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

We wouldn’t ask a piano student to attempt an advanced concerto before they had Mary Had a Little Lamb down pat.So why do we do the equivalent in schools?In this video I use a comparison to music instruction to illustrate why tying school curriculum to students’ ages rather than their skill level doesn’t work for anyone.(music playing)Oh, hey there. I was just brushing up on a piece that I have not played in a long while. It's Schubert's Fourth Impromptu, and it's a piece that I'd actually mastered a long time ago on the piano.But now I'm trying to get it up to speed on a keyboard—and it's a very different experience. But you can imagine that if I was just starting piano—I'd never played before or maybe just a couple lessons and my piano teacher said—well, Michael, you're 44 years old and it's August. So that means our lesson plan says it's time for you to be learning Schubert's Fourth Impromptu. So let's get started.That would be insane. Why?Because I wouldn't have mastered any of the foundational building blocks to be able to play such a piece. More appropriate for me would be trying to learn something like this. Right?So it would be literally crazy for someone to say, sorry, it's time to skip on to what the pacing guide or the lesson plan says you should be doing based on your age.Now, to be fair, that maybe wouldn't be a classical piece of music.Maybe they've taken some of my level into account.But still, maybe it'd be something like this. (music playing) Or maybe even this. (music playing)But the point is that it's pretty obvious that I should be moving on to something more advanced only once I've really shown that I've actually mastered or at least become proficient in the current piece and the set of skills that I'm working on.No piano teacher worth their salt would do otherwise.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.Yet here's the rub.Our traditional schools, they do this all the time and every single day. And we—the public, parents, even educators—most of us don't even bat an eye. We accept that that's just how school works.Even though we know that's not how learning works.Even though, of course a kid who has not mastered double-digit addition is going to struggle if they move on to double-digit multiplication before they're ready. It's crazy.And it's time that we had people—students, kids, all of us—learning at the right level for them, just above where they've achieved mastery, so they aren't bored and there's some struggle and effort required to really engage them, but also so that they aren't discouraged, as there's too much struggle and too much effort required.So let's wake up and move to mastery based learning and embed success for each and every child—not what we currently have, which is failure for most.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

On this episode, John Bailey, who advises on AI and innovation at a number of organizations, including the American Enterprise Institute, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and more, joins me and Diane Tavenner. We discuss AI’s potential to democratize access to expertise, weigh the costs and benefits of its efficiency-boosting applications, and consider how it will change skills required for the workforce of the future.Michael Horn: Hi, everyone. Michael Horn here. What you’re about to hear is a conversation that Diane and I recorded with John Bailey as part of our series exploring the impact of AI on education, from the good to the bad. Here are two things that grabbed me about this episode that you’re about to hear. First, John made the point that this technology is really different from anything we’ve seen before. Specifically, how these large language models could, from the get-go, produce artifacts of work that would rival what an entry-level person in a variety of professions would create. And how we’re just scratching the surface of their capabilities. And most people don’t even realize that yet. So what could this mean for education? Second was John’s observation that just because we can do something faster doesn’t mean it’s being done better. Said differently, making the wrong work more efficient isn’t necessarily the right solution. Now, when we finished up the interview, I had several reflections. But one I wanted to share with you now is this. John’s big framing is that through AI, everyone now has access to an expert in virtually every field. So if the internet democratized access to information, the analogy essentially is AI is democratizing access to expertise. But I’m curious if someone isn’t as skilled or knowledgeable or experienced as John, would they know what to do with or how to use such an expert at their fingertips? I’m excited to be in conversation with Diane for more sensemaking after we’ve talked with a number of people. And we’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections. So please, please share, whether over social media or by dropping us an email through my website at michaelbhorn.com. But for now, I hope you enjoy this conversation on Class Disrupted.Diane Tavenner: This is Class Disrupted, season six, and the first. I know. Can you believe it? The first of our AI interviews. And we, in this case, we have the first best person, John Bailey, as our guest. Hey, Michael.Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. Good to see you.Diane Tavenner: It is always great to see you. There’s so many things we could talk about. But I’m really eager to jump in today to our topics. We’re going to go there right away. When we kicked off last season of this podcast, Class Disrupted, we said that one of the things that we really wanted to delve deeper into was our curiosity around AI. And it’s hard not to be curious about AI right now. In our most recent episode, we were pretty straightforward about kind of where each of us are at this point in time and our understanding and our perspectives. And we overviewed some of the kind of current debates that are taking place specifically around education and AI. And today we get to go deeper with someone who, I think you’ll agree with me, frankly, knows a lot more about AI than both of us.Michael Horn: So I agree with that. I think it’s very fair. It’s one of the many reasons I’m excited for this conversation, because, as you said, it’s going to be the first of many where we bring folks on who, frankly, have very different views from each other around the impact of AI, sometimes from ourselves as well. And so to start this, we’re welcoming back someone to the show who’s been with us, I think, twice before. So this is like a three peat, if you will. So he’s clearly one of our favorites. None other than John Bailey.John Bailey: It’s so, so good to be on. Congrats. Six seasons. That’s huge.Michael Horn: Yeah, we’re still kicking, right?Diane Tavenner: Thank you. And just in case anyone has missed John previously, quick, quick background here. John’s served in many, many posts in the state and federal government around education and domestic policy more generally. He’s a fellow at AEI. He holds numerous posts supporting different foundations. I could go on and on and on, but what some people might not know, John, is that you originally entered education as an expert on technology and ed. And, you know, we’ll hear that expertise coming through because you have gone deep in the world of AI and how it’s going to impact education, and so, welcome. We are so excited to have you back.John Bailey: Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited to be here, and I just admire both of you and I’ve learned so much from you. So it’s so good to be on the show today.John’s Journey to Education AI WorkDiane Tavenner: Well, before we get into a series of questions we have for you, we’d love to just start with how, I guess how. And maybe it’s a how/why did you go so deep into AI specifically? We know you have a lot of experience with sort of frontier models, and maybe you can describe that term for us as well as we sort of begin this conversation. But tell us how you jumped into the deep end and come to this conversation.John Bailey: It’s such a good question. And it’s also like, my point of entry into this was interesting because, as you mentioned, I’ve been involved in a lot of technology and policy intersections for a number of years, including in education. And if I have to admit, like, I’ve been part of a lot of the hype of, like, we really think technology can personalize learning. And often that promise was just unmet. And I think there was, like, potential there, but it was really hard to actualize that potential. And so I just want to admit up front, like, I was part of that cycle for a number of years. And. And then what happened was when ChatGPT came out in December of 2022, everyone had sort of like a moment of ChatGPT, and for me, it wasn’t getting it to write a song or, you know, a rap song or. Or a press release. It was. I was sitting next to someone with a venture team and I said, what is, like, what is an email you would ask an associate to do to write a draft term sheet? And she gave me three sentences. I put it in ChatGPT and it spit back something that she said was a good first draft, good enough for her that she would actually run with it and edit it. And I was like, oh, this is very different. And then it just sort of started this process of seeing, like, what else could it do? And it just became insanely fun to kind of play with it. And then I was posting a lot of this on Twitter, and that caught the attention of some of the AI companies. And then they gave me early access. So I got to play with something called Code Interpreter for OpenAI, which was the ability of analyzing spreadsheets and data files, and then did some work with Google beta testing, Bard, and a handful of other things as well. And so I get to work with some of the companies now on safety and alignment testing, but also seeing kind of a little bit what’s over the horizon, Google Notebook LM I’ve been playing with for the better part of Over a year and giving them some feedback on it. So I think what’s happened though is that for me this feels very, very different from all the other technologies I’ve been exposed to at least over the last 20 years. And that has caught my excitement. I’ve rearranged my entire work portfolio to spend more time on this, just because it’s rare to see something that I think is going to be so transformative. I don’t think that’s going to be immediate. I think that’s going to play out over years and over decades. But also just the pace at which this technology is improving and new capabilities are being introduced is something like I’ve never experienced. In just the last two weeks of December, you saw so many announcements from OpenAI and Google that you can’t even wrap your heads around it. So better models that do deeper reasoning did not get a lot of attention. But OpenAI released Vision Understanding so now you can use your camera. And so I walked around a farmer’s market and it analyzed all the produce and the meats and it was giving me recipes on the fly.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.Diane Tavenner: Yeah, we were playing with it at the holiday dinner table. Yeah. And just like what, what’s on the table and what are ,you know, and, and I think the amazing thing was with my 82 year old mother in law who was like into it and so, and wanted us to get it on her phone so she could go show her friends.John Bailey: Oh yeah, it’s. Yeah. I mean it just feels different. It feels like something I want to just dedicate a lot more time and attention to understanding it. Both the benefits, lots of risks, lots of challenges on it. But it just like I’ve seen, you know, my mom’s using it to your point, like it’s just an advanced voice and the style of. Is just great entertainment for kids too with telling stories and whatnot. So anyway, so that’s my journey into this space.The Best Case Scenario for AIMichael Horn: My kids have started to leapfrog me by just taking their search inquiries right to ChatGPT themselves and then get frustrated with some of the answers. Let’s dive in then John, because you’re getting to see a lot of these large language models clearly up close. You’re getting to experiment and help advise these companies that are at the leading edge in many cases. And I think what we want to do in these conversations, frankly is have both the advocates for and skeptics of AI and you clearly have a little bit of both from what you just said, make the case for both sides. You know, how’s it going to impact positively, how’s it going to impact negatively? So we can start to unpack the contours and figure out where the puck’s really going in classrooms and schools. And so I’d love you to start with this, which is to make the argument for how AI is going to positively impact education first. So leave aside your concerns and skepticisms for a moment and in your mind, like what’s the bull case, if you will, for AI?John Bailey: One is, I think you have to do a lot, I’ve been wrestling with this a little bit. I think most of the other technologies up until this point have been about democratizing access to information. So that’s everything from the printing press to the computer, like CDs and with disks to then the Internet, the Internet democratized access to Wikipedia and you could get any information you want within your fingertips for almost no cost whatsoever. What I think is different about this technology is that it’s access to expertise and it’s driving the cost of accessing expertise almost to zero. And the way to think about that is that these general purpose technologies, you can give them sort of a role, a Persona to adopt. So they could be a curriculum expert, they could be a lesson planning expert, they could be a tutoring, and that’s all done using natural language, English language. And that unlocks this expertise that can take this vast amounts of information that’s in its training set or whatever specific types of information you give it, and it can apply that expertise towards different, you know, Michael, in your case, jobs to be done. And so for the first time, teachers have experts available at their fingertips, just typing to them the way they would type to a consultant. So give me a lesson plan. Here’s an IEP of a student, help me develop three lessons that I can use for that student that’s based on their learning challenges and the interests that they care about. So I think that’s going to unlock both, it’s going to be an enormous productivity tool for teachers potentially. I think it’s also going to be an amazing tutoring mechanism for a lot of students as well. Not just because they’ll be able to type to the student, but as we were just talking about, this advanced voice is very amazing in terms of the way it can be very empathetic and encouraging and sort of prompting and pushing students, it can analyze their voice. And then this vision understanding which was just sort of introduced. Google’s had this in a studio kind of lab format for a couple months now, but I think that’s going to just unlock, imagine a student to be able to do a project and presentation and having an AI system give them feedback and encouragement. That is like science fiction two years ago. And it feels like it’s very much within the realm of possibility. Maybe not right now, but you see the building blocks for where that could actually be assembled into a pretty powerful set of tools for both teachers as well as students.Diane Tavenner: So John, when you, when you step back from everything you sort of just described of what’s possible in schools, teachers. Well you didn’t say schools. So among teachers and students, I sort of mental mapped a school on top of that concept. What part of that do you actually believe is going to be real, you know, for students and teachers and why. And maybe I think you’re probably going to put a timeline on it too is my guess based on what you’re saying.John Bailey: Yeah, I think, I mean if other industries are a bit of a roadmap here, what you’re seeing in almost all the other sectors is that where AI is getting deployed first is a lot of back office functions. It’s in their IT shops. With coding, we don’t have that in education. But there are other, a lot of back office things where again the benefits can be pretty high and the risks of it being wrong are a little bit less than if like it’s engaging in a tutoring lesson with a student and hallucinating. That’s like high risk. Right. And so, you know, I suspect we’ll see a lot more sort of back office improving parent communications. I think we could see this, you know, beginning. There’s already been, you know, decades of legacy of trying to use AI or technology computer based scoring for assessments. I could imagine that. And then I think you’re going to see it roll out with a handful of tools for teachers. You’re seeing companies like that already with like brisk teaching. But also, I mean all these capabilities we were just talking about with Google, I mean they, if the moment they flick a switch and roll that out over Google classroom, that’s bringing AI into 60, 65% of classrooms and teachers around the country. And, so I think what you’re going to see is a lot of teacher productivity tools and then over the next, let me call it two to five years, a lot more sort of student facing things. As those technologies mature and as we build more robust products around it that have some of the safeguards that you want and need that ensure accuracy and quality as well as safety, I think for students as well. So I think there’ll be a lot of potential, but I think we’ll roll it out to students over a longer period of time. Meanwhile, like the teacher productivity, you know, enhancements for this could be pretty huge immediately.The RisksMichael Horn: It’s interesting to think about building off that Google classroom platform and just the access. Right. That solves in terms of distribution that perhaps historical products have struggled with in schools and gaining access to teachers and students. Let’s turn to the other side for a moment, John, and just like, where is AI not going to help things with teachers, students, schools, learning, you know, what’s sort of the, the place that people are dreaming up right now that AI is going to do something and you’re like, I just don’t buy it.John Bailey: Oh, it’s interesting. Don’t buy that’s a different I, where I was going to go. I worry a little bit of, just because something done faster doesn’t mean it’s done better. And I know like, if any of the white papers are like, teachers should always be in the loop and teachers should always use their judgment, but teachers are also human. And I think one of the aspects of human is that if you’re overworked and you’re tired, sometimes the fastest response is the one you go with just because you’re just, you’re trying to maximize your time. And that’s one of the reasons we see teachers using like not great instructional quality resources from Pinterest, you know, and from Teacher Pay Teachers and from some of these other websites. That is a problem that exists now that I worry AI will exasperate. You know, if you’re a teacher and say, give me a lesson plan on literacy or reading something of reading in the third grade, you have no idea if that’s based on the science of reading, if it’s based on, if it’s aligned to your curriculum, if it’s adding coherence. And so there, there could be a sense of this instead of really augmenting a teacher’s judgment it could lessen it. In the same way that I think we worry about this with students, that part of the way you learn is through struggle, and struggle comes with not writing a perfect first draft. It comes from the first draft, the second draft, and the iterations and revisions on top of it. And I worry that the moment like students have just have a button that can automatically improve a paper, a paragraph or a sentence, they’re atrophying a muscle that is really critically important for this going forward. And then lastly, you know, we’re in the midst of this national discourse and debate right now about social media and phones and is that leading to more social isolation, loneliness and mental health issues with young people and inject into this these AI tools that I think as much as people say this will never happen, the risk of an AI companion where you’re talking, literally talking to an AI that’s empathetic and warm and adopting Personas and that’s going to be easier than the friction of talking to real life people. And so I worry that there’s a scenario where this AI companions will start leading to exacerbating the social disconnectedness and divide. And that is something that if you look at kind of the headlines that we’ve already had a couple cases with some tragic situations with kids who have committed suicide, I don’t think it was because entirely of the AI, but the AI was a contributing factor in that. And that’s something I think if we want to get ahead of where we are in the social media debate now, that’s something we should be thinking about researching and adding some guardrails to as well.Diane Tavenner: John, I’m wondering, as you’re sharing these perspectives, how you think about. I guess what’s coming up for me is I feel like the main structures of school and education are still in place. And I agree with you, like the efficiency plays are the first places people go and does AI sort of risk reinforcing the existing model of school and education because it will make it more efficient? So like if teachers were just like barely, barely holding on and now we can keep everything sort of the same but just give them this like boost of efficiency we can keep things the way that they were. And obviously I’m biased because, you know, I want to, yeah, change up the way, pull apart everything but I’m curious just how you think about that, especially as things will unfold over time and like the easy places to start and the asymmetry of adoption too, you know, I mean, not every teacher in America has even ever logged into ChatGPT before. And then there’s some that are like power users at this point.John Bailey: Yeah, I mean a common theme for both of your works and including over the six years you’ve done the series too, has been, you know, we have this system and institutions within the system that are remarkably resistant to change. And I think what we’ve seen is like technology doesn’t change a system. The systems have to change to accommodate and harness and leverage the benefits of whatever technology or sort of new innovation has been introduced to it. So I’m a little skeptical there. I think you’re going to have capabilities of AI outpacing the institution’s ability to harness that. It’s going to take time to figure out what that looks like and what that means going forward. I do, I come back though to this idea of like it’s access to expertise and I wonder if that mental model starts unlocking things as well, that if you’re a school principal, all of a sudden you have a parent communication marketing expert just by asking it to be that Persona and then giving it some tasks to do. And if you’re a teacher, it means all of a sudden every teacher in America can have a teaching assistant like a TA that is available to help on a variety of different tasks. And going back to what Michael’s point was saying with like Google Classroom, imagine if you’re a teacher, you’re in Google Classroom and you have your TA that’s able to look at student folders and just answer questions. You have. Like, I see like John and Michael really struggling in algebra what are some ways I could put them in a small group and give them an assignment that would resonate with both of their interests and help them scaffold into the next lesson? That was impossible to do before. Like that those three sentences could easily do that. And, and that’s why I think you’re going to see this idea of assistance very much kind of entering not just the education narrative but also the, the more sort of broader corporate landscape as well. Where you see that also by the way, is, is a little bit in how OpenAI is thinking about the pricing for this. There is an OpenAI model. Most people probably didn’t see it. The most robust, smartest and the one that has the most reasoning and they’re charging $200 a month for that. And most people are like oh my gosh, like I would never pay $200 a month for software. And that’s because it’s the wrong way to think about this as a software. The way to think about it is will you easily spend that much on a consultant or in a part time staff person. So OpenAI is even adopting almost like a labor market pricing strategy or the expertise that they’re giving you. And so I think this is an amazing thing for schools to think about at time of tight budgets is, you know, again, if you want to maximize your teachers, how can this fill different types of labor market roles in the education system to enhance and support teachers in the limited staff, given budget tensions that are going to be coming out in the next couple of years here.How AI Is Changing the Skills LandscapeMichael Horn: It’s interesting hearing you say that and draw that analogy, John, because actually Clay Christensen, before he passed away, one of the big interests he had was how do you scale coaching models in education, in health care, in lots of these sort of very social realms as the recipe, if you will, for sustained behavior change and success and things of that nature. Never got to really dig into it and write about it. But as I’m hearing you talk about this, it suggests that maybe a disruption of that might be afoot. I guess that’s the question I want to lean into though, as well, which is you named a few things that this could hurt. And so the flip side of it being a great coach is that it might take away social interaction. Or you talked about essay writing and that, you know, actually the learning is in the process of doing it in revision and sort of pushing the easy button, if you will. Right. Jumps you ahead to the product, but not necessarily the learning and the struggle from it. I guess what I’m curious about, and I’m going to borrow an analogy that Brewer Saxberg, former chief learning scientist, I think was his title at CZI Chan, Zuckerberg Initiative and you know, Kaplan and K12 and a variety of places. He talked a lot about how Aristotle back in the day worried a lot about as the written word became a thing, that people weren’t going to be able to memorize Homeric length epic poems anymore. Aristotle was absolutely right. And I don’t know that we regret the fact that most of us.John Bailey: Speak for yourself, Michael.Michael Horn: Two of the three here could do it, but I, so but the question I guess would be, you know, of these things that might hurt, which are really going to, are they still going to matter in the future or are there going to be other things that we, you know, other behaviors or things that are more relevant in the future? And how do you think about sort of that substitution versus ease versus actually like really, you know, frankly, I think when you talk about social interaction that could be, forget about disruptive, that could be quite destructive.John Bailey: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s a great question. It’s a good point. It’s also this is an area where some of the best studies of this are happening in the labor market and looking at like, how is AI changing? There was just one study I was just reading today with Larry Summers and Deming from Harvard that are looking at, you know, AI, one of the things that they’re finding is AI is chipping away at some of the entry level jobs. It is for the same reason that, you know, you don’t like, if I’m in Congress, now all of a sudden, I don’t need an intern to just summarize legislation. I have something could summarize it for me better in five seconds. And that actually hurts that intern because they’re not developing the skills of reading legislation and analyzing and summarizing it. But it also means the other thing that they’re talking about in labor market sort of terminology is that it’s really raising the skills for those entry level jobs. Now you’re not expected to summarize, now you’re expected to do more and a higher level cognitive functions with it. That, that’s interesting. But I also mean that’s going to place a huge strain on our education system. Like if you’re looking at just the results of TIMSS and NAEP and where kids are, they’re not in that higher cognitive function in terms of being able to ask those questions or do those capabilities. And so in many ways I think if this is going to change the future of work and going to raise the level of what’s expected, that’s going to put more strain on our education system to make sure that we get kids that are capable of doing all those different things. I think about that with myself. Like I’m not like, there are many people who are Excel gurus, very good at analyzing data and they do P tests and other things that statistical things that are very important and I would not be able to do. And this was one of the first experiences with code interpreter, with OpenAI is that all of a sudden I had again an expert, a data analyst who could do that for me. But what that meant is that for work I can no longer say, well that’s not something I can do. Now I could do it because I had an analyst that could help me with it and that in some ways don’t tell my employers this, but like now that could like raise their expectations for me as well. But I have to get smart on the type of questions and the type of direction to give it in order to get the answers that I can use to synthesize into some sort of response. So anyway, I think this is going to be a very messy way. It’s going to change the labor markets, but it feels like it’s lowering the floor in many respects and access to these higher cognitive tasks, which in turn then raises expectations in a lot of different ways. And that’s very powerful. But it’s also, I think it probably a huge strain on our human capital systems. Did I answer your question?Michael Horn: Yeah, I think it does. Before I think Diane has another set of questions. But before we go there, just one quick follow up, which is it strikes me that then you knowing that you can ask those sorts of questions and sort of having a sense of the contours, right of like what are relevant questions, what are. What is knowledge base that is out there, that I could ask this in meaningful ways and how to structure it. Like those are topics that I might not need to know all the mechanics of how to do it, but I need to know that they are questions that can be asked and, and the relevant place to ask them is that a…Where am I on or off on that?John Bailey: Yeah, I think that’s right and also again, this is where AI is amazing. Like you could give it a spreadsheet and say what are 20 questions you can ask with this? Or give me 20 insights that you glean from it if you don’t know where to. Like I’ve started again, treating a lot of AI people will tell you not to do this, but if you treat it, if you treat it a little bit, almost as if you’re talking to a person, it does unlock a lot of capabilities. There’s risks of doing that. But also I just find sometimes like I want to do X, like give me the prompt in which to do that or I want to do Y. Like what are. Ask me all the questions you need to be able to answer that. And then it asks me 10 questions and then spits back an answer. I just helped someone with, she’s coming up with a name for her social impact advisory firm and so we created a little GPT and AI assistant that was a brand advisor and it asked her questions the way a brand advisor would and then it spit back 20 names and one of them she’s going with. And so that’s like incredible. But again, she had expertise that could ask questions and facilitate a conversation to unlock some of her thoughts and preferences and then spit back an answer from it.The Interplay Between AI and PolicyDiane Tavenner: So much there especially given my current focus of sort of 15 to 25 year olds and who are going to be intensely impacted by, I think every, are already intensely, I think impacted by everything you’re talking about. I want to flip over to policy and I want to come at it from the angle of, you know, most people think about AI policy around safety and you know, what are we controlling and what are we, you know, protecting people from, et cetera. But let’s come from the other direction that you sort of introduced a little bit ago about the structure of education in schools. We’ve got some pretty interesting policy movement happening in education right now. We are seeing the rise of ESAs or educational savings accounts, which, you know, puts money in the hands of families to spend it where they want to spend it. We’re seeing a lot of states adopt sort of portraits of a graduate or graduate profile that are these more inclusive, holistic views of like what someone should be able to graduate knowing, doing, being able to do and an openness to how they actually get to that place and the different pathways. Talk to me about like those things going on sort of in the policy world and AI happening over here is that kind of the intersection where we could sort of start seeing some structural differences. And again like a more user centered approach to educate, you know, a student centered approach potentially. So I’m curious your thoughts there.John Bailey: No, I think it could, I think it’s a yes. It’s a yes, but in some ways the yes is, you know, I think there’s a whole class of ways of using AI that is about navigating and navigating really complex systems. And ESAs are one of those. And I think, you know, I. One of the first GPTS I built on OpenAI to demo this was, like if you go to Arizona’s ESA, it’s like two websites, there’s a weird random Excel file of expenses and then PDFs that like a 78 page PDF. And again that was the best that team could do with limited resources and also with the limited technologies. And I just put that into a GPT and all of a sudden it was a bilingual parent friendly navigator. And if you said can I use funds for Sony PlayStation? It didn’t say no, you’re a terrible parent. It used warm empathetic letter answers to say like no, you can’t and here’s the reasons why, but here’s what you can do. And it was all conversational. And I think this friction of dealing with education systems and education policy could be immensely improved by using AI. Another example, I have a friend, she has kids in a school district and they send these terrible absentee reports and I say terrible. It’s like her daughter’s name is capitalized. So it’s like shouting. And then it’s like has missed six days of school. It’s very, it is reading, reading like a hostage like script. It’s like your daughter’s missed six days of school. It’s very important for her to go to school. We are here to help you. And then it does this weird bar chart at the bottom that’s like meaningless and like I just gave it to ChatGPT as an image and say make this better and give three questions a parent could ask their kid for why they might be absent. Amazing. It was like. And that I did in an Uber ride crossing the Key bridge in Washington D.C. like, you know, that’s an amazing set of powerful tools that can remove friction and help improve the system to make it work better for parents and for kids and also teachers and administrators too. So the but on all this is like, I think that’s going to be powerful and it’s going to make policy easier. I’m still, until we create more flexible ways for teachers to teach, for students to learn and students to engage in different types of learning experiences, I just think we’re going to end up boxing and limiting a lot of this technology capabilities. On the portraits of a graduate. I do think like again, an easy navigator on this is to take student work and student interests and student grades and say I’m not really sure where to go, like help me, Ask me the 10 questions I need to figure out. Should I pursue an apprenticeship program, a two year degree or a four year degree. It feels like again, we’re very close to being able to do something that, you know, it may not be perfect, but it’s much better than what the vast majority of students have access to right now. And if it helps them make a better decision in this process and pick a better path that’s based on their interests and their passions and their skills and their abilities. That’s great. Like we should do everything we can to help maximize that.Diane Tavenner: Awesome. Maybe just to round out anything. What policy do you think we should be keeping our eyes on as we focus on education in relation to AI? What should we be worried about? What should we be thinking about? What should we be paying attention to? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about policy.John Bailey: I do, yeah. A little bit. A little bit of policy. So one is that Congress is going to move very slow. We thankfully though, in this day and age of such polarization in so many of our politics, there are two remarkable bipartisan roadmaps. One from the Senate, Senator Young and Senator Schumer introduced. And then there was a House report that got reintroduced right before break that is also bipartisan, remarkably good. It’s 218 pages and they have a lot, I take great comfort in the fact that there’s a bipartisan, durable consensus. It’ll take time to enact that. That’s okay. It’ll take time. At least we have a little bit of a pathway on that. The thing I think for most of your listeners to really pay attention to is what’s happening at the state level. And there, I mean, just last year we saw close to 400 something bills that were introduced at the state level. Everything from dealing with deep fakes to copyright issues to regulating the models themselves. The most famous one was in California. And those don’t on the surface look like they have anything to do with education, but they do. If that California bill had passed, that limits in many respects the types of models that would be available for teachers and for students. There’s another bill, similarly in Texas right now that’s being debated. And so I think we need to pay more attention to what’s going on at the state level because that is going to either restrict or enable access to a bunch of these different types of tools in the models. I think, Diane, you had mentioned too in one of the previous questions, like most people haven’t used ChatGPT, and I think that’s exactly right. But I think what’s going to start happening is ChatGPT and Google Gemini are going to come to where people live already. And you’re seeing that with ChatGPT being integrated into Apple’s iPhone, that, you know, I think for the vast majority of people in the country, their first experience of ChatGPT is going to be through their iPhone. And I think for a whole other set, especially teachers, their first experience is going to be using one of the AI tools on Google. And that’s okay. But again, what’s going to either restrict or expand access to those different types of tools are going to be these laws that are either restricting or adding more scrutiny to the models themselves. And what I will say there is, I don’t think anyone’s cracked the code on how to best regulate this. Whatever policymakers think they have the models improve or they’ve done something that they didn’t think was possible. And for the longest time, policymakers are like, we have to restrict these powerful models and it’s based on computing with some astronomical number. And then on December 24, China announces something called Deep Seek that is pretty much as good as ChatGPT4 and Llama3. And they did it with far less computing power. And so that would slip in underneath as like an exception. And I think policymakers are really wrestling with the best way of thinking about this and restricting it. So anyway, I would do more of that. You’re going to see a lot of other attention to AI literacy. I tend to be. I think these literacy efforts are great, but I have lived through, we need tech literacy, we need media literacy for everyone. It has felt like it. This is by no means to disrespect folks that are approaching this that like every new technology gets attached to literacy component to it. It is not really clear we got much from tech literacy back in the 2000s or some of the other things. And so maybe there’s a way to make sure that we get right what we got wrong before. But I don’t think that’s going to be the quite the silver bullet that we need it to be.Diane Tavenner: I think that’s right. This has been really such a good way to start. Michael, do you have anything else you want to.Reading, Listening, or WatchingMichael Horn: No, let’s. Thanks, John. This has been a really tremendous overview of a number of currents that I know both of us have been making notes on the side as you’ve been talking and we’re going to want to dig in more. Maybe let’s pivot away from the topic that we’ve been delving in as we wrap up here and just, John, what have you been reading, listening to, watching outside of the AI education conversation? Hopefully AI is not dominating every single thing. Although I won’t be surprised if you give us some movie or fiction or something like that with AI coursed in its veins. So what’s on your list?John Bailey: Oh my gosh, what is? Unfortunately, it is like, it’s not unfortunate. It’s just I have. I found myself waking up at like 5am like 2 years ago just thinking about this. So like all of a sudden you’re reading books on, you know, intelligence and human expertise and human psychology because you’re trying to understand like intelligence and what is, what makes something intelligent and that. So anyway, that’s nerdy stuff. The new Henry Kissinger book with Craig Mundy, the Genesis book has also been good. I’ve been reading David Brooks’s book How to Get to Know Someone, which I sort of have missed the first time it had come out. But I think also it has an AI play too because that’s trying to get to know the essence of someone and the humanity of someone. And so it’s been great kind of reading through that in light of kind of everything that’s happening kind of around then what am I watching? I don’t know. Some great series on Netflix, the Lioness. Yeah, it’s good. Oh, and all the Landman too which has also been quite good. Coming out of Yellowstone.Diane Tavenner: Cool.John Bailey: I don’t know.Michael Horn: That’s good. I’m impressed with your range. Diane. What’s on your list?Diane Tavenner: Well, my new exciting project for 2025 is we are planning a trip to Greece. And as Michael knows, when we sort of plan these trips, one of the big parts of it is spending like six months reading and learning and exploring before we go. And so I actually had a conversation with ChatGPT like you have advised John. When I flipped to just talking to it like a person changed everything to structure a reading and listening list and like all the things I’m going to do. So I have started in on that list that we co constructed and built together, which is pretty awesome. With the Greeks by Roderick Beaton. And this is on the nonfiction side. I have fiction too, but this one rose to the top because I really asked Chat to say I, I need you to find history that’s like engaging and that’s going to keep my attention and you know, give me all the, the way that I want history, the sort of the big swaths and so, so far so good.Michael Horn: Very cool. Very cool.John Bailey: One other thing, this summer when I did a vacation, I actually created a GPT with all, the travel itinerary, the PDF and everything else into it. And then it was awesome because I could just ask it questions, but it would give me, it would also speak phrases if I needed it to.Michael Horn: Oh that’s next level, that’s very cool.John Bailey: It was kind of, it was just kind of a fun little, little thing. But I’ll share the prompt with you later. Yeah, yeah.Michael Horn: Because we used it for itinerary planning for, for all the different interests in our group, but did not jump to that level. John, that’s, that’s a good one. Mine has just been a book, so I feel boring compared to you both. I polished off Israel: A Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby, which has remained in my mind quite heavily. And so I highly recommend it. I thought it was quite good and quite humorous and quite engaging the way she wrote about it. So I enjoyed it. And that’s what I’ll, I’ll recommend for folks, and I think we’ll wrap there. But John, huge thanks for joining us again, kicking this off with a lot to chew on for all you listening right in with your questions, thoughts, things that are on your mind coming out of this conversation. We’ll look forward to the next one 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.

There has been a national discourse around the wave of anti-semitism that has swept across higher education since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in 2023. But what has it looked like at the K–12 level—and what can that teach us about combating hate more generally? To tackle those questions, I sat down with Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the largest collective voice of Jews in the Bay Area of California. We discussed how anti-semitism has manifested in schools over the last two academic years, the challenge of balancing free speech with protection from discrimination, and how to better equip students and educators to combat hate.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education, 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. Since October 7th, 2023, in this country, we've seen an outpouring of hate and specifically anti-Semitism across schools. The story has been well-known and well-told in higher education and our colleges and universities. It's also occurred in our K-12 schools and districts, and we haven't covered that nearly as much on this particular podcast, and so I'm glad we’ll get to delve into that today.But before we do so, I just want to address what some folks have asked: why are we covering this as a topic for the Future of Education? And I think the reason fundamentally is that hate, anti-Semitism, so forth, raises big questions about the discourse and behaviors in our schools in the future. It raises big questions around free speech in our schools. And to the point of the work here, it raises big questions around how we support each and every single individual in realizing their full human potential, regardless of their race, creed, beliefs, on and on. And so I'll also admit, as this has begun over the past, now, year and a half, this is personal as well for me as a Jew, but I think it raises larger questions.And to help us think through them, I'm delighted that Tyler Gregory is joining us because Tyler, you actually know something about this much deeper than i do. You've been on the front lines of this as the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the largest collective voice of Bay Area Jews in California. Under your leadership, JCRC pushes for a just world where Jewish identity is embraced and all people can thrive. And I think it's important to note before you jump in, you all have mobilized multi-ethnic, multi-faith coalitions to fight back, not just against anti-semitism, but to show up for lots of groups who have felt marginalized or experienced discrimination—from Black communities, the Asian Pacific, Asian-American Pacific groups, obviously, anti-LGBTQ, sorry, I cannot talk today, anti-LGBTQ+ groups, and so on and on. And so this is an incredibly important set of topics, not just in the narrow prism of anti-semitism, but much more broadly, of course. So Tyler, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.Tyler GregoryIt's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Michael.Anti-Semitism Prior to October 7thMichael HornYeah, you bet. And I'll do my best to talk a little bit better as we get going on, but you get to do most of the talking, fortunately. So I just want to have you give us the ground state of things. If we go back to October 6th, 2023, what was the state of anti-Semitism in California K through 12 schools specifically? There was a lot of conversation, I will say, around a proposed ethnic studies piece of the curriculum that some people felt had anti-Semitic efforts. So I'd love you to sort of give us what was the state of play prior to Hamas's attacks, and maybe how that's been similar or different from other states in the US that you've observed.Tyler GregorySo thanks so much, Michael. I would say that the October 7th attacks accelerated a trend that we had previously been seeing, which is an increasing amount of anti-semitism in K–12 schools, both environmental as well as in curriculum. You mentioned the ethnic studies course that is now going to be mandated in California schools and other states are following suit. We had a wake-up call almost five years ago when the proposed state model curriculum included anti-semitic rap lyrics that were references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was our community's wake-up call. And this discipline historically has not included Jewish Americans, Jewish studies departments and higher ed have been separate from ethnic studies departments, Asian Pacific Islander, Latino, African-American, indigenous communities in ethnic studies. But they started writing about us in derogatory ways, and they decided that the Middle East would be a disciplinary area that should be included in ethnic studies. And so that experience was a wake-up call for us that we needed to play catch up and also figure out how we wanted to fit into the story of ethnic studies. And so that's been a hotspot for us, but so too has been casual anti-Semitism on the playground, in the classroom, and often more of dog whistles and overt forms of anti-semitism that maybe your or my parents, Michael, might have experienced as kids. And so we have a lot of work to do to help teachers and administrators recognize those dog whistles and how that leads to exclusion for Jewish students today. So then, I mean, that's obviously a disturbing state of affairs that had been escalating.Responses to the AttacksMichael HornI assume it goes into overdrive, sadly, starting October 7th, but just talk to us about what the last school year looked like before we get into this school year. Just, you know, in the schools themselves, I suspect you have stories of parents and students who've reached out to you and told you things. Give us a sense of the state of play, whether that's through stats or the stories, to really help us understand what was going on.Tyler GregoryYeah, the challenges have evolved. So in the days after the horrific attacks, the main issues that we saw were from parents that felt the response from school districts to their communities were either inadequate, non-existent, had implicit biases, or there were other problems with the way they were communicating. And you talk about belonging on your show. This is really a moment for Jewish students, parents, families, teachers to feel like they belong as part of that district. And I think a lot of folks listening might not understand how these terrorist attacks impact Jews in America. This was the single deadliest day for the Jewish community since the end of World War II, since the end of the Holocaust. And that collective trauma, that generational trauma was felt across the Jewish world, whether we had direct connections to Israel or not. And so for a kid to show up on October 8th after that, whether they had a direct or indirect relationship to what happened, that was a traumatic event for all of us. And that was a time for them to be seen, felt, heard in the same way the response from school districts that we saw after the murder of George Floyd with Black Lives Matter, after a wave of Asian hate, particularly here in San Francisco where one out of three residents are Asian Pacific Islander, we saw the response from school districts to those acute moments for those communities. And we had the same expectation that school districts would hold our community in the same way. And sometimes there were insensitivities. Sometimes Muslim and Jewish students felt pitted against each other in these communications. And so that led to a lot of concern, if not disturbance, depending on the communication in terms of how administrators were communicating to their constituents about the issue.Michael HornDid you see like in the classrooms themselves, teachers lash out in different ways and districts, how did they respond if that happened? Because I mean, right on higher ed campuses, I think a lot of people saw the protests, right? They saw the sit-ins and basically encampments in many cases. And then the administration saying, yeah, it violates a policy, but we're going to sort of look the other way. What was going on in K-12 school districts themselves, in the classrooms, on the playgrounds around this outside of the district initial response?Tyler GregorySo as you can imagine, things got more complicated as Israel responded to the attacks and went after Hamas and Gaza, which is an incredibly challenging condition to conduct a war. You go after terrorists that are hiding under civilian populations. Gaza is one of the most dense places in the world. And a debate, and I don't think this is the place to give my personal opinion on what's happening, but there is a robust debate and differences of opinion. And no matter what school district setting you're entering, you're going to have a multitude of opinions about what's taking place for the war. So once Israel's response started, it got much, much harder for administrators to figure out how to hold everybody, including places where you had Israeli and Palestinian families, both in that district. And you saw activism, much like on higher ed campuses, we saw Gaza walkouts in Oakland and San Francisco Unified School Districts. And most administrators were woefully unprepared on how to handle that, because you'd have a set of activists, students, and in some cases, teachers, which in our mind crosses the line, call for their fellow students to walk out. So what happens if you're a Jewish student that's sitting there and you're not participating? You feel vulnerable. You see that you are being judged by your peers. There is not a good way for the teacher to address the situation in the moment. I would say there are some bad actors and we can talk about that. But for the most part, what we're seeing is a lack of competency on how to hold Jewish and Muslim students through this traumatic time.Holding Divergent ViewpointsMichael HornSo maybe actually, let's jump into that, because I'm super curious. It sounds like it's more of a story of we just don't know what to do to handle these challenges. Obviously, JCRC has been providing resources, I imagine, to help educate district leaders, school principals, et cetera, about what the proper response is. How have you all thought about how to hold these two divergent, two is actually probably the wrong word, right? Two Jews, three opinions. So it's probably multiple, multiple opinions and divergences in a community. How have you recommended people start to respond or lead their schools and districts given those conditions you just described?Tyler GregoryWell, one thing we quickly discovered is that in diversity, equity, inclusion programs or in diversity trainings, the Jewish American experience is lacking. And you could say the same thing about Muslim Americans. And so the first thing that we worked on was retooling our anti-Semitism and Jewish identity training to support administrators and teachers to make sure that they had the core competency to understand what a Jew is. And Michael, you know this as well as I do, Judaism is our religion. Jews are a people. We have peoplehood. But in many places, and this is not something to criticize if you're not fully versed in this. People conflate our religion with the rest of our identities, our culture, our nationhood, our relationship to Israel, or our secular nature. You can be an atheist Jew, right? And I think that our identities have been flattened in this Christian country such that teachers and administrators don't quite know how to put us in a box. And that's a very complicated thing to work through. So if you don't know who we are, how are you going to hear the dog whistles that weaponize various parts of our identity? And that's the way that we try to educate K-12 leaders, to make sure that they understand and can better listen for the ways in which our religious, cultural, political connection to Israel is weaponized in ways that echo forms of anti-Semitism that have existed long before the modern state of Israel, for example.Including Jews in Ethnic StudiesMichael HornYeah, it's super interesting as you get into that because Rabbi Wolpe, he's long made the point, right, that Jewish as a construct predates the Western constructs around race, religion, and so forth. It was sort of an amalgamation of a lot of these things, and you just described them. Even if you go to Israel now, you'll see secular atheist Jews, deeply religious Orthodox Jews, and everything in between, traditionalist and so forth, that doesn't even get into the divisions we think about popularly in this country around reform, conservative, and so forth. It's much, much deeper and multifaceted. So the trainings, it sounds like, is actually fundamental ground level education of just even understanding what is going on and what you're seeing in your context. I'm curious. That sounds like it would not provoke maybe the backlashes that some of the DEI trainings we know historically have done, but I'm sort of curious about the effectiveness maybe more to the point because we also know DEI trainings, but also frankly, Holocaust trainings have not been super effective often in protecting the populations that they're intended to. How do you all think about measuring that or protecting against it?Tyler GregoryWhat I would say is too often when we think about longitudinal students' experience with Jewish identity and anti-semitism, when they have an ancient world history course, they learn maybe there's a couple lines about ancient Israel and the Israeli kingdoms when we're talking about the Roman Empire, and then maybe we talk about the Jewish American experience the Holocaust, and there's certainly a Holocaust education component that is from 1933 to 1945. But Jewish history spans 3,000 years. And so that's why we think that Jewish identity should be a part of ethnic studies and that we do need to educate people about the multiple elements of our identities and talk about not only the bad things that happened to us, but to celebrate what we have contributed to this country. Jewish sports heroes, Jewish elected officials, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, people should understand how we celebrate being Americans as the Jewish community and the ways in which we've contributed to this country. And without ethnic studies, really, we're only talking about bad things that have happened throughout their history. And Michael, you know that most of our Jewish holidays are about overcoming the bad things that happen to us. And at the end of our holiday, whether it's our Passover Seder, we usually say, and let's eat, let's celebrate, l'chaim, right? But we can't just be in this victimhood mentality. We have to talk about who we are, what we believe in, talk about Jewish joy and what we mean to this country. And that's why I think whether we're newcomers or not to ethnic studies, there is ameaningful place for us in this story about what it means to to be Jews in this country. And that's something that I don't think takes away. For those that don't want Jewish Americans to be a part of ethnic studies, we're not trying to take away any other experience from being a part of this. We just think that the Jewish kid in the classroom that's going through an ethnic studies course could equally benefit by being seen through this discipline in the same way that we touch on Holocaust studies or helping kids understand what anti-semitism is.Michael HornSuper interesting. It's a very similar answer to the one Dara Horn gave me when I asked a similar question. I'm just curious, and I'd love to dig one level deeper, as I did with her, actually, on this, which is how do you make sure, frankly, for ethnic studies in general, but also, you know, the Jewish component of it, it's not just one more thing on a long list of items that schools should do because there's limited time. Right. There's lots of competing interests trying to get their segment in. Why does this rise to the top in your view or in inclusion? Right. Or are there other ways to go about this maybe that get the principles across but create more freedom for, OK, what's the precise knowledge or specific standards we're going to study as we learn about principles of, frankly, not dipping into anti-semitism, but hate more broadly?Tyler GregoryI think you've got to tackle both layers, Michael. We, as a community, are often the canary in the coal mine of a health, of a democracy, of society, as the Jewish community. And so to help students understand that a multiracial, multiethnic democracy, when one community is targeted, it often leads to other communities being targeted. And if you look historically to Jewish communities around the world, 1920s Germany was a golden era for Jews in Germany in that democracy. I'm a gay Jew. There were gay clubs in Germany. And we saw how the Jewish community was a canary in the coal mine for what was happening in the steady march to fascism in that country. And so we don't think anti-Semitism is only a Jewish problem. But if you if you zoom out and you look globally, oftentimes we're a scapegoat that is a harbinger of things to come and a measurement of the health of the society that we're living in. And so we think that we can talk about this in a much broader lens where we're helping people understand historically what some of the consequences can be when the Jewish community is targeted. I also think there's not a one shot to this. I don't see a silver bullet. The more ways we can integrate our very small minority in the context of America, two to two point five percent, depending on the day, the better chance we have of reinforcing what our community means.The Free Speech QuestionMichael HornSuper, super helpful and interesting. Let me ask you this, because one of the contours of debate that has come up in the higher ed context. Right. So we lay the education piece. People still have different viewpoints. How do we think about the line between free speech? You know, students expressing viewpoints about Israel or say, you know, maybe less savory ones around support for Hamas, even Tinker V. Des Moines, you know, stuff right. Supreme Court case of the ability to express your views freely. You don't lose those when you enter the school doors. But how do you think about that tenant, if you will, of the American experience? And when this crosses the line into blatant discrimination, bullying and stuff that is not OK, how do you think about that, I guess, in general?Tyler GregorySo for better or worse, anti-Semitic speech is free speech. I think when universities uphold free speech as their gold standard, we ask them, OK, if you're going to allow this kind of hate speech where Israel is the the scourge of the earth and responsible for all these ills that extend beyond what a tiny economy in the scope of global affairs could possibly achieve, we ask, where are you exercising free speech? If this is such an important value to you, why are you staying silent when Jews are not allowed to go to the library because they're being blocked? When are you staying silent when terrorism is being glorified by certain campus groups? We can respect their their value, but where we lose faith in their abilities is when they don't practice what they preach. And too many universities and since we're talking about K-12, unfortunately, too many districts are staying silent in the face of these discriminatory acts. And so that's where we would like to see education leaders step up right now.Michael HornDo you think there's a different line from K-12 to higher ed in terms of how teachers, you know, you mentioned the ethnic studies curriculum, obviously, and getting Jews included in that curriculum and an understanding, frankly, of Judaism more broadly built into it. You know, in higher ed, there's this sort of sense of academic freedom, right? Professors, they create their own courses. I get to lecture as I as I view. Do you see that extending into curriculum in K-12 as well? Or is there a different way we ought to think about academic freedom, slightly different from free speech, but still, you know, related and these noxious viewpoints that you just talked about that perhaps we're not calling out as clearly as we might?Tyler GregoryIt's a it's a tough question. And I think teachers have a right to bring their own lived experiences into the classroom so long as it does not target the experiences of other students. And unfortunately, we're seeing too much of that. We're seeing and this is a tough issue to talk through, but we're seeing Palestinian flags. If a teacher is a Palestinian American into the classroom and there's a Jewish student sitting there not knowing how to feel, are they going to be graded poorly? Are they are they safe being in that environment? And that gets really tricky because we don't want to deny a Palestinian their identity. But these symbols that for some people are personal are otherwise political. So I think we have a lot of work to do to figure out how to massage those issues. But we also don't want to deny the lived experience of teachers, which can be so rich for students to learn about. So I think it's a balancing act. And I wish I had a clearer answer for you.The Road AheadMichael HornNo, no, this is good. I mean, frankly, I think delving into the shades of gray is what's going to make us stronger over time. And as you said, you know, your mission has really been these trainings around the education to get awareness into the schools. I'm curious what you're starting to see the fruits of that. What does the school year look like? You said some of the anti-Semitism has morphed maybe over time. Where are we now? How are we doing? What else do we need to do as we think about charting a path forward for all students?Tyler GregoryYeah, so we did a poll a few months ago of Bay Area Jews, a random sample public poll, and we found that only 28 percent of Bay Area Jews are satisfied with how K-12 schools are tackling anti-Semitism. We also found that one out of three Bay Area Jewish residents have personally experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism. And then we asked those folks, where did that happen? And about 30 percent of them said that that happened in a school setting. Second, only to social media. So we think that it's a prominent source of the challenge that our communities face. And we have a lot of work to do still. What we're seeing this year is more of the incidents that we're getting calls with are classic anti-Semitism rather than weaponization of the war. So classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews having too much power or privilege. And I don't think that we're quite to the bottom as to why that is. But the level at which we're getting those calls is clearly inspired by what happened last year. And so in the same way, I don't want to get too political on here, but after the initial election of Donald Trump, we saw a Pandora's box open on the far right with anti-Semitism. October 7th seems to have led to a Pandora's box opening with far left anti-Semitism. They look and feel differently. There are different types of threats. But that permission seems to continue to exist. And our job is to make sure that those forms of hate stay on both extremes and not creep into the mainstream of our society. And unfortunately, it seems like public and private education is one of the most important battlefronts in which we're dealing with this problem.Michael HornNo, super helpful. Tyler, as we wrap up here, just any other thoughts that we should be thinking about work that you're doing that you want to spotlight or conversations that we ought to be keeping an eye on as we progress through the rest of the school year? One thing that we think is really important to lift up, but I will not give any illusion it's easy. It's important for students to see Muslim and Jewish leaders talking to one another. And I think districts see, OK, we've got to have our anti-Semitism module, we've got to have our Islamophobia module, we need to have an assembly dedicated to Jewish Americans and Muslim Americans or Palestinian Americans. That's great. But if there are divisions in a classroom or in a school or even among parents, what better way to get them to change the tone of the conversation and lower the temperature and tensions than to see Muslim and Jewish or Israeli and Palestinian leaders talking to one another with civil discourse? And that's a broader conversation just in the context of this civil discourse. But if they can see role models talking through differences about how despite the fact that the war is six thousand miles away, both of our communities are in pain and trauma and that actually we have a lot more in common culturally and as immigrant communities than we do our divides over what's happening there. Maybe we can start to build bridges and change the way that we're having this conversation. And so we work with a Muslim organization both to provide joint trainings and to model civil discourse. But there are a lot of amazing organizations both in Israel, Palestine and here that ard trying to bring Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians together. And to model that in front of students goes a very long way. And so that's something that I think we need much, much more of as this issue plays out. That's a very hopeful note to end on.Michael HornLet me ask you a final question. How can people find out more about JCRC and follow your work?Tyler GregoryYou can follow us JCRC.org and learn much more about our education trainings. We'd be delighted to work with you.Michael HornPerfect. Tyler, thank you so much for joining us. And for all of you, we'll see you 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.

At the outset of an AI-themed season, Diane Tavenner and I take stock of our prior assumptions, hopes, and concerns about the technology’s applications in education. We dive into where we see it being used to make adjustments to the current educational model and envision how it could be applied to revolutionize learning.Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. Good to see you.Diane Tavenner: You too. I spent the weekend on a tradition I think we have talked about before, which is we hold a holiday party every year for what are now old friends. Because I think this is our 27th annual, if you.Michael Horn: 27th annual. Wow.Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And it just, it makes me appreciate longevity and just like I have such gratitude for deep, long relationships that have built over time. And yeah, it’s just really, it’s a good fill-me-up for the moment.Diane and Michael’s AI PriorsMichael Horn: Yeah. That’s amazing. We’re obviously recording this as we approach the holiday season, if people can’t figure that out from that intro. That’s an amazing place to start. And the gratitude you have around that, Diane. So very, very neat. Let’s lay out what we’re doing for folks today. And as we get into a little series on the topic that we talked about in the first episode back, which is artificial intelligence. You want to lay it out, Diane, what we’re thinking?Diane Tavenner: Yeah, I think as folks know, like, we are now following our curiosity and we’ve been doing that for a while. And, you know, I don’t think either of us are just like 100% all in on AI, like huge evangelists. And I do think that we’re at a minimum, cautiously optimistic about the possibilities of it. And so we’re just curious about it. And I think we find ourselves kind of talking about it and asking about it. And so we are going to do a little exploration. We’re not exactly sure. We’ve got some ideas of the format and whatnot. We’re not exactly sure how long it will last for, but we thought we’d just kick off today with where we’re starting that exploration. And I think I, personally, I think you’re with me. I hope I end in a different place, quite frankly, I hope I end in a place where I’ve, like, learned some stuff and talked to interesting people and, you know, maybe think a little bit differently. Hopefully smarter than I am now. But today we wanted to just kind of lay a foundation of where we’re coming from based on what we know so far.Michael Horn: Yeah, love, love that intro. And what I would add is it’s obviously a hot topic in education. Everyone knows that. But I think what’s also interesting to me anyway has been how OpenAI and Google and, you know, Facebook, like, or Meta, I should say, whenever they talk about AI, they seem to show education use cases is like a major part of all their launches. I’m sure that’s not quite right, but it’s more than I can remember on most product launches outside of maybe the iPad over the last 20 years. And so it’s obviously getting a lot… Education and AI together, Diane, are obviously getting a lot of attention and I find myself anyway, and we’ll talk about this in a moment: I start out with a strong prior and then I read a couple things and I completely flip my opinion and then I have that opinion and I talk to someone and then I change again. And so like I find myself pretty malleable still. But like you, it feels like this technology enabler that could be really, really intriguing. And we need to explore more.Diane Tavenner: I agree with you and I think we’ll do that in a way that we always do. We’re always looking for sort of third-way solutions that are very practical and very pragmatic and very connected to what’s actually happening with young people in schools, with teachers. And so yeah, I think that, you know, people might be like thinking, oh my gosh, more AI. But I hope that we’re going to bring a, a sort of pragmatic approach to it that that is actually useful for people.The Teacher- v. Student-Centered Approach to AIMichael Horn: Yeah, no, perfect. And I will tell you, when you visited my class and showed off Futre with the students, they noted that you never mentioned AI in your talk. So we are certainly not leading with AI, but we think it’s intriguing. And so against that let me start out with the opening framing I’d love to propose to you and then you can sort of react to how that framing sits. But it’s one that I’m stealing from a friend of ours in the venture world. And it’s something though that I’m noticing in the field and I don’t know that everyone who sort of is launching AI education products notices it this way. But what I’m seeing is that there’s sort of on the one hand a lot of AI startups and AI approaches that are very teacher centered or teacher facing as their entree, if you will, into the classroom or learning environments. And then on the other hand you have the student centered or student facing applications. This might be like the Khanmigo or, you know, some of those things that we’ve seen out there. And so there seems to me to be a bit of a dichotomy in terms of the startup space, the investors approach, different entrepreneurial approaches, even teacher, frankly and school designer and educator approaches on how they’re thinking about AI. Is it first a teacher tool or is it a student facing tool. What, what’s your take on that framing before we dig into each side of this?Diane Tavenner: Yeah, so I think that sadly, and I will say sadly for me, I think most people are thinking about it from a teacher-facing approach. The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And I think I sent you an article the other day or an op ed where I was like very frustrated with the premise, which was this exact premise. And I, as you know, I fundamentally disagree with that approach. Do I think we should be using AI as a tool to support teachers and to support students? Yes, but I think we’re just retreading the, the old way of thinking about schools. And let me just start, Michael, and say, like in this conversation, I’m almost exclusively going to be talking about high schools because I think elementary schools are quite different. And, and you know, so if we get into elementary school, let’s note that specifically. But for me, I’m very much thinking about high school, maybe middle school as well, but older students, and I just think that the world is going in a direction for many, many, many reasons where they need to be owning and driving their own education. Of course, this is not unique for me. I’ve been doing this for a couple decades at this point. This is my fundamental belief. There’s such a downside that we are not focused on how we enable students to own and drive their own learning. And AI is such a game changer. I think potentially in this direction it can help us do things we’ve wanted to do and can’t do. And we’re completely missing the mark when our total focus is on the teacher and how this is a tool that we’re going to build for teachers.Michael Horn: No, that’s helpful. And right out of the gates. We know where you stand. I’m going to try to make the argument for the teacher facing up front and then you can throw cold water on me afterwards if you’d like. But, but let me try it. And, and maybe the way I will try it though is more to explain it about why I think the phenomenon is happening. And so number one, I would say on the why is AI better for teachers than students? Say false dichotomy, but let’s go with it. I think part of the approach is, look, AI hallucinates all the time. It makes mistakes. And these tools are better in the hands of experts rather than novices who can, you know, catch those mistakes and correct them in some ways. So number one, there’s sort of like a risk aversion approach to it. And so, and I think this, you know, we could probably contradict this in certain ways. But I think the AI like as risk to students is maybe driving some of this. Number one. Let me quickly add on that that I do think that there is something to it in the sense of AI when used by Amazon to get you to buy something that maybe you’ve looked at online. If they move the dial 0.001% that is serious dollars to their bottom line and if they alienate you, they don’t really care. Right. Whereas in education I think the argument would be if we actually mislead a student or you know, tell them a narrative about themselves that is going to mislead them in some, you know, like we could do deep damage to their self efficacy and, and, and, and sense of self and even their agency right down the line. And so that’s the reason for a teacher facing perspective maybe. Let me pause there before I go to the other two reasons because I, I that like a meaty set of claims that I think you should engage with first.Diane Tavenner: Well, I think you’re uncovering one of the challenges that we have in education right now, which is a comp. Just a real lack of imagination about what is going to be possible because of AI. And so I think that many people, most, I don’t know, a lot of people at this point have logged on to you know, ChatGPT or one of the others and they’ve typed something in that little box maybe a few times and they’ve had or they’ve read articles about these hallucinations. But in many people’s minds like that is what quote AI is. Maybe some people now are playing with NotebookLM from Google. And you know, one of the really amazing things I think is that you know, it will produce a podcast.Michael Horn: It’s pretty remarkable. A little over engineered but pretty remarkable.Diane Tavenner: And it is like at first it’s like pretty mind blowing and then when you actually start to listen, yes, it’s getting all the right words. I did it the other day. Someone like loaded a chapter from my book into it and then it produced a 22 minute podcast. Man and a woman talking. And I was like. And they were like is this the conversation you and Michael would have had about your book? You know and like there’s pieces of it, yes, but it’s not us, it’s not human. It is, it’s like literally going, it’s read what is on the page and then it’s like making it, sort of bringing it to life. But there’s no thinking and nuance. And dynamism there. Anyway, all my point is that that’s not, you know, that product is the, is one of where they’ve taken what’s underneath it, the AI and they’re actually turning into something that is more user facing. So my assumption is that we’ve only just begun to see what’s possible. And so this idea that like, is that like chat box going to revolutionize learning for kids. No, it’s not. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about as a tool embedded in really well designed experiences in my view, products that will move the needle. And so I think you, you minimize or eliminate those risks that you’re talking about when you build it in thoughtfully. Certainly that’s what we’re doing on our team and so.The Sustaining Innovations of Teacher-Centered AIMichael Horn: Well, and you’re leading with the product design as opposed to the AI, which is also a difference. Right. So let me say the second reason. I think that we’re seeing a lot of teacher facing things, which is that frankly, relative to today’s classroom, it does not require redesigning today’s classroom. It is in our language, a sustaining innovation relative to today’s classroom. And let’s be honest, that’s where the market is, right? As in, if you’re looking for volume, it is not in. I mean, yes, microschools are taking off, but there’s still a small percentage Of the education landscape. Certainly in the US, even more so in the world. And so teacher facing sort of as gateway in teacher directed instruction is where the market is. And frankly most VCs, when they enter a market, they have a five to seven year time frame to get out of the investment. They’re looking for unicorns within that. And that pushes you to where the dollars are, not where perhaps the puck should be going. So I think that’s the other thing driving this dichotomy, if you will.Diane Tavenner: I think you’re right and I think this is the problem we consistently have every time we think something might help us transform schools, right. Is that the, it gets, it get the gravitational pull back into the box, the box of the school, the box of the classroom, the box of the teacher, the box of the course, it just, all the pullback to that is so strong and every time people try to unbundle it or disrupt it, we’ve had many conversations about that. You know, there’s a few outliers who sort of make it outside of that, you know, planet, orbit, gravitational. I spent a lot of time with a lot of them last week and it’s very exciting and inspiring with them and then you get back to the mass market is all still living inside that box. And so, so I mean, this is where I just feel like, I feel like I can’t help but get hopeful and excited, but I’m a little bit worried that I’m going to get my heart broke yet again about the potential changes that we might see. Because that’s what I want to have happen. I actually want to break apart that model and change this to be a learning experience, at least at the high school level, where kids are truly driving their own learning and learning in ways that are much more customized and personalized for them. And let me just be super clear, that does not mean they’re learning alone. This is still very group oriented. It’s actually quite real world oriented and that’s what I think is possible. So.Michael Horn: But it’s not to say, let me just modify this before we jump to where you’re going, which is, I think you’d agree, there are plenty of low hanging fruit use cases to like to, to improve. Right. Teacher practice with AI, whether it’s better lesson plans, more diverse ways of reaching different student needs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, frankly, assessment, probably to get more real time information where your students are or how they’re doing to. Or simplify a teacher’s workflow.Diane Tavenner: Yeah, and that might be the middle ground here. You know, I was the other day, I was sitting there thinking through how can we disaggregate the role of the teacher and what does AI enable? This could still exist in the box model of class, you know, but I do think it would be an improvement. So if we think about all the hats a teacher wears, which are impossible. The job’s impossible as you know, I know everybody knows the feedback we’re getting from the market is it’s impossible because no one wants to do the job anymore. People will get mad that I said that. That’s not true. Some people want to do the job, but here’s the job. So one, you are. And these are the main things that teachers think about and people think about. You’re planning your curriculum and your lessons and you’re delivering them. There’s a real argument that AI, that a single individual teacher should never be planning their own curriculum again, ever, ever, ever, ever. It’s like not time well spent. It will never be as good as what can be done, you know, more globally and with all the learning science and expertise that we have, and even quite frankly, the delivery a lot of it is not personalized and individualized. So that could very much be, you know, AI driven, technology driven. Then there’s feedback and assessment.Diane Tavenner: So I’m giving you like feedback. I know you’ve been grading some papers and assessing work. And again, like, again, we’ve done this for a decade plus at Summit where we took most of that off teachers’ plates. And the technology is absolutely capable of doing this now and better quite frankly, than humans. And so if we take that, that’s like the core of what most people think the teacher’s job is. So what’s left? And it’s the very human things, the things that I would argue matter. It’s the coaching and the mentoring of students. It’s helping them to figure out how they’re going to like sequence their learning pathway and what comes next and what happens when they get stuck and they need actual help in where they’re going. And so that coaching, that sequencing that, facilitating certainly a role in facilitating group learning and really cool real life learning experiences and giving real time feedback in those settings. There’s the social-emotional part of this. Like how do you, how do you become a person who understands a morning routine and actually, you know, knows how to manage your emotions and your relationships and all of those sorts of things. And then of course there’s like custodial care. That’s for younger, but to some extent older. Yeah, none of those things can be disrupted by AI, I do not believe. And for a lot of teachers, it’s the stuff that brings them real joy and it is really impactful for young people. So I think maybe the in between is a disaggregating of that role of the teacher.Diane Tavenner: If I saw products moving in that direction, I’d be happy.Michael Horn: So that that would be. So for all those listening, that’s the sustaining path we would like to see happen. And here’s the disruptive argument. Let’s get student facing here. Right. And student centered. And I think that is the argument. Right.Disruptive Applications for AIMichael Horn: Is that yes, tutoring today or student facing tools. And I’ll get into the second use case in a second. But like the more narrow ones first. I’ve seen all sorts of critiques and I think we’ll get some of them on, on the podcast as we go through this series around how it’s not, you know, it’s yes, maybe procedural knowledge, but not like the in depth, really emotion driven. Right. Learning pieces and other things of that nature and it makes errors, you know. Right. All the rest. The Wall Street Journal has done a few hit jobs on things and so forth. But if you get into non-consumption where the alternative is nothing at all, I don’t have access to a tutor if I’m, you know, however many millions of kids in the United States, let alone the world, clearly better than the alternative, nothing at all. There are some very interesting places to launch student facing applications in that area, number one. And number two, I think the argument for it, and I think this is where you also might be going is I see it as lifting the quality of work of what students are doing because AI now is a tool of work just like we use it in our workplace to better…so that they can create more in depth, more exciting, you know, things. Right. With spending a little bit less time on some of the mechanics and more time on the depth, if you will, of learning and evidence right in the product or performance or whatever they’re creating. And I’m being somewhat vague because trying to capture all the possible use cases one could imagine depending on what subject or grade you’re imagining as we’re talking. But I think that’s the other area is that like the sense of agency for kids where they can actually build professional level skills stuff as they’re exploring.Diane Tavenner: Yeah.Michael Horn: Has just taken a big step up. And it’s not to say that they don’t have to learn the knowledge and application and skills. They do. But then using AI to level up all of that is pretty interesting, I think. Go ahead.Diane Tavenner: Yeah. Let’s talk for a minute, Michael, about the broader context and why – because I think it’s so relevant here about what’s going on – I think in the world why this matters. So, so number one, it’s unequivocal. I just spent last week with people from the left and the right and like everywhere in between. And there’s a, there is an incredible agreement around the idea that school needs to be real world. It needs to be preparing young people, especially high school, for the real world, for jobs, for employment. It can’t be sort of this like theoretical, you know, thing anymore. And it’s not preparing them for that. It’s not preparing them with what I would just call basic professional skills. Like how do you actually like be an employee? How do you show up on time, how do you have agency, how do you do these things? And, and it’s, it’s not actually, if it’s not incorporating AI and how you use that in real work, it’s not going to be preparing them for the future that they’re walking into. And so I think that is happening. There’s a real move towards, you know, CTE, you know, career and technical education. As we know, we’ve got ESAs coming on in multiple states where people are going to be able to sort of more pick and choose their education. So you’ve got a lot of stuff happening where people are like, I don’t want to sit and get anymore and it’s not going to serve me to just sit there and take direction and then wait for you to tell me the next direction. And so I think what, you know. Do I think it’s a chat bot that’s tutoring me? You know, I think that’s super rudimentary. I think there’s so much better stuff coming, but you got to start somewhere. And I think that what’s more important to me is that like it’s, it’s breaking this dynamic of like 25 or 30 kids in a classroom, like waiting on instruction and the slowness of it and the exactitude of it and that. And so it’s moving us towards like this is the world we’re going to.Michael Horn: The waiting on is a really particularly interesting place I’d love to like pick up on because I see the same thing, no surprise perhaps in that one we’ve been pretty clear that more connection to real world is important. I also think the ability to codify and create like standard curriculum, given the fast changing nature of real work is going to be a fool’s errand. And so that pushes you more and more in the direction you’ve been around. Experiential. Right. And so as a result of that, like that’s going to be doing, which means not like you can’t be waiting on the sort of the one scarce resource in the classroom to come over to you, unlock the lesson plan for you and then you’re allowed to go learn that. That that’s not going to be the model that engages or works, frankly. And so it’s everything from knowledge acquisition to exploration. On the one hand we’ll put that like as a big bucket, right? To actually engaging with, connecting with and then doing the work. And AI is a really interesting portal, I think, into all three of those, I guess is the way I would think about it. Whether it’s up leveling the quality of resources on the front end or frankly up leveling the level of work that young people are able to do and they’re showcasing of that and problem solving to real professionals and getting real feedback on it.Diane Tavenner: Well, and I think this is so critical, Michael, because one of the things we’re seeing in the job market for, you know, post high school graduates, post college graduates is. And one of the things AI is doing is, is sort of competing with or removing those kind of entry levels. So no one wants to hire someone who doesn’t have experience anymore. You, you know, almost every job says you need a couple years of experience. So how are young people supposed to get experience? Well, their education is going to have to incorporate experience, if you will. It has to be experiential. It has to be a place where they’re going to be able to make the case that even though I just finished learning in some, you know, degree or credentialing program, I have experience. And so the, the act of learning and getting feedback and producing products has to be much more real world experiential if they’re going to have any hope of getting a job.Preparing Students for Success in the WorkplaceMichael Horn: This isn’t an AI point, but I just, I’m, I love that we’re getting away from credential based hiring and that skills based hiring is a phrase, but I think I find it overly technocratic and a sense that we’re going to be able to define skills in narrow ways. And the word you just used, experience, to me is the way to think about it of experience based hiring. And the way you show you can do and step into a job is through the experiences you’ve had where you’ve done that. And if we believe, let’s go to the equity question. If we believe we want to give everyone a chance at that school has got to be providing it because otherwise my kids are going to be able to find those opportunities, but a lot aren’t. And so I think schools are going to need to be. A long time ago there was a professor, either I think UCLA, but maybe USC, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, and he wrote about how like schools of experience were the right way to hire people to see, like, you know, have you led teams, have you, etc., etc. As opposed to like, gee, Diane built a great product by herself, now we want her to be a manager. Two totally different sets of skills underlying that. Forget about naming the skills, let’s just look at the experiences themselves and say, like, how’d you do what, what lessons did you learn? What would you do next time? How does it equate to the culture here? Those are the sorts of questions and conversations I’d love us to be having in hiring. And so what you Just said, I think makes a lot of sense for the schools to be stepping into that. And the challenge, right, if we stay with our teacher centered model is that to ask teachers to sort of be the font of all of that is, is crazy.Diane Tavenner: It’s not even, it’s not even possible by definition. You know, they are, they’re, they’re waiting on, the student is waiting on instruct. It’s not preparing them to be productive. No, no. And it’s not even neutral anymore. It’s negative because the incentive system in our traditional schools is actually counterproductive. It’s creating behaviors and incentivizing behaviors that are, are counterproductive when you’re going into the real world. And so, and I would argue the learning isn’t even that great. So it’s not like they’re coming out as masters of math or you know, and, and on top of it that. I mean, let’s just go back in time for a moment. We talk a lot about the industrial model and wanting to move away from industrial model schools. But I think some of the things that people forget is the design of the industrial model school was actually preparing people for…Michael Horn: An industrial model economy.Diane Tavenner: The factory. Like you showed up to a bell, you moved on a bell, you, you produced work at a rate and a speed in a way that was going to be very real world, very comparable to what you were going into. And our schools look nothing like workplaces at all anymore. And they’re not preparing young people for all of those pieces of it.Michael Horn: No, we’re going off AI but I’m going to make one more point and then maybe we’ll bring it back. Which is, I actually think when people think about higher education also, and they’re like, oh, the rarefied university experience that I want all 55 million people for some reason to have, that is, you know, Harvard or whatever else, they forget that that is also a vocational experience, which is to train people for the professoriate down the line to prepare them to get master’s and PhD degrees. So for what it’s worth, I think it all has echoes to your point of the world into which you were trying to prepare individuals. And that world has changed totally.Diane Tavenner: And I think that AI becomes a tool because I think a lot of the objections to changing this model, if you will, the box model, the classroom, the school building, etc, has been like, how can we actually do that? We have, you know, 55 million people in the schooling system. There’s a huge operational component like, how do you actually do that? And I do think that AI brings us a new set of tools in a very meaningful way if we deploy them properly. Not properly, if we deploy them, you know, interesting, smart, visionary ways that make that more and more possible.Michael Horn: Maybe let’s leave the conversation there and I’ll put out one more question that I’m really interested to get from folks, which is when…We’re going to talk to people who are skeptics, who are optimists, probably in between. And the questions that I’m curious about are many. But one of them on what you just said is like, how does it maybe make certain things that we thought were important historically less so in the future? Like, yes, it might ruin the ability to do X, Y and Z, because AI is going to do it. But also that thing is no longer that important either as an artifact anymore. And where is that not true? Where is it going to ruin that thing that actually still really is important? How do we think about that? I’m curious to hear what people think.Diane Tavenner: I’m curious about that too. I also will just put an invitation out, Michael. You know, we’re gonna do this for a little bit and we’ve got certainly a list of people we want to talk to and a list of questions. But we always love hearing from listeners. And so if there are people or questions you are curious about, send them our way and we’ll do the best we can.Michael Horn: Perfect. Ok so let’s leave it there. Lots of, lots of energy around where we want to see AI solve problems. And let’s flip, as we always do, to what we’re reading, listening, watching, basically anything outside of our day jobs. What’s on your list, Diane?Diane Tavenner: Well, I have one that’s legitimately outside of my day job, which is The Diplomat Season 2. And it’s just, that’s so bad.Michael Horn: I need to get on that train. I really, for a variety of reasons, I know I would like it, so I will try to catch up to you. Mine is less, is, is not actually divorced from my work. I’m reading student papers non-stop right now. The AI I’ve tried a couple AI tools, Diane, that grade, I will tell you they don’t because they don’t understand context and the content knowledge. They’re very good at telling me, you know, grammatical things. I am not an English teacher. I don’t, I literally don’t care as long as I, it communicates the point in this particular case. So as a result, it’s still manual labor for me, for the next few days.Diane Tavenner: Well, I’m so sorry. I hope that ends.Michael Horn: No, all good. Some of them are great ideas, and I’ll hold to those. But for all of you listening, thanks as always. We look forward to hearing from you. Look forward to hearing your thoughts about who we ought to talk to, what we ought to learn from. We’re excited to do this and do a deep dive on AI with all of you. Thanks so much. And we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Is it better for education solutions to have an interdependent, self-contained design or a modular one? Well, it depends. That contradicts the advice of a lot of CEOs and investors who adhere to one or the other view. In this video, I use music as a metaphor to help explain the tradeoffs and best uses of each architecture.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.One of the big questions that I often get is this: Is it better to be vertically integrated That is, you control everything you do. You make all the parts, you have a proprietary architecture.Or is it better to be modular, that is horizontally integrated? You're just one step or part that fits neatly into a whole that others also contribute to in clearly defined, predictable ways.And basically what we've learned is that, contrary to what Apple or anyone else might tell you, the answer is… it depends.The theory of interdependence and modularity says that when you're trying to improve the raw performance or functionality of a product, a system, a service, composition, you need an interdependent architecture. The reason is you can't specify in advance how one part works and functions and the way another part works and functions because they're interdependent with each other. If you make changes in one, it changes the other and vice versa. And so when you're trying to wring out every last ounce of performance from something, you need to wrap your hands around everything and really embrace this interdependent architecture.IBM mainframes are a classic example, highly interdependent product. IBM did everything. They built the logic circuitry, the operating system, the memory, they manufactured it, they did the sales, everything.But frankly, most Apple products are very interdependent as well.And we can make this idea of interdependence come alive in music as well, because it's a confusing concept. And I thought if we did something very outside of the bounds of how we normally think about it, it might come alive a little bit more for folks.And I'm going to do it by demonstrating something by Bach. It's his Fugue No. 2 in C Minor, and it's a great example of an interdependent architecture. And by having [that architecture] he really optimizes the overall raw functionality of the composition I'm going to illustrate it here on this keyboard—and I'll apologize in advance it's not a weighted keyboard, it's not going to be a beautiful grand piano sound, it's clunky here and there—but i think you'll get the idea. Essentially what Bach has done in this Fugue is that he's going to have three subjects come in you can almost think of them like melodies and then there's going to be counter subjects that respond to it with movement and opposition and he specifies in essence by writing down music everything in advance to create this incredibly rich composition together.It starts with this first subject, which is the alto part, which you'll hear here. And I'll just play it—it's very elegant and simple. We'll use a Steinway grand piano sound so you can get the idea.[Piano playing]Elegant. Simple. And then the soprano in the right hand is going to play that subject as well—the second subject—in the very next set of measures. And it goes like this.[Piano playing]And while it's doing that, we're going to have the left hand introduce the counter subject that's going to move in opposition.And at this point, it's still in that alto range, but I'll let you hear what it sounds like, and then we'll put them together.[Piano playing]Okay, let's put it together with the right hand so you can start to get a sense for how they're interweaving and responding and moving in opposition to each other to understand that interdependence. [Piano playing]So you can see how the counter subject—it's literally moving in opposition in many ways to that subject and it's starting to create this real richness. And just a bit later then we're going to get a third subject that's going to be in the base part in in the left hand again—it's that repeat of the melody if you will. And then the right hand of course will be doing its own counter subject at that time and you're going to start to get a really cool exposition as these three parts start to play with each other in intricate interdependent ways that optimize the overall composition. Rather than play each of the parts, I'm just going to play the whole together just a little bit of it so you can start to see the beauty of that interdependence.[Piano playing]You get the idea.Now, on the other hand, sometimes we're not worried about the raw performance or functionality of something. What we really in those instances want is speed and customization, personalization, and really the ability to improvise within all the different components.And there you need a modular architecture—where the ways that these different parts come together—the interfaces—are specified in advance in very tight ways. In other words, how they fit together, very predictable ahead of time. No surprises. But a lot of freedom within the different parts themselves on the other side of the interfaces to really freelance and customize and make sure that you can meet different demands and so forth.There’s no right or wrong way to be on these different spectrums—interdependence versus modularity.When we're talking about modularity, instead of an IBM mainframe, we're thinking about a Dell personal computer. Instead of an Apple iPhone, we're thinking about an Android phone. Much more modular architectures that allow for customization.Now, of course, we can illustrate this again through music.And in this case, you probably know where I'm going, but jazz—the ultimate in customization through improv. And I'm going to use a specific type of jazz composition to really show modularity. I picked out a piece here called Little Sunflower. It's written by the great trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. And it's what we call a modal piece—almost sounds like modular—in the key of D minor Dorian.And basically what that allows me to know is that in the bulk of the music, when we're in D minor, I can play any note in that D minor Dorian scale as I'm improvising. And the note, it's going to work. There's a clean interface, which gives me a lot of freedom to improvise with melodies in the scale itself and have some fun.Now, when I go into the bridge, there's going to be a D major for four bars and an E flat Lydian first for four bars, and then those will repeat.So I'll work through those.But just to give you a sense for how Hubbard really creates these modular interfaces, I prerecorded a simple baseline on the D minor Dorian, just so you can get a sense of the texture of that, what we're going to lay down over which we can improvise and what it sounds like.So let's go ahead and mute these drums and we'll play this baseline.[Bass line playing]You get the idea. Very straightforward, simple.And then we're going to just add some drums on top of that. It would really be a Latin, medium Latin sort of groove if you were playing it. But just for the sake of this, I just chose a simple rock beat just so you can get the idea of how these two parts come together. I put this together ahead of time. This is what it sounds like.[Music playing]You get the idea.And then the melody is going to go on top of that. And we'll choose a basic classic electric piano. And I'll do a little vamping in the left hand because the interface is clear. I know I can play different variations of D minor chords. And the right-hand melody is going to sound very simple.It's just... I'll play it in fourths just to give it a little bit more texture. And again i can do that with a melody because it's a modular interface. I know as long as I stay within the D minor Dorian no problem it gives me a lot of room for improvisation. And what I'll do is I'll play the basic melody with the drums and bass behind it and then I'm just going to start improvising earlier than you normally would just to give you a sense of how this modular architecture allows you to really customize, improvise in the different parts themselves and create a very cool piece, very different from Bach and that interdependence, but awesome in its own way as well and far more customizable.So let's lay those first eight bars down and then I'll start to improvise.[Music playing and fade]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.

Often, incumbent leaders recognize well in advance that they’re being disrupted by a new innovation but feel powerless to make the changes needed to survive.In other words, they’re held captive by their pre-existing business model. In this video, I use music as a vehicle for explaining why organizations respond to threats with such rigidity and how they can be more nimble when it matters most.One of the biggest challenges that successful organizations have is surviving disruption.When they see a disruptive innovation afoot, they know that if they don't do something, they're going to get overrun by it, potentially in the long run.But responding to disruption is hard because it just doesn't feel natural.Remember those newspapers we all used to read back at the turn of the century? They saw online news coming and they're like, we've got to do something.But they just didn't know what.And they were in essence held captive by their existing business model. We've seen what's happened to so many newspapers since then.So how do you survive disruption and even thrive or pioneer the disruptive innovation yourself? How does an existing organization do the disruption?Clark Gilbert did some really important research years ago, looking actually at the newspaper industry. And what he saw is that the first thing you have to do when you see a potentially disruptive innovation is that you have to frame it as a threat.Why is that?Because framing it as a threat will motivate you to throw resources at the problem and really take it seriously. So the first thing to do is to frame it as a threat.And the way I like to think about that so I can get in that threat mode is you think of like that disruptive innovation, it's coming at you. It's like the Imperial March from Star Wars. Darth Vader's coming at you and you have to do something. (music playing)You get the idea. But here's the problem.If you leave it in that threat framing, then the organization gets super rigid. So you're motivated. You have the resources to tackle the problem. You're ready to go against Darth Vader. But now you're also kind of like Darth Vader. You're trying to move in that hard shell, awkward suit. You're super rigid. And you see a lot of command and control behavior in organizations when they leave it in a threat framing. A lot of top-down leadership, classic Darth Vader sort of stuff.And Clark Gilbert called this threat rigidity.And the problem with threat rigidity is this: You see the threat, you framed it as such, and you're dedicating resources to it. I mean, after all, Darth Vader's coming at you. But if you become rigid with those resources, it's the exact wrong response.Because no one at this stage knows what the disruptive innovation should really look like yet. How should it work? How will it help consumers? How do we design it? How do we structure the business?And so to figure all of that out, you need to be the opposite of rigid. You need to be nimble. That means lots of fast testing of key assumptions, learning from those tests, and then iterating.So the question then obviously is like, how do you become nimble? And so it turns out that after playing the Imperial March and galvanizing the resources, you then need to do a reframe to see this disruptive innovation as an opportunity.Think A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman.Because the question should turn into this. Disruption is going to happen. So why don't we do it?And to frame it as an opportunity, Clark Gilbert found that you need to build an independent, loosely connected organization and empower that small group of individuals to go and explore and pioneer the disruptive innovation.Because why not close your eyes and see that the world will only wait for you if you go out and allow an independent group to seize the opportunity for innovation.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.

A false dichotomy has formed in the education world: rote practice versus project-based learning. As in music, it’s important to both drill the knowledge & skills AND pull it all together into a cumulative performance.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! This post is public so feel free to share it.I have a confession. When I was a kid, food fights, I kind of got the appeal. But as an adult, not so much.Yet we have food fights all the time in education. And we pit things against each other that I don't think are actually diametrically opposed to each other. Here's a classic one. Have you ever heard an educator say, no more drill and kill? It’s not good for kids! And while what they might mean is they don't want someone doing just busy work for its own sake on something that they've already mastered, what they also often mean is that they don't think it's important for someone to work repeatedly at a foundational skill to really ingrain it in their long-term memory.On the other side, you'll get the people who just say, no project-based learning. I don't want students learning projects, just direct instruction. None of this inquiry-based learning or anything like that. And what I think they mean is that there has to be something substantive in the learning. It can't just be a whiz-bang project masking as learning. They really also need to learn the knowledge underlying something and automate these things. But what they're also saying is that why you're learning something, its relevance, I'm not sure it matters, is what they're saying. That putting these things into larger context, not that important.And to think about how absurd these two poles are, all you gotta do is think about music. Learning piano, for example. Like, do you think that it's not important to learn scales? (music playing)Maybe it's not important to practice, say, your octaves? (music playing)You get the idea, right? But what about practicing some different patterns for jazz or something like that? (music playing)Is that not important? I mean, you know, yes, it's meat and potato stuff, but it's critical for foundations. And yeah, it's kind of drill and kill. And yet it turns out that it's pretty important to commit your times table to long-term memory for more advanced math and science and engineering.But now here's the thing, if you told most people, hey, the only thing that you're gonna learn this year is scales, because trust me, scales, like those are really important, they're not gonna do that. They want a project, they want a performance, they wanted the scales to be a part of a whole. And like, I'm willing to do the work, but most kids, not all, but most, they want it to be for a reason. They want that relevance. And that's the performance. They want to work on those patterns and scales and octaves so that they can play something like this. (music playing)Or so that they can play something like this. (music playing)You get the idea, right? And look, they don't want that performance or that project to be the dessert. No, they want it to be the main course. It's the purpose. The repetitive practice, the drill and kill—that's also so I can build the muscle memory and the muscles and automate my skill set so that I can then play those pieces and express myself.But it isn't one thing or the other. As with so much in education, rather than an “or,” we need to move to a both-and. And see that at some points, look for a novice, like one set of exercises to build a foundation, that's going to be critical. Like the performance for a novice isn't going to be one of those pieces I just played, but maybe something simpler like this. And look, maybe if, you know, I'm not an expert, maybe I'm, you know, or if I am an expert, maybe I'm not doing sort of simple exercises like this. (music playing)But maybe I am—even in the beginning just to warm up—because both the drill and kill and the projects are important.And let's be real. Tell me that LeBron James is not spending time drilling his free throws and working on his mechanics, but he's also scrimmaging and playing games.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.

Danny and I enjoyed recording this live episode on the Substack app last Friday. It was fun interacting with all who joined! To that end—to join us for our next live video in the app, click the link below from your mobile device.Paid subscribers also get access to the recording of the conversation—so enjoy!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.

Diane Tavenner and I have launched a sixth season of Class Disrupted! In our welcome back episode, we talked through my newest book, the bestseller Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. We also mapped its implications back to K12 schools and students through Diane's startup, Futre.me.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! Please share this post with folks who will benefit from it!Here’s what ChatGPT thought were the top 5 takeaways. We look forward to your thoughts!* Schools must prioritize agency and self-discovery for students rather than seeing colleges or careers as something "chosen" for them* Help students identify what drives their energy and the capabilities they are developing as part of their education* Treat career exploration like a learning and design process* Teach students to evaluate return on investment of different pathways—in terms of money and time* Leverage tools that support lifelong career navigation, not just in-school navigationDiane Tavenner:Hey, Michael.Michael Horn:Hey, Diane.Diane Tavenner:It is really good to be back for a sixth season, and it's especially good because I'm recording in person with you.Michael Horn:We always treasure those times when we actually get to be face to face, not in front of the video cameras. And that's another perk because, Diane, the other people in the audience listening to us, they don't have to see us. That's a good thing.Diane Tavenner:So some folks have been wondering if we were coming back for the sixth season, given how late it is in the school year. We wanted to just be transparent about what's going on. And so two things. First, we've always wanted to come back. We get tons of feedback and questions and suggestions that are totally awesome and interesting, and it just suggests to us that there's a lot of people across the education spectrum who are listening and getting some value. So we want to be here. And our roles have been changing and our schedules have been changing, and they're a little bit less predictable. And so there are just some logistics we've run into.But here we are. And excited to be here.Michael Horn:Yes, indeed. We're figuring it out. You have taken a new job over the last couple years, which will be directly applicable to today's episode, obviously. I teach in the fall, and then I've learned teaching while putting out a new book that we're going to talk about. It's just really busy, and I don't know if I would have repeated that if I had the chance, but now we're here in person, we're doing this, so let's talk.I would say our curiosity is really leading us to focus on some books that not just me, but other folks have coming out. And also artificial intelligence. AI is everywhere in the education landscape. People are asking a lot of big questions. Frankly, we are asking a lot of big questions. There are a lot of hot, polarized takes, and I think that's never been our thing, Diane.Diane Tavenner:No, I mean, you know we've always talked about our original motivation. And the reason we started this podcast is because we wanted to think about third way solutions. We wanted to think about bringing groups together for really meaningful, purposeful engagement and education and solutions - things that would move us forward. And so, you know, I think that combined with the fact that we both share a very strong belief that schools are in desperate need of redesign, I think maybe growing more desperate every day.Michael Horn:Maybe that is our hot take. But we're different from the poles in that way…Diane Tavenner:Right, right. And, you know, they have to change in order to meet the needs of today's learners as well as our society. And when the pandemic began, we both thought it would be finally this catalyst that we needed to accelerate the change. We thought we could maybe contribute to that by highlighting what learning could look like and elevating sort of third way perspectives and solutions for how to get there. I don't think either of us are satisfied with the progress that's been made since we started this several years ago. But we remain optimists and determined and so here we are.Michael Horn:Those are good words to use, I think, to describe how we both feel. It's also one of the reasons AI is so interesting to us, because we do think it's an important tool. And I'll say that again. It's a tool, not the ends. So do not expect us to talk about AI for AI's sake, but rather in the context of learning and the learning environments we create. And I'll say in all candor, as we start this season, like I don't think anyone really knows its ultimate impact. Anyone who does, they're lying because it's a lot of theorizing right now. I remain incredibly curious about it. I would say I'm very malleable still in my thinking.Michael Horn:Maybe "Malcolm Gladwellian," if you will, if that's a phrase. I don't know if I'm going to reverse everything I've ever thought, but I'm really curious about where it will and won't have impact. What's positive and negative about that, the timeframe over which it will happen and want to learn a lot about that. I will also say I think it's important to note because it's on the minds of a lot of folks. We are obviously statement of the obvious about to have a change in federal leadership and the President and the administration. And there are a lot of questions, of course, about how that might influence or impact what's happening in education as well.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, and I think one of the things we do is we lean into topics that arise and certainly, you know, there's stuff that's going to be coming our way and when we think that we can bring a useful perspective or make a contribution, we, we get together and talk about it. And so I think we can expect some of that over the next year. We're not exactly sure what it will be, but I think we can expect it. And then I think finally, you've always spanned K-12 higher ed and workforce. My work continues to expand as well. And so I think we'll always or continue to center K-12.You know, we hope to help folks see all of the connections between these, you know, sometimes siloed elements of education and learning, because there really is a bigger, broader picture and set of connections.Michael Horn:I'm glad you've come over to the dark side of not just K-12, but, you know, look, K-12 at some level is a dependent system on higher ed in the workforce, and those are extraneous macro conditions that impact what K-12 is preparing students for. So it's a really important conversation to frankly set the context for our schools.Diane Tavenner:Totally. And so with all of that context studying as we launch this new season, I am really excited for this first conversation. Michael, your new book came out literally yesterday as of recording time, and I really wanted the opportunity to interview you about it. We had such a fun interview this summer with David Yeager around his. His book that came out 10 to 25.And I just wanted to do a reprise, you know, like, how do we do that again with your book? You being you, when I suggested this, you said it should be a co-interview. And I was like, I don't have a book coming out.But you rightly pointed out that your book is so related to the work that I'm doing and this is new work for me. At first I thought, you know, well, I don't know. And then I really read the book and I was like, okay, this. This could be interesting. Usual. You were right. So we're going to have this kind of hybrid book talk today.Michael Horn:Well, you actually were showing me a version of the product platform that you're building. And I was like, holy cow, we did it again! Unintentionally. We have wound up with a lot of similar insights. We come there different ways. We do, but we often find ourselves in these places of convergence.Diane Tavenner:Yes, indeed. It’s awesome.Well, let's start with some basics. Your newest book is called "Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in your Career." You have two co-authors on this one, so Ethan Bernstein and Bob Moesta. And the book was released on November 19th. And so I guess my first question to you is, why? Why do you decide to write this book and why is it so important, especially given this moment that we're living in? Like even more important than when you started writing it, I think.Michael Horn:Yeah so I will say there's a personal story to that and then there's like the story of why we think this is the right book for the moment. And I'll lean into that second one for a moment because what we saw obviously during the COVID pandemic was the great resignation in the United States. We saw literally unprecedented numbers of people leaving jobs, trying to make progress in their lives and then frankly, unprecedented numbers of them really dissatisfied with the moves that they had just made. And I'll say 1 billion people roughly every year worldwide switch jobs. In the US we switch jobs every four years. And we have a lot of evidence, according to Gallup, Pew others that at least 2/3 of the workforce in the jobs they are presently are completely disengaged, quiet quitting, whatever you want to call it. And so our basic sense, I think is that we make progress at some level by switching jobs, but it does not line up with how companies think about progression.And we want to help empower people to realize you get to hire your next job, treat it like product development, prototype what you could be doing and figure out the trade offs you're going to make. Like what's a better or worse fit for you so that you can get the progress that you're really prioritizing. So that's where we've landed and why I think it's so important. And we've obviously pitched. You know, we talked last year on this, on this season about your own switch. But like, just to remind folks, you started thinking, "Hey, college for all is not the narrative either." Careers in K-12 schools and the jobs and what people like doing is a really important thing to start figuring out. So maybe talk about that as well.Diane Tavenner:Well, first of all, all that really resonates for me and it's just, it's stuff I know, but when you just lay down all those stats that way, it just is a really profound, it's so important. That's why we're doing this work. So here's what I would say. One of the fun parts of being in a startup is that I get to spend a lot more time with young people than I did when I leading a much bigger organization. And you know, over the last year we've been working directly with high schools and their students to build Future, the Future Platform, which is a life navigation platform and it's really designed for right now, young people, ages 15 to 25. And you know, our small team is made up of college interns and recent college grads. We're building for this group.We need to, you know, be this group, except for a couple of us sort of older and grayer folks. And working with them has been so fun and inspiring and enlightening. And you know, we set out to build Future because we didn't think anything like it existed. So as you're going through your list, you're like, there's all this reality and we don't think, you know, when we look around we're like, how do high school and college students figure out what life they want to lead and what careers will enable that life and how to connect that to the day to day decisions and activities they're engaged in. Which, by the way, may very well be college. But college is a means to that end. It is not the end. And I think that's where we went wrong or went sideways for quite a while.And I'm saying "we" in the, you know, grander sense there. And so currently there's a bunch of technology that's designed to manage the process of applying to college. There's a bunch of websites, you can search for information on careers, but there's nothing that meets you where you are and kind of walks beside you for a decade plus as you figure out you are what you want, what the world has to offer, and where those two things intersect and meet. And so even though your job moves and future are focused on people at different ages and stages, one of the things I noticed immediately was that you identify four primary questions for why people seek to change jobs. And those seem to be so similar to the motivations of young people who I'm talking to and working with. And so let's talk about those four. Will you tell us about those four motivations and what you learned?Michael Horn:Yeah, absolutely. So we did the Jobs To Be Done methodology, I should say that, which is like, explains why people switch behavior. One of the big things is "Bitchin' ain't switchin." Just because you're complaining about something doesn't mean you're going to actually switch behavior. We want to see people who've actually made switches and then we code for the pushes and pulls. So the things that are driving them away from the status quo and I'm pulling you toward this new future. And then we cluster them. Okay, so four quests.First one, get out. These are people who are like, just ain't good. It's going nowhere fast. Managers, you know, we're not vibing. The job description is not working. I want to reset how my energy is being used and how my capabilities are being used. I need to find some place better and quick. The second quest is what we call regain control.And these are people who are really like. I actually like a lot of what I get to do on a daily basis, like how it uses my capabilities. But I don't like how it energizes or makes use of my time. I feel like that's out of control. This could be like I need more work life balance. It could be I actually want to figure out how or where I do like hybrid work. Right?Has become a big deal remote work. It could be that micromanaging boss. My energy's out of whack. The third one is what we call regain alignment. So these are people who basically say the opposite. I really like how my energy is being used in my time. But I'm feeling disrespected for the skills that I bring to the table and what they're being what I'm being asked to do. And then the last one, we call these folks to take the next steppers.This is I would say the closest thing to sort of climbing the career ladder or in our choosing college book, like get into the best college for its own sake. I have no idea why but like I just. That's what I'm supposed to do. And these are people that like actually I like my how my energy is being used. I like what I'm doing. Let's take that next step. I will say there's like U turns in this one as well. We profile some people where that is but it really is fundamentally for all these quests.And we'll get into this something that I've learned from you which is the “ings”—what you're doing, not what the title is and the perks in the surface level. Like does what you do on a daily basis really line up with the things that give you energy and are the skill sets that you're good at? And as you know, those are interdependent.Diane Tavenner:Totally. For those people who work in K-12 and specifically in high school, I and specifically with seniors in high school, I suspect they recognize a lot of connection there. So when I read these motivations I was like, oh my gosh. This is is describing high school kids. They want to get out. They're maybe not regaining or real control or realigning. They're doing it for the first time, really.Michael Horn:I think that's right. And we also, you've noted to me we don't really give high school students in our present design of schools the opportunity to, like, go deep in something and then be like, "Oh, I actually want to regain alignment because I've gone off somewhere." Right? Like, we don't actually give them those choices.Diane Tavenner:Right, right. But as you describe the energy, so many kids in high school are like, my energy is not here. This is not feeding me. Like, I. I could be out doing things, making money, you know, and I don't feel respected. There's tons of high school kids who don't feel like what they can do and are capable of doing are being illuminated or highlighted. So I just saw so many connections there, and I thought it was such a great way to start the book. We're going to get very practical here, but let's spend a couple of moments on the research.There's a ton of research. Oh, my go, gosh, buckets of research underlying your book. And the same is true for our platform as well. So let's just spend a couple of minutes on some of those key points that really matter to you and connect to those nine steps with the, you know, journey. And again, I'll. I'll point out, I bet there's going to be some intersections there. But let's do that for a few moments.Michael Horn:Sounds good. So I'll just say, like, we actually... Ethan's a qualitative researcher. He's a professor at the Harvard Business School. Bob Moesta is the "Jobs to be Done" guy. He created the theory. He loves to do interviews. Over the course of a decade plus, we collected data on over a thousand individuals making the choice to switch jobs.And then Ethan designed an entire course around it, which allowed him to coach literally hundreds of people in lots of different career walks. Not just like your HBS students, because it was an exec online course. So, you know, they're construction workers. Like, it's a pretty wide range to actually start to build processes and protocols. And then Bob actually, when the pandemic hit, Clay Christensen died. This is the personal side of the story. And the three of us agreed within a few weeks to write the book with each other. Bob started prototyping with cohorts, actually coaching them through the process.And so we built a first process. He then improved it in a second step. Then a third step. He tried to break it by seeing how fast. What if we limited time? Like, how are all the ways we can purposely break it and then the fourth and fifth were like, let's put it back together with what we've learned. And that's what's in the book.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. That's awesome. And again, so parallels. You're doing this in a more analog version.Michael Horn:Yes. And you get to do it in a digital.Diane Tavenner:I'm doing it in a digital. But so, so, so similar. And, you know, I think what I'm drawing on is the research around how young people develop, the learning science behind that. The power of purpose in driving. You know, the striving for a good and fulfilled life. And that's all present in what you're doing.Michael Horn:And I would. Yeah. On that front. Right? Like, I would say, we pulled in a lot of those unintentionally throughout or maybe intentionally. Of purpose was a big one. Progress is really what jobs to be done is all about. That's connected.And then Ethan, obviously, being a professor at HBS and sort of the HR person has a mountain of research on a lot of stuff around. Like he's the transparency paradox guy. Like, when is that actually a good idea, when is it a bad idea and things of that nature. And so we got to pull all of that in as we were building these.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's cool is that, and this is a thing we're both committed to is that research for its own purpose is not useful.Michael Horn:Not very useful.Diane Tavenner:So we want it to always be applied. And so, you know, what we have, what we are building is the app is embodies the application of that research. And so we're very committed to the research, but in that real way. So let's just jump into a few of the steps. I'm not sure we'll get through all nine.Michael Horn:Let's not do all nine. Let's focus on the ones that are interesting for your purposes as well.Diane Tavenner:Okay. So I love this [second] step. Energy drivers and drains. And you just sort of alluded to it. But let's dig in a little bit more. It addresses so many of the challenges I have with traditional career coaching. So. Yeah.Michael Horn:Oh, boy. So I want to hear this on the back end because it occurred to me we wrote a book, for people, frankly, who've had at least one job and then the backward mapping of into the K-12 and higher ed processes I actually think is your platform does it pretty naturally. But this big first one is not a new idea. A lot of people have written about understand what energizes you, what drains your energy, how that changes based on context. You know, Bill Burnett, design your life like a lot of this stuff. Right? But what I think we did uniquely here is we want you to look at your. Your actual experiences and reflect on times when you were in flow and your energy was really turned on and it was building and so forth.And at past work where it was draining that energy. Now, for someone in the job market, we're looking at past jobs, past roles you've had. My sense is if you're a K-12 student, it's looking at the projects you do, the times you're in classes, the extracurricular activities you're involved with. And then I think this is where your ings come into Diane, and where you've built around this a little bit.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I think you're exactly right. So one of the things I notice and observe both in K-12, but also in anytime people are sort of coaching or helping people figure out career paths is it's a pretty common practice that they give people sort of this, what I would call a black box assessment that is somehow going to figure out what your aptitudes are or, you know, what you're going to like. But ED is a black box. People don't understand what's going on in that assessment. And what it usually spits out is either some very high level things like, you know, you're a whatever, or I'm not even thinking I'm a good whatever because I never pay attention to these things. But you know what I'm talking about.Michael Horn:Yeah. No, you said you ship to my class. Right? Like, you know, these. This is your fixed personality, so to speak. Or this is your fixed, you know, aptitudes.Diane Tavenner:Right?Michael Horn:And therefore you should be, you know, communicator. Right? Or you should be. Mine is like writer, private equity, like three others. Right? And you're like, what careers?And I mean writer. I guess it landed. But you know, when I might.Diane Tavenner:Well, when they get mortician, they're like, what? What are you talking about? For the most part. And so I don't like that black boxiness because the whole point is we're empowering individuals to figure out the life they want. And so what I love about this is they're actually reflecting on and thinking about things they've already done to apply them to the future.Michael Horn:Well, stay with it. Right? This is the big flip in the book, which is that most places think of job seekers as the supply side, like the, the available pool of talent and the jobs out there as the demand side. Companies demanding workers. Our notion is you flip that. That the individuals, right, have to actually learn about themselves so they can figure out what they are demanding.Diane Tavenner:Yes.Michael Horn:As they go seek out work and that they are the demand side. So it's a flip from labor economists, but it's what I've learned from you about the importance of agency, frankly, building this metacognition about what really makes you tick and then being able to pattern match well.Diane Tavenner:And this is exactly the flip I want high school students to have is I want them to, whether it be applying to college or the career they're thinking about, I want them to see themselves as the people who are making the choice. And I think one of the, you know, challenges that the College For All movement and exclusive colleges have created is that young people feel like they're just trying to get someone to pick them and that it's very arbitrary. And they don't, you know, they're. It's not clear what to do versus feeling totally empowered to be like, no, I'm gonna decide who I am and what I care about and then I'm gonna go find the fit for that. Totally. So I love this. Let's. Let's talk about another one.So there's this idea, and it's very connected, this idea of the career balance sheet and the assets and liabilities, which in my view is such a positive kind of flip from what we normally hear, which is like strengths and weaknesses. So talk about that contrast and what you're doing here.Michael Horn:Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the big thing, right, is that again, this sort of strengths and weaknesses, which I like, I think is useful input and data, but it's a very fixed perspective on what an individual is. How many of you have taken Myers Briggs and like come out with a pro personality type and then realized, actually, in this situation I'm quite extroverted, and in this situation I get a little withdrawn and like, my introverted side comes out. And context is really important. Todd Rose talks about the context principle, right? And so our big thing. And then there's Carol Dweck's work around growth mindset that you can actually build capabilities over time. And so this is the big idea, right, is that we actually have these career balance sheets. Boris Groysberg, the professor at HBS, there's that research, came up with that idea.And basically what he said is that assets from an accounting perspective are resources that have future economic value that are acquired at cost. And so your capabilities, if you will, your assets are skills, your knowledge, your ability to do things, also your credentials and degrees and things of that nature that have value and they're acquired at a cost. And that's the liability side. What's the time and money it takes to actually learn that third language, if you will, to actually become a coder? These things don't happen magically, which is, I think, frankly, another weakness of a lot of these things is like, oh, you'll just learn these skills and do it and no one asks you, what's the trade off in terms of the time you have to invest. Oh, go be a doctor. Well, you gotta get through organic chemistry, at least in our present system.So is that gonna work for you, that investment? And so that, that's basically the idea. And then I guess the last thing I would say is we also want people to realize that these assets you build, they have a shelf life. They depreciate over time. Your degree will be a lot less valuable 30 years from now than it is when you first perhaps come out of college. Your technical coding skills, we know those are eroding faster than ever, thanks to AI, maybe even faster than that. And so what's the useful life of each of these assets you've built? And be like brutally honest with that and then really understand what are the trade offs of, like, where you want to go in developing your further assets? The last one, I'll say this, we talk a lot about the importance of social capital and network. It is, but those have shelf lives as well. Unless you're consciously reinvesting in them to build them up in the directions you want to go.Diane Tavenner:Totally. This is so aligned with how I have experienced some of the best folks across the country starting to talk to and engage with young people about their futures. And they're framing it in the language of ROI or return on investment. I think we're talking about the exact same thing here, which is this idea of like, we need young people to realize, like, whatever you're doing post high school, you are making an investment that is a liability.Michael Horn:When I saw that on your, in your platform, I was like, oh my gosh, like, alarm bell. I was like, this is the same thing. It's just a different age and stage.Diane Tavenner:It is. And so what we're trying to show them is like, think about not only your, your money, but your time, because that is your most precious resource.Michael Horn:That is your most precious resource. I mean, right when people talk a lot of times, and I'm now talking about adult learners, for example, about their lack of resources to, you know, they're working three jobs and they're trying to get the degree to get ahead. Time poverty is the biggest poverty they face.Diane Tavenner:Totally. Well, I mean, I feel that right now.Michael Horn:Right? We feel it right now. Yeah.Diane Tavenner:Literally. So we talk about that return on investment, like what do you, what can you spend and how quickly do you need to have that start paying off? Like what is it actually going to buy you? Buy a good return. Right? Like you've got to invest in assets that are going to get you the return you want. And I, I fear that a lot of young people don't even think about their time or their money into college as investments. And so there is no sort of plan to get a return on that. And as a result, so many are not getting a return on that investment. And so they're, they have massive debt, not just financial debt, but, but this sort of more skill, knowledge.Michael Horn:Yeah, I mean we call it like this is how careers go bankrupt when the liability side is bigger than the assets you've built and frankly are misaligned. And this is where these things are interconnected; misaligned to what gives you energy.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. This is so interesting. We could have a long conversation about how I feel like in education we've gone so far away from thinking about money and business that we've actually done a really significant disservice to everyone who's in it. And I kind of know why we maybe sort of went that way, but we went way too far. And I think we've got to, we've got to pull it back.Michael Horn:Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I think it probably also explains some of the populations that have become more disaffected with schooling over the years. I'm thinking of males at the moment as one example, but I think these are all factors.Diane Tavenner:Yeah. One of the things I love about the book is that of course you're asking people to prototype the jobs and the careers that they want. And you know, you and I are both pretty obsessed with prototyping. We talk about it all the time. I was in your class yesterday, we were talking about prototyping and I think we're obsessed with it because it's so much smarter to spend time, you know, in a low stakes way, figuring out options and ideas and really sort of digging into them before you actually spend all this time and energy to get into them. And so talk about how you, how this comes to be and what it looks like in the job moves world.Michael Horn:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's exactly right. What you just said is prototyping is how we learn. And so what we really want you to do in the book is get away from one of the biggest mistakes I think people who are looking for new jobs make is they think like, "Oh, I'm chasing the one job." And instead we want you to create divergent prototypes, like really far afield. You know, next role, same company, totally different company, same role. And then like different careers. Things I've always dreamed about, like, really go spread them wide, A so that you can start to understand and learn about many different careers and how what drives your energy and your capabilities, like back to those ing is what you like doing actually maps onto these different types of roles and start to flush them out.And I, I guess this is the next piece of it. We really want to help people learn before they switch, not afterwards.Diane Tavenner:Yes.Michael Horn:And to do so, as you know, there's all sorts of things you could do. Job shadowing, you know, the expeditions. Right? You had in Summit, right? Where you're actually spending real time with real professionals. All that is great. It's not always accessible to people. And so the other way we do it is suggest is informational interviewing. And this is a very different kind of informational interview from the one at least as a kid I went on where like, you know, my parents would say, like, "Oh, here's a friend of mine, you know, they're a journalist. Like, go do an informational interview with them." I had no idea what to say or ask in those conversations. But here what we want to say is like, you've done the reflection on what you want to do and what drives your energy. So figure out is what they do on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. Where does it align and where does it not align? So you get a real sense of what it would be like to be in this job.And then the contrasts between these things start to create meaning about where do you want to go next? We, I guess we could talk about how to funnel it down. But I'm curious, like, you've built this out a little bit as well. Right? So how do you think about it?Diane Tavenner:Yeah, I mean, very aligned with what you're saying. And I think a key point I want to pick up on is like, people are really, you know, attuned to and focused on. And I think you're seeing more in high schools where people are trying to do More shadow days, more job fairs, more, you know, company visits or employer visits, more informational interviewing. And I think you just made a really important point that we're focused on, which is those things are all great, but they're not nearly as good if you go into them cold and not knowing what to ask or not what you want to learn for them from them.It's not as good for you. It's not as good for the people who you are with. And so one of the things we're doing in the platform is helping young people really do exploration before they get into those experiences so they can make the most of them. And I think your whole steps, your sequence, really helps people get ready for those experiences so they make the most of them. And in our case, you know, we have 868 careers that. And there are all these really thoughtful ways to explore them and figure out, like, what parts of this career are you going to like that match up with who you are and your ings and what you like doing. And so you go into those, those experiences and conversations with a lot more knowledge and with, with what you actually want to figure out coming out the other side and then reflect on. And I think then you talk about moving into ranking those prototypes, which is, which we're moving towards as well.And I'm curious, like, what, what does that look like? And then, you know, if people open up really wide, how do they then, you know, bring that back and converge, which is another concept you've got in here.Michael Horn:Yeah, absolutely. And I'll try to cover it quickly and then ask like, how you guys do it. But also one of the questions that's always on my mind about doing this in the K-12 environment versus where we are doing it, where like someone's theoretically anyway going to try to find a job within the next few weeks or month or something like that. So the way we do it is you have these energy drivers and you have these capabilities and we've had you bucket them right into the must have the ideally would have and like, okay, I can live without. But, you know, all things being equal, it'd be pretty sweet if it did this too. And then we have you rank these different prototypes and your current job on all of these dimensions. You can think about it of a scale to 1 to 10. And then we've got on jobmoves.com, this really simple Google sheet that will literally multiply it out to give you a mathematical answer.But I think a lot of people frankly have a gut feeling after they've gone through this and you start to realize one of these prototypes or maybe your current role really is hitting most of these critical must have things that you'll be doing. Again, emphasis on the doing, right? That is so important to you and that's how you learn to your point, I love that point. This learning agenda, that's how you start to learn, is you start to use the rank your prototypes so that you can converge and say, this is the one or two things I'd really love to get out in the market now and go find for what I could do next. So we hope the math helps. The force ranking of, you know, I'm on an, I'm an eight on working with people, but I'm a two on leading meetings. You're probably pretty high on leading meetings, I suspect.And so right? And we understand how that role, you know, fills in against it. You know, people should check it out. I didn't explain that correctly, but I think when they check it out, you'll start to see how it works and gives you information about yourself at this moment in time because it changes. So that's the question I want to ask you is like, how do you do the convergence but also how do you do the fact that like people are changing quite a bit when they're still in high school? And also the world of jobs is changing so rapidly. Like we have it easy, right? Because that job, presumably it exists. Yours, like it could be totally different in five years from now because of AI and automation.Diane Tavenner:It could be. And so that's why I think knowing yourself and who you are and what you care about will always matter a lot because then it's a matter of matching up with what a world is offering today, tomorrow, in the future. And so that underlying piece of knowing who you are and in a really granular level, like what gives you energy or what doesn't, or what do you like doing or, you know, all those things is so critical. But we've got a experience we call Compare. One of the things we heard is just let us take two careers side by side after we've done some exploration and then compare them to each other. And there's a couple of things going on here. You know, we're, we're sort of showing a framework for how you can do analysis about the exploration you've done, which it sounds like, you know, you're using some math and some ranking. We're doing something similar. And then the sort of head to head of one versus the other really does illuminate what is more important to me than other things.And it sort of gives some, some credibility to those gut instincts, like you said, or at least makes you talk through them and, and articulate what's going on for you there.Michael Horn:And so I think that's right. And this is, I think, the big thing that our book does. Like there's other books that have a lot of these notions in them. "Design your Life" is, I think, both of our, you know, one of our favorites. But I think what we really want to help people do is figure out how you make the trade offs because there's no job that's perfect. And so we want you to visibly see, oh man, if I take this job, I'm going to have to lead some meetings. But you know what? I'm willing to trade off on that because of all these amazing things I got that are at the top of my list. That's a trade off I'm willing to make.Or the one that Bob loves to always say is, man, I'm going to have to have an hour and a half commute, but it's more money or do I want less money and like it's five minutes from my door. These are real tradeoffs that like you've got to figure out and you have to do it relative to the things that you most want to get in your next role.Diane Tavenner:Totally. And so Michael, where do they go from there in your process after we're sort of converging and we've done this analysis, just bring us home.Michael Horn:Yeah, I'll try, I'll try to whip through the final few steps quickly for our, for our audience, Diane. But essentially this is all the demand side, right? We're doing a ton of demand side work around what you want and the trade offs you're willing to make. So now we switch to the supply side. What jobs actually exist. We're going to start looking at postings, we're going to use those interviewing techniques to actually talk to real people and use our network because it turns out 70% of jobs are filled by a network, someone in your network. And the reality, I think, with AI is that's going to become more in the years ahead. I think social capital is going to get more important.And so we then help you find those jobs, unpack what they really mean. Are they actually what you think they are? We teach you to tell your story through Pixar. All this reflection you've done you need to be able to explain it in an elevator pitch. We help you with that and then we help you. The final step is just a personal cheat sheet so that you know in a really easy way what makes you tick, the work environments where you're most likely to be successful. But it's also something that if it's not too Millennial or Gen Z, you can share with people around you so they know where you're excellent. And frankly, like, you know, you know, a bunch of my weaknesses, we all have them.Like, let's be honest with them. This is where I'm not as good. And can you build other people on the team that are awesome at it? Because frankly, my energy is such that I'm probably never going to really lean into that. Let's be asset based as opposed to deficit minded.Diane Tavenner:Yeah, I love so much about that. The, the last quick thing, I had an amazing mentor who always says, like, you know, people spend all this time trying to improve the things that they're not good at, rather than doubling down on the things that they are good at and being great at that, you know,? So I favor that approach.I will just say, you know, for those who've listened for a long time, you know that my son graduated from college in the spring and he spent the summer working for the Aspen Institute, and then he joined as a field organizer of the Presidential campaign. So he's just coming off of that. And I ordered the book for him, Michael, because I think it's like such a perfect moment and way for him to approach this. And it's funny because so many people really respect what he did. I mean, field organizing is no joke. And they're like, wow, he probably has a lot of skills and a lot of knowledge, and it's just like swimming around there.And I think this process is going to be really amazing for him to make sense of it and figure out where he wants to go next. And so I'll report back, but I'm excited to see how he progresses through that.Michael Horn:Well, thank you. I hope it's a positive one. And I hope for folks listening also that if they check it out for themselves or frankly, if they're trying to retain a team at a school or a nonprofit, they can use it that way. Or frankly, that they get to see how it maps onto what you've built at Futre at Futre.Me right? Because it's an incredible resource. Obviously, you are architecting for kids that they get to keep with them as they leave high school, which is so important. So let's use that as a segue.You bought the book for Rhett. I appreciate that. What are you reading or listening to or watching? Let's wrap us up there.Diane Tavenner:That's great. Well, I have read a ton since we last talked, but the thing I'm immersed in right now is "Nexus" by Yuval Harari. And I will say that I am a big fan of his writing. And because it really provokes me to think differently. I feel like he tells stories and that are very relevant and very current in a way that I'm like, "Oh, I hadn't really thought about it that way or looked at it that way. And this is no different. It feels like very appropriate to this moment in time. And then you burst my bubble a little bit and told me about how he was being brutally attacked for his research.And so I did some looking at that as well, and, you know, that's a longer conversation, but I'm going to stick with it. I think the book is really provocative, especially in this moment as we are coming off an election and into a new administration. And thinking about social media and the media in general and information. Super, super!Yeah. Making me think a lot. Yeah. How about you?Michael Horn:No, that makes sense. That makes sense. And look, I think at the very least, he helps us ask big questions.And that's the theme of what I was going to bring to you, which is that I've been trying to ask better questions, to listen, better not interrupt as much. It's sort of been a New Year's resolution of mine. And so I've read a trio of books around that. First is "Ask: Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You." You have it there for unexpected breakthroughs in leadership in life by our good friend Jeff Wetzler at Transcend. This is not about his work at Transcend, but it's an incredibly good book around asking questions and approaching problems with curiosity.And then I read Hal Gregerson's book from, I think it was 2018, where it's called "Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life." Great book as well.And then I'm rereading the book that I suspect you like as well, which is "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss.Diane Tavenner:Love, Chris.Michael Horn:So good. So good. And I felt like his Masterclass is amazing. I just felt like, okay, I need a refresher on this, because a lot of the stuff that, like Amanda Ripley and others write about in terms of deep listening and frankly, the jobs to be done approach that underpins job moves is all around that deep listening of, like, what is someone really saying and really understand on their terms. So that's what I've been reading.Diane Tavenner:So cool. I like how you got those all piled in. You know, you, you, you slipped three into one.Michael Horn:I'm going thematic, which gives me license. And, hey, it's our show, so we get to do what we want. But for all you tuning in, thank you for doing so. We look forward to the season to come, and we'll see you next time on Class Disrupted.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Geordie Hyland, president and CEO of the American College of Education, joined me to talk about how ACE is helping more educators earn degrees with less student debt. We discussed the college’s laser focus on learning, implementation of credit for prior learning, and the role of employers.Michael Horn:I am delighted that you're all joining us on 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 about this today, I'm delighted because I've got a longtime friend whose career I have followed through his different stops along the way. His name is Geordie Hyland. He's currently the President and CEO of the American College of Education, which we're going to learn a lot about today. But, Geordie, so good to see you. Thanks for joining us.Geordie Hyland:Yeah, thanks for having me. And I've been a big fan of yours over the years. I'm a big fan of your podcast and your work, so it's really an honor to be speaking to you today.Thanks for reading The Future of Education! Please feel free share this post so more can benefit from the insights from this conversation. The Founding Story of American College of EducationMichael Horn:So, you're the doer, so let's dive in. Tell folks about the American College of Education, ACE, what you do, you know, who you serve, how you do it. Because I suspect while it's a really neat story, I suspect it's not one that many people have heard.Geordie Hyland:Okay, well, appreciate the opportunity to do that. So American College of Education, we refer to it internally as ACE. I do think it's a unique institution in higher ed, and we're really trying to get the word out to students, but I think it also has a unique model that's relevant to other higher ed institutions. So it was founded in 2005 with the original premise of offering a Master's less than $5,000 to teachers. And there was a founding decision, not even though it's HLC accredited, Higher Learning Commission accredited, not to accept Title 4 loans. And so I think with. With the original premise and with that founding decision, we've really scaled over time with those guiding principles in mind. So we're at about 11,000 students right now, and we offer programming in education to teachers, but also in healthcare, nursing, and business. And we've really been focused on quality, flexibility, and affordability. And so that affordability combined with quality is key. And currently our Masters are less than $10,000. Our Ed.Ds are less than $24,000. We have a wide range of programming. For example, in education, we can take paraprofessional all the way to a superintendent and everything in between. And I think what is remarkable and something that I wanted to talk about today is the student outcomes. So we have about 85% graduation rate. We have, in States where our students are taking licensure exams, they meet or exceed the state averages. And one of the things that really differentiates us with our focus on working adults that are working full time while they're studying with us is the majority of our students pay as they go, and 85% of them come out with no debt. And in the larger context of higher ed, where there's $1.6 or $1.7 trillion, I can't keep track. There's a lot of federal student loans outstanding, and the average debt rates for a Master's degree student from studies I've seen is about $83,000 and PhD students is about $125,000. I think it's very differentiated and very remarkable that our students come out, 85% of them with no debt and in great standing to be able to proceed in their careers, receive salary adjustments, and really benefit from the experience.Disrupting Educator EducationMichael Horn:Wow. Okay, so there's a lot there that's, I think, super interesting that we can unpack together. But the under $10,000, right, for a Master's degree, the principled decision not to take federal financial aid, meaning students are by definition not going to go into certainly student loan debt from the federal government, maybe they have some private loans. But 85% of your grads graduate with no debt whatsoever, and you have an 85% grad rate. And you're an online program, which means you're much more convenient and accessible. It seems to me like you're sort of fitting into this definition of disruptive innovation that we think. Right? Lower cost, more accessible, more convenient.But you've done it not just around that, but around a value proposition where you're actually delivering on these student outcomes together. I'd love to just hear you sort of riff on that for a little bit. And you know, I guess the corollary is like, it's nice to be a disruptive innovation, but why does it matter? Why? Assuming you think it is.Geordie Hyland:Yeah, why? When I think about disruptive innovation, I go to Dr. Clayton Christensen's book and your important work in the area. And so seeing as you actually wrote the book or a couple books on this, I feel kind of funny talking about it, but I'll give it my best shot in terms of. So when I think about it with disruptive innovation, that the new innovation needs to be convenient and it needs to be affordable. And over time, it moves up market and starts to disrupt an incumbent that is less nimble. And I think another characteristic that's really important is that it brings more consumers into the market that wouldn't previously be interested in that product or service. So at a high level, that's kind of what comes to mind for me. I know there's a lot more behind the theory and in your analysis around it, but that's ACE to me. I mean, when I think about ACE, we've really had the discipline to remain affordable. We haven't raised our prices since 2016 in the larger context of huge tuition inflation. And then we're really committed to credit for prior learning. So we often can, where it's appropriate, provide college credit for professional development for students as they come in or for previous learning to further bring down the costs. And so over time, our net tuition has actually decreased over the last few years. And obviously with the fully online modality that's very convenient for working adults. So our typical student is a working teacher, a working nurse that's working full time, has family commitments that's able to do this while they have lots of life issues going on and then they receive a tangible benefit at the end, typically with more career opportunities and a salary adjustment. So that's very differentiated than the traditional model where a student would have to take time out, they'd have to travel into a bricks and mortar location. And it's just a very, I think a less convenient model traditionally. But I think we're also changing the paradigm with not accepting Title 4 loans and creating a model that's based upon pay as you go, keeping the prices down so our learners are able to do that and for the majority come out with no debt. So to your second question about why it's important. I think that within higher ed right now, I mean I'm a huge believer in the benefit of higher ed. I think that higher ed has such an important place in society. Lots of studies have shown that there's huge benefits to the individual, to society, to all sorts of things. But I think there's elements of higher ed right now that should be disrupted. And one piece of that is the reliance on debt. As I mentioned before, $1.7 trillion of outstanding federal loans, the average debt rates of $83,000 for a Master's, $125,000 for a PhD. Those debt levels can be catastrophic in terms of the impact on individuals lives as they build their career following graduation. There's life decisions like buying a house, starting a family that can lead to mental health issues. There's all sorts of knock down effects with those sorts of debt levels. And I think it makes it challenging for higher ed. Institutions to show the value proposition when there's this addition of the student debt. So one of the things that we've really been able to do in a compelling way is show the ROI for our students. We've worked with Lightcast, which is a market research firm. They looked at the earnings and the data on our graduates, and they calculated that for every $1 a student invests in our tuition, they receive $19.20 in future career earnings. And that's huge. I mean, that's a very tangible metric in terms of what students can expect. And I think that in my opinion, there's huge swaths of higher ed that really are focused on institutional ROI rather than the student ROI. They're not adequately tracking the graduate earnings and career pathways, and they're not as aligned to the, to the business community as they could be in support of their students. There's been a number of studies. I could point your listeners to a couple that I think are really interesting onthis. One is from the Wall Street Journal recently.It was called “Colleges Spend like There's No Tomorrow. These Places Are Just Devouring Money.” That's an interesting one. It studies the 50 major public institutions and it shows that with data looking at their financial statements that they're really not focused on - while the tuition has been going up - the focus in terms of their expenses hasn't been on teaching and learning. It's been on facilities, amenities, more administration, and sports coaches. And another recent study which is really interesting from Georgetown, it's called “Graduate Degrees:Risky and Unequal Paths to the Top.” And it shows that the graduate tuition has increased significantly over the last 20 years and challenges around that. So following that release, we actually called for higher ed institutions that are graduate granting to have a freeze on their tuition for the next five years. As I mentioned, we haven't raised our tuition since 2016. And I really believe there's a place for more higher ed institutions to focus on the teaching and learning, really bring more discipline to their expenses in the interest of the student to try to bring the cost down.ACE’s Secret: A Focus on LearningMichael Horn:There's so much there that's, I think, differentiated, stands out, right? Is really focused on the student and making sure that they get ahead. I mean, that ROI, you listed every $1 of tuition, $19.20 in return, I've got to ask, like, what's the secret sauce? Like, how are you getting outcomes like this? Because, you know, in other online programs, you know, if they graduate 50% of students, we say that they're doing an amazing job for working adults, you are at 85% and getting these sorts of outcomes, like, what's the secret sauce?Geordie Hyland:Well, so I think there's a number of elements to it. I mean, first of all, we have fantastic students that are great students that see the value in coming to us and are really dedicated to the academic, the academic journey. But from an institutional perspective, we really do focus on the teaching and learning. We're focused, since founding, on the value proposition of students. We have a centralized curriculum model. We spend a lot of time on training our faculty, on investing in the process for building their curriculum with our SMEs and with our internal instructional designers, and then on supporting the students throughout their journey. We also are very committed to continuous improvement. We leverage a lot of data to continue to over time, constantly and relentlessly looking at how students are performing and how we can better support their success. And the budgeting process with us is very rigorous. I mean, we're with not increasing tuition since 2016, but with growing over time. You know, we're growing typically 20% a year. We have ratios in terms of our staff to students for some of the positions. And we also have invested heavily in our platforms and our technology. But we really have a lot of discipline in terms of what we invest in and in terms of innovating and trying new things. We pilot a lot of things and then we have a succeed or fail fast approach where if things aren't working, we're proactive in terms of, okay, let's shut this down and focus on another pilot. And that's our approach to innovation.Striking the Balance with Credit for Prior LearningMichael Horn:Gotcha. No, it's just, it really does stand out. And I guess the other piece of that is you said credit for prior learning, your net tuition has decreased over time. Yes, I guess I have two questions on that. One, it strikes me that a lot of institutions, they'll give a lot of lip service to credit for prior learning, or frankly credit from credits earned at another institution, but it feels not really in their business model or their faculty's interest to do so. And so they sort of make it hard and complicated. But then the second question, I guess is the corollary, which is like, how do you make sure you're not just giving credit for prior learning and becoming a diploma mill. Right?And just giving out degrees because it sort of gets people through quicker. Like, how do you balance those two things?Geordie Hyland:That's a great couple questions, and there's a lot to that, but I appreciate the question. So I think first of all, it's very consistent with our model of being focused on the student value proposition to have a well thought out approach to credit for prior learning. So as students come in, we're looking at their previouslearnings and assessing credit as appropriate. But we also have corporate partnership with professional development providers where we've looked across their professional development and then for the professional development as appropriate, we've provided pathways for credit into our programs. And I think there's a lot of benefit there to the student because it can shave off time, which is a huge value proposition to student and tuition cost in their journey with us. And so it's in the interest of the student. And I've often heard that there are barriers set up in a lot of higher ed to doing this effectively, but I don't think those barriers are in the best interest of the student when the credit is provided appropriately.In terms of our approach to that, we've set up an internal team. We have individuals focused solely on credit for prior learning. They're following the industry best practices, they're working across our academic and other teams to make sure that there's comfort in how we're assessing and providing credit for the prior learning. And so we're very comfortable with the process and with the fact that it's solely in the best interest of the student. If they already know the materials in a given area and they've put in the time and invested in it, it makes sense to provide the credit for them.Michael Horn:Yeah, it makes sense. And obviously I guess you see it in the licensure exams. Your graduates are having no problem graduating. So you know, you're not like reducing academic standards or something like that?Geordie Hyland:No, for sure. And we also see it in the employer satisfaction, over 90% in terms of their satisfaction with us. And we see that in the career progression of our graduates. Our graduates self report their first year salary increases and the latest data on that is in the first year across our degree programs, the average is over $20,000 in terms of that salary increase. So we're seeing a lot of value for the student and we're seeing a lot of value for the ultimate employers. So the school districts or hospital systems in them supporting our students as they get their degrees and continue to go on their employment journey with the employers.The Role of Employers in Higher Ed.Michael Horn:Well, so that's the next part I wanted to talk about, which is like the, the employers, you're graduating students into them, sometimes they're working and you're sort of elevating them within. How do you think about employers and their place in the higher education ecosystem? Maybe more generally or at a level of like philosophically. Right? What's the role of employers in higher ed?Geordie Hyland:Sure. So I think that given that there's a challenge with the value proposition of higher ed, it's important that higher ed works closely with employers to make sure that there's a close connection between the learnings and the career pathways of graduates so that the school experience can provide a pathway for, that's relevant for students into employers. So what that means for us is, I mean, we work incredibly closely with, with employers. Obviously we're working with working adults. So the stakes are high. We need to make sure, so we have advisory boards, we have lots of feedback loops. We need to make sure that our, our curriculum is, is as relevant as possible and as close as possible to job experience to enable our graduates to get ahead. We also have in many of our courses, job embedded learning opportunities where our students can work with their employers on actual assignments and projects. So that's one piece of it. We need to be very relevant for our adult learners. But then there's lots of other pieces to it that we're focused on. So we have partnerships with thousands of school districts and hospital systems where employees can come to us and receive an education as benefit, pay for our degrees, and then be reimbursed by their employer. Those are really important relationships. And again, very, you know, we spend a lot of time with those partners to make sure that we're supporting those relationships. So that's another piece. The professional development partnerships that we talked about with credit for prior learning, that's another really important piece where we work closely with corporate entities and then we are fortunate to serve the teachers and nurses.And in those industries there's a lot of shortages. So everyone that's listening, I'm sure, has read about teacher shortages, nursing shortages, and so we are very passionate about doing what we can to contribute to helping to solve or being a solution to that contributes positively to those shortages. So we, in the spirit of that, we work directly with the leadership of school districts and also hospital systems to provide bespoke solutions to help strengthen the human capital and to help those institutions better attract, retain and upskill their employees. So there's a number of levels on how we partner and support employers. And so it's very important to us, and I think it's hugely important to the value proposition overall for higher ed.Leveraging Elements of the Apprenticeship ModelMichael Horn:No, it makes a ton of sense. Okay, we could finish up in a couple different places here, but like, it's actually two more questions. So it seems to me, as you're describing this that you are not an apprenticeship model, but you actually have a lot of the features of an apprenticeship model. And what I mean by that is the students you're serving, they're often employed, not just in general, but like employed at the place that they might then continue to work as they upskill.Geordie Hyland:Right.Michael Horn:And so it strikes me that like, and you're giving credit for prior learning and like if they do something on the job, you can, you can give credit for that or work based learning. And so I, you know, teacher, excuse me. Apprenticeship degrees are getting a lot more attention right now.Geordie Hyland:Yeah, no, it's great to see.Michael Horn:But it seems like you are actually doing a lot of the features of an apprenticeship without the name. Am I, am I misreading it or do you.Geordie Hyland:No, I think that's fair. And we're certainly doing everything we can to support school districts and hospital systems. And if you think about how we work with a school system, for example, I mean we have programming from a Bachelor completer to a Master's, a principal certificate, teacher licensure, Ed.D, and a wide range of different programs. And so we can really support the career pathway of an individual as they progress in their career. And our programs actually stack together. And so for example, many credits come through from a Master's into our Ed.D. And so I think you're spot on in terms of we're looking to make our learning come alive and be as relevant as possible. There's opportunities for individuals to work directly with their employer as they're in our programs.And we're also really trying to map what we do to the organizational help of the organizations that we're supporting. And I think, you know, one of the things that we're hopeful that we're, we will do over, that we contribute to over time and we'll be able to show over time as well is as we're working closely with the school district supporting the progression of the strengthening of the human capital that really helps with learning outcomes or likewise at a hospital system as we're supporting the progress of the human capital that can lead to better health outcomes. So we're very focused, I think on the strengthening of human capital and ultimately the communities that we work in.The Employee Experience at ACEMichael Horn:So a lot of mutual benefit there and then the other place it seems like you have mutual benefit is the people that make it happen internally at ACE, which is the employees. I know you have incredibly low turnover rates. People stay, they build careers at the college. Talk a little bit about sort of, you know, the employee experience at ACE, Faculty, staff.Geordie Hyland:Yeah.Michael Horn:And why that matters for what you do.Geordie Hyland:Yeah, no, appreciate the question. I mean, we are a people business, so we live and die by our people. And I think one of the aspects of ACE that's really important to call out is there's a very strong connection between the mission of the organization and our day to day operations. And so I think there's a close connection there where our teams and our staff and our faculty can feel like they're contributing to helping strengthen the human capital of school districts every day or hospital systems. And it's very tangible and so I think that really helps. We have a very mission driven team that really wants to make a difference and I think a lot of them, it's fair to say, really feel like they are making a difference day to day. So I think that's very helpful and really helps us to hire the best people as well because there's people that come in and feel like they can make a difference with us. We've been fortunate to be recognized by Energage as a top employer over the last three years. 93% of our employees feel like there's a strong mission and sort of believe in the direction of the institution. So I think that's important. And then also we're a B Corp and so that that is a separate process that we go through with B Labs that validates that we're having a positive impact on the greater good. And our staff can volunteer in their local communities 14 hours a year. That's supported by us as PTO. We call it Civic hours. So there's a lot of aspects of ACE that I think are helping people feel like we're trying to do the right thing by our students and by our communities. It's interesting.I've seen a lot of articles lately about employers bringing staff back to the office. We're actually fully remote. Our students are obviously fully remote. Our staff is fully remote. And I think that also helps us to attract the best people for any given role because we're not constrained to one specific location within the United States.Michael Horn:Super interesting. Geordie, thank you so much for coming on and talking about the American College of Education. What you do, the students you serve, the employers, districts, hospital systems, etc. That you serve and then the people at the heart of it really appreciate what you are doing for students. Last thing before we leave, folks who want to learn more about ACE, where should they go besides listening to your voice? Come on commercials while they're maybe on a rower watching the NFL Channel.Geordie Hyland:Yeah, no, I would recommend just going to our website, www.ACE.edu. There's lots of information there and I'm always available to answer questions if anyone wants to reach out to me as well. But I really appreciate your time. And as I mentioned, I'm a great, great fan. Congrats on your new book and love watching what you do.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.