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

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. 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.

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.

Mike Goldstein, founder of MATCH Charter Schools and a fellow at the Pioneer Institute, dives into the complex world of education savings accounts (ESAs) and their impact on families. He discusses how families in diverse situations navigate educational choices, from seeking alternatives to traditional schooling to enhancing learning experiences. Goldstein explores the challenges in accessing resources, the interplay of AI in educational guidance, and the differing landscapes of educational options across states. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of education!

Matt Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Wildflower Schools, shares insights on the expansion of this Montessori-based network, now featuring 72 schools. He discusses empowering educators as co-leaders, the significance of small, personalized settings, and innovative uses of technology to enhance learning. Kramer highlights unique models, including a Wildflower school in Puerto Rico designed for kids with neuro differences, emphasizing how these microschools blend local community needs with national support. Their vision for the future is one of personalized education that champions individuality.

In this episode of Class Disrupted, Jane Rosenzweig, director of the Harvard College Writing Center, joined me and Diane Tavenner to talk about the impact of AI on writing education. Jane underscored the importance of writing as a process of thinking—and warned against the “deskilling” of students because of an overreliance on AI. Our conversation explored how AI could aid resource shortages in education but also pondered if AI’s efficiency would overshadow the importance of deep learning and authentic writing skills. As someone who often figures out what I actually think through my writing, this conversation struck a chord.Diane TavennerHi there. I'm Diane, and what you're about to hear is a conversation Michael and I recorded with our guest Jane Rosenzweig as part of our series exploring the potential impact of AI in education. This is where we're interviewing optimists and skeptics, and I loved spending time with Jane, who's a true expert in teaching writing. I keep thinking about a few of the key ideas from our conversation. One of them is, why do students even need to write anymore? Arguably, ChatGPT, Genesis, Claude, and the others are literally designed to write and likely a lot better than most people. So what's the purpose of writing? Specifically teaching students to write. No wonder I'm still thinking about it, because as a former English teacher, this feels like a big existential question. The other one that's sticking with me is we talked about this idea of AI optimism, arguing that, you know, this is a chicken in every pot. And honestly, who knew we'd be calling back to Herbert Hoover's campaign slogans? But here we are at this very strange and interesting moment in time. And honestly, I can't wait to unpack all this that we're learning and talking about with Michael. But until then, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation that we had with Jane.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Hey, Michael.Michael HornHey, Diane. It is good to see you. And I've been reflecting between the conversations on how each episode that we've had in this series on AI has been so different. I'm just marveling, frankly, at all the different perspectives and viewpoints and levels at which people tackle our questions around AI and education in ways that I had not anticipated at all. And I'm also pretty certain today will be no different, which excites me.Diane TavennerMichael. I totally agree. And, you know, when we first conceived of the series, we called it a miniseries, but as we've gotten into it, we keep thinking of more people who we want to interview because we are hearing such a fantastic range of perspectives. And I will admit, when you proposed our guests for today, I got super excited because my favorite thing to teach when I was teaching was writing. And it was my favorite because students made such meaningful and tangible progress. It was super rewarding as a teacher to be able to give feedback and, like, literally watch them grow, you know, in a matter of days. And that's why I'm so excited to welcome Jane Rosenzweig to the show. Jane is the director of the Harvard College Writing center and a longtime expository writing instructor, and she's been writing a lot about the impact of AI on writing in particular and what we may lose within this age of AI. And since 2023, she's also taught a course called To What problem is ChatGPT the Solution? Super excited to dive into this conversation. Welcome, Jane..Jane RosenzweigThank you. It's great to be here.Michael HornYeah. Well, we really appreciate you saying yes to the invite. And before we get into a series of questions around AI and education specifically, we'd love you to actually just start off sharing with the audience and with us, how did you decide or get pulled into this topic of AI so deeply itself? Like, what sparked you down this journey where you're now contributing to the Boston Globe it seems constantly with, like, really interesting perspectives about how to think about these questions.Jane RosenzweigYeah. So like many good things that happen to all of us who teach, this began for me with a student. It was actually one of the writing center tutors. So about, I would say about a year and a half before ChatGPT was released, I had known that there were sort of ways, things in progress that were going to try to automate writing. And every now and then someone would call me and say, you know, do you want to work for this company that's going to automate writing? And I would say, probably not. But I hadn't really been diving into this. And one day I was in my office and I was looking at something called Jasper AI. I believe it was just one of the earlier AIs.And one of the writing tutors was standing in my doorway chatting. And I said, hey, do you know anything about this? He was a. He's a computer scientist. He was studying computer science. And he said, oh, not that one, but here's what you need to know about. You need to know about the GPT playground. So right then and there, he came into my office and he showed me.So what was the precursor to GPT3 was the GPT Playground. And it was a little bit different. You had to. It wasn't a chat interface in the same way. It. To kind of figure out how to prompt it. And so I started playing around with that.I started giving it my assignments, my writing assignments, just to see what it would do. I was trying to generate a paper about an article by Michael Sandel that my students were reading. And I just, I started to see, oh, yeah, this is. This is something, right? So I started thinking about it and this went on for a while. I was just kind of expecting, experimenting. I didn't know that ChatGPT was on its way. About a week before ChatGPT was released, I published the first of my Boston Globe pieces.Impact of AI on WritingJane RosenzweigIt was called What We Lose When Machines Do the Writing. And it was all my musings of how I'd been trying to get GPT Playground to write this Michael Sandel paper, among other things. And then a week later, when ChatGPT came out, I was suddenly the person who knew more about this than a lot of my colleagues. Right. Because I spent all this time with it, and so suddenly I was, you know, I was an authority. Not, in a very small way, because I knew what it could do in terms of writing. And then when I published that piece, I sent it to a friend at the Berkman Klein center, and he invited me to come over to a conference they were having. And I just started becoming part of the conversation very quickly.Yeah. And then it went from there. The rest is history, whatever they say.Michael HornWow. Wow. Well, so let's zoom out then for a moment and before we get into the topic of, you know, these op Eds that you wrote for the Boston Globe, specifically, What Do We Lose When Machines Do the Writing as you just referenced, and I didn't realize, I guess, mentally, that it appeared literally the week before Chat GPT came out. That's unbelievable. But I would love you to make the positive argument for AI in education, even if it's not your personal point of view, right? Sort ofWhat's the best case that you've heard around where AI can enable us to do things for students that maybe we wouldn't otherwise be able to do? Or what can it positively impact, even if you don't necessarily buy into that viewpoint?Jane RosenzweigSure. So I should say my expertise is teaching writing. And these arguments about what AI can do in education certainly go way beyond what I've spent my career focusing on. So I think that's important to note. I also think I've heard a number of these arguments, and they seem to be changing depending on what, you know, what the market seems to be interested in to a certain extent. So I'll just. I'll talk about what I talked about with my students in class today.Today they had watched Saul Khan's TED talk about how AI might save and not destroy education. And so we had a really interesting conversation in class. But I think of this as kind of the chicken in every pot argument. Right. So AI, the positive view of AI in education goes something like everything that every individual student needs can now be delivered by some kind of AI chatbot. So he talks about how there's a shortage of Guidance counselors. AI can be your guidance counselor. You need extra help in math.AI can be extra help in math. You need a teacher. AI can be a teacher. Oh, wait, you only need help, you know, generating some brainstorming. AI can be a brainstorming partner. So a kind of positive that it sounds like the people who are making that argument are saying, you know, the dream is it's whatever we need it to be in whatever moment, we need it to appear.Michael HornSuperhero, as I hear you saying that. And so that makes me curious, like, you know, if that's sort of the chicken in every pot argument, what parts of that do you in fact believe? Or maybe the better question is like, are there parts of it where you're like, yeah, there's facsimiles of that I think are right, but I would modify it in this way to make it, you know, yes, that could be a positive.Jane RosenzweigSo I'm skeptical of any argument. I mean, I teach academic writing. I teach academic argument. What I'm asking of my students all the time is for evidence to support their claims. I'm skeptical of any argument that goes so big without any accompanying evidence. So, I mean, there's certainly evidence. You know, we see. There's some really interesting pilots going on at Harvard, one in the Physics Department.We've absolutely seen evidence that people think AI can be useful in small ways. But this chicken in every pot argument, I mean, the only. There is no evidence for this, as far as I can tell, that it's really going to solve every single problem that everybody has. And yet that's often the way this is being presented. Not just that this is a tool that might be able to help people learn a difficult kind of physics, which I buy, Right., I've looked at the.The results of their little pilot. It seems very useful.Michael HornThat study was pretty interesting. Yeah.Jane RosenzweigYeah. So that's not. That's very different from the kind of AI can be a personalized tutor argument, which seems to lean heavily on the personalized without a lot of evidence for what that actually looks like. And so yeah, that's where I would like to, you know, I would like to put everybody who's making these claims through the kinds of assignments I put my students through. Okay, give me this arguable claim now. Show me the evidence. Show me the counter arguments. ButI don't think we're there yet. AndI think the argument for the positive outcomes of this is way ahead of what we actually know about the technology at this point.Skepticism on AI's ImpactDiane TavennerSort of classic Silicon Valley. We tend to oversell well in advance before we have any of the goods to actually prove it. It generally falls short of what was sold initially. Well, let's go maybe in a direction that is closer to your expertise and that does sort of land more where you are, which is like, so let's have you take the opposite now, the skeptical take. And like, specifically, what will AI hurt? And like, how. And although I'm sure you could make a steel man argument here as well, you've written a lot about how claims like AI is reducing friction is actually a concept counterproductive in learning, as in productive struggle is the point. And you've already started to get into this production of evidence and thinking. So, you know, tell us more from your real area of expertise, like, what is AI hurting and how is it hurting that. Yeah. What's going on here?Jane RosenzweigSure. Well, so I, I mean, when, you know, when you teach writing. I've taught writing for 25 years. The first thing that comes to mind about ChatGPT and the initial conversations, right. We’re all about, well, if it can just generate the paper, why would anyone want to write the paper? Or why would anyone need to write the paper? So I think one of the interesting things that's happened is that we've had a really productive conversation, not just at Harvard, across institutions, a public conversation about why we do what we do to begin with. And being able to articulate why I would want my students to write a paper even if a chatbot could just generate the paper has been, say, challenge number one. I mean, that was always a challenge, trying to help students see why there's value in this thing that we're doing. So, that's been a challenge. I think one of the ways that I've put it that I always talk to my students about is that I'm not asking them to write a paper because I need a paper. Right. This is the product versus process argument. Right. We got plenty of papers. We don't need any more.So the idea that you would go out and, and generate your paper with A.I. sure. Then I'd get a paper that you wouldn't have an experience. And so there's something to the writing a paper in the way that I think I conceive of it is an experience in figuring out what you think about something. That's what I find valuable. So AI challenges that just by its existence. Right.You know, needing to understand why you would bother doing this thing and then we have the questions about, well, could AI help with this process in different ways? And I've had many conversations about this with a lot of people. And one of the things that people bring up a lot is, well, sure, I could just help students with the brainstorming and then they could write the paper themselves. But to me, if I say that this is all an act of thinking, this is something that I actually want you to figure out what you think. It's hard for me to see the role of brainstorming with a chatbot in those moments when maybe the productive friction should be existing, where you should be trying to figure out between you and the text or you and the video of Saul Khan or whatever it is, what you actually think. So I have some concerns there as well. I think there's, you know, we could, I could just go through every argument. There's, well, could AI make an outline for you? Same questions arise.Right. I don't think an outline, you know, if once an outline's written, then you're exercising someone else's vision. I doesn't really work for me.Diane TavennerI'd love to dig in on this one a little because I've been working with some young people who, by the time they've come to me, they've already tried to use ChatGPT to help brainstorm with them and help outline. And I have some thoughts and opinions about what I'm seeing that is, not only are they not doing the thinking, but the work that's being produced is not very good. And it, it's sort of obvious to me that it's very. And it's very chatgpt. And on the flip side, we've been talking to people and I would call them sort of very sophisticated kind of experts in their field and their areas of expertise. They're having a lot of success using GPT. And so I'm wondering, is there something in between there were younger people who are kind of learning, who don't have expertise, this is not as effective, and maybe it's more effective.For example, you as an expert in writing, it could be a very different tool. I wonder if you've noticed anything or picking up anything in that space.Jane RosenzweigYeah, so I think you've really hit on something that I've actually thought a lot about. I think that when we say AI is a tool, like people say, well, it's just a tool and you could use it to enhance your writing. Well, generally when you use a tool, you what you're doing. And so you know what you need the tool for. Right. If I have a nail, I know I need my hammer because I know that the nail has to go into the wall. One of the things that I'm worried about with AI is that you're handing a tool to do the thing.So that's why, I mean, if you don't know what you're trying to create, then how would you know how to use the tool? Now, I can already hear all the potential counter arguments to that as well, but I think there's something, something really solid there. Right. Like, I'm really worried about, in a sense, deskilling my students. I want them to know how to do the thing so that if they want to bring in the tool later, they can bring it in in a way that actually works for them. You know, that they know what they're doing. Whereas if you, if you hand this tool to someone who doesn't know what a solid argument looks like, doesn't know what it means to connect with a particular kind of audience, the idea that they would say to ChatGPT, how do I connect with my writing instructor? You know, how what is she looking for? And it's going to, you know, sort of draw on this predictive caricature of a writing instructor. They're not going to learn what I want them to be learning.Whereas, yeah, sure, I can use it. I don't like using it. I don't find it particularly helpful for my own work, but I could write a student paper with it that's much better than what I've seen my students write with it at this point.Incorporating AI in School DesignDiane TavennerInteresting. Yeah, that's super fascinating. I'm curious about taking this. One of the things we like to do is just imagine, you know, if we could all wave our magic wand and design the schools that we want, what good parts of AI would we incorporate in that school design right now? Like, is there anything worth incorporating? And as you're talking, I'm thinking about, and I'm curious about, my assumption is that when you're teaching writing to your students, you have a vision of, like, how they're actually using that skill when they leave the university. And, you know, I'm making up stories in my head right now, but I'm sure the folks that you're teaching to write are going on to write, you know, extraordinary research papers, or maybe they're even becoming journalists, or, you know, maybe they're just becoming very effective at communicating their ideas in whatever role they're in. So first of all, I should check and make sure that's true and like, that's how you think about the purpose of writing. But, like, what could you possibly do with AI that would enhance that? When we've talked about the things that's going to take away is like, if they're just trying to replace the learning that they would have to have in order to be good at those things later, I don't know if that's making sense, but hopefully you can make some sense of that.Jane RosenzweigSo. Well, so sure. I mean, my students are fabulous. They go on to do all kinds of interesting things. I think it's really important. There are a lot of students who are studying STEM topics who are taking my AI based, my AI focused writing class, because they're interested in this topic. They're going to write. They don't always know it yet, but they're going to write grant proposals, they're going to write.They're going to be the boss of people and ask for memos and write memos and all of these things. So I do think there's something certainly instrumental in that way about preparing students for further writing. But I also like to think that when we're talking about writing, I'm really trying to focus on how do you know what you think and why you think what you think? And this is not the only way. You can certainly have conversations, figure out what you think in many ways. But when you're asking a question the way we do in academic writing, you're asking a question and then you're trying to examine the evidence and figure out what you think the answer is. And this is also a way of being in the world that I want my students to absorb, right? It's not just so that they can write a memo at work. It's so that they can look at things. They can look at a video or read a book outside of my class and bring that same kind of inquisitive mind to it.So, again, those are things that I wouldn't want to see outsourced, whereas later on, sure, they're going to make a choice to outsource memos that they're writing at work. I think it's, you know, thinking about what you're trying to do. I always say my class is called to what problem is Chat GPT the solution? And this has been a really helpful framing to me in so many ways, like, why are you using it? If you're using it to solve a problem that it solves, then maybe it makes a lot of sense. But if you're using to do something when there's a different goal there, right. I want you to have an idea. I want you to have an opinion. Does ChatGPT help with that? And, you know, I think that's. we're less sure about that.Recognizing the Importance of the Writing ProcessMichael HornSo, Jane, you've just actually clarified a few things in my head for me personally on my own writing process. One of them being outlines never mean anything to me. And I think the reason why is I don't know what I think until I've written my way through the problem. So this has been on the couch for me. But. But the second thing I guess I'm curious about is you've essentially noted, right, that part of the reason for writing is to help people develop this muscle of how to clarify their thinking about, you know, whatever question is in front of them, right? Whatever they're trying to figure out and what strikes me, right, it's not about the performance or the end product. It's about the. The process. So I guess this. The other thing, though, that I become curious about, and I think you've written this in, in some of your writing, is a lot of at least at the K12 level, a lot of the schools there are not making that purpose of writing either clear to students or themselves maybe grading around, you know, sort of judging around that purpose, right? Around the importance of the process and figuring out what you think, think as you wrestle with something through your writing.I'm curious, are there places that are getting this right in your view? Like, do you. Do you know, K12 schools that are doing this right? And if not, how do we start to move to that world?Jane RosenzweigSo I. Yeah, I think that ChatGPT, the release of ChatGPT actually created a really useful moment for us to be thinking about what we're doing when we teach writing, when we assign writing to begin with? There's always been a little bit of a disconnect that I've noticed between what my students were doing in high school and what I was asking them to do when they got to my classroom. That's normal, right? We have a transition from high school to college writing. But I think one of the things that's a real challenge is my students will tell me a lot that they learn to write in preparation for standardized tests, right? So there's a particular kind of writing where you are not writing to discover something. You are writing to demonstrate that you know how to do this thing, which we sometimes call a five paragraph, essay, you know, how to sort of approximate a way of, of interacting, communicating, even if you're not actually being told that you need to say something that matters to you or that's of interest. So some of this, I mean, I understand this, I, you know, couldn't begin to suggest what should be happening in K through 12 in terms of how we could move away from the standardized test model. But I do think that it's difficult for students to see this thing that they've always done quite well, according to a kind of rubric of do you have a thesis statement and do you have three points in separate paragraphs and then someone like me comes in and says, right.Do you actually believe that? What do you actually think? What about counterarguments? So counterargument is often the new piece that we introduce. Right. You can't make an argument that is going to hold up if you can't understand who might disagree with you. So interestingly, this is a place where ChatGPT was somewhat useful. In my class, I built a counter argument chatbot for my students. It was just a little pilot I teach a class about AI. I thought this would be entertaining. It forced them to go through a series of steps to answer a series of questions about their, their thesis for, for a paper they were writing and then to it, it wouldn't tell them though.It wouldn't give them any answers. It was just asking them the questions. And so they actually found it kind of frustrating. And this, I think, is an interesting point about how we think about AI. They didn't all find it frustrating, but the ones who said they found it frustrating said they were expecting an efficiency tool, you know. Right. They are used to thinking that AI, that ChatGPT is going to save them steps. But I had spent ages trying to make this chatbot behave more like I would behave, which was, you know, to just keep asking them and keep saying is, you know, is, you know, what about this? What about this? And then I told it to give them some potential counterarguments, but they didn't have to be correct. Right. Because I wanted them to have to engage. And so I do think there are moments where something like that might be helpful. But I think that it's really, it's kind of doing battle with the perception that AI is supposed to save you time. And what I want is for certain things to take as much time as they need to take. And I do, I think that that kind of chat bot, my students, one of them said he'd rather just talk to me about it if it's going to take him half an hour anyway. But there may be some interesting scalable ways to do something like that. But this brings me to sort of where I always end up when I think, oh, but maybe there was some interesting things to do.But these are my concerns. I think those of us who are in the classroom are very aware that there's a big difference between the way an AI tool could be used and the way it's likely to be used. And I think if we don't admit that and kind of grapple with it, then we're kidding ourselves. Right. Students, you know, students need to see the value in what they're doing in order to want to do it. That's the great thing that's come of this conversation about ChatGPT. A lot more of us trying to articulate what the value is of what we're asking students to do. But they have a lot of competing demands.And so in a moment, you know, are you going to spend half an hour? Are you going to ask the bot. I think this is. We just need to be realistic about this.Diane TavennerSo cool. Such. I think we should end it there because such an important point. And I'm loving just the reflections I'm having already. So thank you for prompting those. We have this fun tradition, Jane, where we end each episode by sharing one thing that we're reading or watching or listening to. We try to make it outside of our day jobs if possible.And so we'd love to invite you to share something to add to our list, recommended or not.Jane RosenzweigOkay, so I have been watching a TV show called Palm Royale on Apple tv. I don't know if you know about this. It's. Kristen Wiig plays a 1969 wannabe socialite in Palm Beach, Florida. And I think why, you know, it's not. It's not high art, but why I've been really enjoying it is because it's not taking place now. It's taking place in 1969.Diane TavennerThat is awesome.Jane RosenzweigI think we all need to take a vacation to a different time now and then.Diane TavennerWell, well, speaking of different times, I think this one might surprise Michael, given what this is not a thing I. I'm normally reading. I'm not a big canon person, but believe it or not, I'm re. I'm actually listening to the Odyssey and I mentioned on some of our other episodes that we're headed to Greece in a couple of months and so I'm diving into nonfiction and fiction, you know, related to this trip to Greece. It's been a long time since I have visited this poem and this time around I'm listening to a translation by Emily Wilson, a narrated by Claire Danes. And it's funny, I wish I would have talked to you about this Jane, because you might have some thoughts about this. But I think for well, the translation who's translating may such a huge difference obviously if you know anything about translation.And I am in this moment in time where I'm feeling like we need actually more female energy, at least in Silicon Valley, in my corner of the world. And so I am loving the extensive explanations about the choices that the translator has made and how they contrast with so many of the historical translations. It's just, it's fascinating and beautiful and so I'm surprising myself and really enjoying it.Michael HornI love that you picked that as someone who took so many classics my first year and my, sounds like you're listening to my college classmate because Claire Danes and I were the same class at Yale, so there's that. And Ryan Holiday who I just heard speak was talking about why the Odyssey still resonates centuries later, even with his six or seven year old kid, just the other day, something I was listening to which so that's super fun. I confess I am just finished a book that falls back into our work lives. So I apologize. It's a book published by the Harvard Education Press titled Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won't Matter by Kathleen deLaski of the Education Design Lab. I will say it provoked a lot of different thoughts for me, mostly informed I think by my growing view that we need to think a lot about how we give young people the opportunity to have real work experiences when they are students and see value of what they're doing. And it actually connects in an interesting way to what you said, Jane, around making sure that the purpose of things as well is in the foreground as opposed to in the background for learners.And that's how I'm connecting with the book first and foremost. So I will leave it at that for the moment. I suspect, Diane, we will have deeper conversations on that at some point, but for now I'll just say a huge thank you to Jane. This has been a fantastic conversation, has opened my perspective on a number of things and of course thank you to all of you, our listeners. We will see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. 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Tyler Thigpen wears a lot of hats. He’s the co-founder and head of The Forest School: An Acton Academy in south metro Atlanta; co-founder and head of the Institute for Self-Directed Learning; an instructor and academic director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education; and the coauthor of a new book, The Playbook for Self Directed Learning, which provides strategies for transforming traditional schools into learner-centered environments. Tyler joined me to talk about innovative educational models that emphasize self-directed learning. We discussed everything from what is self-directed learning to the nature of his school and from the general philosophy underpinning Acton Academy more generally and his insights into how traditional, existing schools can take his advice to create more self-directed learners. We also talked about why high schoolers might be interested in microschools in this day and age—including why his kids have been. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on our conversation. Leave us a comment.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 how we get there today, I'm delighted that we have a very special guest. His name is Tyler Thigpen. He is known as the head of schools at the Forest School and Acton Academy in Fayetteville, Georgia. We'll hear more about that shortly.He's also the co founder, executive director at the Self Directed or excuse me, Institute for Self Directed Learning. Going to hear more about that as well. He guest lectures occasionally at Harvard University. I see him in my neighborhood every once in a while. He's also the academic director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. So you wear a lot of hats, Tyler, welcome.Good to see you. Thanks for being here.Tyler ThigpenThank you, Michael. Delighted to be here. Happy to have the conversation and yeah. Wearing hats as you. As you do. As well, as we do.Michael HornYeah. Well, as it is. Right. But you also are the author of, a coauthor I should say, of a brand new book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. A Leader's Guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. It's out from Routledge. It's on Amazon.Check it out. We'll drop a link into the show notes and we're going to talk about that as well. I have one caveat. I've bought the book. I own it on my Kindle. I have not yet read it. I'm behind. So you're going to teach me a little bit as we go.But where I want to start with you, actually Tyler, is with the Forest School and, and Acton Academy because I'll just say, like when I first heard about the Forest School and Acton Academy, I was like, this is the coolest mashup I have ever heard of in my entire life.It's like outdoors, which I'm a strong believer in getting out into nature and then the personalization and aspects of owning your own learning that Acton Academy is known for. And for those that don't know, Acton Academy is a network loosely held, I guess, of microschools. Several hundred around the world at this point, use technology to help learners sort of follow the hero's journey as they progress through each year. But I want to hear it from you, like, what is this school all about? I have been dying to get down there. I have not seen it in person. I want to know how you blend technology and personalization of an Acton school and forest school, like that sounds magical and maybe mythical.Tyler ThigpenI love that. My answer may surprise you, actually. So what I really love about the forest schools around the world, and there are a subset of folks, families, caregivers, educators, you know, who've built and create these schools. You know, the love and engagement with the outdoors. A lot of, you know, very hands on, project based, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary stuff that, you know, kids are just engaged. I mean, a lot of forest schools, kids are outside, the vast majority, you know, of the time.Michael HornYeah, it's amazing to watch.Tyler ThigpenIncredible. The reason we, and we have, we share a lot of commonality with those schools. So, you know, being outside, in fact, our learners designed our school and they did an architecture quest like four or five years ago and it got built, we moved. We've been in a year and a month. It's incredible. And it includes massively large windows, which were very expensive. It includes a courtyard around which the school sits. This was all choices of the kids.And they're spending a massive chunk of their time outside every day and learning in nature. And then we exist in a really interesting town where we have connectivity to walking trails and a forest. We're right next to the forest, but we're actually not a forest school. We founded in a town that was called Pinewood Forest and it was right next to the largest movie studios in the United States, Pinewood Studios. It's now called Trilith, the largest movie studio in the world. And by that point we had already had the name for school. So we didn't change our name to be Trilith, but we are in this really interesting place that is kind of a hub for creators, makers and storytellers. So the mythical component, the mysterious component, is definitely there because of being in the ecosystem of innovation and storytelling.Interestingly, US Soccer just moved its headquarters five minutes down the road from us. So that's providing a really fascinating sports and competition component as well. But yeah, if you were to mesh up the storytelling, the love of outdoors, definitely the transdisciplinary projects and interdisciplinary, the choice, the hands on learning, that is very much our vibe and very much in line with the Acton Academy model where kids, the goal is that each person who enters our doors will find a calling that will change the world. And similar to forest schools, we have guides, you know, rather than teachers, and there's no homework. And we have studios instead of classrooms. And you can go at your own pace. And it's mixed ages. And so in that way it really is kind of mythical and magical.Learner-Driven EnvironmentTyler ThigpenAnd honestly when folks visit us, Michael and I do hope you come. When folks visit, one of the most frequent comments we hear and I feel it on a day to day basis is they feel like I can breathe here. You know, it's not a sort of super rigid high environment. There's a lot of learning to live together, going on a lot of exploratory play, a lot of passion projects. And because it's self paced and mastery based, you know, it's very learner driven. So it's not top down where you, where the kids feel like they're on edge, just waiting on the, you know, the adults to tell them what to do. So it's a cool vibe. You know, nothing's perfect but it, but it's, it's really, it's really beautiful and it's a labor of love for me because my kids have been there.I've got four kids, my oldest daughters aged out. My three boys are still there, one of them is a senior. So you know I get to hug their necks when I go on campus.Michael HornSo it goes all the way through high school. Give us the sort of the tale of the tape, you mentioned U.S. soccer is nearby so give us the stats if you will for the school. When, when was it founded, how many students, how many guides? You know, sort of the picture of what, of what we're talking about.Tyler ThigpenYep. So the Forest School and Acton Academy founded in 2018 with 31 learners, today and that was grades roughly 2 through 8 and today we are 162 learners. We are at capacity that's pre K3 through grade 12. And so we've graduated a number of alumni know out into now the marketplace as well as colleges and universities. And it's diverse by design so we're trying to maximize economic, racial, age, gender, religion, school background and learning differences, diversity. We want to show that self directed learning works for all kids and staff. We have about 16 full time staff there and then we during COVID launched the Foreste school online which has kids from three out of four US time zones.Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, China, Mexico. My head of schools in Thailand, that's about 50 learners and it's middle and high school and it's the most geographically diverse school I've ever been a part of. It is super cool to have the learners empathize with one another and the cultures and the different value systems and challenges and opportunities that they're all navigating so those are our two schools. And then like you said, we have the institute and that's sort of our version of scale, to be honest. You know, a lot of leaders in our space, when they think about scale, they think about more schools and more kids. But for us, we think about research, we think about leadership training, educator training, we think about sector change initiatives and consulting, you know, to really push against the ocean and help move the sector more towards, you know, learner student agency.Michael HornVery cool. Okay, let me ask this question then. How did you choose to be an Acton school when you all started up? How was that choice made?Tyler ThigpenYeah, we. It's interesting. My background is actually a traditional district. I taught at Georgia's largest public high school for a number of years and was a leader there. I co-founded a charter school that is nature focused. It was built off the idea of. Do you ever read Richard Lou's Last Child in the Woods?Michael HornOh, sure, yeah. Yeah.Tyler ThigpenFounded off that idea, you know, so, I mean, that really should have been called a forest school as well. But it's Chattahoochee Hill Charter school, a great K8 environment in South Atlanta that's still thriving today. And then I worked at a few independent schools, Mount Vernon in north Atlanta, and then the Forest School. But when we were collaborating, really, Michael the, with the leaders of a new development, you know, down here in the great state of Georgia, we still got a lot of space and some, you know, developments that are happening. And so we really build a trust building relationship with some leaders here. And they really wanted a school that would fit the neighborhood. And so I started just pro bono consulting with them to help them think through options, you know, district options, charter charter options, independent school options.Choosing Educational Models for KidsTyler ThigpenI just so happen to have children that I was looking for a high school for. And so the stars kind of aligned and we, you know, I was working at Transcend, a national nonprofit at the time and was familiar with a lot of different options and models, you know, public and private, to consider. And so I just brought all the models to the table with this group and, you know, they're not steeped in education. So they asked me what's my opinion. You know, the district option was great. We have a great relationship with the district here, but it's just going to take a long time. And they weren't really open to, you know, a new version of that in the ecosystem. Charter, you know, the charter constraints I'm very familiar with, we just didn't feel that we'd be able to be as innovative as we wanted to be.And so we went with independent because of nimbleness and because we were going to have a public purpose and be a nonprofit. We thought that was a good speed and could be appropriately innovative for the kind of people we wanted to attract to the neighborhood. And we went with Acton. When I heard Jeff and Laura Sandifer, the founders, say on their video, we believe that every child is a genius and can change the world. I was like, I think that too. I wonder what their school model is like. And so I did a deep dive. And they're just lovely, people in the network are awesome people and a lot of parent entrepreneurs who have skin in the game with kids in their schools.And, you know, early on, Jeff and Laura said, they said, you know, we feel like we figured out about 15% of this learning model and we feel like the founders and the network are going to figure out the other 85%. And I really took them seriously. And I was like, this is a place to, you know, join as well as play. And so I pitched that to the town developers and showed them some of the videos and talked about my vision for it and, and they, they cut a check, you know, for our founding funders.Michael HornAmazing.Tyler ThigpenThat first morning.High School Microschool ChallengesMichael HornAmazing, amazing. A few different directions I want to go. But let me start with this: high school. Because when a lot of folks talk about the micro school movement, broadly speaking, high schools, where a lot of people sort of, I don't know if squeamish is the right word, but like, they get, they're not sure it's going to grow into that. Here you have a high school, you know, you're sending your kids through it, right? And, and I think the criticism, you know, it probably as well as I do, right. That bundle of other things, right, that creates the high school experience, is that something kids really want to forego for a smaller environment that's more bespoke, perhaps in, in all definitions of that word. How have you thought about that? What have you learned? What have you seen in terms of high school and micro school?Tyler ThigpenIt's a great point, Michael. And obviously a ton of your work is connected to that handshake right between the high schools and the life's next steps. And high school is my bag of donuts. That's been the vast majority of my career. I worked, I'm actually an ordained minister. I worked with high schoolers as a full time minister for years before I moved into education. And then I taught at Georgia's largest public high school, served as high school principal. And so most of the bulk of my experience was with the high school model in general.And so it was less fearful to me. A lot of the microschool founders that I'm familiar with, they just have less connectivity to it and there's so much to learn. It feels a little bit overwhelming. Not so for me. It felt very empowering for me. And I could see in the even very innovative high schools I had led that were teacher centric before, I saw some of the gaps and flaws and ways in which to kind of really change it out. So I felt bullish about that. In terms of what's being offered.You're right. I mean, it's a trade off. And for some families, you know, it's not worth it to move into a smaller environment. You know, for some learners, it's not worth it. They want the friends, you know, they want Friday Night Lights. I mean, American football is a social institution in our nation, especially the south in Georgia, but we're actually part of a sports league where our learners can actually participate in American football with neighboring schools.Michael HornThat's cool.Tyler ThigpenWe have a team. And because we're learner led, we say to kids when they have an idea, we're like, all right, if you want to start something, you got to get a critical mass of people to help do it with you. And then you've got to have a parent volunteer who can help. And that's how we got our boys basketball program started. Last night, we literally had our parent player end of season scrimmage. I'm happy to say that we won, the parents by three.Michael HornYou're hanging on. Yeah.Tyler ThigpenMy son did block me like two or three times during the night, though, so I was humbled. And then, you know, our girls volleyball team got started that way. An environmental club gets started that way. Dungeons and Dragons club gets started that way. And frankly, I'm okay with those programs even dying over time because it is learner led. I mean, if the learners lose a will for it, you know, we'll.= move on. And then the other thing I've noticed in, you know, in independent schools and working with them, and not just independent, but, but also public schools, millennial parents these days, you know, tend to, instead of, you know, paying for a larger chunk of tuition so that the school has and offers all the services they want to be able to do with their funds, what they want to be able to do.Michael HornMore à la carte.Tyler ThigpenYeah, à la carte. Right. So the fact that we have a core tuition that covers our operations and then they can, you know, bespoke choose what they want to do. They seem to like that model, you know, at least for now. So that's kind of how we're overcoming it, you know, but that's where we're at.Michael HornVery cool. What, what is the tuition, out of curiosity, because that's always been a hallmark of Acton, is affordable also.Tyler ThigpenIt is. Right now it's 12.9, $12,900 for the year, which if you look at, I mean, Atlanta has a very competitive independent school market that is very reasonable. And, and what's more than that is that more than covers the cost of our operations. Most independent schools, you know, in the United States, year after year, have increased the rates of tuition over and above the rate of inflation. And so it's priced a lot of families out. Yeah, we have sliding scale because we're economically diverse. We make use of our state's funding program, it's a tax credit program to be able to raise funds for lower income families to provide financial aid, financial, financial based, you know, scholarships for them. And that, that really works well for us.And we don't have, Michael, an annual fund, which, you know, it was a learning moment for me when I moved into the independent school sector at one point. You know, it's just a common thing for a lot of private schools to have an annual fund and raise money over and above tuition. We don't have one and God willing, we never will. You know, that's my commitment. So.Michael HornYeah. Well, it's interesting because an annual fund can be quite exclusionary to some of those families that cannot afford right above and beyond. So it makes sense. Let me ask this question then. You lead the Institute for Self Directed Learning, your new book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning. Self directed learning is a big part of the Acton model as well, building learners who are self directed over time.How do you like, tell us about how that journey is? Do you know of, of helping learners take ownership over what they, you know, what and how they learn and so forth. And where's the autonomy and where are the guardrails and scaffolds perhaps?Tyler ThigpenYeah, great question. So the way we define it is self directed learning is happening when learners are. It's not alone. It's not learners sort of off in a cave.Michael HornDoing this is not autodidact by yourself. Okay.Tyler ThigpenTotally, totally. Which would be a Legit critique, know, self directed learning. But it's, it's when they're in the context of a community of peers, you know, trained educators and caring adults. But they have a ton of choice. They get to choose the process, the content, the skills, the learning pathways, you know, the outcomes of learning. And, and they're doing it in service of finding a calling, you know, that will change the world. And, and what we've been trying to do is study that pathway.Phases of Self-Directed LearningTyler ThigpenSo we do have a, through our institute, we have a peer reviewed study that our head of research, Dr. Caleb Collier, he's got a PhD in self directed learning he put out that describes four phases of the pathway of a self directed learner. The first phase, you know, very familiar to all of us, just building the desire for learning, you know, making sure that kids feel like they belong, they are safe, they're having their core needs met and then they see relevance in their learning, you know, which is not to be taken, you know, for granted by any stretch. But that's just phase one. You know, phase two is when learners start to go into advanced player mode by instead of choosing to do something easy and, you know, just amusing, they will choose to do something challenging. So instead of, you know, watching Netflix on the phone or talking with their friends, they're going to choose to do a challenging task where they have to learn and they experience the learning pit, you know, know, and, you know, hitting that brick wall and feeling that frustration. That's phase two. We call it resourcefulness. The third phase we call initiative, which is where learners are now not just starting to, you know, solve problems, they're actually finding problems, you know, and they're seeking them out and they're making their plans, they're setting goals.They've got a structured process for, you know, setting their goals. At our school, we use smart goals and whoop goals, you know, wish outcome, obstacle path, a great, a great protocol for goal setting. And that's, so that's initiative. But then that's not it either. Phase four, and this is, you know, ninja mode, this is, it's persist, right? It's where regardless of whatever struggle comes their way, they're going to be resilient, they're going to overcome it and nothing's going to stop them from learning, you know, and so we, we care a lot about that pathway. We talk about that pathway a lot. We invite learners to consider where they are on that pathway.We invite parents and caregivers to consider where they believe they are on that pathway, and their children. And then we think through like what are the different guide moves, educator moves, mentor moves at each one of those phases, you know, but that's the end goal. And typically Michael, I mean, as you would imagine, like when we share that pathway with education leaders across the U.S. I mean, they very much resonate. Oh yeah, that's what we're trying to do. You know, regardless of the subject, they all want to get there.Michael HornYeah, no, that makes sense. I'm curious. My observation of a lot of the Acton’s that I've been in is it's a really neat blend of self direction on the knowledge or foundational knowledge, maybe put it through the technology and then in pursuit of these bigger goals and the projects and sort of the larger arc of the year. And it does a really good job of balancing like for each kid, some of the things that maybe people would worry about. Right. Of Michael's only going to study underwater basket weaving, which doesn't have a lot of, you know, outside applicability.What have you learned about some of those questions in the institute? And then let's start there and then maybe we can transition in the book.Tyler ThigpenWell, we've learned about how to systematize that for sure. I think, you know, which for us and other Acton’s and I think other competency based schools who hold similar approaches, you know, it is making a very transparent process even at the beginning of each year to say, okay, what are the skills, knowledge and competencies that the learner is going to encounter and strive to master over the course of the year? You know, the way we do it is we present that to the parents, caregivers and learners at the beginning of the year and ask for their feedback. Say, is this right? You know, and then what do we want to add, subtract or change and then what are your goals in terms of pacing for finishing that? Right. And then, and then let them, let them go. And then as guides, we hold them, hold them to that. So we keep the onus on the learner. So it's not our time frame, it's not even our goals.We're just the coaches. Yeah, yeah, facilitators. And then, you know, you'll have some parents who care a ton about not just the foundational skills, but even bulking that up even more and making sure that the foundational skills are super strong. And then you have the opposite end. You have some parents and caregivers and learners who are like, yeah, we don't really value that. As much. And. And then we want more exploratory components or we want more electives, you know, and the cool thing about having a guide instead of a teacher is you can facilitate that instead of, you know, direct instruction, it's.It's managing the quality of learning through multiple channels. You know, I think in the young ages, they're still heavier on direct instruction. You know, we happen to have, for ages 3, 4, 5 and 6, they're in, It's a Montessori environment.Michael HornYep.Tyler ThigpenWhich definitely includes, you know, some direct instruction, but some letting go over time. Our second, third grade is still pretty heavy direct instruction. I think we found that to be crucial. And then when it starts to get into grades four and above, we've learned that's when you can really wean learners off of that direct instruction. But what's so important is making sure our guides and staff know different facilitation protocols to help learners, you know, reflect and self assess, and then making sure the learners grow in their own ability to assess and self assess, you know, their own learning and then their peers learning as well without that's kind of a missing.A missing piece for all this. And they can be just sort of adrift and not, you know, not know what they're learning, what they have learned, what they need to learn,Michael HornWhere they're doing it, et cetera. Yeah, exactly. Makes a ton of sense. And sort of the gradual release, if you will, through the ages so that they can have more agency and choice because they know more of what's out there, also makes us, you know, makes sense, I suppose. I'm curious. Last question before we transition the book, I promise. But I'm super curious to ask you this. When I hear people talk about direct instruction, I think a lot of the mental model they have is one teacher, 30 students.I'm telling you the information. My observation to your point is, in a Montessori classroom, direct instruction is absolutely happening. But it's like one on one, one on three, one on four. Occasionally, you know, we do certain lessons right that involve everyone, but it's. It's like a much more varied direct instruction. Let me show you.Now you try with me here. Now you do. Right. Sort of release. And that when your students get older, as you just described, they're still sort of getting direct instruction in the sense of, like, from computers or, you know, like. Right. Like, it's not like they're not learning content or engaging with a demonstration of how to do this thing that I think is important and I'm trying to learn.And so it sort of gives lie, I think, to one of the weird dichotomies we've constructed in education. You can tell me I'm crazy and I'm wrong, but I'm just sort of curious your take on that framing.Tyler ThigpenI totally agree, Michael. I think it's a great observation to me when I think about where direct instruction can go wrong is when the teacher structures it such that the teacher really is the sage on the stage, you know, and that the answer, the content, the expertise, the assessment, whatever has to come from that individual, you know,Michael Hornand so it's all dependent on that person now.Tyler ThigpenYeah, yeah, exactly. Rather than, you know, the teacher is facilitating, you know, facilitating the learning. And I was actually with a group of superintendents, principals in Ohio last week. We were talking about this and I just sort of off the cuff mentioned the fact that, like, what I've observed and what I have done myself. So I'm confessing here as a teacher, I mean, like, we can get addicted to, you know, the dopamine rush of explaining something to a kid and them getting it and us being.Feeling good about ourselves, you know, and be like, yes, like, thank God my.Michael HornYeah, the magic moment is cool. I help facilitate that.Empowering Learners Through Self-DifferentiationTyler ThigpenYeah. My existence is worthwhile because I explained it to them, you know, rather than letting them, you know, productively struggle and wrestle with it and. And different. Helpfully differentiate ourselves. And I am using a term there from family systems theory, self differentiation, which I think can be really helpful here, where the teacher appreciates the fact that, like, the job of the learner is to learn and that cannot be forced, you know, and to help support and create the conditions, the inspiration, the incentives, you know, the structures, the milestones, the celebrations, all that. But ultimately it's a win not because the learner got it, because we explained it, but the learner got it because they came to it on their own, because you cannot take that away from them, you know. And, you know my parents.I love my parents. I grew up with a lot of. A lot of. A lot of commands, you know, a lot of. A lot of direct instruction. And it came from an unbelievably great place. But it wasn't until I was outside of that environment, you know, as an adult, as a professional, where I started to appreciate the benefits and the power of coming to things on your own, discovering them on your own.You know, people are so, in my opinion, I mean there's so we all have thoughts, you know, we all have feelings, we all have a will and plans that come from a beautiful, beautiful place. And so structuring the learning such that it really appreciates those things and creates space for them to be explored and developed. It's just the way direct instruction. If it's only that, you know, it doesn't provide for a lot of the plan making that a young person be doing. It doesn't plan, it doesn't allow for a lot of the like sense making and feelings working through the feelings, you know that, that I think learner centered schools are really latching onto.Michael HornVery cool. Okay, let's turn to you the book now, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning: Leaders Guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. Why did you write the book? What are you hoping comes out of it? Yeah, and I should, I should mention it's not just you. Caleb is a co author who we mentioned. Amber Bryant, Brittney Toles. It's the four of you who have come together to do this work.Tyler ThigpenYeah, and that's an important point, Michael. Those are dear friends, also parents of learners at the school. Two white men, two black women who we've been working together for the last seven years and we all bring our different backgrounds to this work and you know, love our community and together have sort of tried to with our team, broadly, you know, figure out what works, what doesn't work. And we have, we have pivoted so many times, you know, and so this is our attempt at sort of capturing, you know, some of that learning here. And, and so yeah, in terms of the book itself, you know, what would be, what would be helpful to riff on?Implementing Educational Principles in SchoolsMichael HornWell, so I know that each chapter sort of lays out strategies, right for how to put these principles in place in a school. I guess I would love to hear, you know, is this something that can really be done in an existing school or do they need to have Tabula Rasa to create something blank slate? Like how, how do you think about that? Because that strikes me as one of the biggest questions facing the country right now is do we actually believe this will come from the emergence of a vast diverse array of new schooling types or do we think we can actually move districts and existing schools to embrace the principles you're talking about?Tyler ThigpenYep, I'd love to, I'll address that last point last I think the, are you familiar with the book Teach Like a Champion from Doug?Michael HornOf course. Yeah. Doug Lemov.Tyler ThigpenYeah, massive you know, for the listeners, a massive, you know, power, powerful book at a moment in history in education that, that a lot of really empowered and inspired a lot of educators and, and you, you know, I've read it and had used some of the techniques and really I use the word techniques because it was, that it was a book of techniques. It was like a playbook that you could tick it off. I'm going to do this. And it was to really manage a classroom to get learners focused on a discrete standard. And I do think the techniques did an effective job of that. I think we see our book as a companion to that for a different purpose. It's techniques for learner centeredness. It's what are the techniques adults can do to create responsibly, the space for the feelings, the plans and the thoughts for learners to take hold of their own learning.So that's why we did it. And you're asking what we hope to do with the book now. Maybe all of us will have rose colored glasses. We do think it's possible. And so we speak in the book to both public and private school leaders and educators, you know, public school leaders who are, and educators who are dealing with the constraints of a standards based environment and private school leaders who are dealing with the expectations of parents and caregivers, you know, for you know, life's next steps. Some, you know, college prep environments. And then of course there's that both of those things exist sometimes in the other sphere as well. But you know, the process that we've explored and have discovered and continue to work with districts on is we have identified sort of principles that are true about learner led classrooms and learner led schools versus teacher led classrooms and teacher led schools.Shifting to Learner-Led EducationTyler ThigpenAnd that, that's actually the different outline of our book. And we kind of, and their examples are like in a learner led school the learners are typically doing the choosing, whereas in a teacher led school the teachers typically are choosing things and there's a whole host of things they're choosing. Another example is in a learner led school, learners are doing the assessing for the most part or they're being assessed by experts or by peers. Whereas in a teacher led school the teachers really are the ones who are doing the assessing. And so it's, it, it's a different set of spectra on, on those, along those lines. But what we've done with districts, which is more of a, it's not a let's blow up the model and start something new. It's like, let's slowly work towards this is you've gotten with teachers in public school settings, in teacher centric settings, and we've taught the principals and we've inspired them to take a lesson that they're going to do next week, you know, and say, okay, now that you know these principles and here's the lesson that you have in front of you. What's one thing you can do to make it more learner led, you know, or what's two things you can do along these spectra? And which one did you choose and why? And then share that out and they share it.And now go try it. And they'll go try it. And you know, usually it goes really well because learners are amazing. And you know, when they're given the choice and voice and agency, they will take it. And even when they make poor choices, if the natural consequences are in place, they'll learn from that. And so teachers come back and they'll share about that experience. And of course, if they're sharing about this experience in the context of other educators, then, you know, they're sort of stealing ideas shamelessly from one another, which is great. And then, you know, teachers.And then it's rinse and repeat, do it again. And so teachers will take another lesson and just make that a little bit more learner led. And then as they do that over the course of a year or so, really we've done partnerships for multiple years at districts. They get better and they sort of as a default, they're building their muscles at making their classrooms or their departments even more learner led, even more learner centered, where kids have even more agency. And then at some point we'll stop them and we'll ask them, okay, what are the barriers? You know, like what. What are you encountering perceived or real that is stopping you from doing more? And of course, they're incredible at naming barriers. The teachers are. And when you have leadership that's on board, leaders will listen very, very carefully to those barriers.And then they'll get together and they'll say, all right, what can we, you know, what barriers can we completely remove? Which ones can we tweak to make it easier? And then which ones can we just. We got to keep. But we can help them navigate around. And then the leaders and teachers have that conversation. And in our experience, when, when a district does that, the ball really can move, move forward, but it's playing a long game. You know, it's having a lot of courage. You know, it's having some skills in change management, for sure. And so a real deep belief in the trajectory.So it's not, it's not for everybody because not everybody's there yet. But our book aims to be that thing that one can take off the shelf, open up and be like, okay, this week I'm gonna do this.Michael HornAnd so super practical, super down to earth. Maybe as we wrap up, are there places, district schools, independent schools, but existing schools that you're like, excited about, that you'd say, you know, check out this place because they're doing this one thing that's really cool and you wouldn't believe it if I didn't tell you it existed.Tyler ThigpenYeah, absolutely. So we worked for years with Pike County Public schools in Georgia, Rural district. Former superintendent Mike Duncan, who's state superintendent of the year, he was there for, you know, over a decade, which that's a part of it.Michael HornYou know, that's right. You need continuity. So we're all swimming toward this goal. Yeah, right.Tyler ThigpenYou know, they, they took a stance around, you know, moving their educators towards the role of a guide in a public setting, you know, unapologetically, enthusiastically. I'm thinking about there's another school, I'm touting Georgia schools while I have the opportunity.Michael HornNo, go for it.Tyler ThigpenNorth of Atlanta, North Hall High School has this math department led by this guy called Jason, who has got a real switched on team there. And you know, one example of how they've made it learner lead is this one teacher at high school level math decided to, at the beginning of a unit, give all the kids in that classroom all the standards for that unit and give them all the resources that they would need, both human and material and online and say, all right, you've got six weeks. I'll be here if you need me. Go. And let them prove mastery in their own way. And sure enough, they did, you know, and now he's doing it over and over. But those are the kind of, I think, examples I'd highlight. But again, what's true about those is you've got leadership that's on board and, and stay and hanging around. You know, you've got courage because there's pushback always, you know, when change happens and, and you've just got folks who have rolled up their sleeves and are committed, you know, for the long haul.Celebrating Self-Directed Learning GuideMichael HornWell, and that is a worthwhile goal. We will leave it there. But Tyler, thanks so much for coming on. Congrats on the book, the Playbook for Self Directed Learning: A leader's guide to School Transformation and Student Agency. Something worth aspiring to. Appreciate the work you're doing on the ground online at the Institute and now with this book. Thanks so much.Tyler ThigpenThank you, Michael. Great chatting with you. And all the best.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.

Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd, and Ben DeGrow, Senior Policy Director of Education Choice at ExcelinEd, join me to delve into the evolving landscape of educational choice. Our discussion centered on the uptick in states implementing educational savings accounts (ESAs) and the various questions surrounding their implementation, specifically academic accountability, financial safeguards, and effective program management. Levesque and DeGrow discussed the need for a balance between broad policy frameworks and practical regulations. I keep learning a lot from these conversations around this fast-growing space of choice and personalization—and hope you all do as well.Michael HornYou 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 this pressing set of issues today, I'm incredibly excited. We have people I've worked with for many years, looked up to for many years, who are going to lend a lot of insight on the topic of educational choice in particular, but they could talk about so much more. So first, Patricia Levesque, the CEO of ExcelinEd..Patricia, great to see you. Thanks for joining.Patricia LevesqueThanks for having us.Michael HornAnd then Ben DeGrow, the senior policy director of Education Choice at ExcelinEd., Ben, good to see you as well.Ben DeGrowThanks. Great to be with you.Michael HornI've been looking forward to this conversation since y'all reached out on the topic of educational choice and the contours of that conversation and the really interesting debates that are going on right now around implementation as so many states dive into this world in a much more meaningful way over the last several years. And before we get into those conversations, maybe let's just like zoom out, high level. Patricia, let's start with you. And then, Ben, jump in. Look, a lot of states are moving, you know, not just into school choice, educational choice. We see education savings accounts getting a lot of attention, a lot of movements toward universal choice at that.There have been movements, I think, in Tennessee and Texas in recent weeks. There were setbacks at the polls in November. What's your current assessment if you just look high level of where we are in the world of education choice and this movement, broadly speaking, and perhaps maybe a little bit of forecasting, where you think we will be by the end of the year?Patricia LevesqueSure. I'll start by saying I think we are in a great position in educational choice and opportunity for families. The best that we've been in my 28 years working on this policy. Right. And Michael, me just start by saying the way you introduce this podcast, the mission of this podcast is like the mission of private school choice or educational choice. It's giving families the ability to find the best education fit for their child. So their child, because we believe kids are individuals, they're very unique, and not one system or one school is the right, best fit for every child. So empowering families with that opportunity is what we.What we like to do with policy. And we're in the best position on that, in the country that we've been in as long as I can remember.Michael HornBen, what would you add in terms of where we are at this moment and maybe give us a sense of how many states have moved into different, you know, really embracing real choice at this point?Ben DeGrowYeah, I think we're at a real major inflection point. I feel like every year we've been saying this is the year of school choice for several years and every year it just seems to be more true Than the year before.And I mean at ExcelinEd we cover a whole gamut of choice in the public and private space. But we're just going to hone in on private education choice. We're not talking more than 30 states that are offering at least some students either a voucher scholarship or tax credit scholarship from USA and we're coming up on just over a dozen states that are offering all students, regardless of income, regardless of background, access to funds. Personally, we dive into the nuances of that. It can be, you know, how much funding is available, for how many students and so forth. But with states like Tennessee passing, in Texas, we're on the verge of having the majority of students, the United States eligible for private school choice, which is something we hardly could have imagined five years ago.Michael HornAll right, so with that as backdrop, lot of momentum in this direction each year sort of surpassing the previous one as you said,Ben, let's flip to implementation from the outside. I will say there are a surprising number of debates around how to put these various policies into place in the states. Let's maybe start with accountability. Patricia, you wrote what I think remains the most nuanced and thoughtful take about accountability. I use it all the time on the stump with this continuum between sort of district run public schools to public charters to full on educational choice options and how we think about accountability and transparency mechanisms in each. Just take us through your logic on that and how you think about the accountability conversation right now.Academic Accountability vs. School AutonomyPatricia LevesqueSure. And let me put a finer point and say we're really talking about the academic accountability, right? Not fiscal or health, safety, general welfare, things like that. And so we get asked often, how can Excelined have a position where students in the public school system should have to take a state test and there should be accountability or grading of public schools. Yet in private school choice or education choice, we advocate a more flexible norm referenced assessment model. And the answer to that is that there is a continuum of accountability versus autonomy. And so if you think about the ends of the spectrum, you have at one end a home education parent using their own funds to teach their own child. Right. And we would say there should be a very, very light touch of the state in that interaction between that parent and that child.From an academic accountability standpoint, the other end of the continuum you have the traditional public school system, which is the default system. It's the compulsory system. It's the system that is federal, state and local taxpayer funded. It is a system that has taxing authority and, and sovereign immunity protections. Right. It is the big muscular system that the state needs to ensure learning is going on. Right. That kids are learning how to read and do math because the state or another government entity is compelling you to place your child in that system and telling you which school to go to.Florida Scholarship Program's Academic BalancePatricia LevesqueRight. And so there's a vested interest in the state ensuring there's some academic accountability in the system. If you move along the spectrum to publicly funded private school choice, and I'd put that right about in the middle of the system, what is the right balance between academic accountability, transparency and autonomy of the school? And so I would point your listeners to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It is the program that has been in place the longest of all the statewide school, private school choice programs has served more than a million students and for 23 years only served low income students. So you have the largest, longest running program targeted for at risk kids that has had 13 years of solid academic outcomes. So by looking at norm referenced assessments, we can see that the students in that program are learning just as well or better than in many years their low income public school peers. We saw the Urban Institute do one of the longest, largest studies of 85,000 matched kids and saw incredible outcomes.Post high school college going rates, college completion rates. So if the largest, longest running program has good outcomes, what does that program doing? How do we know if that program has the right balance? And I would say you look at parental participation, private school participation and outcomes which we just talked about. And if you look at the Tax Credit Scholarship program, it was always oversubscribed. There were always more parents every year that wanted to get into the program. And there was a very good balance of private school participation. So 80 plus percent of private schools in the state of Florida chose to participate in the program. That's very different than in very heavily regulated programs like the Louisiana Scholarship program where barely 30% of the private schools chose to participate. Right.So you have strong parental participation, strong private school participation and good outcomes. Those to me give you three green check marks that that what that program is doing has a good balance. And that program is norm referenced assessment on the students you're participating with, the results reported back to the parent so they can see how their own child is doing and data reported back so the state can see how is the program doing as a whole. So we know that the taxpayer funds are being used well, and that's a really good balance.Michael HornBen, if you want to add anything there, I guess the one question I have is the reason norm reference instead of, say, criterion reference or something else? Because we really want to understand the counterfactual. Is that the reason for that? Because we want the comparison.Testing Flexibility and Accountability GuardrailsBen DeGrowIt definitely helps because while a lot of lawmakers want to see that direct comparison between their scholarship students and their state public school students, what a norm referenced test offers is the ability to compare with a national sample of students so we can have some credible measure. But it also allows schools to choose tests that more closely align with their curriculum. So they are actually offering, you know, genuine options and alternatives for students and inviting participation for these schools into these programs. So it is less of a deterrent than mandating the state test as the sole instrument. I would also add, when we think about accountability, the evolution from the traditional volunteer scholarship into the ESA has put an added emphasis also on the need for fiscal accountability. As we think about what kind of guardrails do you need to put in place as families have more flexibility to spend money on things beyond just private school tuition, but also an array of goods and services. And every state, as I set up an ESA program, has to think through these things. And part of the work we do in implementation and our ESA administrator network and areas like that is to help states which are already, the administrators are already very focused on making sure those guardrails are high is to help them balance that consideration with the need of families who are driving the creation of these programs, and that's probably an area we can delve into more.Michael HornWell, I think that's a perfect launching point, right, because that's one of the big conversations. Maybe let's start like where these ESA programs even live and how you manage them and how you help families access the dollars and their set of choices. We see, you know, Step up for Students in Florida. We see Odyssey in other states some places the Department of Ed is trying to do this work directly. How do you all think about where these programs live and who manages them?Ben DeGrowIt's one of the first and most important decisions to be made when crafting An ESA policy and one that gets easily overlooked, especially in the early days. State lawmakers, policymakers would think, well, we just obviously put this in the Department of Education, right, because it's an education program within our ESA administrator network, which encompasses about 20 states. And we bring these program managers in to share best practices, to share technical resources with one another, hear the same common issues and concerns that they're dealing with. We have representatives from Departments of Education, we have Departments of Treasury, we have agencies that oversee that some states do, the higher ed financing authorities. And we also have nonprofit organizations like you referenced, Step up for Students, Children's Scholarship Fund and most recently ACE Scholarships. We have over time come to see that these nonprofit agencies are probably the preferable option to run them because they're not only mission driven, they get involved in this because they believe in the power of opportunity and choice for kids and families. We also have the flexibility to adapt to the needs as these programs scale up. That includes personnel decisions about contracting out to review expenses or other things along those lines.So flexibility, mission driven. We like to see nonprofits, but we'll work with all agencies and help them work on focusing on that student centered, customer driven approach.Michael HornOne of the other things that this then raises the window is right, what can you spend on how far afield, right, how wide you make the sets of choices? You talked about balancing the desires of parents with the state's concern. I imagine some of what Patricia was talking about in terms of what's the participation of various providers is also an interesting data point. And thinking about getting that balance right, what's your own take around how flexible and how much freedom you give families to spend on whatever they want, that connects to education? And then my assumption, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, is the further afield you get out from the topics that a norm reference test would measure, the less relevant those sort of external markers become. And it's more about the parent understanding. Did my child make the progress I had hoped for?Ben DeGrowI will say we again, we would always want to focus on making sure that we're trying as a lot of our ESA administrators that we work with, their goal is to try to get to yes and help serve parents needs and make sure that they are getting the services, the goods they need. Whether it's curriculum, whether it's tutoring, whether it's a therapy for a child with dyslexia or autism, transportation to an education program. Every state has a lot of the same allowable expenses, but every state's a little different in the nuance and what's allowable and what's not. And that starts in the statute and it comes down to the level, how it's interpreted at the agency that's administering. So lots of challenges. We would say do the best you can to get to yes, but I recognize that you need clarity for families. So if you're going to set up guardrails, and you should set up guardrails.For example, if a child needs a laptop for educational purposes, how often should they be able to purchase a laptop? Do they really need one every year? And an agency could say, well, we'll allow one every three years, for example, to make sure that families are balancing that the vast majority of families are legitimately working to help get goods and services to their child that they need. And so really the agency has to police the boundaries of those, that small percentage of people who might want to misuse the system. But we want to make sure that all those guardrails are in place that focuses on helping families get to the yes.Patricia LevesqueAnd Michael, I would add to that. I think Ben was focusing on, you know, those kind of discrete expenditures that are maybe some of them are on the periphery. I would like to point out too that what private schools are eligible is also, you know, an actual difference of opinion in some states, there are some recent states that decided, well, the way that we're going to ensure that it's a real, for real private school is the schools have to be accredited. And what that essentially does in many states is cut out half of the supply that exists in the state or even the opportunity for some of the newer types of models like micro schools to be able to participate. Whereas what you see in a state like Florida is that there is more of a checklist of. Here are the 10 things that we want to see to ensure that you are private school to participate.Ensuring Accountability in Education PoliciesPatricia LevesqueWe want to see background checks on the instructional personnel and we want to see that you've gotten your fire inspection or your health inspection or your radon inspection. There's more of a list of health, safety, general welfare, financial, you know, accountability type of provisions. And we do a site inspection and then, yes, you're eligible to participate. When we work with states on policy design, before it even gets to the bill passed and you're implementing, we would encourage states to be broader in the types of entities or institutions that can participate. It'll bring a healthier marketplace into existence in your state and actually give families more opportunities and options and there's still again a balance. Right? I think you're going to hear us say that word often. How much do you open up the market? How much do you have to do you narrow the market? So there's quote accountability. I think there's a good healthy balance in all of these things.Michael HornSo let's actually stay with that, Patricia, because what you just raised in thinking about that balance, it suggests that maybe there's another principle as states are starting to look at this, which is, and I want to check myself here, but in the policy itself, start broad, don't over prescribe, but know that when you get into the regulation there's a good deal more work to be done. And that's where you know, figuring out where you're assigning the, you know, what, what entity is going to manage this, the guardrails you're going to put up, striking the balance. Is that how you would think about it? Is like start broad and then sort of hone in on, on the finer details as you get into the specifics of operationalizing. Or is there a better approach as states are looking at these various policies right now in your, in, in both of your view?Patricia LevesqueI agree. Broad is better for the, especially the places and the institutions and the tutors and the therapists that you start broader so that you have a lot of opportunity out there for families. I think what we would also say is ESAs are not brand new creations anymore. Right. They've been around for a while. You have a program like the state of Florida where there's 500,000 students that have been awarded for next school year either a full ESA or what some people call micro grants. Right. It's just for transportation or just for reading tutoring or, or math tutoring.But that's a lot of information and data over multiple years on what you know, different policy prescriptions make it easier for families to access as well as give whomever is the, you know, administering agency enough guidelines so that they know how to administer the program well and that goes to not only just what kind of schools, but what's the window for parents to apply? What is the order like it, I think states that prescribed specific time frames of this student gets eligible on this date before this next group. All of those add administrative challenges to getting a program off the ground or making it parent friendly. Right, family friendly each year as parents have to enroll or re-enroll their child.Ben DeGrowI would concur. I mean there's definitely always a temptation to write legislation that can become too prescriptive. But at the same time using that word balance, you do have to include some level of detail to identify the categories of things families can spend money on to demonstrate legislative intent. And once you get down to that next level, that's as Patricia was suggesting, the administrative challenges pop into place. For those of us who've worked in the field of policy for length of time, we always talk about how there's a gap between what's written on paper and what gets put into practice from the implementation. Now I don't see anywhere where that's more true than ESAs. We created programs that originally were designed to serve students with special needs or learning challenges. In Arizona and Florida, the earliest programs, really around the principle of giving families the ability to customize, recognizing that each child is unique and has individual needs.And so trying to define exactly what families can spend money on in statute is impossible. And you do the best you can to kind of identify and categorize those things. But as you get down from statute into the program rules and then to the policy handbooks and then the actual day to day decisions as they review expenses and things, it has to be a way to find that individual child's means within clear, consistent, transparent guardrails. And that's. It's an ongoing challenge. But we're seeing states grow in this area and get, and get better at it over time.Michael HornYeah. And so I guess the principles don't sort of cut off the ability to tick and tack and get it right from the get go. Start with some models that are already out there that are pretty proven at this point. One of the pieces that's getting a lot of conversation right now is around the funding piece at the moment. There's, you know, it moves beyond special needs students to universal choice. There's been a lot of conversation about, well, it says universal choice, but a lot of these programs are not funded such that they could serve every single student in the state. Or there's a lot of double funding. Right.Where we continue the funding flow to districts. We have a separate line item in effect around the ESAs that are getting created. How do you think, you know, a state getting into this should do it? Is there a right way to maybe baby step and then grow into this? Is that an evolution or is it get it right from the get go? How do you both think about the funding piece of this and how it should be set up?Phased Approach to Education FundingBen DeGrowThere's no one perfect script or roadmap for states, but there are some good principles for states to consider as they're going down this path and, and lots of factors are going to help determine it. Even for those who want to make the opportunity available to as many students as possible as soon as possible, we recommend states, you know, step back and think about the fiscal impacts and the administrative challenges. So phasing in a program over multiple years is something several states have tried, and that usually just means phasing in the eligibility. So in year one, you are only including students up to a certain income level or students who previously attended a public school or otherwise limiting, you know, maybe the, the amount or the number of slots available. We don't want that to deter the ultimate goal, which is to create a system that's open to everyone and a system that creates a fair, equitable funding for students regardless of which path their families choose for them, even if it takes three or four years to get there. The other thing we're looking at more and more seriously is helping states think about. And some states are doing this to some degree, but most states have a lot of work to do is serving the students who bring like, low income challenges, learning challenges, and helping to fund them at a rate that's right,Reflects that to make them more, you know, palatable, to have more options to, to access private schools. But also they may need more services along the lines of tutoring or just support navigating the system. So building that phase and plan, building an equitable system are two of the things we help states think about.Patricia LevesqueAnd I would say over the long run, you need to contemplate where do you want to be 10 years from now? Right? Do you want to. I think Florida is one of the few states where the funding is built into the funding formula. So when the legislature meets, they're basically funding the public school and educational opportunities in one funding formula. And it's based on estimates of, you know, how many students are going to be in, in each of the different systems. And it's more of an automatic process where in many states it's a line item that has to be adjusted every single year that you're in a legislative session. And I think those, it's not that those are bad. I mean, I think it's wonderful that that's the way programs have been able to get off the ground. But if you really want to have a system where it's going to grow based on where parents decide and how the systems evolve, it probably needs to be more of an automatic type of formula that's Set up what Ben talked about in either system, in the public system and in your choice system, students that have higher needs, low income students or special needs students should generate more funding, whether they're going to a public school, a public charter, or taking a scholarship with them to a, to a private opportunity.Those types of things are going to be really important to have built into your, your funding streams and how you think about having the program work.Michael HornYeah, it strikes me that it allows for scale, Right, organically as demand grows in either sector, I guess in either direction, but particularly in the choice one. It also occurs to me and Patricia, I'd love your take on this, that Florida, because of just the number of years of choice that you all have had. Like if I think back to how Florida Virtual School got started back in the 90s or early 2000s, if memory serves, it got written, I think into the state funding formula in like 03 or something like that. But it was still like a hold harmless double funding for like some number of years, I want to say. And so maybe that's like a baby step in Florida just because of the experience in years that has been able to really move to that full fledged model that you'd want to see ultimately. Thoughts on that?Patricia LevesqueI do think started small and slow, you know, very, very small. Right. The first private school choice in the state of Florida, that was called the Opportunity Scholarship Program, only for students in failing schools. I think the first year had 42 students in it. Right. The first in Florida, special needs voucher. The first year only had two students in it because it was, you know, assigned to one county. But then the programs grew, the eligibility grew, or the region grew, or allowing a student to stay in the program if they met initial eligibility requirements.All of those things allowed the program to grow slowly. And so what you see in Florida is a really mature ecosystem. I think for other states that are going from zero to universal in one or two years, they might have more hiccups like normal things like how do you make sure the private schools feel comfortable participating and receiving public funding? How do you communicate? How do parents find out about these programs? A lot of those things. There, there, there's going to be a lot of really heavy lifting quickly for implementation. And that's what makes, I think, the work that Ben does, having a network of mature ESA administrators and the very young new ones learning and sharing with each other. What are those best practices? What do you have in your handbook? How do you define what we sometimes refer to as gray area expenses. How do you treat them Arizona versus how do you treat them Florida? And it can really educate a new administrator as they're having to make some of these decisions quite quickly in order to get a new program off the ground.Michael HornBen, maybe just talk a little bit about that work and what it looks like on the ground. Right. And for those unfamiliar with what you're doing with those states and how they're supporting each other, just to give a view of, as Patricia just said, to rapidly, right, gGet these programs off the ground. When you know it passes in legislature and a couple months later you expect to have something up and going for families.Ben DeGrowYeah, it's a venture that takes a lot of humility and cooperation because no state has really mastered this and completely figured this out. But as Patricia is suggesting, some states are more mature in the things they've learned and are able to share those lessons with others. So we work through something called the ESA Administrator Network, which ExcelinEd created back in 2020. And we're now up to 20 states participating in any, any state that's kind of overseeing a complex parent directed spending program. Whether it's a full fledged ESA where families can use their funds for private school tuition and or these other education expenses, or we have a handful of states that operate micro grants or supplemental ESAs that are smaller allotments where families can just spend on certain services. There's a lot to learn so we come together multiple times a year with the group and share our learnings and have them share formal learnings in these settings. And just a lot of conversation.Resource Sharing for Program ImplementationBen DeGrowThe feedback we get is all the conversations that they have with each other during the off program time is where they get a lot of value out of it. But we also try to keep in touch with them in multiple ways. And then we collect the technical resources and documents and things that it takes to get these programs off the ground. Whether it's contracts with vendors, RFPs to help secure the vendors, whether it's handbooks for parents and providers and marketing materials and half a dozen other things. We collect and share those resources with new states, especially as they're coming on board, and we try to give it to them in small doses to help them think about the next step. We also came up with an ESA implementation guide drawing on the wisdom of our some of our veteran states and leaders. And we use that as well kind of highlight the steps, all the steps you have to think about to get from we pass the legislation to now we can start a program and there's a lot to think about and a lot of lessons that we are continuously learning alongside them.Patricia LevesqueI'll give you one specific example. I won't name the state. There's a state that had a brand new ESA and the administrator was really concerned and said we're going to need to delay the launch of the ESA because we did an open call for providers, vendors to get signed up and we, and we only had a handful of vendors signed up. We can't launch the program if we don't have vendors signed up pre approved in the system. And it was really helpful to have another state that had one year of implementation already under their belt to be able to say don't worry about getting vendors or providers pre approved. The parents will bring you the providers. Right? The parents, once they choose a school or a tutor or wherever they want, they'll make sure their provider gets into your system. So it was really reassuring to have that lived experience of that, you know, one year more mature administrator giving the new one kind of that reassurance. Don't worry about that. When you're, you're fine, you're fine.Michael HornIt's a great story and I love it also because it shows that, you know, we don't have to have all the answers from the top, the bottom. Right. The parents, the actual demand can, can bring us the supply if you will, over time as well. Last question, maybe as we wrap up here, there are several other areas I know we could geek out on and work through. The other one that I've heard come up in a few different ways recently is around financial safeguards and specifically like curtailing providers from unreasonably inflating their tuition. And on one side you have folks saying like, hey, and I literally just heard this anecdote about a provider in Florida actually being like, I'm raising my tuition by 7K or whatever, you know, the amount of the ESA because now I can, there's, there's public money. I'd be foolish to just leave that on the table.And then some states that have said look, if we see a price hike like that, we're going to take action. You know, that's not okay. And others being like it should work out in the end because if you're talking about an esa, it's effectively a wallet. And so parents, you know, supply, demand can sort of take over over time. And maybe they do that in short term, but over time. Right, it should rebalance. How do you guys think about that conversation and where states ought to land, because it pertains directly to the ultimate thing around how do we get supply and really participating supply right in, in these marketplaces?Inflation, Tuition, and ScholarshipsBen DeGrowI'll take, I'll take the first crack at it. I think one of the lessons we take away is, well, first of all, there might always be isolated operators who will try to do that. If you look at the larger data trends, what we see in Florida, for example, is more correlation between rates of inflation and tuition than we do the advent of scholarship program or no scholarship program or universal access to scholarship programs. There's basically two effects that work and this is why we push states toward a more open, competitive model. There's, of course, the subsidy affect you talk about. As you give families more access to funds and they have more funds to put in the marketplace, it can encourage providers to raise the price. But there's also competitive effects that can offset that. So if we, if we set up a program like Florida or Arizona or Utah, New Hampshire, a lot, much of these states where families can use the funds not just on a narrow set of private schools, but a broad marketplace that includes private schools of different varieties, as well as micro schools and hybrid options and homeschooling and customized services.The more competition you put into the market, the more it deters individual providers from trying to game the system. So there's never going to be a perfect solution. But an open approach like some of these states are doing is one way we see to really to address that problem.Patricia LevesqueYeah, I would agree with Ben and just say that we hear those anecdotal stories, right? There's one school here that's going to immediately raise tuition to eat up the full amount of the ESA. But the only state where we have a lot of data over many years is Florida. And so looked at 11 years worth of almost 2000 private schools and looked at their, their actual tuition increases based on the data, and we looked at the average increase each year and then looked at the prior 12 months of inflation data, and it's exactly what Ben said, is that private schools really, you can see their tuition increases are very much in line with inflation. The other thing that when we talked with private school operators in the state of Florida and asked about what's going on with tuition, this is what we're hearing from lawmakers. And they pointed out something else really interesting, which is in the state of Florida, at the same time lawmakers have been increasing educational opportunities through universal ESAs, they've also been purposefully putting billions of dollars into the public school system to create higher minimum teacher pay in the public school system. And so the private schools have been saying the only way we are, we're losing teachers to the public system because their salaries can be so much more, because taxpayers are funding, right, greater teacher salaries in the public system.The only way we can be competitive and keep or recruit teachers is to increase tuition, because that's probably primarily how we fund teacher pay. So it's really interesting. A lot of the states that are doing ESAs for parents on one hand, are also doing increases in minimum or starting teacher pay, which distorts the market a little bit as well.Michael HornIt's interesting and it makes me think sort of in the higher ed world also, right. In terms of title4 federal financial aid, but those can only be spent on colleges and universities. It strikes me that the other thing that's unique about the space is it's not just a private school option, but I could be going to a micro school for two days, tutoring for two days, some menu of services, and sort of the fragmentation of that can actually really be, I would think, a downward price. And then as you said, Patricia, at the same time, sort of competing with, with the public marketplace choices for teachers in terms of where they're teaching. It's a very complicated landscape to almost overthink as a policymaker.Right. And when you look at, even in that Florida data, even though you're looking at averages and average private school tuition increases each year, you can see also by what percent of private schools didn't raise tuition at all in a given year. Right. And so, and what is the base that their tuition is starting out from? So, a Catholic school that was only charging $3,500 a year. Right. It looks like a huge tuition increase for them to just do $1,000 increase, but it's still half of what the scholarship amount is or what the average is. I think it becomes really risky if policymakers want to put in artificial caps that could have such a different impact based on all the different range of providers and really can't take into account historical increases or what was the base that you even started from. All of those types of things will only depress the vibrancy or the ability to have a really vibrant market.And we have to recognize that there is still a governor on all of this, and that's the parent. The parent knows how much their scholarship was awarded for. They know what the private school tuition was before the scholarships came into effect, and they're going to be pretty upset at the private school where they thought that they were only going to have, you know, the delta of what they were going to have to cover was only going to be $1,000. And now it's not. You know, there's parents actually are quite vocal on this stuff with policymakers and with their private schools because now they have the power, right, to be vocal on behalf of their child.Michael HornA lot of checks and balances built in there. I think that's a good place to leave this conversation. It's been a whirlwind through a lot of issues that get a lot more complex that you all are working on on a daily basis. I know, but just really appreciate it. I think one thing I will also take away from this is not only is there not a one size fits all kid, if you will, there's not one size fits all suppliers. And so to have a one size fits all rule to treat them has some pretty big downsides. And same place on the academic accountability conversation, really understanding the context is very important as we think about putting policies in place. So, Patricia, Ben, really appreciate your time and the work you continue to do.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.