The Future of Education (private feed for michael.b.horn@gmail.com)

Macke Raymond, the program director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution’s Program on U.S. K–12 Research and former director of CREDO, joined me to discuss the need for a new “operating system” in American public education. We spent time diving into the recommendations from the Hoover Institution’s recent report, “Ours to Solve Once and for All,” which calls for reimagining the roles of federal, state, and local actors to foster a more adaptive, innovative, and student-centered education system. According to Raymond, given the massive changes at the federal level since President Trump took office, now is the perfect time for this rethinking. According to the report, it’s vital we prioritize incentivizing educational mastery, minimizing rigid mandates, cultivating a dynamic, responsive education workforce, and offering safe learning environments, all of which should start from the grassroots up. Have a listen and let me know what you think in the comments.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are 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 this through, today, I think we have a repeat guest, if I'm not mistaken, Macke Raymond. She's the program director for Hoover Institution's education work. She was the director of CREDO for many years at Stanford University, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes. And with the Hoover Institute Institution's Education Futures Council, together they put out this terrific report, “Ours to Solve Once and For All, Securing the Outcomes Our Students Need. “That's probably more introduction, Macke, than you need because you've done so much in the world of education.But first, good to see you. Thanks for joining me.Macke RaymondOh, it's wonderful to be here, Michael. Thanks for inviting me.Accelerating Change in Education SystemsMichael HornYeah. No. So you wrote this really provocative note to me that sort of. I had written this piece for my substack and Forbes about how disruption of schooling might finally be possible in the world of education savings accounts, because for the first time, families might feel like they're losing out if they aren't exercising their choice in sort of the savings accounts that come with it. So there's this sense of value that's been overlaid with certain states moving in this direction. And then you wrote me and said, well, not only that, but we've been arguing, right, for this new operating system, really, the foundational principles of how education operates in this country, and seen states as sort of the lever against that. But this I'll let you describe in a second. But these changes at the federal level maybe have actually accelerated the timeline over which the recommendations and the thought we had put into that report have become even more relevant quicker than we thought that they would.So maybe you should lay out the premise because I probably just did a poor job and sort of give us the context for what the report was arguing for in terms of a quote, unquote, new operating system and why the current moment, in the current context perhaps is conducive to that.Macke RaymondWell, first, you did a beautiful job setting this up, so thank you. The clarity of your introduction is really helpful for all of this. So we've known for a long time that the current way that K12 public education operates in the United States isn't getting the job done for lots and lots of students. And we would also argue the entire system itself continues to not produce graduates and product that is actually internationally competitive. So we've known that for a long time. We also know that a lot of what we've tried to do to improve education has not worked. And based on some earlier work at the Hoover Institution, we dug into what was behind that. And one of the important conclusions there was that we have created a system that is phenomenally capable of resisting change.It is intransigent in really, really important ways. And so this brought us to the question of what would it take to actually have a public education system—federal, state and local—that really was capable of adapting, was capable of innovating, was capable of disrupting where it was necessary in order to make sure that students were getting the kinds of academic and non academic preparation that would set them up for success. All, all the things that we want for our kids. How could we think about the system as itself as a lever for doing that? And so the Education Futures Council was brought together to sort of ponder that question. And the conclusion that the Futures Council members came to was that the way in which decisions were made and executed in K12 from the federal and state and local levels were actually a big, big deterrent to effective operation and effective impact on student learning. And that led to then, okay, what would be a better approach to thinking about what we call the operating system? So we're not calling for a different curriculum, we're not calling for a different staffing model. We're not talking about a longer school year or a different school model. We're really talking about how do the institutions themselves work on their own and work together.And the Futures Council report, “Ours to Solve Once and For All,” posits that there is a possibility of reorganizing what happens at the state and federal level and at the local level in order to create a much better environment for creating conditions for positive learning for students. So that's the purpose of the report. We in a million years would never have expected what we've seen in the last six months. Our initial thinking after the publication of the report, which happened last October, before the election, we thought we were talking about a three to five year timeline of very carefully building a coalition of both advocates and policy leaders to basically try to enable some of these kinds of changes that the report called for. And then the inauguration happened. And within a very short period of time, it became clear that the field of play at the federal level is open for the kinds of disruption that might be possible in order to advance this more productive conversation about the institutional arrangements. You could think of that as a new federalism that we're advocating for. And the conditions have softened at the federal level to the point where this could actually be a constructive conversation.Michael HornI want to dig into a bunch of those parts. Maybe first for the audience, let's lay out, like, as you all see it, what would be the pillars or commitments, I think is the way the report phrases it, of the new operating system. And what would the different actors, local, state, federal, what would be their responsibilities, if you will, in such a system? And maybe once we have that understanding, then I have so many questions for you. So let's start there.Macke RaymondWe have a limited amount of time, Michael.Michael HornYeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. So we'll do our best. Yeah.Macke RaymondAll right. So every single enterprise, whether it's private business, whether it's a social service agency, whatever, they have to have a few operating essentials in order to function. And we call for those as operating essentials for the new operating system. They involve being very clear about what the outcomes are that you want to achieve. And so the report is calling for a broader definition of student success and new measures in order to reflect whether or not we're making progress on those. Second part of that is a regular system of measuring how students are doing. Certainly coming out of the pandemic, we collectively as a nation, care a whole lot more about what students know and can do than we did before. A bad way to get that gift, but I think we can leverage that and move that forward.And then after a measurement system, we have to be candid about the fact that there's a broad range of performance in the system in schools that we have to acknowledge. If we're committed to making sure that every single child gets the preparation for a life of opportunity, then we have to have accountability. It doesn't have to look exactly the way that it has for the last 25 years, but accountability definitely has to be part of the system. And finally, it sounds like a no-brainer, but we really have to create and assure that there are safe learning environments that are conducive to both instruction and learning. And that's not a trivial thing. So the current debate about cell phones in classrooms, the whole problem of school security, whether it's digital or physical, plays into that. We have to make a commitment that schools are environments in whatever way they actually roll forward.Decentralized Education Policy ReformMacke RaymondThey are environments that are safe and conducive to learning. So those are the operating pieces. The commitments are that we need to change the way in which we do business. And over very many years, like 40 now, 45 years, what's happened is that we have created a very strong top down directive process for setting education policy. And it doesn't make sense to us that that should be the case. We have huge variation across the country in terms of what local conditions look like and what learning environments look like across the country. And so having somebody who is from a very remote perspective choosing typically a one size fits all solution and then wondering why it doesn't work across all the settings that it's tried to be adopted to, and then blaming people on implementation infidelity doesn't make sense to us. So we're looking for a different approach to building capacity so that there can be a regular culture of adaptation and innovation towards student learning.So not local people reinventing the education process, but that they are capable of understanding what new tools are available and putting those to good use. And if that's the place that we want local folks to be comfortable and proficient, then the rest of the system has to modify to make that happen. And so that suggests a different role where we're actually saying the learning environment is the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. So we're not top down, we're supporting up. And that means that the role of local agencies and state agencies and the federal agencies have to understand what they are good at and what they can provide. That would be a constructive contribution to this new approach. And that speaks to being a whole lot clearer about what does work and what doesn't in particular environments. Capturing that information, making that information available to local actors in a way that's really constructive and useful and practical.It means that we want to know at a more continuous level how schools are doing and create incentives so that schools are facing conditions that align adult interests in getting better themselves with the improved outcomes that we want. And clearly this talks about a different attitude on the part of adults from the top to the bottom, that these are all now opportunities for really thinking differently about the professionalism of the work and how we cultivate and support that over the lifespan of individuals as educators and as other actors in the system.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.Rethinking Education for Advanced ManufacturingMichael HornSo let me try to make it like, present an example that feels very different from what we've had and help us fit this into the framework or not, I guess so at one level, let's say I'm in a particular region, advanced manufacturing is a big employment outcome that has different competencies and skills and knowledge base, Right, that are, that are important for students. And we could pick our flavor of Advanced manufacturing. But just stay with high level for a moment at the local level. I think what you're saying is like we would say these are the student outcomes that we want to see and we'd have a professional teaching force that reflects what it looks like to educate students to be able to do those things. And if I hear you right, the role of the state and even federal would be less like dictating did you hit a certain test that everyone has to hit? And more helping us have tools to measure, perhaps have tools to understand which jobs are in demand maybe and what and like research basis of therefore these are the skills taxonomy,Someone might want to learn, you know, in demand fields or we see a shift in supply demand. Therefore your outcomes might want to change. And so it's more informed into that. Tell me like, start to edit that, where is that right and wrong?Macke RaymondSo I think you're on the right track there, Michael. We think that there are really strong outcomes that we need to be unapologetic about, but I think we need to be a lot looser on means on the pathways to get there. And let's face it, even in today's landscape, there are schools, there are districts that are already doing well. There's no reason for us to start trying to shape their behavior. They know what they're doing and we should not have a heavy hand on that. We should say you're able to demonstrate that you're having strong learning outcomes. We should back off where the emphasis and the attention is necessary, and I think better placed is on helping those communities where the learning outcomes are not as strong as we would want them to be and that they want them to be and help them understand what the right combination of success elements could be for them.Again, we're not expecting people to go and innovate on their own. We're not expecting people to on Sunday night build new curricula for their classes for the week. We think that there is enough good stuff out there from successful districts, from successful teachers, from the research that shows us what works. We just don't harness that in a way that makes it easy for folks on the ground in local communities, in local districts, coaching local school teams. We don't make it easy for them to say we need to do something different. Here are five things that we know work in communities like yours. Maybe you want to take a look at those. Like it's sort of like a most favored nation kind of approach here at the local level.But the state and federal opportunity here is to build the capacity to bring those exemplars of success and set the cultural expectation that if you're not meeting the same ratchets in communities like yours are able to hit, then you've got work to do and let's get on it.Collaboration in Education Support SystemsMichael HornSo it's almost like the, it's not a good joke, but the thing that I often say, right is like you don't have doctors building vaccines in medicine, right? Like that's crazy. You have, you have a separate set of companies that are doing that then supplying the doctors, et cetera. And essentially what I think I hear you saying is like, yeah, look, there's textbook companies and assessment companies, but actually there's a lot more that goes into teaching and learning that federal and state can be using its resources, whether that's consultative, advisory, connecting or maybe even building alongside, like to help support efforts on the ground. And that might be your school district, it might be your micro school, it might be your charter school. Forget about the form. Its point is on the ground getting support from other players that are able to see across geography or patterns or things of that nature. Is that getting even closer then?Macke RaymondYeah, Michael, I think you're really zeroing in on this. I mean, we know that there are tremendous forces of change happening across the country and we're not putting the right emphasis on preparing local districts for the kinds of changes, local schools for the kinds of change that they're going to face. And so in addition to moving away from a top down regulatory mandate approach, we also have, I think, much more value in the system that we can harvest that states, for example, could be operating the development of some of these knowledge bases. I mean, one of the things that I've talked about for years is something that I call the institutional commons, where states have the data to identify what the best 4th grade math teacher is in the state. Why don't they set up some kind of an incentive system so that that teacher is open to sharing their full set of resources and that that's packaged in a really easy way for some other 4th grade math teacher to go get. Why don't we harvest: here are great ways to set up community based learning opportunities. And here are 12 different models that have been successful around the country so other people can learn on what are the right processes.But also here are some models that we could just flat out adopt?Michael HornRight and just take rather than reinvent the wheel. Or we might say, gee, it needs modification because our population has these sets of resources or these, you know, future aspirations are different here for whatever reason or something like that.Macke RaymondThat's right. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of new learning horizons that as a system we need. We know that there's a huge R and D function at the federal level for building new measures and metrics for assessing this broader set of outcomes that we want. It doesn't make sense to have 50 states doing that work themselves in parallel. It's a huge fixed cost to do that. So that's an obvious place where the scale and the scope of a federal initiative would make sense. But there are places at the state level that do make sense, like being able to say this works well here is something that states ought to be really interested in getting behind and I think with a little bit of encouragement and support in the way in which we establish the new federalism, that's going to be a very fruitful path forward for state agencies.Michael HornYeah, that's really interesting. And I imagine it could link in with workforce development agencies at the state level that's seeing data trends of hiring is actually increasing here therefore right in a local district's not going to necessarily have the time or capacity to absorb that themselves.Macke RaymondYeah. I'd put one other thing on the table there and that is that we have across the country a number of really wonderful examples of almost every single piece of this new system that we're talking about. We don't need to start from scratch to create the conditions. We have positive examples of a relaxed regulatory environment. The charter school world shows us what that looks like. We have great opportunity to redefine what the outcomes are we want from kids from the portrait of the graduates and these new workforce development models that span high school and post secondary. So it's not like we have to go all the way back to zero. What we have to do is we have to be smart and coherent and intentional about setting the system in a direction that allows for these kinds of changes to occur in the system so it better serves students and families and communities.Ed Reform: Accountability and Growth TrendsMichael HornA couple things that spurs for me and I'll try to take them in sequence, but I guess the first one is, and you can correct me if this is wrong because you are way more expert in measurement and tracking student learning than I will ever be. But the sort of the narrative I think of ed reform over the last, let's call it eight years maybe has been like, okay, student achievement grew during no Child Left behind era. There was a lot of friction in that accountability model. But we saw growth 2011, 2012, somewhere around there. It starts to taper and actually fall off even before the pandemic is the consensus around accountability weekends. But what I think the story doesn't tell is that actually a lot of that growth was also driven in the late 80s and then through the 90s, before the federal government sort of solidified some of this stuff through state action. And so I would love you to just reflect on like, sort of people who say, whoa, wait a second, if we decentralize too much, isn't that going to be that sort of led to some of the Common Core conversations, as I recall.And I think I hear you saying that might not be the only way to look at it. And so I'd love you to just to sort of help us navigate that conversation around what's centralized versus decentralized.Macke RaymondWe have relied on states for the most part, to define what the outcomes are that we want and the learning standards. And I think that that is an appropriate exercise at the state level. If you look at the learning standards across the states, and it's an ugly project to undertake, so I wouldn't recommend anybody who's sane to do that. The learning standards are pretty consistent. What you might argue is that we have piled on more and more learning standards that are making the whole thing chaotic. I would point to Indiana, where they went through a very unsexy process of being very, very intentional about reviewing what are the critical standards that we absolutely have to have. And what came out the other end was a series of very, very deliberate learning standards that were scaffolded beautifully from early to late public education that lent themselves to a much broader set of engagement with other learning experiences and tying into some of the workforce development stuff that's very top of mind in Indiana right now. We know that can happen, and we think that that's a right place for it to happen is at the state level.Having said that, I think there's always a role at the federal level to advocate for and to protect student groups that we know from state level data are not getting a fair shake. I think there is a complete justification for protecting vulnerable populations with federal standards and an expectation then that we would measure and pay attention to that and potentially intervene with additional pressure if that has to happen from the feds. If in fact some student groups are not getting the same kind of shake. I mean, that was the origin of the civil rights activities to begin with. We have vulnerable populations of special ed. I would also say we're in an era now where students are differentially vulnerable in terms of their status as legitimate students that come from a variety of origins. But I can see that this would be an area of ongoing concern. So yes, I do think that there is a sort of a bottom line protection of individual students and their right to an education that has to be federal.It's part of our sort of constitutional commitment and our democratic fabric that we believe everybody has opportunity and should be prepared equivalently. So I like all of that. I do think that there are lots and lots of cross state opportunities that exist. There are models for schools that are coming up both through the traditional district realm and through the charter school realm and charter management organizations that set the tone for potentially national models of schools and potentially national networks of schools that we don't think about today, but we ought to be open to because they can set such a high bar for student results that they ought to have some kind of a recognition that says these are exceptional schools. Exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges within states, their exceptional schools ought to have additional privileges and additional autonomies. But also these emerging national networks and constellations of schools, if they're stellar, then we should be able to allow local schools to affiliate with these networks and not stand in the way of that. And that doesn't mean you'd give up local control.It's just that they have a membership option that says quality could come from outside the local area, it could come from a national federation of schools, and we should encourage that if it's really high quality.Michael HornAnd so in terms of the federal role right now, it seems like I hear you saying, on the one hand, I'm just thinking about some of the tensions here. Like it seems like on the one hand they've said we want states to lead, so that's an opportunity. And maybe frankly, it's an opportunity for experimentation because we don't know exactly how this new operating system should look. But two, I also see like a bit of a potential retreat. I know it could be a reset, but it also could be a retreat on some of the research functions that the federal government's traditionally done. And so I'm curious, like how you're thinking about what's opportunity, what's vacuum, what's threat, what's, you know, how do we drive this forward in line with this vision right now?Decentralizing DecisionsMacke RaymondWell, so a sort of a rule of thumb that I have been using in my own thinking and in the conversations that I've been having is that decisions should be handed down to the lowest possible level where you have high quality and scope at the same time. And so with, with all the good intentions of lots of the federal programs that grew up over the years. There were a lot of things that were happening that didn't have to have a federal footprint on them, that actually could have been handled effectively at the state level. And so that part of the reset, I think, has some positive upside to it. The things that I think have to stay at the federal level are clearly the national assessments of what students know, because that's the truth, that's the light of truth across all these state systems. And we can't give that up. The second thing is I do think that there are a new set of federal priorities for research and development and I want to stay away from the R and D umbrella because that constitutes a different set of things. There's a role for federal involvement in R and D.But here I'm really specifically thinking of undertaking specific programs of research on new measures, on new assessments, on emerging practices in light of AI and all of these tectonic changes. There are things that the federal agency has line of sight on that also scale best at the federal level. And so I do have a sort of a wish list under my blotter on my desk about what that might look like. But I also think then that continuing the attention on vulnerable populations and using this moment to instead of be mandate focused and regulatory focused, use this moment to cultivate a kind of capacity building at the state level, is a phenomenal moment that I really hope we don't miss. And I really am anxious to see that that becomes part of the ongoing commitment to public education that we have as a nation and that it has a strong presence at a national federal level.Michael HornAs we start to wrap up here, let's stay on that vulnerable student population piece because one of the things, as you know, I'm super intrigued by these education savings account states, it shifts accountability in my mind to the parents, frankly, themselves, but a real concern, and I grant it is like in a world where we are thinking more deeply about high quality instructional materials, coherent sets of background knowledge right across discipline to turn people into really good readers and things of that nature, if someone's experience specifically from a low income background becomes more fragmented, maybe they lose some of that connective tissue. How would the federal role be to really be using its scale to sort of spotlight that, find trends that you might not be aware of and help local actors, I mean, even down to an individual student. Or is that overreach? Or is it more like identifying trends and building capacity? Like how does that all shake out? So we maybe use the benefits of choice, but don't lose some of the negatives that can come from incoherence.Charter Schools: Challenges and IncentivesMacke RaymondFrankly, this is a moment that actually happened in the charter school world. As networks of charter organizations formed into charter management organizations and communities had larger shares of their students enrolled in both charter schools and charter management organization schools. We faced some of that, that there was an incentive on the part of new entrants to really zero in on what their sweet spot was and be careful about what the protecting the brand became important. I'm not saying that charter schools shed students because I don't think that happened. Our data never showed that that was the case. But there was always the incentive that there were students that were going to be very difficult to serve and that the expectation and the incentives were set up to keep those in the public sector, in the district public schools. I worry that as we proliferate the number of choice paths that we have, that we're seeing, we have the potential for seeing something similar and that if we have different standards of performance across all of these models, that we are in fact inadvertently going to be creating tiering of outcomes. And it's not clear to me that putting parents as the final arbiters of quality is going to be as successful and productive as many of the choice advocates think, unless we can tie that to very clear understanding of what the outcomes are that students have to have in order to be successful and real transparency about how these individual models are delivering on that.So I see accountability evolving to stratified accountability. That's very clear about what the channel is that students are pursuing for their education.Michael HornAnd so just staying with that for a moment, I'm just trying to think how practically that looks. In some sense it's like an asset based view of the world of like maybe, maybe a local community concludes this branch of mathematics is not important. We don't think for our future, fine. But it's going to be reflected in that you're not showing mastery of that. And then someone might flag that and say, hey, just want to make sure you're aware you're not preparing your students for fields that take advantage of this branch of mathematics. And maybe that's an intentional choice, but. But we want to make sure it's transparent.Empowering Parental Choice in EducationMacke RaymondCertainly transparent, but where there are lots of choice vehicles, you could imagine that a district would say, you know, collectively we don't really need physics, let's just say. But it turns out that somebody really wants physics for themselves or for their child, then the ESA piece can kick in there and say, no, no, no. You know what? I'm going to customize this with an ESA because I really want physics for my child. The problem is a lot of parents don't know what they really want for their child in that level of specificity. And I think that's a state function to make sure that parents are actively informed and can easily exercise their wishes for their kids and transact in a larger choice environment in a way that's productive for their kids.Michael HornSo in some ways that's what like Amy Guidera was doing in Virginia, I think around reading of making it super clear to parents, hey, just want to be clear. This is where your kid is at from a reading level perspective. This is the curriculum. We think that. I can't remember how far she went, but I think it went fairly detailed into this may be why the gaps are there. So that parents built a level of information that they wouldn't have otherwise had and they didn't have to go seek it. I think that's the other important part of it, if I remember.Macke RaymondYeah, you're right about that. A related example, Michael, is that underperforming schools and districts in Louisiana were given a menu of high quality instructional curricula and material that they could choose from. Right. They still had the power of choice, but they couldn't stay in a position of inferior production. And so I see that as part of the sort of new accountability work that I think is a natural part of the new federalism, helping states develop that kind of capacity, that kind of information, and making sure that that connection to students and their future is a solid one for everyone involved.Michael HornReally helpful. Okay, final thoughts. Things that we ought to keep an eye on as this ball continues to move. I'd love your thinking along that.Embracing Change in EducationMacke RaymondWell, I'm gonna end with throwing you a rose. That it's probably a very old rose at this point because it goes all the way back to disrupting class. That the models of disruption that you called for before were so in the context of the system that existed at that time and the environment were so radical. But guess what? The world has grown into your scenario. And so I just want to say I think this is an era of phenomenal change. And the question is whether we let the change happen at us and to us or whether we grab onto it and make that change work for us. And so want to thank you for all the years of talking about the fact that this is a natural process and that we should get there. And now that we're here, really hope that we can work together across both political spectrum and across geographic boundaries to really create the system that best serves our kids with that kind of approach.Michael HornWell, the best thinking being done in that system is from the work that you've done. So huge thank you for coming here and talking about it, but for putting out the report. For those that don't know, if you just Google Hoover Institution and Ours to Solve Once and For All, you will get that PDF report. But there's also a really cool on The Education Future Council.com site where you can get the report as well. There's also a video around it, an AI generated podcast. There's a lot of resources that we have just scratched the surface of, so check all of those out for sure. What else should they follow?Macke RaymondWell, I think the best thing they can do is just follow along, paying attention to what the public debate is and be ready to jump in because their voice is going to be extremely important.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

On this episode, Ulric Shannon, Executive Director of the Surge Institute in Chicago, and Kyla Mathews, principal of Epic Academy High School, join me to talk about the controversial issue of banning smartphones in schools. While acknowledging the negative impact of excessive phone use, both guests argue against blanket bans and instead emphasize the importance of teaching responsible use and engaging students in setting digital norms. They discuss how cell phones can serve educational and social-emotional purposes when integrated thoughtfully, highlight the real-world challenges of device access in classrooms, and stress the importance of fostering trust with students and parents.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I am Michael Horn and you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And as we figure out how to do that, we do so right now against a bleak set of statistics, if you will. We have a mental health crisis among teens. We have rampant disengagement and chronic absenteeism for many high schools. And social media, which is often accessed through smartphones, has been a leading suspect in the cause of this. And the result from all that is that states and many districts are banning smartphones in schools in a variety of ways right now across the nation.Nuanced Phone Policy in EducationNow, I'll put my cards on the table. I've been arguing for a more nuanced position rather than a blanket ban from on high, where educators have the power to ban phones in their classrooms when it makes sense, but they also have the power to use them when it will advance an educational or engagement purpose. But it does feel at the moment like there's a tide against any nuanced positions in this country in general, I will say. And yet we have a couple educators joining us today who I'm thrilled to get their perspective because they have also found a nuanced way through this conversation that I'm really excited and eager to learn from. So first we have Ulric Shannon. He's the executive director of the Surge Institute in the Chicago region. Surge is an organization dedicated to cultivating black, brown and Latino leaders to transform education. And then we have Kyla Mathews, who is a principal of Epic Academy High School, which is a charter school in Chicago focusing on college going for its graduates.And Kyla is a Surge fellow at the moment. So, Ulric, Kyla, great to see you both. Thanks so much for joining me.Kyla MathewsThank you for having us.Ulric ShannonYeah, thank you so much for having us, Michael.Michael HornYeah, you bet. I'm excited to learn from you on this topic, but let's, let's get right into it, right? 21 states, I think at latest count, I believe, have passed laws restricting regulating cell phone usage in schools. We have the author, John Haidt, who's on the warpath with his best selling book advocating for a lot of these laws and so forth. Kyla, you run a school that's one to one device school. And as I understand it, you have been arguing that these folks have it wrong, that a blanket ban doesn't make sense. So at a high level for right now, help us understand why that's been your position.Kyla Mathews As a Principal of Epic and a former assistant principal of a large urban school and a parent of a generation Alpha student. People can't think that a broad brush of no cell phones is like the way to go. But what we're learning is that the children that we service right now have not ever not had a phone in their hand. And so being mindful of your audience, being mindful of who you service, you have to be clear about that. And so that's why it's not the right way to go to ban the cell phones without any clear communication expectations and a buffer or filler to replace something that's a part of people's lives.Michael HornSo I want to dig into that and a little, a little bit more. But Ulric, maybe lay out your perspective first because you're working, as I understand it, not just with Kyla, but with lots of school leaders in Chicago. What do you see? Because I'm hearing that a lot of educators are really loving these bans. Once they're in place, they're saying, thank God someone else made the decision for me. In effect, what are you seeing on the ground?Ulric ShannonYeah, I think there's a number of things that are at play here. I think districts are under a lot of pressure, right, to improve academic outcomes. And so they see that as phone bans as a quick fix to that. Right. Like we need to have like deeper conversations around that and actually engage students in that 1. 2 I would say that schools, at the school level, they're responding to a growing concerns related to classroom distractions, cyber bullying and student mental health, as you talked to earlier. And we have to admit that the pandemic accelerated that. Right.The use of technology. Now educators are actually seeing how constant student interaction or phone usage can actually undermine their attention and their community connection, which is also important inside the classroom. So I think if we look at different levels within the education system and the structure, I think people are just quickly responding because there is some urgency around the preparedness for our young people to go off into the world, whether it's academically prepared, socially prepared, and a number of other things. And, you know, cell phones can sometimes feel like a little bit of a distraction, maybe a lot of distraction, and the root of a lot of just, you know, teenage or young people issues because they have so much access to each other. So I think it's just a quick response to a greater outcome, some good intentions, but maybe some poor outcomes.Michael HornWell, so, so stay on that because. So I think what I'm hearing, Kyla, right from you is phones like they're with the kids. Whether we like it or not, they are the tableau. Ulric, you're saying, if I'm hearing correctly, like, so there's sort of a snap reaction, we'll just take them away and somehow solve the problem. I think a lot of educators are saying it does solve the problem, like, you know, behavior seems better in their schools and classrooms and things like that. So help me understand like why this might not actually be the right answer. And Ulric, maybe start with you, like why, why is it just that a snap reaction rather than maybe attacking the root cause of what's going on?Student Involvement in Phone UsageUlric ShannonI think we have to recognize that. I mean, I think Kyla spoke to her earlier, like they had phones in their hands since they were born, right? And phones can actually be a lifeline for students navigating complex identities and social environments. And so it can be kind of a coping tool for students. But like I said earlier, we must understand the why behind the behavior and not just try to control it. And we know that research says that excess usage of phones and social media can actually increase anxiety or in comparison to disengagement. But I think if we can actually bring in students into that process, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. They can actually co-design some of those norms with students. Maybe it's creating a tech-free zone or structure breaks, informing some digital literacy courses that can actually support healthy usage and boundaries of cell phones.I think there is certainly things that we can do, but I think maybe some of the capacity issues within buildings make that a little bit of a challenge when you may not have all the bodies and resources inside of your school to actually tend to those needs and a loving and and caring way that you would like to have inside of your schools.Michael HornWell, so Kyla, let me go to you there, like what are you doing, right, to reset this? What's a better way forward in your view?Cell Phones in Education DebateKyla MathewsI [agree with] everything Ulric just said because we have to be clear whether the cell phone is a distraction or not. And we also have to understand from a youth's perspective that if I release my cell phone to you, am I trusting you as a person, as my teacher? And then secondly, what are you going to replace with my level of entertainment if we want to bring in the social media part? But I have an antidote to this discussion because a number of my staff members who do not have cell phone issues, they just realize that they can capitalize on their age gap or the non existent age gap, like they're Very accepting that cell phones do exist, but I'm going to teach you how to use it responsibly. Even being really specific in a history class the other day, last month, part of an evaluation, part of my popping in a teacher was clear with students about why Twitter is not a good source for information and it created a healthy debate with students. So, now we're not arguing about the phone and being distracted by the content or my teacher isn't accepting of the way I receive information which actually bringing it into the conversation and having a debate about why primary sources are still the way to go.Michael HornSo in that case, Kyla. Right. Like it's sort of an entry point into a broader conversation, it seems like. So, so, so part of the job is like, is that part of the answer that teachers, I mean it feels like we asked teachers to do a ton of stuff today. Do they have another responsibility on, on, on their, sort of on their desks, if you will, or is there, you know, is this part of something bigger?Kyla MathewsYeah, the hurdle, I think and, and just talking with teachers, talking with students, I think two challenges come up for us. One, because I do think I'm a teacher of teachers, so I say to us one is that you don't want to be in a power struggle with students about their personal items. So it's not about the physical phone. Right. But for some students and families it is about the physical possession. And so you want to make sure that trust exists, that this is not about the phone. This is about. At our school we prioritize XYZ over phones in classrooms.Right. So we're clear about the academic expectations, but also we want to promote face-to-face interactions and socializations in the academic setting. Post-pandemic, everything was, you know, we're virtual right now. And so we want to understand that we are trying to get back to this human side of education that makes this industry extremely different than other industries. So if the phone is a distraction, just naming those things with families, they understand that why better than oh yeah, we're just a no cell phone campus. It's zero tolerance. That doesn't help families make decisions for their children. And then secondly, kids want to know that if you take away my entertainment, will this lesson be of my benefit? Whether it's interesting, whether I get something cognitively, they just want to know what is the exchange rate.And I think us as educators, we have to be clear about what, what I have to offer you, what we are going to engage in in the next 50 minutes or 35, because you can have a brain break and then we'll pop back into our lesson. But there's a level of bartering that has to happen because you acknowledge that the cell phone is not going anywhere. What I have to offer you with this primary source may or may not be. It may be the better option in obtaining information. And this face to face interaction that we're having at school is definitely the way to go, especially between 8 and 3. Please and thank you.Michael HornWell, so stay on that because I think there's like two things that you're sort of arguing there. Right? Number one, so we can take away the cell phone during school hours through a ban, but like kids are still using them at night, you know. Ulric, you were mentioning like a lot of the bullying and stuff like that that's happening off school hours. Right. And so like we're sort of band aiding a few hours, but maybe not addressing the larger things. And you know, does homework get done if they still have smartphones but haven't figured out how to use them responsibly, et cetera. And then I think the second thing I hear you saying is, you know, reality is what reality is, we're in a world where there's a lot of instantaneous gratification. And so we've got to figure out how to be more engaging and worthwhile for them to make that exchange willingly.I guess maybe full stop for both of you is like, is that, is, is that the right starting point for the argument? Am I, am I understanding correctly on both sides? Ulric, why don't you jump in first?Ulric ShannonYeah, yeah. I mean, I think both of those ones are absolutely correct. I think one, we can't ask or expect young people to do things that the adults cannot do. And so we have to recognize how we play in those classrooms or buildings as well. So they see us on our phones all day, they feel like a double standard. Right. And it's probably not a much different challenge from what parents have to go through at home to get a cell phone or an iPad away. Right? We give it to cope, right.They need a little bit of quiet time, maybe we need a little bit of quiet time. We give them an iPad, we give them a phone, they can go about their business. But when it's time to punish, taking away that phone is a little bit of a challenge. And so I think Kyla's absolutely right. When we think about like this daily power struggle, it's not for me just about taking away from teaching time. It's also damaging relationships. And we Know that that is a critical piece to get any type of whether your lessons are extremely engaging or are less engaging. If I have a trusting or real authentic relationship with my educator, with my teacher, with my leaders, I'm going to be in that classroom.I'm going to be in full attention. Right? Because I'm knowing that it's like your lesson was intentional and I like you. Right. But I also think there's this piece where a lot of schools love to have events that say, like, we're going to have parenting training. One as I think that is a little bit disrespectful to parents because it's like, are we already putting ourselves on a pedestal that we know more than you? And it could be around cell phones, it could be around anything. But what I do that in the space of schools is that teachers need more than just rules. They need the training, they need the support, they need the leadership that centers trust. And so if we're not providing them with some common training, some common language and common actions, then if one class was doing it but the other five are not, you're never going to get the type of culture that you would want in your building, regardless if you're banning all cell phones or not.So you can't, like, while you can ban the cell phones, you can't necessarily ban or change the behavior. It just pushes it underground. So I think those two points are absolutely right. And I just think we need to elevate the space of our collective learning, maybe in some unlearning to really be able to support our young people in classrooms when it comes to cell phones, which is, I think, a very small thing and the grander thing that our young people need.Michael HornWell, so curious off that. And Kyla, let me come to you on this question, right? Because the Twitter example you gave earlier, I bet some people listening who are for the blanket bans will say, well, you could have had that conversation anyway with phones banned. So I think the natural question then is like, are you finding use cases where you're actually using the phones in classrooms themselves to engage in educational purpose? Like, what do phones do well that maybe traditional technologies or books do not do well? Is that part of the conversation too, or no?Kyla MathewsYeah, I think the biggest piece that we are discussing at my school and in all the years I've been an administrator has been around like discussing the cell phone piece. It's like this healthy balance of using phones responsibly. There is an algorithm of your searches and social media will give you what you've been looking for. Right. So if a teacher is very clear on students on how to search and use the Internet to search for information, the algorithm will perpetuate more and more information. So that's one way that has been healthy in a ninth grade English class. But again, to my point, teachers are committing to bringing students closer with something that they value, but also teaching them how to use it responsibly and then countering that with, you know, hardcover texts at the same time. So there's like a healthy balance.Fostering Community and Responsible TechnologyKyla MathewsAnd then the other piece that, to Ulric's point about teaching parents about their students is also bringing parents in that we are partnering with you around just a bigger, a bigger issue with students detaching from community, detaching from primary sources because of an individualized device. And so that's why the broadband is not the way to go. Bring people in closer about why the importance of other ways to get information is just as valid. And we can also be responsible with this phone. What we've learned too on the bullying side is that you got to teach kids how we do school. And if we prioritize academics and our community as a collective, like how we want to exist at school, teach that and normalize it, students will acquiesce. They won't have, first of all, there'll be less bullying issues, but there also be less instances where students will pull out their phone as instead of going to get a trusted adult. And so that's what I've been able to do in these last three years as principal of Epic is raise a culture of we are all responsible for one another.Even for example, in my announcements in the morning, I ended with take care of yourself and one another. I get that from the nightly news. But that's what's being said to adults, so why not say it to children, right? So we just have to be mindful of that healthy balance with devices we but then also being very, very clear about what we want to accept in our school.Michael HornGo ahead, Ulric. It looked like you were ready to get in there.Ulric ShannonNo, no, no. I think I was just asking.Michael HornNo worries.Ulric ShannonI was asking myself, what are we actually teaching to do? Right? If cell phones are not going anywhere and technology is just moving faster and faster. And so to Kyla's point, you just have to find ways to integrate that into your everyday work in the classroom as well, whether that's projects and polls or digital portfolios. I think there's a number of ways to integrate that because the technology is not going anywhere. And if we remove that from students, we're just pushing them back even further because they will have to use cell phone or some other, you know, innovative device of the future. A teleportation device. It could be at one point, right, but if our young people are not comfortable with using it, they're just gonna be light years behind at the rate in which our world is moving in the next 20, 30 years.Debate: Phones vs. School DevicesMichael HornSo, that's a good departure point I think for the next question that I'm curious about, which is like a lot of folks will say, well you know, like Epic is a, is a one to one device school. There's laptops, right? Some places have Chromebooks everywhere or tablets or whatever else. Why not ban the phones? Because those are the personal devices. Hearing what you just said, Kyla, right, About, you know, personal property is a conversation. But you know, but it gets rid of the social media. Like we can do the polls and the engagement and the lookup like on tablets and laptops and stuff like that. Ulric, what do you see around that? Like are there specific cases where like actually the phone is just like the right device to do the educational thing we want to do? What are those use cases look like?Ulric ShannonAbsolutely. I don't know when the. I always ask a lot of people, when was the last time you actually been into a school and been into a classroom? And a lot of people have not been in a very, very, very long time. So they're speaking from a far distance. But I think that these things. Have you ever seen a group of 12 year old try to get a Chromebook out and everyone is not charged and they're not working and we're trying to plug them up and we're trying to find the one that works and we're trying to get them to log in. We have lost 30 minutes of instructional time trying to do that. When I could just say pull out your phones.I can guarantee you the phone is charged. I can guarantee you it is always charged. And they can jump on the same website just as fast. They can scan a QR code. They know how to do so many things so fast. There could be a TikTok class or a Snapchat class or group for the class where they're able to get information super duper quick. Utilize a Kahoot to collect data in real time from their students. Like do you understand the assignment? Yes or no.And that allows the teacher some real time data. Definitely just using your phone as opposed to asking a group of kids to find that Laptop. And I can guarantee it in a lot of schools, the screens are broken, they're not charged, all the things I've listed before. But I've seen that in classrooms where teachers and students are comfortable utilizing their phone, they know the purpose and the intent. And if you do that with such routine as a previous third grade teacher, they will do that even when you're not there. They will know when, how and what to use their cell phones for if it's routine. But if it's not, then that's going to be a challenge.Michael HornKyla, you were smiling there. I want to hear your take.Kyla MathewsYes, again, I oversay everything Ulric just said. That question about have you been in the classroom? Is so valid. The other piece I would add to, though, is the safety component. So back to the power struggle. Many schools, there's a perception about many schools. And we are also evaluating on how well our students feel safe at schools. With the University of Chicago's five Essential Survey, there's direct questions about school safety. And if parents question the safety of their neighborhood, their school, the cell phone definitely cannot get taken because that is my access to my child.Right. And so that normally is the discussion, that's normally the argument of parents, I need to be able to get to my student, to my child. And so when you build relationships with families, with the community, with students, and understanding that we are safe here, all of us are, that kind of comes off the table when it's time to talk about cell phones. But I did want to raise that as a talking point for the next level conversation. That'll be an argument for sure, the safety concern.Michael HornWell, the safety one, I think is a big deal because chronic absenteeism that we're seeing, it's for multiple reasons, right. Some of it has been disengagement because they're not sure the purpose, but some of it is around safety and things of that nature. So, and I think the argument has been that phones are actually increasing the chronic absenteeism because they're increasing the disengagement. But I think I hear you saying there actually may be the key to increase engagement or at least increase.You know, my sort of sense that my kid will be okay or that I can reach them when they're in school. So help me understand what that looks like. Like, are you finding that phones actually, rather than increase disengagement, are actually increasing engagement?Phones: Balancing Access and SafetyKyla MathewsYeah. So phones, again, to your point, just being a broad brush or just an easy thing to blame is the issue. Right. But when it comes to the safety piece, I know post pandemic like immediately transitioning back to schools, families were worried because we all were trying to figure out how to re engage. And the way to my student is I can call them directly. When I was in class, when I was in school a couple years ago, you would have to call the main office or the secretary would have to call into the classroom. But now with that immediate access to your child, especially in the high school level, parents want that autonomy at the same time. So we have to honor that in some sort of spaces.Right? But if parents, again, trust the learning community, students understand that the bartering between my phone, my cell phone usage and the engagement of your lesson, then it becomes less of a debate and therefore you won't have to be so drastic, as in all being all campuses.Michael HornLast question as we wrap up here, and I'd love you both to sort of take a stab at this one, which is someone told me, you know, Michael, you're just sort of crazy here because, like, we would never have allowed fax machines and telephones on people's desks, you know, when we were, when we all were in school, not to date me, but. Right. And so, like, that's the equivalent of what when that phone is there. And so you just mentioned that the parent can reach out directly to the kid on the one hand, see the benefit, on the other hand, wow, that means anyone can. They can be connecting with lots of folks. And that argument is really would you have had a fax machine sitting on someone's desk back in the day? How do you think about that conversation? What would you tell that individual to sort of reset their mind around that?Kyla MathewsWell, as a principal, my biggest thing and what I tell my staff is that my job is to set the conditions so you can do your job the best way you can. And so if you need a fax machine on your desk, we'll get you a fax machine on your desk. And I also have phones in each classroom so that we don't have to go to the teacher's lounge to call families. Right. For any reason. So I say all this to say is that if we are going to make the learning environment conducive for this generation of students, to your point that technology is not getting weaker, it's getting stronger. Why don't we learn how to empower ourselves and students on how to be responsible with all devices while we have them in our care? That's my plight..Michael HornUlric, your take.Ulric ShannonI love that. Kyla. I think we're certainly aligned here. Our job is not to make school harder, not for the adults in the building and not for students. And so our job every single day is not just a third grade teacher, but also a special education teacher. Every student has individual needs just like every adult. And so, yes, if you need this inside the building, you need this support in order to make your learning experience much more enjoyable and you feel much more successful, you're growing in confidence. Then if that is the fax machine, if it is any other, a major copy machine, whatever it is that you may need.Student Thrives with Computer AccommodationUlric ShannonAnd I'll close with this story, I have one student who folks told me it's going to be a real, real challenge to get him in the building, to get him to pay attention, to do anything. And this student who is probably now out of college, the only thing he wanted to do was use the computer to do his work because he was so caught up on his pencil penmanship that he would just erase and erase and erase like every day, all day. And this was a student who ended up with all A's in my classroom, even with the IEP, one of the highest performing students in my classroom. And it's because teachers just wanted to make it so much more of a challenge and say, well, he needs to learn how to write well. You know, doctors have terrible penmanship, but they're your doctor, right, and you're okay. And if he just needs this computer the same way that some child just may need a cell phone just to feel a little bit more comfortable to do that work there, why not provide them with the resources they need if there's no need to do the fight, if the grades and the performance and expectations are being met, why pick that as your battle?Michael HornGood way to, good place to end it. I think the individualized support for each student so that they can succeed, which is the goal. Kyla Matthews, Ulric Shannon, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate the insights and the wisdom from on the ground. And for all you tuning in, we'll be back next time on the Future of Education.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Tyler Thigpen, CEO and head of school at the Forest School and Acton Academy, joined me again to discuss the powerful impact that my mentor, Clay Christensen, and his theories of innovation had on Tyler’s practical approach to education leadership and innovation. We dove into topics such as identifying and developing capable leaders, designing for sustainability, integrating around a Job to Be Done, and shaping organizational culture through problem-solving.Michael HornWelcome 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. Today we've got a repeat guest, that happens every once in a while, but generally not like this close in proximity to each other. But we've got Tyler Thigpen back. He's the CEO, head of School of the Forest School and Acton Academy. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.We talked a lot last time about how he's the CEO of the Institute for Self Directed Learning in his book about that topic, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. Tyler, did I miss anything? Good to see you. How are you?Tyler ThigpenYou didn't miss anything. Great to see you. I'm doing really well and happy to be chatting about this topic today.Lessons from Clayton ChristensenMichael HornYeah. And so I wanted to bring Tyler back because I thought the conversation we had was fantastic. And literally, like a few weeks after we had recorded that, he came out with this piece on LinkedIn titled 8 Game Changing Business Lessons I Learned from Clayton Christensen. And of course, as you all know, Clayton Christensen was my mentor. The ideas he learned literally changed my life and how I view the world. And Tyler, I guess I, like, I hadn't internalized that you had had some similar experiences taking Clay's class when you were in the EDLD program, I think at the Ed School at Harvard. And so I just thought, well, for starters, like, what. What moved you to write the piece? And maybe macro level, talk about the impact that that Clay had with you or when you got to interact with him and sort of that moment in your lifeTyler ThigpenTotally. And my experience with Clayton, you said, changed my life. And even though I didn't get as much time with him as I think you probably did, I would say the same thing. Just an incredible experience. The first time I led a school, Michael, was back in 2011, and I had read the Innovator's DNA and was very compelled by that. And then my team and I started an innovation diploma for high schoolers. Really centered around some of the characteristics, you know, the questioning, the networking, the experimentation, you know, highlighted there in Innovator's DNA. But I didn't know Clayton. It wasn't until I went to my doctoral program that I heard about this legendary course called Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise, which I know you know very well.And I got lucky enough to get him in class and really just rolled up my sleeves and tried to take from it as much as possible. And it really that was 10 years ago, and it's been, you know, my work as a CEO since that time. How many times I have, you know, thought back and reflected and looked at notes and reread theories and tried to apply things. It's just remarkable. It's really almost more than any other business framework that I've come up with. And so that's really what inspired me to write the piece.I was at a dinner with one of your colleagues, Thomas Arnett, and was sharing some of the same story with him, and I realized I haven't really synthesized my own reflections and thinking. And so I'll put it in a LinkedIn article. And I did, and it was so helpful. And I actually teach it to my leaders as well on my team, and we continue to benefit.Michael HornVery cool. Very cool. And I think you got a lot of feedback on that article. So maybe we'll start not David Letterman style completely, but at the bottom, number eight, and then we'll work backwards number eight. You had identifying and developing capable leaders. And I'd love to know what that means to you, because, like, I think a lot of people would say, well, like, everyone's looking for leaders. You talk to a venture capitalist, they invest in, you know, entrepreneurs. Right? Like, what does that mean? And how did Clay help you around that? Or what's the problem that it helped you solve for?Tyler ThigpenAbsolutely, Michael. And again, I welcome your feedback on any of this because, yeahMichael HornBut I'm super curious what this one meant.Rethinking Leadership and HiringTyler ThigpenYeah, I mean, this was one of the most provoking ideas that I encountered with Chloe. I actually disagreed with him at first. I was given leadership opportunities at a very young age, professionally, like 21. I had a boss that just really believed in me. And so I had this bias around leadership that's like, as long as you have a few certain qualities, you can do anything, you know? But Clayton's very provoking point was to think through, okay, for the roles that you have for your organization, for it to really, you know, grow and execute and learn at a high level. What are the kinds of experiences that this individual is going to have to face? What are the kinds of experiences, therefore, that we would then look for in their previous life, you know, leading up to that point, whether in their personal or professional life, that would have given them the sorts of experiences to be able to navigate them once they approach this new task. And so it really impacted my hiring, honestly, Michael, I just started to really think meaningfully about the competencies required for Each one of our different roles at the school and then backwards design from that and then in our interview questions and interview performance tasks, start looking for team members who had done those kinds of or similar experiences, you know, in the past.And, and really, honestly nobody, because we're our school and our organization is, you know, trying to build something that's new and innovative. So it's not like anybody's really gone to a school for exactly the roles that we have. So if anything, you know, doing this process with folks as they, as they apply for us is. It helps see where they are going to be ready to hit the ground running and then where they may need some support, you know, early on. So that's been key for us for hiring for the last number of years.Michael HornAnd for those who are interested, I think he calls it the Right Stuff Theory. Right. The schools of experience, if I'm remembering, and it's from Morgan McCall's work, High Flyers Developing the Next Generation of Leaders. And I think we may have had a similar, like, sort of disagreement with it initially. Actually, it'll be interesting to compare notes on this. My recollection was like, when Clay introduced this theory to our class, my pushback was like, well, if you're always looking for someone who's had experience, like, you never actually bring someone up into the next rung because, like, you're looking for, like, it's a truism in some ways. How do you develop? And I guess the nuanced understanding I developed over time of it was like, actually it's the opposite, right? Like the argument is, you know, you're looking for a CEO of a startup venture or something like that.You don't go to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to fill that because their experiences are actually in large environments of how to get stuff done and things like that. And you'd be better off finding someone who maybe hasn't had the C level job, but had the experience of navigating and operating in a similar small environment and getting, you know, learning how to pull resources and get experiences done. And now you're giving them sort of that next ladder, if you will, on, their progression. And, and so in some ways I, I started to think of it as like, actually it's more pro development than I thought. It's just you have to sort of understand experience and like, context in a deeper way than maybe I had. How does that resonate with you?Tyler ThigpenIt totally resonates. And I, I think too, he helped me see that if you, I mean, yeah, there's a good chance that if you've got someone who succeeded in an environment, they're going to succeed in another environment. But that's just what it is. It's a chance, you know, it's a bit riskier. Whereas if you need someone to deliver on the promise of this new role in this context, then there's going to be a greater likelihood for success if you look for that level of alignment. So you use the word nuance that. I totally agree. It's a bit more nuanced approach.Michael HornYeah. Okay, so let's go to the seventh one then. You had, you had understanding business models and designing for sustainability, which is interesting because like his class, as you said, legendary class. Building and sustaining successful enterprise. World's worst name for a course ever. But Clay was like consumed with sustainable success, right? Not flash in the pan. Success was like super core to who he was. So, so how did, how did this, how does this manifest and what you do day to day?Strategic Growth Planning VariationsTyler ThigpenWell, and this one, I don't know if in your mind this one is closely connected to the discovery driven planning. For me it sort of is. But basically the way this impacted me was when I was outside of this context, it was like, okay, when designing the performa for our organization, that five year projections, you know, having multiple different versions, all of which are sustainable, but you know, one would be a fast growth, one would be moderate growth, one would be slow growth. And it included all the resources and, you know, processes, priorities, and we'll get to that in a minute, I think. But it essentially there were a few markers that I sort of said, like, it's got to make this amount of profit, this percentage of profit, you know, year after year. Otherwise that tells us, you know, this is probably not a sustainable business model. There are a few key restraints that need to be considered. Like if we're getting this kind of funding for a short period of time, that really shouldn't be a part of the annual operations funding sort of thing.It just needs to be sustainable. And so I would tell my parents and my team of our schools early on, I would say we're building something that hopefully is going to live hundreds of years beyond us. And so allowing those constraints to help with decision making both around growth and staffing and what we would purchase and then continually looking at that for, from a budgeting standpoint, you know, every month has just been crucial, you know, and I do think like the sector in which I'm trying to lead at the moment, you know, micro schools and education, you know, institutes, there are some great examples of some incredible ideas out there, but it's not exactly sustainable and it's just very, very hard. But it requires a level of, he helped me, you know, really up my game in terms of the discipline to like make sure that this, this has a long term plan for it.Michael HornYeah. So it's interesting hearing you say that and I'm going to change my plan of how I ask you questions in a moment because of the way you just went into that one. But my observation on the micro school sector specifically is that far too many educators come into this with noble intentions. They start something and they basically they do the opposite of designing for sustainability. They say, I'm not going to take a salary for two years or whatever else and then we'll figure out what happens to the school afterwards. So like it's almost like a, I want to break out, I want to do this noble thing of creating this purpose driven, tight, community for learners and I'm sort of not going to worry about the sustainability question.Supply Challenges and Strategic PlanningMichael HornAnd, my big fear is like the supply is going to keep slipping if, if we have that mindset, that actually not thinking like a business is doing a disservice to those communities that they stand up. And, and so it, I hadn't linked it to the Discovery Driven planning until you just said it, but I think it's right like the big thing that I tell people that I think Discovery Driven planning is different from Lean Startup or some of those things out there which, which are sort of derivative off Discovery Driven planning is Lean Startup has a little bit of like a, throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Discovery Driven planning is like okay, no, no, let's start with what's the end in mind. Like you know, Stephen Covey. Right. Like begin with the end and then like okay, what has to be true and what are the key assumptions in the model that we need to be thinking about now? Because otherwise it's, it's game over.Right. And, and I think we're not having enough thought on the supply side at the moment in this space is my observation at least. I'm curious how that resonates for you.Tyler ThigpenIt does. The, for, you know, I heard it said a few years ago, like how an organization starts is kind of like really hard to get out of, you know, over, over time. And I've seen that in this sector as well where you know, maybe the cost of tuition, for example, Isn't priced right. And folks kind of get locked in to that and then it ends up not being, you know, sustainable. Whereas discovery driven planning just. It invited me to say, okay, you know, here's the goal and the priority and here are the assumptions baked into what I think is actually going to happen. And then let me put in place these milestones to, to pressure test and double check those assumptions and see if they're true. And I did this.And then by the way, often, sometimes they were, but most of the time they were not. And so like having to pivot, right? I mean, one of the. Our school is diverse by design, like economically, you know, racially, age, religion, gender. And I made a few early goals around that and made some assumptions around how that was going to happen. And sure enough, you know, three, six and nine months in, realized this is not working out. And so the pivots that we made there early on were so beneficial and so crucial. And had I not known about this process, I would have just kind of been doing that lean startup, you throw stuff on the wall and see what works versus being a bit more methodical about it, you know, and seeing what the market is demanding and what is actually potentially sustainable for the long term. So, that's kind of been our process.Tyler ThigpenI mean, even, even when we started the school, Michael, you know, I sort of, I was, I, I think it's going to be this much, this much demand for the environment. And it ended up, you know, after looking at the first milestone, it was way more, you know, so that some of the pivots were like positive pivots, you know.Michael HornYeah, yeah.Tyler ThigpenAnd then some were like, oh gosh, we've gotta, you know, invest, we've gotta add more resources, you know, or we've got to change some processes in order to, you know, arrive at this priority that we have. But, but, but pivots is really what it led us to. And pivots that were crucial.Michael HornYeah, and it's interesting cause that's number five for you. And so that's what this is. What I realized is like, we actually probably should back up to number two on your list because two through seven really build off each other. So two, you have the assessing capabilities, resources, processes, priorities, which really became, I think over time, the business model framework. Those of us of a certain vintage think of them as separate, but I think for most people, sort of it melds into itself. But talk about this RPP as it's affectionately known, or when I was there, it was RPV it was resources, processes, values back in the day. So these things evolve. Right, but talk about what this is and how it was useful to you.Simplifying Alignment with Logic ModelsTyler ThigpenWell, the way I make sense of it, I had done a little study on logic models in the past, and this just was almost a simpler, more, an easier way entry point in for me and my leadership team to help think through alignment in order to achieve our mission and our priorities being that last P. And then so based on those priorities, what are you the processes that we need to have in place, and then what are all the resources that need to go to it and even within our organization. So our organization has three separate components, and then each component has different projects. I use RPP at both the organizational level as well as the departmental level. And it helps me figure out teams. It helps me figure out, you know, policies, procedures, processes, and systems that need to be put in place, that need to outlive all of us in order to bring some of these goals to life. So an example would be we just did a micro school accelerator for leaders across the U.S. independent and public schools, and we just stood it up out of nowhere. And I used RPP to do that. It was like, okay, well, what would be the goal for the size team that we;re, cohort that we're inviting to this? What are therefore the processes? And then what are the resources from our organization that we can pull together to pull that thing off? You know, we. Our online school is another example. We're pivoting to. To be responsive to what we understand, you know, demand and parent feedback to be. And again, using RPP to do that and making staffing changes and making processes changes.And now we have three online offerings instead of one. You know, as, as an example. And even after school, I mean, what's interesting is now that our nonprofit has land and has facilities, it's like all of a sudden our resources have kind of gone out the roof. And so that actually thinking about RPP made me think, oh, you know, are there other priorities that we ought to consider because of this new resource that maybe is underutilized in some ways. So, like, we're actually thinking about after school now, which we've never thought about before, but we have this great place, you know, this great resource that's just not being used in the afternoons and on the weekends.Michael HornYeah.Tyler ThigpenSo now what's the team and what's the process? And RPP is, you know, it's big for me there too.Michael HornSuper interesting. And then I guess it translates into the business model and sustainability Right. Because what do you need to bring in revenue wise to make that, to actually be effectively leveraging that resource that is underutilized to your point, that. But you have in your control. The other piece that comes out of RPP directly and it's in your piece as the number three is shaping organizational culture through new challenges. I love this theory as well. It's Edgar Schein from MIT who sort of originally documented all this work. And then in my telling, really processes and priorities are where culture really manifests right in an organization.But I would love to hear how you, how this has been helpful to you?Tyler ThigpenMichael, this was also very provoking for me. I used to think before this experience with Clayton, I used to think that, you know, if I hired the right people who were like a culture fit and if I was charismatic enough to sort of, you know, broadcast that kind of culture and celebrate the things that we wanted to cultivate, that would be enough. But Clayton's theory was so provoking, you know, based off Shine, as you're mentioning, was like, actually if you introduce a problem to the group, then that's going to have a very formative, you know, impact on the group. And so I remember the first time I led a school, we, I did this. We created basically an unschooling experience. And our staff had never done anything like that. And kids had a ton of choice and voice in what they were doing. And all of a sudden our entire team was confronted with this, you know, experience of children having decision making power where they previously did.Transformative Feedback and EmpowermentTyler ThigpenAnd it completely shifted the culture. You know, in my current context, you know, my staff, a lot of my staff that I had hired had never done, you know, feedback, sort of 360 feedback with one another before joining my team. And so I introduced a new problem which was like two by two by two feedback, you know, where, okay, before, you know, you come to me at the end of the year to give me feedback and receive feedback, like, go talk to two other teammates, you know, and give them feedback and receive feedback. And then, and that was just a major, you know, culture shifter for us. We have another, again, some of my educators had come from environments that were more teacher centric, where learners had a lot of control. And so one of the problems that we introduced to the environment was, okay, there's gonna, we're gonna create an entire day for the learners where they make the rules, they sign their name to the rules. We have it at a campfire.You know, it's this problem that our entire Team staff are experiencing, and all of a sudden it's shifting their hearts and minds to like, oh, the, this is really the learner school, you know, more than anything else. So now as a leader, I mean, I still think about hiring culture fits and, and, you know, really celebrating things I want to cultivate. But now it's like, what problems does our team need to be introduced to, what challenges, you know, and that'll form us?Michael HornIt's interesting when you, when you bring that up. I write about this a lot. And it takes like three paragraphs out of a chapter, right? To be like, find a problem, put a team around it. Then, you know, if it works, have them repeat. If it doesn't, try different processes, et cetera. Sounds so simple in theory. And, and yet it's actually really freaking complicated if you think about that, right? To just do what you did. Okay, we're gonna have a day where the kids are making the rules.What do we start to build out of that? What problems does that introduce? Right? What does that mean for us as teachers? What are our roles? Okay, how do we actually now start to codify what we've done that has worked? Right. And repeat it over and over again? Like, these are not actually, they sound easy, but they're actually really freaking hard in reality. Yes?Tyler ThigpenYes. Amen. And, and what I found helpful to sustain the complexity of it was stand up meetings with my team every day, basically little scrums, you know, like, literally.Michael HornWhat did we just learn? What are we going to keep doing? What are we going to stop doing, sort of stuff.Tyler ThigpenExactly. And, and how's everybody doing? You know, we have, you know, and just checking in and, and iterating in the moment. That brought a lot of camaraderie too.Michael HornYeah, I can imagine. All right, so number four, you had integrating around a job to be done. This is one of my favorites. But why didn't you give the basic notion of what it means to integrate around a job to be done?Aligning Education with Jobs to Be Done TheoryTyler ThigpenYeah. My understanding, traditional marketing endeavors, look, try to sector out and section out different users in the marketplace and then speak to them versus jobs to be done theory, which sort of says, like, okay, you know, we humans have some goals in our lives and we are hiring different things in order to achieve those goals. And from a very human centered, empathetic, design thinking standpoint, you know, what, what are those jobs that we, you know, are hiring others to do for us? And in my context, it's parents and caregivers, they're hiring schools or they're Hiring, you know, learning communities to do certain jobs for them. And there's some great research out, you know, by your team and others around the jobs to be done specifically related to alternative schools and that are sort of non traditional. And, you know, we took that feedback, in addition to the feedback we were hearing from our own community, and we said, okay, this is typically what we understand now. Parents, caregivers, in our context, are hiring folks like myself and my team in order to do. And so we looked at that, we talked about it, we discussed it, and then we sort of said, okay, does this align with the processes, you know, that we have in place? And also, is this what we're celebrating and reporting back on? And so we actually aligned, Michael, our report cards and our progress reports on this.Michael HornSo, like, that's interesting.Tyler ThigpenYeah, jobs to be done, you know, for alternative schools. One of them is, for example, when I disagree with decisions at my child's school and I'm feeling unheard, help me find an alternative that will honor my perspective and my values. You know, so us understanding a family's perspective and values and then reporting back instances where we see their children, you know, living those out in our context was a part of the report card. You know, another one is when my child is unhappy, unsafe, or struggling at school, help me find an environment where they can regain their love for learning. So one of the first things our report card talks about is, are they loving learning right now? You know, and what are they loving learning specifically? And so I think and that it seems like that resonated. We got great feedback on our revised report cards as a result of that.Michael HornWell, it's interesting, just thinking out loud, two things. One, to swim with you, which is the outcomes, right are defined by the job and the circumstance and so reporting against that, super interesting. And sort of helps front and center, like, how should we evaluate whether we were successful or not? Let's do it relative, right, to why they came here. I think it's really brilliant. The second thing is I.I also think what gets very interesting for an organization is when people with multiple jobs to be done are coming to you and they're actually in conflict with each other at some stage. Right. So the one that I'll use is sometimes, like, okay, I'm not solving for academics. You have it here, right? Like social, emotional learning, super important to me. Sort of that balanced educational experience, whole child, whatever you want to call it. And then that first one might be around the perspective and values. And you can imagine sometimes those swim against each other. Right.And so one of the things that I say is helping. You know, when you should fire a customer and tell them, like, hey, this is what you're optimizing for, and we are not optimized for that. So rather than like, have this song and dance about how we can serve you, let's have an honest conversation and help you find a better spot where you can make progress. And it's actually better for your school culture because you don't have someone that's like, sort of pushing against the grain. It allows you to better double down, if you will, on the resources, processes, priorities you're optimized around. You're also helping that family do better for them given their goals. Right. You're not asking them to somehow swim against the outcomes that matter to them.And I think one of the challenges that I observed that I think micro schools could really help traditional districts with is like, we're trying to pack these families in and say, like, your kid should do, like, be striving for the exact same thing as this kid. And, like, that's just plainly not true. Micro schools can maybe allow us to create a broader community, but not have us all swimming in the exact same direction, if you will, when an appropriate, you know, a different goal is appropriate for a given kid, if that makes sense.Tyler ThigpenIt totally makes sense and resonates. And. And it's scary when you start saying no to a family, you know, at the beginning when you're trying to prove out, you know, the business model.Michael HornSure. You just want to attract anyone at that stage. Right?Tyler ThigpenTotally. Yeah. That's the temptation. Right. But. But we actually have on our website, I don't have it memorized, but we have a page on our website and it's close to admissions that does just what you said, Michael, which is like, this school is for X, Y and Z sorts of families. If you are A, B and C sorts of families, love you, see you, you know, you probably want to go, you know, somewhere, somewhere else. And then what's interesting is I've tried to get even better as a leader at introducing people to our environment with that.So when they're going through the application interview process, I've identified what are, like, the eight or nine most common struggles that parents have. And I'll. I'll lead with that. I'll be like, hey, awesome, just know that you're signing up for these struggles. Like, I, as a dad, I'm struggling with everybody's struggle. It's just a part of who we are. But we want those struggles, you know.Michael HornYeah.Tyler ThigpenWhy? We want those struggles. And, and you're right. If they get into it, because sometimes they get into it and not really appreciate it, then there's a couple. I mean, we could sort of fire the customer, if you will, or, you know, and this may be connects.Michael HornLike on the front end, you're trying to make sure that they don't make a mistake.Tyler ThigpenRight.Michael HornWhich is better?Tyler ThigpenYeah, ideally for sure, but they still can get through. And then, and then I think another option though is helping them outsource that, you know, that need that they're trying to hire it for.Michael HornSo that one is interesting. Right. Also because I think I love the way you grounded in the struggling circumstances. Right. That they're experiencing. I also think, incidentally, that's the best way to market like anything is to like ground yourself in someone's reality. And, and then they can be like, oh, that's what I need. Right.And something you just said there, I think is, is a good point, which is the advice I often give people when they're trying to pick a school is I say, like, what are you solving in your family already for your kid? And what, like, what is a school going to solve for you that you can't or don't have the desire Right to solve for your. For. For your kid? Um, and it's a way to help them realize, oh, like, you know, school is doing this lane for me, but like, you know, after school sports is doing this one for me. And then like, I do this with my kid. Right.And, and I don't need it to do every single thing for me. Which I think is where you're going with that.Preparing Children for IndependenceTyler ThigpenIt is. And the, the older I get and longer I've been in this work too, like inviting parents and caregivers to consider, you know, their, when their children are 18 and they quote, unquote, launch, you know, in a traditional sense from their home, you know, what do they want to be true to them? What sort of qualities, competencies do they want them to have and exhibit? And then where are they getting practice at those things from the youngest ages, appreciating that really no single learning environment is going to be able to meet the expectations that they have for their children. But if parents and caregivers were to fully shoulder the responsibility for making sure that their learners, you know, their, their children get the practice in some environment, you know, putting the puzzle pieces together, if you will, you know, it's sort of. Which, which puzzle pieces do you want to you know, choose for that and allow us to help you think through it and, and, and, and ways in which we can add value, but also just be honest about the ways in which we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna add value. And I think that, like you said, I think that's helpful too. Yeah.Michael HornAnd it sets expectations. Right. And, and, and it sets culture, I think, for a community. I'll just say one other thing and then I'll go to your number one reason as we start to wrap up here, which was the other thing that I've learned through Job Moves is helping people make trade offs is really important and it's not settling. Right. I'm not settling for all my kid's not going to have access to this. It's like, okay, my top priority for the school is this, I'm willing to trade off on this. And then you being like, okay, and you can get that elsewhere.Right. Or you can get it not now, but in a couple years that will become a thing. Right. And sort of realizing that trade offs are things you make so you can, you can get the thing you most value or most prioritizing at a given point in time and seeing it as like a value creation step for a family as opposed to a. I can't get that. Geez, what, what, what, what good is this school if it doesn't do everything for me?Tyler ThigpenThat's powerful, Michael. And I think in the micro, the schooling context too, for parents and caregivers, it's, it's so relevant because there's just so much that could potentially be learned and so much that we parents kind of project on learners, you know, as something that's being crucial. You know, what immediately comes to mind is math learning. You know, I mean, there's such an interesting debate about, you know, right now, what math conceptually, procedurally needs to be learned before graduating from school and for what reasons. And the safe default, you know, sometimes fear based posture that parents, caregivers take is like, well, do what I did, you know.Michael HornYeah, yeah, Algebra, calculus, that's the way. Yeah, yeah.Tyler ThigpenAnd I'm like, do you know how to do those problems right now? And are you using them in your life? And you know, but, but talking about the trade offs is, is exactly, I think, the right way forward. Because if we do, I mean, listen, if we want to do deep, deep math learning, we can, we can facilitate that, but just realize it's going to take a lot of time and it's probably going to take this amount of time and we're going to lose, you know, real world learning or collaboration or, you know, self awareness or whatever it is that, you know, whatever else we care about.Michael HornNo, I love that. And for those who think, sorry, this is going to be a plug off the topic. But for those who think that, oh, I learned to think critically through algebra, there are plenty of ways to think critically about the world. And I'm not sure the way we have traditionally taught algebra, we're actually building a transferable skill around critical thinking. So little plug there. You probably don't disagree with me. Number one, you have this notion of humility over ego. You pull from Jim Collins to introduce the idea.But maybe talk about how Clay brought this home to you and how it's manifested in your work.Ego-Free Role ModelTyler ThigpenWell, I just. He's probably in my top three humans on the planet that was a role model for this. And I just saw him respond kindly in, in class at a, you know, sort of high stakes environment, the Harvard Business School. And I saw, you know, learners give challenging, pointed questions and I watched him, you know, respond with questions with a non anxious presence, with a kind tone. And then at the end, you know, the very last day of class, he talked about, he was like, you know, my, my wife and I strive and my children strive to be known for our kindness, you know, and you can't go wrong. And I was like, oh, well, that makes a lot of sense because I experienced him that way and I just. Because he's come up with these theories that really live outside of himself and he's just been very observant about the world and which. That is just the definition of ego free.You know, it's not about him and what he's trying to grow for his own kingdom. It's about observing what is happening in the world and how can we serve others and what works along that journey of serving others. I think for me, you know, right now we're ending up our year. And I've just met with all my leadership team. They've all given me feedback about my leadership, you know, and I just summarized it before this call actually like the pluses and minuses and I just need to take myself. I mean, I need to keep myself in it so I can grow. But like, it's like, hey, Tyler, as a leader, these are the ways in which I need to grow. These are how people are experiencing, experiencing me on my team.Growth Through Humble LeadershipTyler ThigpenAnd, and I can really, I stand to grow from this. And I think that's important for organizational leadership because we just don't learn as quickly if we keep our ego in it, if we're not humble, if we're not willing to see the failure and learn from the failure and learn exactly why from the failure. In fact, I even on this point, Michael, I revised our exit survey this year for our families because I was like, I really want to understand even more deeply when families leave, like, why are they leaving? You know, it's not about me or my teammates. Like, they have some goals. I want to understand what those goals are, and those are outside of myself, you know, so it's not about me or, you know, so. So that he was very impactful and helpful for me in that.Michael HornThat's really cool. And I always think it's like a really good role model because he loved to be wrong, because it meant he learned something. And that was part of that humility, I think. And I always felt. I don't. I mean, you went through the class once, I got to go through it three times, you know, once as a student, then twice working for him. And I always felt badly because he, people didn't get to see how the theories changed or evolved.And I'd be like, all right, man, he got serious pushback on this last year and look at what he's changed now this year. Because even though he sort of debated, asked the questions, et cetera, he actually was like, oh, wow, this is not quite right. Let's evolve it. And I always thought that was such a cool example that unfortunately the students didn't always get to see because it was something that was happening over time. And as a student, you're there for a moment and then you're graduated into the world. But I had the same experience as you.Tyler ThigpenThat's cool. I didn't know. I could imagine that that was the case, but I didn't know that. And to see it from your vantage point would be really fascinating. And I mean, he to me, what you're saying is he sort of did his own discovery driven planning process on his own theories.Michael HornGood way to put it.Tyler ThigpenYeah.Michael HornAnd he used his class. Right. As a way to like, he loved it when he got pushed back. I think sometimes the criticism I would hear of him is some students would say, well, he's so wed to the way he's done it. And I was like, but because he's asking questions and to defend it, because that's how he's going to realize, oh, wow, there's a flaw here. Let's or there's an anomaly or whatever it is, let's sharpen it even further from what I just learned, which I always thought was really cool. That humility to learn from anyone he interacted with.Tyler ThigpenSo cool.Michael HornYeah. Tyler, huge thanks for coming on sharing some of these insights and frankly, like for those running schools, I think there's a ton to learn from here. Not just the micro school community but everyone who's running schools top to bottom. There's a lot of lessons here I think. So hugely appreciate what you continue to do as you've wrapped up your traditional academic year for a little bit. Just, just huge thanks to you and the community you've built.Tyler ThigpenYou're welcome. And thank you for the conversation and for all the work that you and your team do to advance these. Super, super helpful for all of us.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

In this end-of-season episode of Class Disrupted, Diane Tavenner and I came together in-person at the AI Show at the ASU-GSV Summit to reflect on the arc of our AI-focused sixth season. We discussed key themes and takeaways, including the enduring importance of foundational knowledge, skepticism around the speed and impact of AI-driven change within traditional schools, and how transformative innovation is more likely to emerge from new educational models outside the mainstream. Our conversation explored the challenges and opportunities AI brings, particularly in developing curiosity as a critical habit for learners, and we revisited how our own perspectives shifted throughout the season.Michael HornHey, Diane, it is good to be with you in person.Diane TavennerIt's really good to be in person. It's a little funny where we are in person, but it's kind of the perfect setting to end our AI you know, miniseries—season six. We are at the AIR show. I think that's what it's called, the AI show in San Diego.Michael HornI'm gonna take a selfie, as we say.Diane TavennerWe're gonna send you a picture of this. So we're recording here from the floor that is filled with educators and edtech companies and AI. AI. AI!AI's Educational Impact Outside SchoolsMichael HornBecause AI is the thing, which is perfect because our season this year has almost exclusively focused on the question of what will the impact of AI be in education? How do we shape that? What do we want it to be? All these questions, frankly, in ways that neither of us had imagined fully. I think when we started this and we did a first sort of rapid reaction.Diane TavennerWe did. Were we starting our kind of baseline assessment of what we thought and our knowledge and what we were curious about?Michael HornYep. And we've gone through this journey, and now today, we sort of get to tidy it up with our very sharp, insightful takes. No pressure on us.Diane TavennerNo pressure for those key headlines. But, you know, along the way, we interviewed a bunch of really interesting people, some skeptics, some really positive folks. And we benefited a lot from it.Michael HornI learned a ton. My understanding of the space. I don't know if I conveyed it on our prior episode, but I think it's a lot deeper than it was when we started.Diane TavennerFor me, too. I really appreciate them. And then, you know, in true fashion, we just publicly processed out loud last episode.Michael HornWe do.Diane TavennerAnd now we're going to try to actually pull it together with some key takeaways. So that's how we're going to wrap it today. And so we kind of outlined, you know, three big categories here. And the first one is, I want to ask you what belief was confirmed for you as we made our way through this season?Michael HornYeah. So people obviously heard where we started, but I will confess, I've been struggling. I knew you were going to ask this question, and for days I've been wondering, what did it confirm for me? I think I will say two things. If that. And maybe that's cheating. But it's our podcast. Right. So, number one, I think it confirmed for me that foundational knowledge will still be important.Diane TavennerYes.Michael HornAnd I think developing it into skills will still be important, just as Google did not change that reality, despite What a lot of educators and maybe more schools of education sadly were telling their students that became teachers. I don't think AI will change that either. We had a long conversation in the last episode around the nature of expertise and who AI is useful for. I think the second thing that maybe hit harder for me but, but confirmed something that we talked about in the first episode was I think the most transformational use cases of AI in education will be in areas outside of the traditional schools with new models that leverage AI that wrap around it to do things very differently from business as usual, frankly. Like why you started public school is outside of the traditional. Right. I think the other piece of that is I'm somewhat skeptical that venture capital will be the thing that funds a lot of these new models that emerge.Diane TavennerSay more about that. Why?Michael HornWell, I could be very wrong in the latter. I'm just coming, we're at this conference and I just coming from a place where a few people said no, we are funding these things. So I could be completely wrong. I guess my thoughts are that the time frames for explosive growth for VC are short; five to seven years.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornThe microschools, the new emerging schooling models. I don't even know if microschools will be the word we use in five years from now. I'm not convinced those are like zero to a hundred thousand student businesses.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornAnd so I don't know, can you make a venture style business out of them? Venture might be funding the AI software that sort of makes those things go round and certainly the infrastructure that we've talked about.Diane TavennerRight, right.Michael HornBut I, but I guess I think that's going to be the really interesting hotbed of activity to look at. And we had this dichotomy on the first show, teacher facing versus student facing. I think that's less present in my mind at the moment. But the student facing stuff I think will be in these new models, not the traditional ones.Diane TavennerFascinating.Michael HornWhat about you?Diane TavennerWell, I think that, you know, when.Michael HornI feel free to disagree with me also I think.Skeptical Optimism on ChangeDiane TavennerWell, I think my confirmed belief is sort of a dimension of what you're talking about, maybe the flip side of what you're talking about or connected to it and I can't decide if it's in conflict with what you're saying or not. So let me just put it out there and we'll see. I will say that I think of myself almost as always an optimist, but I am a skeptic in one area and I believed coming into this that we weren't going to hear that schools were being redesigned or that even had been. And so it sort of confirmed my belief that I don't know what is going to bring about this kind of change. And so you are saying it's going to happen outside of the. Yes, because that's the only place that.Michael HornIt's the only place for transformational use cases.Diane TavennerAnd it may be yet.Michael HornAnd it may be yet. And I think the confirmed belief for me at the moment, it's great when you're wrong and you learn something new. I will say. But at the moment, it confirmed my sense that it will, look at our field, they tend to be consumed with the hardest, most intractable problems at the center of the field. And this is gonna be the periphery. It's not gonna be the bulk of it. So there's a little bit of a cognitive dissonance if you.Diane TavennerI think you're right. And it's. It's so interesting. The story in America is truancy and absenteeism. So data tells a story along that. But if you're processing that, that is the biggest problem. And then you're creating, using AI to create a solution structure.And what is happening in the school day is the problem. Families are voting with their feet.Michael HornSo it's so interesting you say that. I'm rereading Bob Moesta's book, Five Skills of Innovators. I almost mailed you a copy over the weekend. They're solving a problem rather than asking, what is the system supposed to do and how do you tighten the variance around that? And as he says, you can solve the problem, but create five others. Or you say, what is the system supposed to do now? Yeah. And so that's why I think we got to bust out. So let me ask you, Let me ask you the next question. Where did it change your mind or beliefs? Anything that we learned?Diane TavennerWell, I do. I do think it changed my mind. And I'll point to our episode with John Bailey. That's how we kicked off this series. And I think I've talked to so many people who love that episode, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea all the different ways that I could use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever AI I'm using. And it's true. I mean, John, you know, talked about how we now have an expert in our pocket on every possible topic. And so it really pushed me to think about how I was using it in my life, both in.In my personal life, in my professional life, and in our product. Now there's Some challenges with this expert idea that I think came up for both of us.Michael HornYeah. And maybe that's where I, maybe that's where it changed my beliefs. I think I had a sense and you can read my quotes in newspapers and stuff like that. That or newspapers exist. Ed weeks, stuff like that. That. I think this series really gave me a much deeper set of questions around what kinds of students will actually be able to take advantage of these types of tools. I won't go into it again. Did it the last episode around this novice expert, unknowing, knowing, sort of two by two.Revising Views on AI StrategyMichael HornAnd so I think that's like something that I'm really wrestling and revising in my head coming out of this. I think along those lines, it gave me a much deeper concern over a lot of the things that could go wrong if we're not super intentional and thoughtful about that game. But I think it's like how we leaned into it. And I, I will say, I don't know if this is a revision for me. You may tell me I'm leaving my principles behind, but I sort of scoffed a couple years ago when districts would say, we need an AI strategy. And I was like, no, that's focusing on the inputs, not the outcomes you want. But I think I've revised my stance in that I do think that there needs to be more thoughtfulness around what are our beliefs and values and so forth in an era of AI, and what does that mean for what we think about teaching and learning? And maybe that's your AI strategy.Diane TavennerWell, and this harkens back to the episode with Rebecca Winthorp. Will AI provoke schools to go back and have the real conversations about what is the purpose of education? What are we trying to do? What matters now? How are we using this new, very powerful tool to further our purpose?Michael HornLook, I would hope that they would, but, I mean, I think this is the answer, you know, see number one, where I think it's more likely that these conversations happen in embryonic education communities than the traditional, despite how broken this could look in five years if we go down this road. But that's, I left with a lot of concerns.Diane TavennerYeah. And I'm curious in my own use of AI, if I'm missing out or losing anything, because I'm not, like, processing some of my thinking and work in the way that I used to, like, no doubt more efficient, certain brain work during that process.Michael HornSo was it creating cognitive laziness that.Diane Tavennerdon't, I have no evidence that that's true. But I do wonder.Michael HornAnd on my other podcast, Future U, Jeff Salingo talked about how his daughter, one of his daughters, asked what you did when you didn't have phones. And her visual image wasn't like, oh, you memorized stuff and had to learn a lot. Her visual image was literally like, we have a phone in front of us, navigating us. We must have had a large fold out map. She couldn't imagine that we would write down the directions and so forth and then. And occasionally you pulled over and had to recalibrate, but. And so he was like, oh, so this is an example of cognitive laziness. And I was like, I actually think that's an example of freeing up the brain to do other things that I think is.Curiosity's Impact on LongevityDiane TavennerWell, and in a whole other part of our lives. We both care a lot about longevity and the science and whatnot. And so there's certainly some evidence over there that we are not helping our brains when we're taking all those tasks out of our life. So I want to switch gears and name something else that it changed for me, and that's curiosity. I think we both came to this. And for me, here was the big aha, like I have for years. Like, I built the summit model with the habits of success, and curiosity was one of the parts of that. But curiosity has always gotten sort of shortchanged, if you will, because everyone's like, well, that's great, but how do you teach it and how do you assess it? And it's sort of sitting up there and to me, like, curiosity comes roaring back in.It is having its shining moment.Michael HornLike the habit.Diane TavennerYes.Michael HornThat you will need to be a thriving adult in this world. So you don't take things on face value. So you are inquisitive, so you ask. So you're always needing to use this, I think, to figure out what is truth, if you will. That's perhaps a real skill that we will need to be better at developing.Diane TavennerYou know, I would probably call it more of a habit, but it is a skill. It's one of those weird ones because I feel like we're born naturally curious, not feel like there's a lot of evidence of that. I sadly believe that our education system actually rings that curiosity out of us.Michael HornIt doesn't reward it. Right?Diane TavennerIt doesn't reward it. And you know what's interesting? In my current work, you ask employers, you know, who would you provide job shadow opportunities for, who would you have as an intern, those sorts of things. And when you talk to them, curiosity rises to the top. What do they want? A young person who comes in, who's a signal that you do have a growth mindset and you are interested in growing and you do want to learn and you're just. Yeah, it's just such an important quality, I think.Michael HornYeah, I think that's right. And it. And it connects all these things. My own worry is that if people don't have enough foundational knowledge, they'll actually be far less creative in this world of AI where they're just doing what is sort of told to them and unable to ask big questions. If I ask you to learn how to ask really big questions that break out of status quo systems and things of that nature.Diane TavennerExactly to that point. I think the other thing that I've been thinking differently about is throughout this series, as you know, my biological son is a history guy.Michael HornSomeone after my heart, I know, said.Diane TavennerTo me, the other one is obsessed with AI, so it's an interesting combo.Michael HornBut yeah, the other one I have no chance of understanding.Human Element in InnovationDiane TavennerBut yes, yeah, she said to me, you know, mom, because we're talking about the speed of how the development of the innovation, but the human part is still really real. And so one of the things he said to me is, you know, do you know how long it took for America to fully adopt electricity after it was invented?Michael HornIt was like rebuilding of models around it that are native to that at the center.Diane TavennerYes. And I just think it's so interesting. Like I had a conversation with ChatGPT about why did it take so long. And so some of the things I learned and my kiddo is like, there's infrastructure. In the case of electricity, there was a cost. I would argue there's like hidden costs to it.Michael HornI think there's huge costs. This is not the zero marginal cost world anymore of Silicon Valley.Diane TavennerRight, right.Michael HornIt's different.Diane TavennerRight. There was a lack of immediate need or use. Why are you getting on AI like, and even the two of us saying, you know, we now almost never go on Google and search Google anymore because we've transformed our behavior over. But it took a minute even for us to sort of figure that out, change our behavior.Michael HornInteresting. So this guy Horace Dediu, I was not going to go here until you just brought this up. Who runs the Asymco sort of community podcast, speaks a lot about Apple. He was with the Christensen Institute for a hot minute.Diane TavennerOkay.Michael HornAnd he was doing his research around the adoption of refrigerators and dryers. Adoption of refrigerators was relatively fast, but the adoption of dryers was really, really slow. Oh, and dryers were really, really slow adoption because you had to change the component into which it fit in the house. Right.Diane TavennerAnd so it requires a different plug.Michael HornInfrastructure. Tells you how fast it will go.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornAnd we don't ever ask, have that conversation right around thinking about, you know, how much do you have to redesign huge parts to make really it useful.Diane TavennerAnd I would assume the case with dryers to households across the country. And I. I think that when people look back on this moment in history, they'll probably blur the time period it takes. But we're going to live through, I think, a much longer time period.Michael HornIt's interesting, a lot of my early funders at the Christensen Institute, people like Gisèle Huff, who I adore, they would get annoyed with me. I mean, when I said patience is going to be required because we have an install base, we have a system.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornI, on the last one, expressed my belief that some of these dynamics could change around disruptive innovation actually now being welcomed for the first time.Diane TavennerSo I'm laughing at us a little.Michael HornBit because of our naivete.Diane Tavenner2020 to do a little. Well, back in 2020, but then we thought we were going to do a little AI miniseries and then we'd figure it all out. But I think that as we wrap this season, season six, we actually have even more questions and curiosity ourselves.Michael HornWell, and we'd love to hear from folks who are tuning in. This is a welcome invitation to just pester us less with your pitches and more with, like, what are you curious about?Diane TavennerYes.Michael HornWho would you like to hear from? Not in your orbit, but, you know, people that would further both your understanding and ours.Diane TavennerYes. And what are you doing and what are you seeing and how can we sort of come along on this journey together?Michael HornSo let me end with this one question. Will AI have an impact on young people? If so, when and how?Diane TavennerYes.Michael HornMy answer to that question is like, despite what at least one of our guests said is, I can't imagine it will not have a big impact on individuals. I think AI is going to be much more pervasive, in fact. And look, I'm not one of those people that says just because it's in the working world, they need to use it now because we're preparing them for that world.Diane TavennerIt's already impacting them. So it is having an influence on the work that's available to them. The way employers think about work. The what, what. Where it's going to have an impact on.High School: Experiential Learning ShiftMichael HornParticularly in high school, I think it's going to be like the old world of like, here's the curriculum. Go learn it, I think, is massively thrown out the window. Right. Like, Maybe K through 8th is a little bit more constant because it is foundational. I, I don't think it should change as much, but high school, I think, is different. It already should be much more experiential and exploratory in my view. But I, I think it'll be, I think it should be extremely so now.All right, let's wrap. What are you reading, watching, listening to that I should be clued into.Diane TavennerWell, I'm still on all of the ancient Greek fun, so I have gotten a lot of very polarized reactions to this, but hear me out. So Gavin Newsom has a new podcast.Michael HornHe does.Diane TavennerI've been reading about it and lots of people have been reading about it. I live in California, as you know.Michael HornSo he's your Governor.Diane TavennerHe is my governor. You have to listen to this. The first episode where he interviewed Charlie Kirk. And for those who don't know, the premise is he's talking to people who he really disagrees with. Here's why I'm going to promote it. I love it. These are, they're getting into the nuance of policy and how things work. And I am learning a lot and I want to be able to make my own decisions.Diane TavennerSo I want to hear the full scope of things and feel like. And I don't. So this is the kind of conversation I want to exist out there.Michael HornWell, so you're learning from that and I'm learning from you. I, I am, I'm, I'm not just reading non fiction. I've also been embracing some fiction books. I'll name one. Yeah, there you go. Right. I'll name one which is Paradise. And I'm gonna mess up the author's name.Michael HornI'm gonna apologize, but Abdulrazak Gurnah. And I'm reading this book Paradise, because I'm, I'm learning from you that it's nice to read fiction from the country where you're about to travel. And as you know, I'm headed to Tanzania with Imagine Worldwide. I'm on the board there.Diane TavennerAre you enjoying it?Michael HornI'm still like trying to sense make from it.Diane Tavenner:Yeah.Michael Horn:It's less. The fiction that I read around Sierra Leone in particular was like very of the Civil War moment and like I could really figure out where that is. But in Paradise, there are a lot of currents going on in this book. I'm trying to sense make. And it's really interesting.Diane TavennerHow beautiful.Michael HornAnd thank you to all of our listeners once again. And thank you, of course, to The74 for distributing this. And it's how so many of our listeners connect with us. And so to all of you, we will see you next season on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Dave McCool, founder and CEO of Muzzy Lane, joined me to discuss the role and potential of AI in creating dynamic, role-play simulations for online learning. Dave shared the journey of Muzzy Lane, from its early days developing history games for schools to its current focus on enabling educators to easily build their own customizable, auto-graded simulations across more than 100 higher-education course areas. Our conversation highlights how recent advances in AI have transformed the process of authoring simulations. It’s now much faster, more accessible, and more engaging for both instructors and learners.I highly recommend you don’t just read or listen to our conversation; watch it because Dave gave a live demo of the use of AI to create simulations. Show don’t tell, as the saying goes.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you are joining the show where we are 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 we have a special guest, Dave McCool. He's the founder and currently the CEO at Muzzy Lane, which basically creates dynamic role play simulations in a variety of fields. We're going to learn a lot more about it, but simulations have been an area that I've been very interested in for a long time in the world of digital, online learning and so forth for its ability to frankly create more real world, real life learning experiences for individuals. Dave, welcome. So good to see you and thanks for joining us.Dave McCoolThanks for having me here today, Michael.Michael HornYeah, so let's dive in maybe, because I think simulations have taken almost like a, you know, level up, if you will, from video game land. Right. With AI over the past few years. But let's go back a little bit further than that. Just the founding of Muzzy Lane. What was the big idea behind it? How's the company evolved? Who are sort of, you know, who do you serve right now? Where are these simulations and where are they hitting learners at the moment?Dave McCoolPerfect. Yeah. So the big idea is a great place to start. So I'm a software engineer by background and so when we started Muzzy Lane in early 2000s, we had an interest in games and simulations, looked kind of at the landscape and saw education. More digital transformation was happening in education and just felt as a software engineer is like, this is a great place for games and simulations. It's a great place for deeper, more complex interactive software that can really get at better learning experiences and better assessment experiences. So that was really the big idea. 2002 was a very different time than today.So, you know, we went through a lot of iterations trying to find the right formula. You know, the first half of the company's life was really, we created and released history games into high schools and colleges called Making History. People who use them, love them. Not as many people use them as we had hoped in education at the time, but that series lives on in the commercial space on Steam, so it's still available today. Did a lot of work with publishers. Really kind of most of our work's been in higher ed over the course of the company's Life. A little K12 and a little workforce. But I think for us the big turning point for us was 2014 and 15, the Gates foundation, they gave us a research grant because they'd made a lot of investments in games and simulations for learning and hadn't been getting the results they were hoping for.So they wanted us to study the market, which was interesting for us as sort of startup software people, to do a research project.Michael HornYeah, I was about to say, how did that, how did that land for y' all?Dave McCoolIt was good. We. It was a period. A colleague of mine, Connor Ryan, came in and was running the company at the time while I was running the tech transformation we were undergoing. So he had a good experience that we didn't with that. And so we. It was a really great experience.We produced a 40-page report which is still available on our website.Michael HornWhat did you learn? Like, what were the headlines from that report?Dave McCoolI still remember the headlines today. And it was because they were, they were humbling really for us. It was high awareness of games and simulations among instructors and administrators in university, especially online. But all sorts of logistical challenges with what they were being offered. Things were generally too big, too inflexible. Don't disrupt my course became the thing we heard most commonly. We see the value in what you're doing. I'm not rebuilding my whole course around.Michael HornYou, but I wanted to fit in as a module as opposed to. To I have to rethink 10 of the 13 weeks or whatever.Dave McCoolRight. So it still has to be a scale that fits with my course that fits with my learning objectives, like time. Like I don't have enough time to spend on that particular part of my courses that this game is going to require for me. And they wanted to control the content. They didn't want to have to go back to a developer constantly to get changes made and updates made. And then kind of the basic ones were it has to run any device in a browser, on a phone, including had to integrate to the LMS, which meant LTI integration. And it had to meet WCAG 2.0 AA Accessibility Now 2.2, which again, these were not things people. We came kind of from the serious games and the games for learning side and we were kind of like, oh, games are great and you're going to adjust to get those benefits.So anyway, we were doing a tech transition at the time anyway, that's when the authoring tools came out and we said, let's just go all the way down to we're going to start putting these tools in the hands of our partners, teach them how to use them, make it as easy as possible. And that's really been the business ever since.Michael HornSuper. And so what higher ed programs specifically? Like, when you're talking about the simulations, where have you found the most traction? Are we talking like nursing and it's almost VR like, or are we talking negotiations? Like, there's a pretty big range of what these can look like. Where, where have you found the most traction?Dave McCoolYeah, I think so. We, when we thought about the tools, we thought about how to help people build their own simulations for learning, we thought a lot about ROI, because when you were building specific games, like we built for principles of Marketing, we built for intro Spanish, we built for operations management, but you're building one big product for one course area and it's hard to make that money back. It's hard to make that work financially. So what we wanted to do is build templates that were as broadly applicable as possible. So we wanted to make content forms that you could then fill in with what you needed for your course area and hopefully those would travel pretty broadly. So we're in over 100 course areas in higher ed. Business is probably the number one by usage overall. But a lot of nursing, a lot of medical fields like medical assisting, a lot of the humanities as well.So we're in language learning, we're in sociology, psychology, crisis counseling, social work, all those kinds of places. And the role play format of the multiples that we have really has become the most popular one just because it does travel really well and it really fits a lot of what people try to do.Adapting Games for EducationMichael HornAnd so the, and it sounds like the secret became, okay, we're going to give up our adherence to what a serious game needs to look like or what the ideal version of it is. I'm sort of reminded of the Greg Toppo book, I think the game believes in you, right, where he sort of said there's this clash of like these very big learning goals that serious game designers have as they enter the education space. And like, these are not your words, but these are his, as I recall them, was like, you know, sometimes schools can be a little more transactional in the knowledge and skills that they're trying to get across to students. And so, you know, you may lose sort of the organic nature, right of a game or simulation when put into the container of a class. But it sounds like you were able to take the market's message, make that change and, and give more power to educators to create these role plays. Am I understanding that correctly?Dave McCoolYeah, you are. And it's funny because you're I'm. I'm flashing back to all those. Yeah, yeah, and Kurt squire and Jane McGonagall and like all the people who initially sort of had this movement. And a lot of the challenges were created by this clash of cultures between what is a game for a lot of people? Game is voluntary. It has to be fun. What is learning? Some people learning is very different from that.We're trying to figure out how to fit into the learning environment, push them. Like, we didn't want them to just not change anything because that's not helpful, but. But not impose criteria that are incompatible with what their goals were.Michael HornSo talk to us then about, you know, how that's evolved in terms of the product and how do educators create simulations fit for their course now? How do you help them? What, what, what do those authoring tools look like? It seems like a lot of variables and still could be a lot of work if not done well.Dave McCoolWhich is a very good point. So, yeah, so from fall of 2015 was when the platform came out until a couple of years ago, it was a pretty, just sort of a steady, steady workflow for us. It's like, how do we keep making these tools better? We did do custom tools for some people, partners, you know, for example, Western governors early on was, hey, we want to do a pandemic simulation for our masters in healthcare administration, where you run a trauma center during a pandemic. Ironic. That was 2015.Michael HornI was gonna say that turned out to be prescient, sadly.Dave McCoolBut yeah, yeah, but really mostly just finding, you know, great fielding input from customers. How can we make this better? How can make the learner experience more engaging? How do we give you more flexibility to meet your goals? I think for us a big thing is auto assessment was always a big requirement from the market for us. So the tension for us was always, how engaging can I make this and still auto grade the experience? Because a lot of times you're working with online universities, they don't have the ability to grade open response type things. So that was sort of the challenge. And I think that was really just steadily grew and got up to about a million students a year being served. So it was nice. Again, like I said, mostly in higher ed. And then two years ago, really AI, it came out before that, but we were not sure what to do until about two years ago.And that's really been the newest phase, which has really been. That's been pretty exciting.AI: More than Just a ChatbotMichael HornAll right, so let's talk about that enabler in terms of like, what does AI allow you to do that you couldn't do before? Allow the people that you're working with, your clients, customers to do that they couldn't do before.Dave McCoolSo two really big things. So when we first, when ChatGPT sort of burst onto the scene, all of us, I think, like everybody else were like, oh, wow, this is really, really great, or it's going to make it so that no one needs what we do anymore. We weren't sure which. And the first few, first year or so of looking at it, we thought, well, everything felt like a chatbot, right? Everything sort of felt like, where do we put a chatbot? And we were like, well, we could put it into a smart chat, a roleplay sim, or we could put it in the corner and you could ask it when you got confused, but nothing felt quite right. And I think what, what really struck us a couple years ago, maybe more, 18 months, was instead of thinking about AI as a chatbot that we could put somewhere, we thought about AI as a resource that we could use. So what's AI? It's a big knowledge base of maybe all the world's data, I'm not sure that you can ask questions of and get responses. And we said, well, how could we, starting from roleplay, simulation, what we do, how could that make what we do better? And we really came out with two use cases that we immediately dove in on.One is we said, what if we could teach it how to make simulations in our format and then provide that to our customers? So, you know, we and everyone else is already using ChatGPT to brainstorm scenarios and stuff. And you're doing a lot of copying and pasting from your chatbot into your tool, whatever tool you're making your content in. We said, let's move, remove that step. Let's just teach it directly how to make our stuff. We're AWS hosted, so we are able to integrate it directly into the platform. And just say, you just start talking to it and you say, I want to build a scenario. Here are my learning objectives, or here's some source material to start from. Walk me through a process that gets me to a fully testable scenario.So that was one and that's the market has loved that.Michael HornYeah, I would imagine. I want to come back to that in a moment. Keep going.Enhancing Learner Experience with AIDave McCoolYeah. The first full version of that came out over Christmas, over the holiday of 2024. And the other was how do we make the learner experience better with this tool? And that was a little more challenging at first and then we finally just said what's the simplest thing we can do? It's like, well we have a, the roleplay simulation has a variety of question types. The usual suspects, multiple choice, fill in the blank, categorize. We said, what if we had an open response question type where instead of using multiple choice in a scenario you've analyzed data, you're talking to a coworker, they ask you a question and you just have to answer. And then what we can do is then use the AI as sort of like a fuzzy logic natural language processor back end to say hey. Michael asked David this, David said this back.Here's the rubric here. The learning objectives we're tracking. Give me what Michael says back to David, grade David's response against the rubric and give me a rationale for the grading. And so that came out at the same time and that's been really cool too because now you can be much more authentic. Like one of our university partners said, I saw your journey before. It's really interesting. But it was sort of selected response. I saw open response and I said I'll do that changes everything because now it's a constructed response.Now I, in a scalable auto assessed way can respond in my own words. I can, you know, put my mental model out there and you can, you can, you know, grade that well.Michael HornAnd it's interesting on that second one. In some ways that also brings it more to the serious games origins and that there's something more authentic I would think about it that's possible. Maybe I'm making the wrong leap there.Dave McCoolBut no, I think that's what we talk about. It's more engaging and it's more authentic. And one thing we did along the way is also we added text to speech and speech to text so that you could actually speak your response. You don't have to type it anymore.Michael HornYeah. So I want to come back to the first one, but one more question. Can you use AI also like, or maybe this is a couple years off to start building, you know, graphics or like, you know, things that are more immersive or engaging simulations as well and maybe make, you know, there's this been this world of virtual reality that's been five years away for 20 years now. But maybe it becomes more possible because the authoring of these environments really goes down in terms of cost and time. What's your take on that?Dave McCoolI completely agree. We in the authoring era have really backed off from VR, AR and 3D work which we had done in Our previous custom days, partly because our guardrails were authorable by non technical subject matter experts and accessibility. So those were so kept in that, in that box. We're now doing a really good job of generating with AI all the stuff in that box. What's about to come out from us next is generating images. So there's a lot of images and multimedia in our things today. Building those. And then our next thing is to look at, okay, can we build a 3D scene in, in AI, can we rig 3D characters? Can we create characters that can walk around and interact with each other? So I think that's next.But that's like we've tried to be really disciplined about staying in like here's what we do really well. 3D and VR definitely has a place. The cost of production and the complexities of deployment mean there are places that's not well suited. So we sort of so far staying where we are.Michael HornNo, that makes sense. And so then this ties back into the number one use case around enabling the authoring right to explode in some ways along your guidelines. And I assume that's something I want to let you elaborate on a little bit because I assume anyone can create a simulation, but to do it in line with instructional goals, learning design, not overloading the learner, accessibility, et cetera. I assume there's a bunch of guardrails you all have created over time or rules by which content is created that you know, you don't want a faculty member or if it's at Western Governors, right. Like a centralized instructional designer to have to deal with all that complexity. You almost want the AI to just hard code that in some sense.Designing for Balance and StructureDave McCoolYeah. It's funny, most of our programming on that part of the product in the last year has been prompt engineering and system file work. And you know what we realized immediately we do not want, we didn't just want to put an AI interface in front of our users like you said and ask them to try to make this. It would not, that would not have gone well. And I think what we constantly, the balance we're trying to find is between how much to let the AI go versus how much to keep it structured. Because like, especially with universities who've reacted really positively to this, a big part of it is they can get the thing they need out of this easily and quickly. And before they could either spend a lot of time and money to get the thing they needed or they could get the thing they didn't really need quickly.So it's trying to find that middle ground of like, give me your learning objectives, give me your goals, give me your activity purpose. Like is it a formative assessment? Is it a homework assignment? And then I'll guide you through this sort of, we call them playbooks, this playbook process of saying here, here are the steps to get to something usable and here are the ways in which you can kind of vary along the way.Michael HornLast question on this, because you've talked a few times about using it for instruction, but also the assessment inherent in a simulation. Are all the simulations that your customers, universities creating, do they have both of those goals or some, you know, inherently assessment based and some are inherently instructional? Maybe formative assessment based? Like what, how does that work? How are simulations used? Maybe talk a little bit about the use cases of simulations within different courses in terms of their instructional versus assessment purposes. And can, can an assessment, or excuse me, can a simulation serve both?Dave McCoolYeah, to answer the last one first, yes, it can serve both. And I think for our entire company history, the challenge has been like, when are we teaching? When are we assessing? Like games? You know, the big picture promise of games for education is that they instruct and teach at the same time. But that isn't always easy to put into an environment that has other stuff happening. So our customers who do all those things, you know, McGraw Hill is a big partner, they do a lot of homework assignment work. So you know, it's a graded homework assignment, but it's not really an assessment in that sense. We have partners who use them as formative assessments, as checks for understanding. So like, you know, the end of each section or module, you might, you might take one that they're using to figure out if you've moved on and you understand or not. And then I think to the other extreme, we've got Education Design Lab, which is a partner in the durable skills space, is using it actually as summative capstone assessment to award credentials.Michael HornOh, that's interesting. And to show durable skills. It's because if you're, I'm going to make this up a little bit. But perseverance or something like that is one thing. If you can show it in a, you know, a self assessment which is extremely unreliable, but if you can actually exhibit that behavior in a situation where you suffer a setback in a simulation, maybe you can exhibit growth over time on that. Is that, is that sort of, or.Dave McCoolYou know, critical thinking is a good example that's easy to explain to people. You know, you, you, you role play someone in a job who's analyzing data, working with co workers and trying to apply critical thinking techniques to solve problems. Like you're, you're presenting these challenges. You're the produce manager at the grocery store. They want to put a kiosk in your section. Should you do it or not? You have to analyze data, interact with stakeholders and then there are skills, you're exhibiting things like distinguishing facts from opinions, providing thoughtful analysis, identifying core issues.Michael HornSo yeah, and so within different subjects, I mean you could in some ways simulations, particularly with the scalability now of AI, I imagine could actually uplevel the quality of assessments trying to get at these things from the multiple choice sort of short answer land to something much more immersive, context based, etc.Dave McCoolYeah, yeah, because we've got, I think we've got kind of the uncanny divide right now between how good can an auto graded assessment be or how authentic versus how authentic can a human administered assessment be? There's a big gap there today and we're always been on the side of the auto created, pushing it towards the human. And I think AI really helps you move that bar quite a bit.Michael HornThat's really interesting. All right, I know you're able to actually show maybe something, but I would love to show our audience some of what this looks like on the ground so that they can really feel what these simulations are.Dave McCoolSo my plan here is to do sort of the cooking show version of demoing where I'll show you the first few steps in the process of building something and then I'll jump to something that was built with that same process worked all the way through. I'm in our tool right now. This is an activity. So footwear impressions that I created earlier today, I'll go into the editor. So what I'm going to do here is basically this is the use case of creating a simulation, homework assignment simulation from a lesson plan. Okay, so in this case I had previously uploaded one of our favorite lesson plans of late, which is this Texas,, so the Texas CTE standards has a course called Forensic Science and there's a lesson called Footwear Impression. So doing footwear impression and analysis is part of doing Forensic Science.So I've uploaded that lesson plan previously to the call starting. I can come here and I can say this will be a homework assignment. And then what we have is this eight currently this playbook called Create Activity and it's an eight step process. You can see them on screen right now. You could start at step four if you already had learning objectives and you didn't need those extracted from source material. So some people come there. But let's just sort of start. We'll go,Step one and what we do at each step is we pre populate the prompt which then is combined with all the system text work we've done under the hood to get back the result for this step. So in this case it's going to analyze that document and suggest the learning objectives that my activity should have. And people do have the ability to sort of edit and play around with these as they go along.Michael HornIt's the cooking show thing. I'm supposed to say something witty here.Dave McCoolRight.Michael HornAnd pops up with the. Yeah.Structuring Unstructured DataDave McCoolAnd I think what's interesting about this is, you know, someone said at ASU + GSV last week or a week before. This idea of AI helps take unstructured data and structure it. And this has been kind of an amazing realization for us as we've gone through this process is that you, you talk to the AI in natural language and then it does sort of software program things. And so it makes sort of the trying different things, experimenting getting to your goal a lot easier because you don't have to. There's no. You just try it. Right. So I can say, all right.So there's what it suggested. Evidence, classification, characteristic analysis. So there are the ellos it suggested. If I go to step two. Okay, gradient learning objectives, let's say so.Michael HornYou can carve out an exception.Dave McCoolI can say sometimes it'll suggest something that doesn't work well in the simulation format, accept evidence, documentation. So I say go. So it will go through those, it's going to add those to my activity. So we can say agree. All right, there it is. If I pop over here to the objectives. There they are.Michael HornOh wow.Dave McCoolSo like this already would have been a lot more work in time for someone one of our customers existing. And then what we do is we go to step three.Michael HornIn some ways this makes it way more self-serve. You all are doing probably less on the back end to help them through.Dave McCoolYeah, one of the realizations that hit us last year when, when people started actually using this in our customer setting. Actually now some of those activities are live to students was we realized that they never had to learn the tool. They never left this page. They just worked through these steps, played the activity, maybe made some changes which you can do here as well and then they were done.Michael HornSo does that lower cost increase output? Yes, yes, yes.Dave McCoolYeah, it's lower cost, it's faster output. I think the most important thing that we've noticed is it takes it from not possible to possible. Like we always say, better, stronger, faster. But we're really in not possible to possible.Michael HornAnd so that's interesting because you had mentioned non consumption to me when we were trading notes about this. It's almost like people who would never have ventured into this space all of a sudden, hey, I can do something and get it, get it up and running.Dave McCoolYeah. I mean we have thousands of universities using our product indirectly through partners who've built for them. But it was always, it was always more challenging to get universities, except say if you're Western governors to take on that task themselves. They are building lots of courses. But they always felt the simulation hurdle was a little too high. And this has really changed that for them. So I ran step three, which was basically to create a story and some characters. So if we go over here and look, we'll see now we have characters that have been created.So Dr. Maya Rodriguez. And then we get these personalities which are really cool because this is how the AI knows how to, how to speak in this character's voice. And I could edit these if I wanted to, but I just won't. Sure. For time.Michael HornSure. Yeah.Dave McCoolNow just do one more step before I jump over to the other side. So now this is kind of the build out a story. So I could say build up the story, blah blah blah. I want to modify that. I'll just let it go. And then, you know, five would be create all the materials, create all the data that's going to support this story so that I can ask you challenging questions. Six would be create the questions. Seven is create the activity feedback.And eight would be create the intro screen. And now we have a full activity.Michael HornHere. It's generating right now. And so we're gonna. And then you're gonna jump into that activity now.Dave McCoolJump into that. The one that I built earlier. Yeah.Michael HornPerfect.Dave McCoolSo we can see this. So city crime labs, unusually busy, string of high end home burglaries. That's everyone on edge.Michael HornEarly premise. Yep.Dave McCoolRight. So there you go. So that's the story. So let's pop up one that was already made and see what the student would see.Michael HornI'm just imagining Carmen San Diego back in the day could have been created in, in five minutes. Yeah.Dave McCoolIt's crazy. Yeah. I mean, so you saw that like I just did half the process in about five minutes. It probably would take another five to the other four steps. Yeah, this one I added a few images to. So I Added another maybe five or ten minutes after that process. But in this one, I told it I want it to be in an art museum. So here we go.There's a priceless Botticelli sketch has vanished. Your expertise is needed. Here's what you're going to do. Here's your role. I'll come in, set my character.Michael HornYep.Dave McCoolHere are the people I'm going to work with.Michael HornWow.Dave McCoolAlarm at the museum. Pricessles Botticelli has been vanished. I come up with Dr. Rodriguez to see what's going on. Okay. So we come in.Michael HornAnd so this could be also the speech. It could be a variety of modalities to interact with it as the learner.Dave McCoolYes. Yep, yep. So, yeah, they can voice or not voice. Authors have that choice. And we have as well. I'll turn it off for just a second. Sure. Yeah.AI as Time-Saving CollaboratorDave McCoolSo. So this data you're seeing on the right here, all AI generated. Created the whole story, created all this data for you, all this dialogue. So I think two things about that. One is that it saves a tremendous amount of time versus an instructional designer or subject matter expert having to do all that, but also provides a collaborator. And, you know, we all work better when we have someone to talk to about the thing we're working on. This actually works pretty well as someone to talk to when you're working on this, which is interesting. Not something we had really thought of beforehand.I'll just show you what the open response.Michael HornYeah, let's see it. It's interesting. While we're waiting to come up, I think of all the times I've seen stuff like this that has been super engaging because of the storyline, but how custom and expensive it's felt.Dave McCoolYeah. I mean, just a use case here is like, if you really love this pedagogical experience, one of the use cases in the AI is you can say, move this to an auto body shop, move this to a mall, for example, and it can do that. But let's see here. Let's say I think blood seems like a good thing. I might say I think the bloody footprints will be the most useful because they might show us the perpetrator's blood. That was my thought, actually. That's what I thought the right answer might have been when I did this the first time. It turns out it's not.Michael HornI was going to say, are you. What's your criminal forensics background? Interesting. Okay, Right.Dave McCoolSo what's interesting is. So that what Maya just said there was completely generated off of what I said.Michael HornYep.Dave McCoolAnd then the grade, which I got, which I think I got, oh, I got zero out of four. I didn't do very well at all. But then here's the kind of like, hey, here's why you got the score you got. So I think it's really important that learners understand that and also that they can challenge it. So when this is delivered as part of an LMS assignment, there's a challenge opportunity for them to say back to the teacher and the author, hey, I think I should have got...Michael HornThis is how I was thinking about it and blah, blah, blah.Dave McCoolYep, here's what I was thinking and here's why that should be good. Yeah, so that's, that's the basic experience. You know, you can see over here we've got score categories that are being tracked. There's a feedback screen at the end which gives them a bunch of feedback which we're now generating with AI. But again, just trying to keep making it easier to create these very sort of targeted, authentic experiences for learners.Reimagining Online Course EngagementMichael HornI'm just blown away. It's interesting. I remember the first online course I ever had the chance to take was I'm going to date myself, 20 some odd years ago when I was, you know, enrolling in HBS. And I don't know if you guys actually helped create it, but it was a stats class and it was all simulation based and I'm just imagining like I thought, geez, if everything could be like this, it'd be amazing. But the other thing that occurs to me is you can also vary the format through this much more easily as well so that you keep it a little bit unexpected, you keep me on my toes. I don't, you know, one of the problems sometimes I think with online courses is yes, it's at my pace and path, but it becomes a little monotonous and predictable perhaps and I sort of the thrill of novelty wears off. There's that opportunity, I would think with this as well, to sort of vary what my interactions are like and learning experiences are like.Dave McCoolYes, absolutely. And I think the whole idea is agency. It's really putting you in an active role, not a passive role. Like you are that person. People are asking you questions, you need to react to them. You need to analyze that information and try to decide what the right course of action is as opposed to just consuming the information.Michael HornAll right, so as we wrap up here, what should we keep an eye on for in this space? If you put that Gates foundation funded researcher view back on. So not just Muzzy Lane, but just the world of simulations in general, where do you think this goes? Now with AI over the next five-ten years?.Dave McCoolI think you touched on it earlier. I think more broadening the applicability of these across more areas. There are places like say HVac Training which really need a physical environment. They need 3D stuff. So pushing those AI boundaries to build those 3D assets for you. But I think simulation in my view really should be part of any real online learning experience. And I'll sort of make just a little plug for our AI principles because everyone has to have AI principles. For us it's three, it's to get learners thinking more, not less.And you could see from that open response I had to think harder than if I had a multiple choice there. To increase academic and contegrity, don't decrease it. And I think again those active learning experiences are harder to cheat on. And third is we're really focused on making the online component of blended learning better, not replacing the in person instructional part of online learning of learning. So I think what we'll see is more complex, more interesting interactions, more subject applicability and just generally just more whether it's us or anyone else. Like there should be simulations as part of every learning experience. They are a great, cost effective way for you to practice, makes you better prepared for assessments, better prepared for in person apprenticeships and internships and all those things. So that's what we'd like to see.Michael HornBeautiful. Hey Dave, thank you so much for joining us. We'll check in with you in a few years to see how that is bearing fruit. But really appreciate the work you all continue to do.Dave McCoolGreat. Thanks Michael.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Jeff Livingston, founder and CEO of EdSolutions, shares his vast expertise in the curriculum market. He unpacks the dramatic shift from a publisher-dominated landscape to a more fragmented and innovative market. Listen in as he reveals how political factors and digital tools are reshaping curriculum adoption and fostering new competitors. Jeff also discusses the transformative role of AI in content creation, the growing importance of quality benchmarks like EdReports, and the shift towards personalized learning in education.

Diane Tavenner and I talk through what we've learned from our recent miniseries on AI in education. We discuss how AI offers unprecedented access to expertise, but also highlight concerns about its effectiveness for young learners. Throughout the conversation, we grapple with skepticism, optimism, and the practical challenges of embedding AI in educational systems, all while looking ahead to what meaningful, student-centered innovation could look like.Diane TavennerHey, Michael.Michael HornHey, Diane. It's good to see you.Diane TavennerIt's good to see you, too. I'm excited to see you in person in the coming week. But, you know, and, and maybe we'll just jump right in because I think people know we've been doing this miniseries about AI And I'm going to jump in because I'm very excited for this conversation today. We have been talking to all these folks in this little mini series, and you've been doing a better job than I have of sort of just listening to them and letting them talk and not, you know, sort of interjecting your opinions and feelings. You know, that's a little bit hard for me. But today is our day where we get to do that. And so for our listeners, you know, sometimes you, you write to us or you tell us that you like kind of overhearing us talk to each other. And so this is that episode.We have not talked to each other about all that we learned and discovered from these conversations. And so we're calling this kind of our out loud processing episode where we're going to go through and just process through. What do we hear? What do people say? What are, what were we thinking? What's our takeaways? And then we'll come back one more time and organize that and put that into kind of a final season episode and a final miniseries episode where we'll pull out the big headlines and the takeaways. But today it's going to be pretty raw conversation.Michael HornToday is going to be raw, up close up, personal, all of the different demons in our heads. And if we miss something, send us a line, tell us what we missed. Because we have looked back on some of these conversations. Some of these conversations, I suspect, Diane, it's going to be more like, wow, I, this, this one thing has been really burning with me and I had to address that, but I sort of forgot some of the other points. So don't be shy about pointing that out to us. We, we really have enjoyed, I think it's fair to say, these conversations because it's really opened up to a lot of different perspectives. And I think there have been elements of truth or insight in every single conversation, totally. Even where we disagreed on certain elements or whatever else to me, it's just sort of like revealing the whole elephant, if you will.Diane TavennerI couldn't agree more. That's probably a really important place to start, is with some gratitude. Thank you so much for the people who came to talk with us and share with us. It's been incredibly valuable for us. What we seem to be hearing is it's valuable for other folks. And so let's dive in. I'm, I'm going to take sort of that. I know for a fact that both of us, this has stuck with us.It was from our first conversation with John Bailey and I think it was, for me, it was such an eye opening conversation. The idea that John is so clear that what AI provides is an expert on every subject in every person's pocket. And this idea that we now have this expertise just literally at our fingertips. And not only did he say that kind of at a high level, but I think what was amazing about what John did was he literally gave us these concrete examples of how he's using AI as an expert in his life. And they were like so many different examples. And then I of course went on to like to look at more of them and read more of them. And you know, he's probably the most creative person I've talked to about how he's really using AI as an expert. And so that one's just sitting with me.I don't. And I've heard that from other people too. What, how did that one strike you, Michael?Michael HornYeah, I, I, so similar thing, Diane, which is, I think you take away, okay. Google gave us access to the world's knowledge. This gives us access to expertise. I think that's like a really interesting distinction. It lands for me. I think frankly, the thing I took away, or one of the things I took away from the episode we had with Sia from, from OpenAI was less the views on education and more how she actually uses the tool herself as this personal assistant to guide her learning agenda, to help her figure out what to learn and on and on. Made me feel somewhat inadequate as like a human in terms of all the things that I could be doing with this. I think I've forced myself to increase my usage in certain ways since then.Right.Diane TavennerHave you watched yourself changing at all because of these conversations?Michael HornYes, yes. So I will say and, and I, I'm curious if you've had the same thing, but number one, I search on Google a lot less than I used to.Diane TavennerAlmost never for me,Michael HornSo the only reason I don't is because I have access to the Gemini Advanced, I can't remember what they call it, but the advanced AI search feature, right. Which has a lot of the same qualities as chat, GPT or I guess a lot of folks use Perplexity for search because of the way it answers. Right. Your queries. But yeah, in general, I am not using semantic search really at all. I'm almost exclusively using AI to try to understand certain things. I will tell you, I was trying to get a much deeper understanding of the nursing and healthcare shortages across the country recently. I had Google Gemini and I'm blanking on the exact product, but it's their research product.Create a, like a, it's like a five to seven page basically briefing for me on it. Super interesting how it did it and it, and it resolved one of the challenges I have, which is when you sort of just do a raw search, you get like, oh, by 2036, this is the projection. And I'm like, no, I want to know now. I want to know my specialty and where I like. Right. And you can get that now. And, and it's, it's really interesting Diane, what about you?Diane TavennerSo similarly, the only time I find myself going to a traditional search is out of habit. And then I get there and I'm like, wait, why are you doing this? You're going to get much better information. I'm using the paid version of chat right now.Michael HornYeah, that's what I largely use. I should.Exploring Chat GPT Usage TrendsDiane TavennerYeah. Well, it's interesting. One tip I've gotten from, you know, sort of insider is to, to actually cycle through them and use the different ones from time to time and see what you think. So I'm going to try to push myself to do that and not just fall into a single habit. Although we're not alone. You know, in the last couple of days the numbers have come out about the number of people across the planet using Chat GPT and it's extraordinary, like unprecedented. We might get to that in a little bit. But yeah, I find myself pushed by John in a lot of ways to just push my thinking on, wait, do you really need to be doing this? I keep asking myself that all day now, wait, do you really need to do that? Can, can an expert do that for you? Or, or in some cases things that I thought I couldn't know.I'm now saying, wait, I think that might be possible. Like how could, how could we get to that? And so I, I feel like it really, these conversations have pushed my behavior and change and with positive results.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Michael HornI mean, yeah, it's super interesting. I'm curious, Diane, if you've had this question come up which is so we're learning how to use it and I feel like I'm still very much learning right. How to use it in this way that Increases productivity, efficiency, and the realm of what's possible for us or me to accomplish. Right. You as well, it sounds like. I guess I'm curious as, like, you think about that in the educational context.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornIf you've had reflections about, okay, so what does this mean at different levels of education? Where have you gone with that?Diane TavennerWell, I think that's where it starts to move out of my own personal excitement and curiosity given where I am in my life and whatnot, into the reality check on K12 education. Because very few young people who are in high school or middle school are experts at anything. You're just not an expert yet. And my, when I was listening to John talk and I was listening to Sia talk, I was like, but you guys are experts. So you have this set of skills and knowledge that enable you to use this tool as an expert for you. But novices oftentimes don't know how to take advantage of expertise, so it's not accessible to them or open to them. And what young people are doing in their lives and their learning is fundamentally different from what we are doing in our lives and our learning.And so one of my big questions coming out of those conversations was like, okay, great, but what happens to, you know, the folks that I'm really focused on, the young people and, you know, ages, adolescence and in early adulthood, how did they, given what they're doing on a daily basis and thinking about and trying to do, how does this concept of an expert work for them? And I would argue it doesn't in the sort of raw form that we're accessing it.Michael HornSo. Yeah, yeah, no, I, how do we always end up in the same place? Okay, so, so there's this notion, right, in learning sciences of novice versus expert learner by domain. And then there's the second sort of, you can create the two by two. Right? So you have novice and expert on one domain or one dimension, and on the other you have unknowing versus knowing. So, right. You're an unknowing novice. You literally do not know what you do not know. And you just have like very, very little.Right. Expertise in this.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornThen you become a knowing novice, meaning you actually start to understand the realm of things people in the field and domain do and all the things you don't know.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornAnd then you become a knowing expert. Right. Is sort of the continuum and you still have a sense of like, I know how I learned to be an expert and I know the sets of things that I did and Right. You, you're, you tend to be a really good teacher when you're a knowing expert. And then you become an unknowing expert, you start to automate 75%. I think Bror Saxberg tells us, Right. Of, like, the things that you, you, you, you sort of do on a daily basis, the underlying skills and things of that nature, and you just sort of forget about it. Right.It just fades into the background. It's automated. Right, right. And so what's interesting, I think, as I reflected on this, is from my perspective, um, the, and I like the way you just said it, the raw form of these tools is probably most useful in the knowing, like, circle of that. So I'm a knowing novice, but I at least know the questions to ask. Like, I have a certain set of foundational skills and knowledge in the domain that allow me to, like, use the AI as that personal assistant to help guide my learning and like, you know, be curious to interrogate an answer it gives, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's also true that probably when you're a knowing expert, that it's really useful for boosting your job performance. And, my hypothesis, Diane, is that this is why we've seen so many studies come out that suggests AI is most helpful to the lowest performers in the world of work and least helpful for the biggest experts.Right. And those, I think are your unknowing experts, is sort of my guess. And again, and then on the unknowing novice side, I think it's probably not super useful either, or frankly, sometimes maybe even misleading. Right. In certain cases. And so I think you need really highly curated learning tools. Right. If you're going to be using it for individuals like that.Now this gets. Maybe I should pause there for a moment because we could talk about equals. Yeah, yeah.Diane TavennerBut I love it. I love thinking about it using that framework. And I, you know, I am very concerned about the unknowing novices because by definition, that's who we're getting and serving. I mean, that's, that's a natural state for them to be in, in their life and their developmental journey. And so, and what I, I think you, you know, I am not a fan of chatbots. And from the very beginning, you know, when people were getting so excited and their first kind of conceptualization of how this could be used is we'll just basically take the little box and we'll just put that little box all over the place, everywhere. And then people will just come and they'll just know Ask the box.Questions. And then it's solved. Everyone's just going to learn. And in, in my mind, that's a, you know, that's a chatbot, and that is not going to work for the unknowing novice. They don't even know what to say or what to ask. And this is proving to be true. I, I'm, you know, in a lot of conversations, looking at a lot of data where people have essentially chatbot data for young people, and you will not be surprised to learn that they write weird things.Improving AI for LearningDiane TavennerThey write in, you know, like, short, incomprehensible things. They're not asking questions. They get frustrated in there. They're yelling at it sometimes because they feel like it's supposed to help them, but it's not helping them. And so what I have a little hope about is we're a little bit further along now and people, I think, are starting to be able to imagine beyond a chatbot. So how do we actually, I think this is where you're going, like, how do we actually use AI in products for younger people, unknowing novices, and even the emerging, you know, folks to help structure their learning and help to teach them, but not just to put this open box there for them that they have no access to. And so there's a little bit of promise on the horizon as we get a little bit further into it and people start to process and think about how it can be used. But, but to me, that's the, that that is one of the big risk and I think one of the reasons that you see the folks who are very skeptical about it, and we had a number of them, we talked with a number of people,Michael Horna lot of skeptics on our show. Yep.Diane TavennerYeah. And so. Yeah, yeah.Michael HornNo, I think that's. Yeah, that all lands for me, Diane, where you're going. And, and I guess from my perspective, it does point to something which I think was true in the era of Google as well. Which is it. It's not the case that we don't need to learn knowledge. Right. Or at least what I would call foundational knowledge. And I thought Rebecca Winthrop was really good on that concern.She sort of said, I've been the skills person and now I'm worried we're going to forget about the knowledge. And it goes to something we talk about all the time, which is like, we have to get away from the tyranny of the OR in this education world. This has to be an And conversational. And I think Foundational knowledge is really critical, right? To being able to use these tools in, in ways I think people are really interested in creativity right now turns out to be creative, you actually need to know something and then to be able to break the rules, right? And like interdisciplinary is really important then, but. But you do need to have some foundational knowledge.Diane TavennerI wanted to go here next, like the direction you're leading us because I think both Rebecca and Jane surfaced a really important conversation about skills and knowledge that you're bringing up. And I would argue, you know, folks who've listened for a long time know that I've always organized skills, knowledge, and then habits of success and in the habits realm is curiosity. And so I'll talk a little bit more about that. But what I'm interested in. One of the things that I notice that often happens in these conversations around learning is that skills and knowledge get really. They're not distinguished from each other. They are put into the same category or bucket. I think it might be worth just unpacking a little the difference between skills and knowledge and habits and for, for a conversation for education.Because like you just said, Michael, knowledge is, let's say for the purposes of our dialogue and our conversations, it's, it's the stuff. It's like the names and the definitions and the dates and the, you know, the, the theories and, and those sorts of things. And then concepts are sort of a little bit of a bigger idea of knowledge. Skills are the things that literally you practice and can improve upon and that go, you know, are more universal and stretch across and use the knowledge, if you will. And so just to be very concrete about that, a skill being, for example, to a high level skill is to effectively communicate or to analyze or to solve a problem. These, they're people's favorite skill that they like to talk about is critical thinking. Critical thinking actually has a whole bunch of skills.Michael HornMany, many skills. Yeah, yeah, right.Skills, Knowledge, Habits: Learning FrameworkDiane TavennerAnd many of those that I just named you, those are the big high, you know, domains, and they have multiple dimensions. But think about things that you can actually practice and improve. And so if we call back to Jane's conversation in the writing center and her as a teacher of writing, I mean, skills, skills, skills. So much of what she was talking about was skill development, right? Knowledge. I mean, people have been worried about knowledge ever since, for forever. Because, you know, can you just look up a fact or can you just look up a date or something like that? And, and, and then I think the third category, and then I'm curious about your thoughts about this, that I like to distinguish is this idea of what we would call habits of success. And this is sort of a big catch all for everything from like, how do I emotionally regulate myself? I'm calling back to the good work that the building blocks framework that sort of identifies at least those habit, what I call habits that are related to school success and learning success. So everything from, you know, can I emotionally regulate myself? Can I have, you know, can I be in relationship with others? And then all the way at the top of those building blocks has always been my civic identity, self direction, which, you know, has been a huge center point of how I think we need to structure learning.And curiosity. And curiosity has always been fascinating because super hard to measure. No one really knows how to teach it or if you can teach it. But what I think is happening right now is illuminating the critical importance of curiosity and how our system of learning and education has sort of rung curiosity out of young people. And it might be the most valuable skill habit in this.Michael HornYou've anticipated me again, I think when a student asked me, you know, one of the students at Harvard asked me recently what I thought was the most enduring skill. But, but habit is how, you know, you and I have generally classified it like it would be in a world of AI. And curiosity was the answer that I had for a couple reason. One, I think when you are getting answers or interacting with whatever the form factor is, being able to interrogate it and knowing how to ask and not settling right is going to just be like baseline importance. Right. And then two, though, I think like in a world in which the rate of change is accelerating in terms of the world of work, this curiosity as a gateway into learning and upskilling, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera becomes really, really important. So on multiple levels, I think curiosity is critical. The other habit I'll name Diane, from the building blocks goes down to if like I want to say it's not the bottom layer, but I think it's the second layer, you're going to correct me, but which is self awareness, I think is the one or something like that, or self advocacy or something like that that you all have and you can redefine it for me if I mess it up.But I think this is like really knowing yourself and like the strengths that you bring, frankly, not just your strengths, but also like what you suck at, the things you don't want to do. And I don't think I'm going to be stronger about that. Schools today do a very poor job of helping individuals learn around their self awareness. And like what, what, like what? You know, what superpowers do I bring in? What are my weaknesses? Where should I walk away from things? I get why that happens. We don't want to give up on an individual too early from developing something that could be a strength.Diane TavennerYeah.Michael HornAnd I think as you get out in the real world, you realize that life is lived with your competitive advantage and the things that make you unique and, and not trying to remediate your weaknesses constantly. And so I think in an era of AI where, look, AI is going to be the new expectation in the workforce. Right. Like you, you don't use it. What? Is going to be sort of the question. But you can use it to really effectively craft your career in a way that you couldn't before, because now you can let it do the stuff you don't want to do. Lean into the place where you can add unique value. Well, that requires self awareness.So those are the two habits, Diane, that I think are very, I mean, I think obviously all the habits have enduring value, but the curiosity and self awareness, I think are really important.Diane TavennerI totally agree with you, Michael. And I think there's a couple of other things to, like, illuminate here around why I think we don't do a good job of sort of nurturing young people into being, you know, really aware of themselves. Well, I, I just don't even think we try to do that.Michael HornYeah, I don't think that's been a goal. Right. Of the schools.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornAnd just so people do not misunderstand us, like the report card you got a C in social studies, like, that's not what we're talking about. Right.Diane TavennerSo, no. And, there's a couple of things going on there. One, for all the stuff we've talked about over the years on this podcast, we actually don't give young people and their families very honest information. And by honest, I mean information that they can truly understand and interpret that tells them and gives them feedback about where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are. The grading system that we have is woefully inadequate in terms of giving actual feedback. And our testing system is, quite frankly, as well. You know, when, when, when I get a report of my child's state testing and I have a hard time reading it and understanding what it says, you know, that though, like, this is not working for families, you know, we're not telling them what their young people are good at or not good at. And to be fair, one of the challenges with that is there's a base level of skill and knowledge that I think all young people need that it doesn't really matter if you're good at reading or not.We need to get you to be good at reading. Like you need to be able to read. And so there's not kind of a picking and choosing. There is as there will be later. But I want to jump in on this idea of. Because this is a lot of the work that we're doing right now about like knowing yourself. And I think the approach that we're taking is just from like working with David Jager and then learning scientists like we will be good at work, our work, our career, our vocation. It's pretty simple.Passion Fuels Career SuccessDiane TavennerIf you like it, you're probably going to be good at it. And the reason is because if you like it, you are more curious, you are more willing, you are more interested, you want to do it more, you practice it more, you get better at it. And it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And so one of the activities that we ask young people to do is to really look at the things you will be doing in a job or a career every day. What are the top 10 tasks that you're going to do day in and day out and are a big part of it. And then very honestly self assess do I like doing those things or not? And it's really shocking how it's hard to figure out what people do in a job every single day. It doesn't really come through in job descriptions or in most of the tools that young people are given to think about career and jobs. And it's actually a thing they really wonder about, which is why they want to talk to people who are in the job to ask them what it's really like.So they have an intuition around this. But that like assessment of and that, that just realism about do I like doing this? Because if I don't I'm not going to be very good at it. And so I should pursue the things I like doing. And, and I think that gets translated into people saying follow your passions, which is a wholly unuseful thing to say.Michael HornUnuseful. Yeah, completely. Yeah.Diane TavennerSo, let's make it more concrete for them. And so I, I would argue, you know, that's, I'm with you on that. I would say the skill that goes into building is reflection. And we don't as a general rule spend nearly enough time teaching young people how to truly reflect and then use that reflection to propel them forward.Michael HornYeah, it makes a lot of sense. I want to stay with this, just because the point that Jane made specifically right around this was that the process is what's important in writing. It's not the product. In that case, it sounds like for those of us in New England who have, you know, who had Bill Belichick as coach here for however many years, it's the process, not the right. And we became a big mantra here. I think that's true probably in the Bay Area with the Golden State Warriors, too, but. But like focusing on the process as the learning. I think this is interesting also because reflection is built into that.And I've heard some. I want to try this out on you. I've heard some people say, you know, so. So I think part of Jane's answer was like, I still need you to do the writing. And maybe it's. Some people I've said in class said that AI is not there and see the process. Others I've heard say, like, do the writing. I believe you're going to be using AI to do it, but I want to see the questions and prompts and things like you're asking it to do as a reflection on the process and, like, how it changed, you know, how it changed the final product, if you will.I'm, like, curious as a, you know, someone who taught writing, like, what you think of that as a mechanism and does that make sense to you?Diane TavennerYeah, it does. And. And you've taken me down another path I want to ask you about, because there's all these legislator legislation, state bodies now that are trying to pass AI legislation, and it's this full range. So I'm curious too. To go there with this. Texas is top of mind for me right now. So as a. As a former writing teacher and, you know, I am who I am, so you're not going to change that.Like, I think it would be silly to try to banish AI from the writing process. And let's be clear, that's what some people want. So there's a.Michael HornLet's be. Let's be clear. I teach at Harvard, where there's a policy that unless your instructor explicitly says you can use AI, the default is no. I think that's insane because these people are going to go into the world with an expectation to do it, so we might as well make it intentional. So I'm on record there.Diane TavennerThe further education, taking one more step away from the actual real world and the world of work and saying, you know, What? We're not going to prepare you for that. We're not.Michael HornYep.Diane TavennerAnd so. But we're, we're aligned there. So how would I, as a writing teacher, think about it? Well, I mean, in my experience right now, I've watched young people who are not skilled writers try to use AI to write something for them. And first of all, you can tell immediately, number one, that they didn't write it. And two, it's not good. It's not very good. And so I think that's where I would start is just being really talk about feedback, being open and honest and like, let's actually dissect what happens when you just try to put in a basic, simple prompt and get something out that is like. But quite frankly, this is also what school does, is just put something on paper and turn it in versus actually building a skill.AI BansDiane TavennerAnd so I think there's a big opportunity now for, for great teachers, great instructors. And I actually think we heard Jane talk about some of her strategies here to help young people understand a tool that is now available to them and will be in our world, and how they can use it to not only build their skill, but improve their products and their outcomes. But that is going to require a whole new set of skills from them and muscles that they are not using and flexing in school right now because they're incentivized to not do those things there. And so I think it's very exciting and hopeful and optimistic, and that's why I get very disturbed when I. I mean, there's literally a bill in Texas right now that could very well pass that is going to say something to the effect of, you know, teachers in the state are forbidden from using AI in any teaching and learning.Michael HornYeah. I mean, I'll be. Yeah.Diane TavennerWhat. What is that?Michael HornRight, Right. Every product now has AI, so. Yeah.Diane TavennerYeah. Yeah. Well, and then I'm like, you. I think who it was that some university was saying. Yeah, they're. They're literally going back to blue books.Michael HornYeah.Diane TavennerAnd exams. I'm like, really?Michael HornYeah. I mean, I hear the same thing. I, It's. I didn't know about the Texas bill. I, I will be very consistent on this one, which is, I do not think making policy at the level of inputs ever makes sense. And I feel that way. We had a whole set of shows about the science of reading, and we were super clear about, you know, the importance of using actual, you know, like, actually following the research on this. Right.And so forth. And I don't believe in policy at, you know, banning certain curricular materials because I think it stifles innovation when you see leaps forward. And look, if we want to pass, you know, measures to create professional development so that the people coming out of schools of education actually know how to use these tools, teach science, reading, use AI, whatever, I can have that conversation. And I just, I think it's a blunt axe. Even when I'm in favor of the spirit behind it, shall we say here, I'm not in favor of the spirit behind it. I think it's a blunt axe the wrong way. It's the same reason I, you know, feel that way around mobile phones as well.I want schools to have the ability to take them away and not have them when it does not suit them right on the ground. I don't want a policy criminalizing the teacher that found a good use for it and one person in the school disagreed and then all of a sudden it's, it's a thing. I, I just think that's misguided.Diane TavennerWell, that's another bill in Texas too, so we'll see what happens. I want to stay a little bit on this thread, but I want to go to something that, you know, you and I are both, I mean, our work has been steeped in personalized learning. And so you know, Ben Daley or Ben Riley.Michael HornYep.Diane TavennerBen Riley joined us and another one.Michael HornAnother of our friends, Ben Daley we’d say.Diane TavennerBut Ben Riley joined us and you know, pushed pretty hard on. He believes that the promise of personalized learning has, is sort of overdone adjudicated, it's failed. And he believes that, you know, this, you know, the hype about, well, I shouldn't put words in his mouth. Everyone got to hear him. Let's say he's a skeptic. He's a self describe skeptic. And he did bring up this idea of personalized learning. It also came up, I think in our conversation with Julia.Michael HornShe was more optimistic about it, but yes. Yeah.Diane TavennerSo a number of folks talked about the idea of personalized learning and it seemed to me that there was kind of these two different like either like see, personalized learning is like, you know, this is just gonna, AI is going to go the way of personalized learning. It doesn't really work. It doesn't really personalize or oh, AI is actually going to. We're still on the journey towards the vision of personalized learning and AI actually helps accelerate us in that direction and improve the possibilities. I'm kind of sticking up, you know.Michael HornSure. The extremes yeah, yeah, but, well, but no, I think there's something to the way you did it though. Right? Because what I hear a lot of advocates saying is like, well, now we finally have the technology to do all the things we had imagined 10 years earlier. As though the technology is going to sort of automatically understand, you know, like what you've mastered and your working memory capacity that day based on what you ate and so forth. Like, and somehow deliver the perfect lesson at the perfect time. Which I think is essentially right. Sort of that techno driven vision.Rethinking Personalized Learning PathsDiane TavennerOf personalized learning, which was never sort of my vision and what we do, but that there is that version of that. And so it's got, it just got me thinking about like, oh, okay, where are we with personalized learning? And what do I think about that? And is this, are we on the same journey or pathway or have we hit a sort of fork in the road? And does this change my perspective? I think maybe if you're, you are one of those techno vision people, it probably does. It feels like a huge accelerant. For me I think it's a powerful tool to continue down the path of realizing the vision that I have for young people, which is that people have always confused it as being like an individual kid on a computer, and that's never what it was. It's much more how do we use technology as a tool to prepare young people for the real world, for real life, for real skills. And it's a very powerful tool, if used well, to do that. And then also what I get excited about now is how it can actually structure our system of education and create efficiencies and opportunities that I think have never before been possible. So I'm very optimistic about what it can do, probably more on that latter part than on the first part .Michael HornSay one more beat. Like when you say in terms of what it can do on the system part, what does that look like in your mind? Or you know, sort of simple sketch? What does that look like?Diane TavennerWell, like I'll give you an example, you know, that I've been pushing myself to try to. Okay, if I could design a school from scratch right now, what would it do? And that's because I'm a nerd. That's fun for me. So that's like a pastime. And one of the things I imagine, let's just talk about how a family might engage with school. So, I'm going to give you this utopian vision. But like, what if, you know, periodically you sat down with, with Your family and your girls. And you were able to say, you know what, over the next couple of years.And you, you did this like, with technological prompts, like, over the next couple of years, what's most important to my family about what my girls learn? And they're, they're different from each other. So I suspect you would have different things where you and Tracy would be like, well, this is really, these are my top goals over here. And these are my top goals over here. And of course we would scaffold that for you and we give you a menu to choose from or a list or, or perhaps some, you know, but we would ask you as a family, like, what's really important to you? Okay, like, check all the ones that you care about. Check the ones you don't care about. And then this is like my analogy of how is school like, ordering a sandwich, you know, like, and then we would go through a series of prompts to be like, okay, well, let's get into your family. Like, what does your schedule look like? Like, do you, you know, do you want a day, a week with your girls at home with you and your family? And they go to the building four days a week? Do you want to come at like 10 because of the way your family schedule is and go later? And you know, and I can imagine people starting to have a heart attack right now as I'm talking, like, oh my gosh. But I think if we really, truly went and could ask and understand the circumstances of every family, literally AI can do what humans can't do, which is it can go and crunch all of that, and you can ask it to help you design what would be possible within the parameters of what the school can actually offer.And not every family has to be on. Everyone arrives at 8:30 in the morning and everyone leaves at 3:00 in the afternoon. And one day a week we leave at 1:00. So, you know, like, we don't have to do that anymore. We have technological capabilities that could actually bring a whole community together and meet their needs in a personalized way.Michael HornI think that's really interesting. So many thoughts going through my head as you say this. One, I think the importance of context of the individual. Two, look, not everyone will get every, like, we might be out of romaine lettuce that day and there's trade offs, right? But the point is, and this is what's always driven me nuts about the world of personalized learning is the word personalized learning as a noun, and implying that like there's one way to like, oh, I'm personalized and you're not.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornWhereas instead of seeing it as like a verb or. Beth Rabbitt, I thought, did a good job in this chapter she wrote for us in this new edited volume, School Rethink 2.0 of like. It's a series of strategies you can do to better meet learners with what they need next, right in their, in. In their learning journey. And at that level, like, I, I just, you know, Ben Reilly is a big, you know, he learned a lot from Dan Willingham, the great cognitive scientist. You know, Willingham talks a lot about, right. Like, if you put something in front of someone that is way outside of their, you know, zone of expertise, proximal development, if you want to go right, that they will get frustrated, tune out, if it's too easy. And I see this, like, I see technology tools right now.I will not name companies, but they've sort of bought into the, oh, it should be all whole class. And I see that, like, yes, they're following the learning sciences, say, around reading and the importance of knowledge to build understanding, to do the skills right, et cetera, et cetera. But because every kid is doing, like, reading the exact same book from a teacher who's following a script, right? Like my cousin, excuse me, my kid's cousin, she's like, I read this three years ago. This is the most boring thing. Like, I literally want to jump out of the window. And she disengages, right? And I suspect the truth is on the, on the other side, that, that to me is insane. And so less. It's like magical, technocratic, personalized learning and more, hey, this is a strategy with a set of tools.We have to better come closer to meeting different family needs. When I hear the structural one you just laid out, my mind goes to the, you know, the world of education choice, right, where we're starting to see that with education savings accounts, where these are the experiences that families are constructing. I think what's difficult right now is, like, we know how hard it is to arrange summer camp as a parent. We did a whole episode on that. We're kind of asking parents to now do that the entire year. Yeah. So to your point, how does AI maybe services maybe different kinds of bundles, right? Like, so you, you walk into Subway and we'll go with your analogy, right? And like, they kind of tell you, hey, Here are the 10 best combinations of the stuff. But, like, if you want to custom build it, you can.Yes. I kind of think that's like, we have a Rebundling along these different, like the most common, if you will, set, set of customizations or personalizations.Diane TavennerI just want to pull a couple of those threads and just be pretty explicit about them and why I think this is important and addresses some of the big challenges we're seeing right now. So one, I think so many of the battles we see across the country right now are people who, and I'm talking among parents and you know, we've talked about school boards and all those things are about people who want a certain thing for their child. And because the school only does one note for everyone, if the school's doing the thing that they don't want for their child, they then therefore try to change it for all kids.Michael HornYeah.Diane TavennerAnd this is causing massive, you know, fights and battles. It's very cultural. I'm going to keep picking on Texas today because I've just spent a bunch of time digging in on them. I mean, they are taking back control over the curriculum so that at the state level they can really control. And this is very much about cultural, like what young people learn or don't learn. In response, I think a lot of this. And so to the extent that we could personalize at least parts of education, I think it tones down some of this. Like what, what is true for my child doesn't have to be true for your child.And they can both get what they need without compromising the other child. So, there's a benefit there to it. And then I would say, I think you're absolutely right. There's a ton of people who are really worried and against ESAs and vouchers and things like that because they feel like it's the unraveling of our civic society and we won't have people together., you know, building society together will be, you know, further in our, our camps or our bubbles and whatnot. And I think that, you know, the vision I just painted for you of how folks might get into school, I agree with you. There would be trade offs just because you marked it on your sandwich sheet. You know, that day we happen to be out of pickles.Like, it's just not going to work. There's no pickles. You don't get those. Sorry. You know, but I think people could handle that and accept that more in the good of the, for the good of the community and the group if they felt like they had some control. And I think the problem with our choice system right now in America is it's so blunt. It's like, you can pick a school. That's it.And that's such a massive, we need a scalpel, not a big blunt instrument, you know, like.Michael HornYeah, no, I agree. So, I think models like this are emerging. Right? Like Alpha schools. It's a private school originated in Texas, so this is a bright spot. And they had the two hour learning model, which is essentially as I see it, Diane, like what homeschoolers have done for years, which is like we learn the academic, you know, basically content and some of the skills right. In two hours. And then we like to go out in the world and do real world immersive experiences. They just are using the AI in a very, I think, developed way.Diane TavennerRight.Engaging AI-Powered Learning ToolsMichael HornTo offer that two hour learning sequence. And then frankly, this is the other piece of it that I think is going to be important if we're going to need to think about motivation a lot more. So if we build these curated AI tools that can work with the unknowing novices, we're going to have to connect it in ways that get them engaged into actually wanting to learn these foundational knowledge and skills, which we should be doing anyway. But Right. Like I think and, and, and we're not like that's the evidence of the chronic absenteeism, disengagement, et cetera, et cetera. But I guess I think that's like, we really need to think about how to create meaningful engagement. And I think this notion of, hey, you can learn sort of your nuts and bolts, your foundational stuff that's critical much more efficiently and then get to do much more engaging work because there's a connection between them.Diane TavennerYeah, yeah.Michael HornShould be, should be part of that answer.Diane Tavenner :100% and I think purpose. And so that's why you go back to personalizing people's purpose. Like why are you here? What I mean it's, it's to your work, Michael. Like what are you hiring school to do for your family? Right, yeah.Michael HornBy the way, that is the best question. Yeah, sorry. When people ask me what should I do about my kids school, Tracy tends to jump in the conversation because she said he's going to get towed in, in the weeds. Let me just tell you, like, what is the thing that your family can't or, or, or isn't able to do that school can do for you? Right.Diane TavennerLike what are you, what job are you hiring it to do for you? And, and it will be a different answer for different families. So I want to keep us going.Michael HornSorry, we've deviated perhaps.Diane TavennerI do want to acknowledge that I'm thinking, thinking about this, this infrastructure benefit and this is what Julia was trying to get to, I think, in her points. And this is a vision that she sees. And so it's interesting to go back and think about some of the comments that she made about it. Michael, One of the things that surprised me honestly was that basically everyone we talked to, like these AI isn't for kids who are under 18 right now.Michael HornOh yeah, that was fascinating. Were you surprised? Were you surprised by that?Diane TavennerI was surprised by it. And so, you know, at least now the adults who are thinking about this, working on this, we're very much focused on the adults that are teaching or doing things for young people, but not kind of a direct use for young people when we push them. They did talk about, you know, while it could be embedded in products or maybe, maybe not.Michael HornWell, I mean, it is, let's be honest, right, everyone.Diane TavennerYeah, but that was shocking to me and I don't know why, why did that shock me? I.Michael HornWhy did I, I was super shocked as well. I mean, I think obviously, right, Privacy and some of the really detrimental impacts of social media and these consumer companies are clearly part of what's going on here. I think that caution is good. I do believe, despite what I just said, that I don't believe in bans on, at the policy level of mobile phones in school. I do believe a lot of the John Height research, I find it compelling that social media, specifically on the smartphones, has led to a bunch of antisocial and problematic mental health outcomes and disengagement. So I think that's a lot of what's going on here, Diane, is sort of my guess. And like they also, I think we need to also be honest that kids are using these tools.Like we are not a huge screen time as, you know, household. And my kids have certainly had experience with ChatGPT. They have certainly used it for many things. That is certainly how they search at this point when they want to prove a point to me about something.Diane TavennerWell, and you know, my, my kiddos are, you know, a decade older than yours and they're early in their career and it's, it's. Well, one of them, it's what he does all day, every day for his career. But the other one is literally working around the clock to make sure that he is becoming expert at using it as an early career professional because he feels like if he doesn't, he's going to be, you know, pushed out of the job.Michael HornIt echoes, you know, what Matt Siegelman from Burning Glass Institute has found, which is that AI is actually used more in sort of marketing, communications, professions like that than actually even sort of coding heavy parts of the workplace. Which is interesting. It's not what, it's not what I would have expected.Diane TavennerYeah. Yeah. That is fascinating. You brought up two things that I'd love to touch on. So. And we can decide where to go. First one is this idea of like AI being embedded in products. And I actually think it's worth us sort of surfacing.What does that even mean? And what does that look like beyond a chat bot, if you will? What are we seeing? You know, you know, still feels like it's still early, but things are moving so fast it's not early. So anyway, that one. And then the second one is this idea of, you know, Julia brought a very real fear about the loss of, potential loss of social connection. And so I want to come back to both of those. Where do you want to go first?Michael HornOh, we can do, we can do embedded products first. Embedded product for 200, Diane. So, yeah, what do you, what do you, what are you seeing?Diane TavennerWhat are you embedded?Michael HornYes. We have not yet, we, we are not yet. We have not yet been replaced by AI doing our voices. But what are you, what, what do you, what are you seeing out there in the market? As frankly someone who's building and I think using AI yourself in the product, but not, but not leading with that.Diane TavennerNo. And so maybe that's the good place to start. I see a couple of different categories. So one is there's folks who literally jumped out of the gate immediately and labeled their company, you know, AI. AI is in the name of the company somewhere. They are AI forward, they are AI first. They are like and what I find with those is many of them weren't even sure what product they were building, but they knew they wanted to build an AI product.So it's sort of like a. AI in search of a product kind of origin. And yeah, I think, I think what I see over there is like people who kind of started with a chat bot in some sort of realm and then they're maybe like evolving it over time because I think they're probably getting feedback that great. A chat bot in a specific area is not that super helpful. But let's, let's name some things like that. There's like companies that are like, we're going to provide, you know, AI driven mental health supports. So we're going to train A model to essentially be a counselor, if you will, that you know, can engage with and interface with young people. There's AI tutors obviously in reading and math, you know, all across the board.So, I see that as one category. I think the second category is, I hope it's a category, I think it's where I sit, which is having a very clear vision of what we want to do and why we want to do it with our product. And then we, on a sort of case by case decision grid, decide if AI can be useful or helpful for this particular part of that. If so, how are the trade offs worth it? And then decide where we're going to strategically use it in the product itself and then also in our, in our work. And I would say that the in our work part is much easier and kind of a no brainer because there, there's an efficiency tool and things like that. So, so that's, I do think there's a category of that. And then I think there's a lot of people who are existing products and existing companies, you know, this is the majority, they're not startups and they're having to figure out how they get an AI strategy with the products that they have built that didn't necessarily have any element of that.So I don't know, do those.Michael HornThat feels like a pretty good way to categorize the market to me as well. It's interesting in our opening episode we had this dichotomy of student facing versus teacher facing. And as I hear your reflections on that, like that sort of cuts across those categories in interesting ways. I think both are like interesting ways to view the market at the moment for different reasons. And, and, but, but the way you just categorized it I think is largely what I'm seeing. I would say the market in terms of funding startups is moving away from the first category being the thing. You know, there are a couple home runs in that space, right? Magic school that is used by millions and millions of teachers, right to lesson plan and dramatically make their lives more efficient and by the way, for them to personalize for kids that maybe they were struggling to reach. So, you know, really cool boomed out of the box.I think you're right. The majority, I think, are now increasingly sitting where you are, which is how is AI an enabler of something that we're trying to effectuate here, right? And then I think what you see is that, yeah, the large incumbents, if you will, they are using AI in different parts of the product stack to enable different things in different ways. Right. And in line with the way that they currently come to market or operate. I don't think that they've used it to overthrow right what they've done. It's more as a amplifier of what they're doing.Diane TavennerYeah, so I lied. Let's not go to the social connection yet. Let's stick with that right there for a moment. Because one of the big things I keep wanting to ask you about is we're having these conversations like, okay, step back to your work around disruptive innovation or innovation. And we've had these conversations before of where an innovation sits. Like walk me through where you place AI in.Michael Horn:Yeah, that's great. Okay, so I, I think I've said this before on the podcast, but like fundamentally, AI is a technology enabler that can be used to sustain, which is what we just outlined the existing companies have been doing or to disrupt by fundamentally creating something that is dramatically lower cost, more accessible. Right. And serves people who don't have access, which is what you're trying to build. Right. In terms of this guidance and sort of understanding who you are and charting your future. Right. System or tool.And so that. So again, it's sort of. Yes.Diane TavennerSo AI is, the big category can be right.Disruptive Educational Innovation EmergingMichael HornCan be both. Right and, and so but here's like an interesting thing in that which is back to the conversation we had earlier of the education savings accounts world and not just school choice, but education choice and like in many, you know, in 63 different flavors of ice cream or whatever it is. If like that is growing share, I don't know how big it is, but that's going to be a very different distribution channel into market with the eyes potentially helping you right. Figure out like customize for you. Are the existing companies, like, they don't that those aren't their customers today. This could be, I, I guess, Diane, where I'm starting to think is like, if I, if we truly move into that world, right, I as a family can stay in the district school, but like I might be then like losing out on anywhere from 7 to $16,000 in an education savings account. And now all of a sudden it has a cost to me to maybe take this. And so now like we can actually move into a world where there's actual disruptive innovation of schooling, not just disrupting class.Michael HornRight. For the first time in our country's history, since 1930 or 40 or something like that. And then like that opens up all sorts of Disruption opportunities, that's into the market more broadly. Right. Like right.Diane TavennerTechnology I hadn't thought about but this idea that you think families don't put a price tag on like a public education? They do about it and so now when they're staring at well like I get nothing over here if you will, because it's not quantified in a dollar figure. But over here I get to spend some amount of money I had not thought about.Michael HornI don't know, I'm super curious is what I will say. Diane. Right. But like it it if you stop holding public schools hold harmless as most of the ESA, maybe all the ESA still do, at some point that's not going to continue. Right. Like at some point you're going to have to do what they did in charters and take money. At that point if like families are going to have real trade offs that they're wrestling with, I think and making choices for their kids. And if there's a series of services or products or things like that.Right. That like dramatically help you get what you need for your kiddo in the context of your family environment, that opens up like a mind boggling number of possible disruptions in the market, I guess is sort of the bigger point. And AI look, it is not marginal, zero marginal cost, like sort of how we thought of the Internet before, which itself wasn't because of distribution. But like it it is you are able to build stuff with dramatically fewer resources than you were. And so if you're starting from that point and you're not contending with an incumbent that has a huge advantage in terms of distribution in this world, what does that open up? I, I, I think it could open up a lot of things and, and incumbent, both district and incumbent, like large curriculum players. Right. So yeah.Diane TavennerRight. What's coming to my mind right now as we started this podcast, as people have heard us say a thousand times at the beginning of the pandemic, because you and I thought that the, it.Michael HornCould be this opening yeah.Diane TavennerCould be finally the thing that really broke it open and disrupted education as we know it. We both admit we were wrong about that. So here we are, season six, still hoping, but now talking to you about this and this is why I wanted to ask you that question is AI, I mean you seem to be making a case that it could.Michael HornWell I think it's part of the narrative. Right. And so it's like, I actually think in an interesting way though, the pandemic will be part of the narrative too. Because it dramatically increased the number of families consider these options. And I think led to, yes, ESAs, etc were bubbling, but it dramatically increased the openness. Right. Or the desire of families for that adoption. And so I think all these things come together and I, like, let's, I'm not ready to make a prediction, but I think it opens us up to something that could be very different.Um, yeah, like a very different moment. Put it, put it that way.Diane TavennerI think what's interesting about that, when I think about the scope of history and, you know, my kid is a big history buff, and so he's, he always says, like, what gets lost when people look back in history is that they think something happened really fast. But if you really look at the history, it happened over 60, 70 years. And those were kind of painful years for the people who were living through them. Right. There's a lot of, like, churning and disruption and whatnot. But then we look back and we're like, oh, that happened in like a minute. You know, and so I feel like living through, you know.Social Connectivity and DislocationMichael Hornso the dislocation is, it's part of it. It's uncomfortable. Maybe that's the gateway into the Julia question of, like, how will it impact social connectivity? I'll just jump in with my thoughts on that for, for what it's worth, Diane, which is I, so I believe her fear is real. I've seen, but I'm, you know, I've seen some people say, like, really is in response to the episode. I'm, I'm actually not concerned about it emerging, though, in an education use case, as in, I believe the reason sort of the individualized, personalized learning version of the world didn't come to pass and would never come to pass is like, people, like, being with other people and sort of that experience is really important. And a tool, for example, that is giving you career guidance to stay in your lane is going to be really useless if it doesn't connect you to real individuals at some point in the journey. And the reason for that is the way we get jobs is through our network.Diane TavennerRight.Michael HornBy conservative estimates, over 50% of jobs are through your network. As high as 85%. Right. No one really knows, but it's somewhere in that range. So a tool that does not at some point push you out into the real world and connect you to real people in my mind, is not going to work. And so I, I hear Julia's fear of, like, well, we may have the wrong metrics and policy around these things. Yeah. But at some point like people are going to be like, this thing is useless, it is not connecting me to real people.And so I'm less worried in the education use case. But I think she's right. In the commercial use case, these companion bots in effect, right. Anthropomorphic, as she says, identities of AI, you know, are, are, are, are a real concern. And so I think she's right to worry about it. It's the part of the social media narrative into this one that I think we should be worried about. I don't know where it goes. I, I will say I'm, I'm not against those, you know, real world simulations and things of that nature as part of the learning ecosystem.I do think it does ultimately need to connect into the real world of real people as part of that continuum. Right. And so AI, I think can be a really useful tool for creating the individual simulation where you learn to work something in the privacy of your own home. And you, yes, like you are less afraid to ask a question because of social, you know, in my case, like what an I banker do when I was a junior in college. Right. Like I would have done that, use that. And at some point then it has to connect you into the real world in a real world experience. So, like I'm less worried about her thing in the educational context, but in the world of loneliness and social media and AI filling that void, I think that is a very serious concern and it will ripple into our world of education and impact our schools.Diane TavennerYeah, that all resonates with me and where I go with it because, you know, I can't help it as the practitioner is, well, what does that mean for our work? And for me it reinforces the idea that, and what I think the promise of personalized learning is, which is we actually give more time. In a well designed, like elegant design of a personalized learning experience, there is more quality time for people, adults and young people, young people and young people to be engaged in meaningful, authentic work. You know, what I'm going to call know myself work. Like the work, there's nothing more important than knowing who you are. Building a healthy, developing a healthy identity, developing a healthy self. And like this is what we could be doing in education through like, go back to what David Jager talks about, like what do young people care about? They care about status and respect and there's very precise definitions around that, but in their community and in their peer group, and it comes through earned respect. Like I do something that contributes to this group. I make a meaningful, you know, contribution that's respected by others and therefore I am, I'm given sort of status in the group.And that all happens when you're doing project based learning, real world learning, you know, coaching, reflection, self development, that's the stuff we should be doing together in person. And then personalizing the knowledge acquisition and some of the skill development so that I can come and access that and be a part of that group. I think in an elegant personalized learning model. And to me that is prophylactic against the fears of what would happen in the commercial world. And quite frankly, the fears that exist right now around social media and the damage it's done if young people were building healthier identities outside of that world, that's, that's how they can resist, you know, the, the perils of social media.Michael HornIt's well said. I think nothing is inevitable in this part of the landscape. And this is why I think it is so important that the educators, education entrepreneurs in the world that I just sketched out of a world of ESAs are super intentional about creating those opportunities. Those opportunities could be in the school communities where kids are coming together. It could be in connection with the community organizations around you. And I think there's a, you know, there's this big debate going on of like, hey, we need more career technical education schools. They're really expensive to build. And then someone says, oh, but they're cheaper than sending someone to college.That's a misfit for them. And you're like, actually there's like a kind of interesting middle ground of like leverage all the infrastructure around us of employers and companies and community organizations, et cetera, where people can actually plug in. And you're right, like that foundational work that maybe will be a little more solitary around foundational knowledge skills so that you can actually come in there, you know, being able to contribute in some way. But those are all connected and I think we have to be super, super intentional about it to ward off, sort of ward off the dark side of that story.Diane TavennerYeah, we scheduled a long time because we knew we were gonna go long.Michael HornCan I make one more point, Can I make one quick other point on this? Yeah, just I, I, it's one of the thing that Ben Riley hit over and over again was that AI does not in fact think like humans and therefore will be less useful than we think it is because it does not think like us. To me, that's a bit of like a, there's a word for it that I'm not. It's not coming to. Truism is not the right. Is is not the right word. But it's sort of like a. Like, yes. It does not think like us.That doesn't mean it can be. Cannot be useful to us. Right. And so that's the parsing I would love to pull is like, I think it actually can be very useful as long as we understand the intentionality behind it and we're clear around that. Not in a pie in the sky way or not in sort of a technocratic, oh, we just mix in technology with existing systems and models and poof, it magically works. I don't think that will happen. Right. I do think we have to have intentionality with what we're doing, with what the outcome we want from it.Does it map on to learning sciences? Does it map on to how we build creativity? Curiosity, or at least not stamp curiosity out and sort of the schooling forms, if you will, that exist in the future. So that's just like one other thing that I thought was worth reflecting on.Diane TavennerIt is worth it. And I might just say, and hold me to it. This will be my last thing I'll say. But you reminded me that one of the things that struck me from these conversations, and I think it's because we're still really early, but like, everyone is looking at AI through their particular expert lens and we didn't get a lot of, like, broad conversation outside of people's expert lenses, my hypothesis is because it's still really early and people are just trying to make sense of it. And of course, you first make sense of it through how you see the world and what your work is. And certainly that's what we saw with Ben, you know, and his kind of views and. And you know, what felt pretty narrow actually, you know, but then through all of our guests, I think we just saw kind of how it is relevant, specific to them. It's made me try to push myself and think, oh, am I being really narrow? And how can I think more broadly and to be on the lookout for people who are thinking about it outside of their own specific domain.But maybe this is where we need to sit for a while.Michael HornI think to your point, like, there's so much moving every single day, you know, like there was that study out of Harvard on the physics class, right? They had done the flipped physics class, however many years ago. It produced better learning, continued to do so, as I understand they used a tutor for active learning. It. It produced better results than people said. Well, it could be the Hawthorne Effect, right? It could be. It's narrow foundational knowledge. Does it really do this? I don't know. Like, it's promising, and we have a data point on it, and it was a real rct.Let's. Let's watch. Right. Does it solve engagement? No. It doesn't solve all these other questions?Diane TavennerNo.Michael HornOkay, so let's just say what it does, and let's keep thinking about it. No silver bullets. And it made me so appreciative of the series we've done here because I didn't know what we would learn from our guests. I feel like I took something away from every single one of them that altered how I think about the landscape here in meaningful ways.Diane TavennerI completely agree. And we sort of bring our processing session to a close. I will say I'm very grateful for, it stoked my curiosity and, you know, curiosity had been sort of sitting there at the top of the building blocks, and, you know, and I'm like, curiosity is back, and this is exciting. And so who knows where we're gonna go with this? The only thing we know is we're gonna go for one more show. It'll be our season closer this year where we're gonna take all the stuff we've just processed and see if we can distill it into some, you know, big headlines, big takeaways, you know, and.Michael Hornwe'll wish us luck.Diane TavennerYeah, exactly. Exactly. Before we wrap, what have you been reading? Listening to, watching.AI Amplifying Essential SkillsMichael HornOh, can I do reading? I polished off Stephen Kosslyn’s Learning to Flourish in the Age of AI. So it's relevant. Talks about how AI can, in effect, be an ample cognitive amplifier loop, he calls it, to the skills that are still important at a headline level. You know, critical thinking, communication, emotional intelligence. He puts in there. And then Angela Jackson's the Win Win Workplace. So those are my two that I have finished.Diane TavennerSo we're sort of falling into our oldest patterns where you're reading really smart and intelligent books. And I'm. I'm very. I'm blowing through Madeline Miller as I read Circe. And now I'm doing Song of Achilles in our run up to Greece. And here's what I will say. Here's. Here's the connection of Circe.I mean, I just thought it was such an interesting, beautiful book about a female coming into herself and her identity and identity development, development as a. As a young woman and then a mother, and. And it's just fun and fast, and I enjoyed it.That is awesome. Love ending it there. And, you know, look, if AI Is really efficient, we'll have more time to do the reading around humanity that we should be doing all along. So let's leave it there. Can't wait to be in person with you for our final episode of the season. And we missed a bunch. We know it. Send us all your hate mail so we can get smarter.Michael HornWe appreciate you all, and we'll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools and now a venture partner at Equal Opportunity Ventures, joined me to talk about her own unexpected journey to venture capital and how she’s found reasons for hope and optimism among entrepreneurs. We also discussed EO Ventures’ unique thesis for accelerating economic mobility through market-driven solutions and highlighted some of their investments. Rhee also reflected on changing attitudes toward work among young people, which I found very interesting—as well as the importance of measurable social impact.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you're joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose, which unfortunately is not the world we are living in today, but to help us think through how we can better get there and talk about some of her moves to do so. I'm delighted. We have a very special guest today, Michelle Rhee, venture partner at EO Ventures. And I'm sure many of you know her as the former chancellor of Washington, D.C. Public Schools, of course. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. Great to see you.Michelle RheeThank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.Michael HornNo, I'm, I'm, I'm delighted to talk about, frankly, this new chapter, relatively speaking, of your career with EO Ventures, a venture firm that supports some really interesting entrepreneurs and portfolio companies. Maybe let's start there. Just what is EO Ventures and talk about your path there. Because obviously after you left D.C. Public Schools, you started Students First, you had a long run there, and then have taken a couple other steps. But I think people would be curious why venture capital and why into this step?Michelle RheeAbsolutely. So it's been a circuitous path. And certainly if you had have told me, you know, two decades ago that I was going to end up being a venture capitalist, I would have told you that you were crazy because this is not sort of the obvious next career choice. But, you know, so I, after D.C. Public Schools, I started Students First, which was a political advocacy organization focused on education and education reform. And after spending a few years at Students First, I actually left the education arena completely. I really felt like I was not being helpful in the education conversation because it had, in my opinion, become so polarized and divisive. And I really felt like me being in the conversations was not helping.So I completely left education. About a little over four years ago, I co founded a tech startup with a colleague of mine and it was called BuildWithin. And it was not in the education space. It was actually in the workforce arena. BuildWithin is a software platform that helps employers to start and manage apprenticeship programs. So even though it wasn't in education, there was sort of a very obvious connection into workforce development and so stayed with that company for a number of years. And that was my first foray into like startup land, which was so different from anything that I had ever experienced before.And I was super fortunate in that my co-founder, Ximena Hartsock was a serial founder. And so she kind of taught me the ropes and made sure that the organization and company was being set up well. But after that I left BuildWithin and for a little while was just kind of living my best housewife life for a few months. And then got a call from Roland Fryer. So Roland and I had known each other since my DC days. You know, I met him when he was a 27-year old newly tenured professor.Michael HornSay newly genius tenured professor.Michelle RheeYeah, exactly. So he was the youngest black tenure professor ever at Harvard at the ripe old age of 27. And that's when I met him. And he sort of, he had called me at the tail end of my time with BuildWithin and he's like, I didn't know you had a startup. Like I have a venture firm, we want to write you a check, you know, that sort of thing. And after I left BuildWithin, and he was like, that's great because now you can come on board and join us. And I said, doing what, sir? I don't know anything about the venture capital world. And he's like, we just raised $100 million third fund and we'd love you to come on board and run a fund within the fund that is focused on education investments.To which I promptly said, no, thank you, I'm out of education. I love being out, I never want to get back in. And I said, well, maybe something having to do with workforce development. He was like, sure, come on board, do whatever you want. Yeah. And it was, that's such an odd thing to say, but it's very on brand for Roland. And then I talked to Bill Hellman. So Bill is the co-founder of EO Ventures and he spent 35 years at Greylock, 15 of those as managing director.And I had not met Bill before. And so in our first conversation together, I said, I don't understand why you want me for this job. I said, I don't know anything about investing, I've never done it before. Surely you can find somebody who's more qualified than me. And he said to me, he's like, you know, yes, there's venture stuff that you're going to have to learn. He's like, but it's, it's, you know, you're smart, you can figure it out. He said, really this is a business about picking people and you know how to do that. And I just found it so interesting.It's so refreshing. That somebody with the storied sort of, you know, career in venture like, Bill would think that an old woman like me could learn how to do something new and do. Do it well. Right. So I was intrigued by both of them and, and their confidence that I would be able to do this. And so I was like, all right, I'll.I'll give it a shot. And so I'm. I've been doing this for about 10 months now, and I have to say that I love it. I. Absolutely. Every job that I've ever had, I always knew that I was doing, like, I'm just, you know, doing good for the world. Right.And hoping, hopefully making it a better place. But this is the first job that I've ever had that is genuinely so much fun. And every day I wake up and I almost feel guilty. I'm like, are you supposed to have this much fun when you're working? So it's been a fantastic experience so far.Michael HornThat's amazing. I'm. I'm sure this is off. This is with my Job Moves hat on at the moment. Like, what about the job is really lighting a fire under you that you wake up every day energized, and I've got to keep doing this. Like, what are the sets of things you get to do that you're like, wow, this. This is really energizing me.Michelle RheeWell, first of all, on day three, being on the job, Roland had me sit in on the board meeting of one of our education portfolio companies. And I came out of that meeting, I was like, oh, I need to talk to him about this. I need to introduce that person. And I came out of the meeting and I was like, I guess I have to do education stuff. And Roland was like,Michael HornHook, line and sinker.Optimism in Education InnovationMichelle RheeYep. Yeah. So I, you know, I am in education, but what I have found to be sort of most fascinating about the work is that I got to a place in education, quite frankly, where I had become a curmudgeon. I was like, you know, what? We actually know in this country what we need to do, and we just refuse to do it. And I don't know that anything is ever going to change. And so I was pretty pessimistic about what the possibilities were to fundamentally change the education landscape, the public education landscape in this country. And I find that now, I mean, what better job could you have that every day I get to meet with people who are pitching me and they feel like they're going to change the world and make it a better place through this idea that they have. And you know, sometimes I'm like, love the idea, not sure about the founder.Sometimes I'm like, oh, amazing founder. I'm not sure about the idea. Right. But every now and again I meet people who I genuinely think, oh my goodness, like you could seriously change the game. And it's just incredibly inspiring and it has turned me into an optimist again.Michael HornThat's awesome. I mean, I think that's the. It's interesting. You're probably in a very similar place to me at the moment in terms of outlook on K12 education, which is kind of pessimistic about the changing the existing system. But I see all these things coming from the outside and the entrepreneurs and I know you all have Kaipod learning in your portfolio and it does make me optimistic about this movement that's growing on these fringes that's sort of outside, if you will, the traditional discourse of ed reform. And so I'm sort of curious. You have Kaipod learning, like what's the basic hypothesis certainly behind that investment, but maybe more broadly in the fund. Right.Like what sorts of things are you guys looking to back?Michelle RheeYeah. So the thesis of the firm is that market forces can significantly accelerate the economic mobility of the populations that we're focused on when done in the right way. So as long as a company aligns with that thesis, we're sector agnostic. We have portfolio companies in housing, healthcare, govtech, fintech, education, workforce and, and more. And so. And we also have something called the social money multiplier. This is a model that Roland came up with which basically allows the firm to, to, to put real sort of measurement around are the investments that we are making are, are they having an impact on society that, that we would hope so.Kaipod: Empowering Microschool MovementMichelle RheeKaipod is an investment and a portfolio company that I have had the good fortune of getting to lean in a bit on. And for some folks, I think they'd think, well, microschools, how much impact could they have? But I think that when Amar and Roland first met, Roland really first of all loved Amar because he's amazing founder, but he also saw the potential for the microschool movement to not just sort of be relegated to the fringes of oh, these are people who would normally homeschool their kids, et cetera. They really together saw the potential to serve a broader population and specifically our target population of low income folks of color. And that has 100% panned out over the last few years with Kaipod. But I was fascinated because Amar invited me onto a webinar that they had for people who were interested in starting microschools. And what I have found really interesting is that there are a ton of educators out there, teachers who for whatever reason have become frustrated by, you know, I don't know if it's working in a district bureaucracy or you know, or they're just looking for something new. They've always wanted to be an entrepreneur as an example and have never really been able to figure out how could I make the leap from education into entrepreneurship. And KaiPod and microschools actually enable people to make that transition.So I was on this webinar with all these folks, many probably the majority of whom were educators, teachers who were thinking about making the leap into starting a microschool. And it was really just amazing to hear from those folks, hear their stories, to kind of see them struggling through like do I want to take this kind of risk? Right. Because in many ways educators aren't always risk seekers. Right. Some of are very risk averse people, but having the opportunity to move into something like this but where they can really leverage their expertise and their experiences and their knowledge base but actually, but do something different and allow them to kind of control their own destiny. Right. It was really encouraging to be on that call and to see so many people who were interested in that. And I think this is, you know, oftentimes I always tell people that folks in this country are looking for like the silver bullet solution.The one thing that's going to change public education and face public education. And I don't think it's ever going to be one magical thing. I think it's, you know, instead of one 100% solution, it's probably 50 2% solutions. But I really feel like the microschool movement could play a big part in this. So that's one of the reasons why we're super excited about KaiPod.Michael HornYeah, you're echoing a lot that gets me excited about them as well in terms of bringing in and I think it's something that people don't understand how these schools are started by educators. Like right. They are on the front lines, they are sick of what they had and they want something different in many cases. And so this is a way for them to do. So what else are you all in the education portfolio or are things that you are excited about at the moment that get you excited about the entrepreneurs or ideas that are coming your way?Michelle RheeYeah, so super excited about a few of our portfolio companies. One is called EdLight. That is a company that is really focused on utilizing AI to analyze student work and be able to sort of take that analysis and feed it back into the teacher and the planning process. So, very excited about that. We have a company that we're incubating within the firm called Manta. And that is a data analysis platform that school districts, charters, nonprofits, foundations are using. And it's basically like having a data scientist in your pocket. And so all of this sort of data analysis work that has consumed lots of organizations, a lot of their resources and time now is like made incredibly easy.So we're excited about that one. And then, you know, we as a firm are really focused on workforce development and knowing and seeing all the data about the fact that young people these days, fewer and fewer of them think that college is for them and they think they want to go straight into the workforce. But we think there is a lack of really sort of defined career paths out there. And so we're very excited about Stepful, which is another portfolio company of ours and Stepful started because they, they, they started training phlebotomists. Basically what they did was they took what traditionally was a two year like community college program and they condensed it into four months. They made the vast majority of it asynchronous and virtual so people could, you know, do their job at Starbucks during the day, come home, make dinner for their family, put their kids to bed, and then sort of do their coursework in the evening. And it's, it's been exciting for us because they are taking folks who largely before were like in these minimum wage service industry jobs through four months.With Stepful, they are learning how to become phlebotomists and nursing assistants and pharma techs and then moving into these jobs where they can get a starting salary of say $70,000 a year. So it's great in terms of their economic mobility. But what Stepful has figured out, which a lot of boot camps and other folks couldn't, is they really have these unbelievable relationships with employers, hospitals, labs, doctors, offices, et cetera. Right? Everybody needs a phlebotomist. And so you're pretty much guaranteed a job when you finish the Stepful training. And so that has been an amazing portfolio company for us. And we're really trying to figure out could that model be replicated in other industries and for other specific job classifications because it's been so successful. The employers are thrilled, the participants are, are, are really happy.And you know, from a business and investment standpoint, we couldn't be more thrilled.Michael HornThat's super interesting. And frankly, I mean, all the workforce development stuff is interesting in that you did the apprenticeship built within as well. And you're. I was just on a conversation around this that, you know, the number of high school graduates going on to college has dropped significantly down to 62% at last count from a high of roughly 70. And the interesting thing to me is that we don't really know what those individuals are doing. We don't have narratives around what are they finding pathways and so forth. And so it's sort of a lot of one off anecdotal things, but we know apprenticeships probably are part of the solution.Again, to your point, there's not a silver bullet here either. I'm just curious, like your sense of, as you think of the map of things that could help those individuals, what else are you excited about in that workforce development space or maybe churning over that we ought to keep an eye on?Michelle RheeYeah. So, I mean, I learned this when I was at BuildWithin that, you know, this notion that kids are going to go to school for 16 years and learn, learn, learn, and then suddenly they're going to go to work and do right. It was such, it's such an antiquated notion. First of all, there are so many new job classifications out there right now that there are no, you know, university kind of programs of study. Right. That would link to that. And, and so as educators, we know actually that the most effective way for someone to gain skills and knowledge is for them to be learning and doing kind of simultaneously. And that's what the apprenticeship model allows for.And so we saw that firsthand at BuildWithin and In. In occupations that people wouldn't necessarily think. Right. When people thought about apprenticeships when we first started Build within, people automatically thought, oh, this is like trades. Which is, you know, they utilize the apprenticeship model, which is great. But, but there are, I mean, through BuildWithin, it was, you know, medical assistants, it was teachers going through teacher apprenticeships.Evolving Perceptions of Work Among YouthMichelle RheeI mean, there was just such a broad range of professions that were well suited for the apprenticeship model that people just didn't really think of. I think though, you know, as we think about the workforce development space at Build within, one of the things that I. We're sort of noodling on, which is interesting, is that I think that people are missing the boat on just how young people are thinking about work generally these days. I think it's very different. We have another portfolio company called JobGet and JobGet is sort of like the job sort of placement site for the hourly wage employees. And one of the things that the JobGet folks told me was that a lot of people come onto the platform and they say, I want to work on these days in, during these particular shifts. Right. And they don't really care a ton about like, what the, what the work is.Right. They want it to fit into their lifestyle. And it's clear that those folks, like, they need income, right. They got to pay the bills, they gotta have something to eat. But I think there's also something else out there that is, you know, more meaningful to them that they want to spend the majority of their time on potentially. Right. And I don't think that us old people have really dug into this and really understood, like, how is the next generation thinking about work? And you know, is it just work is a means to, you know, survive and have the money that you need to put a roof over your head and food in your mouth versus I think when we were younger, we thought, oh, you have to have a job that you feel passionate about and that you love, you know, going to every day, that sort of thing.Like, are those notions changing? So I, I want to make sure that we as a society are not like missing the boat on that because is that going to impact things like, you know, worker productivity and like, motivation? And how do we, how do we make sure that people, you know, don't see their passions and their work as two different things? I actually think it's important for those things to be married.Michael HornYeah, it's super interesting you bring that up because it's something we found in the research for Job Moves as well. Right. Which is that for some people, purpose is met through work, but for other people, work is a conduit for them to get purpose in their lives, not at work. Right. And so it's sort of funny. I think you're right. It's like a dichotomy for those of us who want all those things to converge in neat ways in their lives, as certainly I have as well. But it's definitely a shift.Balancing Social Impact and VC ReturnsMichael HornI want to shift with the remaining time we have. You know, Roland Fryer, you mentioned social impact and I'm sure he's the one that came up with the formula to help you all think about that and measure it. I'll never forget when I saw him at Milken years ago, at this point, probably 15 years ago or more, and he talked about the heart test in a mocking way in education, can you feel the good we're doing and saying, no, we have to measure this. And to be brutally honest, I'd love to hear you reflect on how that works,you know, actually measuring impact from the companies you all invest in squares with the returns as a VC firm that you're looking for. And what are your investors, you know, the limited partners, like what do they expect on the other side? Do you guys have longer time horizons? Are you playing with that so that you sort of get out of the unicorn or bust mindset of some VCs or how do you balance these two sides of the equation?Michelle RheeYeah, it's interesting. Roland has a very specific point of view on this which will not be a surprise right because we only will consider an investment in a company if they are impacting social mobility and economic mobility in some way. Roland always says, like we are not double bottom line investors because he believes that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes that makes people think, oh you, there's a trade off to be made here, right? Sometimes sacrifice your financial gains because you want to, you know, have that impact. And he sees the work that EOV is doing as no. The first hurdle is are you going to move economic mobility for our populations? Right. And because the answer to that has to be yes in order to qualify for an investment. He's like, we are single bottom line investors and that single bottom line is the economic returns. And we're just then, so we drive at those.Social Money Multiplier Impact ModelMichelle RheeAnd because of our thesis, right, we know that the impact is going to be there. But we, you know, as you would imagine with Roland, he's very, he's very disciplined about making sure that we're, we're measuring everything. So that social money multiplier is a model that he came up with. It's like, how much are we investing? How many people are being impacted by this particular company and in what, what way? Like how, how, what does that multiplier look like for this particular company given what they are doing? And so our portfolio companies are required to set targets around SMM to report against those. Right And we look at those just like we look at that metric, just like we do all of our other metrics in the company. So, you know, I think that for us, Bill and Roland very much think that when founders are taking on some of society's biggest and most intractable issues with the right solutions, you are going to you know, you don't have to compromise. You're going to see those incredible financial returns and the impact is going to be there as well.Michael HornLove things that break trade offs because that's when we have opportunity in the world. So Michelle, huge thanks for joining us for talking through the work, for doing the work that you are doing for getting sucked back in a little bit into the education world although maybe not in the fractious policy craziness that divides and actually with the entrepreneurs that just putting their heads down making an impact really appreciate it.Michelle RheeAbsolutely and thank you for everything that you're doing. I think talking about this work and making sure that we're encouraging more people to start and found companies is critically important. So thanks.Michael HornWell I hope everyone takes a look at EO Ventures website and checks it out. If you're an entrepreneur and you're making an impact in this way definitely, definitely reach out. And Michelle thank you and for all of you tuning in we will be back next time on the Future of Education.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. 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Lukas Barwinski-Brown, CEO of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, joined me on this episode. For those who don’t know, Lang Lang stands apart as one of the premier pianists in the world. Lukas shared his unexpected journey to leading the foundation and discussed its mission to ensure that music education is accessible to all children, regardless of their background. Lukas emphasized the importance of music education in developing children's cognitive skills and potential and highlighted the foundation's goal to create a lasting impact on both young musicians and communities in need.And you’ll be really interested to hear just how they set up the program so that children can be part of a group but learn at a personalized pace. That’s something that will ring a bell to those who watched this past episode of the Future of Education where I used music to illustrate the absurdity of our lock-step traditional school system.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and you're joining the show where we are 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 how we get there today, I'm delighted we have Lukas Barwinski Brown. He's the CEO of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. If folks don't.In my humble opinion, Lang Lang is the greatest living pianist at the moment. And Lukas leads the foundation and it is just a thrill to have you. Lukas, thanks so much for being here.Lukas Barwinski-BrownThank you very much for inviting me. I am very, very honored and very happy.Michael HornWell, I am delighted as well as listeners know, I was an aspiring pianist at one point, so I love highlighting music education. Before we get into the work of the foundation, I would just love to hear about your own personal journey to the work. You know, how does one get to become president of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation? Not that this former pianist is jealous or anything like that, but I would just love to hear about your journey.Lukas Barwinski-BrownYeah, the journey was practically my life journey. It was very, very full of surprise and very unexpected, to be honest. And the, the same, the same way I, I, totally unexpected. I practically, am, I landed here in the USA and everything has started, I think I will say around 25 years ago when I met Lang Lang and as a head of Universal Music in Austria, so I was running Universal Music in Austria, classic and jazz and, and I met this young guy, nobody know him. He was like, this was not the Lang Lang from today. This was really a different Lang Lang. Very young, very, very inexperienced. And we became really a very close friend. And this friendship practically was cherished, you know, for many years.And, one day, I will never forget this, this was my birthday. And he came to celebrate my birthday with his mom in Vienna. And she was, all the time, half of the dinner, he was talking with him, his mom in Chinese and using all the time my name. And so I was like, what the hell is going on? Why, what are you talking about? And he said, please, can you come to New York and run my foundation?Michael HornOh, wow.Lukas Barwinski-BrownAnd yeah, this was like, this was my reaction. Exactly. Wow. And we spoke very, very often about the foundation before and I was always pushing him to do the foundation because, I think and I believe that foundation can be really his very big legacy. And you know, and then unexpectedly, he asked me to run this. And as crazy as I am, you know, I quit my job, I sold my house and I move over the ocean and, and came to New York. And without no experience and not knowing really what I am going to do.And then I decided to exactly create this foundation together with him so that everybody will understand what we are doing. Especially I will understand what I am doing. And this is how this was the beginning and this is already 15 years ago.Michael HornUnbelievable. So I want to get into the work itself. It's obviously very authentic to who you are, to who Lang Lang is, to his wife is, I might add, professionally. The quote that you all have is, we believe that all children should have access to music and music education regardless of their background or circumstances. You all work across geographies though we'll talk about the US perhaps in a moment, but also Europe, China. So tell us about the nature of the work of the foundation itself.Music Education's Essential Impact on KidsLukas Barwinski-BrownYeah. The mission is not only the slogan. It is exactly what we believe. And we believe practically and we are working on this and believe every day. And we believe that music education is really very important in children's lives. And also this is what I try to emphasize that music and learning music and music education is not just the hobby. It is not that we are teaching those kids how to play piano or how to sing or how to play guitar. We believe and this also scientists, scientific already proven that the children who are exposed to music and music education the brain is totally different constraint than the children who are not.And so saying that those kids who are in our programs and we believe that we prepare them for the better academically life and as you probably know, our programs are in very disadvantage neighborhoods and we are going to those who need those program. So saying that we believe that we kind of like we are opening a better path for the future for those kids to, to, to finish the school and to, to, to go to the colleges and to make the better education for them.Michael HornYeah. And I love this. Not only changing the brain, but also developing, you know, executive function skills, et cetera, right through music that pervades the rest of their life. Is the foundation is the work that you do in these communities. Is it you giving grants to music educators or is it you all running specific programs? How does it work on the ground?Lukas Barwinski-BrownThe grants will be the easiest way and we don't like the easy way. We created programs and the main, two main programs are practically addressed to totally two different groups, groups of people. The one is the education program which we call Keys of Inspiration. And this program is supporting the public Title One schools in the across the country. And the second program is kind of like 180 degrees on the other side is the Young Scholars program in which we are supporting the super talented kids, the, I am always saying, those, you know, 10, 11, 12 years old who practically can play already with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall.So, you know, so those two diametrically different programs, you know, practically are, cover the 360 degrees. Because here you have this, the kids in needs and here you have those, those talented. And both groups are really, you know, very important for us. So asking, answering your question, no, we are not giving grants in either of these programs. So what we are doing, for example, for the Keys of Inspiration, it is also the most expensive program in the foundation. We are bringing to the school a piano lab. So when I create this program, I was thinking, how is this possible that the entire class of 30 kids can learn piano? You know, piano usually is one to one, one professor, one kid. Otherwise, you know, the professor will make the suicide after, you know, 10 minutes of everybody are bumping on the pianos.Right? So I was like thinking, you know, how is this possible? What, what can we do? How is this? Because we cannot of course making this one to one piano lessons in the public school schools. So I was thinking about how I learned languages. I was going to the piano, to the language labs and everybody, you know, the entire class was sitting with their headphones that they were learning the language and they said, this can be exactly the same way with the piano. And I contacted Roland, the very, you know, fantastic piano producer, and we were discussing this and they said, yeah, this is a fantastic idea. Why are we not doing this? We can build a piano lab where 30 kids are sitting front of the keyboards and everyone has own and they are connected to each other. They have the headphones and they can play. And this will be exactly the one class get the piano lessons in one hour. And this is how we created practically the Keys of Inspiration.And when we are supporting the schools, we are bringing the keyboards, we are bringing the headphones, we are bringing the benches and learning materials and books, etc. Etc. We are also giving the support for the teachers and we are making the teacher training. And I think the biggest difference between us and you know, Michael, everybody in America has a foundation, right? So there are millions of foundation. But the biggest difference between us and those millions is that we are in the curriculum of every school. So we are not after school program, we are not preschool program or Sunday school program. We are exactly taking seriously as math, science or history. So this is, let's say spending what we are investing in the school.And one of my co-worker, he made a calculation which I practically never did it, you know, and maybe this will be interesting for you. So Dan, who is also a teacher in, in one of our schools in Boston, he said, you know, did you think how much value you are bringing to the community with your piano labs? And I said, I, you know, I hope a lot, but, but I never make the any calculation, right? So he said to me, listen, average cost of a piano lesson is like around $50, right? So when you are going to get the piano lessons, you are paying, grab the 50 bucks. And so in the school, in the public schools, they have a 36 weeks of instruction, right? So average in our school, let's say today, because of course we are progressing. So in the time, in the few years, you know, the entire school is learning the program, let's say we are taking the first three years of the program. We are talking about 400 students, right? So he made the calculation and he said okay, $50, 36 weeks, 400 students, it brings you to over $600,000.Michael HornWow.Foundation's Community ImpactLukas Barwinski-BrownSo this is, this is the value which we as a foundation are bringing to the community, to the school community. And of course we can make this even further. And when we say we have now 100 schools and as you know, the $60 is almost like $60 million annually, what we are bringing practically back to the community. So what the, this is the value of the program. And so this is how our grants are working. The same is with the Young Scholars. The Young Scholars. We are taking those kids and we help them to develop the artistry because of course they are in the fantastic schools, they have fantastic piano teacher.But yesterday for example, I spent the entire day watching the master classes which we organized here in New York. So we are sending them to the festival, to the competitions. We have created piano academies in Beijing, in Cleveland and in Cambridge where we are sending all those kids with, and you know, to, to make the exchange with the best professors of piano, you know, which you can get it. So this, this is the money where we are spending. We are not giving the 500 in the hand and say what you want, but, you know, I think this is much more important.Michael HornYeah. So I, there's a number. I'm buzzing with numbers of questions right now, but I want to stay with the let's do the Young Scholars program first. Just. It's interesting to me because when I was in middle school, I competed in an international Chinese music competition. And there was a young Chinese woman who blew us all away in the competition. And then I remember my grandparents being so blown away by her that they sponsored her to come to America and study at Juilliard through the rest of the time. And so I have a lot of excitement, I guess, for what you're doing for these people.Are, are these individuals, when you identify these young scholars, these talented people, are, are, you know, are they from the same demographic as the Keys for Inspiration or is it anyone when, when you find these people and send them to these incredible academies?Lukas Barwinski-BrownThis program is open for everybody.Michael HornOkay.Lukas Barwinski-BrownYeah, the program is open to everybody and it's open for the entire world. Yeah, it is open for entire world. So every three years now I have extended. Before it was two years. Now I extended to the third year. So every three years we are opening the application process practically for everyone. Everyone who is not older than 16, 17 years old can apply. And you are sending the two videos.The one video is where you are playing and the one video is when you are talking. So we will know also, you know, your personality. You know, and then we have agreements from very esteemed professors like, you know, we have professors from Juilliard here in America and Cleveland Institute of Music. We have professors from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. We have professors from Royal College of Music in London. So those professors, they are practically selecting the finalist.And, now we have created also like three halves which we have the Asian, Asian students, you know, like China, Japan, Korea, when we are doing with them. Then we have the, you know, European and they had like the rest of the world, we have here in the States. And, and this is, this is something what makes me very, very proud because, you know, like when I know those kids when they were 10, and we have a lot, a lot of alumni. And now, now I see that the guy is 20 and play with the orchestra and then winning the festivals and, and next week, one of my really, like, son, he's calling me dad, you know, Clayton Stevenson, he's getting the, the, the Medal of Excellence in, in, in, in Washington, D.C. you know. So this makes you so proud, you know, and they are finishing Curtis and Juilliard and Harvard and Columbia and you know, playing all over the places. And, it is really very rewarding program.Educating: A Rewarding ExperienceLukas Barwinski-BrownIt's very rewarding. And, and then you have, on the other side, you have, you know, you know, those elementary school kids, you know, and when you are going there and they welcome you and they are so proud because they never see the piano from close and you know, and they are starting with one finger, you know, and, and then next year you are coming to the school and they play already, you know, maybe with one hand or with the five fingers, you know. So this makes you really, this is exactly, you know, Michael, my entire life I was working in corporations. I was working, you know, in Polygram probably you know, Polygram from the previous times, you know, the biggest, you know, record company. So Polygram, then Universal, then Phillips Classic, you know, etc, etc Virgin. And I was making somebody more richer and richer. And now for the first time and as you know, since 15 years I am giving back and I feel so rewarded. I feel so happy when I'm going to those schools, when I see my young scholars and, and, and you know, this is something what I never thought I will, I will witness and this makes me probably so very happy person.Michael HornSo I want to dig in now to this Keys of Inspiration program where you've outfitted these piano labs with Roland. I have a Roland keyboard right over there. I love the electric instruments that they make. It's a beautiful piano sound. The question I would love to know is, I mean you're building the curriculum. They have the headphones on so they're able to play. What does the class look like? Are they able to move at their own pace as they, someone perhaps masters, you know, two hands before someone else masters, you know, just the five fingers. Do you give that kind of personalization? Are you helping teachers learn how to do that?Lukas Barwinski-BrownYes. So this year we switched from Roland. We switched to another company. Okay. Which I found it which produced the Smart pianos. So this is kind of like, like step up of this what we did, you know, in the past few years. So the One Piano. This is the name of the piano, the one Piano.The Smart Piano has integrated also a software. So now our classroom looks really like from 21st century. And I think kids are love it because you know, now kids are probably much more advanced than we are with all this telephone and play games and everything, you know. So now that every piano, every instrument has also a screen. And the screen is connected automatically to the piano. And in this screen you have already the software which is practically an animated curriculum which we have created with Royal College of Music in Toronto. So it is kind of like because they are kids, we are going to the second graders, second, third, fourth grader, you know, they are kids we want to make and this is practically the philosophy of Lang Lang. And he wants always to make happy children learning the piano.So he wants to make this happy moments when you are coming to the piano labs. And by the way, the program in China, here we call Keys of Inspiration. In China they call this program Happy Kids. So this is exactly the philosophy. It is like the kids are supposed to be happy when they play, when they learn. They don't know even when they learn and how they learn. They learn, right? Because learning by playing. And this is exactly, this is what we want.Of course it is very serious curriculum. Of course they are making the progress. Of course it is, you know, it is learning the music and of course this, learning the theory and you know, and this is what I said. I'm always saying they don't need to, to, to play Bach and Schumann. You know, they can also play, you know, John Legend and Beyonce as long they know how to read their score. You know. So this is, this is, this is exactly the, the, the, the, the case. And, now they are sitting in this room.Music Education VisualizationLukas Barwinski-BrownIt is a beautiful, you know, like picture when you are coming and you see those pianos with the screens and then you have a main kind of like, like conductor is that the teacher and the teacher is connected to every single kid and he see and he heard or she heard the progress of the, of the kids and you know, and you can individualize, you can say Michael, you play this because I heard that you struggle with, you know, with the half note. Right? And then you know, Mika, you know, will play for example, something different because she's already a little bit farther than Michael. Right. So they can, they can also personalize this. And of course you can also you know, make kind of like little bit show and you take the headphones off and you can play entire class.Michael HornWow. Yeah, so you learn a little bit of performance then.Lukas Barwinski-BrownYeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, and the kids are very proud and very, you know, they even with, with one finger. But they are very happy, you know. You know they play you know like.Michael HornWell, they're making progress. It's a beautiful thing. Let me ask, let me ask this question. Yeah, let me ask this question which is. Um. I think I read somewhere that the classes, you all say that they should be twice a week or something like that. Is that what you've done in places like Boston? And how, how can we make that everywhere? Because at least when I grew up and my kids school, right now I remember music class was once a week. If we're being honest.We didn't really learn much. It was more about exposure. It wasn't really about the learning. How do we, how do we get to where you all more systematically across our schools?Lukas Barwinski-BrownThe two weeks is of course a dream and I, I'm. I'm very, very proud because most of our schools have a two weeks program. So you know why we started and why program, right? It is because the, the first and you know this, the, the best. You know, the first what is kicked out of the school is the music. When the principals, they have the choice, you know, sport or music or something, you know, they will always choose the sport, never the music. So this is why we say, you know this is really. It is a lot big need here in the country. And I realize not in the, in this is not only the, the you know, the America, you know situation this practically everywhere.And so to you know, I have a very big sentiment to, to Boston because Boston practically was the birth place of Keys of Inspiration. And I tell you that very, very short. I was warning you that I'm talking a lot.Michael HornNo, this is great.Lukas Barwinski-BrownYeah. So you know, when we decided and we were so excited, Lang Lang and I that we want to go to the public schools in you know and, and bring our program and, and, and, and teach the music. Everybody, everybody laughed us out. Everybody. This was not even the best friend. Everybody said that we are crazy. And they said, you know, you are Chinese, you are Polish, Austrian. You don't know what you are talking about.You know. You know the public school system in America is so complicated and, and you know, every principal is like the king of the kingdom and you know, you cannot do anything with them. Forget it. Why you are not making some, you know, claps or whatever. You know, the kids maybe on Saturday can come and, and I look at Lang Lang and I said hell no, I don't want this. You know, we have this. No, I want to go to this, to the public schools. And then I was in Boston.He has a concert in Boston. And I met people from Boston Arts Academy. And, and you know, and Mr. Hold and you know, and, and I, I told them, I said listen, this is my dream. This is a piano lab. You know, we can build a piano lab. This will be crazy. You know, this entire class is learning this with headphones.And they said we love it. And they connected me with Orchard Garden. Yeah. This was our first schools in Boston, you know, public school, you know, elementary school. And they install also a piano lab in the public. In the Boston Arts Academy. And this was for me, Michael, the moment when I started to believe in this program.Global School Support ExpansionLukas Barwinski-BrownBecause I said when one school got it and, and making, then I will go and I will do really a lot. I, I, there's no. Nobody can, can stop me. And, Ariela, my education director, she said me, you know, two days ago that we just achieved 100 schools in America. You know, we support hundred schools. So, this is, you know, it makes me really proud about this, and I'm really very happy about this. And, we have 150 schools in China and we have now expanded the program to Europe. And so practically when you.And I'm always the conservative, you know, mathematician, I'm always taking only that the first three years. I'm not, you know, some of the schools they have already programmed for 10 years or for the eight years. So you can multiply this. But let's say today on, on Friday, you know, over 180000 kids learning our program in different schools. So you know, from the first school in Boston, you know, to those school across the countries, it is something very special.Michael HornThat's wonderful. Well, one of the times when you were in Boston, this is where I live. So I'm gonna have to come with you and, and see this in person because it just sounds amazing what you've created and frankly it sounds like a model not just for music education, but in terms of the progress and delight for kids that all of their classes perhaps could learn from and take some tips from how you've built this curriculum for each individual child and teacher and support them all. It's really something.Lukas Barwinski-BrownYeah, yeah, it is. And you know, it is showing you also that you are on the right path. You know, it shows you there is a need. You know, somebody I remember a few years ago was asking me why we have only, let's say, 80 schools and not 800 or 8,000. And I'm saying. And I answer, and I said, listen, you know, the program at least cost me $50,000 per school, right? We are bringing every equipment. We are bringing, like, 30 pianos, etc. Etc.I said, if I will do like other foundations are doing and bring one keyboard to the school, I will have already 5,000 schools.Michael HornRight? But the impact would not be what it is.Lang Lang's Music EducationLukas Barwinski-BrownExactly. This is not what we wanted, you know, so some, Some other foundations, they are, you know, they bring one guitar to their school and they said, oh, we support music, right? But, you know, this is not what we believe, we at the Lang Lang foundation, we believe really that it has to be a genuine, you know, genuine teaching.This has to be really taken seriously. And this is how we believe in this program.Michael HornI love it. Lukas, thank you so much for coming on the future of Education to describe not just the commitment, but then the actual impact and the depth of that. And I think you've created a model that I hope a lot of folks learn from, and I'm excited to spotlight. So thank you so much.Lukas Barwinski-BrownThank you so very much, Michael, for inviting me. And if you want to have a, you know, talking companion, I am always for you.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

In this episode of Class Disrupted, Diane Tavenner and I chat with Rebecca Winthrop, a senior fellow and director at the Brookings Institution, about the impact of AI on education. The conversation kicks off by highlighting Rebecca's idea of a premortem approach, which involves anticipating the negative impacts of AI before they occur and strategizing ways to mitigate these risks. We identify key concerns such as cognitive offloading, manipulation, and the effects on socialization and consider how this technology might catalyze a rethinking of the purpose of education.Rebecca is also the coauthor of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better with Jenny Anderson, who writes the Substack How to Be Brave .Michael HornHi everyone, this is Michael Horn. And what you're about to listen to on Class Disrupted is the conversation Diane and I had with Rebecca Winthrop. Rebecca is the coauthor of a terrific new book, The Disengaged Teen. She is the head of the center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and she has helped stand up a global task force there on AI and education, which forms the basis for our conversation today. Rebecca brings forward a couple interesting perspectives that I want to highlight here. Number one, the importance of doing a premortem on the impact of AI in education. And as she said, a premortem doesn't focus on the optimistic case for AI. It fast forwards the story to say, knowing what we know now, let's get ahead of this and imagine the negative impacts from AI and then guard against that.Second, in her mind, the big premortem risks to worry about are three things. Number one, we can offload cognitive tasks to AI, but as she said, the child development people don't know what kids have to do on their own and what actually can be offloaded to AI without harmful consequences. Second, she worries about manipulation. And third, she worries about the impact to software socialization from AI. One thing I'm leaving this conversation with is… Rebecca hopes I guess I would say that AI can be this thing that spurs us to have this national dialogue around the purpose of education so that we can really rethink what schooling looks like. Is that the way that this happens? Is it such a big shock that we'll all come together and have these conversations? Or is it more likely that the real action around system reinvention or system transformation will occur from the grassroots? That is, as in individual communities, education entrepreneurs create new forms or systems of schooling that gain traction over time as more and more people migrate to them and we are left with a series of different systems that have a series of different purposes to them. That's the question that I'll leave thinking more about from this episode that you're about to hear. I hope you enjoy.Michael Horn:Hey Diane, it is good to see you in a school as well. That is probably pretty energizing. And I will say on this show, the hits keep on rolling. I'm loving all that our guests who have such different perspectives on the vantage point and the question around AI and education are bringing and I am very certain today will be no different.Diane TavennerI couldn't agree more, Michael. And as those interviews start to become public, we are now hearing from our listeners, which we love and honestly, it's one of the best parts of doing this podcast, besides getting to have really fun conversations with you and geeking, I'm.Michael HornI'm okay taking a backseat to the listeners.Diane TavennerBut I hope we keep hearing more questions and suggestions, especially at this time in the season when we start to think about what's next. But before I get too far ahead of myself, we have a real treat here today. I think we do.Michael HornIndeed. We have my friend Rebecca Winthrop on the show, and Rebecca is a senior fellow and director of the center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on education globally. That's how I got to know her most deeply. She pays a lot of attention to the skills that young people need to thrive in work, life and as constructive citizens. So really big, weighty questions. She's also the co-author with Jenny Anderson, of a very highly acclaimed new book, the Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better. Definitely check it out.AI’s Impact on EducationMichael HornIt's obviously sort of a zeitgeist at this moment, sadly. And the book does a great job, I think, tackling it, helping people put in perspective and sort of think about where do I want my kid on these different journeys as they're learning? And it's not necessarily what you think the answer might be for those listening. So definitely check it out. For our purposes in this conversation, I will say not only does the book talk a lot about the the themes that we talk a lot about on this podcast, but Rebecca is also spearheading the Brookings Global Task Force on AI and Education, and we will link to that and the book in the show notes. But suffice to say, she's been thinking a lot about the questions were most interested in, Diane. And I feel lucky we get to record with her because Rebecca has been like getting to hang out with like people like Drew Barrymore. And I think Hoda was at one of your book events, Rebecca, so you are rolling. The book has definitely hit a nerve.Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to see you.Rebecca WinthropOh, it's a total pleasure to be here. It's a treat for me, too.Michael HornYou can lie if you say that, given all the folks you're getting to hang out with. But before we get into the approach of your thinking around AI and education and some of the questions that you're asking, I would love to hear how and why you got interested in this topic in the first place and how you've gone about learning about, you know, AI in general and AI in e ducation specifically.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Rebecca WinthropMaybe in reverse order how I've gone about learning about it. I mean the I think all of us, I would assume all of us, it certainly, maybe I shouldn't make this assumption, are out trying stuff in our own lives. So I've gone about it. You know, when something new hits, I just want to check it out. So I've, you know, I'm now a steady user of GPT4, paying my little, you know, subscription. And it is so much better.And I've tried the, you know, the, the dollies and the this and then that, like PowerPoints. Make an illustration. Do this. What can it do? Like, what can it do? Just, just because you get a little, it's experiential learning, right? Like you get a little bit more of a sense of its power and its limitations. Well, maybe that's just how I learn than just reading the text. So in terms of going about learning about it, the first thing I've done is just been playing around with it. And I'm no expert by any means, but it certainly has helped me wrap my head around the massive seismic shift, that generative AI is, I think that's the thing that most.And this gets to the first part of your question that I was most, you know, almost emotionally struck by was how crazy it is to be able to interact with a machine in my own words. Before we had to learn a different language. We had to learn code to interact and make machines do things. And now it's in our own language. And that right there to me is a huge fundamental shift that we need to take incredibly seriously. And so then from there I started getting really interested in it because who can, who can not be interested in, if you're in education and everyone's talking about it. But also I started being really worried.I was initially very worried about it because I just come out of all this book research Jenny and I had been doing for the Disengaged Teen. And the big highlight message there is kids are so deeply disengaged in school. And Diane, this has been your life's work to find a new way of doing school that they're not disengaged. So this is no new. And Michael, you have been on the forefront of how to use tech well for a long, long time. So I've, I've been learning from you for years. So it's not news to both of you. But this book is a sort of broad audience book.And we found there's four modes of engagement that kids show up, they show up as passenger mode. Most kids we partnered with Transcend, 50% of kids, that's kind of their experience in middle school and high school. Achiever mode. They're like trying to be perfect at everything that's put in front of them and end up actually being very fragile learners. Resistor mode. These are the quote unquote, you know, problem kids. That's who we think is disengaged.We broadly society and they're avoiding and disrupting, but they have a lot of agency, a lot of gumption. And if you can switch their context, they can get into explorer mode. And the thing that I thought about, GPT3 launched in mid, sort of. Right. We were sort of towards the end of writing the book and I was so worried that it would massively scale how many kids were in passenger mode if we didn't do it right, if we didn't figure it out. And so that's why we, you know, lots and lots of people are doing incredibly good work in different pockets around the globe. And anyways, that's why we launched our Brookings Global Task Force on AI to try to bring those questions together and bring a different, slightly different methodology.The Premortem ApproachDiane TavennerRebecca that sort of leads into the first place I'd love for us to go, which is, you know, one of the ways that you approach this work is through premortems. And for, you know, people who don't know what a premortem is, oftentimes we do post mortems after something to, you know, digest what, dissect what went wrong and what went right and whatnot. But the premortem is when you try to think about that before you're even in it to really, you know, visualize and imagine the potential negative impacts that could materialize so we can do something about it before we get there. It's conceptually a more empowering way of thinking about things. And so, you know, I, I'd love to unpack your sort of premortem thinking about this. And we're going to start with the positive. So let talk us through, if you will, the positive case for AI in education. You know, as you've done this sort of premortem forward thinking.What are the, what are you excited about? What's the possibility? Right.Rebecca WinthropYeah, well, Diane, I will, I'll get there on the positives, but I want to talk a little bit about the premortem piece because what you just did is exactly what everyone in education has done. When we started this premortem exercise because the premortem is you do not start with the positive, which actually has been a problem. The people in education, our people, all of us in our community are sunny optimists. We believe in the potential of human development. And every time we finally had to switch it up, like every time we did the proper premortem. There's a whole science behind premortem thinking and starting with the risks. And people like rebelled.They didn't like it, they felt uncomfortable. So anyways, that's an interesting observation but the idea of the premortem came out of sort of discussions we've been having internally. We had actually came out last, almost a year ago February. Last February we had a great meeting with our leadership council. We have a leadership council at our center and HP hosted us. We were in the Hewlett garage and it was amazing. And then we did a broader conference and we were just around the table trying to figure out how to wrap our hands around how different Gen AI is and what it means for education and knowing that there's incredible conversations happening in a range of other pockets. And one of the things that I believe strongly in is that we should always look broadly across, not just a solution set can come from anywhere.And so even outside of our sector, from the health sector, in this case from cybersecurity. So this is a typical thing done in other sectors, cybersecurity being one. And we never, we can't there, your listeners might know, but we can't find a single instance where it's done in education. And I actually think we should do it for every tech product before we roll it out. And it basically is, let's figure out how it could all go wrong.And then put that all on paper and then figure out how to mitigate those so it doesn't all go wrong. And we should have, should have done this with social media 10 years ago. If we'd had child development folks, educators, teachers, therapists, counselors sitting around the table designing social media with developers, we, I'm sure, I am sure we could have avoided at least 70% of the harms. Now would companies have gone along with it? That a different, you know, question. Let's parenthesize that like we, these are things that you can, if you go through a very systematic thought process and, and we have an incredible, Mary Burns is an incredible colleague working with us leading this where you, you literally, you know, it's a very sort of systematic process to think about the risks. Yeah, you want to speed up and go straight to the benefits.Diane TavennerFlip it. We don't have to follow that. Like, let's flip it. And so let's start with that. Like, I mean the worst case scenario of a premortem is the patient dies.Rebecca WinthropRight.Diane TavennerAnd so like what, what's the kind of patient dying of AI and education make that case for us and yeah, let's do it in that order.Rebecca WinthropYeah, the premortem is like moving the autopsy forward and like, right. How could they die? So I want to caveat this and, you guys have thought about this deeply. So please chime in with your own versions that we are in the midst of the premortem research on the risks side, which includes lots of focus groups with educators, you know, with kids, with ED leaders, our steering group members, etc. So a few of the things. So this is going to be the Rebecca version. This is not the entire task force. A few of the things on the risks that give me pause are talking to, and we have, you know, a number of colleagues on our team who are learning scientists, neuroscientists, and then talking to other colleagues outside of Brookings who know sort of child development, no brain science, no brain development.And as far as I can tell, we do not know. We royal, we, the people in child development, do not know what are the things that kids have to do on their own to develop critical thinking? You know, agency, key skills, and what could you offload to AI? And to me that is like, I actually am quite. I like just saying that I'm like, oh my God, I'm so nervous. Like, I'm really nervous. I'm nervous for my kids, I'm nervous for the students of the world because, you know, obviously Gen AI can do so much for us. So if one of the main ways that kids develop critical thinking through education at the moment, pretend is learning to write an essay with a thesis statement, picking evidence that supports their argument, putting it in logical order, and, and let's be honest, like the what seventh graders produce as essays, it's not a great contribution to humanity. It's not the product of the essay.Critical Thinking in the Age of AIRebecca WinthropIt's the process that they have to go through to that logical thinking process, understanding what, how you parse truth from fiction. It's as basic as that. Like where, what, where is data? What is evidence? How do you analyze it for arguments? So there may be another way to develop that critical thinking skill, but at the moment that's sort of one of the main ways and until we replace, come up with another way that all kids can do it makes me very nervous that sort of Gen AI will sort of, kind of basically offload critical thinking development to our kids. That's the thing I'm most worried about. And the second I'm most worried about is just, I mean we are at the tip of the iceberg with what this technology can do. And I'm, you know, I am sure we're going to have all sorts of incredible things in the next seven years that we couldn't even. That are like straight up Star Trek.Right. With neural, you know, being able to talk to technology. We can already do that. Like and you know, robotic, you know, R2D2 type scenarios. And so I do worry about manipulation and I do worry about socialization, interpersonal socialization because we see what just a phone flat screen text message interaction does, but for kids, sort of ability to interact face to face. So those to me are the three things that I'm most worried about. But the first one is what makes me really worried.Are you guys worried about that? Like how do you, how are you thinking about this?Michael HornOh, I love when you turn it back on us. We're asking all you folks so we could develop a point of view on this. I think this, the quick answer for me is yes, I am nervous about it given the current way schooling is designed that we have not thought about how to mitigate it. Which maybe is my chance to turn it back to a question to you which is part of the premortem is identifying. And so all three of these risks I think are big. Manipulation is big socialization, we had an entire episode on that question and, and what do relationships look like in the future? Forget about schooling for a moment. Right. With AI bots.Yeah. Right. And so I guess having identified those as three big ones.What should we do to. You know like you're starting to think about the. Yeah. What's the mitigation piece? Right. Structurally, assignment wise. How do we think about this so that we don't, you know, we don't live right into those.Rebecca WinthropYeah, we haven't gotten there yet in the task force. So this again.Michael HornYeah, just speculation.Yeah, well, but, but let me sharpen the question actually Rebecca, because you just wrote this big book, right. Or I should say important book, the Disengaged Teen, where you thought a lot about the negative implications. Right. Of being in passenger mode and sort of the listlessness, which I think could be a byproduct of, of maybe all three of these. Certainly two of the three. And so how have you thought about that?Rebecca WinthropYeah, well, I think for me, the mitigation piece I'm going to take your question broadly, Michael. For me, I think we have to, I have like a sort of sequence of types of, levels of types of things we have to think about. So, like, for me, the biggest thing, and you guys have talked about this on your podcast, is really thinking through and being very clear when we're talking about adult mediated use of particularly Gen AI, less predictive AI and student mediated or child mediated. And I mean that for right now, like, we're in a massive point of transition. We will eventually come to some new normal eventually. But in our current sort of transition, the discourse around AI and education is so fuzzy and flimsy and unrigorous. You guys are great because you're surfacing that.And so often we hear, you know, AI can transform education. It'll be great. And people reference. And I think, you know, it depends. And when people, certainly from technologists, you know, discourse, you know, it's true that AI can transform many, many things. It's unbelievable. Like protein folding, incredible. Spotting viruses in wastewater, amazing.Like just rapid breakthroughs that are incredible. And all of those are run with by adults who have deep critical thinking and subject matter knowledge and are using the AI as a tool. And that's very. And then the discourse goes. And then we'll just give it to schools and it'll be great and kids can blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, well, give it to schools who. So, like, let's be very clear. Like, is it helping teachers massively teach better or is it helping them do the same more efficiently? Diane, this, you've made this point, you know, those are two different things.And it's very different from giving just sort of blanketing Gen AI in pedagogy for students to use. You know, given the example of the essay. Right. Like, it might actually, first of all, kids don't have the content knowledge to understand. So I've spent my whole, you know, 20 years talking about the sort of academic skills plus. And now I'm like, oh, my God, let's not forget about the content knowledge. Like, how will we know, how will kids know how to assess if this, the sniff test, does this seem right?Michael HornActually, can we put a pin on that just for one sec? Because that's interesting. Like, you've been pushing us to be like, okay, not knowledge for just its own sake, but to do these skills and now you're worried we might all sort of like sort of blow past it and forget that the knowledge actually is an important base. Is. Am I hearing you right?Rebecca Winthrop100%. Like I've been absolutely pushing, which you know, you both have too, with the bringing together of knowledge acquisition with knowledge application. And I do think if we do it right, that's to me the sunny possibility with Gen AI, maybe it could bring those two things closer together in a more scalable systematic education system wide effort. But I am very worried that people will be like, well, they'll forget about the knowledge acquisition pieceand that is very scary.Learning SystemsDiane TavennerCan we stay here for a minute? Because I keep asking people to think about the system and no, no one seems to want to go there with me. You're the first person. So sorry, I can't help myself. I'm so excited that someone wants to actually talk about a system and especially this space because, you know, I love this space. So you're thinking that there's this process of acquiring knowledge and like I think we're aligned on this great knowledge for knowledge sake is not super useful if you don't have skills like what are you doing with that knowledge? Are you analyzing? Are you, you know, making an argument? What do you. The skills you need to bring the. So tell, like paint me a picture of how AI might help bring those closer together in a learning system, if you will. Do you have any like, I mean, can you imagine that the.Rebecca WinthropI'm not sure I have a clear vision at a classroom level, but I have a clearer vision at System Transformation Lever.Diane TavennerOkay, okay, that's great.Michael HornLet's go there.Rebecca WinthropSo one of the things that, you know, sort of in system transformation theory there's the real sort of shifting of the purpose of a system which is the hardest. This is straight up Donella Meadows Systems transformation theory, which argues just maybe some of the listeners aren't familiar, you know, that you know, there's different levers to shift systems sustainably and you know, some of them are shifting how we measure things. Shifting how we allocate resources and those are all important and good, but we tend broadly people who shift systems, but certainly in education to get stuck there. Which means let's shift our assessment, which is important. We need to do it. You know, let's shift how we put money and you. It's much harder to really shift a system that way than if you shift the shared vision and purpose of what aEducation is for. And so that's a cultural shift. It's a mindset shift. It includes you know and underneath that it includes shifts in power dynamics. So to me if, if the way in to me Gen AI provides an opportunity to do some be a lever to shift sort of the purpose of ed. So if, if ChatGPT and any other Gen AI tool can pass all the exams that we're gatekeeping and systems for can do all the most of the assignments and if it can't do it now it will do you know what I mean? Like it's going so fast. Exactly. So then we have to, it will force us.It is forcing us, which is part of the big discussion in this why we did this Brookings Task Force, to think deeply about what is the purpose of education. So we're bringing, we have, I mean it's a massive freaking logistical enterprise getting all kids in a jurisdiction to a place at the same time of day. Like that's a, it's, it's just, it's incredible what schools do logistically. Like so what are we. If you know, we might not. It might be hard to break that up until we have a different world of work because we, you know mainly schools are also doubling as childcare in every single country in the world. It's the largest nationalized, you know, government supported child care system. So I'm not sure we're gonna just kids roving around the world.Reevaluating Education's PurposeRebecca WinthropBut if we have something we're doing with kids at certain hours a day, what is the purpose of it? Like is it to identify a problem in their community and then start working backwards about the what needs to fix, they need to fix it and try to learn the stuff. Here's content knowledge that they may need that would inform them on how to fix it. And teachers are scaffolding and you know, curating problem solving expeditions and that's the core thing of what we do. And you sort of learn knowledge and you're using Gen AI as a dialogue agent. I mean I think Convigo is really interesting and I think it's a useful use case of how to student. You know interfacing could be helpful for students but more does it free up teachers ability to teach differently? Because I don't think we will get away from teachers nor do I think we should get away from teachers because human, the human connection piece is so crucial. So to me it's really we, we cannot. It's the deep thought about what's the purpose of education now.Like we can't just keep going along, assigning the same tests and trying to ban cheating, you know, like, which is a short term, totally understandable emergency response because we don't know what we're doing and we haven't got our hands around this. And boy, I wish, you know, tech companies would have given school districts a heads up, you know, like.Diane TavennerYeah maybe I'm not sure that that would have mattered. I must say, I do love what you're saying. You know, years ago we created this whole experience for educators to go through. That was how do you create an aligned school model, sort of an elegant model. And literally, step one is to determine the purpose of education. So you're speaking my language here. And it's an interesting thought that this could be the lever that sort of forces us to rethink because the purposes it's serving right now are so obviously met in some other way that we don't have a choice. We have to revisit that. It's a fascinating way to think about how it could drive system change.Rebecca WinthropJust on that, Diane, Jenny and I, in our book, in the Disengaged Teen book, our meta argument around why engagement matters. And really we're focused on, you know, explorer mode. We all need more time in explorer mode, which is agentic engagement, the marriage of agency and engagement. And our sort of big argument is it's really time to move from an age of achievement to an age of agency in education. And we are seeing the age of achievement fraying. We're seeing it in mastery, competency based, you know, College Board shifting up its, its, you know, ways of assessing new AP test versions. You know, we're, we're seeing it fraying and Gen AI, I think, just accelerate the fraying of the age of achievement, which is all about sort of, you know, content acquisition and synthesis and skills within that and sort of repetition back out. But really following instructions.Diane TavennerYeah. Talk for a moment about the benefit of an age of agency. What does that look like? Why is that a direction we would want to go? And how does maybe AI support it?Rebecca WinthropRight. I think AI could it. I'm not sure where it. I think it could go either way at the moment. I think it really depends on how we use it. But when we talk about an age of agency, the piece that we are really leaning into is all the evidence around the marriage of, of basically agentic engagement, which, you know, Diane, Summit, you designed for agentic engagement. So this idea that when kids have agency over their learning and they have an opportunity to influence the flow of instruction in Little or big ways Summit is on the extreme. That's a total redesign.But you can do it in schools. Educators can do it in their classrooms by giving choice, by asking for feedback, by before starting a lecture, asking kids, where do you want to start? Do you have any questions about this topic? Like we're doing the solar system, where do you want to start? You know, just that shifts the entire mindset of a learner. Right. Much more engaged. So A, they're more engaged, B, they're developing skills to really be able to independently chart their learning journey, which is what they're absolutely going to need when they leave school. No one will be, you know, spoon feeding them. And we see that in the kids who knock it out of the park in the age of achievement. We found so many kids in our research who were excellent achievers in school and fell apart in college because no one is there, you know, spoon feeding them.And so for us, and the other piece is they're more engaged, they have, they're getting sort of agency over, they're learning much better skills and they're much happier. It's so much more fun to have some autonomy and ownership over your life and to try to be the author of your own life. And those are all the reasons why we think it is really imperative and that Gen AI has accelerated this need because, you know, more than ever now, kids are going to have to navigate this world where you've got Gen AI, you're going to have advanced robotics, you're going to have neural links, you're going to have like, sooner we're going to be, I'm sure, interacting with, you know, new robotic people. There's a whole, it's a, it's a wild world that's coming down the pike and our kids need to lead it rather than be led by it.Diane TavennerThat's. Yeah, Michael, I feel like I'm hogging all the time. Do you have a question?Michael HornWell maybe last question before we wrap up, Rebecca, which is so let's say we have the purpose conversation. We, if not nationally, at least in strong pockets of communities, we commit to an age of agency and we start to think about what that is. Where does AI like what you know, you've been impressed by it in certain cases. So where do you see it perhaps what's the positive case to be made for it in this rethought, purpose of schooling with a coherent design?Rebecca WinthropI mean, I think the thing that I am most potentially optimistic about, and I know Diane, I think you disagree with me, but in the age of agency, I think if we're rethinking the purpose, a huge barrier to that is teacher expertise, practice prep. And we've got a ton of teachers who've been trained in the age of agency and it is not their fault. They're teaching their heart out and they're doing their job. And you know, we're very clear in the book that we, you know, this is not a problem with teachers. They're squished from above with the system and squished from below, frankly, with parents sort of pressuring them. And so could Gen AI really unlock teacher ability to be experts in a new sort of let's pretend the school is around solving problems? I think we need a huge piece of that solving problems, being around citizenship and civic in sort of personal, collective and community wide problems.But I feel like that it could just, if done well, it could really be a massive boost for educators. So it isn't so scary they're not thrown into a whole new purpose of ed, a new, entirely new system with different, you know, ways of succeeding without some serious support.Michael HornNo, that's super helpful. I like the vision in general. I'm taking from this conversation that whereas it's kind of hard to have these national dialogues or dialogues even in communities around purposes, maybe AI is such an abrupt big shift that it actually brings us to the table to say, what the heck are we doing here? Because every single one of the stakeholders is like, this ain't working. And so let's talk about what are we actually trying to accomplish here? So maybe we'll leave it there, Diane, and shift to the last part. Rebecca. We have this tradition that our readers enjoy. Yep. For better or worse.They keep lists apparently of what Diane and I have read or watched. So. But we want to hear yours. What do you, you know, what have you, or what are you reading, watching, listening to, often outside your day job. But it's okay if it intersects with it.Rebecca WinthropWell, I have, Well, I don't watch much, I must say, except for Shrinking, which I rushed through and through. Loved it, loved it, loved it. That was the best.Michael HornIncredible.Rebecca WinthropI can't wait for like the next season. But I actually don't watch a lot of stuff. But I do love to read. So I have two things here. One is Unwired Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies by Gaia Bernstein. She. It's awesome.She's a lawyer at Seton hall and she. It's a really good book and I'm not all the way done. And then the other one is a novel called Dust by Josh. Classy that just came out. It's like a sci fi. It's like a new Lord of the Rings.Michael HornOh, cool.Rebecca WinthropWow. Wow.Michael HornAll right. I like that.Diane TavennerYeah, I like that too. That's fun. Well, I have, I have one this week. I was telling Michael, you know, he's not the only sort of fan, fan, author, fanboy, fan girl. This week I met a woman named Samara Bay, and she has authored a book called Permission to Speak How to Change What Power Sounds Like Starting with you. She's fascinating. And I got to have coffee with her last week and we did like a joint book club. We switched books and then got to sit down and talk about them.I know, super, super fun. She's got this incredible journey. She wanted to be an actor. She became a dialect coach. She worked with tons of famous people like Gal Gadot, et cetera, et cetera, and now has turned her passion of helping people to people who are really trying to bring impact to the world and drive impact in the world and helping them find their voices in public speaking. It's which, you know, here's the inside secret. It's basically figuring out how to get out of your own way is really the secret to it. And so it's a beautifully written book.It's also a super practical guide in many ways and so highly recommend it. Really enjoying it.Michael HornAwesome. Awesome. Diane. I realized, like, I'm starting to outpace. Sorry, the podcast recordings are outpacing my ability to keep up with the reading and so forth. And like Rebecca, I'm not a huge TV person outside of sports and shrinking. So yes, there we go.Yeah, but, so I, but I'm almost done with a book. Task versus Skills. Squaring the Circle of Work with Artificial Intelligence by Mark Stephen Ramos, he was the Chief Learning Officer at Cornerstone, is no longer there, but has been starting to do some writing and thinking about how AI changes our learning organizations or organizations where people need to be upskilling and reskilling. So far it has been interesting, deeply technical, and kind of enjoyed it. And I'm not at all getting out of work. So apologies on that, but no apologies for having Rebecca here. This has been fantastic.Diane TavennerThank you.Michael HornYeah, thank you so much for joining us. And a thank you again to all of you, our listeners. A reminder to check out Rebecca's book with Jenny Anderson, the Disengaged Teen helping kids learn better, feel better and live better. Check it out, read it, digest it. We'll have more conversations about it, I suspect. And let's all stay curious together. We'll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.