Changing of the Guard at Virtual School Funded Only When Students Demonstrate Mastery

Welcome to The Future of Education. And now here's your host, Michael Horn.

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

Thanks for inviting us.

Thanks, Michael.

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

Sure. Yeah. So the founding story is, I think, an interesting one. I was an assistant superintendent in the Exeter, New Hampshire area, and I worked for a very innovative superintendent, Skip Hanson. And when the charter school laws changed in New Hampshire, he was the first superintendent to step forward and say, I think there's a great opportunity opportunity to create charter schools that could benefit our kids. And so he thankfully allowed me to do the design work on the Great Bay Charter School, which is still operating today. And then a few years later, he asked me about the virtual side. He said, do you think we could help another group of kids through a virtual charter? And again, allowed me the— opportunity to do the design work on that. And so it was just that simple, you know, interaction in his office one day that led to everything. Soon thereafter, he decided to retire and I said, well, it'd be an opportunity for me to do something different. I stepped into the role and the first few years were really quite interesting. There were nights when I would go home and wonder if we were going to make payroll and, you know, where the money was coming from. And we were, Always following the policies available at the state level, but since we were doing things in a different way, it was, there were just questions all the time. And just always thankful for the commissioner, Lionel Tracy, and always finding answers for us or knowing the right person to ask and really helping us to get off the ground. And then I think, The next piece that led to our success was the people we were able to attract and hire, one of whom is here with us today, Natalie. She was in our second cohort or first, Natalie? Second. Came in as a teacher and for many, many years just continued to do exemplary work and kind of rose up through the ranks. And I think one of the cool things about Natalie is if there's a job at VLAC, she's probably been involved either directly in it or somehow in it. So she really has just a wonderful understanding and an understanding that I don't have because I've never been a teacher at VLACS. I've never taught a kid and she has. So I think she brings a lot of wonderful things. Over the years, we have grown to a point where now we serve regularly 10,000 to 12,000 students. on an annual basis. You know, 98% or so who are from New Hampshire, the rest are from out of state. We come close to 1,000 full-time students each year, K through 12, and the rest are part-time. And all throughout our history, we've— the question has been, well, who are the kids who come? And people are expecting the answer like, you know, it's a certain type of kid. There came a point we stopped asking the question because early on we surveyed, you know, why are you here? And what we found was it wasn't about only kids who struggled. It wasn't about only kids who are, you know, on the high end academically. It was just across the board, every type of student you could think of. And you can see that on our graduates. We've had kids whose parents have thanked us for saving their child, and there are other kids who are, you know, ready to step out and become the next president. I mean, they're just all over the place. And we've continued to be able to attract just amazing, amazing folks. We have about 250 employees, although in the month that I've been gone, Natalie's probably hired another cohort. And we continue to grow, which is amazing. Of course, we went through the pandemic and helped a lot of extra people. Almost overnight, our number of kids increased by 47%. But what's, I think, really interesting is we've never went back to the enrollment numbers that we had prior to the pandemic. We dropped, but, you know, we've helped a lot of these

new students. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot of them have stayed or more people got to know about us and came to see us. So it's really been, for me, it was the last 18 years have just been a highlight of, you know, I can't think of a better way to cap off a 45-year career than to be able to experience what I experienced and the people that I got to work with. And Natalie may have another thought, but I think it's pretty, This is pretty true that the school's in a really good place. The enrollment numbers are still healthy. We're not seeing 20% increases, but we are seeing regular 2%, 3%, 4% increases. Financially, we're in a really good place. We have our own building now for administrative purposes. Yeah. And a really stable staff. So I think things are really in a good place. And I don't mean that to sound like I did that. It's really people like Natalie and others who did all the work to put us in that place. So if I left anything out, let me know. But—

No, no, that's good. Well, let's maybe start to color in the lines for people just a little bit more, and then we'll— Natalie, we'll talk about the future. But Natalie, maybe I'll ask you this question since you're now leading this organization. Just paint the picture for folks. Like when Steve says part-time students, these are people who are taking 1, 2, 3 online classes, right? These are virtual students. But you have a very different flavor of how people do virtual learning than most of the virtual schools that are out there. It's enabled by the policy environment, certainly in New Hampshire. You have a very innovative funding model. You have a lot of choice about how people complete learning. So maybe fill in the lines of that student experience a little bit more.

Sure. Yeah, you've mentioned some of the really key parts there. We, I've had people say to me, I wish my state had something like this. Like when they hear about it, we, you know, have students from Massachusetts who will come and take courses with us because Massachusetts does have online schools, but not in the same way where they're asynchronous, where they can be just taking 1 or 2 courses. Many states, you have to just choose to take your entire school online. And so this idea that, you know, you can be a full-time student at any school in New Hampshire and then take an additional course because perhaps your school doesn't offer it. Certainly the ability to access a wide variety of courses is a key thing for small rural schools that can't support, you know, having maybe just 1 or 2 students who are ready for a particular math course, and they can come and take it at VLACS. And then we also, as you said, that competency-based funding model is key for us. The idea that we are not getting funded for kids just coming and showing up and sitting. and doing nothing. They have to master their competencies, get credit for their courses, and that is how the state is paying us. And that's a really innovative piece that, you know, we can give credit to Steve and others, but to really that idea that students are progressing in their— as they are progressing, that is how we are getting funded. We aren't— And that really helps us make sure that we Have that idea of we really need to support students to get to fulfill their own version of success, which, you know, they might come and do one course, they might come and take a ton of them, but we're there to help personalize and to support them in that so that it's going to help us be successful since that's how we are funded. But it's really for them to be able to, you know, take their own path and, you know, figure out what they want to do and how to proceed. And it's just really about the opportunities we're able to provide that I think is just unique in how we're able to do that.

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

Well, there are traditional online courses, if you will. We also have something called projects, and then we have even rebranded what we used to call experiences to custom projects. And so what that allows kids to do is to move from— to pick the place where they feel comfortable. So if they want to take Algebra 1 as a traditional course, they can. They could take it as a project, which In our world, we put them in a scenario where we may say, you know, you're going to be starting a business and you need to do certain things from an accounting perspective and you're gonna produce a budget or something. And then there's some competency that is supported by that. But then also that kid could come to us and say, well, I have an idea. for working with an engineer, and I'm wondering if there are some math competencies that I might be able to master as part of this. And we would work with them to do that. And we have a growing number of instructors who are really becoming very knowledgeable and very skilled at those alternative assessments. Whereas when we first started that, it was a smaller group, and that group is continuing to grow, but it really allows kids to approach things from many different ways. And what we've basically done is standardized our competencies and built rubrics around our competencies and done professional development around, you know, how to assess and so forth. And so, yeah, it's a very different environment. And also, I'll go off track a little bit here. You alluded to funding and You know, and as you said, if I have 10% progress, we get 10% funded. And one of the concerns early on with that model was, well, what do you do about the kid who is going to take more time than normal? You're not getting paid for time. So what if a kid takes a year and a half to complete a course? Well, what we found, and this is what we had hoped, was that there's a balance because you also have the kid who completes that same course in— 2 months. 60 days. And over time, we just, that has just really played out very well for us. So we haven't had an issue where kids are taking too long and we're losing money and not able to support. So it's been really interesting. And there's actually, for those who might be interested in that, the document is a little bit old now, but Larry Miller, did a study a number of years ago about competency-based funding. And one of the interesting things he found in his analysis is that if we had been paid based on seat time, the state would've had to pay a considerable amount of additional funds to us to support that model. That there were, you know, it was, there were savings to the state, if you will, because of the way we were doing it, which I can't say it was necessarily our intent, but it was just interesting that that happened. And I'm not making the case that everybody should jump to our model. I'm just saying it was, you know, an interesting outcome.

No, that's super interesting. I'm curious, let's actually stay on this assessment strand because I think sort of 2 questions probably come up for folks, right, when they're listening. One is, how does the state trust you all with assessing? Like, don't you just want to pass kids so that you can get the funding? And then the second question, which I think is extremely pertinent at the moment, is about— can't go more than 5 minutes without asking in education, okay, impact of AI. And, you know, I hear it a lot from our higher ed friends, which is AI is taking the online courses for the students. Like, I don't, you know, they're using AI to do the work, cognitive offloading, et cetera. How do you all think about those 2 questions, you know, around the, did the student actually do the work? Did they master it? And perhaps this, on the one hand, it's a beautiful incentive On the other, I can imagine the state being like, oh, wait a second, did they really master it? How do you, how do you show them that? Natalie, you want to take it? Yeah,

I'll jump in with one, one piece and then I'll invite Steve to, to jump in too. One of the, the pieces that's been core to every single one of our learning experiences is a discussion-based assessment at the end of every competency. So every student is meeting with their instructor for every competency and doing that discussion together. Over time, how we've sort of helped students prepare for that discussion-based assessment has changed, and I think that's going to continue to evolve, especially as you're saying that, that second question of, of, you know, how do we ensure that students are really doing their work? That has always been one of the pieces, one of our goals of our discussion-based assessment, because even, you know, before the current age of AI, there were plenty of, of opportunities for students to, you know, turn off their camera and secretly type the question in while we were— I've had that happen. You know, you hear the kid clicking on the other keys, like, what's the answer to this question? So we have really focused on the relationships of those instructors and those students. And I think that's going to be ultimately the thing that is going to always be central core part of our system is going to be that it's a relationship, human-focused. Relationships. And no matter what's going to happen, we're going to have those pieces where the instructor is going to know the student well, and they're going to have that ability to, you know, verify that it's really them and that there's real learning happening, as long, you know, along with, you know, changes that we're going to have to make with that model. But Steve, I think that you have some sort of thoughts about the state and how they trust us.

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

Right, they don't have the incentive to not hide it. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, just incredibly proud of the work that everybody's done. And, you know, when you go through the retirement kind of cycle and people are saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I truly meant this, that Whatever people are saying to me is just a reflection back on them because one person doesn't do the work and one person doesn't, especially in an organization of the size of VLACS. It's really about the people and the employees and then the support we get from parents and schools throughout the state and organizations and the DOE that I hope it's something that New Hampshire's proud of that exists in New Hampshire. But I just think that in some respects, the timing was really good. I think when I wrote to you, Michael, and said I'm stepping down and thank you for your support, I mentioned how lucky we were to have Disrupting Class come out about the time that we started because it really was a wonderful way to begin a discussion about what we were thinking about doing at the time. And You know, putting some components of it into effect. And I think going forward, and I'm gonna step into AI here for a second, but I also wanna preface this by saying I'm no longer the leader. So some of the things I may say may be very different, but some of the things I kind of worked on over my last 6 months was the idea that we really need to embrace AI as a teammate, not in place of any human, but as an incredible technology that can do things we, we couldn't do and couldn't use as supports for kids before. And also, as much as we may have really big concerns about AI, understand that it's the, our kids' world. And if what we do is push it away and don't involve kids in using it and learning how to use it effectively and using, using it honestly and with integrity, then we're doing a real disservice to the kids. And that's what I worry about because I, you know, I worry about the pushback all the time. At the same time, you have to acknowledge those concerns and you have to deal with them. And I think Velox is in a transition, you know, and the transition's always the difficult part because we still have, even though some of these ideas are innovative, they're older now, now that AI's here. And there's a transition to really bring AI into it. And You know, so, you know, other schools have issues with academic integrity and so forth, and so don't we? You know, we have to work with kids all the time, and most of the issues are about teaching the kids about the proper way of doing it instead of slapping them on the wrist and saying, don't do it again, and that's all you do. Again, that to me is a disservice. But this idea of a teammate, You know, so one of the things Natalie and I and Julie Reese, our Director of Learning, have talked about is discussion-based assessments and how possibly we could bring AI into that as another discussant. And perhaps the AI brings up or poses some questions that we may not have thought of. Isn't that a wonderful thing? And certainly by having an instructor there and a student there, if AI says something that is not factual, well, you have 2 people there who are going to push back.

Yep.

You know, but it can take us to another level instead of thinking of it as a negative.

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

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

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

Changing. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're right now in that sort of taking stock mode of, you know, Steve and throughout his time helped build some really amazing opportunities for students. And some of that was sort of the idea that if we build it, they will come, which they have. But there are elements, some of, I think, the more, the pieces that we find more, you know, exciting and innovative, like the, you know, project-based courses and, you know, learning through experiences, those pieces have not necessarily had as many students engaged in those as we have with our traditional courses. And what Steve just said about, you know, maybe if we're worried about a course being able to be taken by AI, maybe that's not where we want to put all of our energies. I think some of our, our more innovative project pathways are really the places that we are hoping to draw more students into those. And So it's kind of looking at our distribution of our offerings and figuring out, you know, how to, how to kind of direct maybe more of our students into what we think are some more of those really authentic, really exciting opportunities for students. And along with that, you know, continuing our career-connected learning that we have for students, that to me feels like a place that, sure, students could use some AI to write some things. But there's also, if they're passionate about what they're, they're there because they want to work with a mentor and they want to, you know, go to a job site and learn what it's like to be there. That's a really, you know, exciting place for them to be. And also we have interest-based courses. Some of our most popular things these days are enrichment experiences where students are actually meeting synchronously. It's one of our only courses that we have that are really synchronous opportunities for students. You know, they're there to learn how to bake bread because they're a 5th grader and they want to learn how to do that. Like, those pieces are still— The human element of VLACS is alive and well in all of those courses. So that's really exciting for us to continue as well. And then we've been developing partnerships with 3 New Hampshire universities. We have Southern New Hampshire University, UNH, and also the community college system of New Hampshire. And we have partnerships with all of them for dual credit courses. And we're really excited to continue developing that with them. And I think one of the things that is key for that partnership is it's really win-win for both of us. They're looking at how to retain students within the New Hampshire university systems. And, you know, being able to have students have an inexpensive way of getting some college credits, but then they also see what it's like to be a student in, in New Hampshire. And, you know, with the population declining these days, I think those universities are really excited about continuing those partnerships with us as well. And getting kids an idea of what it's like to take a college-level course when they're still in high school. So those are some of the things that we're— Steve's planted all of those trees that we're going to keep watering and help them grow with. He's mentioned Julie Reese, our Director of Teaching and Learning. She's really taken the lead on figuring out what are we going to embrace with AI and how are we going to move forward with that. And I'm excited to see what she and her team put together. Well,

I hadn't thought about it. I guess a couple reflections off of that. Take it for what it's worth, but it strikes me on the dual enrollment front, you have an advantage because I see a lot of high schools, they're offering dual enrollment classes, and I'm putting my hands in quotes because like it's really just a high school class warmed over and with a little college curriculum sprinkled in. You're really partnering with universities that have online courses themselves, right? It's the real McCoy, if you will. And so that seems like Distinctive and important. The second thing that occurs to me is in this time of AI that's changing work, I hadn't thought about it, but you're right, with the experiential, career-connected, et cetera, opportunities you have for students, you could bring them into the ground floor of like working on these problems. The AI becomes a tool because employers are not having this question around cheating. They're like, how do you use it to get better results? And that's fantastic, right? And then 2 things, one of 2 things happens. Either the student says, man, I love this, and so I really want to apply myself more, and I'm not going to fake it because this might be my future job, right? Or they conclude, not for me. And what a great thing that they learned, that they can cross something off the list, if you will, right? Like, both of those seem to me to be really positive outcomes. And because you're in a mastery-based environment where there's not failure, but just keep working at it, you take away, I think, a lot of those incentives where people are like, oh my gosh, it's midnight. I got to get this done. I got to pass because otherwise— Got it. turn it over to AI or Cliff Notes or whatever it used to be. It seems like those incentives are not present. And if anything, they, they, they maybe move the other way. Natalie, to your points.

I mean, kids are still kids.

Sure.

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

Well, building agency in them to recognize where they are in their own learning. Well, let's just finish up with this. I'm tremendously grateful that you both jumped on to give me an update and give the audience a look into what's coming, but also what's been. And Steve, I'll just say, I appreciate the kind words about Disrupting Class, but you have been an inspiration, what y'all, you, Natalie, and the whole team there have built. For me, something I talk about in all my classes, I love pulling you out as an example as I'm on the road. And so just thank you for all that you've done for the students that you've served and And Natalie, as you step in this role, you got a friend in Massachusetts who's a big fan. So keep up the great work. I appreciate you both. And Steve, you know, don't be a total stranger as you go off into the world of photography and exploration outside of this world.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

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