we are. We're doing this together.

It's awesome. Before I bring you into the conversation, Amy, just one follow up, Sal, which is, if the pandemic hadn't happened and we hadn't had this forced experiment with online and distributed learning in the ways that we have, would you have gone to that step in your mind of, gee, there really ought to be not just Khan Academy and Schoolhouse World with the tutoring, but a virtual school itself? Or do you think you would have stayed rooted in, yeah, let's open a Con Lab school in Lexington, Massachusetts, so my kids can go there and things like that? Or, you know, would you have stayed grounded in the online blended version of the world, as opposed to the online virtual remote version?

I think the pandemic for sure accelerated our thinking on all of this when we, you know, Khan Academy, obviously, if the whole world knew that the pandemic was going to hit March 2020 to hit the schools, we would have all tried to prepare more in advance. But as we've talked about before, you know, Khan Academy was unusually well prepared, as was ASU Prep, to help people during that. But I think we all know that based on what we saw in the pandemic, not everyone had access to something really great. There was definitely a lot of road bumps on how distance learning was done. And so I think it got a lot of people thinking, well, we have to create kind of an infrastructure for the world that I almost. There's a strategic oil reserve. There should be a strategic education reserve of systems and processes that in an emergency time, a lot of people can lean on. But even in a non emergency time, you have kids in rural areas, kids in urban areas that don't have access to really rigorous coursework or whatever it might be or want to be connected with kids all over the world. So it accelerated Schoolhouse World, it extended the. The pandemic accelerated a whole series of content at Khan Academy, and it for sure accelerated the, I think, the interest from the world. For us to do an online high school and for us to actually do it.

No, that's perfect. And that emergency infrastructure is something that Amy and I have talked a lot about over the years. Amy, I want to turn to you just to give our audience some background about ASU Prep Digital, what you all were doing before the pandemic hit yourself and your own vision for what online education can and should be.

Sure. So asu, of course, is quite an enterprising post secondary institution and is always thinking about learning across the entire spectrum. So PK through Gray, we are thinking about learning in specifically the K12 segment of that continuum for ASU prep. And, and when the pandemic hit, we had immersion learners, we had hybrid learners, and we had digital learners. And then all of a sudden everyone was digital. And so we were in a really lucky position to have the infrastructure and the stability needed to be able to handle that volatility. And so that really increased our impact, certainly in the state of Arizona, as the Department of Education and the Governor's office reached out to us to help both with training teachers across the state, but also just partnering with districts to help kind of distribute that infrastructure so that more districts would be able to have access to that stability. So we learned a lot, kind of to what Sal said earlier that there's everyone was doing online, but not very well. There were some bright spots, for sure. Some really wonderful models emerged, but ASU Prep Digital, in our infrastructure that has been in design for quite some time, really thrived, and our learners, in fact, really performed and outperformed state averages. And so that was beautiful. And I think also that the desire to proliferate that and to give access is something that both Sal and I had quite common thinking on. How can we extend this, given all the market forces and how the world has changed? Everybody deserves access to an excellent model. And that's where I think there was great synergy between the two of us.

So now you're going where I want to go, which is the partnership and the magic of what you all are both bringing. And why work together as opposed to doing this apart in some sense. So, Amy, take us into that first conversation that you and Sal had, maybe coming out of the koi phase, and what you all saw as the magic there. And then, Sal, I'd love your take as well.

Well, both Sal and I have said we finished each other's sentences in the first conversation, and we had probably a 90 minute, which was supposed to be a half an hour conversation. Sal was walking around his neighborhood. I was sitting right.

He's good at that.

Yes, exactly. And we kept saying, what if, what if, what if? And we thought, okay, this really just feels like the right thing at the right time. And he sends over a vision document that had been drafted for quite some time, and it was like reading some of our own team's work. And so I responded to him, and we just said, let's do this. And so we quickly got a core team of designers together. We've maintained a pretty lean team that has gone in with a zero constraints mindset and said, how do we build bottom up? Using some of the first principles that Sal is really dedicated to, but also just what ASU and ASU Prep is dedicated to in terms of the fusion of college pathways for learners at any time, mastery model, applied learning and community. And then how do we build something that is applicable to kids all over the world? And so, ironically, it was easy. Now we haven't done the work yet because we haven't launched, but there has not been very many things that we've even had to have healthy discourse over. We've just found ourselves very excited about how much aligned thinking there is from a design standpoint.

I'm still bracing. Bracing ourselves for our first disagreement.

Yes, exactly.

Sal, how about on your end? I'm curious. You could have done this on your own. What was the advantage of partnering with an ASU Prep Digital and maybe to get more in the mechanics. I'll flash a question up here from Dr. Jim Dunnigan. Curious how Kahn's platform is integrated into ASU Prep to give students a cohesive feel. And so I guess that's maybe part of the question is who's doing what? What parts of your offerings remain separate. Maybe just help us understand what the nature of the partnership really is.

Yeah, you know, maybe it's useful. I'll give a high level of what I wrote in that, that crazy, you know, doc that I shared.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Five, six months ago. And then why? This, I think is kind of the dream partnership. You know, there's. There's your core learning in stem, your core learning in English Language Arts, and then there's how do we connect people? How do we create like a real human element so you learn to build those muscles and you feel connected to people all over the world. I guess I'll take them in reverse order. That's where the stereotype of online learning is that, oh, you're kind of just doing your own thing. You feel detached from other people. Honestly, that's the stereotype of some in person learning as well. You're just sitting in a classroom and you're just, you know, your eyes are glazed over. So, like, how do we really challenge that? Well, what if we really made it? Every day there is a synchronous in person experience. It could, it might be over video conference where you talk about really interesting topics. The stuff that students and adults were dying to talk about. You know, will the Fed be able to control inflation? Will CRISPR change the human genome? Should social media be blamed for the polarization in the world? There's a lot of interesting topics that unfortunately aren't being talked about in school, but they're the best possible motivators and prompts to get a multidisciplinary data and to build all sorts of muscles. So we said, okay, let's make that the anchor. We're calling that daily seminar. And we want to be very transparent about what those are. We want to be able to have a place where we can have conversations and teach students and maybe the world that there's a way to have conversations and to be able to disagree about these things, but be able to do it respectfully and learn from each other. Then you have all your core competencies on stem. That's where Khan Academy is already quite strong. We are already mastery based Schoolhouse World, which is the Tutoring platform already created a mechanism to not only support students as they need tutoring, but also to validate their competencies. So while you're taking a Khan Academy unit test, it records your face, it records your screen, you explain your reasoning out loud and, and then that video artifact gets peer reviewed. And so if you got 90%, you explained your reasoning, you didn't cheat, et cetera. We say, okay, you know that unit of calculus or you know that unit of algebra 2, whatever it might be. So that infrastructure was there. We're going to be able to do that for math and science that was in the document. So it's okay. What if our virtual school had the daily seminar, was able to leverage Khan Academy and schoolhouse in this way while also giving more supports, maybe Oxford style tutorial instructor that can connect you with students to make sure that you're motivated, you're setting your goals, you don't get blocked. What if on the writing and reading side, everything you need to do in high school was mapped in front of you, but you have choice? You say, okay, I can read some of those books, some of those books, here's all the different types of writing work I can do. And that there's a way to be evaluated. We're actually exploring some really novel, powerful, peer based grading that we think is actually going to be more robust than traditional grading. And so that was kind of the high level vision. There's also Amy alluded to this really blurring the lines between high school and college. There's no reason that students, you know, we're doing pilots right now, Khan Academy with Howard University, where if students get mastery in college algebra on Khan Academy while they're in high school, in Title 1 high schools, they're getting transferable college credit from Howard University. Maybe there's other universities that we might be able to do this with. Hint, hint, hint, hint, hint. That was the vision that maybe kids can get up to two years of college while they're still in high school. Maybe more. So when Amy and I chatted about all of these, you know, as we said, we were completing each other's sentences and I was appreciating. You're right, Michael. We could build out all of the infrastructure to do this. But here Amy had already built out the infrastructure. They're already serving over 40,000 students. They have a charter in the state of Arizona. They have figured out all this stuff and they are incredibly mission aligned. And every data point I had on ASU is very non traditional university, knows how to really execute, move fast, Willing to take risks, willing to innovate. And so it was intriguing on that first meeting, and then every meeting since then, I've just gotten more, more and more impressed that this, you know, this, this was the absolute right decision, that from my point of view, having. Having my cake and eating it too, we're able to put something out here with this vision and, and ASU is able to bring all of their tremendous assets and talent and, and folks to, to bear on this problem.

Amy, I want you to take the question as well, from your perspective of, you know, why this partnership made sense from ASU Prep Digital, you had been running the online school. I assume you're still going to be running those online school and course offerings in addition to Con World School Partnership, but I'd love you to elaborate on that for folks.

Yeah, I think both Sal and I commented when we first met about the compliance and comprehensive K12 schools is no joke. And so the fact that we had gone through the accreditation and infrastructure process to be able to drive down on public funding in the state of Arizona to be able to use this model for every, at least at this point, ninth grader that wants to, and then expand that and what our aspirations are, depending on what direction we go, to be able to bring access to students outside of Arizona. We just knew it was the right thing to do. I would also say the. To bring the difficulty of a beautiful platform in Khan Academy, a wonderful place to show peer mastery in Schoolhouse World. And then the integration of ASU Prep has been something our team has been working on and aligning all of the standards for 9th grade and drawing down. Okay, this makes sense from Khan Academy, this makes sense for the students to apply their learning in Schoolhouse World, underpinned by some of what ASU Prep has in Lego blocks of learning assets where we might need to cover some of those gaps. And so to answer the original question on how we're doing that, it's a little bit of everything based on the fact that everything's dismantled and then put together for a specific learner. Now, as it relates to the ASU Prep Digital population, that will still continue. And I think what's powerful about personalized learning is you have to have a program for everyone. And so this model is for high aptitude, rigorous learners that are curious and hungry and may not be able to find exactly what they need in some of the models that are out there. And so we operate under the assumption that all students can. So I don't. Both Sal and I believe that it's not Just for high achieving learners. It's for learners and under resourced homes that didn't know that they could. And so finding those students who, you know, we, we truly believe that the cure to cancer is probably in one of their heads and they just haven't gotten, you know, access to the microscopes to find it. And so what we hope to do in this early year is really demonstrate that with 200 small pilot 9th grade students, we've got it down, we can do this for curious, hungry high aptitude learners and then bring it to students in small bites who need a little bit more of a scaffolded approach to that and, and then propel them, slingshot them into university level high achieving content using the machine of ASU so that all of a sudden they're blurring the lines and transitioning into university level credit sometimes without even knowing. Because that's just how it works in our community based model.

It makes a lot of sense. I want to stay on this for a moment just because this starts to get into the mechanics of what the school is. So those 200 ninth graders that you're starting with, they all going to be based in Arizona on as part of the public charter school. Are they going to be distributed across the world paying private tuition of some sort? Is there a beta like how does this actually work from a mechanics standpoint? Either of you probably could take this. I'm looking at Sal in my screen at the moment, so why don't you jump in first and then Amy fill in the blanks.

You kind of answered the question. It's both and that's this. I think this is a pretty innovative thing. I don't know if this exists where you can have a charter, but then you can also bring in tuition paid, paying students from outside. And the goal here is obviously to make it as accessible as possible. You know, a lot of the truly, I would say rigorous, respected programs out there that might be, you know, could easily cost 20 or 30 thousand dollars a year. We think we're going to be able to do this or we are going to do this for sub $10,000 for students inside of the United States. And so we, we think that this is a really cool model where it's going to be free for students in Arizona, but then they're going to be able to learn alongside students from California, from Ohio, from Arkansas and maybe even a few. We have interest from Europe, we have interest from Latin America. So that would make it truly a world school, which I think will only enhance everyone's Experience.

I will just add that I've been surprised. I shouldn't have been surprised really. Based on when Sal sort of released the this from his own social platforms, the volume of inquiries was pretty substantial, but also just where they were coming from. Only 13% of our initial applications have come from Arizona. And so it's also really emboldened. We're doing the right thing by bringing this at an affordable price point to students outside of Arizona. And in fact, over 20% of our inquiries have been outside of the United States. So to Sal's point, we're really hoping to build a community where we can kind of shrink the globe for our students in the Oxford model.

Something I'll add on top of that, from a post secondary view of colleges and universities, one of the reasons they often can't get affordability to really happen is because the marketing costs are so high to even acquire students. Having Sal, your brand, Khan Academy's reach of 100 million-plus learners, Arizona State University and the reach through Arizona at the table together I think is a pretty potent combination as well in terms of lowering the overall cost and getting rid of some of the extraneous things that you might otherwise have to spend money on. Again, from my perspective, I think that's actually another big piece of this. I'm curious if I'm a parent and I've got a ninth grader and I want to enroll, what does that look like right now? Is there a process? You know, who are you taking? What are the mechanics of that? And then I want to from there just to sort of tease it. I want to move to then. What does mastery really mean? Sal, you started alluding to this peer assessment of mastery concept, but it's one of the coolest things I think that you've created period. And so I want to go there next after that. But let's start first on the mechanics of I want to enroll. What does that look like I can.

Yeah. So Con Worldhouse. Sorry, ConWorldSchool.org is where our students can go to find all the details. But we're taking applications on a May 15 and a June 15 deadline. And there are several different ways for the students to demonstrate that they're a good fit for the Con World School. Everything from what books are you reading to a video about what they're excited about. We're really. We also encourage our students. Our next info session is May 24 and both Sal and I and our team do basically a Q and A. So we go through what does it look like to be an interdependent learner in a community. And how. What is Socratic Seminar? And some of these buzzwords that make sense to educators, but what does it mean to a parent and a family? We answer all of that and then we just encourage students to go through that process. And so we are already seeing an influx of those applications coming in and we have a small team that's reviewing those to find out if they are the right fit for the Commonwealth School. And if they need a bit more support, they are still welcome at ASU Prep Digital. And there'll be assets based on what the model is inside of the con world school that they get teasers of. And then potentially they can work their way into it, depending on what their progress and mastery looks like that year.

That's very cool. So let's stay on that last buzz phrase that you just used, mastery learning. Sal, I want to turn to you, break that down, because I suspect some people who tuning in are less familiar with this notion. And you have a pretty clever way of assessing mastery that I actually think creates a very scalable infrastructure that could change the way we think about assessing talent and skill attainment for a lot of things in the world. So why don't you talk about how you think about that?

Yeah. You know, mastery learning in some ways is the oldest way of learning. It's just the idea that you always have the opportunity and the incentive to improve your level of fluency, or mastery, if you want to call it that. And. But it's not the way that we typically do it in a traditional school. In traditional school, we take a test. Amy gets a 90%. Michael, you get 80%. I get a 70%. Even though that test has identified gaps, even though Amy might be a B plus or an A minus student. What was that 10% she didn't know. And that 30% that I didn't know. Even though that gap is there, the whole class then moves on to the next concept, especially in many cases building on those gaps. I had a 30% gap in exponents. Now we're going to do logarithms, or now we're going to do exponent equations. How am I supposed to understand that? And it also goes the other way around. Imagine in a traditional school, a student gets a. Let's say they get a C in algebra 2. And then that summer they decide that they really do want to learn this well, and they do maybe review and fill in those gaps in their heads. And then when they take pre calculus, maybe they take an A. Well, Anyone who's gotten an A in Precalculus has mastered algebra 2, but guess what? That C still sits there in their transcript and I would argue is incorrect information. And so what mastery learning is all about is if you have a B or at a B level, we could call it other things approaching mastery, et cetera, that you could move on. That might be okay for you at this point, but you always have the opportunity to go back and try to make that an A. And that's important, honestly, just, just to make sure you have a good foundation for the, for the rest of your life. And we know this is a major issue in America and frankly the rest of the world. 65% of all students here in California going to the four year system, going to the Cal State system. So these are the kids who graduate from high school who decide to go to four year college. So that's already, you're talking about the top 50 or 60% of students in our current system. When they get to the four year college, the four year college gives them a placement exam and says, wait a second, you're not even ready to learn algebra yet. We're going to bring you back to pre algebra. So mastery learning is happening at these weird touch points, but at almost a destructive touch point where all of a sudden, yeah, really the last four or five years of your education, you were building on two shaky of a foundation. Let's go back to middle school math. That's happening to the majority of students. They're not even placing into algebra, which frankly should be a high school subject. So we know there's a huge need for it. But you do it the other way around. You let people master concepts, fill in gaps at their own time or pace. We have over 50 efficacy studies at Khan Academy. We just have a recent one just came out. If students are able to put in even 20 minutes a day for three days a week doing mastery learning and math, they're growing 50 to 100% faster than their comparable peers. That's just an hour a week doing that. Now imagine Khan World School, where that is the, the way that we're going to learn everything. You're just going to have a really strong foundation. And the key, well, how do you assess it? Well, that's the tools at Khan Academy, at least on the STEM side, are really good for a lot of those foundational skills. The next question is how do you authenticate it? How do you know that it is actually someone's work, not their older sister or somebody? And that's what we did at Schoolhouse, where we had to vet tutors, we said, look, record your face and the screen while you go through a Khan Academy assessment, while you explain your reasoning. And if you get 90% that. And this is all get streamlined at Schoolhouse World, it gets peer reviewed by people you don't know according to a rubric, making sure you didn't cheat, making sure you got to 90%. And then we say thumbs up. Actually on your trend on Schoolhouse Transcript, it says you now have shown 90% mastery and let's say unit three of algebra two. And the video artifact is there too. So if anyone ever doubts it, they can click on that video and watch you perform it. I encourage anyone to do that. You're like, okay, this student clearly knows that it's fun far. It's a far better signal than saying someone got a 95% on a test that they took 10 years ago, and that by itself is a signal. But then that allows that person to begin their tutoring journey, which we also hope the con world school students do. And you can imagine if you can then tutor algebra, tutor calculus or tutor physics, that not only means that you've mastered the subject material, it means you could communicate. It means that you have empathy. It means that you're. You want to do good for others. And schools like mit, University of Chicago, Case Western, they've already put it on their admissions application because they think this is such a powerful signal of student mastery and student personality or student want, desire to give back.

There's so much in there that I love. I love the dynamic nature of mastery also that. Right? Like you didn't master it yesterday, but now you have and it reflects that. Frankly, I think if you think about the sports analogy of what that looks like, you know, at one point Michael Jordan was a master of certain skills in basketball, probably not so much anymore. And so it changes also as you know things and there's that pure ability to recognize that as well. I think it does another thing Sal also, which is it separates the role of the teacher to say they're not the final judge and jury of someone. They're really your advocate and guide and coach. And someone else that you don't even know gets to authentically assess. Hey, does Sal really understand and master teaching to the world? And it turns out you do. So the. I. I want to start to go to just some audience questions really quick, some lightning round on this. So I'll pull them up. I think you both can take this one. It's from J.W. marshall, who says, what do you see as the biggest challenge for success as you launch this model and how do you plan to overcome that challenge? So Amy, why don't you go first? I'd love you to highlight where you know the biggest challenge in your mind question that you have and then Sal, go after that. Yeah.

We have talked quite a bit about how much we've learned from questions that our parents are asking in this really rigorous and high aptitude learning model. We have parents that think that can only be done when surrounded by learners that are just like them. And so when we have this principle that every learner can with the right mechanisms of support, I think we have had many conversations about how to prove that out because we're building this, we're designing this model from the ground up. And so notions of a teacher are very different. And so how to explain that to a family who is, okay, what does that mean to have a learning guide? Am I still going to be able to get that same one on one access and will it feel the same for my child to be in a learning guide and or Hogwarts House type of model? What does that really mean in practice? And so I think one of the great challenges and opportunities has been been to educate parents on how to do this in a very different way. And Sal kind of talked about this in terms of mastery. But in a mastery model, we're not sure how grades are going to look because grades can sometimes skew incentive. And so because we know kids can often game the system or a teacher is looking at a student who has a specific GPA and it doesn't really tell the story, we're taking such a different approach in our model so that we don't just look at letter grades, but we look at what does the student know and how can they apply their learning. And so educating families on how we're doing that without having demonstrate it. We're pointing a lot to the Con Lab school and what's going on in Mountain View, California. We're looking a ton at what is working well at ASU Prep, but this is all done in a virtual environment. And so we're looking for these early adopters that are willing to take that risk with us based on two really, really powerful brands and institutions that have done this well, but in a unique model with a pretty powerful value proposition.

Sal, what about you? What do you see as the biggest challenge and how you're going to tackle that?

Yeah, I think some of it is the notion of personalized mastery is a new phenomenon. I think most People nod intellectually when you say, like, of course, yeah, why are we doing that? Why aren't you filling in that 30% gap? That is why I had struggling or why. But it is a new model. The good thing is, to Amy's point, we have Khan Lab School, where we now have our second graduating class. And, you know, it's another place where we can have our cake and eat it, too. People think that for students to do well on APS or sats or get into top universities, they have to be stressed out, they have to be competitive, they have to kind of elbow out other people. And that might be a path. But Khan Lab School has shown that that isn't. That there's a completely alternative path where students can actually not have traditional grades, where students can actually be learning for mastery. And by the way, when you learn from mastery and you, you show up and you take the sat, you do very well.

So it turns out you've mastered it.

So you can perform. Yeah, about, you know, test prep or whatever, they're showing up, and they're frankly rocking it. They show up. It's expected that you're going to get a 5 on your APS. It's not some big scary thing because you guess what, you already mastered the subject, so you just show up, you're like, of course, I know this already. And, and it's showing that these. And these students are healthier, happier, more collaborative, they have more time for their passions, which is another key thing, more flexibility for it. They're doing more internships, they're able to work on real projects, start. Start companies, and they're getting into college, frankly. You know, Con lab school had nine graduates last year, 15 graduates this year. And they're punching well, we're punching well above our weight in terms of where, you know, these, these, these kids are going. So I would point to that for the world school, that the precedent has already been set that, that the world wants more students like this. And I think the, the biggest obstacle for us now is frankly, getting the word out and explaining it to the, to the families and the students that I think could really, really, really benefit from this. You know, students who are curious and, you know, it's not necessarily. I think there are going to be some students who are, quote, bored in traditional school who want to do more, who want to explore more, who want to go faster, who want to do the Socratic seminar. I think there are also kids who are disengaged in traditional school because they aren't able to pursue their passions. It isn't mastery based. They feel like they're doing a bunch of busy work, but then here it's all going to be things that they can connect to. How is this going to make me or the world actually better?

That's a good way to put it. So another question is, how fast do you think this team can go? There's so much appetite from so many learners across the globe, whether accredited, ideal or supplemental. Good, too. I will transition that as also like a larger vision. Question, where do you all see this going five years from now? We're sitting around, maybe in person, even having a conversation, maybe virtually. What do you think? You know, what's your big vision for where this goes? Sal, why don't you go first and then.

Amy I I hope if we're talking five or ten years from now, that we're able to. Well, however many students were serving, we have shown this, the same thing that I've just talked about at Con Lab school, that we're now doing it at even a larger scale that like these kids are consistently healthier, happier, feeling more connected to their work and to each other, and they have great outcomes, whether it's success in college admissions, internships, jobs, frankly emotional health and psychological health, which is a major issue for young people these days. That's a big win. I think there's no reason why this couldn't scale over five or ten years to many tens of thousands of students, maybe more. I hope there's a world where it's free to more than just students in Arizona, and there's many possible vectors to be able to get there. But obviously if we're doing that, we actually are delivering on being able to reach a large population of students with this type of a model that I think will generally be better for them and the world.

Amy yeah, I would agree. I hope that this not only is a model where there's thousands, Sal and I are, in our first conversation, said tens of thousands. And then we have lots of really smart people around us that are saying let's start small and continue to make the model really well honed. But in 5ish years, I think that more educators around the world are embracing untypical days and how to disrupt tradition and transcend what is kind of constraining learners around the world. So I hope that we bring a model that helps to raise the tide for other schools to do that. I certainly would hope that all of the tens of thousands of learners that we get to impact are thriving and they're also contributing. And then I hope that, you know, hope these are in five or six years and we get to point to this inaugural 200 to their graduation. And so if we're doing it right, they're going to go in with 60 plus credits and they're going to move, be moving quickly into their masters and then be contributing back to their community.

So last question for me as we wrap up and for those who ask questions that I didn't directly ask, it's because I think Sal and Amy may have answered it earlier. And so you're welcome to go back and watch the video. I'll also get the text up on my substack and places like that so you can check it out. But last question for both of you, which is sort of to come back to where this vision started, Sal, with the book that you wrote, obviously, but then pioneering it in the Con Lab school, then going virtual. Is there a world in which people start to create brick and mortar like lab schools and take the kernel of what you all are building this con World school so that I can access it in a brick and mortar school community and maybe have some of the benefits of both place and the broad geographic span over virtual? What do you all think about that? Sal?

That's the hope, I think. You know, there are already conversations about starting other Con Lab schools, but even the Con Lab school in Mountain View, Kim, who's the head of school here, she's been very involved in this project because we don't think it is just Con World school learning from kls. We actually think as Con World school gets built out, KLS will start to bring its elements in. And so you can imagine going back to a five year vision if there's I suspect there will be a critical mass of students in Phoenix, in Scottsdale, but maybe in New York, maybe in London, there's a critical mass of Con World school students that they can actually convene, find some space, do all of the things that you can't do online, do sports, etc, maybe some of their tutorial instructors, maybe some of the guides or the advocates might be local to their geography, but there's still ways to connect with the rest of the world. Would love nothing more than that because what kw, I hope it becomes really a platform on which you can do hybrid, the best of all worlds learning. But obviously if you're in a situation where you're in rural Alaska and there isn't someone else around you, you still have access to the rest of the world and truly rigorous learning.

Amy, final word, I absolutely think we are going to have pockets of con world school students that can be and I think parents are incredibly smart activators and the market is showing us that as micro schools are popping up everywhere. So while we're demonstrating this in a con world school, totally virtual model in year one, I know that there will be all sorts of iterations that will pop up around just as Sal said. And we're excited to support that and also advocate for that on a policy level within states that might, you know, have unintended barriers. So this is really just the beginning and just being very student centric and committed to learners, it's going to, you know, with the power of SAL and the ASU brand and dedication to innovation and blowing up any kind of impediment that there is in front of us, we're pretty excited about we're going to do for kids.

Amy Sal, I'm like really excited that this is coming together. Sal, when you showed me that vision and walked me through how you thought of a school day in a school week and so forth in this format, I was like immediately to my wife, holy cow, this is incredible. Watch what's coming down the pipeline in high school and then to see this partnership get off the ground and these 200, dare I say, pretty lucky students that are going to experience this over the next year as you select them, I think it's going to be pretty cool to watch where this goes. So on behalf of a lot of future students that you'll be serving, thank you. And for all those tuning in, you can check out this and more content, obviously on the future of education, but keep an eye on the Kahn World School as it continues to develop. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks, Michael.

Thanks, Michael.