Takeaways from a Season of AI in Education

Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. It's— we're in person.

I know.

2 episodes in a row.

It's amazing. For those who are only listening, we actually are sitting together here in Boston, which is super fun. It's good to be on this coast with you. And for me, the best part of this is I got to have family dinner. last night at your home. And I was— I woke up this morning thinking about— I just felt really happy. It was joyful. I think you know that my favorite night of the week is family dinner night at my house.

Your house, yeah.

And I hustle home so I don't miss it. And it was so fun to be with your girls and with Tracy. And I was thinking a lot about those few hours and like, the learning that was happening at that table. I mean, we got to play this board game that your girls had like invented and the dialogue and the conversation and the curiosity and that, you know, they were making their own lunches, which called back to like Rhett cooking.

Yeah. But he was doing that from a young age. I remember scaffolding.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Preparing meals, shopping and everything.

Totally. And, uh, so there was, that was really fun. And to be back in that sort of younger age, because mine And I should say, the thing I kept thinking is like, this is what learning is. And what if this is what it felt like? Which doesn't— I wish everyone could have this experience.

That sort of experience, yeah.

And yeah, so that was a good—

No, it's really cool. I will say we also then had a conversation this morning about— she was like, so what night is family dinner night in the Tabner household? And should we think about creating a similar structure as our girls hold up? So yeah, You being there also caused us to, because I think it's intentionality also.

It is.

Right? And that intentionality we both brought to raising our kids and now thinking about reinventing schools. And I think it was interesting because our previous episode, we were live as well.

We

were at the ASU GSV Summit with Reed Hastings. And it was interesting to hear Reed, I think for the first time in my memory, and I think that's what he said, talk about We actually need to reinvent the classroom model, the school model itself. We can't just be tinkering, if you will, toward utopia or layering over here and whatever else. That's obviously the tune we've been singing for most of our professional careers.

Right. But it was fun. It was exciting to hear him talk about that and reflect on the work that he's done in different, you know, elements of education and to really start to zero in on We have to work beyond just the classroom if we really want to transform the experience for young people. And so, I mean, I guess it always feels good to be affirmed and validated.

Sure, sure, sure. We feel like geniuses now.

Yeah. So I think our plan for this today is a callback to mid-season where we did this in-person, also kind of mid-season, oh my gosh, we're learning so much. Let's get together and just reflect and process and talk about what we're learning. after that first half of the season where we were really talking to sort of thought leaders and people who were thinking big picture and who understand AI and in AI. And so, we thought we'd do that again. Yeah. Where, you know, the back half of our big AI exploration season has really been with practitioners, I would say. And so, what are they, you know, what are we making? We had all these really fascinating conversations. This is our first time to really sit down and like sort through them and process them and understand what we heard. And then we've also been thinking about next season. And so we'll share a little bit of that.

We'll tease it a little bit. Yeah, it's been interesting. And I'm glad process is the word that I've been thinking about because I think when people appear on our podcast, this sounds silly, but it's not an endorsement of their model or their tool or whatever it is by us. It's a genuine learning opportunity for us. And obviously we were both interested in new school models, which was 3 episodes that we had. And then we were interested in the edtech tools that are coming up and using AI in different ways. And we were trying to process process, we had this framework that you introduced in the last time we were in person in Cambridge or in Boston about the sort of Horizon 1, Horizon 2, Horizon 3 schooling models. And the way I think we've sort of categorized it there was H1 is sort of the industrial model that we know, and you had H3 as sort of this post-industrial model, and H2 is sort of this hybrid that is elements of both maybe, and so forth. And so—

I love that metaphor of the steamship that outfitted with Stales still because it has to be running both because Steam is not reliable enough. You can't really get, you know, all the functionality you need and trust it. So you have to still bring the, you know, H1, if you will, into it. I'm glad you brought up the framework because that really shaped how I saw the second half of the season and had all those conversations. Yeah. I've actually been thinking a lot about that framework and how my understanding of it is sort of, I don't know, maybe becoming a little bit more nuanced as we talk with people and think about these different models. And so that might be

for me

a place to start.

Yeah, I think let's dig into that because, and you can take it wherever you want. I think it's a framework that I have found both useful and I've been struggling with like, what is this H3 really going to look like? Where does it really depart from the grammar of schooling as we've known it? And do we really think we're going to actually get there or are there going to always be this sort of H2 pulling us some of the elements? Like where, and then I guess I'll say the last thing, which will probably come up as we talk about the school models that we had on the podcast, where, you know, where are parents in all this? Like where is their headspace? Because like what we want, where parents are, where schools are, and I, for those that can't see my hand gestures, I actually think that's the continuum at the moment.

Yeah.

Like historically, I think parents were more conservative than the schools. I think that may have flipped.

Well, and I think there's some evidence of that with the growth in microschools and sort of alternative— like people really sort of self-bundling, if you will. You know, the homeschooling—

I was shocked, by the way, from the homeschooling. I read this morning in the 74—

I did

too. 10 million.

I know.

10 million families, they reported from this RAND survey that Johns Hopkins had done. I think it was Angela had done there. And that's a big number.

It's a big number. And I think it speaks to this idea of where our parents, and I agree with you, they've historically been more conservative. I mean, I wrote Prepared to try to, you know, I call it a love letter to parents, like to introduce them to some of the ideas of what's possible. Because my my feeling was like they want one thing for their kids, but they don't know how to get it. And so they kind of double down on, you know, the existing model, if you will. I actually think we're starting to see, at least for some, a break from that. And not just a small amount, but, you know, a growing—

In some cases quite big.

Yeah.

And in some cases there's steps. And I actually think that comes up. I don't know if you want to stay on the H1, H3 or go into

models or— Well, I think what I would say, just a couple of reflections and observations. So, and kind of how I've been using that framework in real life. Great. So one, I find that it is helping me be engaged in conversations with educators and developers, all the people who are in, who care about this work and who are working in it, who are thinking about AI, in that if I can just set the framework out upfront and say, look, like my passion is developing the post-industrial model in H3. And honestly, I don't think I've seen it yet, and I don't think it exists yet. And that's not a bad thing. That's fine. But let's not pretend that certain things are H3 or that they are a real new model. We might have that conversation in the models conversation when I don't think they are. And you brought this up the last time we talked. We also need— tons of kids are in H1. They're going to be in H1 for a while. Sure. How do we use AI to make those experiences better? So, I think when I'm able to say to people, which conversation are we having? Where are we working right now? And the key for me has been, how do we not constrain or compromise work in developing the post-industrial model or the H3 place by working on H1? And that is a real risk, I think. Yeah. I mean, there's so many, like, elements of H-1 policy and norms and practices and tools that just codify and solidify that model and then therefore prevent unintentionally the invention of new models.

And we talked about that some in the mid-season in terms of, you named assessment and special education in particular in those. I think there's a lot more. And frankly, in the last—

I'm going to add a new one.

Well, since we recorded, I think we have seen the growth, the fastest growth in my memory of a series of policies around screen time. Cell phones were already emerging, but now into screen time in general that I don't love, but well-intentioned in H1 that are diametrically opposed to I won't call them H3, but I will say like these new models of schooling that are appearing by education entrepreneurs in the sort of this H2, H3 nebulous area.

Right. I couldn't agree more. The other one that I would add is the place that I'm working every day right now. So let's call it the sort of college and career counseling and readiness world, if you will. And it's just so clear to me that, you know, the goals in that area by the vast majority of people are to improve college and career counseling and readiness in the H-1 model.

Yeah.

And I keep saying, like, if we're successful at that, don't we just codify this entire system? Don't we reinforce it and bolster it and prevent ourselves from moving to what I believe is, and certainly what we're trying to do at Future, which is life navigation, whole human development, like, enabling young people to emerge into a life of flourishing, to launch into a fulfilling life, not just get accepted to college or, you know, take that next sort of educational step, if you will, which is what is happening right now, I think, in H-1. And so just the— I don't think I've convinced a lot of people of that.

So it's interesting. I think it is a risk, one, but, and so I agree with you, no surprise. But 2, I'm going to take a theory that we use in my class and from the Clay Christensen playbook, if you will, value networks. And Tom Arnett has been writing a lot about this at the Christensen Institute. And basically the way I'll say it is this, when, let's use an analogy, when RCA and these large vacuum tube consumer electronics products, they got disrupted by Sony and these transistor-led products. Right. It wasn't just Sony replacing RCA. It was also all of the component suppliers of RCA got disrupted by a whole new batch of component suppliers because they were completely plug-in compatible with the old and vice versa. And then it wasn't just that, it was also retail got completely disrupted. So RCA sold through appliance stores that made their money not by selling RCA products, but by repairing.

By repairing, of course.

Right? Because these vacuum tubes would blow out. Sony got sold in discount retail. Target, Walmart, Kmart, all birthed in 1962. And so it's an entire— and so the shorthand that we used to say at Entangled, um, where I spent some time, uh, was systems disrupt systems. And so in some ways, like, you're building the new system. Now, I will tell you the struggle I have when I teach it in my class, which is we use a few school networks as like different, different versions of this. So we have Virtual Learning Academy Charter School in New Hampshire, Big Picture Learning, like a few of these that Tom has written some case studies on. And every single one of them at some point pull back into the existing system. And, like—

Yeah.

And Tom's answer to this is always like, well, yes, we inhabit Earth.

Yeah. It's the gravitational pull, right? Right. Like, we are—

we are not completely free of ours yet.

Yeah.

Sorry, Elon. And— but, like, so where is the limit of exchange of these systems?

Yeah.

And where are crosswalks distorting these new things? And where are they, to your point, actually codifying, like, grooves on a train track that are impossible to escape?

So that's an interesting segue into talking about the 3 models that we talked about, I think, during the season. Because, you know, we specifically wanted to talk to Alpha School because, like, everyone was talking about Alpha School. There was a lot of sort of PR and marketing out there about them, but we kind of wanted to really get under the hood and understand And, you know, was this a new, a new invention or not? And what was going on? We wanted to talk to John Danner, who was the, you know, co-founder of Rocketship and now starting Flourish, literally a, you know, AI-native, designed as an AI-native model. So what does that mean?

By the way, his is the only one that's actually AI-native.

Correct.

If you think about it, 'cause Alpha dates back to 2014 or whatever it is. That's true, yeah. And then Summit, of course.

And then we talked to Summit about, you know, their vision to create the next generation of models which would be AI native. So, I'm curious.

Play you. Go ahead. Go ahead. Ask your question. Ask your question. Go ahead.

Well, what's your impression of those 3? I mean, how would, how did you come away from, you know, what were you believing that they were actually inventing? Horizon 3, AI native, you know, what, what is your take on that?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think this is where I'm struggling with the framework is because I still can't completely imagine all the features of H3. And so I think let's tease this for next year's. I think we should construct a little bit more clarity around what really is H3 and what are the distinguishing characteristics. I think for sure. Because I think in my world, I sort of like, I don't know, Montessori feels like it has a bunch of these. And if I look at the alpha model, I actually see some tiebacks to Montessori. I see some tiebacks, ironically, to big picture learning. and things like that. Let's put that aside for a moment. In some ways, they feel like the closest sort of, like, pulling from both sides of it in very clear ways. Flourish, to me, felt like the closest to what I might imagine H3 in a middle school model.

Yeah, I think it has the potential. Potential.

We don't know yet, right? And I appreciated John's honesty with where they are. And then I had this— I'll tell you my take on Summit. Let's start there. Yeah. Because that's your baby. And you asked this question before we recorded, so no one knows you asked me this question, but you said like, I'm wondering how you're going to respond and react to this because in your mental model, Michael, to disrupt yourself, you need to have a completely separate, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then like the old migrates out to the new and that's not what they're doing. So I had this thought though, as I finished, because I didn't know what to expect. I came in with it a little bit like, Yeah. Huddles up a little bit. And then when we finished it, my reflection was this, which is when— there's another way to survive disruptive innovation that we don't talk about that often, which is— because I think it's like less proven. But the way is you are so clear on the job to be done that you know your mission, what you don't do, your priorities, what you don't prioritize, et cetera, that when new technologies come in or new features, you can swap them out very cleanly because everyone in the organization understands this is what we do.

Interesting.

So let me give you an example outside of an industry, and then you can, I'm gonna let you fill in the blanks on some of it. So there's this retail store that came in at the quote unquote low end that has never gone upmarket and never been disrupted by online retail. And it's called IKEA. You probably know it.

Oh my gosh. My children love it.

Right. And IKEA, we have become convinced they do one job to be done really well, which is I need to furnish this apartment today.

Yeah.

Like, I—

Yeah.

And they're not selling heirloom furniture. They're not trying to go high-end, nor are they threatened though by discount furniture or Wayfair or any of these folks because the job to be done is so distinct and clear. And they lay out the entire store like you're walking around the apartment and you fuel up midway through with Swedish meatballs and, right? Like, and so a new technology comes along and their simple Question always is: Does it help us get the job to be done accomplished better, or is it irrelevant to us? And if so, so take China.

Do they ever ask if that job still needs to be done?

That's probably a good question, but I think at the moment you probably have

to. I think that they probably keep finding that that job keeps needing to be done.

I think it's still relevant, and they probably say the market's pretty big. Right. It's a good question. But so in China, it's interesting. Like in in the U.S., we drive large cars. So we go— we pick out the furniture with the stickers, and then we go down to the bottom thing, and we pick off these flat carts, and we put them on that cart, and we check out, and we drive off in our cars, and we assemble them really easily. Right. In China, they don't have big cars. And so IKEA will deliver it to your house same day.

That day.

Yes.

Which is key.

Super integrated around the job. And they can make those sorts of decisions because, like, does it help us get the job to be done or not? Context changes, fine.

Right.

We just know what we are true north is.

Such clarity.

Such clarity, right?

And

so it prevents them from going off market.

And specificity.

And specificity, right? And you can imagine all the ways that trickles down, I think. And so my read when we were listening to Summit was like, now you could argue your mission changed, right, when you moved away from sort of the college, but I would say not really. I would say it was more clear. You actually were really clarifying what it meant to educate a prepared human.

I agree. I agree. Sharpening, clarifying, clarifying

the

metrics. And talking about it in a way that was more resonant.

Yeah. To the families you serve.

In the moment.

Yeah. So I guess my point is like when I heard what y'all are, or what Summit is doing.

Not me.

The team at Summit.

Big fan. Katie and Dan.

Um, and the whole team at Summit. Um, big fan. They like, they see, you know, Summit Learning got ripped out and they're like, okay, we can design this new technology with AI or partner or whatever it is to accomplish what is the school that Dan walked us through very helpfully, I thought, on that episode. And like, they could reinvent Expeditions, but again, it's not changing the DNA and the mission and clarity of the place. Right. It's more like, how do we sharpen the processes and better get them done right now with the available, I think that's very possible.

Without being disrupted. Without being disrupted. And to be very relevant and the adoption of that.

And that job to be done is still like, the prepared thing has not changed.

No, it hasn't. If anything, it's maybe more relevant. Oh, that's such an interesting—

Here's where we get to say we didn't tell each other our talking points in advance.

No, we didn't. We literally wait to talk about these things. That also brings me probably back to Alpha because Using that lens, I'm trying to think if I feel like Alpha has that level of specificity and clarity in a job to be done, or if they—

I'm not sure they do.

I don't think they do. I'm not sure. Yeah, because their model feels a little bit more like this, like, like you said, there's a little piece from here and a little piece from there and a little piece from there, and they're kind of stuck together, but it's not clear what they're adding up to necessarily.

I don't disagree with that. I, to me, not just from our episode, but in subsequent conversations and things of that nature, what I've taken away from Alpha. Okay. Let me say it differently. I think the thing that probably bothers you the most is the disconnection between the morning academics and then the life skills learned in the afternoon is my guess.

For sure. Just this sort of absence of intentionality and things like, I just don't understand how you have that. Yeah.

And so my takeaway

is

I don't disagree. For my kiddos, I would agree as well. And I also think relative to the current system, it's still significantly better than what most families would be getting on both dimensions, I think.

Yeah. And then you have to talk about ROI. Like, is it $75,000? Well, so the dollar— the price point. Yeah.

So let's actually talk about that because I agree with that.

Yeah.

And it's not what I would price it at, but I also cynically understand pricing it that high. This is a higher education thing that I hate, right? I would always, you know, Western Governors University is not seen as a prestigious university because they charge $6,000 or whatever, but they're amazing at their job to be done. But the game is like, if you come in at this high price point in the absence of metrics that people universally really can understand and agree on, they equate price to quality.

Yeah, it's a luxury brand. It's a luxury good. And so they burst onto the scene and sort of signal to people with lots of money that And they did it to break—

I mean, we've been frustrated we haven't been able to break into the conversation. We said that upfront in the 2 hours. I think that's been a way for them actually to do it. And so I've sort of like— I'm living in this dual world where I'm like, it's not how I would do it.

Yeah.

It's not. And I get it. Like, I get what it's accomplished for them. And there are many parents for whom, like, They're really desperate for it. They're running toward it or maybe running away from something. And that's more, I think, the truth.

Those are the conversations I've had with parents. You know, when parents are running away from something to a variety of different choices, depending what's on the table for them, which again, I always take as feedback as someone who wants to be in the system and serving the majority of young people. I'm like, huh. You got to pay attention to that when people are running from what you're offering. And where are we not meeting their needs? And really, to me, this is what it means to co-design and work with communities to create this public good, if you will.

Yeah.

The other thing that came up for me in the models, and this is on flourish, but it's come up a lot this year, and I'm curious what your thought is. You just talked about how the conventional wisdom is that, you know, to disrupt yourself, you have to sort of, you know, wall off that new innovation, which was certainly the approach I took when I was leading Summit. Yeah, you did way too good. I'm glad to know there's another pathway. I think I talk to a lot of people right now who view microschools as that possibility. I think that's what they're thinking. So by people, I mean, you know, whether it be school districts who are thinking about starting microschools where they think they're going to do their innovation there, charter school networks who are thinking about doing their innovation there. Certainly Dan, or yeah, John. Dan, John. Dan Nurr is thinking about, you know, starting as a microschool. And he talked about how he thought that the scaling there would be easier and whatnot. I'm skeptical of the microschool as the place where you can actually design a new model. Right. And the reason that I'm skeptical, and I'm curious what you think, is I actually don't think at the micro level you work through so many of the elements and principles and systems of an actual model. Like, I just can't imagine serving 50 million kids a year in micro schools. Interesting. Like, I just don't think that adds up to a system of educating the number of young people we need to educate. And so, but I could be totally wrong.

Yeah.

And if that's the case, like, how do you make the— what do you actually learn and develop in a microschool that is transferable to a larger school or a larger system or a larger model? I feel like there's a lot of gaps there.

That's interesting. A lot of thoughts. So we'll go through them. So one, and then push back where you— because I don't— so on the district and charters using microschools. I would say promising, but I'm unconvinced. And the reason I'm not convinced is I still don't see the mechanism. Let me say it this way. Districts for years have had alternative schools to serve people who dropped out of the system. Great area of non-consumption. I've written a lot about how I thought it could be a disruptive thing, but the thing that they don't do is disruption has to grow and people have to migrate out to it, and no one migrates out to

it. No.

Right? And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think part of it is the business model. Charters are a little different, but the business model of districts is the district. It's not the schools.

Correct.

And so schools take on the thing of pilots.

That's a bigger system. And I'm like, how does that microschool in any way help us understand and transform the system?

Yeah, no. And so I, I'm, I don't know that the dual, that I am convinced that the dual transformation strategy works there, even though I've recommended districts do this because I don't see another avenue for them. Let's leave aside charters for a second. I guess I would push back on the, well, maybe I would relabel it from micro schools. Oh,

interesting.

I don't actually, I'm moving away from that phrase because I think micro implies small. And if I look at what I think the most promising disruptive innovations in this new schooling space are, I don't think the feature is necessarily small. Yeah, I think the feature is that it's a low-cost private school. And so like Flourish may end, it's small at the moment, but it may end up being several hundred students. I could imagine maybe John would say no.

Yeah.

Khan Lab School was originally a microschool. It's like 300 kids or something like that.

Right.

So it's grown. You wouldn't call it micro anymore.

I'm not sure I'd call it low cost either. Well, that's fair.

That's fair also. Right. So, but I guess the point being, That's a good push, by the way. But the, I guess I am somewhat optimistic still that like we'll have hundreds and thousands of these different schools and some of them will be chains and some of them will be sort of your local coffee shops, sort of if you think about the mix. And I do think families are potentially going to move out of the district system into these new things. Now, I have 2 thoughts on what you're saying, which is like, but how do you do all these people? Like the size and complexity. And I guess I have a couple thoughts. One, I think we don't, I don't think we can know the answer to that until they start to grow in size and complexity and solve the next problem. And there's a tendency of people in education to want to design the system top down.

This is so true.

And I don't think we're going to, I don't think that's how it's going to work.

Okay.

So that's one. But the second one is, I think I can imagine a lot of families in more bespoke, smaller communities, Like these 10, I mean, if it's truly 10 million of 50, like that's already 20% that are DIYing. And is the future system 100% that? I doubt it, but it could be 70.

What's interesting to me about that is, so the DIYing, and this was the point of that article this morning, is literally people, it felt like summer to me when I was like organizing all these summer camps and these activities. And so these parents are like assembling and essentially duct taping together the, you know, the microschool part tending to be more of like online, digitally driven learning.

Yeah, almost like 2 days a week there.

Plus these real-world experiences.

Yeah, the set of 3 things.

Yeah. And so in my mind, I'm like, okay, that's a parent sort of cobbling all those things together. But if you're a microschool that the parent's going to you because they're expecting you as a school to put all those things together, how do you do that? If it's, if it really is about small, how do you have all those real-world experiences that like we're imagining for a small number of kids? I just don't know. There's somehow—

No, and this is where I think we agree, which is I think, I personally think like the upmarket trajectory of the sector, because disruption comes at the low end, it doesn't serve most people and has to serve more complicated use cases, which is what I think you're describing. And so I don't know what that looks like, but my current thinking is, Maybe all these microschools plug into what's a community center, and it's actually kind of permeable between them. I think your argument would be H3 is actually the operating system underlying how these all connect to each other.

It is, yes.

Which we haven't created yet.

Yes.

And then the second thought I have also is, like, frankly, like Odyssey and ClassWallet and all these things that are trying to direct education savings accounts, I think they have to reduce the complexity of, like, stitching this together. And it's almost like, you used to say this when you were in COVID, at Operating Summit, you had, like, the different flavors, or you— right? You go up to this— the sub shop and, like, the menu items.

The sandwich. Yeah. Exactly. It's the ordering the sandwich.

But I kind of think that's what we start to, like, take the coordination out of it.

Right.

Because most families aren't gonna be able to coordinate.

I can order the signature sandwich where there's no substitutions, but I know that I'm getting, like, the Santa Cruz that has turkey and avocado and salsa. Right.

And most families are not gonna be able to do— and when they do, it's not gonna taste very good, to use your analogy.

To make their own. Right. And so I think

like that's the other part of the innovation we don't— haven't seen yet. And so, sort of my evolution in thinking has been—

Interesting.

It's the coordinating infrastructure. It's like the different reassembled parts that coordinate. Like, maybe it's HopSkipDrive as part of this ecosystem. For those that don't know, that's sort of disruptive to the bus.

Yeah. It's like the Uber of busing, essentially. Exactly.

Right? And like, all these things, maybe this new system and future, I would think, could be part of it.

Yeah.

And anyway, but I almost think the way that happens is, like, we're going to just have to solve each next problem to try to take more, like, more students and more families.

And I think that comes back to this idea that I guess maybe you're helping me realize that I've been sort of experiencing the microschool as, like, people who are like, oh, we're going to reinvent education in the classroom. Like individual classroom teachers are gonna reinvent education. And so microschools were starting to feel like that to me. I'm like—

That's a good point.

No, we're not gonna reinvent this system. So, so what you're helping me see is like, yeah, we have to like effectively scale though if we want them to be micro, if it is about small, or we need to understand the principles and then figure out how they all kind of coordinate and work together to scale up the system because the system is the actual, I mean, if you think about it, the industrial model, Most people don't go to their school and think this is like a factory.

Yeah.

Because the factory is the underlying infrastructure of how everything runs.

That is the operating system.

That is the operating system. And I think what I want and what you want is a post-industrial operating system that enables and allows the experience we had at family dinner last night. Yeah. Like that type of human learning. And it counts. And it counts. And it has all— and so will some of the features of that those schools look like the ones we see today? Of course. Of course they will, because there's amazing things that happen today, and those of course get pulled into that. But it's that underlying infrastructure that really transforms, I think, everything.

I think that's right. I sort of want to jump into the tools. We probably have a couple things we want to pull back onto the schools on, but we can go back for a while.

Yeah, let's do it.

We can iterate. But the— so it's interesting. I think timely, interestingly enough, right?

So, this was our conversation with Peyman.

Peyman, yeah, we should say this to remind people.

Who was working on how do you make a better master schedule? And I think what I agree with him completely as someone who was fanatical about the master schedule, that embodies all of your values and your resources, your master schedule does. And yeah, so he's really trying to to do, make that better.

Yeah. And he is clearly designing in the H1, but I think the takeaway I had from it is one thing AI can be really good at is simplifying a lot of these logistics and time and getting the right experience at the right time for the kid who maybe can't, their family or guardians or whatever it is, can't line that up for you. And like, so when you think about this operating system of industrial model. We move from class to class. It's all there in the building. It's not outside of the building to something that is much more porous and flexible and so forth. My thought from, like, the takeaway from that conversation was, wow, AI could be incredibly helpful at this coordination, logistics, pulling in resources truly from the community, and each kid probably having different mixes of that.

Right.

And I'll stay with my community center model, just idea for a second of like multiple micro schools, if you will, or whatever we want to call them, plugging in is you can almost imagine a parent saying like, I want to opt out of parts of this.

Totally.

Because I will manage this. And another parent being like, or, you know, having a conversation where like, please help. And you being like, okay, we're going to line up 3 amazing outside-of-school experiences for you. And then you're going to jump into this learning experience here, but then like, You're gonna do this project at this other one here because like we're hearing what your goals are and where your struggles are and like the questions. And we're, by the way, seeing you could use some exposure to this to even understand, is this something you hate or like or et cetera?

And I think what you're doing right now is sort of starting to illustrate the difference between industrial model Horizon One. So, Paymon and Timely are working on a master schedule that's still within the confines of a building, you know, a 5-day week schedule that's kind of 8 to 3, that's classrooms, you know, I call it the egg crates. It's like 1 to 25, like all these, you know? So that's what he's doing. But now you're talking about, in my mind, a new operating system that would greatly sort of expand beyond those boxes, those little egg crate boxes, to all the possibilities that could be practically now assembled and personalized for families and kids. And so that kind of would be the H3 version, I think, of what Timely would do.

I'm learning a lot here already. No, I think I'm 100% and I'm getting clarity now.

Okay. And so I think this is a perfect example of like, yes, Paymon, go please. Like there's, like another school year is coming and please can we get off the magnetic whiteboards where people are still like by hand trying to create master schedules, which we know is not going to deliver and do use AI to do that significantly better, significantly faster in a significantly more personalized way. So I thought that was an exciting tool for that reason, and it provides that clarity we just said. I think that, yeah, I'm curious.

Okay, where are you going to go?

I can't decide where to go.

You can pause it.

It's okay. It's okay. I can't decide because, well, let's just remind people of the other folks we talked to. So we talked to Dacia Toll, who is working on CourseMojo, which is the ELA sort of in-classroom experience, and I think I would kind of bucket her that conversation with the one we had with Matt Pasternak, who is at Once. He's working on reading younger kids and how they read, starting very sort of human-based and then bringing in AI to support. And if we remember, he's doing really interesting things of how you're using all the people resources.

Giving really cool experiential opportunities potentially for high schoolers.

Right, right. Which takes me back as you were talking a minute ago, and I'm thinking back to Dan Eflin's like description of at the most stripped-down basic level, what is a school?

Yeah.

And I love this framing, and I think about it all the time now, which is like, it's literally a set of— it's a group of students, it's a group of young people, it is a set of objectives or outcomes that those young people are trying to reach, and it's a bundle of resources we have to help them do that. Like, at the end of the day, that's the most stripped-down version. And I think once is super interesting in how they're thinking about the potential resources. High school kids, you know, instruct to teach young kids in the, the, like the virtuous cycle that's sort of created there.

I just had this thought. I hadn't had it before, but there's like a, both a very cool career potential, right, of teaching for those kids. Also, frankly though, if they don't do that, because I can imagine some people being like, oh, this is like very self-determinative or whatever. And I don't know how I feel about that. I actually think it's also a very cool, like, parenting sort of one-on-one opportunity, if you will, for kids to get experience with younger kids and learn about the science of reading and, like, some of the motivation stuff that I'm sure Matt is baking in and things not to do and so forth.

And I would add a third is, is the entrepreneurial nature of this. So I would talk to him about how could high school kids create summer businesses where they're using ONCE to tutor kids in their neighborhood. And set up like little entrepreneurial ventures, which he's super excited about and open to. And so that type of creative thinking about, you know, recognizing and seeing high school kids as resources to help anyone learn, but other, especially younger kids to learn, such a, I just, I love that kind of thinking. I wish it were just across the system in so many different ways.

Totally agree.

One thing that we have talked about that I think is worth bringing up here is we both noted with both of those conversations how these are not— these have required significant human expertise to create these products sort of in collaboration with AI, if you will.

That's a good way to put

it. And I think Dacia did a good job of really walking us through the level of intentionality and intervention and human expertise that has gone into creating those really cool, important, rigorous experiences in the classroom. So I'm curious, like, what you think about that and how you process that.

I, so I agree. I will tell, I'm just gonna be honest. I left the Daisha conversation glowing for like 10 hours afterwards. I was so excited. And I think a large part of it was because of what you just described with the intentionality of what is not just like good, great practice look like?

Yes.

And let's recognize that like 80-plus percent of teachers don't have the training or background or can't or time or whatever.

More than 80. Like what she described happening in that classroom is humanly impossible to do. I don't care how good you are.

Totally agree. Right. But like even if you were one-on-one or one-on-two, like a lot of teachers still don't have that background.

True. True.

Right. And she's like, looking at the best practitioners to think about the next best question with the text, like really deep in the text. And that's, that's something I think that often comes up also, right, is you can't just do this in a generalized way. Like actually really digging in is important to create this instructional tool. So impressive. I also really appreciated how she was like, look, in your framework of H1 through— like she engaged in that framework and was like, I'm on the H1, maybe H2 part of this. I found that really helpful because like it immediately, it's like, this is where I'm sitting. But by the way, I can easily imagine what she's built being part of an H3 set of offerings as well.

I think that's right. And so, let's go there because my current favorite provocation, I'm probably driving a lot of people crazy with this, is what if, and what I ask them to do is pretend for a minute that we can never, ever, ever have classrooms with 1 teacher, 25 kids, 5 days a week, 50-minute periods. I don't even care if you have a block schedule every other day for, you know, 90 minutes. We can never do that again. Imagine we can never, ever do that again. How are kids going to learn? Can we, like, expand our imagination how they can learn? And the reason I'm provoking this is I loved everything Dasha said and agreed with you. I left sad because of the comment where she was like, Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're doing it a couple days a week.

Oh, interesting.

And I'm like, we're going back to the 1 in 25 egg crate to do all these other things, and we're just doing that a couple— why? Why aren't we doing that more? Why aren't we doing that really strategically or what? Like, I don't understand, you know, this— yeah, how we're thinking about that. And so that felt depressing to me.

Yeah, yeah, I hear that. I think it speaks to something different that we were gonna hold on, but I'm gonna go there now.

Oh, great.

'Cause you've been forwarding me, uh, pieces around the adoption of AI in the workplace.

Yes, yes.

And Reid used the analogy that we've both loved for some time that, um, uh, Ethan, uh, Mollick at, at, uh, Penn, uh, uses, which is like thinking about AI like electricity. Yep. And this sort of, there was the paradox, right? Yep. Electricity got introduced. It didn't actually increase productivity until you redesigned the business models and factories models around it so you could distribute as opposed to have this central driveshaft. And I think the same thing is playing out right now in industry, which is like AI, more of a cost add, maybe marginally product, you know, productivity, particularly for coders, but like maybe not elsewhere. And large parts of enterprises are frankly not using it to its theoretical capacity.

Right.

And I think the same thing may be true in schools right now as well. I'll, maybe this will get us into magic school, unless the tool fits the workflow exactly as you've currently designed. And like Daisha's thing, it does, like you do need to rethink use of time and space, right? And like what, and activities and instructional plans and coherence. And like it raises all these questions that are problems in the current model.

Correct. Correct. You're right. I have been forwarding you lots of things because, you know, I love to do this. I love to go and look out into other industries because it helps me sort of understand the principles and kind of what's going on. And then I feel like sometimes I'm too close to it in education. And so, I need that sort of distance to then come back and look at what we're doing through that lens.

Yeah.

And so, one of the things that happened to me this season is I just engaged in a whole bunch of conversations with people who are in different industries. And I've been really trying to deep dive into how are you using AI and how are you bringing it into your company or your work or What you're doing, how is it getting integrated and whatnot? And these articles I've been sending you this last week was profound to me. This line of inquiry has led me to believe, one, and I'll just say this again, AI is not changing education, full stop. Like, the only thing that will change education is humans. We can use AI as the tool to do it, but AI is not changing education. There's zero evidence that it's changing education. One, in my view. And then two, it doesn't appear to be changing business as fast as everyone's at. And so, like, we started this season with me feeling like, this is, like, coming. It's coming like a tidal wave, and it's gonna hit us, and we have to get ready, and it's going fast. And I'm ending this season like, oh, no, this is electricity. This is a 70-year—

That's interesting.

—project. Like, calm down. We actually have time because it's just not coming that way. And the specific thing that came this week that crystallized it for me is learning that all of the hyperscalers, so OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini, in some form or fashion, different but similar, literally are paying a lot of money to, let's call them an intermediary or a third party, to force companies to adopt AI and integrate it into their workflows because it's not happening naturally.

Yeah.

What appears to be happening naturally is like all these companies jumped on, okay, let's do a pilot, let's figure this out. They've been running those, they're not working. And so, they're tossing AI. They're like, nope, we're not gonna do that.

Well, because it's expensive, the compute power, the tokens, right? It's expensive and people aren't using it. Like, they're not changing their workflow.

It's not happening the way they thought. And so, So, you know, OpenAI apparently is gonna give their private equity companies a huge amount of money to force their companies to integrate AI, OpenAI. You know, the—

We'll see if any of that money materializes. Well— We've got the business model of, I mean, that's another shaky thing in all this.

Yes.

It's like, which companies will still even be here at the end of this? Google probably will, but like, we don't know.

Right, right. And I think it was Anthropic who's going more of the consulting route. So McKinsey and those folks, And they're going to use them to try to deploy it. And Google had a— what was their strategy? Like a combo of the two or something like that. Anyway, I'm like, if it's not happening in business where they actually put resources to these things and efficiency is their, you know, the way they're competing, it is not happening in education. We don't have the resources to do what they're doing. We don't have the incentives they have. So it just gave me sort of like, in some ways, a good breath of like, oh, we have more time. And then 2, oh, unless we actively do this, this is not going to be the tool that helps us do this.

Yeah. So stay on this. This is really interesting on a few fronts. You're crystallizing something I'd been thinking about but hadn't fully dawned on me, which is I do think what's true in the business world, and I think it's very true in the education world, is individuals are using it in Yes. And, and like, I've been thinking about some danger of recording and then this won't be out for a few weeks, but I've been thinking about writing something around how like for years education was like the last place to adopt technology. Right now it's actually adopting technology very quickly and that's the problem. And, uh, and the reason I say that is I think teachers are pulling it into workflows that exist. This is the Magic School thing that we learned to do do what they're already doing, but more efficiently, perhaps with less thought, et cetera, et cetera. And, but to your point, from an enterprise, like reworking workflows, no.

Right. Which goes back to that idea of the operating system.

Yeah.

Right.

But I think, so the other thing I want to just to say on this is the other reason I've been skeptical, all my friends that live out where you live in Silicon Valley tell me that like you don't get it, it's exponential improvement, and therefore it's gonna like flip a switch and the world's gonna change and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Reid has this view a bit as well, right? That he said.

Yeah.

But I think what they discount is like, they think through a very narrow lens of like how work is done.

Yes.

And they discount all of the human friction that you just started to allude to.

Right.

And organizational friction and legacy systems and stuff like that. not just in education, but like, I think you're right. It's actually in almost every part of the economy.

Right. And I'll just say 2 funny things about that, because that's where I live, as you know. That's like the water that I swim in. And I do think a lot of that sentiment comes from, it is moving most quickly and most effectively in software development.

I mean, that's where it starts to shift. Right. And that's why you see the product development. I mean, that's why I think you see an It's amazing, right? Yeah. Claude Code is amazing. Amazing. And it's like zeroing in on an application in a part of the economy that they understand

completely.

And it's a narrow set of—

everyone is there.

I'll misuse the Howard Gardner multiple intelligences. It's a narrow set of intelligences.

Like, that's a gross—

you know what my point is though? Yes. I, I don't mean to lift that up as a valid framework, but I more mean it as an analogy.

Yes.

Yes. Let me say it this way more specifically, right? Which is an interesting thing about these large language models is they're largely trained on language and images.

Yeah.

And like, we have, as humans, have lots of other senses that are not going into these things.

Right, right, right, right. And it turns out we have a lot of power and control over our systems and our lives and whatnot at the end of the day. Well, that kind of leads us into the last 2 tools that we explored. Okay.

Kira and Magic School.

Kira and Magic School. And I, I mean, just a funny aside. I don't know if people could detect this, but I think we have to come clean and be honest. Like, both of us left one episode this season pretty frustrated, angry. I mean, I had a very hard, long weekend after one episode because it really shook me. They were different episodes.

Okay. Yeah.

And I don't think either of us predicted that we would have our own emotional reaction or that the other person would. So I will come clean and say—

Let's name it.

Yeah, I mean, the— I, I, I had a really rough weekend after we, we recorded the Magic School, um, episode on a Friday, and it, it, it shook me.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't know how you would describe your feelings.

After the Kira.

After the Kira.

Yeah, could— I mean, could people hear the frustration? I don't know.

Yeah, you were frustrated.

I was frustrated, I think.

Yeah.

Or that— I will say on the Magic School episode, one little surprised me about the conversation. And so maybe that's why I didn't have quite the emotional reaction was I was not surprised by the direction it went. Yeah. But we can break that down. Yeah. The cure, I'll just say rather than hide it, I was trying to understand in more detail, like, what are you— like, what does this actually look like when you say you have a Central American country that it's all moving over to a new— like, that's a big claim. What is it— like, what does that actually mean, look like? How are you changing workflows, what people are doing? And when you say, like, contrast with Dacia, 'cause Dacia's episode we recorded, I think, afterwards, and that's when I had this big breath of fresh air to me, was like, she's like, no, we went deep in the content as humans to really understand what it's saying. And I felt like, so maybe Kira's able to ingest anything of content and like magically make it awesome and personalized. But it took me back to a lot of stuff in like the mid-2010s that talked about personalization and data without like a clear view of like, how are we assessing mastery? How do we understand this thing? And like, if you don't have a viewpoint on that, I'm not sure how you're driving these behaviors. And so, I'm not castigating the tool because I just, it was more like I wanted to understand more.

Yeah. And that was what, I mean, we hung up and you were like, I don't— I'm so frustrated. I don't understand what it does.

Yeah, it was more limitations. Yeah.

And to be fair, as you know, I've spent multiple hours now sort of getting under the hood.

Yeah.

I think that's a really interesting response, though, that— and what it made me reflect on is, Kira is currently in the complexity. So, I always love this, you know, quote that goes, you know, you start with simplicity, you move into complexity, and the goal is to get to the other side of complexity, back to simplicity, so people can understand it. Yeah. And I really realize that I have been sucked into Cure because it is in that complex, messy place.

Yeah. So it's hard to describe.

So much potential there, though, that I can see when I'm really geeking out and nerding out. And so I see the possibility there, but I'm doing like all that mental translation, I think, having dug in. So, but I don't think it's a simple story yet by any stretch of the imagination.

Which is fine, right? Like a A startup doesn't have to be until product-market fit is so clear.

Right. And there's a lot to be figured out there and understood, but I do think it's the closest thing I've seen to the potential of being kind of this operating system, post-industrial operating system. And I will just say quickly that like part of your skepticism probably comes from like, we get a lot of people calling us, emailing us, stopping us, you know, in the, in— We get a lot of that. At the SGSP, telling us we're doing exactly what those people said we're doing. And, and then we try to dig in and we're like, are you really? You know? And so I, and you get more of it than I do. And so I bet—

I think that's certainly true. And I think I'm also, part of my skepticism is I kind of think you have to build for this H2, H3.

Yeah.

And purposely say we're not building for H1.

Yeah.

To do, if you're, if you're really going to be the operating system for this new model.

Yeah.

I think anything you build in H1 that's optimizing around that is gonna do 2 things. I think it's gonna suck you out. Like, I think there will be values that are in contradiction with each other and you can't do both. And 2, I think because most of the kids are still in H1 and most of the money is still in H1, we're gonna see what every venture-backed edtech company has done, which is like start out with this value proposition that sounds great. And then move back into the traditional system because that's where the money is.

And that is, is huge tension. It's a huge tension and it's a limitation in our sector, quite frankly.

Yeah. And I think venture does not help it because they have very rapid expectations of growth that are

incompatible.

Incompatible.

Incompatible with that. And so how do we get someone to build for H3? It's a, it's a huge question.

Let's go into it next year more because I think what you did at summit, actually doing it interdependently with the school model is, and, and with the AI tools available now, maybe actually easier to do parts of that. I think that's going to have to be the answer, but let's hold off on that.

Let's hold. Let's hold.

So let's talk about Magic School because you had a reaction, but like, this is a place where I'm going to say it, they do have product market fit. It's taken off like gangbusters.

Like crazy. Which Well, let me just say the parts that I really spent that weekend grappling with and struggling with. So the first is, I mean, the clarity with the purpose of Magic School being to make teachers' lives easier.

Yeah.

And so first of all, I just have sort of, that is not my goal or ever. Period. And it's not because I don't love teachers. It's not because I don't think educators are amazing. Look, I am one. I do that role, whatnot. But my goal is not to make a teacher's life easier. My goal is all about the young person. And I view all of us, me included, who are not those young people, as resources to that young person's learning journey to get them to their outcome. And so I just think when you orient around making a teacher's life easier, Because you're, you by definition are no longer focused on the student. And so I just think that fundamental premise is problematic to me. Second, it just, as a teacher who is really committed to the craft of teaching and learning and education, this, the, I just feel like it sets this incredibly low bar. And, you know, we had a dialogue about you know, IEP creation. And as you know, I spent a lot of time in Magic School Bus, and I was really disturbed by this like popped-out generated IEP for a variety of reasons that was terrible. And, you know, the idea that that was somehow better than what is existing in school that had the wrong kid's name on it is like good enough, or we should be celebrating, or like that's our bar. I just can't. That's just not who I am as an educator. Yeah. You know, my, every morning I wake up and say like, is this a school I would wanna go to as a student, teach in, send my child to? And I don't want, that does not meet my bar in any way, shape, or form. So I'd rather not be doing education than doing it at that kind of standard. And then the third thing was, I've just seen this movie before. So first it was, you know, Teachers Pay Teachers where we just throw these random activities up and And, you know, you're just doing this activity-driven thing. And then it was Pinterest where teachers are just grabbing stuff off of Pinterest and now it is Magic School and it just really diminishes. It makes me so sad. It's like, really? That's who we are?

Yeah. I think I wasn't surprised by any of it, which is why I will say I appreciated, when you talked about learning styles and stuff like that, I was, we were both pretty horrified by that given the research clarity around that learning style, learning styles That came up in a few conversations. Yeah. So full stop. I thought his answer on the IEP, I could appreciate it a little bit more because I do think that the baseline is not what we would hope across. Um, and so I get it. And I think my overriding thing is like, it illustrates to me the problems with H-1, which is, and I, you know, I sent this thing to you that I did with Rick Hess. I think because existing school models struggle with coherence, rigor, setting clear expectations for students and focusing on the student, frankly, any model, any tool you sell into that model that gets immediate uptake without significant process and priority changes, as frictionless as that has and the other tools that you named have, it's actually amplifying those things rather than solving them.

Yeah, I completely Completely agree. And then, of course, the business model of, we're going to get all these teachers to use it, and then we're going to take the data to the school or the school district and say, did you know all your teachers are using it? You should buy an enterprise license. That was deeply disturbing to me. That's the seat that I've sat in most recently. And I'm like, really? Am I going to be like, that's how I'm making my decisions about what tools we're adopting?

Well, I'm going to say independent, though, right? of that, this is my bigger point right now, I think, of like the individuals in the system are just doing stuff. And that's where I think actually education, again, I think the moniker, we're tech backwards, Rip Van Winkle wakes up and recognizes the classroom, I don't think that's true anymore in this era because they're using a lot of stuff. In fact, districts are using, have licenses to 3,000 tools on average.

That stat, you tell me that, you've said that like 20 times.

It's mind-blowing, right? Mind-blowing.

I know.

And it's a problem. Most of them we know don't get used.

Correct.

We know for the effective ones that it's like a 5% problem of only, you know, students on a certain part of the curve even using them.

Yeah.

To me though, these are all model problems at the end of the day. And that's where I think I can get my head around, okay, are we working on H1? Are we working on reinventing completely? I can get my head around that there's importance and value in Personally, I really struggle on the first one because I just think the model is so injurious at this point.

Well, and I think that one of the things that happened in the middle of the season was this backlash to this technology, which we haven't even unpacked yet. Like, literally, we're mid-season, and suddenly, almost out of nowhere and overnight, we're seeing—

Utah, other states.

I mean, this massive backlash, and you alluded to it earlier. Look, we were already on this trajectory trajectory of banning phones in schools. And, you know, we've talked about that over the years. I think we've both sort of settled in like, you know, okay.

Yeah. I mean, I'm willing to live with it. I don't love it.

I don't love it either. I will, but I don't want to live in the space of like, I wish that we could have a culture in the school where kids could learn to use them responsibly. No, I agree with that.

Yeah, I agree with that. I guess I'm more intrigued with some of these other tools that sharply limit and let the educators have control. But look,

I'm not gonna dive into it. Yeah, that's interesting. So that one, fine. We had sort of, but then suddenly overnight, we are banning Chromebooks. We are putting limits on the amount of minutes that can be, technology can be used in the school in a school day. We are saying that no one in a school can use AI, including the teacher, in any way, shape, or form, which is the most baffling, mind-boggling. Like, how do you police that? What does that even mean? And these policies are popping up like crazy. My take on this is that there's such a lack of understanding and such a conflation going on. So there's all these cases and the heightened sensitivity around social media and the negative impacts on kids that is mostly sitting on their phones, but certainly it's online and some kids are, you know, districts are not using the filters and whatnot. And so they may be getting on their Chromebooks. So that's getting conflated with actual useful learning tools, useful learning technologies, useful operational system technologies, and we're just suddenly going to just ban everything. Seriously?

Yeah. And this is, so this is the thing, right? Let's like, we live in the nuance. We like the third way. That's our trademark, for better or worse. Let's like spell it out. We are simultaneously not with large parts of the edtech market that is going into traditional schools. And so I understand why the backlash is emerging. I would agree that for the most part, they have not been useful, in some cases counterproductive.

Correct.

And these policies are limiting. So we're not going to let someone use CourseMojo for, right? Like what?

That was the first example that we came to. Or we're going to say like, well, if you use it and you, we're going to count the timer, you use that for 20 minutes. So you only have 40 more minutes. today for the whole day to use any sort of technology with, like—

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

Yeah. And so, or like a mirror learning, which Dacia also talked about, which very well studied, lots of RCTs. We're not going to like let them use that. And then there's been this whole meme that has gone on about a particular company, iReady, on the internet over the last few weeks about how there's no studies behind Fine. I'm not gonna defend them right here, except to say, like, that's true of every freaking textbook and material we have ever had in school. So let's, like, have an honest conversation.

Well, yes. And all the negatives that you just said about edtech are 100% true of all of those industries, if you will. The other thing, like, let's put ONCE in this. There's a bunch of places banning technology use with kids under a certain age, period, full stop. They can't use ONCE to teach their kids to read, even though there's a huge huge human component to it. Like, this is crazy.

This is crazy.

This is literally taking a sledgehammer to, you know, elementary building.

What is a real problem? And I've been thinking a lot about it. Like, what's the role, you know, blended and all these things that we've sort of— movements that we were part of. And I was looking back and I was like, I actually think we were pretty clear. Like, a station rotation, which is all I said an elementary school from a traditional district should even attempt. I'm partial to the flex model that I— in our typology, but like, I didn't think most districts had the cultures or routines or processes to do it. A station rotation model imagines a kid on a computer for like 30, 45 minutes, a station with intent, one with coherent— like, it's not these bad implementations. But to your point, these blunt ax policies—

They don't give any discretion or flexibility or professionalism to the people in the school who are having to make these choices and decisions. And the tension there, of course, is like, wow, did we lose that? Did we deservedly lose that trust? That trust.

Yeah.

Because we are making some bad choices about what we're bringing in. We are wasting money on things we're not using. We are not thoughtfully integrating, you know. Um,

so 2 thoughts here, because I think you're right. And, and so we've sort of made our, our point of view known. I hadn't thought about this, but I loved that Dacia said we're doing outcomes

Yes, I do

too. I've been saying this since 2009. Yes. Yes. Like districts and districts would look at me like I was crazy. There's now, you know, through the Southern, um, Education Group.

Yeah, there's a whole group.

There's a way, there's a boilerplate language. I think every edtech company worth its salt ought to do a contract.

Well, let me just amend that cuz I'm in that space right now. That's the exact place I wanted to go because I've sat on the other side and I was like, this is brilliant. I love this. And quite frankly, it's good for me too because it doesn't help me if someone buys my product and never uses it. That's actually bad for all of us.

Yeah, yeah, zombie revenue, et cetera.

But the problem is even the outcomes-based contracting people will tell you, oh, we only really are ready to do this with very limited number of products where the clear measure, where there are clear measures. I think we've got to push on that. I'm hoping to be one of the people who will push on that because the space I'm in, they're like, oh, we have no idea how to do outcomes-based.

I'm going to go into one of your other bugaboos. This would be amazing. Like, RCTs is one way to look at the world.

One way.

If you have outcome-based contracting with assessments and measures that we trust, it solves itself.

Totally.

And so, like, this is a way I think to actually develop incentives.

I agree.

To get those more grassroots-driven, what's the outcome we're trying to drive? What's the right assessment or measure? for it. And let's count it, like conversations.

I agree with you. And like in my case, there are things I specifically know that our technology is designed to do. And so maybe those aren't yet, you know, fully industry standard or something. But when you're buying it, don't you wanna know what it's supposed to do and then figure out if it does that? And then hold it to account for that. Yeah. And I think that's good for everyone. So I agree with you. I think more there, really interesting.

And I think that would be be a great, instead of the bands, that would be a great place for that. I will say, I think it also, we may pull back into school models here for a second. Yeah. I think it's one of the reasons Alpha is attractive also to families is because they feel like they're making this big leap. Okay. And so actually I heard someone, one of my students said they'd profiled 7 different micro schools using AI in different ways. And one of statements was like, families feel like, you know, 2-hour uninterrupted block of time or whatever feels radical. Is it really more radical than like 7 45-minute periods? No, but like no one ever thinks that way. But it feels like radical to do, you know, mastery-based progression and then like all this time for life skill development. And with what you said still true, like it's decoupled and that may have problems for FAR transfer.

And I'm not sure they're doing mastery-based.

Okay. So maybe we'll come back to that also, but like, I guess my point being like families are opting for it. And I think one reason that they are is not just the price point signaling, but also the old metrics signaling. We might not love the old metrics. NWEA MAP, I think it's like a very bizarre usage of it. And I'm just going to spell it out for those that, because I think people still are confused around what a norm-referenced assessment often shows. Which is like, imagine a Y-axis of different score levels or achievement levels and like, okay, I'm at the 90th percentile entering in relative to the people in my band. There's a curve and like, you know, am I falling below or above? Right? Right. And so when they say 2x, it's like 2x the person in the middle at my curve is what that's showing.

Yeah.

And in some ways it would be shocking if they weren't hitting that because Because the traditional school is capping how fast you can move. We heard Reid talk about this on DreamBox. And so, like, if you now uncapped it, I would hope that a student would move at least that much faster.

Well, this is why I question if they're doing mastery-based, because that has nothing to do with mastery.

Say more on that.

I mean, where you're just comparing against the kid, that is not mastery-based. Norm reference is not mastery-based.

Yeah, okay, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, so this is where I think they are though, is because they also have a bunch of criterion reference also going on that they didn't talk about.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm skeptical because they're like jumping between adaptive learning programs. I think this is a big question.

I think this is a big question.

Yeah.

Yeah. I, I don't disagree. And I'm wondering where the feedback loop truly is in that. Some friends of ours in the industry who've spent a lot more time with the model tell me that there's a lot more

underneath it.

Underneath it. I don't know. I don't know. I will say simply raising the bar from 60% to 90% was a nice start.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's

Well, and we did that as providers.

But it's crazy to me that they didn't before. But it reflects also on H1. But I guess my point being more, I think that's why they have these very traditional measures, because it gives, like, as a parent, it takes away anxiety. I'm making this big jump. What do you mean they're going to be doing a Tough Mudder and a press conference with athletes? And like, this is a lot of fun.

But I have these familiar measures that give me comfort.

And so, I think it's almost taking the world as it is, not as maybe we would like it to be. it to be.

And that's it.

And I think that's part of, like, it's why I also think you'll hear the bragging about the SAT score or the acceptance to Stanford or the, you know, and yeah, so I guess I'm just explaining it a little bit, but, and I think that crosswalk may be part of this process as more families gain maturity around, oh, is that possible through this? And so I'm curious.

Yeah. So what I think you're speaking to is this whole societal shifting sentiments. And so, and we don't really talk about this, but this would be an interesting thing to explore next year. Like, is there a way to understand— well, we know people who look at these things, so there is a way to understand this. Yeah. Is the public sort of sentiment moving or shifting or changing? And what is moving it and shifting and changing? And so, you know, are we in this sort of chaotic period where we're like, people are holding onto things of the past, but they're like exploring and looking at the future. And they're kind of like, you know, there just feels like—

Well, and here's the relationship, right, to the tech conversation also, which is like, okay, my kid's going to be on this 2 hours of screen time with AI. It sounds creepy. It's a vision model that's looking at me and tracking my attention. But there's a real measure that shows outcomes.

Right.

And so,

And this cool cocktail party thing where I just say that my kid's, you know, running a Tough Mudder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right. Running a Tough Mudder. And so, like, but here the legislation would ban these movements to, like, like this stuff as well. That's not— I don't think that's what we want either.

No. I mean, we've never liked legislation like the type of legislation we're seeing popping up overnight. I hope by the time next season starts, it's kind of calmed down a little bit and people have sort of gathered their wits, I hope that educators are going and making logical cases as to why, with real tangible examples like we've just given about why these are not useful policies and can we actually put something more thoughtful in place. I hope the media doesn't, you know, sort of fan those, you know, fears and instead sort of brings a little bit of a rationality to it. Got that. That's a lot of hope. You gotta have it.

But yeah. I mean, I think I, I think my hope on that front continues to be the families that are opting for these new models and that it's more grassroots driven. Because I, and I think like, I think that's my other piece. And we've had this conversation offline. Your question a little bit is, is it really going to be a portfolio of models in the future? Is it really one?

I'm so curious about this.

And I guess the reason I think it might be a poor— I think it depends how you define model.

Yeah, it does.

And I think it also depends on, like, I think it's very hard to imagine all families lining up. I'll say it upfront, like a billion people in Alpha School, I can't, I would be shocked. Shocked. Because I don't think that's where people are.

Oh, just count me as a complete skeptic. There's no way. Right. No

way. And so, right? But I think that's the point is like, some families are going to say no screen time.

Right.

Great.

Right.

Some families are going to want more than what Alphabet wants. Yeah. Okay. But like, let's, like, let's, let's take the air out of the balloon and let a little more choice with like some measures that give feedback loops to the families so that they know they're making progress for their kids.

You're— we can't help ourselves. We're like starting to foreshadow all the things we're thinking about and what we're We're starting to plan for next season. So, I guess maybe it's obvious at this point, but people might not realize that literally at the end of every season, we get together and we reflect and we make an active choice of whether or not we're gonna do another season. And this season, I don't even think there was a question.

No, this was the most clear cut we've ever been, I think.

Clear cut. We— I feel like we— so clear. So much more to explore of the impacts of AI. So, I think we're gonna going right back in on that front. 2, I think we have more questions than we had even at the beginning of this season, more people that we want to talk to than we had at the start of this season. So, like, more, more, more of what is happening with AI in education? What are the tools? What are the models? What's happening on that front? So, I guess this is a good time to say, like, if you guys have ideas, people you want to hear from, things you think we're not Exploring, we would love to hear from you over the— you know, this will be effectively the summer, if you will.

Yeah.

I know. It's like the one sort of traditional thing we do is like have summer break. Absolutely. I know.

We're a little traditional.

We're a little bit traditional on that front. So we want to hear from people on that front. And then we've got these other 2 kind of funny passion project ideas.

Are you going to talk about it? Yeah.

Go for it.

No. No? Okay. All right.

We've got a couple other ideas.

We do. are gonna be our curiosity driving it and our desire to explore, but it won't be with guests. Or at least—

Maybe, yeah.

But not—

I don't know what form they're gonna take. I would— yeah, they're interesting. They're, like, things that keep coming up for us, and so I think they deserve a little bit of exploration in maybe not the exact way that we do the rest of the podcast. So we'll see how they take shape.

We'll see how those take shape. Probably not like season 1 where we script everything.

No, no, no, no. So we hope folks will be excited to join us again for another season.

I think that's right. And send us your curiosity questions and things that we've said that don't make sense to you. And we've both had a lot of hot takes today and left a few dangling. I

don't know if I— we have a rambling conversation.

I was about to say, did I give you room for everything you wanted to say?

No, definitely. I mean, this is just an ongoing

So, people pick in where the things that we maybe had incomplete sentences or thoughts, or you want to hear more.

Definitely.

We're going to scratch those itches next season.

Definitely. I'm very excited for it. But before we do that—

Should we do what we've been reading or watching or what we're going to be

reading? We should. And I—

I think I have to pull out my phone so I know what I've been reading.

You have to know what you've been reading. And I've got— I decided since this is the last episode of the season, the season. I have 3 things, so I'm going to go crazy and share more than one.

All right, go for it. Go for it.

Go for it.

You want me to start? Yeah, you go. You start.

So this one probably won't surprise people. I have just recently finished reading How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle by Ray Dalio. And people have heard me who've listened to the podcast before talk about his previous book, The Principles for Dealing with a Changing World Order, which was really profound for me in terms of this deep analytical approach to identifying these historical cycles that helped me make sense of the world we're living in and what sort of feels chaotic. This new one, newer one, about how countries go broke is a companion to the first one. Obviously, it's speaking to something that I think about and don't know a lot about, which is our debt and you know, what it means if we're no longer the reserve currency, et cetera. What I will say about it is it's sort of classic Ray Dalio. If you like that kind of thing, it's actually comforting to me in a weird way. So I read it. Oh, good.

Well, it's a critical topic.

It is critical as like a citizen, I think, and a person in the world. So I highly recommend it. I find it fascinating. So that's one. The second one is a podcast, you know, that's become one of my favorite podcasts. It's fascinating. Interesting Times with Ross, I never say his last

name. Ross Juthot. Yeah.

And

he was my year from college, so you know.

Oh, I didn't realize that.

Different college, but yes.

Okay. And I listened to this one at the same time I was reading the Countries Going Broke book, and they go together in a really interesting way. It's titled A Bitcoin Evangelist Tries to Convert Me.

Oh, interesting.

And it is like Bitcoin 101.

Okay.

Which again, important topic, highly related to the Countries Going Broke. Well, I have to say highly related to the notion of a

Reserve currency.

Exactly. Exactly. So I found those 2 things a really interesting pair. And then the last one is, you know how much I love the Last Invention podcast series. I thought it's just incredibly well done. They do continue to add these fascinating episodes here and there, but that comes out of a group called the Reflector Podcast who actually does all of these other topics. And I just listened to a 3-part series titled Strange Bedfellows: When LGB Meet T.

Oh, interesting.

And so good. It's this historical look at the movement. It's incredibly well done, the style that I love. And for me, very personal, lots of people I love are LGBTQ and living it. And it just gave me a lot of incredible insights and history and understanding and provocations. And yeah, really fun.

Super interesting.

Yeah.

I'll add that then to summer dog walks, I guess.

Yeah.

What do I have? So I'm finishing up Jump, which is by Larry Miller. It's the story of— so he was on the Jordan brand and Nike, and it's his memoirs effectively.

Okay.

But he was someone who was incarcerated. He did some, you know, pretty awful things as a young man growing up in Philadelphia, spent a couple times in jail, got his education while he was in jail, got a degree, and then ultimately an accounting degree from Temple, and then went on to have this incredible career. And it's these reflections and frankly also how he was dealing with this, like, ghosts in his past that no one knew about and he couldn't talk about. And sort of, it's a really interesting, like, reflection on human potential and how do we think about, you know, this in people.

You were telling me about it last night and I'm very curious. Yeah.

And it's a great audiobook. So, it's very lively.

On my list.

On your list. I'm doing a weird thing. So, I was trying to read books out loud to my kids, 'cause why not?

'Cause they're adorable, and it's so fun. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, but you don't get the— I mean, 'cause they're just so racing ahead all the time, right? I don't have a lot of opportunities. I was trying to do a couple Mark Twain books with them, 'cause I remember loving A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Here's the takeaway, really hard to read it out loud. It's really sort of funky.

I was like, oh, interesting choice.

But

as a result, I'm reading it

I'm reading all the Mark Twain books now, so, to myself. And so, like, I know you're gonna laugh. I don't love fiction generally.

No, you don't.

Nope. But I'm enjoying it. So we'll see where it goes if I keep going through it. But I, I had this idea that I would culminate with the Ron Chernow, um, biography of Mark Twain.

Oh my gosh, you be careful before you do that. Scott read it. Do you know how long that thing is?

Yeah.

He was in that book forever.

Yeah, the Ulysses S. Grant book was a long one that I read by him as well.

I mean, the level of detail about one person's life, it's extraordinary.

Okay. Well, we'll see if I do it or not. But maybe it'll slow down my pace of books for next year.

It will.

It will. I'll have to watch more TV.

You'll come back next season, I read one book.

I read one book this summer. Yeah. No, it's entirely possible. But those are the things at the moment on my list.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I'm not adding that one to my list.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll commiserate with Scott afterwards. Huge gratitude, Diane. This has been a lot of fun this season. In some ways, we've had a lot of fun throughout, but in some ways, the most fun. that I think I've had.

I agree. This is, um, we both do kind of a lot of sort of side gig volunteer, you know, middle of the night passion projects. But this definitely is very special.

Huge thanks, Raoul, and huge thanks to our audience again, because, uh, it does really fuel our curiosity and our desire to do this. And, uh, feedback keeps us going. Reminder, subscribe, rate us. We forgot to say that up front.

I know, because we always forget to say it. We've never said it, but it turns out it does matter a little. And so, if you can even take just, you know, 60 seconds to put, you know, 5 stars there and give us some of the feedback that you give us, you know, verbally or in writing, it helps a lot.

And let's also say thank you to the 74 for continuing to distribute. Let's say thank you to Learner Studio for sponsoring. The team, Danny and Lindsay, who make this come to life at the moment, really appreciate both of them. Both last names Curtis, but not related. And just huge thanks to everyone that makes this work.

Yeah, awesome. And with that,

we'll see you next time on Class Disrupted. This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question: what will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers, and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in education, because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learner Studio's mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.