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

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Apr 21, 2025 • 32min

Inside the Demand Side of Families Using ESAs

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!
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6 snips
Apr 14, 2025 • 50min

10 Years of Wildflower Microschool Growth for Teachers & Students

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.
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Apr 9, 2025 • 31min

The Challenges AI Poses for Learning How to Write

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. 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.
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Apr 7, 2025 • 38min

Tyler Thigpen on Self-Directed Learning

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.
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Mar 31, 2025 • 42min

In the Nitty Gritty of Education Choice

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.
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Mar 26, 2025 • 36min

Real Experiences, Real People Matter More with AI on the Rise

In this episode of Class Disrupted, Diane and I welcomed my colleague Julia Freeland Fisher, the director of education research from the Clayton Christensen Institute. Our conversation explored the potential and challenges AI presents in the educational landscape with a particular focus on Julia’s concerns about AI's impact on human connection and the risk that AI could replace genuine interpersonal relationships.Diane Tavenner:Hey there, I'm Diane, and what you're about to hear is a conversation Michael and I recorded with our guest Julia Freeland Fisher as part of our series exploring the potential impact of AI in education. This is where we're interviewing optimists and skeptics, and I really enjoyed talking with Julia and keep thinking about a few key ideas from the conversation.First, Julia's expertise related to social networks gives her a really important perspective on AI and the potential for it to either harm or help with social networking, which is such a critical factor in career and life opportunities for young people. She was really compelling in talking about how real experiences matter, and I think you're going to enjoy listening to her talk about how using AI to create what she calls infrastructure in digital experiences could enable young people to build social networks. Infrastructure is in contrast to sort of chatbots or agents, which are a really different experience.The conversation caused me to deeply reflect on my own social network, how I created it, and how I use it, and how complex it is. And at the same time, I'm thinking a lot about a handful of young people I know and what their social network is currently, and how AI may or may not be interrupting them building the social networks that they need and will depend on in the future. And then I'm also thinking about that for me and my age and stage, and what does that mean?It's been a fascinating rabbit hole that I'm really hopeful will yield some positive impacts on the product I'm building in the future, and how my behaviors as the leader of a company sort of evolve and respond to this moment in time. All of that to say, I truly cannot wait to thoroughly think through all of these ideas with Michael, but until then, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation we had with Julia.Diane Tavenner:Hey, Michael.Michael Horn:Hey, Diane. Good to see you.Diane Tavenner:You too. So, Michael, since we started this miniseries on AI and have begun interviewing all these really interesting people, I've started to notice AI literally everywhere in my life. And so I remembered something about this from my psychology days, and I had a conversation with yes, GPT about this to try to make sense of what's going on. And it turns out there is a particular psychological phenomenon that is going on here. I think I'm going to pronounce this correctly. It's the Baader Meinhof phenomenon. It's also known as the frequency illusion.And basically what happens is when you learn something new, you think about it, you focus on it, and then you start noticing it everywhere. And this is the result of two cognitive biases. So the first one is selective attention bias, where your brain is now sort of primed to notice the thing you've been thinking about, so you pay more attention to it in your environment. And then the second is confirmation bias. You know, once you notice it repeatedly, you interpret this as evidence that it's suddenly more common, even though its frequency hasn't actually changed. I don't know about you, I find this fascinating how our brain sort of filters and amplifies information based on what we're focused on. And so, yeah, that's happening to me. Just to illustrate my confirmation bias.I'm actually going to say out loud that I do think AI is everywhere. And I'm betting the person we are about to talk to today might feel the same because a lot of her recent work is on AI.Michael Horn:Well, I think you have nailed the lead in Diane. That's a perfect segue as well for today's guest, who I suspect is nodding along, excited to have her Julia Freeland Fisher. I'll say up front, I'm really excited about this one because Julia has been a longtime colleague and friend of mine. I hired her at the Christensen Institute as a research fellow. And then when I left full time a decade ago, just about a decade ago, she stepped in as my successor. It was like a version 2.5 or 3.0 or something like that. We jumped ahead several generations.So it was terrific. And I couldn't be more thrilled, frankly, about the work that she's done since because she's really elevated the important topic of social capital into the education conversation. She's frankly, taught me a ton along the way. The book that if you want to sort of catch up on it that she wrote a few years ago is Who You Know. But most recently, she published some really interesting research about AI in education titled Navigation and Guidance in the Age of AI, which we'll link to in the show notes. But I'm sure we're going to get into that and much more. But first, Julia, before we do that, just welcome to Class Disrupted. Great to see you.Julia Freeland Fisher:Thank you. So honored to be here with both of you.Michael Horn:Well, we hope you'll still feel that way by the end, but yeah, but before we get into a series of questions we have for you, actually, let's table set a little bit and share with the audience. How did you get so deep into this topic of AI itself? Because, as we said, you've been researching social capital for several years now in education. You've thought a lot about the role of technology in that equation, clearly. And you thought a lot about how schools perhaps should redesign themselves to become more permeable, if you will, to the outside world. But why AI and what's been the scope of your research around it?Reimagining EdTech for Human ConnectivityJulia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, historically I was sort of obsessed with the concept of, and I'm putting this in air quotes, edtech that connects. I've been really disheartened, but still optimistic that there's a long runway of innovation if we were to start to think about education technology, not just in service of content delivery or productivity or assessment, but also in service of connection, that young people could overcome the boundaries of their existing networks, they could connect with peers and protect professionals that shared their interests, that there's just so much possibility if we started to do in the classroom what many of us do in our working lives, using technology to connect across time and space. So I've been studying that for a long time, and it has been a small but mighty market, certainly not something that has grown significantly and that has made me painfully aware of just how much the ed tech market ignores connection as part of the value proposition of school. And so enter AI, and we'll get into this more. But you know, for all of its sort of fantastic productivity, upside and intelligence, the piece of AI that I've been paying attention to is the tendency to anthropomorphize it and to make it human-like, to make it capable of mimicking human emotion and empathy and conversation. Because what I see unfolding, and this is not inevitable, it just has to do with how the market absorbs it is a true possibility of disrupting human connection as we know it because we don't value it to the level the market ought to.And because the technology has suddenly taken this dramatic turn towards human-like behavior, affect, tone, etc. So I'm just fascinated by that. And I want those of us inside of education, I want parents to be awake to this kind of dimension of the technology that like wasn't really, it was maybe lurking, but it wasn't really dominant in the edtech sort of old days, the sort of version one of ed tech where we weren't giving these tools the same sort of voice and emotion that I'm seeing now. So that's a little bit of it. But I want to, you know, at various conferences I've been labeled a pessimist and a doomer. I really want to come to this conversation as a realist. Like I'm, I work for the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. I am not anti technology. I am worried about the market conditions inside of which the technology is evolving.Diane Tavenner:Well, Julia, I'm so glad we started there to like just ground everyone in the work you're doing and how you think about it. And I'm going to give you your moment to sort of be the realist. Let's start with just inviting you to sort of make the steel man argument in favor of AI in education. Like in your mind, what's the best case possible scenario for AI in education from your perspective, given your work, you know, as a mother even, you know, like, what's the best possible outcome we could reach?Rethinking Personalized Learning PotentialJulia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, I want to first just describe how surreal it is to have Michael B. Horn and Diane Tavener asking me that question. Like I'm chatting with two luminaries that I've learned so much from in thinking about the potential of tech to really personalize learning. And I know that term gets overused and now it's maybe out of fashion, but like it's a little absurd that I would be providing an answer to you on that. But here I go. Anyways, I think, just quickly, I think the potential to scale a system of personalized content, experiences and support and thinking about those three things actually as kind of separate strands or value propositions being key. The adaptive content and assessment piece may be the most obvious, the most familiar sort of evolution on top of how we've talked about ed tech in the past. But I'm actually probably equally or more excited about the possibility of seamless infrastructure to support a mastery based system that also gets students connected to new people and learning in the real world.And it's infrastructure doing that. It's not the AI talking to the student that's doing that. And I'm not sure how much investment we're seeing that you guys may know more than I do, but that's kind of my vision of what the more time I spend with the tech, the more I see how much that could actually be feasible in a way that even 10 years ago, I think we all had sort of dreams of that. But the tech was a little bit clunky and was, you know, it could create a pathway. But the idea of flexible pathways that actually were adaptive in real world contexts felt a little more out of reach.Diane Tavenner:So let's stay here for just a minute, Julia, because I want to make sure people really understand what you're saying by infrastructure. We've had dialogue around and by the way, I'm working on this, you know, I'm working on this. Got one person in your corner. We're getting closer and closer, but like, we've had a bunch of conversations about sort of chat bots or agents or things like that. And when you're talking infrastructure, that's kind of in contrast to the experience that I think most people are having right now. So just illuminate that a little bit for us. Like make it, make it. So everyone can visualize what you mean.Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah. Let me name two pieces of infrastructure, one of which I know Michael has featured in some of his work, and then another of which I'm not sure if you guys have talked about. So one is a tool called Protopia. It's used in higher education founders Max Leisten, I believe. And the tool that Max has built, you know, he partners with alumni engagement offices. And the way the tool works is students can go onto their career services website, ask a question, and based on the content of the question, Max's tool will call through the alumni directory of that school, find the alum who is best suited to answer the question, and email them directly to their email. There's not a clunky app that you have to go through and if they answer that student's question, fine. If not, it will go to the next best alum to answer the question.So that's infrastructure. It's behind the scenes, it's facilitating an opportunity for learning. And in this case, obviously I'm highlighting it because it's facilitating connection as well. But it's sort of doing the behind the scenes manual work that is not like high quality human work, but is necessary if you want a system where students are moving beyond just a singular predetermined path and actually having opportunities or conversations beyond it. The other one I want to highlight that I actually think is illustrative of why this is exciting and also why I'm like a little bit getting labeled. The doomer is a tool called Project LEO that spun out of Da Vinci schools in Los Angeles. And it's designed to create bespoke individualized projects aligned with the principles of project based learning based on students' interests in they're like ikigai, which is that Japanese Venn diagram thing.What was so exciting in the initial version of this tool is that they were then not only did students get a personalized project aligned to their interests, that aligned also to the teacher's sort of core content that they were trying to hit on, but that it would also connect them to a working professional who would give feedback on their project. Now, as they've rolled out the product, the demand or the willingness to pay for that last feature has been quite limited. So it's not currently sort of part of the main product. And I say that to say like infrastructure for project based learning, that's exciting to me. Right. It's been perennially hard to scale project based learning that's interest based. Diane, this is like again absurd for me to explain, explain this to you, but that's really exciting, right, that it doesn't sit on a teacher's desk to have to create 25 unique projects.I would like to though see the market mature in a way where demand for that last mile connection out to the real world is also there and people are willing to pay a premium for real world experience. So those are just two examples of like it's the behind the scenes creation of stuff that students then do. It's not necessarily a student facing adaptive tool, which I'm not totally down on. Like I think there's a place for that. But that's the infrastructure conversation.Diane Tavenner:Super helpful.AI: Pessimistic and Realistic ConcernsMichael Horn:Yeah, yeah. So Julia, if you've painted that picture of what could be and frankly a layer of AI that's much more invisible, I think facilitating these sort of interactions, experiences, connections and so forth, I'd love you to take now the flip side. And you said you've been labeled a pessimist, so maybe it's. I was gonna say give us the skeptical take, natural side, maybe it's the realistic take. But, let me ask it in this way a little bit more directed because I. We want this part of the conversation which is what do you fear that AI is going to hurt and how and although I'm sure you could also offer like a real, you know, sort of steel man argument here as well. I think that your research has a lot to say around what you're seeing and what implications that might make mean that we ought to be wary or at least on guard about right now.Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah. So there's, there's two things I want to name here, and one of them that I could go on and on about, which is human connection. So I'm going to let me say the first one briefly, which is I'm worried about it harming the concept of experiential learning. And then we'll get to human connection. The concept of experiential learning is so exciting to me. It's what I want for my kids. It's what I want for all kids. And as much as I think that I just described two examples of infrastructure that could get us there, I think the market is much bigger for simulated experiences than actual experiences.And I think a lot of the hype around AI is like, these bots can simulate anything. They can be anyone. You can be pretending to talk to fill in the blank. And yes, that may be a context to develop skills in a more applied way, but it's not real experience. And I'm worried about that for two reasons. One, I think that you run the risk of young people becoming accustomed to sort of synthetic interaction. But two, because if you look at what employers are demanding of entry level work, it is experience, it's not just skills. And Ryan Craig has written a lot about this, the experience gap.As AI actually chips away at entry level work, Higher ed needs to step in and actually prepare students in new ways. But the piece of that I think we're not paying attention to in the education conversation is that that actually requires true experiential learning, not just simulated skills, not sort of performance tasks. And at least from what I'm seeing, and Diane, I'm right where you are at the beginning of the episode of like, I'm just reading all of this stuff through my little doomer lens now. But I just think there's so much more hype, partly because employers are willing to pay for like, simulation experience stuff in the L and D market. There's much more hype around simulation than around, what would it take to scale true experiential learning, which, by which I mean learning skills in an applied context with other humans. Yeah, so that's my number one.But now that was like, not my real rant. My real rant is, I actually think, Michael, that's something you probably thought more about than, than I have.Michael Horn:So yeah, let's hear number two then.Threat to Human ConnectionJulia Freeland Fisher:Okay, so number two, what I think it could hurt is human connection. And I want to put this in a context of what I said initially around bots being anthropomorphized. And this is happening across many different pockets of both the consumer and ed tech market. I think we should be way more worried about the consumer applications. So we're talking here about romantic companion apps like Replica, character AI where people in general and young people included are being drawn into parasocial relationships with bots that emulate and can even exceed sort of human behaviors in meeting those users emotional needs. That is emerging against the backdrop of a long standing loneliness epidemic, which is a lagging indicator of our underinvestment in human connection and inside of schools, it's emerging against the backdrop of what I have observed over the past decade of my research of a lot of sentiment about relationship, but very little strategy, very few metrics guiding whether students are actually connected, very little budget dedicated to human connection again, as a value proposition in its own right. And so it's really, and Michael taught me this, right, Michael taught me disruptive innovation theory.It is a classic disruption story in that loneliness is providing a foothold in the market for these bots to take hold. And there is very little stopping their upward march in the market. There is very little to hinder their growth because we as a society have basically said go get less lonely on your own, like go solve this loneliness thing by yourself. Which is ironic at best and really dangerous at worst. So that's my big concern again, I don't think ed tech is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Like if we asked over the last 20 years what technology most affected young people's lives, like, I'm sure some of our colleagues would like to be like Khan Academy, but I think many of us would agree, like, no, it was commercial tech.Michael Horn:Yeah, sure, yeah. In particular. Well, so let's stay on that because I think you've raised two very interesting challenges and the consumer. I mean, we also know from schools right now that frankly what plays off in the consumer space impacts how engaged teens are and so forth.AI's Impact on Human LearningMichael Horn:In the school experience as well. So I think something that has been on both of Diane and my mind's around the AI conversation is what AI hurts of that, like what will still be relevant, if you will, in the future. Right. And how much is this about replacing outdated structures? I'M going to guess that you think real human relationships and social capital and the like will still be important in the future. I'm hoping you're going to tell me that, but I guess I'd love you to play with this theme a little bit and get a little bit more nuanced, like, so take the experiential learning piece, right? If we're offering simulations as entry level to get someone information of, hey, is this something you want to explore more as an entry point to then get something different, you know, is that a bad thing? Or like, where's the slippery slope? And where is it really chipping away at something that's fundamentally what makes us human and that we ought to really be concerned about handing over to AI.Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, totally. I mean, I think let's look at the upsides real quick, both on the experiential and the human connection front. Like on the experiential, these simulations are a way to scale practice, which we know, again, we use the shorthand of skills, but it's actually we should always be talking about skills and practice. And so I don't want to claim that like simulated practice is a bad thing. It's a great cross training for like developing skills. I think I just worry that the market is so blunt that it treats that as the outcome of interest versus applied skills plus human connections. On the human connection front, you know, I've been looking at the navigation guidance space and there's really two stories emerging. On the one hand, we have the potential to disrupt the social capital advantage that has perpetuated opportunity gaps by giving students from all sorts of backgrounds access to resources, information and guidance that otherwise often travels through inherited networks.So that's huge, right? Like, democratizing access to information and advice is not something that we should devalue in some sentimental name of like preserving human connection. The piece of it, the slippery slope though, right is that what I found in my research, at least based on our interviews with the supply side, is that the demand side really treats navigation and guidance as an information gap, not a connection gap. And we know that an estimated half of jobs and internships come through personal connections. So if you just use AI to solve the information gap piece, you're not doing the last mile work of actually addressing opportunity gaps. You're improving, you're sort of. It's like a rising tide lifts all boats, but the gaps are still going to be there if you don't get the social connection piece right.So that's where I'm very wary of these like self help bots that, you know, tout democratizing access and opportunity but are actually sending the wrong message to young people about just how social the opportunity equation in America is.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. Oh, I could not agree more. Literally. Okay, let's, let's take a little bit of a turn here, Julia, you probably can guess this if you don't know it. One of the things I do for fun in my spare time is imagine the designs of new schools that I would be excited about teaching in or my child would be excited to go to. And so let's go there for a minute. Like if you had a magic wand, you could design the school to look any way you wanted to, presumably using this new technology we have.What parts of AI could you take advantage of and you know, what would you avoid because it's not going to work well. And like what would that actually look like in a school?Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, again, maybe I'll stick with the relationship theme partly because I'm like Diane, you just tell me your answer and I'll copy it as like the school designer in this conversation. And there's a lot of people in the field who I trust more to sort of think about the like whole school design. But when I think about like how do we design a deeply connected school experience for young people in the age of AI? I think there's three kind of main things I'm looking at. One is, and most of them are infrastructure, just to be clear. One is infrastructure to support high touch webs of support for each and every kid. So this is very clear in the youth development literature that young people don't just need one caring adult. Even though for some reason that term like, like people grabbed onto it and has stuck.Young people need webs of support and they are most effective when the people in those webs are connected to one another. This is research from John Zaff and Shannon Varga at BU. It's informed really great models like City Connects and Bar, but those are expensive to run and the data systems to actually make them highly responsive and even predictive of what a young person needs just like don't really exist. So that's number one, high touch webs of support. The second though is more diversified networks aligned with students' interests. And that's what we found in our own evaluations of particularly career connected learning efforts at the high school level that are trying to expand students' options. Young people were least likely to report that they were connected to people who shared their interests. And so I think there's a ton of opportunity there again to like use AI to detect young people's interests toMichael, to your point, to do some front end exploration of like future possible selves. Conversations and Confidence in NetworkingJulia Freeland Fisher:Diane, I know you're thinking a ton about this, but then to build the middleware so that you are starting to have conversations with people who share those interests. And maybe the best unit to think about there is conversations, not relationships. These don't have to be long lasting connections necessarily. But how is the high school experience a constant stream of conversations with other humans? And then lastly, you know, I, I do think that the one place I'm interested in these self help bots and I know I'm giving them that sort of derisive term and it's on purpose, I think we need to be wary of them. But I am really interested in something we see time and again when it comes to building and deepening and diversifying young people's networks is confidence is really the moderating variable that you can teach young people communication skills. You can do these kind of surface level, here's how to write a professional email. But confidence makes or breaks whether they go out and mobilize networks on their own, whether they even start having new types of conversations with people they already know.And I do think that's like a little wedge in the system where these self help bots could make a difference. A couple providers playing in that space now climb together, Kindred, Backers. These are all sort of startups that I think are keying into like what if AI could de-risk help seeking or reaching out, which for an adolescent can be like so daunting. So those are a couple thoughts of like those being in the background. So that high school, and I'm thinking mostly of high school is like an inherently networked experience. It's not just if you are outgoing or wear your ambitions on your sleeve or do an independent study, but for every student.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, that, that's so fascinating. You know, quick just personal anecdote here, I'm stunned at how reluctant sort of the younger generation is to ever make a phone call. Literally they don't call people. It's not a thing. And you know, my son worked on the campaign, the presidential campaign and he had a quota of 175 phone calls a day. And he actually thinks, and I agree with him, this is one of his greatest skill sets now like month after month doing that, like that ability to just talk to people is so missing in our world right now in that generation. So that really resonates with me.Let's do one more, if you're okay, I'd love to zoom out because I know given the work that you do, you're influencing people, how they're thinking about policy and procedure and, you know, all of those things, like, what's on your mind in this moment in time? What are you telling people that they should be looking at, thinking about, you know, wary of promoting in terms of policy, procedure, and, you know, you pick the level, whatever.Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, well, I'll riff on your last point about your son to answer that initially, Diane, which is something that came out in our research time and again. And this was talking to founders like yourself, but who are incredibly thoughtful about the design of their products and services. And time and again, and you were not one of them, Diane, because you are not pro chatbot, at least in what you're currently building. But time and again, folks would bring up, and again, this is in the guidance advising space. You know, sometimes students would rather tell a chatbot something than a human. And it's a safe space and it's a place for sort of less, there's less risk involved.Exploring Student Reliance on ChatbotsJulia Freeland Fisher:And I came away from that research being like, is that a feature or a bug? Like, how are we internalizing the fact that students don't want to talk to humans? And what is that a reflection of? And so I think that's number one. Like, what I hope at this, like, sort of ecosystem level people start thinking about is like, if students want to be talking to chatbots like that, let's actually interrogate that a little bit more. I think the second piece is around really starting to come up with language and some markers of what I'm calling pro social technology. So again, I don't think AI is inevitably going to disrupt human connection. But I think if bots are not trained to nudge students into the real world offline, if bots are actually trained to keep students engaged, if consumer tech, right, is making money on engagement, that is all moving in an antisocial direction. And I just think we need more language around that because, like, I was in a, like, off the record chat with someone from a, one of the big who recently left one of the big AI companies. And, you know, everyone's worried about like, national security and China and things that I know I should also be worried about while I'm like, lying awake about AI companions.But, you know, I said to him, like, what about the fact that these are being anthropomorphized and like, encroaching on what we sort of hold dear as human. He was like, yeah, everyone working in industry is, like, creeped out by that, but has no idea what to do about it. And that was revealing, right, that there's a real prisoner's dilemma here. That, like, there's a creep factor. But it's like bullet seven on slide four. Like, no one's really as worried about it as I think we should be. So that's number two. And then the last thing is really much more parent facing.Like, I think whether you agree with the, like, moral panic, Jonathan Haidt stuff around cell phones over the past year, he's tapped into parent anxiety that I'm like, this is the right anxiety in some ways around screen time and addiction. But, like, we're not even talking about what's coming. And, you know, if you think social media was designed to appeal to our deeply wired need to connect, AI companions, are that on steroids and so I am not myself, like, a parent organizer, that's like, not. I wish that was, like, who I was born to be. But I'm hoping that there will be more conversations around parent organizing around just like, not creating barriers to innovation. This is the tightrope we need to walk right, like, not shutting down the tech, but being super aware that, like, we have seen this movie before.Michael Horn:Yeah.Julia Freeland Fisher:So those are my big three.Diane Tavenner:Well, I got carried away there, Michael. Any other questions you want to ask before I take.Michael Horn:I think we asked the right questions. This been fascinating.Diane Tavenner:Okay, good. Yeah, I couldn't help myself. I so appreciate your thoughts, Julia. And we're going to ask you for one more. So we always invite our guests to join in our sort of end of show ritual, which is where we share what we're reading, listening to, watching. You know, we try to do it outside of work, but we often, you know, regress back into to work. But we'd love to hear what's been up for you lately?Julia Freeland Fisher:Yeah, so I just finished this, like, breathtakingly beautiful book called Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb. It's a memoir about her grandmother, and it's done really beautifully. It's like her grandmother is talking to her. Like, the form she chose is just stunning. And yeah, it was just intergenerational connection is, like, one of the most beautiful things. It was beautifully done. And I was actually thinking about it when I was.And then I'll stop talking, I promise. But I was listening to your guys's last episode on AI and you were talking about Notebook LM. And like putting a chapter of a book into that and just how much texture of like the brilliance of what she did would be lost listening to these, like, TED Talk adjacent fake voices, like, riffing on it. And like, our kids deserve to live in nuance and to detect it. And like, how do we. Anyways, that book in particular is just such a beautiful, like only a human could have written it. And I know all sorts of people in Silicon Valley will debate me on that, but. Highly recommend.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, for sure. I love that recommendation. I'm working on planning a dinner called Generations Over Dinner and so that might be a fun.Julia Freeland Fisher:Oh, my gosh, check it out it's beautifulDiane Tavenner:So I might add that in there. I will. Okay, what's up for me right now? Well, I'm gonna stick with my biases that I introduced at the top of the show and say that we just finished the second season of the Foundation, which is a series on. I forget one of those. I don't know. It's on something. Anyway, based on the writings of Isaac Asimov, you can tell how good I am at tv. Not very.And yes, one of the big plot lines is all about AI. There's no doubt about it. And so I'm seeing that literally everywhere. I will say it's for me, having not read the books, unlike my kiddos, it's a little bit hard. It's a lot going on there. It's hard to follow. I don't remember everything. I was glad I had some guides, human, actual guides, sort of coaching me through it, and it came together for me at the end and felt worthwhile. So it's certainly beautifully done and well acted and. And all of that. How about you, Michael?Michael Horn:This may be my entree, Diane, into it. Because I've struggled with the books. Sal Khan has actually tried a couple occasions and I just I cannot get into them. So I like that. I will also stay with biases, but on a totally different front. I feel like I'm going to stereotype myself here or everyone listening is going to be like, yep, that's Michael. So I just recently finished The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer by Christopher Clarey. My tennis fandom, I think, continually comes out recently on this podcast. So beautifully organized book. Really enjoyed it. I will say I'm like, there's Rafael Nadal people. They're Roger Federer people. I'm a Nadal, Pete Sampras sort of vintage person. But I was really glad I read the book, gained a deeper appreciation of Federer, and frankly, actually picked up some tips that I wish I had known much earlier in my professional career from practices that he would employ at the tournaments that he would show up at with everyone around the tournament, not actually the playing itself, which was not something I expected. So we can offline about that later. But it's all about relationships, it turns out.Diane TavennerSo you have me curious now. I wasn't expecting to be curious afterwards.Michael HornBut it's all about relationships. It's comes back to Julia's thesis. And with that, a thank you, Julia, for joining us and taking us through this fascinating conversation that we're going to be reflecting on for a while. I know. And thank you to all of you, our listeners. And we'll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. 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Mar 24, 2025 • 37min

Rethinking Education: Is the Customer Always Right? Stride, Inc. CEO Weighs In

James Rhyu, CEO of Stride Inc., joined me for a thought-provoking conversation in their 25th-year of operations. Rhyu shared his journey from accountant to CEO of Stride, Inc. He emphasized the importance of viewing students as customers. We then delved into the potential of online learning to overcome stigmas and serve diverse student needs, including safety and flexibility for those struggling with their mental health. We also explored Stride's investments in technology and career skills, as well as personalization. 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, I'm really delighted that we have James Rhyu, the CEO of Stride Inc. For those of you that don't know, you may remember Stride's former name, K12 Inc. Back in the day, when I got in this world and co-authored Disrupting Class, K12 was the big player on the block, if you will, helping to think about how digital learning could really open up opportunities for individuals that had not had it in the conventional school system. The company's continued to evolve quite a bit, rebranded as Stride, has a number of offerings. We're going to get into all of that and more because this is Stride's 25th birthday, if you will. 25th anniversary. So, James, thanks so much for joining me and having this conversation.James RhyuThanks for having me, Michael. Appreciate it.Michael HornYeah, you bet. So let's just start high level because I suspect people tuning in will know some of the history, but maybe not your history. And so tell us about your own path into becoming the CEO of Stride.James RhyuYeah, sure. At first, I would say this is the first time I've ever been CEO of a company. So I'm still sort of a rookie at the job, you know, learning as I go. You know, I mean, I started as an accountant, you know, tell people the only real profession I guess I'm really qualified for is accounting. I was, and I was probably average at best at that maybe. But, you know, so I sort of obviously said, then I came up through the finance, you know, end of the company. And I always like to tell people I was not a very good student. I was sort of a C student and, you know, so running an education company, I don't even know if it's a bad thing, but I take us maybe a slightly different lens to running the company.Having been sort of not such a great student, I've never been an educator, which again, I don't say necessarily think is a bad thing, but it certainly puts a different lens on how to run the company. I think, you know, the education system in this country hasn't produced, I think, the outcomes societally that we want, probably. And so I think coming from a different angle or a different perspective, you know, has some benefits, I think, you know, so anyway, So I came to the company 13, 14 years ago and I came on the financial side. I was the CFO. I had come from previously that to that I was with a company called match.com. I think a lot of people have heard of Match and I was very fortunate to be there when we started this little app called Tinder and sort of helped sort of explode online dating. And I always say that it's somewhat relevant that experience because people maybe of my generation remember, but a lot of people don't remember it, online dating used to have a huge stigma to it.Like it's now very commonplace and you know, you don't really have a lot of stigma associated with anymore, but it used to have a lot of stigma associated with it. And I think online learning or different modalities of learning, certainly different angles to take at education, they have some stigma associated with it. And I think the ability to overcome that stigma is one of the things that I think is important for Stride, certainly, in K12. And I think that you know, just like in online dating, it can produce amazing results for people if we can overcome some of that stigma. And so I was a CFO here for a number of years and there was some CEO transition. And you know, most, most companies go through like sort of succession planning. And about a year before, more than a year, almost, probably almost two years before I became CEO, the then CEO at the time, who's a mentor of mine, Nate, continues to be a mentor and friend of mine, he approached me on behalf of the board and said, would you consider being the CEO? And I actually said no for a fairly long time.You know, like I said, I was an accountant. I was very grateful to have been the CFO. You know, a lot of accountants don't even get to reach that professional summit, I guess, and, and I just never thought of myself as a CEO. I really thought of myself as a finance professional. And it took some number of months before I sort of convinced myself to throw my hat in the ring for the job. And obviously I ended up getting the job. I think what the board saw at least, and you know, I'm now four years into the job, hopefully they continue to see is one is I have a real passion for the job. Meaning, you know, and I really consider this job a job where irrespective of the company, we have a set of current and potential future customers.And our job, my job is to try to meet the needs of those current and future customers. And I think that will in enure great benefit for our shareholders and stakeholders. And so really that's sort of how I view my lens to the job is really sort of a customer focus. And I say that very specifically. And in this company, when I became CEO, I really, I'll say it sounds weird, but I introduced really the word, the term customer into this company. And I think, I think largely it should be introduced into the education vernacular more broadly because, and specifically In K through 12 education, you know, we think of them as students. That's fine. And by the way, you know, they are students, but they're also customers.Rethinking Education as Customer ServiceJames RhyuAnd I think if we thought of them in that way, you know, the establishment of K through education has long thought, I think of their customers largely as an entitlement. And structurally there's a reason for that because you've got one school in a geographic area and that school really has dominion over the students in that area. And so you didn't really have to work for your customers in a way, right? They were an entitlement to you because you live in that area and historically you live in that area, you go to that school and that's still sort of pervades today for 90 plus percent of the population in the country. And so you can see why that framework established this entitlement sensibility, if you will. But in most other aspects of our lives, we want to be treated as customers. And the reason we want to be treated as customers is because when you're treated as a customer, there's this, there's a sort of two way dialogue, if you will, it's not always explicit, but you know, there's this push-pull of what's best for the customer. What does the customer want? What does the customer need? What outcomes does the customer want? Right. Like if you're running a restaurant and you're a dietitian running a restaurant, you may be like, okay, well I know what's best for the customer. You know, low calorie, high protein, you know, low fat, right.Michael HornWe're cutting out those sugars, we're going to get the right oils, et cetera, et cetera.James RhyuYeah, but if you listen to your customers, your customers might say, you know, actually the reason I eat out is because on a special occasion or whatever, I want to indulge maybe a little bit, or I want to try something that I can't make at home or that's different for me or whatever. And maybe health isn't the most important thing in that circumstance. And as the customer, you know, restaurants listen to that and obviously you have this wide variety of offerings and choice that enables what customers want and the outcomes that are important to them. And I think that's really important. If, you know, if you sort of put that lens on, on education, then you have some different perspectives, I think maybe than historically we've had. And even when you think about, you know, and I know you're probably going to maybe get into this further along, but you know, if you think about the outcomes that people want and you think about my restaurant example, I don't know, like a lot of the educators and people are going to say, oh, you know, but you know, eating is different than education. Of course it is. They're all different.Every customer experience is different. But I would argue health is pretty important and education is pretty important. So, you know, we're talking about, I think, comparable outcomes, you know, healthy people and educated people, you know, and I think that if you think about that sort of analogy, sometimes what the customer wants isn't actually a healthy diet. And in our country, if we listen to our customers, unfortunately a lot of families aren't in the position where the most important thing to them is getting an A and going to Harvard. Sometimes the more important thing to them is survival, is actually the high school diploma which allows them entree into a job or a field that requires a high school diploma that helps them put food on the table for their family. So the outcome often that we think about is, oh, well, you know, you have to get good grades maybe. And of course that's important. And of course learning is important.I say more importantly, learning is important and learning skills is important. And hopefully real world skills that you can apply later in life are important. But in some families' cases, I think we have to remember that the grade, and particularly high achieving grades, A's are not always the most important. And I think again, just taking that lens of like, what does the customer really want, what's important to the customer, how can we deliver for that customer is really important. And so go, sorry, I know I drifted a little bit, but going, yeah, this is helpful. Yeah, yeah, about how I got into the job. So, you know, like, whatever, I, you know, I almost begrudgingly accepted the job because I thought I could take a little bit of a different lens to what we're trying to do and expand how we think about our customers. And I think that sort of was important to me.Michael HornYeah, well, I want to lean into that angle because I think there's a few things there that you said that, that I just want to key off on one sort of, you labeled yourself. And I don't know if it's true or not, but as a C student. But it certainly gives you a window into the people that are not being well served by the traditional system, maybe being taken for granted. Maybe they are motivated by other things. Right. Engaged by other things.From our research on what customers want and motivation and so forth, I don't think there's anyone who's unmotivated. They're just not motivated to buy what the system is offering.James RhyuWhat family doesn't want their child to succeed, I mean, in whatever. However they define that.Michael HornYeah, I totally agree. Yeah.James RhyuHowever they define it, they want their child to succeed.Michael HornYeah. And I think that's a big thing. And I guess let's follow that energy because as you know, like one of the big criticisms, I don't think you're hearing it as much at the moment, but certainly five, seven, eight years ago in the field of the virtual schooling in particular, that you all helped define that landscape was that large numbers of students weren't being served well. You could look at student outcomes on test scores and things of that nature and make certain assertions. And then people had different explanations for what's going on. Right. They ranged from, oh, you know, virtual schooling isn't good for folks to, oh, some of these companies maybe are not investing enough in teacher professional development or you know, the teaching experience to, uh, what else was there? You know, something, you know, things around the curriculum and stuff like that. Right.And so I'm just sort of curious. You've made the point that individuals, when, you know, and families, when they come to a virtual school specifically, you know, their top priority might be help my kid get out of a bullying situation. Right. This is no good right now. And yes, we want them to learn, but we just need to get them back on course right now. How do you think about those as competing with, say, the learning outcomes that critics like to point to? And how do you think we ought to be measuring it?Politics in Education: A ConcernJames RhyuUnfortunately, I think sometimes we let politics creep too much into our education system, and I think it's really unfortunate political agendas, you know, when I hear people talk about the, the education system and the students in, in terms as if they're like the afterthought, you know, because there's this other agenda here that's more important. I think it's troublesome to me, I would say. And, and by the way, all those critiques that you mentioned, I'll also say I think many of them are fair. Like, I think also, like as a society and as a company, I don't think we should be. I don't want to lean into that sort of political dialogue where, okay, well, now I've got to figure out, I've got to frame the way to like say it in a way that make, you know, sort of like subverts what they've said or end runs what they've said. Like, the reality is we're certainly not perfect.I think that there's a lot of things we can do better. A lot. I mean, the list of things we can do better is actually longer than the list of things I think we do well. Frankly, I think that again, the customers that choose our types of programs. You mentioned an element of a category. I think that's a much broader category, which is safety. Right. Bullying is an aspect of child safety that parents are worried about.Gun violence is an aspect of it. There's a lot of aspects of child safety that, where virtual learning is for that family, that customer, that's the most appropriate choice. And I don't think that we should be dictating to those families what's the best choice for them in their particular circumstance. Now I also think that while the criticisms of this company have often been fair, I think that some of them are not completely accurate. And I also think that they're often being levied by the same system that I could easily say .Michael HornThrow the aspersions at it as well.Investing in Teacher DevelopmentJames RhyuYou know, they have some of the same issues, I think, you know what I mean? So, you know, so I think sometimes it's a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black and, and that to me feels more political than it does so like figuring out what we can do for, for families. We've invested more in the past. I've been the CEO for four years. We invested more in the past four years and in any other four year period in the history of the company across whether it's, you know, our teacher professional development or, you know, new curriculum or new technologies or new platforms. And I think that a lot of what we try to do is also invest in things like the professional developments. Maybe teach professional development is one example where, you know, the, the in person model of, you know, the district professional development days where, you know, the kids get off and the teachers come in, you know, they have people come in and when I talk to teachers a Lot of them say that the subjects aren't often hitting the mark, the day isn't well utilized often. So what we've tried to do is actually invest in an online teaching platform that gives teachers some empowerment to maybe choose the types of professional development they want. You know, not everybody maybe has to do the same thing.Michael HornSo their own choice to break out of the one size fits all sort of way.James RhyuThey may know better where their areas of improvement are and what they need to sort of lean into and what they're struggling with in their classrooms or you know, whatever the situation may be. And so some of our investments are more towards those types of things than maybe, you know, trying to do it the traditional way. So again, some of the criticism may be fair, like, yeah, oh, they don't do it a certain way. That actually true. Maybe we're taking a different angle to it. And by the way, maybe that angle isn't even perfect yet. Maybe that angle, it has a lot of room for improvements still. But, I do think taking maybe a different lens to them, some of these things is important and I think those are a lot of things that we're trying to invest in.Michael HornGotcha. Let me ask you this because that's obviously the virtual school conversation, but over the last decade plus really you all have become a much larger company with larger suite of offerings from digital courses for students to career options or career connected learning options and things of that nature. Just like how do you all think of, you know, when you think of what Stride Inc. is today? We've obviously been geeking out in the virtual school portion, but how do you think about it and the portfolio or suite of things that you all offer?James RhyuYeah. So I think about it just in terms of what's the market we're really trying to address here. Right. And to me the market is the 55 million K12 school age kids in the country that may or may not want something different, by the way, I think many families are actually very satisfied with their situation. But I think that the way that the established system works has probably evolved less than most other sort of large scale categories, if you will, in the country. You know, whether, whether it's, you know, retail or entertainment or you know, whatever it is, it's evolved less. And so I think Stride is a company that really is what we're trying to do is see how can we improve the overall customer experience and outcomes that they want, those customers want across the landscape of 55 million students.And that is everything from, you know, we're investing now in a, not just a curriculum, and we've been investing in curriculum for a long time, but the platform to deliver the curriculum that allows for just, you know, a little more easier, more intuitive experience. You know, if you can think about like a Netflix type of experience, you know, where, you know, it gives you recommendations based on what you know, what you like in, in an educational sense. More of like recommendations maybe on what you need, what your sort of next step is in, in there maybe a little bit working away from the traditional like chapter 1, 2, 3 of a textbook and more, you know, towards an engaging type of, of experience. I think it's a little more in line with what the customers experience in other parts of their lives as well. Where, I mean, of course, just like I guess everybody else in the world where, you know, we're, we're really thinking about how to invest in AI. I mean, you can't sort of, I think, say anything these days without at least mentioning it. I think our approach to it's a little bit different in the sense that AI, I don't think is actually the answer.I think including elements of AI in an overall user experience solution is more the answer. You know, you've been in the industry probably around the industry a lot longer than I have actually. So you know, how long have we been talking about like personalized learning and, and how like really today after we can talk and by the way, you know, there's been, you know, tens of billions of dollars of investment in VC money that have gone into education company. How personalized is the actual learning today in schools?Michael HornNot super personalized at all.James RhyuI mean, if you, if you really walk into a classroom, right? I mean just walk into any random classroom and you hopefully you can't just walk into any random classroom.Michael HornYeah, but when I get to visit and so forth. Yeah, for sure.James RhyuBut if you just walk into a random classroom, I mean, I happen to, I live near a school and I have a dog and so I walk my dog actually around school and I, you know, I'm interested, I peer in, you know, there's windows, I peer in, I look. The personalized level of learning that is happening is not, I think, what we thought would happen 15 years ago. Right. And so. Well, how can you personalize learning? I mean, you can't put 30 teachers in a classroom. There's a teacher shortage. I mean, you were barely putting one teacher in every 30 person classroom, let alone, you know, putting 30 teachers in I mean, that would be the real way to personalize it. Right. If you, if you sort of think.Michael HornAbout the tutor for every child. Yep.James RhyuRight. You can't do that, though. So as much as I know some people really don't like the technology in the classroom and technology taking over education. If we're really going to personalize learning, I think, I do think we have to do it through technology. But I don't think it's just, oh, AI. You know, then everybody says AI. I don't think it's just AI. It's, you know, if, imagine if the student goes into the classroom and the first thing that they, you know, they turn on the computer and the first thing they see is some prompt, though, that says, oh, good morning, Michael.James RhyuHow are you feeling today? I mean, that, that little level of personalization, by the way. I mean, if you go, if you're, you know, if you live in a rich place and you know, you're really wealthy and you send your kids to private schools, the private schools, the first thing they do is the headmaster stands out. The school greets every kid, good morning, how are you doing today? Right. That's the first greeting those kids get. Right. And if we can make that part of the opening of every day of every student through technology. And by the way, Michael may say, you know what, I was up late studying for an exam or I was up late watching the super bowl or whatever they were doing. I'm a little tired.Engagement Through Personalized LearningJames RhyuAnd if the interaction could be, oh, well, in that case, why don't we just take three minutes, watch this video and get up and stretch a little bit before we get into the lesson. That's personalized learning and it has nothing to do with education yet, by the way. Right. But I think that personalizes, and again, that's a more customer centric view of learning, I think, than what maybe the educational norm would suggest is about personalized learning. Right. Because we do know that a kid who's more engaged learns better. And by the way, a kid who can pay attention better is going to be more engaged. By the way, a kid who's tired needs to get, you know, some blood circulating to be able to do that.So I don't see. There's nothing wrong with having that engagement through the computer. Get up, stretch your arms a little bit, get, you know, get your blood flowing a little bit. Now let's dive into the lesson. And when I say technology and thinking about your customers, it's more those kinds of experiences I think we can bring into the classrooms. And those are the kinds of things that I think Stride would like to invest in and help that experience for those customers improve.Michael HornNo, it makes a ton of sense. I mean you're preaching to the choir on a number of fronts as you, as you may know. But among them, as my wife likes to say, when she visited our kids current school and she saw a kid in the middle of a lesson pop up, go outside, run around, take three laps and then get back in. And she was like, what was that? And they were like guess he chose he needed a brain break. And she was like, we're going here. So, I totally dig that example. I'm curious because you all are servicing a lot of curriculum.There's teacher professional development. You're helping in some cases change the structure of classrooms in traditional schools. You have the virtual school. You've also invested, I think in some career training platforms. You purchased Galvanize right before the pandemic if memory serves correctly, there's a whole bunch of chatter about how coding boot camps are no more or they, they crested and they fallen. I'd love to hear a little bit about the career connection of what you all are doing. And the reason I ask also is just to put my prior out there.I think we have, in an effort to not lower expectations for kids, we have sucked out the connections to careers and the building of social capital for basically everyone to the detriment of helping people find reason to engage in many cases with the learning and explore and be prepared for the world. So I'm sort of curious how that has filtered in and where things are.James RhyuYeah. So years ago, before I was a CEO, we strategically saw an opportunity in the career space and specifically in the K through 12 more high school, obviously high school, middle school type for careers. Because you know, and if you think and just put sort of, I'll say career learning, the name we use aside or whatever. But like skills, you know, I think that's really the, really the thing that we're after here. Right. Is providing students the ability to acquire skills at younger ages that are useful in real practical ways post high school graduation. Right. That's, that's the real objective.If you think about like what we're really trying to do right now in some, in some instances I think that can be a direct correlation of acquire a skill or set of skills leads to maybe a certificate, that certificate leads to a job. And therefore after high School either you don't want to, you're not well qualified for your financially can't afford college, you can go out and earn, you know, a standard of living that can support your family. Right. And I think that's really important, at least strategically for us is to, is to really lean into those skill development side of it. And I think on the flip side of it, I think some people are maybe critical that it's trying to maybe de-emphasize, you know, going to college or the college experience and things like that. And I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think it really has to do with whether a child decides to go to college or not.Here's one thing we categorically know. Most kids who go to college don't use their college major in the job that they're in. Right. So either way they're going to have to obtain skills for some career that they're going to pursue. And I think the earlier they can acquire those skills, it's going to be better for their lifelong professional journey. And so whether they go to college or not, whether, you know, whether they go to a four year college or a two year college, whether they go right into the workforce and later go to college, there's so many permutations of this. But I think the base level, and by the way you're seeing now led by I think tech companies, but sort of more broadly across industries, companies that are really doing away with the four year college degree requirement and you know, really prioritizing skills and, and I think that that's a trend that's already started. I think it accelerated a little bit during the pandemic.Enhancing Student Skill AcquisitionJames RhyuI think it's going to continue to persist. And so our view is that we want to be able to offer those skill acquisition opportunities for students starting at younger grades. Virtually all of our programs now have that opportunity. What I'll go back to where we started with some of the critiques of us, which is I think what we haven't done, so those are available, I think what we haven't done a good enough job of is really ensuring that the holistic view or the holistic support necessary to really enable those students to embrace that we haven't done yet a good enough job of. And I think that's sort of where we'll make some future investments is, you know, they need better guidance and you know, traditional guidance counselors, they usually are focused on, okay, so what credits do you need? What college do you want to go to? And what credits do you need to go to that college? And you know, I think, and if that's what they want, we should provide that to them. But also, I think we should supplement that with, hey, also along the way, you know, if you're interested in cars or, you know, maybe you should take some things in mechanical engineering or whatever.We know, whatever the thing is, you know, the boot camp specific stuff. We did buy a couple of companies in that space and they were bad acquisitions, unfortunately. I think the, like when we were looking at that space, there was virtually nobody in the entire industry that was making money, by the way. It was entire industry that was losing money. But they had a lot of sort of fanfare and popularity. And we happen to own and operate one or two of the only profitable companies in an industry tech elevator. And there's been some, I think, broader market shifts moving away from those programs. I think the other CEOs that I've spoken to that are participants in that space have all said, you know, volumes are down dramatically.I think, you know, what they publicly say, maybe what they privately say are a little bit different. But I will tell you that our volumes are down dramatically. I don't necessarily see a recovery, I think because the, I mean, say AI again, but I mean, AI, I think, has at least in the psyche of a lot of people, suggested that maybe those types of jobs, and particularly at the lower levels are not going to be needed as much. And I think that's probably directionally right at some point. So, you know, so I think there's a shift in the marketplace and I think that we got that sort of bet wrong in where that was headed. So shame on us, I think.But I think that broadly speaking, there's still tremendous opportunity in skilling kids, whether it's through the boot camps or not, or particularly in computer science or not. I think that's sort of the secondary importance. I think the primary importance is kids need to get skills. They need to get skills to give them job opportunities. And we, and I think our country needs to do a better job of focusing in on that. And I think we're going to continue to invest in that. I think it's really important. And I think parents, and if we get it going from a customer perspective, customers want that for their kids.Educational Choice and Parental PrioritiesMichael HornYep. That's where I was going to wrap up is like, as you think about, you know, 25th anniversary Stride Inc, you all have a number of, you know, irons in the fire, if you will, different priorities you've named here. What are you hearing from parents? Right. As we, I think it's fair to say in many states we're shifting to more and more, not just school choice, but educational choice. I think the next few years we'll see a continuation of that for sure. Many of the parents I talk to, I agree, they're fine where they are. And many of them are saying, I'm not relinquishing this choice at this point, but what are their priorities that you're hearing at this point as we wrap up this conversation and how that may impact what Stride Inc. focuses on over the next however many years?James RhyuYeah, okay, so I, I'm hearing a lot of the same things you are, by the way. I think the research supports it. I think, I saw research recently said something like upwards of 70% of families have considered at least some alternative. But I also hear safety continues to be a big concern for parents. Again, that sort of broad category, whether it's bullying or gun violence, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Mental health is a big concern that I keep hearing from parents. I mean, our customers.Michael HornStay on that, stay on that for one second because, like, the mental health thing is being so pinned on technology right now. How does that interface for you guys? You're obviously not a smartphone app company, but I'm just sort of curious. Yeah. How do you think about that?James RhyuI don't want to comment on the root cause of our mental health issues in this country because I'm, I actually just don't have the expertise to, and I don't have enough data to really, frankly, to synthesize, to really understand it well enough. But I do know that an increasing number of families that are in programs that we help manage state mental health as an issue with their child. An increasing number of the children themselves are stating mental health you know, and I say set up as a broad category.Michael HornSure, there can be any number of things underneath.James RhyuExactly.Michael HornBut the point is they're coming to you.James RhyuIt is an issue. And I think part of the reason that virtual learning is very attractive for families that have some of these issues is sort of some of the flexibility. Right. So if you have some mental health issues, maybe you can't deal with some of the structure, or maybe you can't deal with some of the social interaction, or maybe you can't deal with the rigidity. And so the flexibility that's offered through virtual learning, sometimes it just, it helps families deal with some of those issues. And, you know, whether they're because of technology or not. Again, I don't really want to delve into that. I think that the reality is unless the government steps in, which, you know, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, but unless the government steps in and regulates the use of technology for children, which by the way, some countries are doing, the use of technology is only going to continue to increase unless the government steps in and regulates it. So while we may have differing opinions on whether it's a good or a bad thing and kids should be using technology or shouldn't be using technology, the reality of our customers is they are using technology and in increasing ways. And whether the result of that is some of these issues or not.Michael HornYou take them as they are,James RhyuThey're also using it to help with some of the solutions.Michael HornGot it. Super interesting, James. Just a fascinating conversation. You guys are touching your hands in so many of the cutting edge things. But I think I'll take away from this the voice and intent and motivation of the customer and personalizing around that being two major thrusts as we as, as you all continue to go into this next chapter of growth for Stride Inc. Fair to say,James RhyuAbsolutely see you in 25 years. We'll do it again.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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Mar 17, 2025 • 44min

The State of Educational Choice

Andrew Clark, president of yes. every kid., joined me to discuss the current landscape of educational choice in the United States. The conversation delved into the rise of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), specifically their widespread adoption and impact on public schooling and education spending. Clark shared insights from his experiences as a lobbyist and argued for the popularity of universal ESAs and the importance of ensuring their successful implementation. The discussion also touched upon accountability within the schooling system, potential pitfalls, and the importance of empowering families to make educational choices.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 a life of purpose as they define it. And to help us think through what that looks like and how we get there, I'm delighted that we have Andrew Clark. He's the president of yes. every kid. We'll learn more about that and their vision for how we advanced truly this learner-centered future in this conversation ahead. But first, Andrew, great to see you. Thanks for being here.Andrew ClarkThanks. Thanks for having me.Michael HornYeah, no, you bet. So, like, before we dive in, right. And talk about the work you do, just like think it'll help folks to understand the journey you've taken into this conversation around educational choice, specifically working in education along with the work of what, yes. every kid. does, which of course, it's a 501c4 organization. You don't see those quite as often in education. We see a lot of C3s, so we'll dive into that in a moment. But your purpose really is unleashing the extraordinary potential of every kid by treating them with dignity, empowering them to make decisions for themselves and give voice to every parent, student and teacher who shares that goal. So love to hear your journey into that work and what that work itself looks like.Andrew ClarkYeah, of course. So, yeah, 501c4 is a lobbying organization and I am a lobbyist by nature. I'm not an education guy at all. And I like to say education came looking for me. I didn't go looking for it. But the way that that happened is I was working in Arizona, working on state budget issues, and at the time, ESAs were being hotly debated. So there was a small ESA program in the state, one of the very first that have ever passed, in fact, the first. And the debate over the expansion of that program had people thinking it was going to go to the ballot and be a big fight.Andrew ClarkAnd so people were asking if we'd be willing to fund that initiative. And I just didn't know a lot about education. And so we started doing a lot of research to see if that was worth getting engaged on because the implications of education spending are significant on state budgets, as you know. And in doing that, what shocked me is when you put together what I'd consider, the more classically Democratic arguments about education and the more classical Republican arguments, the public essentially rejected both arguments pretty soundly.Michael HornSay more.Andrew ClarkYeah. So, you know, the traditional argument from Democrats has essentially been public schools are grounded in the community. They just need more money. Right. And if I can just have more money, they'll be fine. And you know, public's great with investing in public education, but they don't think that's the end all be all and they don't think that things can go unchanged. Whereas the Republican argument was essentially like, hey, public schools are terrible and they just need a whole lot of competition. That competition is going to force excellence and test scores and that's what we want.And the public is dubious on test scores and they don't like the kind of competitive nature of it. Like none of that really resonates either. And so put those two arguments up against each other, there really wasn't any constituency being like, yes, that's what I want.Michael HornSuper interesting.Innovative Policy Strategies NeededAndrew ClarkTo me, that was eye opening going, how do you have a space in which the two competing ideas are both unpopular? As a lobbyist, that's a really weird phenomenon. It just made me say, hey, I think what's going on in this space actually doesn't make any sense. And there's an opening to do something much more innovative and novel that people will actually enjoy. And so that's kind of what led to ultimately starting to run some experiments on different types of policies that we could talk about. But I can give you two examples. One of the things I saw early on is if a program in education was universal versus being low income, it was way more popular with the public, like 35% more popular. And essentially no advocacy group was working on that to the degree that I would have expected. And so I was like, hey, why don't we start working on bills that are universal and just saying, if it's a low income bill, we're just going to reject it.We're just going to be opposed to it, even though we support more freedom generally. And as you can imagine, for a lot of school choice advocates, that irritated the crap out of people. But I'm like, I'm going to reject your bills. That was novel at the time. And there's a couple other policy areas like that where I just over index to saying like, why don't we just do things that people like and that make good economic sense and good educational sense? And let's just bank on the fact that if people see benefit in it, they're going to vote for it, they're going to re-elect people that do that and that's going to have a more transformational effect than advocating for something people don't want. Which sounds intuitive, but it was relatively novel at the time. And that ultimately led to me working with some other people and together we all created yes. every kid. And that's what we do. We just lobby for laws like that and try to get them in place.Michael HornSuper interesting. And you do the work beyond Arizona now it's nationwide, right?Andrew ClarkAbsolutely. Yep. We work in about 36 states right now.Michael HornYeah. And I guess the reason it's counterintuitive, as I would think about it, is a lot of folks might say like, yeah, we agree, you know, universal may be the goal or yes, that's going to make it more popular, but we have a win right now. We can impact this population, let's go for it. And they accuse you, I guess, of being against incrementalism toward that goal or something like that.Andrew ClarkThat's certainly my reputation in the space. I would argue everything we're doing is incremental. It's just a question of where you're going to draw those lines and what you're going after. And I think education is particularly influenced by this rise of Taylorism, which is this philosophical backdrop to the industrial revolution that basically said people, people don't matter, processes are what matter and we can optimize processes and everything just becomes a top down exercise. I think the people that go into education carry that mentality or that culture into the space. And that's true whether you're on the programmatic side, you know, you're trying to actually put schools together, or if you're on the advocacy side, you think I'm going to do this thing because academics think it's wise or think tanks thinks it's wise. And I'm going to impose that. Whereas in most spaces that are bottom up, you go the other way.You're like, what do people see benefits in? What are customers going to gravitate to? And you design around that bottom up feature that just there's just not a lot of people that have that ethos in education.Michael HornSpace, from a job speed on landscape through my work that I hear the logic there for sure. So one of the big things that you all have been working on and pushing, you mentioned it briefly, these ESAs, education savings accounts, this notion not just of school choice, but educational choice more broadly. It's something that my audience is certainly familiar with. We've talked a lot about it in the show, so. But I think, you know, 2025, we're having this interview, beginning of the year. Where are we nationally on ESAs? What's the state of choice? I think there's like 11 states maybe with universal choice. But is that right? Who are they? What does that even mean?Andrew ClarkYeah, I would say the world is transformed in my view anyways. So the original thesis for a lot of this is hey, we've got a very again Taylor top down education center today where the government says in law you as a family will put your kid in the public school or we will send you to jail. And then inside of that school we're going to dictate how the day goes for you. And it's all very carefully orchestrated. And what we said at the time when we started back in 2018, 2019 was we just need a way out, just an exit, a right of exit to go try something else. So if that system doesn't work for you, no problem, let's get out. And that was the, a lot of the premise for these original universal ESA accounts, which is now up to a dozen states.Michael HornA dozen states. Okay.School Choice Programs Surge NationwideAndrew ClarkYeah. And I would say, you know, you've got about 40% of kids in America that have access to some kind of private school choice program. This is booming. It's not just happening in legislative, it's also having huge political impacts. Like the idea is very popular, it's 75, 80% popular. And so when opposition has come out and tried to take people out in Texas or Arizona or Iowa or Arkansas, what has happened is the people have advocated for school choice, have won and won by pretty wide margins and then that just encourages the next group to go after it. And so now it's kind of sweeping. I think it's not crazy to think you're going to have 18 or 20 states that have school choice programs by the end of this session and you could have 60, 65% of kids in the country having access to private schools through these programs.Michael HornAnd so it's public dollars. Yeah, yeah.Andrew ClarkWith subsidized dollars. Yeah, it's a pretty massive change in the country.Michael HornAnd so if we hit 18 or more by the end of the year, I assume you're thinking like Texas, Tennessee, like states like that are the ones that tip next. I'd love to hear your crystal ball on that. But are we talking about educational savings accounts specifically in all these states universal, or are we talking about different forms of tax scholarships or vouchers? Like where are they landing in this choice landscape as we're seeing this sweep of legislation?Andrew ClarkYeah, so certainly Texas is going to be the point of contention for everybody just because they've got north of 5 million kids and the entire country has 55 million kids. So you're talking about a significant portion of the total student body population in the United States is grounded in Texas and it's one of the few states that's still growing. Almost everybody else is on the decline. So the fight for Texas will be significant. I think the macro trends you're talking about is most states are still going for ESAs, which in policy terms just means I'm going to take a subsidy, I'm going to put it in a government controlled account, I'm going to create a bunch of rules around that account and then a family can come in and dictate where the money gets spent out of that. So most states are still needing to do that. But you're starting to see this, what I would consider the next wave coming out, which is these personal tax credits, which is just basically saying if you don't take your kid and put them in a public school, if you decide to do something else, we're just going to give you your money back.And so Oklahoma already has this in law. I think you'll see this in several other states emerging this cycle, maybe three or four of them, where they're just literally like any other, tax credit, child care tax credit, child tax credit, et cetera. They're just going to give you your money back and you'll have the freedom to spend that however you will. So I don't think it'll be nearly as much money as you see in an ESA. It might be 3 or $5,000 as opposed to 7 to $10,000 in an ESA, but it will have significantly more regulatory freedom.Michael HornInteresting. So essentially we're saying you do not avail yourself of the public school. Sure, people without kids don't either, but this is a way of giving you some of that money back so you can make a different choice with your child. Is that essentially the theory?Andrew ClarkThat's exactly the logic, yep.Michael HornOkay, so I want to come back to some of these strands in a little bit, but I want to know in particular, there were three states where at the ballot box it seemed like there were some pretty big defeats of choice in terms of referendums, namely Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado. What happened in those three states, because my impression, I'll lay out my priors, was what yours is that like, yes, this is a red state phenomenon for the most part, but, but it seems incredibly bipartisan support for it within those States, people of all stripes seem to really like the Education Savings Accounts in particular. So like what happened in those three states, because of that referendum. A lot of the stuff you've talked about has been policy at the state house level.Andrew ClarkYeah. So I'd say strategically there's two big inflections in policy design choices that have huge impacts on the the way that the public perceives them. So one is this question of who is eligible, Is it going to be eligible for every kid in the state or is it just going to be eligible for some kids? If it's eligible for every kid, it is about 30 percentage points higher than if it's just some kids. And some kids could be low income kids, special needs kids, it could just be an overall cap, whatever. But the difference in political popularity is massive on that one line alone. And the second part of it is if it's just a private school choice option, people are way less inclined to be supportive of it as opposed to if it is agnostic to whatever works for the kid. So an ESA is designed to say, look, if you want to put your kid in public school part time and private school part time and tutoring a little bit, and we don't care, you pick whatever you want. That's a very popular idea.People want all the options. They don't want to be pigeonholed into just private schools. That's not a very popular option. And so the mistake that I think a lot of these very well intentioned advocates have made is they think, man, if I just go put a $10 million program on the ballot, which is the Nebraska proposal, that's going to be fine because it's not going to scare anybody. And who would oppose $10 million? It's so small. But what happens is teachers unions aren't idiots, right? They're going to go after a small threat just as hard as they're going to go after a big threat. And if they go after a small threat that's not very popular, that small threat's going to die. And so if we could rewind the clock, I'd love to sit down with the advocates doing that and saying, hey folks, there's no reason to walk in with an idea that's 30% popular just because you think it's good.Talk to the customer, the customer wants everybody to be eligible. $10 million isn't going to get that job done. Go bigger, actually be more ambitious. And what you'll find is when the public's with you, then you'll actually win at the ballot. So I think in all three states we go through it, but they all three made that mistake essentially in crafting policy that wasn't politically savvy.Michael HornAnd so the big, just to reiterate what you just said, the big issues universal, not for some. And two, it sounds like a voucher that is like essentially a ticket to a private school and that is your only choice. That is not popular either. People want a more expansive set of I get to direct my kids' education and including public options that you know, ideally, and we heard this in Florida, they start innovating, right? The public options as they start to see different ways to structure education as well through these different funding mechanisms over time.Andrew ClarkWhat the parents are upset about is they want control. It's not that they want a different tax status for the school. That is not right.Michael HornIf it's the private first, public is not what's driving this. I want control. Okay, all right, let's flip to implementation. That's a good gateway into this because you are not just advocating, as I understand it, for policy, you're also advocating around implementation as well and thinking about this. And there's a lot of debates about how ESAs are put into place specifically. The first one is maybe where it lives and how we manage it. Are we using, you know, a third party technology like Odyssey or something like that to help distribute funds step up for students? Is the Department of Education trying to stand up something? How do you think about the where it lives and how we manage it, how we disperse funds, et cetera questions?Andrew ClarkYeah, I think on the first step you're right that most advocacy groups come into legislation, they're like, I have a big idea. And they give the big idea to politicians. The politician puts the big idea into a law and the law just says here, here's the big idea. Give people money essentially, right? And then they give it to a department who's like what the hell are you talking about? What am I supposed to do with this? And at that point most of the advocacy groups are gone. What we try to do that is different is we want to stick around and say, hey, here's what the intent was, here's the thinking behind it and here's how you could actually apply that. And I think that's really important to carry that through line all the way down because the passing the bill is just the very baby steps. All the real work happens after that. And there's a moment for choosing in the aftermath there on what are these going to look like in practice? And I'll just give you maybe two mental models to think about what this could look like.One way that this could play out is going to be like health insurance. So if you think about the way that health insurance works in health care, those companies, those third party companies are basically tasked to ration your healthcare. They're there to think through like what's the appropriate use of the healthcare system and how do I make it as cost efficient as I can and safe. So that's one option. I'll give you another design option which would be like Social Security where we're trying to eradicate senior poverty and we just send people a check and we say this is for you to take care of yourself, I wish you the best. Right? These are two very different approaches. They're both welfare programs, but very different policy designs and ESAs are going to run into that. Those kinds of choices.ESA Decision: Customer or Third Party?Andrew ClarkAre we going to make it more like a health insurance model or we're going to make it more like Social Security? So when we say we're trying to empower parents, both could empower parents. But one model, there's going to be a decision maker that's a third party. And then the other model, the decision maker is going to be the customer, the end user, which one are ESA's going to decide? And for us we have a very clear point of view which is the customer ought to make the decision. That doesn't mean there's no regulations. It's pretty reasonable that any public funds given are going to have some regulations. But there is a very binary choice between who the actual decision maker is. Is it going to be the government or a third party or is it going to be the customer? We think it ought to be the customer. Most people in the space think it ought to be the third party.And I think that's a very bad idea. You just look at how popular health insurance companies are, right? I mean you just watch the poor CEO got shot and half the country cheered. I think that tells you just how unpopular that idea is. But I think that is a very real possibility of where education's headed to if we don't head this off.Michael HornSo let's play that out on a few things. I had never thought about that mental model with ESAs because I think of it as fundamentally a consumer powered choice, more akin to say a health savings account than a health insurance plan. But it's interesting when you frame it that way. So some of the downstream decisions of that, I guess in the health insurance model would be restrictions around what you can spend on, restrictions on pricing perhaps of the schools and things of that nature. Just sort of play that out. What are the implications where you see that taking hold based on what some people are advocating for and how you would do it instead?Andrew ClarkYeah, I think health savings accounts are probably like if I give you the two extreme wings there between Social Security and health insurance. Yeah, Health savings accounts are probably somewhere in the middle ground and maybe probably more tilted towards the customers. So I think they're a fine model. Right. If I go see a chiropractor, I can pay with my HSA and I don't have to get that pre approved. I might have to submit it afterwards and maybe the HSA company would reject it. There's some rules around it, but for the most part I can pay for pretty wide latitude of whatever I want to. That is different than like if I go see a doctor with my insurance company, they're going to call Blue Cross, Blue Shield or United or whoever and say, can this person get this treatment? And if the answer is no, they're going to say no.Right. Like, doesn't matter what you and your doctor negotiate out, that insurance company is going to make the decision. And that's the way most of these ESA programs are working right now is I say, okay, I want to buy, you know, Bob's textbook. If the department hasn't pre approved that purchase and or Class Wallet or Step up hasn't pre approved that purchase, you're not going to be able to buy that book. I think that's the bad model and the one that we're running the risk of slipping into. We want to be much more in the HSA mold where it's like, hey, I can buy textbooks, that's what's approved. And then as a consumer, it doesn't really matter what textbook I buy, as long as it's a textbook, we're all okay with the fact that that's on the net, that's going to be a positive for society.Michael HornSo it's interesting you say that because I've seen accreditation pop up as a requirement in some of these programs, which I have to be super honest, has like shocked me on a number of levels. And maybe that's speaking toward that is like, okay, if it's accredited, we say that's pre approved and therefore you're good no matter what. If not accredited, we're going to have to have another conversation. Is that.Andrew ClarkAbsolutely. And this is where, you know, most people who advocate for ESAs and other kinds of freedom are really, really offended when they get attacked by critics who say, like, oh, this is going to raise prices and send in grifters and cronyism, I actually welcome the criticism, like, bring it on, because it keeps us clear on where the risks are and they're not wrong about the risks. So the risk is you get somebody who comes grifting along. Let's say you have a textbook company, they're going to say, man, only my textbook should be approved. Those guys, textbooks that's full of crazy garbly gook and kids will learn God knows what. So you got to make sure you only approve my books and not their books. Right? And that's. This is just classic government. You can only buy my therapies, not theirs.You can only buy my tutoring service. You got to make sure that my employees are approved, not their employees. That's just what happens when you get a regulatory environment is you get regulatory capture. People want to make their business not providing customers some benefit. They want to make their money by getting the government to get rid of their competition. And so one of the reasons that you want to try to make sure you don't have that is think of the higher ed space that you've talked a lot about. Higher ed space does that exact problem. They say, like, you can't create an alternative.You know, the folks at the University of Austin, people are all excited about that. That's unaccredited right now. You can't use your 529 or your Pell or any of that public subsidy money to go to that school. And why isn't it accredited? It's got some of the best professors in the country, maybe in the world, working there. Why isn't it? Because they've made it a 5 to 10 year process to get accredited. Well, what happens? That means no competition can come into the space. That means higher education goes sky high all the time and it never stops. There's no incentive to bring it down. The same thing will happen in K12 if we allow the same kind of regulatory barriers to exist.If it's hard to come in and sell a textbook, well, then the existing textbook guys are just going to jack the prices up. It's going to be really hard to get in. So this is kind of why these debates matter so much, is if we want to get to a world that is low price, high quality, happy customers, you have to give people freedom to come in and enter the market and freedom to buy in the market really easily. And most of the advocates and lobbyists in the space they're being paid to try to capture the market for some regulatory space. And so both politicians and just normal people have to be outspoken, loud advocates for the ideas of freedom and markets or education is going to stifle and do what it's always done historically in this country, which is it's going to get captured by the special interest.Michael HornJust to play that out. The counterargument I suppose would be, well, if we don't have lists, we're going to get, you know, hacks and frauds coming in and taking dollars. And I think I'm going to anticipate your argument back would be like, well, we have some of that anyway and it's going to be discovered a lot faster if individuals can make these choices than we're hoping that government somehow discovers it. Right. Because in some ways that's a feature, not a bug actually of more choice. Am I anticipating the debate correctly?Andrew ClarkYep, you got it. I mean, this is, you could think of it in Milton Friedman's vernacular. Right. When it's, when it's me spending someone else's money, I'm much more prone to spend it maliciously than if it's me spending my money. Right. And so depending on how you think about it, if it's you spending the government's money, your incentive is to spend as much of it as fast as you can. And, you could be relatively reckless. If you're spending your own money, you're going to guard it very carefully.Most people, most families want what's best for their kids and they're going to make hard trade off decisions. I think that's one of my favorite things about your job to be done research. It's showing, it's illustrating the trade offs. Right. That's what we want people to do. Yeah. And that's again why you want the market dynamics to flow.So yeah, public schools spend money on all sorts of crazy things. Margarita Rosa at Georgetown has essentially made a career out of the crazy things people have bought inside of public schools. You're not going to get rid of waste fodder abuse, but you can put in reasonable mechanisms without corrupting the market.Flexible Spending with Educational Savings AccountsMichael HornAnd so that's, I mean, in my mind that's been the, one of the biggest arguments for ESAs is it really is putting money in a wallet that is yours and you don't have to spend it all in one year. You can save it over time. And so that doesn't introduce, it doesn't just introduce the notion of choice. It also introduces the notion of value and trade offs as opposed to a voucher, which is like a ticket for one thing, regardless of economic value and, and doesn't have those trade offs and choices and fractionalization and value assessments that an individual might make. Let's go on, just to stay on this though, on what you can spend on. Do you think there should be categories of things or like how do you, you know, where do you draw the line or, or no line. Right. Because you know, I obviously we've seen the headlines, equine therapy and you're like, actually it's a really important thing for some families and kids, so probably a really good thing.And by the way, you know, schools send their kids to field trips to Disney World and stuff like that. So like where is the line and where isn't the line in your view?Andrew ClarkYeah, and I, my personal view is the best case is like the child tax credit that we saw issued during COVID There were a list of uses for that. They were pretty broad and you know, the IRS reserved the right to come in and audit and make sure you spent the money on your child. Makes sense. Pretty reasonable. Didn't prohibit anybody from doing what they wanted to do for the most part. But it also made sure that if there was fraud that the government had a mechanism to come in and enforce it.Michael HornCome back in and unfold it. Okay.Andrew ClarkThat's the best case scenario.Michael HornGot it. Okay, so let me ask this question which is a lot of these ESAs, even the ones that are universal, meaning access to it is open, they're not fully funded, as in that there's a line item, as I understand it, that could cover every single person in the state and it is double funded in many cases in the sense that there's an account for the public schools and then there is also an ESA. That introduces an interesting sort of case of rationing or choices around who do you market this to first perhaps you can't foreclose people, but maybe you can if there's waiting lists, like how do you navigate that focus, access, set of questions in these environments? And maybe I just named the corollary up front, which is like at what point do we say, okay, the dual sort of funding structure was really important so we don't, you know, get their ire up front. But at some point like there it has to be replicative of, you know, what was there. How do you, how do you think about that?Andrew ClarkNo, I think, I think the original strategy we had of let's just give people an exit was a good one for its time. I think the problem is if you leave that old system in place, exactly what you're saying is happening. One, you would hope that the money, you know, that was 15 or $20,000 in the public school system would now be the 7,000 in the ESA. And we would say, great, the government has now saved $13,000 and it's a win win and everyone's happy. But what happens in reality, we've created a lot of dependency in the current system. They don't let go of a dime and then it becomes additive. So that's a problem for the government in terms of its overall spending, but it's also a problem for the market because what happens is you get New York City spending $40,000 a kid, what do they do? They just start spending money on every crazy thing you've ever imagined in human history, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. And people begin to expect that level of service even if it doesn't make sense.So it's like, why does this school have a climbing wall? And why does it have a restaurant? Why does it have crazy things? I have the money and if I don't use it, I lose it, so I've got to keep spending it. Well then what happens is when an alternative comes up and says, hey, I'm gonna now give your kid a better education at a significantly lower cost, they're like, yeah, but where's the cool climbing wall? Right, right. And so now the expectation level for service gets higher. So the promise of like bringing the cost down, which then increase access for everybody, it starts to diminish because the service expectations are higher, which is a little, a little bit wonky. But it's to say that if we don't get the, the existing public school system transformed as well into a place where it has to care about what families want and be responsive to what families want, the promise of this idea to transform education, it's not going to deliver. And so I think the next big wave is we have to go back to public schools and say, hey, it's time for you to also come back to a system like esas where parents are going to decide, do I give you all $15,000 or do I peel a thousand of that off and go use it for a tutorial when you don't meet my needs? I think we need to, we must get the definition of public schools redefined from the public system owns and operates the dollars and the families comply to a system where the families own the dollars and the school meets their needs. And if we can do that, all sorts of good cascading effects will happen. And if we don't do that, I think we'll stall out again.Michael HornAlso interesting off that right. Is this notion of overserved and that is critical to disruptive innovation. And one of my arguments around why we can't disrupt schools at the present, you know, traditional system in the United States is there's no non consumption and there's very little sense of overserved. But it's my argument about why have ESAs have emerged, I actually think some of the most well off families that are like, you know, I don't need the 10, you know, English as second language instructors and the football team and the this and that. Like I just want this, this, this, this, this boom. Thank you very much. I'm great. And that's sort of where the disruption will really start I think if we're going to really see a revolution of how education, learning, schooling occurs in this country.Andrew ClarkYeah. And maybe if I just double click on that because you and I do the same research methodology which is this jobs to be done. And we asked the people who have left the public school system, why did you leave? And almost universally what they say is I just wanted basic life skills. Like I just want to be able to do math and read and just, you know, some fundamentals: wash their clothes, pay bills, like the easy stuff. And so what they go and search for in the market usually costs about $5,000 a year. So they're leaving a free service that costs $15,000 a year to go to a paid service for 5,000. But they're doing it because they want less, which is really remarkable to watch. So I'm with you.I actually think we probably in a space where 65, 70% of the current offering in a public school, people don't actually want to buy. And if they were given the choice, they wouldn't buy. Which is a pretty fascinating intellectual thing to get to doodle through.Michael HornNo, I think that's exactly right. I mean look, it's the classic case why iPhone, new iPhone sales are slowing down and spreading out. People are like, I don't need the extra whatever gimmick. I'll hang on for another year to my phone. Right, exactly. So, let me go to this, which is accountability. I think it's implicit in a lot of what you said. But it seems to be another place where there's a lot of opinions on both sides of this.And on the one hand you sort of say, actually the quote unquote accountability of no child left behind, etc. Etc. was more transparency, perhaps less accountability because not clear always what happened out of that. There were some punishments attached to it, but for the most part there were ways to ward them off. This is perhaps true accountability, goes the argument, because families say, you're not serving me, I can leave, I'm going to move to another option. And I have control over that. Whether it's mid year, mid month, end of the year, right? So much faster cycle times. The flip side of it says, sure, but these are public dollars and we want some sort of layer of are kids actually learning how to read? Are they actually learning how to do math? Things of that nature.And so we want some minimum set of baseline assessments, maybe, perhaps they could be more growth based, but we want some sort of public mechanism still in place. How do you think about this question? What do you see happening?Andrew ClarkSo I think the way you framed it up I would vigorously agree with, which is we don't have accountability today in public schools, we have transparency at best. And we could go through a litany of examples. But Chicago, Baltimore, New York, you know what you see is enrollments dropping wildly, right? Like people are just straight up walking away from public schools and on these standardized test scores, you've got tons and tons of schools, just Google it. Chicago proficiency rates. You'll be like, wow, there's 30 schools where not one kid is proficient in English or reading or English and math. And then you'll be like, great, so what happened, you know, the next year nothing changes, right? Year after year the behavior stays the same, but as they lose kids, their pure pupil dollar amount goes up. So if anything, they're almost getting more money for, for not changing at all, for being resistant.That is not accountability. That is again, at best, that's transparency. But it's not actually changing anything. So I'm with you. The idea that somebody could actually then say, like, if you're not helping me, I'm going to go somewhere where I can be helped and my money's going with me. That's actual accountability. That has teeth to it. So I think that if you value accountability, and I certainly do, that's the accountability you want.The standardized test score isn't going to get you there. Now that said, I do think, look, reading is good, math is good, right? And if you're investing in this as a taxpayer, you want to have visibility into it. I think when you mandate testing on every single kid, it's not useful for parents, they don't want it, they're not asking for it, they wouldn't buy it. That's not a great way to do it. I think the way that we do it with NAEP, which is just this randomized group of voluntary participants, makes way more sense because then you get visibility into what's going on without anybody being forced and without teachers trying to optimize to the test. So I think that's the kind of thing we should do. And you could do it across a broad range of things, micro schools, private schools, whatever. It's voluntary.You can get much more transparency, much more visibility into where kids are actually learning and where they're performing without anybody being forced into anything. So if I were the state, I would invest money into a NAEP style system, if not NAEP entirely itself, to try to get that visibility without coercing people.Michael HornIt'd be interesting. I hadn't thought about this before, but one of the challenges is, I understand it that NAEP faces is frankly budgetary, it's all from the federal government. But if the state were to say, hey, we're going to contribute X amount in because we want, you know, to leverage the sampling mechanism and this well regarded assessment that's already structured, but do it every single year, say, or you know, maybe that's a way to get the funding up to be able to do something like that. And then I imagine this is a question though, but I imagine your second statement would be like, and some parents probably do want assessments to know, hey, how's my kid doing against on this or that or whatever else. And so they could pay for, or they could choose schools that administer. And then I guess the question is what becomes public or not in those choices. I'm curious your take.Andrew ClarkYeah, as you know, the philanthropy community gets really obsessed on this idea of navigation where they're like, we're going to tell people what they want and we're going to tell them what good and bad is. And when you ask people like would you pay for any of the services that government or philanthropy suggests? And the answer is always no. So it's like, would you pay for this testing service the way that we do it today? The answer is almost, yeah, uniformly no. So what I would do is say, hey, in your ESA or voucher, tax credit, whatever you're designing, testing is one of the things you can pay for in whatever you want. And then you, as a family, you decide what's actually creating value. And that way, you know, if it's a Google review Or a Yelp review or it's a standardized test or it's whatever, I don't care. Right. You as an entrepreneur, come up with whatever feedback mechanism you think families will be like, yes, that's going to help me decide where to put my kid and why and whether they're succeeding.Great, go out and sell that. Is that worth $20? Is that worth 200? Is that worth 2,000? Right. Let's find out what the value of that is. And that way we actually start getting real products and services that families value and use as opposed to the ones philanthropy or government's value that nobody finds value in and nobody uses and we just hemorrhage crazy amounts of money on for no particular reason other than making people irritated except for academics who love it.Michael HornWell, it occurs to me as if certain places write in provisions and policy around navigation requiring a coach or something like that to help advise. Frankly, like the AI tools that are coming out right now that are going to know your situation are going to make that so cheap and easy and to say nothing of social trust and so forth, that if they're, if those policies are not written at an extremely sort of like outcome level as opposed to process level, they're going to be outdated within days, right.Andrew ClarkYeah. I think this is the overarching argument I'd make is Taylorism. I'll give it a lot of crap, but I actually think it was great. The industrial revolution was awesome. It made things super cheap. But it's made for machines and people are not machines. And so when you're dealing with the people business, let the machines do the machine thing. But if you're trying to say, what's the right coach for my kid? There's no process to tell you what the right coach is.It's you sitting across the table from the coach having a conversation saying, is this person going to love my kid? Are they going to resonate with each other? Are they going to understand each other? Is this relationship of trust? There's nothing that you can do to replace that kind of just authentic relationship that goes back and forth. And s I think you're not going to design a law that says, hey, let's optimize for that. The only thing you're going to do is empower people and let them make their own decisions. And that's why, you know, freedom almost always beats some kind of top down control.Michael HornAnd presumably someone could pay for that navigation or counseling or whatever else.Andrew Clark100%.Michael HornOkay, last question as we wrap up here. This has been a pretty wide ranging question, or conversation rather on how these things should look in practice. I'm curious, are there other implementation questions on the ground that you think are not getting enough attention or are really sort of bubbling up right now that we haven't talked about that we ought to focus on as we wrap up this conversation?Andrew ClarkYeah, I would bucket the implementation thing kind of three waves. There's the how do you sign up for it? Which sounds really stupid, but there's a million debates on like, how do you sign up for these programs? And kind of who gets qualified and then which time period. We could nerd out on all of those. But this is one of the reasons why we advocate for universal, not just for because it's good policy and good politics, but because it's good implementation. So if it's a low income program, you have to go ask people, how much money do you make? Please submit all your form forms. And then somebody has to process. It takes forever. Whereas if it's universal, it's just, are you a person who lives in the state? Great, you're approved.Streamlining Government Program EnrollmentAndrew ClarkOff we go. But there's a ton of fights on the how do you sign up for? So I think it should just be easy to sign up for. It should take seconds, right? Verifying your taxpayer should be stupid simple. The second one is easy to use, which is where I think we spent most of our time talking here, is like, how do you use these darn things once you're approved? And then the third part that is there is in an ideal world, people should love these programs. It's free money. Who doesn't love free money? Right? Like, I think there's all sorts of good arguments against free money, but if you're gonna do it, it should at least be enjoyable. The fact that we torture people is kind of crazy, but there's almost no feedback mechanism to see if anyone cares, because nobody cares about the family in government, which blows my mind. So one of the big arguments is, hey, you actually need to circle back with the family and say, was this experience enjoyable? Did it meet your needs? Right.Jobs to be done? Was your job hired for? If yes, cool, we're probably doing something right. If no, where did we break it? Let's go back and fix it. And until we can get that kind of feedback loop going and get incentives aligned, it's going to be hard for these programs to work in practice.Michael HornAll right, I lied. I want to stay on that last one for a moment because one of my arguments to folks like Joe Connor and other entrepreneurs in the space, building systems to help with the disbursement of dollars is that as they move up market. Right. Part of the feature set that they probably will have to have is some of those feedback mechanisms, as well as, frankly, navigation supports, because they'll sort of become. I hate the Yelp analogy, but I'm going to use it for a moment, like sort of the Yelp, like, marketplace, if you will, for me, helping to figure out or find things that I might not even know about otherwise. That's my own opinion of how they might evolve naturally. I don't think there needs to be policy to do it. I just think it's part of the feature set.But I'm curious, is that how you're thinking about this, or do you have other ideas in mind?Andrew ClarkNo, I think if a marketplace is allowed to thrive and it's out. What you see in these early days anyways, of school choice is people start by saying, I don't even know what my options are. I've always been told what to do. So they just default to essentially a private school, or what you'd think of as a bundled solution. It has all your products and services in one place. And then as they get more comfortable, they're like, I really want to do math over here and I'd like to do athletics over there. And they start to unbundle. They start to pull off services and go to different places and different vendors for them.And so somebody who's been in a program for two, three, four years looks very different than somebody who's there the first time. But my expectation is just like, you know, when we transitioned from cable companies to Apple tv, it got annoying really fast. You're like, my God, I'm tired of having 32 subscriptions. I just have one again. Yeah. So what happens is you start to rebundle. And my guess is you're going to, you know, any.Any good market has this process of bundling and unbundling, and that's what drives innovation at its core. But I expect you to see we've had 100 years of a tightly bundled system. Now we're just starting to have the first two or three years of unbundling. But the natural evolution of economics would tell you it's going to rebundle. So somebody's going to say, hey, you just tell me what your kid is like and I'm going to come back to you with suggestions. And you just, you pay me and I'll take care of transportation, I'll take care of everything. And you know, you might end up paying a premium for that service, but it might be really worthwhile.And then somebody will get irritated and break that model and we'll just turn and turn and turn until, you know, the experience and education is the greatest thing that none of us have ever imagined, which is the way that that all again, all human experience goes.Future of Customized Service BundlesMichael HornWe should wrap up there. But I will say I think it's a really good point and that rebundling will be around different spools, if you will, from the current one, which will be the real magic. And to your point, figuring out the right mix and sort of services and so forth and trade offs that individuals will make saying like, well, it's still not 100% but nothing in life is. It just reduced the friction of me having to make every single choice. It's a lot of work picking all the summer camps as parents we have to do. So if there's a couple bundles from which I can choose and the more it can be customized around, you know, this is my circumstances, my kid, all the better, right?Andrew ClarkAbsolutely. That's what we all want. We all want an EZ Bake Oven. That is also exactly the way we want it. Right?Michael HornWell, with that is the final word. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fun conversation. I've learned a lot and just appreciate the work you're doing.Andrew ClarkOf course I appreciate the work you're doing. It's excellent.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.
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Mar 12, 2025 • 37min

How AI Could Lead to a Massive Productivity Boost in Education

In this episode of Class Disrupted, Diane Tavenner and I chat with Siya Raj Purohit, who works on education initiatives at OpenAI, about the transformative potential of AI in education. Siya shares her career journey and how it led her to focus on bridging the gap between education and workforce development. Highlighting the immense value of AI tools like ChatGPT, particularly in university settings, she underscores its potential to personalize learning, reduce teacher burnout, and enhance classroom interactions. Siya also addresses concerns around AI by emphasizing that while AI can elevate thinking and productivity, the irreplaceable human element in teaching—such as mentorship and personal inspiration—remains vital.Michael Horn:Hi there, Michael Horn here. What you are about to hear is a conversation that Diane and I recorded with Siya Raj Purohit from OpenAI as part of our series exploring the potential impact of AI on education from the good to the bad.Now, here are two things that grabbed me about this episode.First, I was struck by how much Siya uses ChatGPT in her daily workflow already. Yes, she works at OpenAI, but it has seemingly revolutionized her life. As she said, it's a massive productivity tool. From using it as a tutor to helping her figure out what projects to prioritize, what to learn, this is just part of how she works now. Second, I was struck by how much she's really on the ground level with universities, particularly professors, helping them figure out how to make it part of their workflow as well for teaching and learning, and how deep she is in specific use cases as a result, and how she sees this, frankly, as an important tool to free up teacher time, elevate student thinking, and the like.As the conversation wrapped up, I've also been reflecting on a couple things.First, what would it take for ChatGPT to be a massive productivity tool for me personally? And if that's the framing, what does it mean this technology can and can't be used for in education?I was also struck by how OpenAI has decided to go deep on supporting those in college and beyond with their tool, but they haven't yet created their own products or services for students who are under 18. Candidly, that's not something I had really realized or reflected on before this conversation. So I'm excited to reflect a lot more with Diane after we talk to a number of people about this topic. But for now, we'd love to hear your thoughts about this conversation. Please share it with us over social media or through my website, michaelbhorn.com. And with that as prelude, I hope you enjoy this conversation on Class Disrupted.Diane Tavenner:Hey, Michael.Michael Horn:Hey, Diane. Good to see you.Diane Tavenner:I confess I am really excited about today's conversation because the first two we've had about AI have been super interesting and have been raising some big questions for me around the assumptions that I had coming into these conversations and AI and schools, and in particular how we organize schools themselves around new technologies. But it's made me even more curious to talk to other people and get other perspectives. So I'm really, really looking forward to talking today.Michael Horn:As am I, Diane. And I. I agree that the first two episodes have piqued my attention on different things, and I'm looking forward to digging in on more at some point. But whereas our last episode featured someone who is, I think it's fair to say, largely skeptical about AI, I suspect we will get a very different take today, given our guest actually works on Education at OpenAI, the company that of course developed and operates ChatGPT. Her name is Siya Raj Parohit, and she has been focused on supporting ed tech and workforce development in the startup community and at AWS over the past decade before she more recently joined OpenAI to work specifically on education. We're going to get to hear about all that up front. But first, Siya, welcome. It is so good to have you.Siya Raj Purohit:Thank you so much for having me.Michael Horn:Yeah, you bet. So before we get into a series of questions, questions starting to dissect AI and its impact, or not on education, I would just love you to share with the audience a little bit about how you got so deep into AI around the question of education, perhaps specifically, and maybe you'll also humor me as you do so, because I'm curious OpenAI's interest in all this because it seems like more than maybe any product launch other than the iPad that I can remember anyway, I can't think of any other consumer tech product or service that has made education such a cornerstone of all of its announcements and sort of promise and potential for the new technology. So maybe you can tell us a little bit both about your journey, but also how OpenAI sees education.Siya Raj Purohit:Absolutely. So I've spent my career at the intersection of education, technology and workforce development. This all started when I was 18. During college, I published a book about America's job skills gap, talking about how American universities weren't teaching the skills that students needed to land jobs in industry. This stemmed from my own experiences and the fear that I may not be able to land the jobs that I aspire to. And that's something that I think a lot of young adults relate to. But I've spent the next 10 years from that just trying to help bridge that gap. I worked at early stage startups, venture capital funds, and most recently Amazon, trying to bridge that gap between learning and opportunity, helping make economic mobility more possible for different types of learners.I joined OpenAI about 8 months ago to help build up our education vertical. As you all might remember. November 2022, ChatGPT launched and suddenly became like such a used product around the world. And what was interesting for OpenAI is that learning and teaching was one of the most common use cases on why people were engaging with ChatGPT. So this year we launched a product called ChatGPT EDU is designed for universities and school districts to be able to use an enterprise grade version of ChatGPT. With that, it brings all sorts of different types of benefits. There are all sorts of network effects that can exist on a campus once all students, faculty and staff have licenses.I will share a couple of examples of what that looks like. But a big part of my job is to help education leaders, educators and students start using AI more effectively on different types of campuses.Michael Horn:Perfect. Perfect. Go ahead, Diane.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, I mean, I think it sounds like, rightfully so, Michael and I are both operating under the assumption that you're probably biased towards seeing AI as something that offers real opportunity to improve and transform education. And clearly your personal pathway and journey is leading you to that impact. And so one of the things we're interested in is having you sort of make the best case for how AI will impact education in a positive way. And we have a lot of things in our minds that we've thought about, but we're really curious to be expansive in our thinking and have you make that very best case for us.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.ChatGPT: Revolutionizing Personalized LearningSiya Raj Purohit:So I believe for education as a sector, personalized learning was always the holy grail. We always said that if we achieve that, we have made it, like we have accomplished a lot of education goals with that. And I think that with ChatGPT, it exists. I have a personalized tutor that I talk to every day. It knows my projects, the skills I'm developing, like my aspirations. And it helps me become a better knowledge worker every day. And I think that in education, it's making high quality tutoring available to anyone with an Internet connection and supporting educators by automating a lot of the time consuming jobs that they do to let them focus on what matters a lot for them, which is like mentoring and inspiring students.Diane Tavenner:That's interesting. Let's stick on that one for a moment because, and we'll get to this a little bit later, but like I wonder, does that mean that the schools don't actually end up changing very much because the tutor and the sort of automated assistant just allow students and teachers to do things the way that they have been doing them, just better and more efficiently? I'm curious what you think about that.Siya Raj Purohit:So right now the most interesting examples we're seeing is that educators accrediting ChatGPT for reducing teacher burnout, which as you both know is a big problem in America. Teachers who used to spend so much time doing lesson planning, quiz grading, like all the preparation for classroom activities are able to outsource a lot of that work or kind of use ChatGPT, do a lot of that work. And so then they can focus on those classroom interactions and the engagement within different peers in the classroom, which I think is much more valuable. As far as the classroom dynamics go, I think that it is a big compliment in the way that it brings personalized support and tutoring to individuals. But at the same time I do think that there's still value in students being grouped with others that are of the same age as them because then you develop a lot of social skills and you learn how to interact more. So I'm not of like mind that like people should just do online school and have ChatGPT because I think that social component is becoming increasingly more important.Diane Tavenner:Got it. I'm thinking back to your 18 year old self who wrote a book, which we could spend a lot of time just even talking about that, but having we've both written books, we know what it takes. We weren't writing them at age 18, I don't think. And your whole premise there that like I'm not learning the skills that I'm going to need to be successful in the jobs that I want to have or the careers I want to have. How do you see AI and what you're doing with ChatGPT contributing, you know, making that not true or improving that. What is the intersection there of your personal sort of passion?From Personal Struggle to System ChangeSiya Raj Purohit:The reason I wrote that book and I felt so passionately about that and I guess that passion still, like it's so deep in me is because at first I thought it was a Siya problem. Like Siya was not able to be learning engineering skills to be able to land a job that she wanted. And then I did enough research by speaking with some really accomplished individuals to then realize this was actually a system problem. And the book was like my attempt to capture like the scale of this problem and also prove to myself that this is not just like the thing that I'm struggling with. And then I think the next part of that was like, how can I free other people from the struggle? And that's when like, this journey to try to make economic mobility more accessible has become like my life passion. So I think with ChatGPT one thing that it does really phenomenally, which I hope the students will take advantage of, is it helps elevate our thinking. A lot of times I share my thoughts on a project and I'm like, how can I elevate my thinking? How would a COO of a rocket ship company approach this? And it helps kind of expand my thought process much more.Siya Raj PurohitAnd I think while doing that, it helps us feel like less alone in a lot of these things that we encounter a lot of the problems because we can find the right examples, we can think bigger about this, we can find our own gaps. And I think these things are very powerful.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. One of the things that's interesting about talking to you that I'm observing is when we ask other people to make the best case scenario for AI, it's a little bit detached from them. But what I hear in you is literally this is what you're doing. This is how you're working every day. It sounds like you are a true believer. Am I missing anything or am I hearing that right?Siya Raj Purohit:I used to work really hard at AWS, but I accomplish about three times more every day at OpenAI just because I have AI now. I use it a lot to up level myself, but also to uplevel the project outcomes I provide.Diane Tavenner:Interesting. Awesome. Well, this next question might be more challenging for you.Michael Horn:It's a massive productivity tool for you. And I'm interested in your book. There's this common theme, right? You used "me search", as we would say, not just research around your book. And then you were doing the same thing with this tool because you're living it in terms of your massive productivity boost. But I guess I'm curious, like the flip side of some of these things because I, you know, there's a lot of skeptics, as you know about, oh AI might not even just like not have these transformational impacts, but also might undermine certain things. And so I'm sort of curious where you come out on some of this stuff. And I'll Just name two. And then you can go wherever you want on it.Michael Horn:Which is one, you said in some ways it actually makes you feel like you have a companion alongside of you to elevate your thinking. Some people said that actually could be dangerous because maybe you'll be in isolation. Right. And not feel like you have to connect with others. And then you talked about elevating thinking. And I think that's the other big worry that people have is that it'll actually do the thinking for you. Right. And we won't do the difficult, effortful work to learn about how to construct an argument and, you know, critical thinking and build knowledge so that we can analyze it and so forth and so on.Michael Horn:And I'm just sort of curious, like I kind of want you to steel man the argument and make the best skeptics take, but I almost more want you just to start to dig into these different use cases, you've heard the ones that I just named and others and sort of talk us through how you think about them.Human Connection in EducationSiya Raj Purohit:Yeah. So let's first talk about the human connection piece. It's really interesting because a lot of educators come talk to me about their own doubts and concerns about the future of their profession. They're like, will I still like be a teacher or educator given that ChatGPT exists and it's getting so good? And this question honestly surprises me a lot because the reason that I remember educators that have influenced my journey is because of who they were and how they made me feel and who they told me I could become. Right. These are things that ChatGPT doesn't do, because ChatGPT and AI know about me what I tell it, right? But great mentors can see things about me that I don't even know about myself. And I think that's a really important distinction. And I think that educators have this really unique opportunity in this era to double down on those things, they got into teaching to mentor and inspire and find these connections.Siya Raj Purohit:And now they have the opportunity to do more of that because if they can help increase the potential or vision for more people, that's the true power of education. I'm really excited about that. And I don't think that ChatGPT will replace human relationships. I think it's just gonna become like a support system. So like, the reason, like how I use ChatGPT on my personal career front is that I tell it like the things that I might want to become, like, this is like my 5 year goal, this is my 10 year goal. Can you create a really robust roadmap on how I can get there. And it gives me really, like, precise instructions as I join these types of organizations, publish this type of content, think about taking on these types of projects at work. It's really detailed.Siya Raj Purohit:But what it misses out on is, like, when my manager comes in and goes like, hey, this is your superpower. You should double down on this. You know, like, forget, like these type of strategic projects. They just hone in on what makes Siya, Siya. Right. And that's what we need more people to do for other people.Michael Horn:Super interesting talk about the other part of this. The you mentioned elevating thinking, giving you a personal roadmap. It's amazing. Again, the other fear that I hear a lot of is people say, well, it's actually going to cause people to not do the effortful work to actually learn or even get to the questions that you're able to ask of it. How do you think about that concern?Siya Raj Purohit:I think educators need to show more about what an extraordinary outcome looks like. And we need to just be able to showcase what amazing end products look like in different verticals and different domains. And the reason for that is that if you give a generic input to ChatGPT, you'll get a very generic output, which a lot of students are realizing, because they're just like, okay, I'm going to plug in my homework, get a very generic output, submit that. And that's not what professors are looking for. So I think one of the most creative use cases I've seen is a professor at the Wharton School. He always had an essay as a final submission for his MBA class. And he says, he's like, what is the value of an essay? The value of an essay is not necessarily in its output, but in the conversational skills and critical thinking skills that go into getting to that output. So now he requires the students use ChatGPT.Siya Raj Purohit:He's like, they are going to use it anyway, might as well make it a requirement. And now he measures the number of prompts they use to get to an essay that they're really satisfied with. Some students are so good at prompt engineering that they take like two or three prompts and they have a really good essay. And some students go back like 18 or 19 times to get to a good essay. And he uses that as their ability to clearly articulate what they're looking for, which he thinks is a really important skill. So if he can teach students how to communicate those skills, like in terms of communicating that output that they want to see, and also be able to visualize some really extraordinary output, then they're going to be able to use AI as just a tool to get there.Michael Horn:So maybe this is the last question in this section that I have because building off that, I think it's almost an implied set of knowledge and awareness, right, that students need to have as baseline to be able to have those expectations or hopes for outcomes and things of that nature. I'm sort of curious, you also mentioned that what the purpose of an essay is implicit in all of that is that some of the artifacts that we have used historically to gauge, you know, thinking processes and argumentation, et cetera, et cetera, like they might change in the future. Right. The example we've used a few times at this point is Brorr Saxberg, one of our friends likes to say Aristotle worried deeply that the written word would mean people didn't memorize Homeric epic length poems anymore. And he was absolutely true.Michael Horn:And I don't think any of us regret that. And so I'm sort of curious, your take of like, you know, sort of how we do work or the artifacts of what we think of as representing learning, how might those change even in the future? And maybe some of these concerns, they won't all be that relevant because we will show our knowledge and skill development through other means.Siya Raj Purohit:So I think a lot of like basic calculations, basic strategic work, all of that is going to become much less important. I think a lot of listeners would probably relate when their teachers told them they wouldn't always have a calculator around, so they needed to learn basic math early. And now we do. So it's just like these kind of like, the basic elements of strategic thinking, I think are gonna be less important than they used to be. But the things that are going to be more important is like, like critical thinking, but also emotional reasoning and the ability, like emotional intelligence to be able to these outputs and make sure that they match the type of Persona that you're serving. So right now in my current role, I do a lot of like, I guess, partnerships and BD work and those kind of things. And like, yes, I use AI to create the different types of documents and slides and those kind of like assets that we share. But the way that I communicate them to the end user to kind of inspire confidence or interest is like the unique ingredient here.Siya Raj Purohit:And we need to be able to teach that. So when the strategic work, as our reasoning models get smarter and do more of that strategic work, that human element helps people distinguish their work and stand out.Diane Tavenner:Interesting I'm so curious because I think you maybe more than other people have started to maybe personally see some changes happening in schools because of AI and like how it looks different and how it feels different and/or I bet you can imagine them a little bit better than a lot of people. And one of the things that I think we suffer from is just imagination in this space, right? Like we all know what school looks like and we have a really hard time breaking out and imagining something different. So can you just take us there? Like what could possibly look different, feel different for a teacher, for a student in a school? What are you seeing? What are you predicting?AI Revolutionizing University ExperienceSiya Raj Purohit:For this one, I'm going to actually focus more on the university setting because that's where we're seeing the fastest changes happen. Our current thinking around what an AI native university looks like is that every campus will have multiple AI touch points across that help enhance the student/faculty/staff experience on campus. So basically the idea is that we're going to take the knowledge of the campus, make it conversational and more accessible to these users. So when students come on campus, they're going to have these orientation GPTs which, where they can ask questions like where's the best pizza place in town? Or how do I change my roommate? Or any of these kind of preterm questions that they have. Then they're going to come into classrooms where professors will have designed these custom GPTs that are just basically that have learned from the professor's material and help answer questions. So a professor at HBS, Jeffrey Buskyang, was telling me that most of his class uses custom GPTs between 12am and 3am when like a human tutor is not available. And they can ask questions like which CEOs handle layoffs well and get the exact examples to help understand these kind of concepts. So classroom conversations will become much more in depth because of this.Siya Raj Purohit:But also students will be able to do things like I have a statistics exam coming up, can you give me some practice quiz questions that relate to the same like level as my professor provides and just be able to go back and forth in classroom content that way. They'll go to career services where they'll be able to use the university's proprietary data to practice interviewing with a McKinsey partner and McKinsey recruiter, all with like AI. So like all of these experiences will happen, student clubs, career services, classrooms, and it's going to happen seamlessly for students. So they'll be able to navigate between this very easily as they try to like grow as students and professionals.Diane Tavenner:Super helpful I want to dig a little bit more and this might be surprising to you, but I actually think a number of people who listen to our podcast, maybe fewer that listen to our podcast, but sort of in education, have literally never even used ChatGPT yet. They haven't logged into it. So let's spend just a moment helping them picture what it means to have a GPT. Is it on their phone? Is it on a computer, Is it on a kiosk? What does it literally look like if I'm a student when I'm engaging? And what makes it seamless?Siya Raj Purohit:I saw a meme recently which I thought was really funny in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry starts writing in this diary and it's like Tom Riddle responding at the other side. But I really liked that example because your first experience of ChatGPT feels similar to that. You just start writing. It's a blank screen and you have a conversation and it converses back with you. And it's actually a very magical feeling because you're able to have conversations with the super intelligence that exists outside of our brains, which is very powerful. So I think that it's really important to be able to first start having this conversation. You can use chat.com, you can use your mobile app, you can start actually on WhatsApp now or even call in.Siya Raj Purohit:There's a 1-800 ChatGPT number. So any of these mediums that make sense for you, you can start and you can ask basic questions. What we see most people do is start with very basic questions and kind of start building up as they gain more confidence in the back and forth interactions of this and then they're able to do more and more complicated jobs. So how we think about transformation for organizations is the very first step is at an individual level. So when individuals start writing emails better, they start doing better, like project planning or activity building. Then it shifts up to the department level. That's when people start collaborating together on different projects. One of the best examples I saw of this is that a school district told me it takes 40 people several weeks to assign which class goes into which room on campus.Siya Raj Purohit:And now ChatGPT can do that in a few minutes. So hugely empowering at the department level. And then finally get to that organization wide level, which is when you'll have so many different AI touch points and make that experience much easier as you navigate different levels of knowledge on campuses.Diane Tavenner:I think the other thing that you're saying that I'm not sure everyone will pick up unless we call it out. So I'm going to ask you to call it out is the reason, this is not like going to be a generic GPT. The intersection with the campus is that you're actually taking the data and the information and the expertise of the campus and well, you'll tell me the right words, but like mixing it with the power of GPT to make it sort of a customer customized experience. Did I get that right? What does that look like? What's going on there?Siya Raj Purohit:So basically there's ChatGPT, which is accessible to everyone. Everyone will have slightly different experiences as they go through it, but it's basically a knowledge base and a conversational platform. Custom GPTs are specific instances of ChatGPT which are basically trained to do very specific tasks. So a professor can be like, this is my six months of curriculum. This is all the case studies I provide. Just reference these when answering all student questions. So now that super intelligence is focused. So it doesn't like look at the web, it doesn't research answers, it focuses on the six months of curriculum, goes very deep and helps students be able to learn from that more effectively.Siya Raj Purohit:And you can use these custom GPT instances for any type of knowledge base. One of my favorite examples of this is that a professor at the University of Maryland told me that they created a custom GPT of themselves. They uploaded about 24, 25 pieces of research work that they've done. And like there are different pieces of writing and now they talk to what they call Virtual Dave and get good ideas on what their next research project should be. So it's like having a thought partner which is only limited to a finite amount of information that you share, but it's super intelligent itself.Diane Tavenner:Interesting. And let's just stay here for one more quick beat because you're leading us into what, maybe the work looks like for the teacher or the professor, but like just get a little bit more concrete. So that professor literally like copied and pasted his stuff into GPT? Tell it, tell us a little bit about what that, what's his work now? What's he doing?Siya Raj Purohit:Yeah, so it takes about 15 minutes to build a custom GPT. You upload PDFs or documents and so you don't need to copy/paste and you give it instructions. Again, this is where the assistant piece comes in. You explain to the custom GPT what his job is. So in this case, this professor is like, you are going to be my virtual thought partner. As I think about my next research papers. As I think about my next book or my LinkedIn posts, I need you to sound the same as I have in my career so far. So maintain the same tone and professionalism, but help me ideate on what the next iterations of these projects can look like and give me like very honest feedback.Siya Raj Purohit:So these are the instructions it gave and then the professor just has conversations with it. It's just like, could I go in this direction? And custom GPT is like, no, it's a little bit like overdone. Why don't we look at this path and it just becomes a good like research assistant for you.Diane Tavenner:Awesome. Michael, here's the jobs to be done at the moment, I think.Michael Horn:Seriously, right. What we're going to flag that for coming back to Diane?Diane Tavenner:For sure. So let's now bring in. I promise we will stop really soon as soon that we're getting to the end here. But I know that OpenAI you think a lot about, you talk a lot about, you focus a lot on policy and you're engaging with the policy, you know, field and whatnot. You know, what are you learning about the intersection of education policy and policy around AI? Like what, what should we be looking at, looking for, watching out for, paying attention to from your perspective as educators, as people who are leading schools and school systems and universities, you know, what, what do you see coming? What's important, what should we be thinking about?Siya Raj Purohit:So right now universities are in a couple of different groups when they're thinking about AI policy. Some have like very established guidelines and clarity in terms of where AI plays the role in their student journey. So like, I think some of the most forward thinking education leaders that I'm working with are like, okay, like AI is accessible. The cat is out of the bag, it's going to happen. And now I need to think about how I change my curriculum at the university to be able to use AI and help students prepare for the future. The best examples of this is Harvard Business School, there's a professor named Jake Cook who teaches a digital marketing course and he's mapped out what a digital marketing marketer's journey looks like now in the profession and the seven different jobs that a digital marketer does and where does AI enable each of those jobs? And he's turned all of his projects,AI Integration in Education EvolutionSiya Raj Purohit:So now you use AI to do competitive research, AI to create marketing assets and images, AI to help you with the copy and website and all of these kind of elements of what he thinks the students will graduate into the workforce and need to know, and like policies that enable this kind of forward thinking nature are really helpful for students because then they go into Enterprise and have ChatGPT Enterprise and actually are able to use that effectively. And then there are other institutions that I think are still trying to figure it out. They're concerned about how it might change their former assignments, how they can't use the same kind of syllabus they might have used in the past years. And a big part of our job right now is to help kind of showcase these examples of the forward thinking institutions and help these other universities learn, kind of grow their own thought process. At the end of the day, universities are the ones best suited to make these decisions for their students because they understand them the best. And it's so interesting because when you like speak with a state school, you realize they care a lot about like navigation of tools and being able to help students find the right information on a campus that is 50-60,000 students whereas a small liberal arts schools are just like, how can I help the student be able to voice their opinion more effectively? And all of these things have AI solutions. But it's universities that need to kind of figure out what they want to become and how AI can help with that.Diane Tavenner:Interesting. I could ask 27 more questions, but I'm going to ask Michael to rein me in and either wrap up with something something orMichael Horn:No, I think this is super helpful, Siya. I guess my last question is you're clearly spending a lot of time with colleges and universities. Are there others in the OpenAI team? Are you spending similar amounts of time with K12 institutions or how do you think that's going to evolve over time? Because clearly it seems like the colleges and universities are, not all as you just said, but many of them are wrestling with this yesterday. Are you seeing similar movement among K12 schools and districts or not? In which case that also tells us something.Siya Raj Purohit:They have a growing number of K12 customers. But the big caveat is we don't have an under 18 product right now. So it's not for students, it's for like teachers and staff members in K12.Michael Horn:Gotcha. Okay, super helpful. All right, well let's maybe wrap up there. Something we love to do, Siya, though, before we let our guests go, is to wonder what else you're reading or watching or listening to outside of your day jobs. And so maybe ChatGPT has recommended you reading lists or watching lists. But I'm just sort of curious, one thing outside that maybe you could point us to.Siya Raj Purohit:It's interesting to say that I've actually been asking ChatGPT a lot for book recommendations because I think it's very magical when you find the right book at the right stage of your life. And I want to see if ChatGPT can help make that happen more often. It's mixed results so far.Michael Horn:Okay.Siya Raj Purohit:One book that I'm reading right now which is super fascinating, it's called Say It Well, it's written by one of President Obama's former speechwriters, and he intertwines, like, how to be a good public speaker with stories from President Obama. And it's just super fascinating to read about how, like, things that President Obama slipped on in different talks, which make him much more human and accessible, but also like the ways that he thought about providing great speeches and connecting with audiences around the world. So I'm finding the book really interesting so far.Michael Horn:Very cool. What about you, Diane?Diane Tavenner:Awesome, thanks for sharing Okay. Well, I am going to turn to TV because we've been talking so often. I've exhausted all the books I'm reading right now, and I'm a little slow on this one, about a year behind. But we just watched the series on FX, Shogun, and I was. I must say, I was a little skeptical going in. I was a young kid when the book came out and then the miniseries on tv, and I was like, there's no possible way this could be done well or without some real issues.Diane Tavenner:And you all may know it's won 18 Emmy awards, the most ever for a single season. It's truly extraordinary and really thought provoking. Yeah. Highly recommend.Michael Horn:So I was gonna say, you could imagine it winning awards, but someone who'd read the books being like, it still didn't quite deliver, but it delivered for you, it sounds like.Diane Tavenner:Well. And I never read the books or watched the original series.Michael Horn:Okay. Okay. Okay. So.Diane Tavenner:But I just had this image in my head, and as I understand it, the current version is very different from the old ones, but it's. It's great.Michael Horn:Very cool. It's been teasing me for a while, so that is a good endorsement. For mine. I. I guess I, I want to say, like, the NFL football playoffs or Australian Open, but I feel like that gives away when we're recording, but too late, I've given it away. But I'll give you one other. I've actually really been enjoying or I enjoyed because I finished it in a day, a book recommendation that one of my daughters gave me, or she actually ordered me to read it.Michael Horn:She had finished, it's called the Girl with the Secret Name by Yael Zoldon. And I'll apologize if I've mispronounced her name. But it's a historical fiction, takes place during the Spanish Inquisition and it was fascinating. It was a history that I knew at a high level, but not with any depth at all, I will say, like literally zero. And so my daughter was teaching me quite a bit. It was fun. So, that's mine.Diane Tavenner :I love when that happens.Michael Horn:Yeah, no, know you've had that experience with Rhett giving you many recommendations. So now maybe this is the first of many for me. But I'll, let's, let's wrap up there, Siya, a huge thank you for joining us for shedding light on this topic, for sharing frankly how you are using it in your daily life to both on your learning journey but also in your work itself on, on a day to day basis. So really appreciate it and we hope you'll keep staying in touch so we can stay ahead of the curve as well alongside you. But huge thank you. And for all of you tuning in, we will 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.
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Mar 10, 2025 • 33min

The Move from School Choice to Education Choice in Florida

Ron Matus, the Director of Research and Special Projects at Step Up For Students, joined me to discuss the evolution of education choice in Florida. We talked specifically about the significant growth and impact of education savings accounts (ESAs) on the landscape. And Ron shared insights into the trend of unbundled, à la carte learning by highlighting its rapid adoption and the factors driving it. We also touched on the accountability debate surrounding ESAs and the innovative roles districts and programs like Florida Virtual School are playing.Michael Horn:Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. Delighted you are all joining us at the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us think through how we get there, I am delighted that Ron Matus, the Director of Research and Special Projects at Step up for Students, which was founded as a nonprofit org to administer scholarships for Florida school children to the school that most made sense for them. I'm delighted that Ron is joining us today. Ron, first, good to see you. You've been a longtime friend and follower on both sides of the equation in this space. So how are you?Ron Matus:Good to see you. I'm great. I am amazed and grateful and honored to be on your show. I feel like I'm in a dream. So thank you so much for inviting me on.Michael Horn:As always, you guys will learn as you listen that Ron is nothing but flattering and over with the praise of others. But why don't you start before we get into some of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you, which is getting a view of the landscape in Florida, specifically. But first, give us sort of an overview briefly of your own background, how you came to the world of education and, and perhaps how, you know, Step up for Students, how it intersects with that story and how Step up for Students has actually evolved over time into its current set of operations.Ron Matus:Sure, sure. Well, I guess the most boring part would be my story, but I am a longtime former newspaper reporter. That's what I did really my entire adult life until I joined Step up back in 2012. I was at the Tampa Bay Times, which is the biggest and most influential newspaper in Florida. And back when newspapers had a little more juice, I mean, they were pound for pound, one of the best newspapers in America. I was there for 10 years, and for eight years I was the state education reporter. And so there's a direct connection between what I learned as a reporter and what inspired me to move over to Step Up. You know, over that time, writing a lot about issues with public education, seeing how choice was making a difference, and I started covering education, during Governor Bush's second term, of course, he did a ton to accelerate choice in Florida. So I was there in the early days as choice was ramping up, and I came to see how absolutely vital it was to an education system that I thought made sense. And at some point back around 2012, I got a chance to move over to Step Up. One of my former colleagues, a really remarkable guy named John East, who was a longtime editorial page writer at the Times, had moved over to Step Up. And a few years down the road, he reached out and said, hey, if you want to actually make a difference, instead of writing about problems, you want to help solve them, you might want to consider Step up and best decision I ever made.I'm not one of those reporters who left the profession because things were crumbling around me, and I had to go, you know, reinvent myself as a PR flack or something. I left because I realized that choice was going to be the new normal, and I had a chance to shape that a little bit, and I had a chance to watch it unfold from just an incredible perch, which is Step Up. So the second thing that you were asking about how Step Up has changed, I think Step Up has changed remarkably over the time that I've been here. And in some ways, that change is representative of the change as a whole in the public education system in Florida. So when I got to Step Up, there were, like, 20 or 25 employees. We have 20 times that now. We have more than.Michael Horn:For real.Ron Matus:For real. We have more than 400 employees now.Michael Horn:Wow.Ron Matus:When I got to Step Up, we were serving about 50,000 students on scholarship. Today you probably heard this big announcement from Governor DeSantis last week. We've now reached the 500,000 threshold in terms of scholarship students. So the number of students we're serving has increased tenfold. And then, as you know, because you pay such close attention to this stuff, we're not just serving students on school choice scholarships anymore, which was the way it was when I got here, which is relatively simple. And I want, you know, my colleagues do a lot of incredible work. So I don't want to say it was simple, butMichael Horn:Emphasis on relatively. YeahRon Matus:Yeah, compared to what it is now. You know, these scholarships are technically now all ESAs. And so the volume of transactions that we have to process, it's gone through the roof. And so we have been right there the whole time, as Florida has moved from a system of district schools to school choice, and now from a system of school choice to education choice. And, and that's where we are now. And that next phase of going from school choice to education choice is exciting and we're right in the middle of it.Expanding Education Choice DiscourseMichael Horn:Yeah, I think that phrase from school choice to education choice is a really good way to frame it, of course, because ESAs are not just, and one of my biggest pet peeves is when people call them vouchers, and I'm like, it's not just, it's, it's very different in a lot of, in a lot of respects. And I love how you introduced yourself the same way you introduced yourself to me over, you know, probably, I think it was right before you maybe you formally joined Step Up for Students is the first time we connected and you said, I'm just a journalist trying to figure this out. So here you are, having learned quite a bit and for, and figured out quite a bit. And I guess the intersection section where I want to go in is about a year ago, maybe a little over, I wrote a piece suggesting that as education choice grows, meaning not just school choice, but we should start to expect more unbundling of what we think of as schools. Right. Students aren't just going to go to one school.They'll have tutors, they'll have a variety of options. But I didn't expect to see a great unbundling en masse. And, and I base that frankly on two things. One, our theories at the Christensen Institute around how innovations tend to start as very bundled over time before they modularize and unbundled. But I also based it, frankly, on data from Florida that you all had published about how individuals were in fact using ESAs. But then fast forward, and you all came out with this report, a taste of à la carte learning. And it seems that things on the ground are changing quite a bit. So in that report, what did you learn? What is the data showing in terms of how people are using education savings accounts and how perhaps the nature of choice and schooling and learning is evolving?Ron Matus:I think it's changing pretty rapidly. So when you say, you know, you expected there to be an unbundling, but not a great unbundling, I guess it depends on, you know, what your definition of great is.Michael Horn:Sure, I got some latitude in the headline writing. Right.Ron Matus:So, I mean, I think there's a lot going on and things have changed very quickly. Your analysis was absolutely correct in that the vast majority of money at this point is still being used for private school tuition, even though technically these are ESAs. The vast majority of families are still using the ESAs like the old school. And I say old school even though most of the country hasn't even gotten these yet.Michael Horn:But I was going to say you're well ahead of the curve there.Ron Matus:We are ahead of the curve. And so, but, but most families are using it like a voucher in that they're using it to access the private schools that they want. And for what it's worth, those private schools are also changing pretty dramatically. I mean, I think there are a lot of dynamic things going on in the private school choice space too, and I don't want to diminish that. At the same time though, even though most of the money is still being used for private school tuition, we do have growing numbers of families who are doing completely customized, personalized, à la carte unbundled learning. And it's not, it's happening pretty quickly, but it's happening maybe a little less quickly than people realize because the first ESA is 10 years old. I mean, we got our first ESA program 10 years ago that was for students with special needs. But very quickly, thousands of parents were using that ESA to pick and choose from multiple providers and programs.Rise of Personalized Education ProgramsRon Matus:They were the pioneers, the early adopters, you know, whatever you want to call it. And they really started showing the rest of us what was possible. So, there were pioneers and there have been for 10 years. And then you fast forward to 2023 when we got this new scholarship program called the Personalized Education Program Scholarship, which is an ESA for a broader group of families who are not enrolled in public school. They're essentially homeschool families, although there are some legal distinctions there. But Michael, we went from thousands of families doing à la carte learning to tens of thousands in a snap between those two programs, between, you know, the ESA for students with special needs and those in that program who are unbundling doing à la carte, and this new program at this point, we have probably about 80,000 families doing à la carte learning this fall. I would bet a decent amount of money that we would be in excess of 100,000 because the cap on the PEP program alone is 100,000 plus we are seeing more and more of those, the scholarships called the Family Empowerment Scholarship for families with unique abilities, students with unique abilities.But that program has a bunch of à la carte families too. So between those two programs, we'll be beyond a hundred thousand this fall. So when you say great unbundling, I mean that's a pretty big number that's materialized in a short amount of time.Michael Horn:That's a huge number. I just put it in context in two ways. One, overall K12 student population in Florida. And then two, just so we have a percentage sense. And then when you say like they're à la carte, like, you know, what are their days or, or sort of spend look like what, you know, what's the range of categories you see that they're cobbling together?Ron Matus:So overall in Florida we have about 3.3 to 3.4 million kids. So, you know, 80,000 or a hundred thousand do an à la carte, that's still a relatively small number in that bigger mix. And I don't know what the ceiling is. You know, if I ever had a crystal ball, it was shattered into a gazillion pieces five years ago. Things have changed so rapidly. I never would have foreseen what we're experiencing now. So it's still a small percentage, but it's growing rapidly. And then in terms of what those families are doing, it's remarkable. I mean, they so quickly have figured out how to maximize the use of the ESAs to cobble together these programs from multiple providers. So to give you just, I mean, just one example, this one mom who I wrote about in conjunction with the à la carte paper, she's probably picking and choosing from a dozen different providers. So she's going to outschool for a writing tutor, she's going to two different micro schools to get à la carte classes. In one case for science and engineering classes, in the other case for art and drama classes. She's using the ESA to do lacrosse for her kids at a recreational league. She's using it for a chess club, Lego robotics competitive team. Oh my gosh. What else is she using it for? Oh, her kids are dyslexic, so she's got a dyslexia tutor which she accesses online because the tutor is in Iowa where they were originally. So she can continue to use the same tutor and then on and on. And then, then she supplements all of that with a variety of homeschool materials. So she's got like 20 different things that she's juggling to put together for her two boys. And that is not unusual in the least. There are families all over the place doing that.ESAs and Special EdMichael Horn:It occurs to me one, the lack of parochialism is admirable in the state that you would allow dollars to be spent for a tutor in Iowa. Right. I can imagine other states putting in education savings accounts and being like. But it has to be spent within, you know, so that strikes me. But a second thing strikes me about the special ed origins, which I, for some reason, had not put that together. The opportunity, I think, for ESAs, like, of course special ed families should be on the front lines of à la carte unbundled, because their needs are probably the clearest to those parents and the need to source it from lots of different places rather than assume a one size fits all, like they've been crushed under the weight of that for a long time.But B, it also could bring some real exciting, like from a, you know, not just from a service delivery of getting the right services, but also from a cost perspective I would think, the current incentives in special education across the country are to like, ramp up dollars as evidence of serving. Here's actually a way to make it more efficient, I would think, because the parents are thinking about what's the right mix and value across. Across a budget, in effect, which I think is pretty exciting. The other thing that your report did, and again, the name of it, A Taste of à la Carte Learning, came out in June. You all talked about how this was also really happening in certain regions within Florida. I think South Florida was one of them that you fingered, if memory serves. What's the context? So, like, if part of this story is special ed, what's the context of South Florida? Why is it, why do you think it's perhaps happening there more?Ron Matus:Well, it's definitely like happening in a huge way down there. I mean, there are folks down there who have just created an alternative universe for education in a short amount of time. It's really remarkable to behold. Shiren Rattigan, who you just had on your show recently, who I just find to be completely inspiring, she's right in the middle of that. But there's like a hundred of hers down there doing these amazing things. I think there are several things happening that make sense as to why South Florida is a particular hotspot. So number one, you know, there's the density down there. There's a lot of people. I mean, there's 6 or 7 million people between three counties, you know, Miami Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. And, you know, when you have that many people, even a small percentage who want to do something different can be a lot. And I think that's what we're seeing down there. There's a small percentage who want to do something different than traditional education.But they've got numbers because there's so many people down there. The second thing I think is it's incredibly diverse down there. I mean, Florida would be one of the most diverse states in the country, right and South Florida is even more diverse than the rest of Florida. So you just have this incredibly dynamic mix of people. Many folks down there would be first generation immigrants. So you have that, like, immigrant drive. I think you have very much a ton of people with an entrepreneurial mindset down there who want to do something different, who want to, you know, shape their own destinies.And if they got the opportunity, they're going to do it. And then last but not least, and I hope I'm not, like, gonna sound disparaging here, I do think that these folks, particularly in Broward county, which is the heart of this, are particularly driven because of the situation with the school districts down there. It's kind of interesting that you have, side by side, one of the most dynamic school districts, a district that has made a name for itself embracing change and embracing choice. And then right next door, which is Miami Dade.Michael Horn:I was gonna say that must be Miami Dade.Ron Matus:Yeah, Miami Dade. Certainly under Alberto Carvalho, who's now the superintendent in Los Angeles, they did remarkable things, and that has continued under the new superintendent. But then right next door is Broward, which is, you know, kind of more like your traditional big city school district, fairly or not, it has, you know, a disproportionate share of negative headlines about board politics and, you know, financial issues with projects and cost overruns. And that's been kind of the Broward story for a long, long time. So there were many frustrated families down there. Not to say that it's still not serving a lot of families well, because I don't want to take that away from them, because they are. But I think there was more frustration down there because it's kind of a stereotypical big city district.And then the last thing I'll say, and then I'll quit rambling. Parkland also happened down there in 2018, and I don't want to, I don't think we should diminish, like, the psychological impact that had on a ton of families. So between the frustration with, like, a typical big city district and then the horror of Parkland, people wanted something different. And it's not a surprise to me that the biggest growth, both in raw numbers and percentage in homeschooling in any big district in Florida was in Broward. And so it's also no surprise to me that parents there and educators there took the opportunities they got with ESAs and ran with it. And that's what you see happening.Michael Horn:Is your sense that the folks who have taken ESAs and gone into homeschooling are most of them in micro schools at this point. Like how micro schools are in the state of Florida?Ron Matus:You know, nobody has a good number, but it's easily hundreds.Michael Horn:Okay.Ron Matus:There is a group called, you know, the Florida Micro Schools, which has a couple hundred members and I don't think they've captured them all. I mean, Michael, they crop up all the time. I mean, it's amazing. But nobody has a good number on them. Some of them you can track because they are technically officially state registered private schools.As you know, the definition is kind of fuzzy. So there's a bunch of schools that aren't registered private schools, but are still like these little micro environments, essentially micro schools, either hybrid home schools or kind of their own little homeschool setup. So nobody has a good number, but I would say easily hundreds.Michael Horn:Super interesting. Okay, so let me ask you this question, because you brought up the districts and where they are more effective, perhaps you see less folks looking outside the district and where they are perhaps less effective, you see some more pent up demand for other options. You know, you talked about the special education history in Florida also. The other history, of course, is the Florida Virtual School, which goes back almost, you know, 30 years ago, I think, at this point. And Florida Virtual School is interesting because it's literally à la carte online courses for the most part. And it was also sort of like in this interesting way, like a tool of districts to provide bespoke options. So I'm just sort of curious, like in your view, has that made school districts perhaps more able than maybe we'll see in other states to be able to respond and offer, you know, unbundled education options themselves or sort of be the quarterbacks, if you will, for these, for families, you know, taken a little bit here, taking a little bit there, you got the Tim Tebow law. Like you have sort of, it seems, ingredients that would make districts more nimble.But I don't know if that's true.Ron Matus:I think it very much is true. And I'm so glad you brought up Florida Virtual School, because as amazing as they have been for 30 years, I don't think they've ever gotten fully the credit they deserve for being just the pioneers, of course choice. Right. Like you're right, they were, they're like the original à la carte provider.Virtual Learning Expands in DistrictsRon Matus:And they've been here in our backyard, and I think what they did was show people a model and they also kind of prime the pump because, you know, for, I don't know, at least a decade now, maybe 15 years now, it has been a graduation requirement that kids take at least one virtual school class. And so hundreds of thousands of families have had a little taste of à la carte learning because they've had to, like, take a single class from a different provider. So everybody's experienced that. I think what we're seeing now is families can still go to Florida Virtual School to access à la carte classes. But we're also seeing, and this is a super amazing development to keep track of going forward. We're also seeing districts now offering unbundling of their own, apart from virtual classes, and so there are six districts. I think that's correct,There may be even more now. There are six districts that I know of who are now official providers in the system who can get paid with ESA funds. And they're doing that so families can access one or two or three classes, whatever they want to supplement the rest of the programming they're putting together for their kids. There are at least a half dozen other districts who are in the pipeline. So there are districts who are seeing the times have changed. Some families don't want our whole package deal. They just want some of the pieces,Why don't we offer that to them? And so Florida Virtual School primed the pump for that. But we're seeing districts on their own offer in person, à la carte classes too. And that's a trend I expect to continue.Michael Horn:That's fascinating. I mean, I think it's really cool also, because it also gives lie to this sort of storyline that I think is lazy from people that say, oh, ESAs are just a way to undercut districts. No, like districts, come on in, innovate, compete, you know, do better things for students. You got evidence that maybe they're doing it?Ron Matus:Well, they're doing it. And it's also not unexpected to me anyways. And I want to give everybody credit who deserves credit. And I don't think this is an either or thing. It's not us versus them. And even though people don't recognize this enough, the fact is districts in Florida, most of them, not all of them, but most of them did respond to the first wave of choice. They did respond to school choice.All those charters and all those private schools that, you know, parents were accessing with their vouchers or tax credit scholarships that did inspire districts to rev up their own choice options in a huge way. I don't know what the exact latest numbers are, but I would say they are either the biggest engines for school choice now in Florida or among them, because all those magnet schools and career academies and IB programs and everything else they created, made them leaders in choice, too. And so I am not entirely surprised that now that we're moving from school choice to education choice, and they see families wanting that, that they will find some way to adapt. And I think we should give them credit for the extent to which they are adapting to the new environment.Florida Education: Innovation and ChallengesMichael Horn:Super interesting. And of course, it's not just choice, right? With the innovation and choice and range of things you're seeing, you know, test scores, everything else have risen in Florida. It's one of the real bright spots in the nation. I want to end our conversation on maybe the downer, but maybe you'll give us the silver lining, which is you have this section in the report around remaining challenges. And so I'll quote it, you say, to ensure the sustained growth of à la carte providers, policymakers must continue working with parents, providers and other stakeholders to raise awareness about the possibilities, better define success and accountability, and thoughtfully strengthen processes for everything from determining eligibility to facilitating payments. Now, I don't have to tell you this touches a big nerve around accountability and it's a flashpoint. As you know, in this space there are some who say public funding, therefore we need, you know, publicly determined accountability for every choice a student or family might make, whether that's school or piano lesson or equine therapy, I suppose. And the other side says, well, families choosing is in fact the accountability, because if it's not working for them, they can go elsewhere.So they're really empowered in this world of ESAs and education choice. Help me understand why you all highlighted this as a challenge in your own perspective or observations around this tension or looming question.Ron Matus:You know, I think we had to put it in there because it is an important question. It is a totally fair question, and, you know, nobody should dodge that. And I, and I don't think it's a downer. I think it's an opportunity for us to better explain one, that it's not either or, but two, that, you know, accountability isn't just regulations. Accountability is on a continuum that also includes, you know, consumer choice or parent choice and that end of the accountability spectrum, and this is something I've learned a lot about over the past 10 or 15 years, is pretty exacting. You know, parents make good decisions, they do drive quality.And I think we need to help people understand that accountability isn't just regs. I think we have an opportunity to help people understand that there is evidence, including from our other scholarship programs, that when you have a light touch with the regulations and you put the bulk of the accountability on the parents to drive quality, you get good results. I mean, what we see with the other scholarship programs essentially are better outcomes at far less cost, with much higher customer satisfaction, even though those systems are far less regulated than the traditional systems. I suspect that will hold true with à la carte learning as well. One other thing to mention is that, you know, going back to the not being either or so there is a regulatory accountability piece on the PEP program as well, which is, you know, the à la carte program that's blowing up. Those students do have to take a norm reference test just like their counterparts who are using the old school school choice scholarships. So at some point, not too far in the future, we will have data from those students and that will tell us something. And you know, maybe it'll tell us that just like with the school choice scholarship kids, that light touch on the regs is working pretty well.Maybe it'll tell us something different and we'll have to, you know, adjust. But somebody in their wisdom, I think, you know, and I know testing can be controversial, and I know plenty of families don't want to take any test, but I think that somebody in their wisdom decided we should at least have that piece so that we can check going forward whether this is getting, you know, the results and the outcomes that we want and taxpayers want and the state wants. So I'm rambling now, but we had to put that question in there. Accountability is a huge question. It's a fair question. And I think we have an opportunity to better explain it to people so that they see the setup that we've created so far makes sense.Michael Horn:So sorry, lightning last question on this one then, because I'm curious. You all Step up for Students is almost a portal that's processing ESA dollars and helping people get to the schools of choice or education programs of choice, whatever it might be. What role do you all play in sort of showcasing the data, whatever that means, whether it's test scores or consumer opinion or whatever else, to help, you know, people have more information. Are you all thinking about, almost Yelp like providing more of that information?Ron Matus:I think that is the hope that eventually our systems will be able to have that consumer posted information so that families can get some kind of. Now, I don't know where that's at and sure, I want to be careful here. I don't know exactly where that's at or what it's going to look like. But that has been something that's been talked about for a long time. You know, essentially having the parents themselves, the consumers, like we do with so many things nowadays, put their two cents in as to whether this provider or that school was a good deal. So I suspect that that is where we're headed.Michael Horn:Well, these are things that we'll have to stay abreast of and you'll have to come back at some point and tell us how it's evolved over time. But just really appreciate you all, you coming in and your team and I didn't realize 400 plus amazing growth, you know, the work that you all are doing on behalf of Florida students. Appreciate it, Ron.Ron Matus:Well, thank you so much. And a big shout out to, you know, all of my colleagues, all 400 of them, most of whom I have not met. I haven't met them, but they're incredible. And they're making this all happen. I mean, they're making it so families all over Florida can have exactly what they want for their kids. And it's a cool thing to be part of. So thank you so much for giving me a little bit of a spotlight and asking these great questions. I really appreciate it.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.

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