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

Every few years it seems that hype grows around the possibilities of unbundling education. The latest fuel is the emergence of at least 14 states with education savings accounts (ESA) programs that allow families to pay for a variety of educational programs and supports from public funds.As a recent article in Education Next, where I’m an executive editor, proclaimed, “While parent-led unbundling is not a new phenomenon, the current movement has expanded so quickly that it’s been dubbed ‘the Great Unbundling’ of K–12 schooling.”But we should be cautious about such grand statements. Good theory on innovation can help us parse out the hype from what’s likely to play out.First, in favor of the argument that we will see more unbundling, despite the media’s conflation of ESAs with vouchers, there is a substantial difference between the two that can drive unbundling.A voucher allows an individual to use a set amount of funds on one specific service, in this case tuition at a private school. Think of it more like a ticket. The voucher can’t be separated into smaller, discreet parts. As a result, the consumer doesn’t have much incentive to think about things like cost-quality tradeoffs and value below the amount of the voucher. They don’t benefit from spending less than the value of the voucher. They use the voucher to get access to a school, and then it’s done.An education savings account, on the other hand, deposits funds into an account that a family controls. Like a bank account, they can use the money in a variety of ways. They don’t have to spend it all in one place. They can decide to spend on a microschool with limited offerings that costs less than the funds available in the account because they know they’ll have other funds remaining to spend on other services like tutoring, enrichment activities like music or sports, specific academic programs, or even tickets to SeaWorld akin to a school field trip. As a result, they have lots of incentive to think about cost-quality tradeoffs and to consider a broader universe of education possibilities that transcend schools. Families can theoretically even decide not to spend all the money deposited in the account in any given year and save the money for future purchases or investments in a child’s education. Much as is the case with the emerging research around income stipends such as the Chelsea Eats Program, although the funds come from a third party—in this case the government—the money now belongs to the families; they are able to break it out as they need to support their needs and specific circumstances.At the same time, just because families have the option to spend on a variety of educational services and unbundle schooling, doesn’t mean they will choose to. A good theory—the theory of interdependence and modularity—helps illustrate why. It casts cold water on the notion that this will be the “great unbundling of school” rather than a “relative unbundling.”In every industry, the early successful products and services often have an interdependent architecture—meaning that they tend to be proprietary and bundled. The reason is simple: when a technology is immature, to make the products good enough so that they will gain traction, an organization has to wrap its hands around the system architecture so that it can wring out every ounce of performance.As a technology matures, however, it eventually overshoots the raw performance that many customers need. As a result, new disruptive innovations emerge that are more modular, and customers become less willing to pay for things such as raw functionality and increased reliability. Instead, they start to prioritize the ability to customize a product to their individual needs at an affordable price. Customizing a bundled service is expensive because it forces a full redesign of the underlying system architecture, but customizing a modular offering is affordable because it is merely a matter of mixing and matching discrete parts that fit together in well-understood ways.To believe that unbundling will occur en masse, one also must believe that schools have overshot what families desire in terms of functionality and reliability.On the one hand, that’s likely what’s driving some families to cobble together a variety of educational offerings.Strange as it may sound, there are some families that are overserved by today’s schools. They don’t need the full “bundle” that many traditional schools offer: the full sets of meals, the extended hours, the broad range of classes, and the many athletic, arts, and other special offerings. They can’t possibly take full advantage of all these offerings—and they don’t want to. They instead want to customize for their children’s specific needs or interests. Imagine opting for a truly great musical education coupled with a la carte academic offerings from Outschool, or enrolling a child in a full-time virtual school so that they can prioritize their development as an athlete. Or so that they can double down on the academic program that has grabbed their interest.We were seeing more unbundled schooling offerings emerge before the pandemic, but COVID accelerated the interest in these arrangements. More families realized that they had specific preferences for their children’s schooling and have sought customized offerings.But many more families still rely on the bundle and don’t feel like schools are overshooting at all. Indeed, they feel underserved by schools, and want something better. They might want even more of the bundle—more childcare, more services, more food, more learning.More generally, because in the early years of an industry customers are willing to tolerate the product standardization that bundled offerings mandate because customization is prohibitively expensive, differences in usage patterns—and therefore customers’ individual needs—are not obvious during this stage of an industry’s evolution. People are generally willing to conform their expectations and their behavior to accommodate use of the standard product.In other words, because of our nation’s long history with schools, it’s not as obvious to most families (the demand side) or many educational suppliers (the supply side) just how to think about the progress that different students and families desire beneath the level of schools; how to present and talk about those educational offerings that transcend the context of “school”; and how to ensure that unbundled offerings still lead to a desired level of coherence such that students learn the needed levels of background knowledge necessary to advance in their academic lives and develop fully the habits that will be important to prepare them for their futures.Said differently, because most kids in America have gone to school for a long time, it’s just easy to keep talking, thinking about, and choosing schools.And that’s what it appears most families that have availed themselves of ESA options are still doing: choosing a school first, and then filling in some educational offerings around the margins.According to data from Florida’s ESA usage in 2019-20, for example, 80% of the funds were used to pay for tuition and fees, with the remaining going to instructional materials (roughly 11%), specialized services, and tutoring. That resembles the “customize the last 10 percent” approach Christy Wolfe wrote recently about when reflecting on the “Chipotlification of education.”But, as families gain more experience with an ESA and the possibilities of unbundling and opportunities for customization, behavior changes. According to a 2021 EdChoice research paper, “the longer students remain in the program, the share of ESA funds devoted to private school tuition decreases while expenditure shares increase for curriculum, instruction, tutoring, and specialized services.”In other words, as families gain a deeper understanding of their needs and get more comfortable with customizing their education, they are more willing to unbundle it appears. That also echoes Kris Comeforo of Outschool.org’s on-the-ground findings serving families in Detroit. He found that the presence of money alone in an ESA was unlikely to cause families to spend on different educational services. Information and social reassurance from those who had experienced the service were generally critical ingredients as well.My takeaway is that we shouldn’t expect an unbundling of school to happen en masse or right away. Instead, we should expect greater unbundling in schooling relative to what we’ve had. That’s a step forward for customization, given that we didn’t have much unbundling before at all.This was post first appeared on Forbes.com. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Two innovators in education, Laurence Holt and Jacob Klein, have teamed together to create a market map for charting the path and impact of AI in K–12 education. The map not only charts places that new AI companies and products are entering, but also highlights where AI could make a positive impact in a not-so-subtle nudge to innovators. In this conversation, we walk through some of the big trends they see unfolding; speculate about where AI has yet to have big impact and still could; talk about some of the real risks of AI in education; and discuss how you can help Holt and Klein keep the market map up-to-date. Here's the link to the market map.As always, subscribers can listen to the podcast, watch it on YouTube, or read the transcript.Michael Horn:I'm joined by two people who've been thinking a lot about how to do this over the many years. Laurence Holt and Jacob Klein, two longtime entrepreneurs, innovators, big thinkers in education about how to create a better world for educators and the students in it. And guys, it's good to see both of you. Thanks for having this conversation. Why don't I kick it off to you as we start the conversation to just give the thumbnail sketch of how you come to the conversation even before the artificial intelligence part, just education in general, how you got into this field and sort of your backgrounds, because both of you have very entrepreneurial and innovative pathways in it, but different pathways. So, Laurence, why don't you go first?Laurence Holt:Sure. So I'm originally an engineer, software engineer, and joined Amplify, an Edtech player in Brooklyn when it was fairly small and was chief product officer there for over a decade through the entertaining ups and downs and left about two years ago to spend time with family, but also pursue some philanthropic interests and support entrepreneurs. And that has pointed me directly to AI of late.Michael Horn:Terrific, Jacob.Jacob Klein:So I've been tutoring students for many years. I was a teacher at a KIPP school briefly. I went back to school and got a master's in Learning Design Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. And while I was there, I was able to start the company that became Motion Math suite of games around teaching K–8 math, especially trying to leverage new technology, which at the time was the iPhone and the iPad. We were able to grow that company and sell it eventually to Curriculum Associates, where we continued to grow our suite of math games, now called iReady Learning Games. I just left there a few months ago. I've been consulting for several companies in the AI edtech space, including Oko Labs and EdLight, and really excited for the future of this field.Michael Horn:Awesome. And you guys teamed up, you built this thing called the AI in Education Map. It's an article on Medium is sort of where it lives. But tell us what is on it, what are you tracking? And we'll get into the why and sort of those questions in a little bit. But let's start with what is it at its surface level?Laurence Holt:Sure. And if people can't, presumably you'll link it in the show notes.Michael Horn:Exactly.Laurence Holt:If you just search for Medium and AI and Education Map, people will find it. It is a map of use cases or sort of jobs to be done that can be supported by we believe can be supported by generative AI, specifically around teacher practice and teaching and learning in general, in and out of classrooms. So it is not a map of startups in the space. It includes that, but we want it to be broader than that.Michael Horn:Gotcha. Jacob, would you add anything on that description, or does that sort of capture what you think it's doing in the field, from your perspective?Jacob Klein:Well, I think starting from all the work to be done points out places where there's many companies, particularly in content generation, have already started, and there's going to be some great companies built there, but also places that we're not aware of any companies starting yet where we still think there's huge potential.Michael Horn:Yeah. So let's dig into the why, then, behind this that you created it. Laurence it occurs to me that in past efforts of technology and education, there have been various actors that have been well funded to come together to sort of try to create an edtech market map at the moment, or whatever else. It doesn't seem like this has been the case in AI so far, and you all have created this map. What was the motivation for doing so?Laurence Holt:There is just so much going on, and as you point out, a lot of it is sort of point innovations, right, smaller things that people are just trying because you can do them so rapidly. And we wanted to make sense of that for ourselves and understand what's out there, but fit it into some kind of a structure that was we thought it'd be just as a time capsule. It'd be sort of interesting to capture it in its early stages and then update it regularly and see how it develops.Michael Horn:Now, Jacob, against that line, we're going to get into the categories and the different jobs to be done or tasks that you see that AI could do in a moment. But you all have this set of risks right at the end of this, with AI in the article itself, why did you include a section like that in what probably isn't going to be seen? People aren't coming to look for the risks. They're coming to look for the heat map, if you will. Why did you include that?Jacob Klein:Yeah, there's a very overly optimistic side of our field where every new technology, there's an excitement. This is going to transform everything. We're finally here. I was pleasantly surprised, for example, that the New York Times article on Khanmigo a few months ago took an appropriately skeptical approach. And I think you can be bullish about this technology. It's magical in a lot of ways while still looking for all the risks that have diminished the impact of other technologies in Edtech. And there's a more profound one, I think, with generative AI, which is really a redefinition of thinking and of writing and of really intellectual work that threatens or has the potential to redefine a lot of what schooling is about. So I think it's important to be aware of those risks as we go around developing and looking for yeah, and.Michael Horn:There's some pretty big heady ones in there. Atrophy of critical thinking. Right. That's a pretty heavy risk that you list there you have the null hypothesis and hallucinations, and some of those that are probably more well guessed at, if you will, by folks. But just take that one for a moment. The Atrophy of Critical Thinking, what do you mean by that specifically? And sort of what's the worry?Jacob Klein:Well, Ethan Mollick is probably the best writer on this topic. He had a good essay a couple of months ago. What does it mean when you can get a I don't know, B minus essay by clicking a button? It really raises the floor, which could be a good thing. But you could see there certainly will be quite a few students that that's really what they do. Whereas before they would maybe attempt more effort to write a good essay, now it's what ChatGPT will spit out. The AI detectors don't seem to work. So that is a real risk, is that a lot of students will use the tools, not understand how they work, not question them critically, and just not learn much.Michael Horn:Gotcha. Now, as we look at the actual categories itself, Laurence, let me turn to you on this one. You have both sort of real items and categories, and then ideas are almost it reads like wish lists of gosh, I hope someone develops this. Tell us about the different categories and how you've created them.Laurence Holt:Yeah, that's exactly right. We wanted to map what we were seeing, but also what we thought was possible, but we haven't seen yet. And so we've sort of got different colors on the map to highlight that. And that comes from a thesis that is sort of thinly veiled, which is that if we think about evidence based practices and engaging practices, the kind of thing that we write about and you write about, but that we don't see widespread in schools. I'm thinking about things like, say, role play or project based learning or competencies or just feedback for students. They're often a common theme may be that they take a lot of effort, that they either in the preparation on the teacher's part or in the execution. They're hard work in their current form. And so we began to wonder, well, what if there was an assistant teacher that could make that a lot easier still under the direction of your teacher, but essentially remove some of the obstacles in teachers days and free up time.And therefore maybe we'll see these practices suddenly becoming, or maybe gradually becoming much more widespread, and that could itself be disruptive and transformative.Michael Horn:Yeah, I want to turn to this in a moment, but I actually want to do the curveball here because, Laurence, you wrote one of the more interesting articles, I think, in Education Next, a couple of years back, if I recall, my timeline may be off and I'm probably going to surely bastardize what you wrote. But in my telling of it, you talked about how there's these findings in different streams of scientific research, in effect, where we know that individuals with different chromosomal footprints, for lack of a better word right, seem to have different learning patterns. It might explain ADHD or it might explain they might need more greater number of dopamine receptors and things of that nature, which may change the way you educate them as well. I'm just sort of curious and you could probably summarize this better than I just did, but one of the takeaways I had from that know, your average software program, it might reach one subset of those kids but probably not the other, and you need to tailor it. Is it your perspective that even in the world of AI, where a lot of know to the point Jacob made about all the hype and stuff like that, it's going to personalize, it's going to realize these categories? Is it your perspective that we're actually going to have to custom build for these different archetypes that maybe exist out there? Or will the AI be able to sort of intuit some of these underlying genetic differences that explain some of the learning differences that we sometimes don't talk about in education?Laurence Holt:Yeah. Wow, lots to unpack there. The finding is that, and it's quite an old finding in psychology that humans respond differentially to interventions and approaches and learning paths. You could imagine. In fact, researchers found a set of students who responded extremely well to an online reading tool, for instance, and others who didn't. And when I was building and Jacob were building a lot of these products, often the question was does it work or not? And what this research says is that's the wrong question. The right question is for whom does it work? And if you knew that ahead of time, then school can become more of a matching to the way you want to learn and to effective practices for you. Now, we've walked ourselves right back into the well, that sounds like a lot of work on the part of somebody problem.And so to your question about who's going to figure that out, in some senses it's quite easy to figure out. You just try things and the ones that work, you see the needle move, right. And that's what you should do more of. But it does mean that you have to make available to students several different ways of working and that can be difficult to do in one class or one school, right. Where AI, certainly we feel could help with that.Michael Horn:It's super interesting. It's just a fascinating article that I still think more people ought to dig into and wrestle with the implications of. So what have you found in terms of the categories that you've mapped so far, just a little bit about what's on the map itself.Jacob Klein:It's moving very quickly. I was really impressed with Reach Capital's latest market map, which has some connections to our own. There's a lot of content generation, lesson plan generation startups and existing players that are working in that area. There are some great companies around teacher coaching, teacher support tools, as well as grading. One company that I've worked with, Edlight, is working on the problem of feedback to student handwriting, which I think has a lot of potential to get out of just purely digital interfaces for math homework in particular. So we're seeing really a Cambrian explosion of companies and efforts within existing companies to bring AI into their products. What we haven't seen as much as Lawrence mentioned, is bringing some effective, innovative pedagogies to teachers at a lower cost both of price point and the mental cost of implementation and grading. That's some of the more exciting work, I think that can and hopefully will be done.Michael Horn:Why do you think that or other and what other areas are unexplored? But why don't you list some of the areas that are unexplored still in your mind as you look at the map? And maybe some hypotheses for why we haven't seen either what you just talked know, lower cost, easier implementation, or perhaps certain categories that remain somewhat unfilled on the map?Jacob Klein:Well, as Laurence mentioned, project-based learning, competency-based learning, some social models of learning, jigsaws, simulations, role plays that might know the capstone to a semester course, but not something that a teacher implements every week into their classroom, just because the prep time, let alone the grading time, is really difficult. So I think it's natural that companies are looking for existing models that teachers already know, that already implement and saying, we can do this much quicker. I think the next stage will be you may have tried this work occasionally, but here's a way to do it every single week for only an hour of your time. And particularly social models really interest me. There's some interesting academic work out of Dan Schwartz's lab at Stanford of teachable agents I've never seen that brought to scale. AI could help with that. There's a lot of great work in academia that hasn't been brought over commercially to education, and AI could potentially support that.Laurence Holt:So this goes to, if I can add Michael, and this is your field more than ours is whether what's going to happen in education is that AI is essentially sustaining innovations as it appears to be outside of education. The winners peer to be Google, Microsoft, the usual suspects. Will that happen in education too? And the low hanging fruit is to go to things that teachers already do, so maybe they go to teachers, pay teachers to find a lesson. Well, now I can go to one of a dozen different lesson generation free websites and do the same thing, whereas the more disruptive innovations would be enabling new models, enabling new practices. So the big question is, will that come later or not?Michael Horn:What are both of your hypotheses on this? Because I agree with your general observation that outside education largely, it seems right now and look, it could change, right? But right now it seems largely that it's been a sustaining innovation to those tech giants, right? It's not a wholesale platform that changes the cost structure and if anything, it actually increases costs. Right. It seems education seems unclear at the know. Jacob, from what you just said so far, actually, we're not seeing maybe a lot of disruptive activity because we're not seeing dramatically lower costs, greater accessibility, greater simplicity and things of that nature. What do you both like? Where do you think the dominant do you think it'll be the incumbents that really sees hold of this, or do you think we'll see a wave of startups?Laurence Holt:We're definitely seeing the wave of startups.Michael Horn:I should say startups that will disrupt. And last, I guess, should have been the question, right?Laurence Holt:Yeah, that's a different question. I think there's with education, as you know, it is not just a case of applying the technology and doing something that gets a wow, it's the user experience. It's that how do you make that part of the fabric of teaching and learning in a classroom? And that's a much higher barrier. And so I think whether some of the more innovative companies will actually be rolled up into something that adds up to being something more disruptive, I think that's all still to be seen.Michael Horn:Jacob, what about you? What's your take on where this is going to go?Jacob Klein:Yeah, I think eventually there's got to be a simplification and some kind more coherence, more integration of tools. Now you have early adopters exploring a lot of things. I mean, ChatGPT in a way is a unification of lots of different separate kind of chat, bots and previous AI tools all packed into one. But I think my sense is that we're entering an era of even more fragmentation, with the voucher states putting public money into different school models, with some of the pipeline to college pulling back and more people realizing that there's other career paths that can be really fulfilling. So I think there will be some unification, but also a long tail of more niche use cases that optimistically support more diverse learners.Michael Horn:I want to go toward one of the points that you just brought up, Jacob, in a moment around new schooling models. But first a different question, which is one of the other theories that I've had is that we're going to see a lot more learner agency in this world of AI, more tools that put the learning and the power of AI directly in the hands of students themselves. What are you seeing on the map? What are both of your takes on that possibility or not.Jacob Klein:I hope you're right. I mean, this is a golden age for kids who are autodidex. You already had Wikipedia. Now you have some pretty good virtual tutors that can guide you through material, point you to new material, challenge you. So for the kid who already feels that agency and in charge of their own learning, really the sky's the limit, even more than was true before. So that's very exciting. How do you get other kids to feel that way? Some kids need much more social structure, and I think that's where some startups have a bit of a blind spot thinking that each kid, if only given the tools, is going to direct their own learning. They need a teacher, they need a peer group, they need those social cues as to what they should be learning.That guidance. But I think AI could certainly support teachers, support counselors, support individual tutors with students to help students find that agency.Michael Horn:Laurence, what's your take on that question?Laurence Holt:Yeah, I think also that the answer to it may be in the details, in the specifics, that maybe there are areas where we will start to see some real disruption. If I were to pick a couple with the certainty of being wrong, probably. But it's the old sort of killer app idea. What's the killer app for? A Macintosh or something like that. And one of them that I'm quite excited about is feedback. Students getting more and better and faster feedback. We know that drives learning and we know that on average, students actually don't get much feedback. That in fact, teachers don't always set long open ended work because it's a very, very big grading exercise for them across a load of 150 students.But what if they did set more open ended questions and that students were able to get quality feedback, perhaps marshalled by the teacher, so human in the loop feedback and a chance to revise what they've worked on, which they often don't get in school today. That all seems to be within the reach of generative AI right now, and there are some people working on that. So it may be as specific as that. There's just a big lever that starts to really take off.Michael Horn:Yeah. And so obviously then my head goes when you mentioned that to we may need to create some new schooling models that can absorb that sort of change in use of time and things like that, right, with educators and students. But it also brings up another thing that I've thought a lot about, which, know, could you use AI as an enabling technology to be the kernel around which you build new school? And for know, Imagine Worldwide, right? They have their work in Malawi and Sierra Leone and places like that in Africa, literacy and numeracy and you add AI to that, it becomes much more powerful and then you start to have sort of grassroots-based communities, rethinking school, maybe around that kernel. Or Jacob, you mentioned the states with the education savings accounts, right? Very new school models that can start to pop up, potentially powered by AI perhaps in a variety of different ways. Are you all tracking that at all? What are you seeing? If so.Laurence Holt:Yeah, firstly, I think you're right that we've been talking about US education for the last 15 minutes, but actually there are other areas that could be way more receptive to innovation and low and middle income countries where the problem is often the teachers may not be there today. And so assuming we have the bandwidth, the infrastructure is available, which it is more and more, but there's still work to do, that could really be a big transformation. I think also microschools, potentially homeschooling, these are areas where it's a big lift to set up a micro school right now. And this proliferation of AI tools may make it considerably easier. But we haven't seen anything yet that is specifically sort of generative AI for microschooling. It's more the case, I think, that the whole map has got use cases on it that should give microschools a boost.Michael Horn:As we start to wind down here, the other question I want to talk about is this map is big. There's a lot of different areas. I don't even know if we've given people the full sense of just how many different categories you have on it, but you have sort of your macro categories of teacher practice, support, classroom material, evaluation and feedback, student support, and then within each of those you have more and more categories. I think we can show some video of this as this conversation goes live, but I'm just sort of curious as you step back and look at it, someone that jumps on the site, they look at the map. What are, for each of you, the most interesting or two to three most important things that come out of it in each of your views?Jacob Klein:Yeah, I think one of my main takeaways would just be the diversity of use cases. And I think eventually AI will be equivalent to just the word digital. I mean, it's just embedded in almost everything that why not? Would you include some intelligence, some generative content, some other AI in the software that you're creating? So I think eventually it becomes an invisible technology in most use cases. And also we're just at the exciting beginning. So I think it's a really exciting time in technology in general in Edtech, and I hope that we will learn from previous mistakes of other cycles of Ed tech that will insist on rigor, that we won't lose the humanity at the core of education. And I think if we do that, there will be some amazing new models and as you said, an increase in learner agency.Laurence Holt:Totally agree with all that. I think just to name a few specifics that we're excited about feedback I mentioned. I think that's just potentially an easy one to see progress on. One entrepreneur used this really interesting phrase that I love, which was modifying with rigor. There's a lot of sort of modification of curriculum that goes on out there, as we know. And sometimes it is teachers trying to find activities that they know their students can do, but that might have the unwanted side effect of reducing the rigor. So how can you modify a lesson but keep the rigor? There have been some experiments that have shown AI may be able to do that tutoring. We've seen so far a sort of one to one homework help style of tutoring, which we know is not the style of tutoring that actually gets an effect in literature.Laurence Holt:It's much more intensive and guided by the tutor. And so can we start to see that small group and social would be the last one? I'd mentioned that people think AI putting AI tools into classrooms is going to reduce the social aspect. But actually these tools can be great at managing discourse and encouraging discourse and role play and debate. So I think there's some really interesting places we could start to see evolving there. I will say we haven't seen in the last couple of months while we've been tracking this, a whole lot of new use cases. We've seen a few that will add to the map. But I think the territory has been the first wave of exploring. The territory has been pretty thorough.Michael Horn:That is interesting, right? I guess a frenetic amount of activity and maybe then people are pausing to try to figure out now where to go from here.Jacob Klein:One other thing, Michael, is just I'm very inspired by companies, AI Camp and Mindjoy being two of them, that are bringing students right to the bleeding edge of the technology, giving them the tools to start their own experimentation, not just as a consumer, but really as a co creator of some of these tools. Because often it's young students that are going to expand the map to think of new use cases, that are going to have AI natives that are going to grow up with these technologies, that are going to be able to teach us about the best use cases.Michael Horn:Really important point. I hadn't even thought about that piece of it. It weaves into the last question where you all just took us naturally as we wrap up here, which is how are you keeping this map up to date? What's the frequency? How can people help? Can they contribute to the map? Because I suspect a lot of folks, they want a view into this and they want a view that continues to evolve as others come into the space or other incumbents launch their own innovations in AI to perhaps tackle some of these use cases. How can people help?Laurence Holt:Yeah, we're working on an update for later this year and we would love help. So we were going to call on your audience, maybe to do some of the work for us. Certainly anything that people feel is missing or wrong, we would love to hear about that. Probably the easiest way is just to add a comment either to the show notes here or to the Medium article. We will track all of those.Michael Horn:Perfect. I will put that up top as well so people can make sure to keep track. But Jacob Lawrence always admire both of your activity, entrepreneurship and thought leadership, but also that you guys took the initiative to actually give some organization to what is a very fast emerging space that all of us are trying to keep track of right now and see where it's going to go. And as you said, there are some clear risks. There's some clear risk of null hypothesis that it's just going to be sort of the same old cycle hype and then settle back into the rhythms. But we all want to see something bigger and better for all students. So appreciate you both and the work you've put into this.Laurence Holt:Thank you, Michael, this was great fun and great to see you.Michael Horn:Yeah, likewise. Yeah, you bet. And for all watching, check out the map. We will provide a link to it in the show notes and you can contribute to it, as you heard. Tell them what's wrong, tell them what's right. And let's keep the conversation going. We'll be back next time on The Future Of Education. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

On the latest Future of Education, Louise Baigelman, the founder of startup Story Shares, joined me to discuss the reading crisis that affects not only elementary-school students, but also adolescents. For adolescent students, although they need to learn the same skill sets as elementary-school students to become strong readers, how they build those skills needs to be different. Baigelman shared her insights from teaching middle school English language learners and working with students with learning disabilities. In particular, she spoke to the challenges she had in finding appropriate books—from a content perspective—for these students. The dearth of materials these learners found engaging—while still being rigorous to the skills they needed to build—is what caused her to found Story Shares.A few choice quotes that Louise offered from our conversation that I found revealing:We've actually combined these decodable texts as chapters into a chapter book so that they feel like a YA novel, but each chapter is on a discrete sound or skill that they're practicing.andNinety-two percent of educators said they currently can't find good books to offer their students to practice if they're struggling with reading.As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation, watch it on YouTube, or read the transcript.Michael Horn:There's a real reading crisis, not just across the country, but across the world, where lots of individuals, they've progressed past third grade, where you're supposed to theoretically have learned to read and just have not developed the foundational skills to do so. To help us talk about this and to present some solutions to these problems is Louise Baigelman. She's the founder of the startup Story Shares. And Louise, first, it's great to see you, but I'm so excited to talk to you because of what you're building to really tackle what is an immense problem.Louise Baigelman:Yeah, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and chat with you about it. Thank you for having me.Morning WarmupMichael Horn:Yeah, absolutely. So let's launch into our morning warm up. Why don't you give folks just a sense of how you come into this question of literacy, your own background, working in education before you founded Story Shares.Louise Baigelman:Yeah, so I'm a reader and a writer by nature, and I was an English major. I went to Teach for America right from college, and I taught middle school English language learners in Lynn, north of Boston. And that was where the initial seed for Story Shares came from as far as working with students who were mature but struggling with reading and having challenges, which I'll talk more about, with finding the right books for them. And I then worked at a family foundation that was interested in that same challenge, but from a learning disabilities perspective, older students who may have dyslexia or another reason for struggling with reading and need help from there. So that was where the Story Shares came from initially.Michael Horn:Perfect. No, you had this rich background in education and describe the problem that you saw. I mean, I sort of alluded to it in the intro, but really dimensionalize what you saw on the ground when you were working with adolescent youth.Louise Baigelman:Yeah, so it was striking to me, and it still is, reading is often taught in elementary school. That's how it was created. But my students were in middle school, and they were beginning readers. So they had just moved from Haiti or the Dominican Republic, and they were 12- 13- years old in middle school, but they were reading at a 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade level. And at that point, the books that I could find to offer them to read that were on their reading level were books written for 1st, 2nd, 3rd graders. And so those were books Junie B. Jones, even Hop on Pop if you're working on the very basic levels. And my students wanted nothing to do with those stories.They were really aware of themselves and their peers and what everyone else was reading. They didn't want to have to read baby books, but the books that their peers were reading were just far above their level and way too difficult for them to access. And I was noticing the impact of their low literacy across the board. I was supporting these students in English, but also in becoming a middle school student in America and being able to succeed in science and math and social studies. And without them being able to read, they were falling behind in all of those subjects. They couldn't read the directions, but I couldn't find books to offer them while we were practicing at these skills. And so for me, without good books that they could read and want to read, it would just compound. They wouldn't read.They'd rather pretend to read a difficult book than actually read. And so their skills, they stagnated at that point. And then the ripples from there across the subjects and more broadly were dramatic. So I just wondered, isn't there a way to create a book that we could offer these students that's engaging to them, that's relevant? It's written for their age level, features, characters that look like them, more representative and inclusive, but was just more simply told, written in a more basic way so that they could scaffold up as they improved their skills.Michael Horn:I want to get to that in a moment, but I actually want to stay on this problem for a moment because I'm just sort of curious. You've probably done some work quantifying it and figuring out how big we're talking about. I assume it’s not just kids of immigrants coming into this country with English as a second language. It's pretty widespread in a shocking sort of way. Right?Louise Baigelman:Totally. And that's the other fascinating part, is there's so many different populations that for any number of reasons are struggling with reading beyond the typical age. That was compounded dramatically by COVID because any underserved population fell further behind when they didn't have a school to go to. So the Nape report card that came out in 2023 had 68% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. 68%. So more than two thirds of students hit fourth grade not being able to read on grade level. And at that point, it gets worse every year because not only are there not instruction models and even teachers trained in supporting those students at the middle school and high school level, but also there aren't books for them to read that are relevant for them. So 68%, it includes students, English Language learners, it's students with learning differences, low income communities where they haven't been exposed to the right instruction early on, wow a significant number of students.Michael Horn:And just to make that clear, when you're talking about these learning challenges at fourth grade, they're basically testing things like phonics and phonemic awareness and decoding. We're not even talking about comprehension and background knowledge being the problem here. This is very foundational skill level reading that this is picking up. Is that right?Louise Baigelman:It is, but it's actually part of the spectrum in a sense of reading challenges and even delays. Essentially, a student at a fourth grade level or an 8th grade level could be a struggling reader for any number of reasons. It's the decoding and the phonics. If they miss that piece. Some students mastered that, but they haven't built the background knowledge and fluency. They can read you something, but they can't tell you what happened in that story. They're not making those connections while they're reading or their fluency. Their challenge to actually work through the words is getting in the way of their comprehension.So our goal, and we can talk about the solution piece, but is to actually have wherever you are on that reading journey, if you're behind having opportunities.Work CycleMichael Horn:To address it, well, it's a perfect shift. So let's get into the work cycle as the second segment of the show and let's talk about the solution that you built, Story Shares, and what you're aiming to do through that solution.Louise Baigelman:Yeah. So Story Shares is a solution based on engagement to really connect with those students beyond the third grade that are not yet reading proficiently and providing them with content so books and things to read that are relevant and engaging and readable for them, but also supporting teachers and opportunities for how do you really inspire independent reading practice at any different level? How do you find the right books, the choices that will actually make a student feel empowered to want to read. And so Story Shares initially started as a writing contest, where we wanted to see could we provide some incentives and awareness of this audience, some guidance and tools for authors and teachers around the world to create books to write stories, but to use some pretty straightforward principles to make them just more readable for students who don't yet have those core strengths. And so the first contest we did was super successful. We ended up with hundreds of submissions and did a bunch of pilot testing and got really great feedback on those best stories from the classroom. And we then expanded upon that and done several contests where we've managed to get thousands of stories from over 150 countries around the world from really diverse global authors. And they use our writing platform, which actually gives them some feedback on reading level as they're writing. So it'll let them know if that word was really way too challenging, you might want to but it also just says things like write shorter sentences, shorter chapters, shorter paragraphs, if you use words that are a little bit more graspable.And we've just compiled this amazing collection of stories that we then have transitioned to think about how do we refine the best one? We curate them, of course. We get so many stories but we find that about 30% of them are on target enough to kind of put through our process. And so now we publish them and tag them so that you can go into this library collection and say, I want a story for a 9th grader but at a first grade level and find all those choices that meet that intersection.Michael Horn:Let's break it down even a little bit more, because I think one of the books that you showed me when we talked a few months ago was, if I'm remembering correctly, it was about someone who maybe is learning digraphs, right? Ch and Th and stuff like that. Right. These basic sounds, if I'm remembering correctly. And so you basically could say, like you said, 9th-grade level, maybe this sort of ethnic background or this sort of set of interests or whatever, and find a reader tailored to that skill that I'm actually building, but that is in a way that's topical and interesting to me. Is that how granular we're talking?Louise Baigelman:Yeah. So it's this brand new initiative that we're so excited about, which is thinking about those students who've gotten beyond the third grade, and they really need the foundational skills. They need focused science of reading, aligned instruction on these different phonemes and graph names and how they build on each other in a scope and sequence. And what we discovered is that through this author community that has contributed to our library, so many of them are educators, and a lot of them are actually wills and trained educators, and they are Dyslexia specialists. And so we were able to create some guidance. Again, you don't want to have to offer a Bob book to a 9th grader, right? My son is in first grade, and he's already kind of like past the Bob book, so but how do you give a book that has discrete sounds that would be engaging to an older student? And so what we came up with, and the guidance that we provide to our authors, is we feature teenage characters. We use photographs, full color photographs instead of kind of line drawings so that they look more like a graphic novel that maybe your peer is reading. We've actually combined these decodable texts as chapters into a chapter book so that they feel like a YA novel, but each chapter is on a discrete sound or skill that they're practicing.And then each book is in a series where they go along a scope and sequence that aligns with some of the most used ones, but for older students. And our writers are able to take that and then create these amazing books that we then have to align a little bit more closely on our side. But we have our first set that just came out last week, and we're really getting amazing feedback, so congrats on that.SpecialsMichael Horn:Tell us as we switch into our specials, tell us more about this series that you've just launched and give us a little bit of a feel for it because it sounds pretty enticing and I can see why I haven't learned my basic phonemes or whatever. Sticking me in front of some sort of first grade reader or decodable is not going to really get me excited. In fact, I might be embarrassed and then sort of tune out to school. I assume embarrassment and social pressure is a big part of what you're combating. Tell us about this new series to tackle that.Louise Baigelman:Yeah, so that is exactly right. We're really addressing that effective piece of I want to have something to read, in addition to having the books really meet the needs of the skills. So we had so many conversations as we were starting to work with more schools and libraries and distributors to schools and libraries, where people were saying, what we really need is decodable texts for middle school and high school students, even late elementary ones, that they would want to read. And several people said, but it would be impossible to make a decodable text for an older student.Michael Horn:Actually, stay on that for a second. Why would they say that? Why hasn't this been done? Why isn't there another solution out there for this?Louise Baigelman:Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about that question. It's tricky to use few words and tell a good story, and I think that's one of the reasons people thought it was impossible. How could you make it engaging for teens if you're only allowed to have a few words on a page? I think also, just more broadly, there's this really exciting new push for the science of reading where we're realizing if we can teach things systematically early on, that we can set students up for literacy success. And that's a shift in and of itself. And so there's so much going into that. But the problem is that there's been so many students who've gone past that point without it that there's this other part we haven't yet. I think it's just that we haven't quite yet turned our attention to of how do you apply the science of reading to the beyond third grade piece? It's the intervention side, so it is tricky, but on the other hand, it's simple in a way. When you start to think about how do you address it? Well, you definitely don't want a circle guy.Right? Again, they have a total place, but.Michael Horn:It's not for the team.Louise Baigelman:What about a photograph? Right. Or how about they love to text? Like, we have one whole book that's in this series where it's actually like chat bubbles, where they're engaging that way and there's graphic novel components. We know what teens like. It's just that we haven't yet somehow married the two. Yeah.Michael Horn:And so you're doing this you've launched this series right. To tackle that. I cut you off before, but keep telling us more about it. Yeah.Louise Baigelman:So we felt like it was a good challenge to take on an important time to do so and started playing with just first making some prototypes. Could we sort of address that? And then we created this model for our authors, reached out to the ones that we knew already were educators with some good expertise, and we've just produced this first series. It was honestly a bigger undertaking than we initially thought, just because there's so many different scopes and sequences out there and thinking about how do you make it both meaningful practice that will really be something teachers can use, but also something that students want to read. But we've landed in this amazing place, and we actually just have run a pilot study for a few weeks now where we don't have the post survey results yet. But the presurvey, it's about just sort of 50 educators, 92% of them said they currently can't find good books to offer their students to practice if they're struggling with reading.Michael Horn:Wow.Louise Baigelman:So that feels dramatic to us. And again, solvable with some focus on the issue, congratulations.Michael Horn:But that sounds like some secret sauce that you've actually created in terms of getting the content and the skill, building and marrying them together in a way that's engaging but still instructional and perhaps not something anyone could go do, if I'm reading you correctly.Louise Baigelman:Yeah. Thank you. It's kind of this combination of the model we had before for Hilo text and this new shift that makes so much sense so that you can meet those students even before they are able to read Hilo.Michael Horn:Got it. So stay with us for a moment. Now, you've launched this. Who are you working with in terms of schools and educators? Like, who's using these materials? What are you learning out in the field? Are there some good stories that sort of demonstrate impact or good results that you have to share?Louise Baigelman:Yeah, absolutely. We have some great partnerships with all sorts of schools. So we provide our books and our digital library on a school level, classroom level, district level, and then we also work with distributor partners, libraries, and then actually Ed Tech, curriculum provider partners who also are looking for texts that can fit into the curriculum they're creating. We have a really cool new partnership with Denver Public Schools through the Carmel Hill Fund where they are actually really focused on independent reading for students at any level. And so we're doing a big pilot. We're providing a lot of books there. We have recently been hearing the most from special education classrooms, teachers who are really eager to find these kinds of books. And we also have a lot of Yale teachers working with the stories.One of my favorite sort of pieces of feedback recently is from a teacher who said that she has students who they're always kind of a challenge during any time where there is independent reading because they don't have books. To read, and they end up kind of messing around and that she offered them one of the story shares books and one of these students read for a whole block. And then afterwards, he nudged his friend and said, you have to read this one. And then he went to the teacher and said, can I find other books like this?Michael Horn:That's a good win.Louise Baigelman:Full cycle.Closing TimeMichael Horn:Yeah, that's a good win. That's a good win. Okay, let's shift into closing time. As we wrap up here. Where are the future directions for where you go with this?Louise Baigelman:Yeah, so as I mentioned, there's this larger problem around. Not only do we need better books that meet students where they are and also engage them, we also need to think about literacy for the older grades now that we have such a huge proportion of students who aren't yet able to use reading to then do everything else they need it for. So how do we think about literacy? PD for teachers that are working with those older students who were meant to teach science in 9th grade, but now they have to also teach reading? How do we think about interweaving it across disciplines within the curriculum, so that the social studies teacher has ways to support the struggling reader in order to access that text on whatever topic they're studying? We're thinking about. Yeah. How do we really look at this beyond third grade reading intervention such that we can start transforming those trajectories for the students who have been falling behind?Michael Horn:I'd love to hear what kind of feedback you get from that. Right. Because I can imagine you've just raised a really good point. Right. Like the 9th grade teacher doesn't matter their subject area, whether it's English, social studies, math, whatever. They have not been trained in how to teach the science of reading. That's not been part of their educational pathway. They're not trained for it.They've been trained to deliver the content, presumably, or work with students in learning the content in their particular course. So how do you crack that nut? Because they have to sort of be all hands on deck, right?Louise Baigelman:Well, it's really one of the biggest challenges right now for it, is we weren't thinking about teaching reading at that point. So there's a couple of pieces, if you can think about it as an interdisciplinary literacy is in every subject, and background knowledge, as we know, is one of the core pieces to reading proficiency. If we can start thinking about it as interconnected, that in social studies, they're doing this and it relates to this topic. And in Ela, they're reading a book that also uses the same vocabulary, and so it's reinforcing it, and then in science as well. And you have practice texts for each of those pieces because there's the instruction side, but there's also the practice side. You've just learned a skill or you've learned something. Now go deeper or go stronger and if you don't have the right level practice text, you can't either. So if we can start thinking about it in a little bit more of an integrated way and providing some of those teachers who now do have to think about literacy with some of the tricks and tips to use, then yeah, start moving that needle.Michael Horn:No, that's exciting. That's exciting. And I think that's such a good point, which is that after you've sort of learned how to read, that background knowledge becomes so important and it all becomes very interwoven, as you said, integrated. Right. And so we have to think about every subject, really, as part of reading instruction. Not just that ela block, but it's literally I mean, even arts, music, that's all part of building one's background knowledge to be able to access more complex texts across a wider range, right, of exactly. Yeah. So how do folks that maybe are intrigued this first time they're hearing of Story shares? How do they get in touch? How do they follow what you're doing? How do they maybe put in some orders for some series of books if they want? How does that all work?Louise Baigelman:Yeah, so our website is storyshares.org, and you can visit there. There's a teacher portal where it also has the direct links for ordering books and getting in touch with us. If you want to place larger orders, you can always reach out to me directly. My email is Louise@storyshares.org work, but, yeah, we're really excited about building partnerships with more schools and educators, so we'd love to get in touch with anyone.Michael Horn:Louise, thank you for doing this work. Appreciate it. Fascinating to get to know story shares better. And for all of you tuning in, we'll be back. Next time on The Future of Education. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Over the years, I’ve spoken to many of the leaders of a variety of microschools. In my conversation with Luis Brito E Faro, we explore the vision behind Brave Generation Academy, a microschool with its roots in Portugal but hubs all over the world just two years into its existence. The microschool network is serving roughly 1,000 students today with locations in South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Kenya, India, and now the United States as well. They serve not only students in 6th through 12th grade, but also students pursuing higher education online. And more plans are in the works. We talked about the day-in-the-life of a student, as well as the freedom and flexibility to pursue a student’s passions they offer—and how they knit together their extreme personalization with the importance of community.As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation, watch it, or read the transcript below.Michael Horn:I'm Michael Horn, and welcome to the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And to help us think about that very topic today, we have Luis Brito Faro. He's one of the founders of Brave Generation Academy. Luis, it's great to meet you and great to have this conversation.Luis Brito E Faro:It's awesome to be here, Michael. Thank you so oh, well, thank you.Michael Horn:I mean, look, you're coming to us from Portugal today and I want to dive right into the morning warm up because you are one of the co founders of Brave Generation Academy. Before I give my spiel on what I think Brave Generation Academy, why don't we just go from your own voice telling us what is the schooling network you've set up?Luis Brito E Faro:Absolutely. So we're a network of microschools. We serve learners from 6th grade and above up to masters actually. So we already have a university BGA for adults. We use a self-directed learning approach so our learners can set their own goals and define the pace that they study. And we basically have three pillars knowledge, which is the academic side. So the subjects that you sit, or the bachelor's that you're taking the curriculum that you're doing. Skills, which are the technical or soft skills that you want to develop and grow and improve about yourself. And then community, which is how to use those skills for the well being of the community, for the well being of those around you. This conceptually speaking, this is our model. Yeah.Michael Horn:Very cool. Well, we're going to dig more into it in a moment, but when did you guys get started? How long you been in operation?Luis Brito E Faro:So, informally we started in late 2020, but our official launch was in September of 2021 in Portugal with about ten hubs. We call them hubs.Michael Horn:Ten hubs off the bat. So you've been in operation then maybe just shy of a couple of years, it sounds like, officially. How many students do you serve today?Luis Brito E Faro:I guess so right now we are at about 800 students and we're going to 1000 in September. Most of them based in Portugal, most of them 6th grade to twelfth grade, but already with a few with BGA for adults. And then we are in other countries. We are in South Africa, Namibia. Mozambique, Kenya. The US. And then in India as well.Michael Horn:Wow, that's quite the geographic spread. At each hub, how many students are at a given hub?Luis Brito E Faro:So the average is 30 or better even. The maximum capacity is 32 with the learning coaches. Some hubs go a little bit over that, some hubs go a little bit under that number.Michael Horn:Got you. And it sounds like the microschools are located worldwide, but I didn't realize you guys are offering a university education as well. How did you get that accredited so quickly?Luis Brito E Faro:So we partner up with universities that were already doing an online course, already had the platform, but lack the feet on the ground, lack the hubs, lack the learning coaches, the skills and community, just brave the theoretical part of it. So we partner with a platform that has partnerships with universities such as the University of Bolton. So we offer computer science, business management, education by Cambridge and sports management as well. Those are our four bachelors as well, with upskilling and reskilling, but this is more for the labor force.Michael Horn:That's super interesting. So, if I understand it correctly, basically there's a university that has an online program and you say, let us be your brick and mortar hub on the ground to create a community around it. Let's shift into our second segment work cycle, start to dig a little bit deeper into the what's the philosophy, if you will, behind Brave Generation Academy?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah. So we have know, and starting with our founder, Tim, he saw that his kids had really little time to experiment and to really figure out what were their passions. So we started coming up with a model that would be able to create a space where learners could be themselves, where learners could fail. Try understand if that's what they really like, and throughout that process, actually develop the skills that we talk about nowadays so much. Those buzzwords of 21st century skills flexibility, adaptability, setting goals and so on. We believe that has to be done organically, experimentally, not with PowerPoints. Theory can support that. But they actually have to go through the struggle process. And that's how we came up with how that's our know help learners find their passions, become motivated and take their own initiative.Michael Horn:It makes a ton of sense. It sounds like Tim experienced the struggle with his own kids. Was this in Portugal or where was this?Luis Brito E Faro:So just a little bit about Tim. Tim is a serial entrepreneur. He has no background in education. His parents are Portuguese, but he was raised in South Africa. Eventually he moved up to Portugal. He had his kids in a really good international private school, but every day OK, how was school? It was okay. What did you learn? Same as you did. And he actually had the chance. Tim and his family, they do this every three or four years. They do this trip around. Sometimes they did like coast to coast in the US. They went to Mongolia and Russia. To Australia. They do this big trip. So he has to take his kids out of school temporarily. And he used to take a tutor with him and his kids, and he would see that they were actually really excited about learning and they had time to do things they liked and so on. And then during the pandemic, that became even more evident when they were together at home. So he saw a chance as an entrepreneur. He saw an opportunity. He saw a problem and an opportunity. So he took his two boys out. He has two boys and a little girl. He took the two boys out. They were the guinea pigs. He left the girl in school for a little longer in case he screwed up. But he worked out fine.Michael Horn:That's great. What's your own background to join him in this?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah. So by study I'm a mechanical engineer. I studied mechanical engineering with a major in thermal energies and renewable energies. I never actually wanted to be an engineer. I just wanted the problem solving and the critical thinking. I was never a fan of school. I obeyed, so I followed the rules. But I had many discussions with my teachers about how things were done. But what really made me fall in love with education was that I played rugby all my life. So I played until I was like 21, 22. Then I stopped to go abroad for a year. And when I came back, I became a coach. And growing up, I was really lucky to have really good mentors and coaches in rugby, in life generally. So I could apply that and I could give back and I could be on the other side and I could see the impact that having a mentor and having someone trying to again create this space, have a tool. For me, rugby was a tool to try to raise these teenagers. I saw the impact that I could have in their lives and that made me really passionate about it. And that's how I met Tim as well, because Tim is also a really big fan of rugby. So I was coaching the under 16 and his eldest son was playing under 16, so I went to play against him, his club, St. Julian's, and they ended up just crashing. Just terrible loss for us. I will never forget that loss. But in rugby you always shake hands, you always have a beer afterwards. So I met Tim and from that moment on I started following him and so on. And eventually I saw him posting about PGA whilst it was still his kids. And I quit my job within a couple of weeks and started opening the first few hubs.Michael Horn:Wow, that's quite a story. It's interesting. One of my favorite friends in the podcast and innovation world is Aidan McCullen, and he also has a rugby background. Maybe it's something about you all that causes you to ask good questions. But tell me one more thing before I get into curriculum questions, which is, who are the families and students signing up for this? Right. 1000 students in two years time. That is serious growth for a microschool network. Who are these families jumping in because COVID is behind us, right? So who are making these just choices?Luis Brito E Faro:And on top of it, this was done in a very conservative country where we're not accredited by the government, and the parents know that. So we're expecting that when we get accredited, that NABO will probably double. So these people it's a wide spectrum. So we have people coming from both homeschooling, portuguese homeschoolers, expats, public schooling. So we have kids coming from Portuguese public school, we have private schools. We have a wide spectrum, 50 50 in terms of international and Portuguese, at least in Portugal, that's where our majority of students are. About 90% of them are in Portugal, but they're coming from every background in terms of goals. I think what they want is for their kids just to be happy and just to have a purpose when they wake up. I think that's one of the best things that the parent can see is just their kid just waking up with a purpose for their day. And this is what the self directed model does for a kid, which is to take ownership over their lives. And people like to have responsibility, like to have ownership. The biggest cause of anxiety is normally lack of action, and normally you have lack of action because you don't have ownership over what you're doing, or you lack it. And that's what we give the kids.Michael Horn:No, that makes a ton of sense and helpful in filling it out also. And it'll be fascinating to watch the accreditation come, I guess, and see that doubling. So let's switch to our third block, the specials, and get into the curriculum and so forth. Tell us about what the curriculum you've chosen and how you move through the academic knowledge, the skill building, and community.Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah, so we started with the British international curriculum because it was a good balance between an accredited, well structured curriculum. Cambridge IGCSE is an a levels. Every university in the world pretty much accepts it. In the US. You have the Ace diploma, which gives you college credits similar to the AP. And it's flexible in the sense that you pretty much don't have mandatory subjects. You can pick whichever subjects you like, so you can do physics, and you can do arts and design. For example, in Portugal, this isn't know, you have to pick an area, and then you stick with it, and you.Michael Horn:Can only do on actually, hold on 1 second there. I just want to make sure I pull that apart. So in the British curriculum, the students are getting a lot of choice to say, I want to specialize in x, whereas in Portugal, they have to do this well-rounded thing, and they get less choice. Is that the distinction?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah. So, for example, in Portugal, you reach the 10th grade, and you have to either pick the three major areas are science and technology, and that makes you pick physics and chemistry, which is a single subject in Portugal. And then you can pick between biology and geology or which is also a single subject, or geometry, like descriptive geometry. I think would be the translation, which is basically like technical drawing. And then you pick economics. And within economics you have to do economics and then you pick between history or geography and then you have arts and then you have humanities which is more focused like in law and history and so on. And then obviously you have the core subjects which is mathematics, mathematics, portuguese philosophy. You have some core subjects whilst in the A levels you reach the 11th grade. Then you normally pick three subjects, that's the minimum and normally between three and four. And you can do whatever you want to do depending on what you want to do after you finish high school. So if it is a university, you pick them depending on what university asks you to sit.Michael Horn:Got you. And is the curriculum online or how do you offer it to students?Luis Brito E Faro:So initially we partner up with an existing platform, but we ended up developing most of the curriculum. So we hired our own, what we call them the course managers, who are the subject matter experts. So the learning coaches are not experts in any subject. They have a very diverse background. They can be engineers, they can be artists, they can be PE teachers. They're focused on teaching how to learn, not what to learn. The course managers are focused in teaching what to learn. So they're the ones developing the curriculum then. But a really important thing to say is that for us at PGA we see ourselves as an ecosystem where other organizations can just plug in. So for example, we also started offering the American Curriculum, which is offered by a charter online school from Wisconsin. And now going to Florida, we're probably going to start offering also the Florida Virtual State School. We have some kids doing a Swedish platform. So what we want is we want to have several know picture a kid coming into a store, we have several hats and the kid picks the one that fits him the best. That's how we see it.Michael Horn:Got you. So walk us through a day in the life then, of what that student is. If I think about the course of a day or a week, what does it look like for a student?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah. So for people to visualize it, our hubs tend to be in we try to put it always have these flagships hubs where they're in really nice areas of the town where the kids can just cycle there or walk there and have tons of services around because we like to leverage the resources that exist in the community. So if a kid wants to play tennis for him to go to the community. If a kid wants to do arts, to find an art studio or a music studio and he does all of those activities in the community so that everybody wins. So our hubs are really simple spaces. Think of like a co working space, 1500 sqft bathrooms, focus room for them to do deep sessions of work, a relaxed zone and little kitchen for them to relax and eat lunch and so on. And the rest is pretty much collaborative space. So tables facing each other, peer to peer work like a proper co working space. It's open 08:00 A.m. To 06:00 P.m. 30 learners more or less two learning coaches and the learners do their own schedule. So let's pretend that I'm a learner. Let's say that I'm a surfer and I want to be a data scientist for example. Okay? That's something I enjoy doing. I want to do it. So I'll come to the hub on Monday I'll arrive, I'll say like I will arrive maybe 09:00 A.m., that would be my time. I will already have an appointed time to sit down with my learning coach to do my weekly meeting where I sit down with a learning coach and I present to him my plan for the week. So I'll be showing my learning coach. Okay today I'm going to be doing this and this topic of history and English and maths. Tomorrow I'm going to be doing science or physics or whatever it is and I show him the plan according to my timeline. So we have a tool that calculates how many topics do I have to accomplish each day in order to finish the course in time taking into account my goals. So everybody's going at their own pace. We never close by the way. We're always open throughout the year. We only close two weeks in Christmas, one week in Easter. So I show you my weekly checklist, my plan for the week and that embraces the academy, these goals that I was just telling you about but also the skills and community. So for skills it will be surf. So I will tell him that on Tuesday I'm actually not coming in the morning because the waves are going to be really good. So I'm going to be surfing in the morning Tuesday and Thursday. And then a couple of weeks back I actually told my learning coach that I want to be a data scientist. So he found me a job shadowing so a person for me to go and spend a couple of hours in the company with them so that I could understand what a data scientist does. And I was also recommended a roadmap of massive online open courses to do and challenges that nowadays you go online, you have Google courses, you have IBM courses, you have the best company in the world offering the courses that you should be doing. So Wednesday I'm going to be doing academics and I'm going to be doing a little bit of data science as well. And then Friday we have a hub activity where everybody is bringing food related to the country where they come from. So our hubs have ten different nationalities, 15 different nationalities. So our learning coaches like to create this type of hub activities. So we're going to have a lunch, hub lunch together and this is going to be my week. And then maybe Thursday comes and the waves change and I end up going to the hub in the morning and go surfing in the afternoon. Who knows?Michael Horn:So you have that flexibility. How does it work if you got 30 students there? A couple of them are maybe taking the Wisconsin curriculum, the majority are doing the Cambridge curriculum, few others are doing the Swedish. We're all doing different things right now. How do we get opportunities to collaborate and sort of enjoy each other's company even though we're doing very different academy plans?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah. So we have to go beyond the academics. So I'm going to give you a practical example. Once I was in this hub and I was talking to a learner, trying to see what were her passions and so on. And firstly she wasn't reluctant. I think she wasn't really understanding the question because she thought I was talking only about academics. So she said that she didn't really like anything special. But then I started digging in, peeling the layers and she said, no, I actually do clay work. I work with clay pottery. I do pottery. I said, okay. That's awesome. So I started talking about that and eventually she did a workshop of pottery for the other kids in the hub. So she taught all of the kids to do pottery and now in the hub they have little sculptures of what to do. And we do this with everything, with sports, with arts. We always have kids that have their special talents and it's really important for them to have something that they feel that they are good at. And this is the magical thing about not having a constrained curriculum, which is everybody will have something that they'll be good at, which will boost their confidence, develop their social skills and so on. Then the learning coach will spend more time with the learner, taking into account the ratio that he has. I think it was I did his math a while ago, it was something like it's crazy. It's something like a week to three months. You'll spend more time with a learner in one week than the traditional teacher will spend.Michael Horn:Oh wow.Luis Brito E Faro:So you really get to know the learner, really get to know really the basis of the performance of the learning coach is the relationship that he has with the learner. Understand the vulnerabilities, the goals, the strengths, the weaknesses and so on. And then he'll manage the hub taking that into account.Michael Horn:Very cool. So let's go into our last segment, closing time. How do you make this work economically? What are the costs? How does this all hang together?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah, so we're basically a profit for purpose. So we have to be sustainable because we don't want to be dependent on anyone else. But we can make it work because it's a very simple model. We keep the hub at 30 kids, two learning coaches and you manage hub by hub. So what ends up happening? For example in the US. Our fees are about $850 basis a month per month. Okay, that's just over $10,000 a year. And we can make it work. Obviously, you know, some hubs then we have a big scholarship. So we have about 30% of our kids are on scholarships. So some hubs have to take the hit whilst others balance it out. But we're actually much cheaper than in terms of logistics because think of a big school. You have the canteen, you have the football field, you have the labs, you have such a big staff with us. Very simple, very lean. And you just leverage what already exists. You don't have to build a new football field. There's one next door. Just use it.Michael Horn:Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask then. So they're paying essentially for the coaches, maybe the curricular access and the hub upkeep that 1500 sqft. But my sailing or my surfing or rugby or whatever else, right? That's stuff that I pay for and do outside even though it's connected into school, is that the way to think about it?Luis Brito E Faro:Yeah, exactly. So a part of the activities will be paid by the learners. But we actually have a lot of, for example, workshops and talks and all of the internships there the learning coaches and we from a central perspective, BJ central, we are the ones finding that. So that's also a big, big part of the learners experience that we offer.Michael Horn:Gotcha. Gotcha. Super helpful. Okay, so if I'm watching this, I want to find out more. How should folks do that?Luis Brito E Faro:So www.bravegenerationacademy.com, that's our website. That's the easiest way to go. Our instagram. Same thing. YouTube channel. So we have a big documentary series that came out with we have testimonials. We have a day in the life of a learner. We have a lot of content for people to check and we have a video of a hub. What does a hub look like? So people will really be able to see it through their own eyes.Michael Horn:Very cool. And so you've mentioned Florida a couple of times. Sounds like you're already in Wisconsin. Maybe if I'm reading it right.Luis Brito E Faro:But only with the curriculum. Okay, in Wisconsin.Michael Horn:All right, so what's next? Where's the vision? Where are you guys going with this in the US? Where can we expect it? I suspect some states are going to be wondering, families, how do I we.Luis Brito E Faro:Have two ways of going about it. We have our proactive expansion, but we also have reactive in the sense of a lot of times we open hubs and this is why we open also so aggressively is that we have a family saying, look, I love to have a hub in my city. And we say, okay, I need ten kids to open a hub for it to be financially sustainable. With ten kids, we break even. So help me find a space. Refer to me a learning coach so that they can go through our training program and we open the hub. So from then we can be opening in California and Texas, wherever it is, proactively. We're going to be focusing more in Florida and South Florida. Right now we're in Boca Raton. We want to go up to West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and so on. So if anyone listening is interested in having a hub, just reach out because we're going to make it happen and we are really fast in making it.Michael Horn:Very cool. Very cool. Hey, Luis, thank you for coming on and telling us about what you all are starting at Brave Generation Academy. I mean, this microschool network sounds like something to keep an eye on and a lot of folks are going to want to check out.Luis Brito E Faro:Thank you so much, Michael. I really, really enjoy it. Thank you for your time and keep.Michael Horn:It yeah, no, absolutely. And you guys keep it up, keep reinventing schooling. And for all you tuning in, thank you for joining the future of education. We'll be back next time. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

With just under 10 acquisitions in the last 5 years, PowerSchool has been active in transforming itself from a student information systems company to an integrated education company that works across the day and lifecycle of K–12 students and educators. What’s more, the company turned heads in June with its announcement that it was partnering with Microsoft to integrate AI into its PowerSchool Performance Matters and PowerSchool LearningNav products to empower educators in delivering transformative personalized-learning pathways for students. In this conversation with its CEO Hardeep Gulati and Chief Product Officer Marcy Daniel, they detail where PowerSchool is going with its AI plans—and just how much they think they can make productive personalization a reality for students and educators. There were lots of notable parts of the conversation, but I’ll highlight this one from Hardeep:There could be a lot of good use of supplemental tutoring and supplemental content and they can go to Khan Academy and they can go to Excel and other systems, but they're only doing that 1 hour in a week. If we really want to improve achievement, we’ve got to actually do that within the context of [students’] day-to-day learning. And that's really a unique opportunity for PowerSchool because we are where they are doing their homework, we are the system where they're getting the homework and we can now personalize the entire homework within that context.As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation above, watch it below at YouTube, or read the transcript. Michael Horn:Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and this is the show where we are dedicated to helping the world build education systems where every individual can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And I am delighted because we don't often get to be in-person when we have these conversations, but the folks at PowerSchool have graciously allowed me to be one of the keynotes at their conference here in Orlando, Florida. And so they've made available the CEO Hardeep Gulati and the Chief Product Officer, Marcy Daniel. And it's just really good to be with you all in person. Thanks so much for doing this sit down.Hardeep Gulati:Thanks, Michael. Great to have you here, especially for somebody who really talks and has so much written about the things which we are really focused on, not just on the competency-based learning and other elements. You have really helped us show them the way in terms of the innovation. And thank you for taking the time to actually be at our user conference.Morning WarmupMichael Horn:Oh, you bet. So, I mean, this is honestly a delight for me. And we often when we have these conversations, divide them up in four segments. We get our morning warm up, we go into our work cycle, we have some specials and then closing time so Hardeep you get to kick us off on the morning warmup. I think a lot of people, when they think about PowerSchool, they think of it as an SIS provider, student information systems, right. The origins in some ways, but from my perspective, it seems like you guys have grown into so much more, a much more complete set of solutions. And now obviously, you're a publicly traded company. It's a very different setting from maybe a decade ago. So in your words, how do you describe what PowerSchool is and what it's evolved to be?Hardeep Gulati:Yeah. Thank you. And as I was sharing with you in the hallway, the PowerSchool journey has been a phenomenal journey.Michael Horn:Right.Hardeep Gulati:We've been around more than 25 years. We've always known to be the student information system leader, and we are still today almost more than 21 million students, which is almost one-third of the North American school districts leverage our SIS. But we are a lot more than that now. In fact, in the last eight years, we have grown from an SIS to a full end-to-end platform. All the different elements of student information cloud build on our SIS, but also our Personalized Learning cloud with Schoology, which again has more than 50 million students assessment and curriculum. We have our Student Success cloud with MTSS and behavior and special ed support. We have our Workforce Effectiveness and Workforce Recruitment cloud to help, really help school districts not just recruit teachers and onboard them, but also helping them with their professional development and then we take all the way into even the student workforce development? How do we really help with our Naviance product, with our college career readiness? So we now reach actually 50 million students. Almost 80% of the North American school districts actually leverage some of our capabilities. So we are really now a more holistic provider for all the different things the school districts might need.Michael Horn:So it's holistic. It's end to end, from back end to front end, and from really early learning all the way into college, essentially. That's quite a reach. Against that backdrop, obviously, artificial intelligence, I don't need to tell you, is an incredibly hot topic in education. It's something we're going to get into a little bit more in the details. But I guess I want to do sort of bigger picture because it's such a hot topic right now. As you think about all of those things that PowerSchool is doing, how do you think about the vision for artificial intelligence with the roadmap that you have for Power School in the long run?Hardeep Gulati:As you said, this is so much of a hot topic and you now see everybody getting onto the bandwagon. But actually, if you look at our vision eight years back when I joined, one of the first things, when we talked to our customers and majority of the customer, we asked them, what is your biggest problem, right? And a lot of them pretty much said, hey, fragmentation, I've got all these different systems, I can't really improve student outcomes. And asked the second question to them, okay, tell me your nirvana. What is the one thing if we are able to do? And ultimately, if you have a clean, say, no limit budget, if you can do and say, I want to be able to personalize education for every child. We actually set up our vision and mission almost eight years back on that personalized education. But we did know that to build personalized education, you need to be the system of record, which thankfully with coming from an SIS word, we already are the system of record for all these school districts. You also need to be the system of engagement. Your parents, students, teachers need to be in your system to be able to truly personalize education within the context of their everyday learning. So that's allowed us to really bring tools like Schoology, like performance matter assessment, like special education, like Naviance, like the teacher professional development all into our tool to really be that comprehensive system that we can understand everything. What's happening with the student, what's happening in the classroom, what's happening with the teacher, all those elements. Then allow us to really build our personalization our data strategy and bring AI to help give those insights all the way into personalizing the actual education and learning itself. So we have been marching this vision, but great to see now the technology and the metascalers are actually helping us. Hyperscalers are actually helping us through accelerate our roadmap even further. So we're very excited about some of the innovation. Now we are really able to accelerate, and we'll happy to share more about that.Work CycleMichael Horn:Yeah, well, let's get right into those details and shift to our work cycle. We're going to bring Marcy into the conversation because obviously PowerSchool had this big announcement about embedding generative AI into a few of PowerSchool's teaching tools themselves. So why don't you level set us on what was the announcement specifically and what should we expect coming?Marcy Daniel:Thanks, Michael. So, I mean, really, our announcement was about a collaboration that we're doing with Microsoft with their OpenAI tools. And the first place that we're starting is really with generative AI and how you can use it with an assessment or check for learning understanding. And we have two core tools, performance Matters Assessment and then also our Learning NAV, which is a tailored or personalized learning pathway that you can use. And in both those environments, what we are doing is enabling the teacher to quickly develop a formative assessment in really minutes to be able to leverage that in those core workflows that she has.Michael Horn:Wow. And I love, by the way, I should say this up front, my own bias. I love that you all are focusing on the assessment piece of this because I hear for so many years I've heard all this conversation around personalizing learning. I've obviously driven a lot of the conversation and if you want to do that, you need to know where the student is and they're learning without the assessment. What are you actually basing that off of? So I love that you're leaning into that. And I guess that's where I want to go next, which is for educators who maybe they're hearing a lot of the hype and buzz right around AI, and maybe they feel, like it's a cool technology in search of a problem, or it's causing problems because, gosh, it's complicating my own assessments that I've had out there. They're cheating, whatever it might be. I guess say it a little bit more succinctly, like, what are you trying to solve for educators and what can they expect as these tools get embedded with AI?Marcy Daniel:So, I mean, I think what we're looking at is how do we apply AI to core workflows, things that teachers do every day, and really how we can save them time at the end of the day. You mentioned assessments used in a lot of different ways, but it's used pretty much every day for a teacher to understand they might do an exit ticket once they teach a unit or a plan that day, what did they get? What did they not get? And so if we can enable them to take something that normally takes an hour, an hour and a half to put together, like a five question assessment, we can give them a tool to just generate based on a particular standard, a particular grade, a particular topic, even contextually a particular, maybe interest or theme area that goes with another lesson plan they're doing that takes something down to really just a matter of minutes that they can then incorporate into their plan immediately. So I think it's because it's used so high frequency that it was very attractive for us to immediately put that into Performance Matters assessment to be able to generate that assessment in a matter of minutes.Hardeep Gulati:Wow.Michael Horn:So take us through sort of what this looks like in the course of a teacher's day. And either of you can jump in here. But I'm a teacher, I've got my students. Is this something that I'm generating after school when I would be lesson planning in the old days? Is this something that I'm watching students do independent work and I can create that assessment? What do I need to change in my classroom to make this really work for me? How is that going to look?Hardeep Gulati:I can start at Marcy and feel free. I think the way I always tell the team is think about it's. Like, let's pick the examples of how other industries have taken advantage of AI. Let's take about the car industry, right, which automated driving my Tesla. Right. Think about the initial lane change warnings. Right? That's where it started. And then went into, hey, I'll keep you in the lane. Then to almost give me your directions and I'll help you navigate there. And even I can navigate your complex path within a city. Well, our AI path is very much similar. We started today with already in the last couple of years we have branched ATRIS based on AI. So we have a lot of districts who take advantage within our data analytics platform, different attributes to be able to come with address modeling so we can actually tell them these kids might get at risk based on these factors. So that way you can provide the right support intervention. So we are giving them those warnings with the things what Marcy talked about, giving them tools to help them stay in the lane. We are helping teachers come up with the lesson plans, come up with the questions, as well as guide the student to on a mastery that here's the things which actually might help you. The piece where we are actually taking this one step further is now almost taking to automate it to their directions. So this is where how do we put AI in that whole thing from end-to-end flow, where let's take one of the biggest areas where the learning happens every day, which is homework. Let's personalize the homework itself. That's something homework hasn't changed. Simple mythology has been doing for 100 rows a year, but every child struggles and has their different needs, but yet we measure them with the same homework. We also, if you think about it, and I have done this. A lot of data around this is that number of kids in North America who actually spend more than an hour of supplemental learning outside homework are very few. So if we really want to improve the achievement gap, we got to actually make the homework itself personalized. There could be a lot of good use of supplemental tutoring and supplemental content and they can go to Khan Academy and they can go to Excel and other systems, but they're only doing that 1 hour in a week. If we really want to improve achievement, we got to actually do that within the context of their day-to-day learning. And that's really a unique opportunity for Power School because we are where they are doing their homework, we are system where they're getting the homework and we can now personalize the entire homework within that context. Now there is here, which is now the actual scenarios are a lot more complex. You look at a lot of different behavior aspects, their career pathways, how do we now incorporate that into their homework itself? So we're not measuring every kid by the same mastery. We actually want to factor that kid's passion, that kid's career path, that kid's goal and bring that learning into it. So we're not measuring the same thing and deal with the environment for that child. And that's where things like our Naviance and other pieces come into the picture and helping even take that one step further and provide a full personalized learning pathways. So we're really kind know doing that now as Marcy were mentioning, actually it really helps the teacher. Sometimes people are scared to your point is like hey, this is going to take teachers away. Actually not. I take the same example of an automatic car. It's not taking the role of the driver if I'm shuffling my kids to the stuff. It's not that the automated car means I'm going to send my kids to go by themselves. I would still be in the car. But now rather than the tedious task of driving, I'm actually engaging with my kids and family. Well, that's what now we're equipping teachers with those automated tools to now actually focus on the engagement rather than actually have to worry about the mundane task of homework and collecting that to know where the kids are. So it really actually allows our teachers to teach and focus on the teaching. So it's augmenting the teachers and really into their day to day learning.Michael Horn:It's powerful because I think for years we've talked about technology really powering those human moments and making it a much more human to human connection which frankly a lot of schools, traditional classrooms are actually not all that much. So if you're lecturing to a large mass of undifferentiated sort of lessons to them. But the other piece that I just want to pick up on there that you mentioned that I think is quite interesting is when you think about sort of connecting that into Naviance and those career or college pathways? If I'm hearing you all correctly, it sounds like you could start to say, like, hey, Michael, you're really excited about this career field or this set of skills or whatever else. Why don't you learn algebra? In the context of this? We're going to generate problems that show you the relevance. Am I catching where you're going with this?Hardeep Gulati:You're absolutely right. It actually lets them not just do the competency and masteries on the different standards or what the lesson plans or the curriculum is. It actually takes that one step further to start building life skills, collaboration skills, other things which the kid is passionate about. So we are really focusing and developing the whole child and helping them achieve their true journey of their career goal.Michael Horn:That's really neat. So, Marcy, this is rolling out this fall, right? So what should educators expect as they come back to their classrooms in August and September?Marcy Daniel:Yeah, so they should expect we're rolling out into a beta or a pilot format. This fall is really where you normally log in and you have to create items, and that has a big task associated with it. Now you just press a button, hit generative item and it automatically creates those items. You can select them and put them directly on assessment and use that. You asked before, is this in class? I think it could be in class. I think because it's so easy to generate them, I think you could do your exit ticket literally after you taught your lesson. Have kids, take it. I think the other part that's really exciting and you started touching on this is that you could really personalize it for every student. Let's say you have 25 students in your class. You know what their interests are because we are connected to the college and career readiness, you could really start tailoring that experience because you've cut down the amount of time that it takes to do it.Closing TimeMichael Horn:Wow. So as we go into closing time, if you will, Hardeep, I guess the question I have for you is that we're all excited about this. There's a lot of folks who are nervous about AI in general, AI in education specifically. What do you think about those risks and what do you say to those who are maybe nervous to embrace AI in the classroom?Hardeep Gulati:No, I completely know where people are coming from, especially coming out of this pandemic and the crisis after crisis on certain engagement and to outcomes to teacher know, we almost are, hey, we want a breather. But in reality, with the generative AI, we are already facing another challenge. I shared in my keynote, Google just shared earlier this week about the stats on ChatGPT. If you look at the search, homework was the second highest category of search on ChatGPT. So how people are doing homework today is anyway getting disrupted because those same questions without kids actually taking advantage of ChatGPT is not going to really be any more feasible. So teachers and school districts have to evolve. Even they can look at banning as much, but they still have to evolve. And what we are seeing is actually a lot of our thought leader districts are actually trying to get ahead of that and they are figuring out how you take advantage and actually rethink about the homework itself to be able to factor that it's actually a lot more different interactive. And to your point, I think we are taking these steps, we are building these components, we are launching the item generation and lesson plan so that allows teachers to create better personalized lesson plans and pathways. But as we work with them and look at how we can actually help them rethink about homework into the next year and think about even broader than competency-based learning into their career pathways, we have opportunity to partner with school districts to really drive that and stay ahead of it. And as I said, it's not to replace teacher, it's actually, as Marcy said, it actually gives time back in the hand of teacher so they can actually focus on teaching, which is what they love and that's why they're in the profession to begin with. So it actually really takes all that administrative aspects and automates a lot of the company. The other concern I think I do hear about is equity element. Does this actually help equity or actually makes it worse? It's very important that we do address the access problem, right? And this doesn't take the address the access issue, but as we have seen, there has been a lot of investments over Pandemic when with ESSER money to address the access issue, but just that giving more hardware doesn't solve the equity problem. What we have seen that to address the equity problem truly and we have seen equity problem does get worse actually through the Pandemic. We actually need technologies like this at scale, which can really help it but address the equity at scale problem. And I think again, the partnerships and rolling into the right way allows us to stay ahead of it rather than making it worse.Michael Horn:You went where I wanted to do, where I wanted to go for the last question on this question of equity. And so I'll phrase it this way because you mentioned some of the districts that have banned ChatGPT or AI and things of that nature. And I guess my take and I'd love you both to reflect just briefly as we wrap up here, my take has been that when you ban AI from your school systems or whatever else, or ChatGPT or whatever, it is that, in effect, you're saying to those students who have access outside of school and at home and so forth good for you. Go wild. But those of you who don't, too bad. And that seems to me deeply inequitable. How would you respond to that take? Do you have a different way of thinking about it?Hardeep Gulati:Go ahead.Marcy Daniel:Yeah, I totally agree. I think districts that struggled with do we ban it, do we embrace it? I think that they're starting to come around to the fact that we do have to embrace it. It's here. And I think one of the things that I have found fascinating as I've talked to districts is that they are finding unique ways to use it and it does drive more equity than it does disparity. If they can work with their communities to understand those things. And to your point, students that maybe not have access to computers and things like that outside of the classroom, it actually starts opening an entire new world for them. And so I think that there was a speaker on one of our earlier panels today that said he was familiar with both sides of that coin and that as he's worked with districts, is fully embracing on moving people over into the empowerment camp of AI for districts overall.Hardeep Gulati:No, I would completely agree with Marcy. And what I would just say is know it's important for us as a technology providers to actually partner with people like yourself, the districts who really do this and educate the right way. This is our fundamental opportunity and it's a pivotal moment to actually help us x rate a lot of the things we've always wanted to do, the competency based learning. A lot of districts have struggled. How do you do that? Well, this actually gives you a path to do that. It's also important this addresses the teacher burnout problem. Let's give the tools to the teacher which helps them actually take a lot of that work out of their hands and we can actually improve it. It also helps us address the personalized learning and engagement problem. Let's help support each child. And then also let's not just focus on achievement, let's focus on the whole child. So let's give them all the other things that helps us. So it is a journey, it's a lot of different elements. We're actually even partnering with organizations like Code to even have initiatives like teach AI. So we want to actually teach even AI, not just to schools from professional development perspective, how they take advantage, but actually how they can actually introduce to the kids as well. Because I think that allows us to really take advantage of really helping use this as a transformational moment. And we're very excited about the unique opportunity we have to actually support. We're really excited about all the work going on in the industry. But as we can kind of really integrate all that into the day to day learning and really help where learning and engagement is happening in the power school systems for 80% of the North American school districts, we have a unique opportunity to really partner and help them with this journey. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Readers of this newsletter know that a little while back I published a piece titled “Why System Transformation Is Likely a Pipe Dream: But I’m for System Replacement.” That piece referenced a white paper by Thomas Arnett of the Clayton Christensen Institute titled “K–12 Value Networks: The hidden forces that help or hinder learner-centered education.” Tom collaborated on that white paper with our friends at Education Reimagined.After publishing my piece, they both reached out to dig deeper into the conversation and its implications. That conversation is what I’m bringing you today. Is school transformation possible without replacing the existing education system? In addition to Tom, Kelly Young of Education Reimagined joined me to argue that it’s not. In an educational landscape that constantly seeks marginal improvements, my guests spoke to the importance of embracing new value networks that support innovative approaches to learning. The conversation touched on the issue of programs that remain niche solutions, rather than robust, learner-centered alternatives. In exploring the concept of value networks, they both challenged the notion of transforming individual schools or districts alone. They argue for the creation of a new value network to truly revolutionize the education system. Of course, they admit that achieving this is no small feat, as it requires a paradigm shift in mindset and a careful balance between innovation and existing structures. In this conversation, we wrestle with the full implications of their findings and more. For example, I asked them if we just instituted more growth-based measures of learning as opposed to point-in-time and deficit labeling accountability approaches, would today’s schools and systems really not be able to respond? And if the answer is no, how separate does a new model of schooling really have to be? Can districts do this work? Their answers were illuminating.As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation, watch it below, or read the transcript.Michael Horn:Today, we have two folks who been at this work for a number of years in reinventing our education systems and our schools and rethinking a lot of the fundamental assumptions really that undergird them. We have Kelly Young, who is the president and founder of Education Reimagined. Kelly, it's good to see you.Kelly Young:It's great to see you. Thank you for having me.Michael Horn:Yeah, especially fresh off vacation, to have you here is a luxury for us. And then we have Thomas Arnett. Tom, you've been on the show before, so it's good to see you again. Obviously, Tom is a senior researcher at the Christensen Institute. He and I have been colleagues for many, many years now. I think you just passed your 10th year anniversary at the Christensen Institute. Tom Arnett:I did.Michael Horn:So congrats and good to see you as well, Tom.Tom Arnett:Yeah, great to see you, Michael. Great to see you both. Two of my favorite people to chat with, so I'm excited for this conversation.Morning WarmupMichael Horn:Well, hopefully you'll still feel that way by the end. But as folks who listen know, we separate this show into four segments, and we're going to dive right into our morning warmup. And I'll start with you, Tom, and I'll give a little bit of background and the reason we wanted to have this conversation. You all had collaborated on a paper a number of months ago that came out that I used in my class at Harvard. It's a great paper called “K–12 Value Networks: The hidden forces that help or hinder learner-centered education.” And the big argument, I think, if I were to summarize it, is that schools are a part of a larger systems surrounding them, whether that's the school boards, the unions, the policymakers, they exist in an ecosystem and a network of different organizations that are impacting them in different ways. And that if you really want to transform, it's not enough to just transform an individual school or an individual district. You kind of have to tackle the whole system itself. And that often means creating a new value network entirely. And so then I followed this up some months later because I was frustrated, I think, coming out of GSV, where I saw both of you and everyone was saying, like, how do we change the system? And I was like, we don't change the system. We replace the system with something completely new. And so I wrote this piece, why system transformation is likely a pipedream, but I'm very in favor of system replacement, and we thought we'd geek out and talk a little bit about. So, Tom, I want to start with you, which is like, I did my best to summarize the paper but I'd love you to give a little bit more of the basic argument behind why you really need a whole new value network if system changes what you're after and the logic behind that conclusion.Tom Arnett:Yeah, well, let me dive right in, Michael. I think all of us on this conversation share this common view that education could be a lot better than it is and that it's not just about tweaking curriculum or tweaking the professional development we give teachers that there's some fundamental things that should be rethought about the idea of single paced, classroom based, teacher driven instruction. Now, folks have been calling out the conventional model of schooling for probably close to a century, know Dewey. But we also can look and see that folks like Larry Cuban and David Tyack for decades have been pointing out that, yeah, people tweak the system on the margins, but that fundamental, what they call the fundamental grammar of schooling or the fundamental our language in the paper would be the fundamental organizational model of schooling hasn't changed. And so this paper really draws on insights from outside of education that are super relevant here. Clayton Christensen, when he was studying organizations was asking this question why is it that large, successful, well resourced companies consistently fail to adopt certain types of innovations? And what he ultimately landed on was the idea of value networks being a key driver of that phenomenon of why companies often don't innovate. So in a company context, the value network is your customers, your suppliers, your distribution channels, your investors. But in education, we look at the value network as being made up of things. It's essentially the context of individuals, other organizations, institutions and regulations that interface with and establish help an organization establish its model. So for a school, the value network often includes local, state and federal education agencies, policymakers, learners and their families, employee unions, voters and taxpayers, the post secondary education system, community organizations, vendors, teacher preparation pipelines, philanthropic donors. That context that value network for schools then becomes the dominant influence on its priorities and it shapes what types of innovations will you do? But it also determines what types of innovations just don't pass muster, don't get traction because they don't align with what that broader context demands. So we wrote this paper to really point out if we want to get to new models of schooling that break free from the conventional grammar of schooling, we can't just do it by trying to take existing schools and tweak them, adjust them. Because not only do their models have a lot of inertia that's hard to overcome, but the value networks, they sit within the expectations that policymakers and parents and others have of what those schools are supposed to offer and how they're supposed to work. Those forces just push schools back into a more conventional model. So again, the high-level takeaway is if we want new models, we have to find ways to assemble new value networks around those models to support those models.Michael Horn:Super helpful description. And Kelly, I think for all of us it rings true. But your background is one where you came into this question of reimagining education through this organization called Convergence, which, in essence, if I tried to summarize it, would be you take sticky areas where there's two sides, broadly speaking. Or multiple sides, perhaps, that don't necessarily agree, and you take them through a process to come up with convergence, like a new set of views, if you will, that all sides can take to. So I hear that and I'm like, okay, these folks think that they can somehow get system transformation by getting all these different stakeholders in the value network to speak the same language. And indeed you came out with this incredible statement that undergirds education reimagined about what education could look like. And then here you are writing a paper with Tom and espousing a lot of these same ideas that it's not going to happen in the existing value network. So I want to know, that feels like an evolution, maybe it's not. You'll tell me, but how did you come to that conclusion?Kelly Young:Yeah, it is somewhat of an evolution. It was an evolution watching transformational efforts over the last ten years when we came out with the vision. So rather than ask people to come to common ground, we actually asked them to set aside the legacy system and imagine what you would invent today, what we know about kids development, society, learning, education, et cetera, and ask them to really imagine the future. And there was no question that there was agreement on what that future was. And it was what we call learner centered education. And it really is around about human thriving as opposed to consumption of knowledge, right? And rather than compliance, it's about agency. So even at the time, if you read the vision document, it goes through everything that would have to be redesigned from the preparation of adults, the adult roles assessment, credentialing of learning, funding models, you name it. It would have to be redesigned because in our current system, it is all designed for standardization, compliance and knowledge transfer. So we knew all of that to begin with. And in some ways it's not a radical shift. What we're proposing, what we've always known, is that you have to find the people who want to do this invention of a new system and that it is invention at this point. It's not about taking something and scaling something. There are models that exist. Montessori, for example, right, is a learner-centered model of education. But until you have systems transformation where that would actually enable that model to thrive and exist and be incentivized, you are not going to see those models significantly spread inside of public education. And our mission, just to be clear, is about creating a public education system that a learner-centered public education system. So we have watched people trying to do it inside the system and outside of the system. We are really about finding people who see this vision and are making instances of it for children, whether it's in charter district, out of school time homeschooling, et cetera. And we kept seeing this tension that people were trying to do it in system because that's where the money and the kids are. But they were highly constrained in what they were able to do because of the values networks. Then we were watching people going outside and seeing that they could actually assemble values networks that were aligned to what they were doing but they had no funding and they had no enabling infrastructure to do it. So if you think of microschools and pods and other interesting things that are happening outside of the system so we just got really clear that without creating a values network that is aligned to the work, some element of it is going to pull you back. Whether it's the school board, parent views, funders, state regulatory bodies, teacher certification, there's just too many whack a moles to get them all. Unless you're able to actually assemble a group of people who want to invent this future together.Work CycleMichael Horn:No, that's super helpful. Super helpful and that evolution makes sense. I think in light of that list that you just provided, that's a daunting list to move any one of those, let alone all of those. Let's move into the work cycle where I want to give you all a bunch of the yeah, buts that I get when I've come out with my piece or that I hear often and have you react in essence and see sort of how you frame it. Kelly, I'll start with you because I think one question we often get, at least I get, is like yeah, that may be right, but do we really need to change the system? If we just keep improving on the margins, that'll be fine. So is system transformation really the thing that's needed? I'd love to have you react to that one.Kelly Young:Yeah, I mean, I wish it wasn't because systems transformation is really difficult. But the reality is I was just looking at the stats and I apologize. I can't cite the report, but the instances of mental health, for example, and how dire that situation is for the youth of this country now and that comes from not having a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of what they're learning makes a difference. That they make a difference. And adding a handful of things, moments of silence, social and emotional learning, adding a project here or there is not going to fundamentally shift that sense for them. And so it is unfortunate that systems transformation is necessary. But we have been trying for decades now to take this system and get it to marginally move on. Even the things that the system recognizes are critical, like NAEP scores or state testing. And it can't move it, let alone on social and emotional learning, sense of purpose, employability access and sustainability through higher ed. So if we really care about kids getting the results, systems transformation is really the only way we've got forward.Michael Horn:Yeah, it's interesting hearing you just say that and I'll just riff off of it before I go into the next question, which is, if you think about all those you said, moments of silence or meditation or social emotional learning or whatever, these add-ons. Not that any one of them is bad, but fundamentally, the system is still if at the end of the lesson, you still move on to the next one, regardless of whether you've mastered it. And agency and purpose is at the heart of your challenge. Well, you've just told people, like, actually, you don't have agency over whether you can keep working to control something. And so the system keeps unambiguously sending these signals that undercuts a lot of these well meaning activities, I think fundamentally, and you just laid out, I think, a nice list of, yeah, those are wonderful things, but they're still not changing the fundamental gears of the systems. So I want to go to the next one, which is like but surely there are anomalies to this idea or that we can do something differently. And the one that I often hear and Tom, I'll start with you on this. But Kelly, I'd love you to weigh in as well, which is if we put in competency-based learning policies, like we wiped out Carnegie units and seat time and maybe we changed the incentives. Kelly talked about incentives so that a Montessori model as an example could really thrive. And so we moved to maybe more growth based measures of learning as opposed to point in time and deficit labeling and things of that nature, then surely if we change what we pay for, these schools and systems could start to respond. What's your take on that one?Tom Arnett:So my initial reaction, I have so much sympathy for district administrators because their value networks are really messy. They've got a whole populations and communities of parents that want somewhat similar, somewhat different things. They've got state policymakers that are pushing them on different angles, federal policymakers that are pushing them on different angles. They're teachers unions, they're community stakeholders. And the nature of their institution is they're expected to serve all of these groups and give them all what they want and all what they need. And it means that they're in this tug of war where I often look at the status quo and I think, well, this is the natural equilibrium that you get when you have all these different forces from their value network pushing and pulling on them and they're doing the best they can to appease all these forces. So then to get to your question around like, well, why can't we just change the policy, change the incentives. I think what's often problematic is that we end up passing a policy that just layers one more force into that messy set of forces that are pushing and pulling on them within their value network. So you may get like a little nudge. There a little nudge here, but it doesn't have the ability to fundamentally realign the value network. I think of New Hampshire, my understanding is they've had competency based policy for a while and there are some really cool programs in the state of New Hampshire like VLACS that we profiled in our paper. But by and large, the competency-based policy hasn't fundamentally led to the redesign of widespread redesign of the districts across the state. And I think it's no one's fault. It's not that anyone's trying to become a nuisance or a hindrance to change. It's just the nature of the value networks that a conventional system sits within. It's really hard to tweak a policy or tweak an incentive and actually get a complete realignment of the organizational model and the priorities that that model is set up to pursue.Michael Horn:Kelly, what's your take? I mean, maybe we just need more patience with that change.Kelly Young:So the other part about for at least learner-centered education is that it is a paradigm shift. It's designing a system for a different purpose than our existing system is set up for. So when we talk about values networks, we're not talking about slight modifications like the experience of a child learning math for example. That would be a reform that you could institute. There are five elements that the vision document laid out for what learner centered is and competency based is one of them because you need to be able to credential learning no matter where it happens, wherever it happens, at whatever pace it happens with, whoever it happens with. And we actually thought at the beginning we have a star in the vision document and we had competency based at the top because we thought if you change that one, you change everything because that's a structure that we thought is keeping the whole thing in place. It turns out a, there are many structures keeping it in place but mostly there's a mindset keeping it in place. And so a structural change is not sufficient to cause a mindset shift. You need the mindset shift first and then to employ the structural change to support that mindset shift so you can find places where they are using competency based legislation to totally redo single sites learning like Iowa Big for example, in Cedar Rapids or many places that we all know. But the mindset shift for us is a shift between that we are preparing kids for the future, they are living now and they have contributions to make now. And that the idea is that we're not trying to help them fit in to a preexisting slot. We are helping them be lifelong learners so that they can create their lives and live fulfilling lives. And those two trajectories are radically different. And so it does take competency based ways of learning to fulfill on the new paradigm. And competency based in the existing paradigm for our existing system is actually just a lot of busy work to allow for self paced learning. And so it does add value to have self-paced learning. But it's a lot of work to do it and insufficient to actually change the experience of kids more than marginally. There's a whole host of other things that you would need in addition to competency based. So that's part of what's been a radical shift in our thinking. We actually realize that the mindset shift and that is really around agency and relationships have to be at the core of things first before any structural change will suffice.Michael Horn:Super intriguing point. I want to come back to that in a few moments and maybe once we end up we'll end with that thought because I think that's a very powerful idea. I want to go to another yeah, but that I get first though. Which is but look at this great thing have and you Kelly, you mentioned Iowa Big, right? I got one in higher ed recently. I made an argument that sort of these policies that states try to pass and different foundations try to fund of getting colleges to accept transfer credits from other colleges. It's not really going to work because fundamentally, we're still not credentialing learning. At the end of the day, we're credentialing seat time and asking these recognitions and there's business model issues and there's questions of faculty saying like, well, what you learned over at that college over there is not equivalent to what I teach here. It's not good enough for my major. Or like they have all their ways, right? And a few folks, several folks reached out and were like, you're wrong. Look at this great demonstration project we have here. Or look what we did in Florida. Or look at this. And I'm like, yeah, again, you're pushing on the margins. That's great. But I don't think you're not going to fundamentally change the system was my thought. But I want your thought because like pointing at the great thing. I'll give you another example. There are 500 public Montessori schools that are public schools, right? So there does seem to be room for them. Why can't those great things just sort of grow and thrive and prosper and change people's mindsets over time? Kelly, why don't you take this first and then Tom, you get it next.Kelly Young:Yeah, I mean I was definitely in the camp that thought if you find the models, they can spread. And if you network the models together to work on systems transformation, systems transformation will happen. Turns out it was not true and for a variety of reasons, but mostly because without that, systems transformation is a critical component because these things are roses and concrete now it's not as though they are growing in fertile ground to continue to multiply. Their seeds fly off but they land in fertile context. So the question is how do you get to systems transformation? And I guess our thought was people will rise up, they will shift the context that they're operating in and begin to shift systems but the reality is that is not what they are tasked with. Even if you are a single model that is not your job to figure out how do we do assessment credentialing of learning in alternative ways at scale that takes a completely different skill set, a different set of people to be involved with it. And until you have those things that make this an easy shift, that make this a scalable shift, things are going to stay in small pockets and it led us to have a radically different strategy going forward from simply identifying pioneers and networking them together. Tom, actually we are now about how do we pilot and demonstrate alternative public education systems in a handful of places because we believe that until you can invent systems that actually would enable this that's what will spread. The models can't spread until you have the enabling systems and tom date we really have been uninterested as a country in what would it take to invent those new systems that are scalable.Tom Arnett:Well, I'm going tom add nuance in that I'm going to recognize I think the marginal improvements are worthwhile. I think as folks are trying to create a new system shift to another paradigm, the work that other folks are doing of trying to improve the system we have is not without merit. The second thing I want to call out is that I'd be really curious to go look at those yeah but for instances and see how many of those actually have accomplished what they accomplished because they have a different type of value network supporting them because that's what I've seen and a lot of the examples. One thing to point out is that new value network does not necessarily have to mean outside of public education or outside of school districts. There's places within school districts, we profile some of them in the paper where they are coming up with very different approaches to education. But they found a way to kind of assemble a different type of value network within that public education landscape, which often means they find kind of exceptions or loopholes in policy or just places in policy where they can do things differently. It means that they're often serving different types of learners and different families with different expectations about what schools should be. And so their forces align, their value network forces align around doing something different. All that being said though, I will say that often those programs get stuck and one way in which I see them get stuck is that you create a new program that's kind of cool niche on the margins, but it never improves. It's like we created this really cool program for alternative education, for dropouts, and we are now checking the box that we've got dropouts back engaged with the system. But it's not becoming a really robust, learner-centered program. It's just kind of this niche program on the margins that no one's expecting to become more than just this stop gap. So that's one problem is I think you need leaders with vision to say, no, let's use this as a ground to invent new models of schooling, not just let's plug a hole and then walk away and go back to our day jobs. The other problem I see, though, is sometimes these programs do improve and they become really compelling, and then they get throttled. So a couple of programs I've seen within districts where they've created really compelling, learner centered versions of education, and they're getting really great test scores. And they'll often say, yeah, the district loves to feature us when people come to visit, they take them on a tour and they show them our site, but we can't grow anymore because our building only holds 200 or 400 kids. And the district has said, we don't want you to grow. You're a cool program, but we don't want young to affect the enrollments in our conventional schools. So we have to limit you and kind of keep you caged in that space. So that's where I hope that some of the impact of the work we're doing is to help superintendents, state policymakers, help them have the vision of look, not only how can we create the context where new programs and new value networks can emerge. But how do we also protect them and give them the runway they need to improve and grow and not just be relegated to these really neat boutiquey niches of the system, but never allowed to become mainstream alternatives to conventional education?SpecialsMichael Horn:So I want to jump in, and I'm going to jump ahead now of where I was going to go, and we're going to go into our special section because this is where I want to push you both a little bit. And See is carving out an area within a district. Kelly separate enough? Like, how separate does it have to be? And the reason I'm asking it is because isn't that still in a value network of the district board or the colleges or whatever else? And what I think I often see and Kelly, I think you alluded to this a little bit also, which is like, yeah, maybe you see that great example. It's not their job to rearchitect the system, and frankly, over time, they sort of fade out or there's a regression to the mean, if you will, because the system still has its underlying incentives, and you can pick the five that pull it back, but that's five of 50 that could have pulled it back.Tom Arnett:Right.Michael Horn:So I'm just sort of curious, in your viewpoints, how separate does it really have to be? And are some of these examples that you've cited within districts, are those really the right mental models for us to pin? Tom tom, why don't you go first on your view and then Kelly?Tom Arnett:Yeah, well, as backstory, Michael and I have had some back and forth on this one. I think it's a real challenge. I think of it kind of like a gravitational pull, right? Like if you can get out of the Earth's gravitational pull, there's a place where you can be a satellite to the Earth and you can do things a little bit differently. But some of the things we want to see it takes really escaping that gravitational pull beyond just kind of being in orbit of it. And I think that's a challenge. As you launch a program within a district, there's a poll to bring it back to where it's at. And that's real. I think the counterpoint to that is the stuff happening in what some folks refer to as permissionless education. I mean, permissionless is about getting totally free of any kind of conventional value network. I'd say though, there's its own set of challenges over there. In terms of open, there's a lot of open space to do stuff. But in terms of finding the funding and finding the support, it's got its own set of challenges. I actually think it's an interplay of both that we need innovation happening both within districts and in the spaces outside of districts. Both to see the different versions of what's possible and to push each other a little bit to try things that are different.Kelly Young:So our view is I would love to believe that it's possible inside of districts and that you could carve out the space. And for all the reasons we talked about, those value network that are very volatile, they're constantly in flux. It is very hard even if you get something going to sustain it long enough. But that's not the only issue with it. In every other industry we have R and D space where we know that you do not invent something new with the people who are tasked with producing the existing resources, whatever it might be, right? You just wouldn't do it. You don't go to the car manufacturers and say let's invent flight because they have to continue to make cars. They have the tools to make cars, they have the incentives, all of those things exist. And yet, for some reason we think going to the people who are tasked with administering the existing system, they are going to have the time, the space, the funding, the resources, the talents. Because to invent a new system of education is not an easy task. You really have to be standing in a very different place. And if you're also tasked with administering the current one, you're always intention. So to. Me. It is not because of the lack of will, the lack of talent, the lack of vision for lots of people in districts that are trying this. It's that it isn't the right conditions to actually do this work. And it's also a misplacement of what we are doing or a miscategorization of the stage we're in. I keep talking about invention, and it's because so often in education we see a model and then we say, let's scale that model. Rather, what we have to do is create the conditions for models like that and many others like that. To be able to spread and to create those conditions is a very different task than creating a model. So I'm not willing to say, no, that you couldn't do it that way. We are just looking at education. We imagine what are the conditions and how can you get those conditions. I am very skeptical that you could get them in a district without significant resources going towards it and really examining how separate it is. I do think it would need separate governance because of the value networks. It would have to have people who are completely opting in from the educator perspective as well as the families and youth. And that the existing system that's sitting side by side with it is not administering the funds to the new because that's the other issue. As one begins to grow, as the new alternative grows, there's a lot of incentive for the existing system to also thomas's earlier point throttle it right to pull it back. So you also need to know that the funding of it is not controlled by the people who have an incentive to kill it.Michael Horn:No, that makes sense. Okay, so let me go into my penultimate question then, from there, which is I love that phrase, create the conditions. Kelly, that you just used. I think that's a really good one. And Tom, you mentioned the permissionless space and this is the zone of Education savings accounts and some of these other efforts to create, I think, more room for permissionless education, but still with public financing. And I'm curious your views of that theory of action, both of you. Kelly, maybe you can go first on this one, but is that what we're pinning our hope on right now, to have the space to reinvent and do systems change or are there other ways or mechanisms that you would see us creating the conditions to have a novel public education systems?Kelly Young:Yeah, one, I believe if you can get state funding and federal funding to support the R&D, that's where we want to end up. Whether at this stage we could get it free from the constraints of the existing system seems very difficult and it has not happened to date. And so I think it's going to have to be philanthropically led in the early stages to actually develop the R&D for this. And it will be important to have the philanthropic support because if it's only done on parent tuitions and parent support, you're going to be building a system that is only designed for some and you will not actually be designing something that works for all children. And I think if governments are risk adverse, right, policymakers are risk adverse and so they are not typically the places where you get the cutting edge ideas from. It is usually from, at least in industry, right from the marketplace. And because we don't have a marketplace in education, we have to create the spaces. And I think that's going to have to be philanthropically supported. And once young get some things that are working and people can see that where kids and parents and educators are loving what they're experiencing, then I think you could begin to get state and federal money to go deeper, expand, broaden the pilots and the prototypes.Michael Horn:That's helpful. Tom, before you give your reaction to the ESA permissionless, et cetera, world, just one quick thought actually off of what Kelly said and check me on the nuance. I think what you're saying, this R&D sector, there's similarities to what Joel Rose and Transcend and some of those folks have talked about like an R D for model providers. But I think what I hear you saying is, yes, but that's not sufficient. They also need R&D to create the new system by which those model providers thrive and live in and so forth. Am I hearing that correctly?Kelly Young:100%.Michael Horn:Okay, perfect. It strikes me as a really important nuance. So Tom, let me turn to you then on this ESA permissionless question. How do you frame that effort, in your view? Could this be the separate enough space?Tom Arnett:I think it can. I think there's a lot of promise. Again, from the perspective of how do you create a different value network? It allows for removing a lot of the forces that push and pull existing school systems and saying, let's create a value network that can align around what do learners and families need without a lot of other pressures pushing and pulling in different directions. I do want to say kind of add some caveats and say that when we talk about what is learner centered education and our vision for learner centered education, I don't think permissionless guarantees that every program coming out of permissionless education is going to be learner centered. It's one way to create the conditions where folks that are innovating and building new models could create those types of models. But it doesn't guarantee that every model is going to be good or every model is going to be learner centered.Closing TimeMichael Horn:Super helpful. Okay, let's go to closing time. You all have inspired me with this last question around changing minds. Kelly, your comment in particular around the importance of that more than just sort of a wonkish policy response, if you will, or changing to competency based learning I think is an important insight. And I'm curious how you see that playing out. And I'll put forth what I think might be a vision and have you both react to it. It strikes me that what you're both saying is you effectively want families choosing, actively choosing these learner-centered models and systems rather than saying you have to opt in. Because if you have to opt in, then that creates a value network that's going to try to change the underlying architecture, if you will, of the new system. Instead, you want people that say like, yeah, that's what I want, they opt into it. Theoretically they're successful. More people see that and they start to opt in. And over time, if you will, in the classic disruption stories, the volume collapses from the old way of doing things into the new. Is that sort of the mental model that you have in mind when you say changing mindsets or is there something else going on there? Kelly, why don't you take it first and then Tom, you get the final word.Kelly Young:I agreed with everything that you said and I think when I said, yeah, that this is a mindset shift, that you need to start with the people who have already had a mindset shift and do want what this is. And you nailed it. And the idea is if this really does lead to human thriving and youth having joyful experiences not just once they graduate, but throughout their childhood and education process, that that should be what people want and it would start to draw more educators and more children. Now, that's easier said than done, but that is the mental model.Tom Arnett:So I want to articulate a little bit of what I see the transition looking like. What does it look like for us to go from where we are today to having new models that are in new value networks, to those models becoming mainstream, widely accessible to lots of learners? I worry that folks might read our paper or listen to this conversation and think, oh, so you want to force folks into you have this vision of what learner centered education should be and we need to create the policies that push people into this new vision. And I don't think that's how it happens or how I don't think it can even happen successfully if that's the approach that people try and take. In other words, we don't get there by education reform, by just passing policies that push people into this new system. I think what happens instead, and this very much draws on the ideas of disruptive innovation is that there's some folks like Kelly mentioned a minute ago that have already they have different priorities, they want something different from education. And it starts by building models that serve those folks and that align with what those folks are looking for. And often it's not know, they don't care about academic achievement, but they just have a very different if you look at these different value networks they have a very different ordering and how they rank what matters in education. They're not saying first and foremost is like are you covering the content? Are students getting high test scores? They're saying that may matter, but most important is are you setting up youth to thrive? Are you giving them experiences that prepare them for the real world? Are you helping them to have a sense of purpose, to have a sense of mastery? And that comes first. That's what's more valued in these new value networks. So we don't get widespread change by convincing everyone that they need to change their values and adopt these new set of values of the folks in the new value network. I think what happens instead is as those value network improve and thrive, folks that are sitting in the old value network say you know what, it's actually getting to the point where I feel comfortable that it's reliably going to help me do what I wanted to do with my life. In other words, let me give a case in point. I see families often, they'll verbalize and they'll say yeah, I want this more holistic approach to education. But then as their kids approach like 8th grade they start to go yeah, but I also want them to go to college. And I know that they need to get good test scores to go into college. So that was great for elementary school and middle school, but now that they're in high school, let's put them back in the conventional education system. So I think what happens is we get to a point where the proof points from that new value network are so compelling that folks say actually, you know what, the kids over there, they are getting into college. They're maybe not getting in by meeting the same criteria we thought were important, but they are getting into college and they're doing really well. Or maybe what happens is folks look over and say those kids aren't all going to college, but they're really thriving in their lives post secondary education and that's really what I care about. And so it's not that people change their values, it's that they start to see how these new programs sitting in new value networks are just compelling with what they really want in life.Michael Horn:Love it. Kelly Tom, thank you so much for joining me having this conversation. I feel like I learned a lot from it and have some new ideas coming out of it. So just appreciative to you both, I suspect a lot of other people will learn and those who are tuning in frustrated, seeking to transform the system, hopefully they walk away with some idea is of how they can actually help on that. So on behalf of everyone tuning in, thanks so much. 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As Clay Christensen always said, despite its reputation, a good theory is a very practical tool. It helps you to decide what steps will lead to what results in a given circumstance. It's not “theoretical.” In this conversation with Outschool.org's Kris Comeforo, we break down how he used innovation theories to guide a program that Outschool.org put in place to serve homeschool students in Detroit—which it’s now expanding elsewhere. Kris told me about how he used the theory of interdependence and modularity, the Jobs to Be Done theory, and some of the other points from my book, From Reopen to Reinvent, to drive his actions. I enjoyed geeking out with Kris and learning about how they engaged homeschool students in the city of Detroit to make a real impact. It was gratifying to hear how the work is now expanding through the use of theory along with the spread of education savings accounts and micro-grant programs in at least 14 states at the time of this recording. As always, subscribers can listen to the conversation, watch it below, or read the transcript.Michael Horn:Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can fulfill their human potential and build their passions and and to help us do that, in today's conversation, we're welcoming Kris Comeforo, who is the Director of Product and Programs at Outschool.org and a recent graduate of Harvard University's EdLD program, which is a program focused on education, leadership. And so, Kris, it's great to see you. I'm excited to talk about the research that you did as part of that program and then some of what you're doing at Outschool.org that we'll get into in just a moment. But first, welcome.Kris Comeforo:Thank you. So, Michael, really, really excited to be here and have this conversation with you.Michael Horn:Yeah, you bet. So I'll give folks a little bit of a background of why I was so excited to have this conversation. You reached out some months ago because you were starting to work without school and an organization in Detroit which I'll let you share more about in just a moment. But a lot of the theories that my research is based on in terms of helping organizations innovate became not so theoretical. You were really using them on the ground. And I said we just ought to geek out about this and learn about what you learned in the process. So why don't you set the scene for us first? Because I've read this capstone project that you did about this work in Detroit, but set the scene for folks. Who were you working with? What was the objective? What were you and Outschool.org trying to learn?Kris Comeforo:Yeah, absolutely. And I'll first explain the distinction between Outschool and Outschool.org because I know that raises some questions with folks. But Outschool is an education platform with live online instruction. I think over 140,000 active classes on there, they've reached over a million learners in nearly 200 countries. Really great platform. And on March 2020, Outschool realized that a lot of families that could benefit from live online instruction might not be able to afford it. So they established Outschool.org very early on into the pandemic with the mission of making sure learners that experience racial or economic marginalization have access to a suite of services so that they can love learning. So that's how Outschool.org really got started. And in the beginning, Outschool org's thesis was providing access to Outschool classes. And that's what the organization did through what I kind of consider like the emergency relief part of the pandemic, when really no schools were open and educational opportunities were limited. But as Outschool.org started to rethink what its strategy was going to be, as schools started to reopen and things and the landscape started to change a little bit. And that's about when I entered Outschool.org through a year long residency with that EdLD program that you described earlier. So I was going to be spending ten months with this organization trying to think, like, how are they best positioned with the resources that they have and the access that they have to the relationship without school to serve communities and what they really need. And where I focused my work around was this organization, Engage Detroit, which is a group of homeschool families in Detroit, Michigan, started by Bernita Bradley, who is a complete tour de force in education and community organizing. And it was a pleasure to work alongside of her and her community. But we really asked that question of what do you need and how can we best support? And they too, were an emerging organization. Bernita herself wasn't a homeschool parent. She spent a lot of time supporting public schools and public school initiatives. But during the pandemic, she and a lot of her neighbors and friends turned to homeschooling to really support their children's education. So spent a year developing our newest program Outbridge with Engage Detroit.Michael Horn:Perfect. Now that's super helpful background, and obviously I'll just make a few footnotes for folks that are tuning in, Outschool the parent, if you will, for-profit in this case. Obviously, I think a lot of folks became familiar with them, if they weren't already during the Pandemic signing up for enrichment classes. I know my kids took several classes on Outschool during the Pandemic, and it’s still part of their imaginary play because they remember it well. So you have that. You have Outschool.org then trying to figure out how do we leverage what we can bring to bear for these communities. Bernita, I will say her work in Detroit, she really is a tour de force. She was the one on a panel at GSV who put me in my own place. I sort of said, how do these parents that don't have backgrounds in education and maybe a lot of wealth in many cases because she's really working with marginalized families who don't have a lot of resources in many cases. I sort of said, how can they possibly navigate this world of homeschooling and make sure their kids are getting the resources that they need to bear? And I know we're going to get into this, but I'll never forget her line, which was, Michael, 16% of Detroit students can read proficiently. You better believe we can do better than that. And so that's sort of where your story kicks off, because you start to work with her and you start to think through and you have this theory of action as you describe it. What are the resources and sets of information that we need to help this community of parents really unlocking the promise of homeschooling and specific the customization to their kids needs that they desire? So tell us a little bit more about that theory of action and then we'll get into some of the theory driven parts of that on the innovation side.Kris Comeforo:Yeah, absolutely. And I think I just want to underline the point that you raised with Bernita. She really looks at this through an asset based lens of our children are brilliant, and learning happens everywhere all the time, and we can support them to be the best. And so many of members in her community just felt like they weren't getting the support they needed through the public schools at the time, during the pandemic. And they knew and really believed in their hearts that their children could be achieving at much higher levels, which is really what gave birth. And she'll be quick to remind anybody right, of the origin of that. So not surprised at all that that's how she framed it to you as well. When we were developing theory of action, it was deeply understanding the context and talking to families was such a key role. And we also talked to a lot of families from our emergency relief program that we were handing out Outschool dollars to. And we not only talked to families that were spending it and gave us good stories, we also talked to families that weren't spending it and say, like, wow, we gave you a lot of access to these great enriching online classes. How come you didn't use all of the funds that you were granted? And the results were interesting, but also not surprising. We heard things like, thanks for this suite of online classes, but we only have one computer and there's three kids in the house. We can't manage getting everybody all online at once. Or thanks for these online classes, but my child's been shuddered at home for the last two years. They want to get out into the community and learn in person with their peers. Is there anything else they could offer? And then what I think is the most, I think, insightful one was a parent told me, my child wants to learn how to swim. You can't learn how to swim online. And that, to me, really just unlocked how we were thinking about this. How could we be positioned? Sure, we have this huge library and access to great online courses, but how do we connect families to a whole ecosystem of supports that are around them so that they could tap into local places in Detroit where you can learn how to swim, or you can learn how to play the violin or learn how to cook or get a math tutor in person, if that's what you have decided that your child needs the most right now. So not just limiting it to the resources that we had on Outschool, but a whole wide ecosystem of supports both online, but also in their community. And the way we really started to do it. And I don't know if you want to get into theory yet, but was just listening. And really what I wanted to know after taking these courses that I know you're so interested in is why are you hiring homeschooling to do the job of education? I'm a lifelong educator and public schools teacher, assistant principal, principal. My mom and dad were both public school teachers. It's hard. Teaching is a difficult endeavor. So now choosing to homeschool and you're a working parent. Now you have to manage your job, you have to manage the duties of being a parent. And now you're also going to take on this massive responsibility of homeschooling and not only decide to do it, but families in engaged Detroit have persisted through the organization still growing. Started out with, I think, twelve students, and now there's over 200 families that are part of this network of families homeschooling in Detroit. They're sticking with it. And so my question is, why did you hire homeschooling? Why is that the solution? And what's the job that you're trying to get done with homeschooling? So it started there.Michael Horn:Yeah, let's stay on that for a moment because that's the jobs to be done theory, of course. And you spent a lot of time trying to understand, as you said, a, why they hired homeschooling, which is an interesting question, but also to your point, and I'm going to accelerate your story a little bit after you realized that, gee, the bundle of online courses, maybe that's not all that these families needed. They needed a much wider range of things. You started to give them cards, basically prepaid cards with dollars loaded on them that they could spend on a variety of activities from different buckets ultimately. And you evolved to that, of course, but not all the families used those cards and used the dollars. There's like several hundred dollars on these cards that they could use, and some of them didn't even use them. And so if I recall, you're doing interviewing both to understand why they're hiring home school and really listen to drive the theory of action. But then also why do some families not use these cards? Like, why are they firing, if you will, a solution that is ready made for them? What did you learn through that process and how did it adjust your program over time?Kris Comeforo:Yeah, no, for sure, I think that's something that's been the most fascinating to study. And I think I was a little too optimistic. I really thought. I was like, wow, everyone's going to spend the money this week. I know it. And that didn't happen. Every family got $500 per learner. So if you had a family with three learners, $1,500, like you said, loaded on into a debit card that could only be used for educational purposes. Now, some families emerge really fast. I call them the super users. They had a plan. They knew exactly. Like, there's a Stem camp down the street on the weekends. There's a summer camp through the YMCA. There's online classes and assessments we want to sign up for. And it was fast. In talking to some of the slow adopters or who were kind of non consumers at first, there was a lot of things at play. Some of it was information overload. It's like there's so much out there. If you go online and I help my family, my brother and sister, I help lead my niece and nephew through, like, what do we do for math over the summer? If you just type that into Google, there's so many things that come up. And as a very experienced educator, I know how to sift through that information. But it's not always clear to families what's high quality and what's going to be worth it and what's actually going to move, whatever the results that you're trying to drive towards. So information overload was definitely some of it. Also there's some semblance of kind of like a scarcity mindset of, hey, $500 sounds like a lot per kid, but actually that goes really quickly and I have to make the right decision with this because it's not going to come back. We funded this through philanthropic donations. This is a one time scholarship. It's not something that families are going to have access to over and over again. So families really wanted to make the right decision as they were trying to go through this.Michael Horn:Super interesting. So then you talk about the set of services that you hypothesize that they need. And you take some pages literally from my book from reopen to reinvent, and you basically say, hey, if we imagine that they need access to everything from content knowledge to skills to you call it something different in your paper, habits of success, I think. Social emotional supports or something like that. And then real world experiences and the like. You have this sort of diagram that you build around it and then you have this really interesting sort of interaction that you say, if we hypothesize these are the sets of things that homeschooling families are going to want to connect into a we know from the jobs to be done. A major driver of this is going to be the social activity, the opportunity to socialize with other families and be part of a community still. So it's not just functional learning that they're looking for B, that the way they integrate across these different modalities or things that they're searching for, if you will, is going to be trickier in some cases than others because of this extreme modularity. Maybe I'll let you actually explain the theory and explain it how it manifested here. And then this is the part that I really want to geek out a little bit on about how it informed your design because I think there's a big jump from School provides everything, which is the fully integrated interdependent offering to homeschooling. It's completely unbundled. We get to choose from an array of providers and there's a continuum, it seems, in between.Kris Comeforo:Yes, no, and that's exactly how I thought about it and was definitely informed by your work from Reopen to Reinvent and try to like, how do I conceptualize this and bring it to action because you're exactly right. If you go enroll in a public school and just sign the paper and enroll, you walk in the building. You have a teacher that's certified by the state. You have a curriculum that's purchased by the district. If you need to go to the nurse, she's down the hall. If you want to sign up for the band, they'll give you a flute, they have a music teacher, and they'll even drive you to marching band competitions. Right? All of that just by that one instance of enrolling in school. Everything is really tightly put together, whereas homeschooling, families, it's a completely different architecture of school. Every single piece of this is put together piece by piece by piece. And this is very liberating and can be very customized, but also at times it can be really overwhelming in terms of how do we choose exactly what's right for my child right now and how does this connect? And I think that's something worthy of talking about to all of the different things. So because it was such a wide ocean, I needed a way to kind of segment it into different domains. So that's why I picked on the basic needs, the foundational skills, building social capital with real world experiences. Those were the different ways that I started to segment. Like, oh, I see people are spending on what I would consider a health and wellness activity. Or this is an activity that's going to support their foundational needs as a way for me to kind of visualize the behavior and the patterns that were starting to emerge as they started to spend in different ways.Michael Horn:Yeah, so let's stay with that now because on the one hand and theory of interdependence and modularity for those that don't know, essentially says most industries start as very integrated, fully proprietary, full bundle of offering. And the reason is that the way those parts in a system interact are not well understood. They're unpredictably. Interdependent change to one, oh my gosh, it changes these three things. I never thought about that before. And then when I change those things, that changes the thing that I just changed in the beginning. Right? And it sort of cascades. And so managing a schedule in a school, managing how band interacts with PE, how it interacts with your English language arts class, how it interacts with staffing. And so you end up with this full bundle of a model. On the other side of it, as industries evolve, they tend to go toward more modular offerings because they allow for customization. So once you satisfy the basic reliability and we start to understand how these parts connect to each other, we say, actually, it's okay if you want to go to this provider for your music, your private piano lesson, whatever it is, you want to go over here for this part, and so forth. And that's how real customization and choice come together. But what's interesting is that typically there's this continuum where we need to sort of be in the middle for customers as they're dancing between sort of different poles on this. And I guess that's what I was wondering as you reflected on this. It struck me that some families were totally capable of doing the fully unbundled, fully modular. They would take your prepaid card and just start picking different providers and others. Maybe wanted some of those components you just named to maybe be a little bit more interdependently linked and not arm's length providers. Because, gosh, you mean I've got to figure out the science camp and that's different from where they learn math, and you're telling me then I got to pick a reading provider also? That's a lot of things that unbundles a lot of choices all of a sudden. I guess I'm wondering did you find that that families fell in different places? And if so, what do you do to change that continuum? What does the theory tell you to do differently as you're designing it or how you're offering these options?Kris Comeforo:Yeah, definitely saw that wide spectrum of how people wanted to go and we got to remind ourselves, right, like school has this deeply ingrained mental model in our society that you go into this building, you can only learn chemistry if you sit in this seat for 180 days for this amount of time. And I think more and more and I think what innovative educators are getting excited about is people are more open to challenging that thought right now, which is exciting. But at the same time not everybody is ready to dive full on into that and taking a step back. A lot of different research with unbundled learning will say access is really important. This is expensive. People need assistance with funds and there's a number of different ways we can talk about that later. How different states and jurisdictions are helping with that information is also key though. Families need to know exactly what their suite of options are, how they can connect them and how it all fits together. But what we uncovered is an additional key component is community, is families needed to talk to each other and we could facilitate that. And there was some role for me to play as like, hey, listen, I've studied education for a long time. I used to be a principal. I know this is a really good math program. You can trust it. That was helpful information for families. But what would really spur a change in behavior is when one family would say that same thing to another family. Not me who had before this year had never been to Detroit, Michigan. But instead when I get families telling stories about how their kid is doing as a result of this program and what started to become interesting and this is indicative across the country, not in just Engage Detroit, some families started to integrate their services with other families, forming little micro schools with each other and saying, like, all right, listen, you seem to have this science thing figured out. Can my kid come with you and do those things? And then we'll go over here, I'll take them on the field trip to do this other experience. And families started to connect with each other to where they saw what worked. But it's still modular in the fact that you don't have to join that thing and subscribe to it. But families started to build it in a way that made sense for them, which I think is an important component of it.Michael Horn:Yeah, so I want to stay on that because that's actually really interesting. So is the point of integration you found less between, say, micro school and the real world internship, maybe at a lab or something like that or whatever it is, and more like you integrated community in the designs so that they could better pick and navigate among the choices. Is that, like what the point of integration was? More than the different parts of the wheel, if you will, to each other?Kris Comeforo:That's how I saw it, because that was the one thing we all had in common in this space. And that was that families and engaged mature. We're all in the same physical area and we have each other to support each other. But kids were all different. We had kids K through twelve and there wasn't enough kids to design a really great pathway to an internship that made sense for everybody. But the one commonality we had was we all have this community to work together, and we would bring them together for community events every single month. And we'd do things, we'd do activities and talk about making plans. We'd share different ideas. We'd let families talk to each other about different ideas that they had. And what was fascinating in the spending habits is whenever we had a community event, spending the next week doubled the average. Like there were spikes and this happened four community meetings in a row. We've since expanded this program to another community in Grand Rapids. And an interesting thing here is in Grand Rapids, all the families involved in the program are enrolled in traditional brick and mortar schools. Same thing is happening every time we bring families together and talk about these things, spending and engagement goes up. So I do think there is an interface with community that that's how we can kind of connect this thing together in a more interdependent way, even though the pieces of the puzzle may be different.Michael Horn:Super interesting, because the example we always use is IBM was the fully integrated interdependent initial computer, and then Dell, on the other hand, is the personal computer. They specified the standards, but, you know, have your seagate memory, your drive from this guy, the monitor here, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Your version of Microsoft Windows that you select and it all snapped like Dell would snap it together. It sounds like you're saying to build that modular design you have to have the community like that's the interdependent part and then you can really allow them to farm off to different options. What I guess I'm also hearing is that relates to the insight you got from the jobs to be done work, which was that maybe for whatever reasons that they're hiring home school to do it well, they needed a social component of that. They were not firing the social component of traditional schools. That was a hiring criteria and whatever they did next. And so that actually is a common linkage through the two frames, if you will.Kris Comeforo:Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't even connect it that way when I first thought about it. But you're exactly right and that social component to the job. I think there's a misconception that educators, myself and just the populace at large think that homeschooling is this, I'm just going to sit in the corner alone and do this thing. And actually when you talk to families, they're very connected with other families and kids are very connected with other kids in ways that I didn't anticipate. And I think you're right that that social component drives through to the interdependence that kind of holds this thing together. And it fits with what our thesis has been as we support different communities through these direct to family funding structures. Whether we're providing scholarships or whether states are providing micro grants or ESAs, is that we can't just show up into a state and say, hey, let us help. Going through existing communities is where we found to have the biggest impact because that social component is so key and families really education is a deeply fundamentally personal endeavor and families want to do it in community with others.Michael Horn:So let's finish up there as we have this conversation, which is like the work now going forward. You brought it up that there's education savings accounts, there's micro grant programs increasingly in states, all these different ways that are not really a voucher, because a voucher is like, hey, you can go to a different school, but that's it. These are really accounts like they're dollars that you can spend on a variety of activities and you were starting to see a lot of uptake in those communities. How has theory enabled you to set up quickly and start to expand in these different places and sort of what's the vision for where Outschool.org goes from?Kris Comeforo:Absolutely, it's it's and speaking about theory, right, I know ESAs microgrants can be a politically charged issue, but if you look at where the puck is going, I think ESAs are live in 14 states, microgrants and other programs so popular and it's coming. And what I think we're trying to be really mindful of is as a mission-oriented organization is how do we make sure that families that we care the most about that historically have been the furthest away from opportunity, have access to take advantage of these programs in the most impactful way, whatever it is to them. And I see from afar, states are making some predictable mistakes that we made along the way. If you just say, hey, sign up here if you want some money, a lot of people will sign up. But data comes out from states. A lot of people also just don't spend if you just handing out the funds isn't enough. And we also know too, I know there's been numbers thrown out and a large number of families that start to take up the ESA dollars were families that were already enrolled in private schools and just funnel that towards their tuition. But like you said, there's more to it than that, especially with these micro grants. I think Virginia, Kansas has an interesting program as well where families in public schools are eligible for additional dollars for supplemental enrichment and tutoring and different things of that nature. So we see again. All right, states are providing access. I think that's great and can be really impactful for a lot of families, but there really needs to be a place for information, but also mostly community. And I think bringing people together and letting them have a supportive network of peers to think through, how do they get the most out of these additional resources is a problem that we're really interested to solve moving forward.Michael Horn:I think you've done it in a perfect place. So it sounds like the big task to do is to integrate forward, not just provide resources, but to integrate into the next steps of information and community. And then we'll actually see uptake and equitable access perhaps to these resources that are in these communities that people can avail themselves of. How many states do you guys expect to be operating in over the next couple of years and sort of helping facilitate these communities?Kris Comeforo:Yeah, I mean, I don't have the answer to that question so directly, but we are talking to different states and communities again, though I recognize the states that they're happening in, but it's specific communities that we know that we want to help serve throughout. So we're actually in the middle right now of running an RFP for new community partners for next school year, where we're going to be accepting a number of existing community partners in different places. And if you happen to be in a state that has access, we feel like we're well positioned to help your community get the most out of this experience. So this past year we had ten community partners. I believe we're going to have eight to ten or so this year and are excited to work too directly with states to help figure this out and make sure really there's equitable access for students that need this additional support.Michael Horn:Chris, fascinating. Work. Any final thoughts or things that you'd say, like, hey, don't lose sight of X before we wrap this up?Kris Comeforo:Yeah, I mean, it's been a learning journey for me along the way. Like I said, I spent my whole career in public schools. Mom and dad were public school teachers, and what I get a little wary about in this conversation about direct to family funding is how politicized it gets. And public schools will always be a part of the solution. And I think programs like this could be really helpful to kids in public schools or not in public schools. But I really think us as a sector need to stop thinking about this, of, like, it's either this way or it's that way. Because I think that's the beauty of a modular approach is that it can be a lot of different ways for different families and different learners depending on what they need. And let's not presume to have the answers for families. Instead, let's build with families to get them access to the things that they need.Michael Horn:And I will tell you, for those that if they get to read your paper at some point in your capstone, that comes through loud and clear, as does really, this note of empathy for really understanding what the communities say is important to them rather than presuming it on the front end. So, Chris, thank you for letting us learn through your experiences. I'm going to be very interested to see where Outschool.org takes this in the months and years to come and what other insights you have on it, and maybe we can have you back on to geek out about what you keep learning.Kris Comeforo:Absolutely. I really appreciate it, Michael, and not just because I'm on the podcast. Your book came at the exact right time for me to think about this, so I do appreciate you starting that conversation for him. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

I’m more and more interested in how employees are navigating their career pathways and how they learn to keep up with the fast-changing nature of work. The corollary to that is also how are companies helping their employees stay up to date. Chief Learning Officer Marc Ramos of Cornerstone OnDemand joined me to talk upskilling and reskilling for adult learners and the changes companies need to make to stay ahead of the curve. We also dove into the implications of AI on the future of work and learning.My favorite comment from the interview? When I asked Marc how he talks to companies about the importance of investing and training their employees. His response? “You’re reminding me, Michael, of Sir Richard Branson's quote of, "What if I train my people and they leave?" And his comment was, "Well, what if you don't train them and they stay?" As always, subscribers can listen to the audio of our conversation, watch the video, or read the transcript below.Horn:                Welcome to the Future of Education where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And to help us along that journey today, we have someone who is the chief learning officer at Cornerstone OnDemand. His name is Marc Ramos. And Marc has had a long and distinguished career in corporations really helping drive learning of individuals and employees and frankly, the companies themselves. And so first, Marc, thank you so much for being here. It is a pleasure to have you.Morning Warmup                       As you know, we've got four segments of the show. We get to kick it off with our morning warmup, and I'd love you actually just to tell us about your own journey into your current role as chief learning officer at Cornerstone OnDemand, because you've had an interesting career path.Ramos:             Yeah. Well, first and foremost, thank you so very much, Michael for inviting me on the show. I'm honored and humbled. In terms of this first segment, the journey, the pathway, it's really, really interesting in the sense of, I guess there's maybe two ways to look at it. One is, where am I now, the kind of working backwards. And the other one is maybe where did I start and then moving forward. So maybe I'll munge those together in ideally some sort of understandable way. But yeah, I'm currently the chief learning officer at Cornerstone. Been on board for a little over 10 months. I'm actually dialing in from beautiful Cape Coral, Florida, where we've been here for roughly that same amount of time, 10, 11 months.                        Actually prior to coming back to the US, my family was based in Basel, Switzerland for three years where I headed up Novartis's learning strategy and learning innovation and different segments of that learning tech, learning analytics, knowledge management strategy, so on and so forth. And then prior to moving to Switzerland and working at Novartis, predominantly in California, my family actually moved to Basel from the San Francisco Bay area where I had a variety of jobs.                        The one prior to moving, I was at Google for roughly seven years and had a lot of great experiences and roughly three different hats that we can talk about. And then prior to Google, I was at Accenture and Microsoft and Oracle, and then a stint here or there with smaller sized companies. So that's a little bit of the corporate background, predominantly in a global setting, predominantly in a multi segment or multi vertical setting, different size companies, but for the most part around, how to scale learning and a little bit across the board in terms of the various types, portfolio types, leadership development, management development, and then working the other side of the spectrum.                        I was just thinking about this the other day, where did I start my training career? I started my training career when I was maybe 13 years old. I was the head dishwasher at Mr. Cheese Chinese restaurant in Long Beach, California. And as the head dishwasher, the experienced 13 year old guy, I was responsible for training, guess what? All the other dishwashers. So that was a little bit of my start. But in all seriousness, I actually did end up more formally starting my training career in restaurants, predominantly out of high school.                        And I just found myself doing well in terms of this thing called process documentation, as well as how to work with folks to get them up to speed, to become a server, to become a bartender, to become a chef. And then one way or another, work from restaurant training to call center training, telecom training, and then in the tech space. And then if it helps, the last portion of my career, maybe at the DNA level is actually come from a family of teachers. So my mom, brother and my sister were all teachers. And I guess I'm a little bit of the black sheep, Michael. I went the corporate route because I was thinking about why should learning be contained in a box compared to how can we scale this for bigger, broader needs? So that's a little bit of my background.Horn:                No, it's helpful just to understand from where you're coming and a separate time we'll have a different conversation about restaurants and training and learning. My wife has worked in that industry and done a lot of training and manuals and procedures and all the restaurants and the work there. But it's also interesting, I actually really like that you moved the teaching and learning from the formal, if you will, education space into companies themselves. Because I think as Rachel Romer, the CEO of Guild often says the 4 and 40 is dead. It's now in the 4 and 4 it's you. You're training and upskilling constantly.                        And on your resume, you've been at a couple of the places, Google, Novartis, that are really known for being incredible places to invest in the skills of its employees and really take that work seriously. So you have a lot of experience on that. So now you come to Cornerstone OnDemand as the chief learning officer. Tell us what is Cornerstone OnDemand? I know it's a talent experience platform, but I'm sure a lot of folks are asking what does that mean and why was this such an interesting next step for you on your career path?Ramos:             Yeah, first and foremost, I've known Cornerstone since, oh gosh, 2003 when it had a different name at its startup, I recall. So I've always had certain levels of familiarity with the company as it grew, became more and more popular. And I've always been somewhat of a geek, for lack of better words, related to this thing called learning technologies. So I've always been very familiar with the company, and interestingly, when I came on board at Novartis where Cornerstone was already implemented as the learning management system, I got to know the technology, its value, its impact, as well as the company in a far more detailed and wonderful and granular way to a certain degree, granular in the sense of we really needed to make sure that we were looking at our learning platforms at scale and making sure that we're always thinking about as modern approaches.                        And it's not about always being the cool, shiny corporate learning entity in the block, but to stay competitive and to think about skills and to think about data. And now I'm thinking about AI and so forth. How do we really make sure that we're always on that cutting edge? So in a way, that's how I think about Cornerstone, is really providing those human performance and worker development and building one's individual personal career platform in a variety of different ways using modern technologies as well as having a strong ecosystem broadly in terms of, oh gosh, there's over 7,000 customers, over 102, 103 million learners that leverage and use and benefit from Cornerstone's applications.                        The other side of your question too, which is I think super fascinating is so I've never worked for a vendor per se. And so I had followed Cornerstone, as I mentioned for many years, Michael, but it wasn't until I was at Novartis that I got, again, a lot closer. And I kept on mentioning it to myself in terms of my own career aspirations, there's that company I want you to win in order for me to guide you to win. Can I better influence from a customer's perspective where the company might be headed? So can I provide any advice? Can I provide any use cases? Can I provide any reassurance that looking at it from a client's lens for which I held for three years plus, how can I help the company?                        And the last thing to that too is given the scale of Cornerstone, can I reach far more people than what I could have done in my prior jobs? Google, when I left was around 90,000 Googlers. Novartis, when I left was about 110,000 Novartians. But if Cornerstone's reach is over 100 million. And if I can perhaps provide a little bit of benefit related to my background and my experiences and my perspectives, being able to really benefit the world, so to speak, at that greater scale was just really, really exciting to me.Horn:                Makes sense. And I'd love you to go a click deeper because you mentioned the applications that Cornerstone brings to helping companies on that journey and influencing those a 102 million folks that you have connection to. What do those sets of applications look like? Because I don't think Cornerstone is providing the learning itself, it's more the platform through which you engage and find the learning and set your goals and things of that nature, is my understanding. But I'd love to hear more about what that suite of solutions looks like.Ramos:             Yeah, I think the best and easiest way to describe it is when you think about a worker's or a learner's journey from hire to retire, and maybe even beyond, where does a learning platform or a talent platform or a build your skills and track that from the right data perspective platform, where does that reside? So we have an umbrella that we call our talent experience platform or TXP, and that pretty much encompasses this hire to retire journey or perspective. And then within this talent experience platform or TXP stack, there's our traditional learning management system, which does provide a variety of different content and a variety of different support, particularly if you're thinking about the type of compliance training that is required or this other type of record keeping related to one's portfolio, one's transcript and so forth, and a variety of other kind of features. But it's your traditional, and I think very innovative learning management system.                        On the other side of this is the X in TXP, right? And that's about the experience. And so we we're very, very fortunate to bring onboard into our family EdCast, and this happened roughly a year and a half, a couple years ago. And basically this now provides this really nice harmony or compliment to, one would say the administrative management side of a learning management system or LMS with the various experiences that might not be driven per se by the company, corporate down. It's really how do we build out those experiences, bottoms up, employee or worker up. So how do we democratize, or actually how do we provide that level of control and accountability to a certain degree where the average worker, for lack of better words, they're in a lot more control of their hire to retire journey rather than here's the pathway that the company says you must take.                        Well, actually, no, I want actually a lot more control out of my personal and professional and vocational pathway. So the learning experience platform, the LXP from EdCast, that provides that nice harmony, that nice balance, and then somewhere in the middle that's very journey related is our version of a talent marketplace or opportunity marketplace, as we call it. And this is basically helping, as you mentioned beforehand, how does one think about re-skilling or a new opportunity or a new project or a new gig, or how can I trial? Exactly what it's like to be a data scientist if I'm a salesperson. How do I trial that for two weeks, two months, whatever that might be? Maybe receive some mentorship, maybe receive some voluntary opportunities in between.                        But those are three predominant aspects of our solutions, so to speak. The traditional LMS, the LXP and opportunity marketplace, and there's so many subsets that glue all of this together. Our skills layer, our data layers, our content layers and a variety of the pieces that really harmonize and glue this all together.                        The last thing I'd say is a common theme related to what I just described, it's interoperability. We need to make sure that all these platforms within the stack, the technology, the applications that they all can communicate and share skilled data and learner data and proficiency data and content data across one's journey rather than looking at a pocket application or a pocket platform from a different provider along the way. So the interoperability is a big piece piece.                        And then I'd also say there's a really, really important effort related to connectivity and being open, because the brutal reality is many, many companies, SMBs, small size businesses, large enterprises, they may already have something in place or they may want to bring on something totally different to bolt on, to TXP. And so we need to make sure that that interoperability and that openness is also built into the program.Work CycleHorn:                Super helpful. And as we shift into our work cycle, the next segment here, I will say we've seen something similar that you just laid out, which is you mentioned how a lot of employees don't want to just do the career progression as the latter has been defined. They're looking to make progress as they define it, and they're much more active right now on it. And part and parcel on that is there's a big push, my sense is in corporate America right now to really unlock growth and mobility for their current employees and that they see this as really mission critical in some ways. And I'd love you to A, comment on do you see that same trend that it seems that the learning agenda is much more important for companies today than it was maybe a decade ago? And secondly, sort of why is this such a big push and why do they see it as so core and strategic, if you do see this as a big trend?Ramos:             Yeah, maybe that can combine that together. So we're coming out of the pandemic where different definitions of work are being required and let's not go into the work remote versus work in the office thing. I think what's interesting is the pandemic and successful ways of working, we learned so much from that unfortunate situation, and one of the things that we did learn was individuals do need to have a lot more control over their work in the ideal state, but thinking about learning and one's individual development, they need to, again, kind of control that and call it democratization or whatever word choice you want. I think that's just a big reality.                        The other reality too is there are companies that probably overhired and we know some names and there's tons of others where now they need to think about, well, work is changing and maybe my workforce is not ready or capable or organized in such a way to deal with this new world. So they need to think about either shifting their folks internally or possibly in a worst case scenario, even letting some other folks go. And I think the third vector here, the third piece so to speak, it's all the macroeconomics that are totally unpredictable. I don't care who you talk to, it's not like everybody has a crisp, right, accurate and relevant crystal ball.                        So I think when you munge all this together, for many, many companies, the smart thing to do is really to think about how do I develop the people that I already have rather than dealing with a lot of these other unknown factors or uncontrollable factors. So this whole mobility piece than the re-skilling across different job roles and different job families versus up-skilling, making sure that one role or that one job family is just increasing their proficiency. I think this horizontal move is actually becoming, as you mentioned, it's a lot more current, it's a lot more validated.                        And I think if anything, it's probably aligned with the individual's need to control their aspirations. So if I'm a sales person using that example again, and let's just say I want to be a data scientist, I would prefer doing that in the company that I already have been around, that ideally I appreciate and maybe identify with its culture, so on and so forth. They got a great team, have a great management, whatever. Well, let's really take care of what's right in front of you now. And so that mobility piece is interesting.                        And then we can talk about maybe in another segment of the show today, what are some of the advances related to new learning technologies that are really helping to support re-skilling more so than just vertical, what I call vertical upskilling. So it's a huge, huge, huge opportunities, and I think the temperament of society and the temperament of for-profit and maybe even non-profit companies, it's happening right now. So we're seeing a lot of cool things that are happening.Horn:                So let's go into that, right? In terms of the technology stack and what's changing and helping companies do that more efficacious, perhaps more real time on-demand, what are you seeing that has you really excited at the moment around the changing nature of the technology itself?Ramos:             Yeah, I know that we'll definitely get into the generative AI topic. I think for me, be a more simplistic perspective. One of the things that I've seen is a big, big, big trend, and it kind of ties to the prior subjects, Michael, about workers and learners having more control, the democratization piece and so forth. One thing that I see is really kicking off, and it's not overly generative AI or AI dependence, even though it can be, is this whole aspect of user generated content or UGC. And the whole intention here is if you really want to, for lack of better words, unleash the expertise or the talent that you have in your company for up-skilling or maybe re-skilling or maybe just to keep their current state, you want to give that type of recognition, or maybe from a knowledge management perspective, you want to capture all that tacit knowledge, that tacit information, those unique insights.                        I think it's fascinating in the sense that a lot of companies now are really starting to think more about how can I leverage the expertise within my own corporation, my own workers, to help build the type of learning or informational or instructional assets to support the growth of the company. So I came from Novartis, in Novartis, we deployed a learning experience platform EdCast before the Cornerstone acquisition. And so we were just looking at EdCast as a solo opportunity. And because similar to a lot of large science-based companies, we had a lot of scientists, researchers and so forth working at the molecular level to build new medicines.                        And what's fascinating is a lot of these folks had so much expertise related to the science of building phenomenal medicines. It was never really unleashed. And so we have the opportunity to use user generated content at Novartis to identify the right expert, have them dip into creating a UGC asset, would be as simple as recording something cool in your phone, putting together a deck or maybe identifying some cool paper, then adding your perspectives to it, and then how to release that asset.                        And I don't know the specific numbers, but when I left, the total number of consumed learning hours was far more leaning towards user-generated assets, from our own people than from other providers externally. And that one I think was a huge sign. And this ties into this whole aspect of we live in a creator society, so anybody now can create something pretty darn cool for a variety of different reasons and then possibly monetize it. So we really, really tapped into that.                        Then the other thing I'd say now thinking about from a gen AI perspective, just kind of high level, then I'll stop because maybe we're going to kind of break it down, but it wasn't until OpenAI, the company OpenAI, the company that they released ChatGPT 3.5 last November, and then 4.0, just a few months later, this whole thing kind of took off. And now there's a lot of other players in the space, Microsoft, Google with Google Bard. And anyway, what was a fascination and what was shiny, it's now real.                        And so what does it mean to us, at least at a high level perspective, from a talent, from an HR and from a learning perspective, it is about providing a better experience. It is about providing a more engaging and adaptive set of learning opportunities for folks. I kind of call that the stuff that learners see. Maybe it's the menu of stuff that you would see in the kitchen. So I'm a learner, here's the stuff I want to do. I want things to be personalized, adaptive, tailored, whatever.                        And the other way to look at it, which I think is the huge untapped opportunity that I don't hear a lot about in a lot of the AI things that I track has to do with what's happening, not in the kitchen per se, but what's happening behind the scenes. I'm sorry, not in the restaurant per se, but what's happening in the kitchen, what's happening behind the scenes? How is the menu and the tactics and the ingredients and the pots of pans, are they also being far more matured from an efficiency standpoint, from an operation standpoint, from an automation standpoint? So you've got this really, really interesting blend in terms of the benefits of generative AI for learning and also for other functional aspects, whether it's formal HR or talent and beyond.SpecialsHorn:                So let's shift into our third segment on specials and use that window actually as our question into this, which is you just talked about user generated content as a big piece of this, which I think is really interesting because it strikes me that maybe 80% of the foundation of skills are common across companies, but it's really that 20% that special sauce, the cultural specifics of working in a particular organization. That's what really distinguishes, and that can get really expensive unless you make it easy for your internal employees to create learning content and learning trainings.                        But of course, doing that well is really hard. And it strikes me that AI, you couple that with user generated content, all of a sudden you can take the best of learning science, couple it with the know-how of the folks inside your organization and create a lot more reps at creating really good modules to help people learn different skills, whether it's horizontal or vertical. We can do both now actually far more easily. Are you seeing that right now or does that sound right to you? Where do you expect that to go?Ramos:             Oh, absolutely. In the restaurant, learner facing or behind the scenes, the stuff that's happening in the middle, and I think UGC is a really interesting proposition because I think it's happening in the middle in the sense that the learner, the guy or gal in the restaurant, they have the power to build any one of those awesome items on the menu that would've traditionally come from somebody behind the scenes. But now they can use the behind the scenes new areas and functionality of generative AI, such as doing needs analysis a lot faster when I have no clue about what needs analysis is, because I'm a regular quote, unquote, "user" or individual that doesn't know the instructional domain or whatever.                        But now I can do rapid needs analysis, now I can do rapid investigation of what's the type of learning outcome that I should have. Now I can use my access to a skills taxonomy, a skills catalog, or just a skill in general to make sure that we have the ability to identify the right content at the right proficiency level for that learning asset that you're building. And then we talk about all the different modality stuff, building really cool videos and building really cool photos from scratch or whatever the heck it might be, doing your own audio, creating your own music from scratch.                        So yeah, what has been the traditional model and expensive model in many cases where the folks behind the scene, content developers, instructional designers, so forth, they had to go through the art and the science of building something really, really awesome. But it did take time and there's some complexity. And then you have to deal with subject matter experts to validate and validate and validate and validate. Well, if you can grab all those different items, everything from understanding how to design something correctly, to validating it with SMEs subject matter experts, but have, quote, unquote, "the machine" do that for you, that's an efficiencies play.                        But I don't want to send the message that the machine should be doing stuff for you all the time and at X, Y, Z level of depth or detail. I think it's so important to make sure that there's still the human, there's still humanity involved because the machine is probably not going to be correct to begin with. But if you do this thing called smart questioning or prompting, and there's a whole science behind that called prompt engineering, but if you ask the right questions against the first response that the machine gives you, okay, how about this and this and this to validate, you look at the second response, well, in mood from 60% accuracy to maybe 67% accuracy, you refine, you refine, you refine. Then you meet something that's generally going to be in your ballpark in terms of relevance.                        So that human in your play, you working with the machine is phenomenal. There's a great saying, and I'll stop. There's a great saying, well, there's a great set of questions. Is AI going to replace my job? And the saying that I love the most, is AI going to replace my job? No, but the human that has more skills regarding AI probably will.Horn:                And so that actually takes me to a question I had a little bit further down the line, but I'm going to bring it up here because it strikes me that there's so many people saying AI is going to replace jobs or it's going to replace functions, et cetera, et cetera. And even back as far as Peter Drucker and the effective executive some 50 plus years ago, he said, "Well, the computer replaced management." And I think the clear conclusion is actually it made management more important because it increased the velocity of decisions that individuals had to make on a daily basis.                        And AI, it strikes me, it could have a similar effect based on what you just described, is that the power of the human with the AI tools really increases the velocity, if you will, of information flow, of activity, of efficiency and creates more need maybe for human capacity and all this, which of course creates more need for human learning and training for people to be able to do this new set of skills and so forth. Are the companies that you're working with, do they see this dynamic? Where are they not seeing it? What's it going to take for companies to realize that this learning agenda is actually going to be core, if you will, to their strategic advantage in the industries in which they work?Ramos:             Yeah, that's a great question, Michael. So Cornerstone is deep into really understanding what's our play, what's our perspective with generative AI and all the different AI families, and where do we play, how do we win? But ultimately, how do we provide even that much more value to our customers or new customers from a prospect perspective? And it's interesting, we did a survey just earlier this month in June, where we surveyed 25 top CLOs and heads of learning within our Cornerstone community, and we kind of ask them the same thing. And what's really, really interesting is regardless of their region, their location or the company size, one of the things that we found was just interesting is everyone is starting to tap into it to some degree.                        I'm just looking over here in terms of some of the responses that I just happen to have up. A lot of folks are already close to 25, almost 35%, we're already toying with it, playing with it, experimenting with it. So that level of, I guess, accommodation in terms of what they want internally, it's already kind of kicked off. I do think it's also interesting in the sense of people kind of get it in terms of the benefits, but they don't know exactly where to start. And the other thing too, I was just really, really fortunate to have an article out in Harvard Business Review, HBR, really coming back to your question about, so where do I start? Where do I play? And this kind of ties back to some of the insights we gathered from some of our key customers, and this was written with a co-writer colleague of mine, Marc Zao-Sanders, at a company called Filtered. They do a lot of great AI and data and content focus.                        But my point was very simple in a sense of where's the demand? That's like the Y axis and you compare the demand to the risk. So in other words, if you have something that maybe is of high demand, in other words, you're going to be able to really test and experiment and explore ideally at scale with a good size base, but where is there less risk. So if you can have something with a high demand with less risk, maybe that's where you should start. Because again, whether it's ChatGPT 4.0 or the current version of Bard, or you name it, still ain't there. This whole term about AI hallucinating, it's becoming a former minimized, but it's still there. So you need to be able to start in an area where there's actually less risk, which I think is the big key here related to this matrix. But you still want to play, you are going to play with in an area where there's enough user base, enough data to work with as well.Closing TimeHorn:                No, it makes a lot of sense. So let's shift into our last segment of the show, closing time, if you will, get to look a little bit around the corner and sort of wrap up some thoughts here. And the one that I'd love you to talk to, because you sort of hinted at it a bunch of times around helping companies get started down this pathway, making it easier for them to involve their employees, creating content, all the rest. But I do think it should be said that a lot of companies, they still have this sort of old school mindset, if you will, of, "Well, if I train them, they'll go somewhere else. I'm making them more valuable. I want them coming to me already prepared. I want someone coming into the entry level role that already has experience." You see all those sorts of things.                        There's this friction in the system still around learning in companies. Do you see that going away? How do you talk to companies about that friction and show them, no, this is a good investment. This is going to help you strategically. It's probably going to help you retain your employees, probably going to help you move them into the roles that they want that they're more excited about.Ramos:             Yeah, you reminding me, Michael of Sir Richard Branson's quote of, "What if I train my people and they leave?" And his comment was, "Well, what if you don't train them and they stay?" And I think it's a very reality based scenario is that if you want to stay competitive, if you want to stay loyal to your people, if you want to really strengthen your brand from an attraction as well as a retention standpoint, this is a necessity. It's a requirement for survivability, just to be very honest. So how do you get there? Getting back to the core of your question. Some companies that are maybe a little hesitant and kind of setting aside the two by two decision matrix that I mentioned beforehand, at some point you do need to recognize that it's in the best interest of your people to at least experiment and trial and test and prototype and MVP or whatever, whether it's generative AI, whether it's user generated content, if there's something that you think is worth trying and you think it can be centered around or maybe built around or built by your people, do an experiment.                        There's a lot of really great recipe books related to how to experiment with minimal risk and with moderate to maximum controls. And so experiment where you must give it a try. The other piece that I said with that is let your workers do it. I mean, don't have management, don't have the folks in the castle, for lack of better words, dictate or mandate, Hey, you must kind of do this stuff. No, open it up. Do it from a more grassroots perspective, but let your folks kind of do that. Then give them the accountability, give them the charge, maybe give them those small budgets as necessary to really kind of take control of that. So I think that's important.                        And then even when we come down with all this generative AI stuff, I think using OpenAI, the company who put together ChatGPT, I believe the 3.5 version, which was released last November, I believe it's still free. And the cost on a monthly basis of ChatGPT 4.0 was the latest and greatest. I think it's like 20 bucks a month. So whether it's free or 20 bucks a month, there's no reason why you can't go out and just experiment. Just see what it's all about. Ask it sophisticated questions.                        But remember my comment regarding smart questioning or prompts, don't settle for the first response, ask it again, validate, validate. Look at it from a right hand view or left hand view angle, whatever that might be. But just try it because a lot of this stuff's for free. In fact, a lot of the different kind of modality builders, building video from scratch, building cool photos from text-based inputs, building music, a lot of that stuff's free. So experiment, try, because the stuff might not be free in the next few months. So definitely take advantage of the timing of where we're at.Horn:                Makes sense. Marc, thanks so much for joining us on the Future of Education. Really appreciate you being here and sharing these insights from the corporate learning world and the work that Cornerstone on-Demand keeps doing.Ramos:             Thank you so much for the invite, Michael, and really excited to join you. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Kelly Smith, an entrepreneur and founder of one of the hottest microschool networks, Prenda, joined me to talk about his new book, “A Fire to Be Kindled: How a Generation of Empowered Learners Can Lead Meaningful Lives and Move Humanity Forward.” In our conversation, Kelly shares everything from an update on how Prenda is doing to some of the big themes around his book, which is designed not for educators, but for individuals—to help them become lifelong learners and maximize their potential.The book follows the philosophy behind Prenda Learning and takes readers through what it means to be an empowered learner—followed by the key components in a learning process: to dare greatly, figure it out, learning over comfort, start with heart, and a foundation of trust. I pushed Kelly on how to overcome the barriers in our DNA that cause us to try to save energy and avoid doing hard things like learning. We then ended on a question of the importance of making this real so people can put it into action and connect it to their everyday lives.As always, subscribers can listen to the audio, watch the video, or read the transcript below.Michael Horn:   The messages in this book are ones that resonate for any individual regardless of your life stage. You're a kid, you're an educator, you're an adult living life, this has messages for you. So first, Kelly, it's great to see you. I always love when we get to spend time together. Thanks for joining us.Kelly Smith:      Thanks for having me, Michael. It's good to be here.Morning WarmupHorn:                So we're going to start off with our morning warmup. We got four parts of the show, morning warmup, work cycle, our specials, and then our closing time. Morning warmup is just a little bit about Kelly and the Prenda Learning that you've started. Just tell us a little bit about what it is for those that don't know.Smith:              Thanks for that, and excited to be part of morning warmup. So I think you just said a second ago that my life's work is helping empower learners, helping people see themselves differently, and I hope we get a chance to talk about that, but it wasn't always that way. I studied physics and nuclear science. I was trying to make fusion work, which if you're following this, it doesn't work. I did a whole bunch of careers in technology and software and got to this point as a father of four kids, myself and somebody who was, at the time, volunteering at the library to teach kids computer programming of all things. I had this moment where I just started thinking about the questions, what is it learning and what is formal institutions? And I think very much an outsider perspective on this, although I, of course, attended school like everyone else, but it got to this point where I became obsessed and that led me to do something crazy, which in 2018, was to pull my kid out of school and invite my friends to do the same.                        And I started a micro school around my kitchen table. So it was me and seven kids. Really, I was reading your book, I think the word, micro school, you had uttered and a couple other people had talked about, but it wasn't huge yet. And we just put this thing together, personalized learning for mastery is using blended learning. We were doing a lot of projects and inquiry and all the fun things. At first, it was just designed around what made sense to me intuitively as an adult who likes to learn. Eventually, I found that there's lots of great research and people who have thought a lot more deeply about these things than I have. I'd say one of the interesting differentiators between something like homeschool and a micro school is this inherent connection, this human piece. We were together in-person every day.                        My role as the learning guide in this class, as the adult, was to know and care about and understand the motivation of each of these kids and then be able to provide an environment in-person where they could take the risks and do the repeated failure and all the things that learners do. And that became just a fascinating semester that led to more semesters and more people doing it. The COVID pandemic came and exploded the whole concept. And since that, we've continued to grow. So we're serving something like 2,000 students today, really, all across the United States, but strongest here in Arizona, which is where I started out.Horn:                Wow. And if the model is the same as it was a few years ago, you're partnering, a lot of times, with existing districts or charter schools or whomever, and then serving students, as I recall, it's seven kids around a table often, learning at their own path and pace, with, in your case, you were the guide there, but obviously, you're setting it up around these communities across the country. Is that still what the model looks like or how has it evolved?Smith:              So picture a small group, we tend to cap them at 10. You'll have an adult and 10 kids, typically, close in age, but not necessarily the same age, so the mixed age group. Research would all apply here. Older kids teaching younger kids, kids with different skill levels and proficiency in mastery, trying to personalize as much as possible, trying to provide as many choices as we can. We're pretty high on agency around here. That's the academic model that stayed consistent. One of the areas where you'll see some change, for those who have heard me talk about this in the past, is the goal has always been to invite as many people in and make this as accessible as we possibly can.                        So in contrast to folks that maybe start a private school and charge $20,000 for tuition, we're saying, let's see if we can make this free to families. In the past, that has involved partnering with districts and charter schools, and we still do those things. There's a new opportunity now with a wave of school choice programs across the country to do that in a way that's more direct or simpler. And we've really leaned in and participated in those programs. So you'll see us in a lot of these states that have large ESA programs in universal school choice, not because we have any sort of political slant. We really don't. Our goal is to make this model available and accessible to as many people as we can reach.Work CycleHorn:                That's great to hear. So let's shift into our work cycle and get into the guts of this conversation, which is not about Prenda, but it's based off of a lot of the insights you had in Prenda and as well as... And you detailed this in the book around those early days, coaching people on coding in the libraries and so forth, but a fire to be kindled how a generation of empowered learners can lead meaningful lives and move humanity forward. It's a big title. I'm just curious, why write a book? What are your hopes for the book? What do you hope it accomplishes?Smith:              Even after all this time doing it and thinking about this stuff, there's this voice in my head that's like, who do you think you are? This is audacious to make the claim I'm making, which is, basically, that we, as a civilization, don't yet appreciate and understand what real learning is, what learning can be, the level and degree of power. And I try to give lots of examples throughout the book of people who have discovered power and purpose and accomplishment and achievement and contribution all through this idea of really becoming a learner. And the first chapter goes right into it and says, you might think you know what that means because you have got this degree and you can point to these courses or these certifications. And I'm saying, those things are fine, but real learning transcends all of that. It's down to questions and answers and skills that are applied and applicable in whatever you are trying to do with your life.                        And so that's, I think, a pretty big claim. It's inviting people to rethink their relationship with learning, think about themselves as a learner in a new and different way. And hopefully, it's exciting and people see that and think, yeah, I've tasted that. I know what that feels like. I don't think it's going to be totally new to a lot of the people, for example, listening to your podcast. But I think the hope is that we can double down on that and say, all these reasons, maybe to hedge that or hedge against it or do something different, let's be just explicit about it. Those aren't really what I'm about. As a learner, I'm about understanding myself, setting a big goal, and then going about learning in a way that really leads me to what I put in the subtitle, of a life of meaning and the contribution that will help move the species forward. So I really believe that, I believe, in a maybe irrational degree, in humans, and that's what I'm inviting people to do through this book.Horn:                Well, and your optimism in the book comes out loud and clear because you talk a lot about what education can enable in a future state and things of that nature. And if you close your eyes, what do you imagine society to be, and things of that nature. It strikes me, you also do a lot of work to decouple this notion of learning from schooling, which you just talked about there, really grounded in what's the progress you're trying to make as an individual. And to that end though, I'm curious, as I was reading it, there's a lot of, yes, yes, yes, as I'm reading it, and I was thinking, but he's writing it to me as an individual, not to other educators or people who are thinking of founding schools or people who were thinking of enrolling in schools, like the ones you've created. So I'm just curious about that decision as well, why write it to the individuals as opposed to maybe the education audience?Smith:              It's a great question. There's actually two books, Michael. So this is a funny story, is I said there's a theoretical framework here of what an empowered learner is and how that works. And then once you have that, once you agree with me about that, here's what that means for the classroom, for a learning environment, for setting things up, and it gets into a lot more. There's a lot more PJ references in the second half of the book. Well, my editor said, you're writing two different books to two different groups, and it's not really one book. So as painful as writing, and you've written books, there's this moment where it's like, you're right, I need to decide what's my main message. One of the things we've seen with Prenda is, people who buy into it all the way, who are empowered learners themselves, it's almost... I would say, number one is being able to start with heart to see human beings.                        Number two is be an empowered learner yourself. And everything else, I will give you, you can use those things and create amazing learning environments. But if I had to pick, if I had to get really focused and prioritized about the change I want to make in the world, let's get more empowered learners thinking about this, in these ways, and then we can work with them, I think there's probably a lot more still to say, but I felt like there's folks like you and many others that are out there communicating to those people. I felt like what might be missing is just a deep, almost spiritual connection of, what is this? What are we really trying to do with this anyway because once you have that, and you take an example like, you used the words a second ago, learning versus schooling, there's this agency question of somebody who's decided to learn something, they're unstoppable.                        You literally can't get in their way. And we've all seen this working with kids. And then there's somebody who has decided not to learn something, and it's just feels completely ineffective. Every attempt of carrots and sticks and all the programs I want to put together around them, it's really, if they're not with me on this, it's not going to happen. And so what I really believe is we as adults need to lead the way on this. Let's be learners ourselves. And that means this is hard for educators sometimes, it means being wrong, it means not knowing, not having the answer. It means changing our mind. It means asking a kid for help with something. I mean, there's all these things that really model the curiosity and persistence of a learner, and I'm inviting everybody to do that.Horn:                Well, and it does it great. Although, I will also say there are some great tips for educators too, the three questions that you have that you ought to ask instead of leading with the answer and things of that nature throughout the book. Part of the book is talking about this empowered learner, which is, obviously, in the subhead, we've talked about this, is there's a whole chapter on it. And one of the things you talk about is something that a lot of cognitive scientists, like Daniel Willingham and others talk about, which is, people choose not to learn a lot of times because we're biologically wired to conserve energy and not learn.                        And you go through all the reasons in the book, you give the science. And then you're asking the reader or the learner to make this leap. You can actually overcome this and rewire in some sense. What I would love to know is, what gives you the confidence that we as individuals can overcome that? Where do you draw on that strength to say, we can overcome millennium of DNA and inheritance of evolution that have asked us to find the lazy way out, if you will?Smith:              I mean, it's massive, what we're up against, as human beings, and so I want to acknowledge that. And let's give ourselves some grace and be patient with ourselves as we try to do that. But the reason I'm confident is because I've seen it, I've seen it firsthand over and over again. And I'm thinking of one of the girls from one of my early semesters, friends with my daughter, incredible, bright, just fun young woman. I think she was a third-grader at the time I got her, and she had struggled with math. She was operating grade levels behind. We were using, at the time, Khan Academy for the day in and day out, what we call conquer mode. So here's your lesson, here's the formative assessment, you're answering questions, and she's getting them wrong, and I could see her resorting to all the tactics, like making jokes, distraction, just clicking through, rage clicking through Khan Academy, all the things that you do to get out of the incredibly painful feeling of not knowing something.                        Our brains don't like it, and they're working so hard against us. Anyway, over a time, and it took months, she gets to this point where she's engaging with each problem. She misses it and she'll read the hint or the explanation of why she missed it. And I see her building that muscle of being a learner and taking risks and being okay being wrong, which was a lot of what it came down to. And I watched this transformation happen in this little girl, and then the next week, and this is where it got crazy for me, is we go to softball and I'm sitting by her parents and our daughters are on the same team, and her dad's like, she just never swings. She just sat there last season and every pitch just watched it go by, and she gets up to bat and she just takes a huge cut at the very first pitch that came. I don't even think she hit it.                        She might've struck out, but to see her posture literally change in a totally different domain, to me, it was not coincidental. It's part of her growth as a person and as an empowered learner, is to be okay taking those risks and accepting the fact that you're going to have failures along the way. I've seen it happen. I've seen it for her, and I've seen it for lots of other people, where... In a way, that's part of why Prenda is K-8, is I actually think it's easier, the younger you are. Writing this book is like, hopefully, people that are maybe a little more set in their ways will believe me on this and take some risks. But I feel highly confident. This is not only possible but it's necessary, it's what's needed. I mean, the limitations are all on ourselves. We're limiting ourselves every single day, so unlock that and be you. This starts to sound like self-help, at some point. And I'm not really a self-help guy, but I believe, strongly, in what humans are capable of.Horn:                Well, there is that element of it, and what you're just describing is far transfer, taking something that I've learned in one domain and then applying it somewhere else. And essentially, you're giving a process to do that over and over again. You have, Dare Greatly, Figure It Out, Learning Over Comfort, Start With Heart, Foundation of Trust and Making It Real. Let's maybe drill into the first one of those, which is the Daring Greatly, which is, basically, your assertion, and you have the analogy of climbing a mountain or things of that nature, in the book, but essentially, this notion that, hey, set a goal and say, I'm going to go... It starts with a big goal, and then yes, you're going to plot out the little steps, but this is how you do that to make that first big commitment, if you will, to learning about something that you care about. The curiosity that I had, as I was reading this chapter, was, is this concept equivalent in some sense to what cognitive psychologists would call agency, teaching people that they have agency? Or is it something else in your mind?Smith:              The thing about agency alone, agency in a vacuum is just, yes, you need to make the choices, and I believe very, very strongly in agency. I think what's interesting, you need to connect it to something, and I think the psychologists talk a lot about motivation. I mean, it's something you can read. Daniel Pink writes about this stuff and others. But to have this idea of why, and the classic example from an Algebra 2 classroom, where you're frustrated with solving for the vertices of a parabola and hyperbola or something, and you're like, why, teacher? Why are we doing this? And there's two paths, really, the teacher can give, is like, well, you're going to use this in your life, which is a lie for most of those things and for most of those kid, or you can say you won't use it in your life.                        I think there's a third answer here, which is because you could be this concept of empowered learner, and that's going to look different, literally, different for every person, and it doesn't always include every technical skill. I care less about the specifics of that, but it's more about, and you'll see this in that chapter, I talk about Socrates a little bit, and just this idea of a real understanding of yourself, your strengths, your interests, what's the inspirational Mark Twain quote of, there's these two days that matter, there's the day you're born and the day you find out why. And it's this purpose, this idea of big purpose. It should feel scary and audacious, and I know these things about myself, and therefore, I can set a big goal. And then it's about taking that goal seriously and backing into a plan.                        Well, then what does that actually look like? What do I do today if my goal, when I'm 35, is to be a brain surgeon? There's an answer to that question. It's almost math, and whether you end up being a brain surgeon or not doesn't matter to me. It's in the process of doing those steps today. You are building the muscle that will then transfer to the new mountain that you choose if you end up deciding to do a different thing. And so I think there's some value to always having a mountain that you're climbing and being explicit about that for yourself and your friends and everybody around you to hold yourself accountable.SpecialsHorn:                Yeah, no, that makes sense. At the risk of having you summarize your book, I don't want you to do that, but I'll ask one more question on the process. Just, it's been interesting to me since reading your book, some of the language has crept into my own way of talking about what I'm doing or even saying to my daughters, hey, what you just did there was figure it out. You didn't know. You went into the deep end. We didn't know how to navigate this, and you figured it out. And so that's been interesting to me as well, is how concrete these ideas are. And the language is something that you can just easily adopt to make it almost do that inner voice as you're trying to pursue something and say, oh, what's happening right now, this is uncomfortable, this is really difficult.                        I'm going to choose to embrace the suck and get into the learning. And so you have all these phrases throughout. Are these things you're using in the micro schools that you've tested? Are these things that are like, Kelly, this is how you think? Where does the inspiration for all that come from?Smith:              No, a lot of it's institutional. We had a moment early in Prenda, actually, where we sat down and said, what are we all about? What are we trying to do? I mean, that was really where this empowered learner concept came from. And in fact, I said, I don't want one of those mission statements with semicolons in it, so we need a mission statement that's just a few words. And we came up with one that has two words, and this is still true, Prenda, as an organization, exists to empower learners.                        That's literally the goal of the company. So that meant something to us. We couldn't have articulated, at the time, what that was, but it's a phrase that continues to exist, a concept across all of Prenda. And you'll even hear kids talking about it. The first five chapters after that are the core values of Prenda. I mean, Dare Greatly is one of our core values. Figure It Out is one of our core values. So as we put that together, those are meaningful. They have shared meaning across a community that includes five to 80 year old people and working together on these things. I mean, everybody adds their own flair to it, which I really appreciate.Closing TimeHorn:                No, that makes sense. So as we go into closing time, and last question here, you go through this process in the book, and then you end with this chapter on Making It Real. And it's interesting, when I read the table of contents, I was expecting this to be, okay, rooted in real world projects or something like that. And instead, it's about how to make the process really real to your life. But I'd actually love you to abstract that other piece of it, because what strikes me about your learning model more generally is it's like this perfect blend of direct instruction and organic intrinsic progress based on what you're purposeful or excited about or whatever else at that given point.                        You have this really cool blend between the two that seems to me anyway, to hit this practical sweet spot. And I'm just curious how you've come to that model because it seems to buck a lot of traditional schools, but also frankly, the far extreme of unstructured journey around. So you seem to have hit this really interesting sweet spot between the two. And I'd love you just to reflect on that as we close out.Smith:              I'd love to say that was on purpose. I mean, I really entered this as an outsider and a novice. So a lot of it was just what was intuitive to me. I mean, over time, as these concepts gained words, I guess, in my... I was able to talk about them and notice them. There was this contrast that just continued to appear between what I had received. And so if you look at something like Dare Greatly and have a purpose, I had set this goal in high school to get all As without ever getting above a 91%. So I used my time and energy to do that. As I look back, it's like, what a stupid waste of my time. What could I have accomplished? What could I have done? If anyone in my life had said, here, you're capable of more than that, some invitation to set some bigger goal.                        It literally just never occurred to me, and I never did it. And so I think what I'm really trying to do is align an environment with these principles that I believe to be true. Growth mindset's real, Learning Over Comfort's real. I mean, these are real concepts, and how can you just, structurally, allow those things to happen, which you just can't, if it's all about, I've got this list of standards and I've got to get it into their heads. I mean, this goes back to the very title of the book. This is a reference to Plutarch, which I'm sure all of your listeners are well familiar with. But the system itself, what your district curriculum is telling you to do, what your legislative, the code, the laws that are passed, it's all telling you to fill vessels, even down to like, you should or should not talk about this particular social science theory.                        We're going to teach kids to think this. And that's all filling vessels, filling vessels. It's so wired in to the system. And so what I'm saying is, what if instead we start with kindling fires? What if it's about helping an individual make a decision to care about learning, to own it, and then do that work, which as we point out in the book over and over again, this is not easy. This is very messy. It's hard. It takes an enormous amounts of just time and frustration and the emotional work of it, but it's worth it because that's the type of humans that we need as a species to continue moving forward. So that's my hope, is people will shake things up a little bit and choose to be empowered learners themselves and hopefully, do that for others as well.Horn:                Well, it's a heck of a dream and a heck of a way to get people started on it, is to read this book. It's extremely accessible, quick read, that I think is helpful. As I said, the language has seeped into my own dialogue now, both inner monologue, I should say, as well as dialogue with my kids. So Kelly, thank you for writing it, but also, thank you for spreading the work through Prenda Learning, which I'm glad to hear, it's expanded to 2,000 students and continuing to grow and make an impact in the lives of the individuals that we need for them and society. So thank you so much for being here on the Future of Education.Smith:              Yeah, you bet. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

As students, parents, and policymakers question the purpose of high schools, educators worldwide are building novel secondary school designs. What makes them "innovative," however? In this conversation, Shadman Uddin, a master’s Student in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education, offered that what makes a school innovative is less its adherence to a list of “novel” ideas, but more its outcomes against the things that matter most in society today, which includes knowledge acquisition, but also things like real-world applicability and social and emotional development.Against that backdrop, Ken Montgomery, co-founder of Design Tech High, known as D-Tech, and Keeanna Warren, who just became the CEO of the Purdue Polytechnic High School network, joined me to talk about their school designs, in particular the importance of: * helping students connect to something bigger than the school itself; * offering competency-based learning pathways with a transformed assessment system; * allowing students to find their creative purpose aligned to the common good; * and building a more permeable school that is connected to the community and offers a deep sense of belonging.They also talked about the role of AI (artificial intelligence) and the anxiety that their students feel around its emergence, as well as the barriers that arise to building school models that break the traditional molds—from policy to human capital. Ken and Keeanna also talked about how they’re seeing a lot of energy from parents for new types of schooling—and not the small “C” conservative force for the status quo that parents often fall into.As always, subscribers can listen to the podcast, watch the conversation, or read the transcript.Michael Horn:   Welcome to the Future of Education where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And to help us think about what that looks like and means today we've got three terrific guests in a format that we haven't typically done in the Future of Education. Where we're going to get to have a little bit of a conversation, a roundtable. We have Ken Montgomery, who I've known for many years. He's the co-founder and executive director at Design Tech High known as d.tech to those of us in the world. We have Keeanna Warren, the assistant executive director of Purdue Polytechnic High School Network, which has gotten a lot of plaudits over the years and we'll talk more about what they do there. And then the person bringing us all together, so to speak, is Shadman Uddin, who's a master's student in education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.                        And Shadman, I'm going to start with you as we launch into... We get four cycles, if you will, on this show. The first one is the morning warmup. And Shadman, you are bringing us all together because for one of your classes, you wrote this paper around next-gen school models, innovative schools, and we got talking as you were doing that. And one of your first questions was, what is an innovative school? If I remember this correctly.                        I had COVID I think at the time, so I had brain fog. And I said, there's a lot of places out there, the Canopy Project, whatever else, that have done this in a variety of ways. But it seems to me innovation... As my friend Rick Hess often says, no one goes into an Apple store and says, “Give me your most innovative iPhone.” They want an iPhone that accomplishes something for them. And innovation is a means not an ends. And so what if we looked at the outcomes and asked, okay. Well, what are the processes that are getting them? So I'm curious how that suggestion landed and what did you learn in the paper?Morning WarmupShadman Uddin: Yeah, totally, Michael. And first of all, I just want to thank you for having us here today. It's really exciting to be in conversation with both you, Ken and Keeanna. This has been a conversation that we've been having now for a few months through this research. It's really great to just have this forum and discuss a lot of the findings that we had in the paper. So before we get really right to your question about how did we define next-gen, I just want to form around a little bit of the team that was behind this and how we came to do this research in and of itself. So it was myself, another couple of students at the Graduate School of Business here at Stanford named Rahul Adhikari and Nikita Sushilkumar. And we were all together in Gloria Lee's class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.                        And all of us were united by this sense of excitement that we had, seeing all of the students and families asking for more innovation in high school across the US and even globally as well with Rahul and Nikita coming from India. And we had this big question of, how are these new innovations that are happening, or at least the ideas that hearing from new school leaders, how are they taking shape and are they successfully scaling? And so we posed that question to Gloria and she was like, "Why don’t we go ahead and do a whole research project around this? Let's find out this answer together.”                        And that really launched this amazing series of conversations. We spoke to over 26 different school leaders and ecosystem builders in what we defined or called the next-gen school space. And ultimately we learned a lot about what are some of the major barriers and what are also some of the key strategies that the highest performing next-gen schools are doing to kind of circumvent and keep growing amidst a lot of the barriers that they face.                        But back to your first question of how did we even decide what was a next-gen or innovative school, and this was where we got caught up for a couple of months honestly. We saw the Transcend Canopy Project that tried to define next-gen by a various set of inputs that they quoted to be different tiers of innovation in next-gen. And what we realized is, one, we were most interested in the scaling strategies and how were the schools surviving and thriving. And we didn't want to get so caught up in more of the intellectual and theoretical debate about what constitutes a next-gen innovation in a school. And so what we did is actually after speaking to you and then Kim Smith at Cambiar Education is we opted to do a different taxonomy or classification for how we thought about next-gen. And what we ended up deciding to do was an outcomes oriented framework.                        So we thought about, okay, what are the outcomes that next-gen or innovative schools are trying to create within the high school landscape today? And then can we look and see what schools across the nation are performing well across those various indicators of outcomes? And so we leaned on Sir Ken Robinson's five educational outcomes that he outlines in his book, Imagine If. Imagining a new way of school, a new way of education. And those five categories are academic, economic, so that's job readiness, social, cultural, and personal. And we saw a number of schools doing different things across those different domains. Some schools focusing on primarily one outcome. But that then allowed us to compile a list of schools that we saw to be high performing in each of these categories. And then we went ahead and started reaching out to school leaders like Ken and Keeanna to learn more about how they were growing and how they were building out their visions.Horn:                Ken, let's go to you on your school model. D.tech is one that I was out at the Bay Area actually still when you launched it. So I got to see some of it up close. But love for you to give the same sort of overview.Ken Montgomery: Yes, thank you. Just like everybody else, I appreciate the time and opportunity to share our story with you all. I think a lot of what was kind of said is same with us. I think that's why we're all here. Definitely, one thing that is really resonating is a lot of people have said that we have all these programs, which I'll get to in a second. But what really separates us is our view of students. Like our view of what students are capable of. The fact that we feel high school is not just preparing you for something, you should do something real while you're actually in high school. And so we say that we exist to provide people the opportunity to do meaningful work, contribute to the common good, and develop their creative purpose. So everything that we do is just aligned towards that.                        We say people, staff and students. And the creative purpose part is becoming even more prevalent because… even more important, as I'm sure we'll talk more about AI, there are a lot of changes. And that's what we say too, is that we don't know how the world is going to change. We just know it's going to change quickly and unpredictably. So we prepare our students to enter that kind of world. So we have five pillars. What makes a design tech school a design tech school? The first one is design thinking. All our students have a four year design lab, design thinking graduation requirement. And they can earn their regular high school diploma from us. Then also an innovation diploma. Which certifies that we worked with Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity about developing rubrics for how you assess creativity, initiative and things like that.                        So if the students take on this additional project, they earn their innovation diploma. And that's tied to design thinking. We're competency based. All of our students, we have an advisory period, all of our students have flexible time during the day and then we also have intercession. And so we are located on Oracle's corporate campus in Redwood City. And that really started... The first connection was our intersession program.                        So three times a year for two weeks, the students take a break from their core classes and basically the Bay Area becomes their classroom. And so one example of that, Oracle employees teach kids computer coding or wearable technology or the internet of things. Or our students might go out to learn how to perform in a rock band or things like that. So it's really just trying to get kids out in the world and have them, like I said, find their creative purpose while contributing to the common good. We try to align everything towards that.                        And we also really are focusing on belonging in terms of, especially with... I think that's something with the next-gen model is like, we've seen the previous system, it has left certain people behind based on their identities and in some cases it was designed to do that. So something I think is essential and if you're thinking about what does the next generation of schools need to do, it needs to have that equity component in it as well.Horn:                Super interesting. And I'm hearing some common themes across the schools obviously, but there's that belief in students that they can do something real while in high school in both your models and you also have connection to something bigger than just the school. Keeanna, obviously the direct linkage with Purdue University. Ken, with Oracle. And this finding of purpose. And, “What is my superpower?” I think was your words, Keeanna, right? For each individual. I'm curious because both of you sort of build in outcomes as you're talking about this. What students are capable of and doing it while they're in school.                        But by the same token, you're also bringing in these project-based learning, design thinking, these elements that people often say are innovative and yet John Dewey or Maria Montessori might have said, “Ah, we thought of that before.” So I'm sort of curious when you think of this frame where Shadman landed around innovative school more focused on the outcomes than what you're doing, if you will, how does that land for you as defining what next-gen really is? Keeanna, why don't you go first and Ken you can follow.Keeanna Warren: Yeah, I think that's a really incredible question because I think one of the things is, honestly if you look at research based practices in teaching and learning, it is you learn by doing and it's not something that we've reinvented. But I think it comes down to really applying best practices but putting students at the center. And it really sounds simple, but I think there is this historic assumption that students aren't capable or want to learn. And I think that is a really big piece about just really centering the learner and it's not innovative in the traditional sense, but using...                        So for example, using technology systems so that you're able to undo and not have to use a master schedule. Those are one of the ways that we apply next-gen learning to the teaching practices that we know that work. Using the science of reading. I mean, none of that is new, but just the implementation of it is really new.                        But I think that these next practices are an answer to making sure that teachers are getting what they need. So I love how Ken brought that up. It's not just about... The students aren't the only learners in the building and that's what we call it... I focus not on students, but on... Not just on the students, but also just being learner-centered overall in the ecosystem. And I think just integrating technology in a way that's purposeful and actually innovative. And I think really just the application of it and ensuring that really the practices that we know work really well, integrating real life learning into it and really doing things with technology that are going to lead to future success.                        And then just keeping up with the times. There's so much technology out there that's incredible that's not being utilized. And I think some of it is fear and not understanding, but I think what sets us apart is we already know what we've been doing for years doesn't work. And to disrupt that, you have to apply new practices and new technology, which requires an awareness of technology and teaching and learning and all those things. So I do think it’s just applying what we already know and marrying that with the technology that exists is what makes us next-gen.Horn:                Ken.Montgomery:   I feel that... I don't know, this is where I always have these moments recently. I feel really old because I feel like I'm on the next-gen of next-gen. So when we were opening, we were a next-gen school, but we were… it was more towards... Because we were trying to personalize learning. That was kind of like what was considered next-gen 10 years ago. And now I feel like the next-gen is going to be more about helping people find their creative purpose. And so I love what you were saying at the start about you don't go into the Apple store and say, “Give me an innovative product.” You go in there and say, “I want something that works. Something that does this.” So I think it is a really nice shift to think more of innovation in terms of the outcomes instead of the process. In terms of like, are you personalizing learning, are you using these tools and things? It's more like, what are you after?                        Because I think innovation, I think you could say, what we're doing is innovative. We're an innovative school because what we're trying to do is create a model that helps people navigate the world around them. And so whatever you're doing at that time, that seems really innovative if you can do that. And so you can think like, what did the iPhone do? It did help us navigate the world around us and it decreased the friction of a lot of things.                        And then in doing that it actually started to change the way we navigate the world around us. And so I feel like if you can build a school model that is flexible enough, that is really helping people navigate and then shape the world around them, that they're considered innovative. And that's why I think it is really important to have more of the conversation focused on the outcomes instead of the tools and the technologies and the process. The process starts to take more of a backseat to the outcomes.Horn:                Yeah, I love that. And obviously when you start blowing up master schedules and so forth, you create more dynamism into the day and week and year of what you can accomplish and how you can change. As we move into the work cycle, Shadman, I want to go to you on this because I'm curious in your research, what were you seeing as those practices that were popping up as sort of common themes across those next-gen models?Work CycleUddin:              Yeah, absolutely. And just even a quick note on the discussion that Ken and Keeanna brought up here as well. I mean, what we saw on a broad level across schools across the country were so many different innovations. From changing class sizes, from experimenting with hybrid, from bringing in more industry partners into the school. I think why we really preferred to abstract it to the outcome level was to really be able to think of this whole landscape as an ecosystem. Where various different next-gen schools were innovating in the ways that were most responsive to the needs of their community. Those were some of the grounding principles that we saw to be most effective. And we found whenever we tried... Especially early on when we tried to litigate against, oh, are you trying project-based learning? Have you seen the research there?                        It was almost like trying to just force a square peg into a round hole, just trying to pigeonhole a school into saying, "You're only next-gen if you do this." And I think that wasn't really fair to a lot of the edupreneurs that we were speaking to. Because they're coming back to us and saying, "Hey, we are listening to our families. We're listening to the students. And we're delivering based off of that. And these are the outcomes that we as a school value. Sure. We'll incorporate some traditional model stuff too and then we'll innovate here." And getting into that debate almost, it just didn't seem fair to the spirit of what we wanted to encourage within this broader ecosystem. But to your question of what were some themes that we were seeing across the country, and it is really difficult to try to find these threads between schools in Indiana versus schools in Tennessee and New Orleans and the Bay Area. There's such different family needs.                        But we did see high level, there was broader openness to hybrid learning. More interest around having smaller schools. This is primarily driven by a concern around safety that we saw across the nation, both as a result of the pandemic and unfortunately because of the rise of school violence from both gun violence as well as within schools. And so there were more families looking to say, "Hey, I actually just want to have a more socially community oriented experience for my child." We saw that in number of places. I think number one, we just saw a strong desire from families across the country looking for more career and technical education for their students. Be it, "Is this going to get my child into college better?" Or even, "Is this actually going to open up new alternatives outside of college?" As well. And so we saw both of that. Funny little story I think that was unique about our approach is we actually tried to do this whole thing and just see what ideas were resonating across the country.                        And so myself alongside a couple of other students at the business school, we actually put up a bunch of different landing pages of 30 different next-gen school ideas. They ranged from learning technical and computer skills to learning how to build social change or entrepreneurship, fully self-directed learning, et cetera. And we generated over 1500 clicks on Google Ads over two weeks. Which is pretty bonkers. Like 23 out of the 30 ideas beat the average consumer product conversion rate of 2%. And five ideas generated from between 9% to 16% clickthrough rates on the ads.                        And that was such a big signal to us of, it's not just that there's one or two ideas that families and students are looking for, it's that there's a lot of yearning for change in high school. I mean, we pitched each of these as high school for entrepreneurship, high school for computer science, high school for AI. Just to see what we could get from students. And then out of all those clicks we spoke to over 40 parents and students just to get an understanding of what exactly they were looking for. And at the base of it all, it was just this yearning for something new and traditional schools just not meeting the needs of their students. And so I think from the demand side we were like, okay, this ecosystem development around next-gen needs to happen. There's there's so much interest for it.Horn:                Well, so that's so interesting because I think a lot of people say, "Gee, parents are a small C conservative force in education. They don't want change, they don't want this, they don't want that." You're suggesting something very different. So Keeanna, take us on the ground now in your community. I would say something common that Shadman just outlined that connects to what you and Ken said, which is connected to community. Communities are different. So those needs might manifest themselves differently. But what are you seeing? Are parents leaning into these new practices? You mentioned AI, using tech to undo the master schedule. Those could be I imagine daunting in some circles, but are you seeing that or are you seeing something elseWarren:            That aligns exactly. We are seeing so much community voice and choice and even in the foundation of our schools, we reached out to parents and we asked, "What are you looking for?" And they were telling us the same things, "We want to make sure that our kids feel safe." And that's not just physically safe, but there's a psychological safety that goes along with what Ken does with his schools as well, is just making sure there's that sense of belonging. Parents are looking for smaller schools, we're even launching a micro school model to support that need, which is a conversation for a whole another day. But very interesting and intriguing and something we're very excited about. I think another really important piece is, we believe in the power of community. We believe that we should be a school without walls. Not literally because we live in the Midwest where the weather is changing often.                        And so we want walls, but in the sense of the term of we want community partners to come in. But we also want our students to go out. And we want our students to care about their communities and solve the problems that are most important to them. And ideally we want our kids to feel empowered and proud of their community. So we really center community in all that we do. I also believe in parent as the first teacher and unapologetically believe in school choice that is inclusive to all. So I believe that kids should have a school that fits their unique needs. Again, I think that we are past the industrial age where we are preparing kids to be factory workers. That's not what we're doing. That's not what we are going to do in at PPHS because that won't properly prepare the kids.                        But that's what's happening in a lot of spaces. And then as far as the evidence, you vote with your feet. And so I will tell you, we're in a public school system, so we are open to all kids and that's really valuable to us. But I'll tell you, our seats fill up quickly. We live in a city where there's a common enrollment for our township or school, the boundary lines for our school and we consistently fill up. And I think that is evidence of itself that that's what parents are looking for. But even in our feedback we hear the same thing. The sense of belonging, the feeling that our kids will actually be prepared for the future of work. And that parents are feeling that their kids are actually prepared for college and post-secondary success.Horn:                Ken, what about you? Are you having a similar experience or are you seeing some parents be like, "No, thanks."Montgomery:   Yes, it's similar and I do think... Your school sounds amazing by the way. I mean, I love that emphasis on community because I feel like that gets overlooked way too much in terms when we talk about next-gen and things like that, that human connection is at the heart of it. And because we are centered on anchored and design thinking, empathy is one of our guiding principles. And so we just for a very basic level, the reason that we've been successful attracting students and such is parents... We're in the heart of Silicon Valley. Parents look at how they are working now compared to how they were 10 or 15 years ago. Look at their kids' school and if it's traditional, they're like, "Well, this just doesn't match up. There's no way this experience,... My kid is having basically the same experience I had. There's no way that could be preparing them for what work is going to be like in their future."                        But what we've even noticed even more so with students in the last the six months with AI and ChatGPT, we've seen an increase in... I don't want to... Anxiety is a strong word, but it's a lot of nervousness around students where all of us have moments in school we're like, "When are we ever going to use this?" And so now with ChatGPT, students are asking themselves about that with everything. Like, "You're teaching me to write an essay, when am I ever going to use this? You're teaching me to make a presentation, we're never going to use this?" And then they take it to the next level, "What am I going to do? What is going to be left for me to do?" And so our counselors are, we talked about AI, our counselors are pointing out that there's student anxiety around this.                        And that's why we are feeling even more so that we have to lean into our, developing people's creative purpose. Because even though ChatGPT will be able to do a lot of things, we are still human. We still need to know that we matter, that we make a difference, that we can create. We still have to have this sense of purpose in our lives. And so we're seeing that even more so just in the last six months. Even more so at the student level. The demand from the student level, even more so than the parent level, as the students, it's really starting to hit them. Because students are doing their work differently. Their schoolwork, they're able to do it very, very differently than they were just six months ago. So I think that's increasing even more of the drive for like, "Whoa, we need something different from the student." The students are saying, "We need to be repaired differently." And the parents are like, "Yeah, we agree."Horn:                It's so interesting. Keeanna, you've teased this now a couple times, so I'm going to you. AI, how are you all using it? Because this is actually the first time I've heard Ken, what you said about student anxiety and nervousness. I've heard more of the teacher side of this and that students are using it. Keeanna, it sounds like you're doing something with that energy though to lean in on it. So tell us more.Warren:            So I think that is something we're seeing too, that students are nervous about it from different perspectives. So we get the student who's nervous because they've watched too many Will Smith movies and they don't understand the fact that AI does what we tell it to. So it will do that. And so we're teaching kids to be the programmers there. But we're also teaching kids to be the consumers of the programming. And I think there's also the fear that, "I won't have a job or my parents won't have a job because these chat bots in different forms are going to take those certain skill level jobs." And that's true. And so we're coaching the students around how to become the folks who program it and the folks who innovate. So I'm like, if you're thinking about creating a chat bot now, you're two steps behind and we need to make sure that our students understand how to stay ahead.                        I always use the quote, I'm like, in a world of Netflix, don't be a Blockbuster. I even forgot the name of it because it's irrelevant to us. And the kids are like, "What's that? You're so old." I'm like, "Yeah, I'm proud of it." So there's a piece there. I think there's another piece because we're a school that's diverse by design so we believe firmly in the power of all the types of diversity. But I also know, and transparently I will share, my dissertation was on AI use in education. So yeah. I was like, the last thing you want to do is talk to someone who wrote a whole dissertation about this. So yeah, that's always a disclaimer of stop talking about it. I have to remind myself. But not a lot of people who look like me, so a woman, a Black woman, not a lot of us are writing the machine learning models.                        And so AI can feel dangerous to a lot of educational leaders that I spoke to because there's a lot of bias that could be in there. So one of the lessons that I love to do is... And you have to build a strong culture before you try this, but have the students play around with AI and specifically around the idea of bias. Have them explain to you why racism is a good thing. Some chat bots will give you a really compelling argument. And we have an agreement that racism historically, not been good. Sexism, not good. But you can get those chat bots to give you compelling research... I shouldn't say... I hate to use the word research,Horn:                But some sort of manufactured... That's insane. Wow.Warren:            Yes. And so I'm like, "Kids, you have to be the ones that are moving us forward with this because it's just one sided in many ways." So that's just one piece of it there. And just really emphasizing the importance for students on how to use it. So I use it myself. I tell the kids that I use it and I tell them how I use it. I have learned how to write really good prompts to get really good outcomes.                        And so there's a good lesson there too. And then I think another piece about using it, I always tell the kids I'm a good writer. I would even say... I'll say I'm a good writer. We'll start there. But if I am a poor writer and I try to use the platforms, it's not going to help me. So you still need to learn. And also there's some AI that make grammatical mistakes. Now I know that grammar actually changes over time just like language does. And that's a human art form behind it. And I can tell if a computer wrote it versus a human with creativity. And so that's the art that we always bring to it. So I'll stop there because I literally could talk about this for days and I don't want to do that. But yeah, so I think there's so many great lessons in there on teaching kids how to be the creators and how to use AI properly.Horn:                Well you answered one of the questions I had also, which is how do you get the adults in the building that know about AI and what to do with it and what questions to ask? So that was great on multiple levels. Let's move into our special section, which is I'm curious sort of the biggest factors that are driving or hindering growth of next-gen high schools like yours. Shadman, you just came off this research project, so let's start with you and then Ken and Keeanna, I'd love to hear on the ground what you've experienced around things that are driving the growth. We've sort of hit on some of that with the parent demand, but also the hindering. So Shadman, why don't you step in first?SpecialsUddin:              Totally. And this was really the crux of our paper. Really trying to understand what were the barriers and drivers that were affecting growth. I mean, you've even heard just a snippet from two school leaders how exciting the innovation is in next-gen schools. And we had the same experience with every single one of our school leaders that we spoke to. We were just like, "How do we get this? How do we get more of this?" And so what we ended up doing was actually trying to frame our analysis in a broader framework. So we broke down every single factor in terms of either demand side, supply side, cultural or regulatory. Which encompassed like the political environment and the policies therein. And what we saw was demand side is really strong. Schools have existing strategies for how to either generate more enthusiasm or find families and build that way.                        There's certainly challenges on the demand side that we saw. But we saw, at least in the learnings that we compiled from the schools we spoke to, we saw some really excellent strategies for being able to capitalize on the demand that's existing for new innovations within schools. And I think Ken and Keeanna can probably talk more about what their schools are doing. They've done really great jobs there. But in terms of the barriers, where we saw the most friction and this almost was across the board entirely, was on the regulatory side. And then on the supply side constraints. And so within supply side, we had three main categories that we saw really serious challenges facing next-gen schools. That's human capital, that's in infrastructure. And then finally financial capital. Human capital, it's already... There's a teacher shortage broadly. To get next-gen school teacher talent, not only do you have to be able to attract and retain those teachers, you're also looking for a unique skillset of teachers.                        For example, at Design Tech Ken talks about how you're looking for that special nexus of skills in a teacher who knows how to teach well, but also knows design thinking and knows how to be able to teach it and deploy it at that level. And then one story that we heard from East Bay Innovation Academy was you get new teachers, you develop them and you put them on your website and all of a sudden you've got headhunters taking those teachers from you after they've been upskilled. And so there's this really competitive environment around human capital that we just were hearing from everyone. And obviously then you go to infrastructure. This I think is one of the biggest constraints facing next-gen schools is, if we have models that require us to be physically in place, many times it's the buildings themselves and the cost of either building a new one or updating existing buildings that really just require so much financial capital from the get go. That you have to go ahead and already have X number of students set up.                        It doesn't allow an innovator to be able to test new models or test new marketing and get those students. You already need some significant financial capital raised in order to go ahead and start your new school. And I think what we heard was this was a mega constraint because for founders who don't have extensive networks around access to capital, which is really rampant across the country, then it becomes very difficult to have an idea. Especially for a lot of school founders who don't have entrepreneurial backgrounds to be able to go ahead and make that step.                        So those were three really big constraints and we pose a series of recommendations around how to deal with that. I think both schools do an excellent job dealing with some of the regulatory constraints that they face, either partnering with district leaders or building coalitions with existing stakeholders in a school market and community.                        We saw that to be a really effective strategy of being able to anticipate some friction that may be coming up from a political standpoint. I think that was a really excellent strategy. And then of course, working really carefully with community design. And I think where future entrepreneurs have an opportunity is, how can you help schools really think about bringing their infrastructure costs down and helping schools access more financial capital and think about ways that we can... And this is one of those wicked problems of tackling the teacher shortage, but those are where the ecosystem needs to be thinking about in order to really help lift that dynamic back up and see more of this innovation that we're hearing on this call scale to so many more communities and demographies across the country.Horn:                Ken, let's go to you. I'm curious your answer on this, but I also, I'll just say, the infrastructure piece, partnering with Oracle, you have a really interesting answer for that part of the puzzle that actually contributes to the model as well. I don't know if you want to comment there or go elsewhere because California obviously also has had its share of challenges over the last few years. But your call where to go.Montgomery:   Yeah, I definitely think... Well, that's one of the infrastructure... We were not... Oracle built this, a building on their campus and they lease it. We have a 50 year lease, a dollar a year. And that's solved the biggest infrastructure problem that most new schools have. That we have a facility.Horn:                But actually let me interrupt you for one second because I'm curious. Some people watching this are going to be like, "Okay, but you had an amazing partnership with Oracle. What are the odds I can replicate that?" So what's the lesson to maybe take away from that, that transcends that one partnership?Montgomery:   I think there are a couple of things. One, it works really well because both sides, Oracle and us, we have humility about what we can do and our limitations in that we feel that there are some things that a person working on the job can explain to our kids and teach our kids in a way that maybe a teacher may not even be able to. Oracle on their site also, they're not trying to run our school. We have autonomy in what we're doing. So it's really a partnership that starts with humility. And I do think that that's the other piece of it. Or I think a lot of the next-gen models have more promise in this is the flexibility. Is that if you want to make partnerships like that work tie it to the humility on our side, we have to make things flexible to access those partnerships. We have to be willing to say, "Well, maybe we don't have to do it exactly this way." So that we can work.                        So especially freeing up the time. Most companies don't run on a bell schedule. I think actually all companies. Very few companies run on a bell schedule. So we have to be able to flex things like that to take advantage of the resources that they provide that way. But I do think, in California especially, where we are in Silicon Valley, the facilities is a major challenge. And so that was where we were very fortunate that Oracle saw that. They believed in our model, they saw that as a need and that's why we're on their campus. But the two challenges that are still challenges that I didn't think they would be after when all the schools had to close because of the pandemic, I thought that, well, schools are building up this, at least the foundation of an infrastructure to offer flexible learning situations. Even though it's not perfect across the board, everything, but every school had to do something to make it more flexible.                        And we also thought, like the economy basically came screeching to a halt when kids couldn't go to school. It caused a lot of disruption. So I thought, wow, the political power and will of educators is going to be stronger than it has ever been before. But what we've seen is everything, it was just a race to get back to normal. So things where we thought like, okay, we have this foundation, flexible, so some of the policies might enable us to be more flexible, things like that. Like, no. It is just right back. Get your kids seat time, instructional minutes, all that. It's like the flexible learning that we did didn't even happen. And then the same thing, just the teacher sustainability, that if you're teaching teachers a new model to be innovative, but they can't sustain it professionally, then it does feel like you're really... It's a difficult journey.                        Because especially like you said, the design thinking. We don't lose people, but we can't recruit people. Because we can't match the salaries. And it's even around here, a lot of people work in tech are like, they are coming back to the office, but they have very flexible work schedules. Whereas teachers, you're still here from, the school day starts here and it ends here. So in terms of the compensation and the flexibility in your work life balance, the value proposition for teaching is getting... It's challenging now. And I think that hopefully we'll start to loosen up some of the policies and rules allow around that or increase the funding for compensation. But things can be done and I thought those things would be done based on what we learned, but they haven't happened yet.Horn:                It is similar to my observation. Lightning round around this and then we'll move into closing time. But I'm just curious about this specific issue around seat time. And obviously I've been pushing for competency mastery based learning since I've gotten into this field. Everyone has different barriers that they poke at when they look at the regulatory landscape, at what's holding that up. So sort of the lightning round of what are the two biggest things in your judgment that are holding that out? Ken, you want to go first then whip around Keeanna and Shadman, you can close with a couple more.Montgomery:   Yeah, I think it's just the lack of consensus around how to assess those competencies. If we had that then we could focus more on that than the seat time. So I think that's the biggest... That along with really... Especially like I said, this is really pronounced where we are [inaudible 00:39:56] investing in teachers in a way that they can afford live a middle class lifestyle in the communities where they work.Horn:                Keeanna.Warren:            I would agree with the fact that teachers just need more training and support, and we all do on how to really... I'll use the word fairly, measure competency so it's unbiased. But there's still some art form to it. I think that's really big. And I just think marrying the idea of, we know that learning is not time-bound. There's nothing in research that confirms that. And just making sure we're applying what we know and that teachers feel really prepared to understand what competency-based education is and how to really help students move towards and giving coaching and good feedback. I'm super into ungrading and other things that we could discuss, but I think those are two really important things.Horn:                Well, that's two round resounding votes for redoing the assessment system. Shadman, what did you find?Uddin:              Yeah. I mean, it's actually funny that you say that because I think it even goes back to the earlier conversation we had about inputs versus outcomes. Even when thinking about next-gen. I think this is a similar situation of where a lot of folks in traditional school systems, policymakers are thinking, "Oh, these are the inputs that make a school a school." As opposed to thinking, "These are the outcomes that we want to be seeing within our students."                        And when you're coming in with that input lens, you're just tethering a lot of schools to have to do X, Y, or Z. Sure, maybe having seat time regulated within some schools works for some communities, but for other communities that have really played around with hybrid and have really figured out distance learning, is that really what you want to be holding that school too and stifling that growth?                        Yeah, I mean, I think here at the Graduate School of Education, we often talk about how there's a whole body of learning signs that we're discovering around how we should be thinking about each learner and their context and delivering based off of what cognitive information they already have and designing KCIs, all of these frameworks. But then when you go to the school level, the conversation is nothing like that at all. And that was just this big disconnect that we saw in terms of outcomes versus inputs.Closing TimeHorn:                Fascinating. So closing time, Shadman, you get the last word and I was going to ask you around limitations of the research, but that's a very deficit minded way of asking it. So instead I want to ask, what's the further research that you want to do or you'd like to see in the field that isn't there yet?Uddin:              Yeah. I mean, I think this conversation is really step one. One of the cool things that we saw once we sent out this paper to all of the schools that we interviewed and the other ecosystem builders was everybody was just so excited to hear what other schools were doing when grappling with similar problems that they were facing. And I think being able to discuss this at a level of, okay, school founder to school leaders, to ecosystem builder. Like, have these conversations about your specific pain points and thinking about, okay, what are the strategies that have been deployed? Where are the pain points? We just kept hearing from school leaders that they're so busy just trying to get through and keep their organization and school running that the opportunity to really connect across the country with people who are trying different models or not even trying different models and just doing things entirely different, that was something that we thought to be missing.                        And so one thing for us as next steps is how do we continue to use this research to generate more community, more conversation. And really think through how do we better support school leaders and school founders like Ken and Keeanna who are on the ground innovating. So my ears are open and definitely eager to hear more from folks who do listen to this conversation and even from folks here today of just like, yeah, how do we make this better? How do we continue to push the ecosystem to allow for more innovation?Horn:                Well, we know that by the time this conversation released, we're recording it before you graduate, but you will have graduated by the time this comes out. So congratulations. We look forward to watching what you do to further that. And Keeanna and Ken, just a great appreciation with the work that you continue to do to unlock the futures for these students that are going to make great contributions in the world. So thank you all and we'll be back next time on the Future of Education. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.