The Future of Education

Nir Zicherman, co-founder and CEO of Oboe, an ambitious AI-driven learning startup, joined me to share his big vision for the future of learning that helped Oboe secure $16 million in Series A funding led by a16z. We talked about how his personal journey as a self-taught programmer inspired Oboe’s mission: to become the world’s first truly generalized learning platform built specifically for self-directed learners. Our conversation explored how Oboe leverages AI to dynamically create individualized learning paths, addresses both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in learners, and differentiates itself from traditional edtech and general-purpose AI tools. I’ll be curious your thoughts.Nir ZichermanEvery single day, there are billions of people around the world who use the internet to learn. They follow rabbit holes of curiosity, right? They ask questions, they consume all of this content online to teach themselves things that they’re interested in. And they use resources like Wikipedia and videos on YouTube and Reddit. And now they use LLMs in the form of ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude. They use all of these resources to stitch together a learning path for themselves to teach themselves what it is that they want to learn. Billions of people every day. And yet, not a single one of those platforms that I just mentioned was actually built to teach you. And that’s always struck me as something really crazy, right? That there are so many people who are going through this every single day where they’re using the internet to get answers to topics that they’re interested in and wanting to go down these paths of curiosity.And yet there is no truly generalized learning platform that has ever served the average consumer.Michael HornWelcome to The Future of Education. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. I’m Michael Horn, delighted by today’s conversation. We have someone I’m meeting for the first time in this recording, but who has started companies and a company right now that has gotten a lot of attention over the years. Nir Zicherman is his name. He is the co-founder and CEO of Oboe, hot new learning startup that’s raised over, I think, $16 million, led by some notable investors in there, and founded a previous company that sold to Spotify as well. All of which we’ll get— we’re going to get into.But first, Nir, great to see you. Thanks for joining me.Nir ZichermanThank you so much for having me. I’m excited.Michael HornYeah, I’m excited to learn about Oboe because it’s been one of these startups popping out of this AI era that has started to get a lot of buzz very quickly in our space. We’ll get into that in a moment, but maybe like just first your own background, like how did you get in the world of startups? Why learning? Why this moment at this time?Nir’s Background with PodcastingNir ZichermanYeah. So I have a very unusual background for a person who now runs a tech company because I did not start off that way at all. I actually went to Cornell and studied political science, or we called it government there. And I went to law school after that at NYU, and I was on track to be a lawyer. And, when I tell people that, they’re typically shocked because you don’t often hear about people.Michael HornNo, I was going to say it’s sort of the opposite, right?Nir ZichermanYeah, it is. It is very much the opposite. But when I was in law school, a number of just fortuitous events led me to pick up a programming book just because I got interested in it and think maybe this could be a thing that I teach myself, even though I never formally learned it in school. I did not study computer science at all or any topic related to computer science. I studied political science, which is not a science.Michael HornYeah.Nir ZichermanAnd as soon as I started programming and writing code, I just fell in love with it. I absolutely loved it. And so much so that by the time I graduated law school, I decided what if I tried to get a programming job at a time when the legal job market was actually doing very poorly and the tech market in New York where I live was doing very well. And I thought, what are the chances that a person with no formal training, completely self-taught, who wants to get into this space could get a job? And I was able to, I was able to actually very quickly, which is very different than, than the world of law where it was extremely difficult to get a job.Michael HornSure. Obviously gated processes and, and all sorts of things, right?Nir ZichermanExactly. All about who you know and, and And, you know, how much your— my transcript was straight Bs at law school. So there was absolutely nothing special about me. But in the world of programming, it was an absolute love of this new thing that I had discovered and kind of late in my life, much later than most people get into it. And so that’s how I entered the tech world. And I started working at a bunch of small companies around New York for a few years and developing my skills and meeting more people. And what ended up happening is a few years later, I started a company actually in the podcast space. So it’s always funny being on these podcasts, especially at the time.Michael HornYeah, I was going to say, you’re like, I know what you’re doing.Nir ZichermanYeah.Michael HornWhen I probably, probably better than me. Yeah.Nir ZichermanVery meta at the time when I would do interviews about podcasts on podcasts about the podcast industry, often distributed on the platform that we built. But the company was called Anchor. So Anchor was started in 2015. And the whole idea behind it, 2015 was a time when podcasting was just an up-and-coming medium. Like it was not anywhere near the level of popularity that it has today. In fact, I would say a year earlier, right before we started the company, most people did not even know what a podcast was.Michael HornHuh.Nir ZichermanAnd there were a number of breakout hits that happened around the 2014 era that changed that. Like the show Serial, which was an NPR show, it was the first sort of like mainstream podcast that people were talking about on a regular basis. The medium had been around for about 20 years before then, but it wasn’t a thing that most consumers knew about. And we saw this opportunity there where we looked around at podcasting and we said, well, this is a really interesting space because it seems like demand is only going to skyrocket over the next few years. You’re going to see smart speakers coming out, right? That was the year the Alexa came out. You’re going to see connected cars that have the ability to stream any content in audio form. And so there was a really interesting opportunity of growth on the consumption side. And yet creating a podcast was really, really hard, really hard.You would need to buy software. You would need to pay for software, pay for distribution. You would have to do your distribution manually. You’d have to figure out how to monetize by yourself. Very difficult for an average person to do. So the whole thesis behind the company was, why don’t we identify every possible point of friction that exists in the world of podcasting when it comes to creation? Just knock them all down. Let’s just be the company that makes it as easy as possible for everybody to create a podcast. And so that’s what we did.And over the course of the next 4 years, the company grew to the point where at the time we sold it to Spotify in 2019, at the time that we sold it, 8 out of every 10 podcasts created in the world any given week was created on our platform, which is purely just a function of we just made it that simple, right? Easier than anybody else.Michael HornWow. Okay. And then, so you sold to Spotify, as you just said, and then you stayed there for a few years helping build their podcasting business, as I understand it. Tell me ju… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Julie Young, founder of the Florida Virtual School and author of Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality, joined me to talk about her new book. From my standpoint, it chronicles an entrepreneurial story that stands up to some of the better memoirs from other founders, with an in-depth look to how she thought about not just creating the Florida Virtual School but how to build an entirely new category from scratch. Aspiring entrepreneurs across all sectors would do well to study the inspiring lessons in the book.In addition to talking about Julie’s personal journey from elementary educator to online learning founder, we discussed lessons learned for entrepreneurs, the trade-offs and opportunities of virtual teaching, and, given the presence of AI, explored what she would build today if she were starting something again.Julie YoungAnd so it was really important to me that people understood, you know, okay, so you don’t have to get up at 5:30 every day. You don’t have to drive to school every day. You don’t have to, you know, only take vacation when your kids get a break. You know, you don’t have to eat your lunch in 20 minutes. You know, all of the things you don’t have to do, you don’t have dry cleaning anymore, you know, all those things you don’t have to do, but here’s what you do have to do. You have to love these kids with all your heart as if they were your own, and you have to be available to them when they need you. And that’s the trade-off. And I would often describe it, you know, as a very similar model to being a doctor who was on call.And, you know, here’s your day. You go to work every day. You have doctor’s hours in your office. But then if somebody needs you after hours, you got to be there for them.Michael HornWelcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through elements of that today, I’m extremely excited. Got a good friend of mine who’s coming back for, I believe, a 3rd time on the show. We don’t typically do that, but there are certain friends that have so much insight that I’m delighted when it happens. None other than the founder of Florida Virtual School, its longtime CEO, really the founder, as we’re going to talk about today, of a movement of virtual schooling that did not exist at the time when she founded the Florida Virtual School. She was also the CEO of Arizona State University Prep Digital.She still has her hands in many innovative pots in education, I’ll call it. None other than Julie Young. And Julie, first, good to see you. But I should say before, you’re also the proud author of this exciting, fantastic book, Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality. Check it out. It’s an incredible story. Michael Crow, the president of ASU, called it the inside story of how a bold experiment grew by reimagining learning. There’s a lot of praise on the front end of this book from a lot of folks that we’ve known over the years.But I’ll just say congrats on this came out several months ago, but congrats on publishing it. I was riveted when I read an early manuscript of it flipping through. So I’m so glad that you’re joining us and just congratulations on having your story out there in book form.Julie YoungOh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. You, I, when I think about the journey, Michael, and I think about you, I feel like you were part of it. So I’m super happy to be here with you today.Michael HornWell, you’re kind, but I remember several of those conversations during the pandemic as you were starting to think about, do I want to, do I want to actually write this? And I’m really glad you did. It’s, I would say, you know, it is the story of the creation of the Florida Virtual School. It’s a story that I think doesn’t get enough attention. People don’t recognize it grew to, I’m going to get the numbers wrong, but almost half a million course enrollments, I think. You had this really innovative funding formula that we’ll probably get into that was focused squarely around student outcomes, not seat time. But even more than that, what I hope people read this, and I hope everyone does read it, I hope what they take away is not just a story of the creation of the Florida Virtual School or a memoir about you, but really a story of incredible entrepreneurship where you created a whole category from scratch and all of these things that you had to reinvent in schooling as you were building this from the ground up. Maybe let’s just give folks like the 101 to ground us in your story. Like, you’ve probably been asked this a number of times on the, on the quote unquote book tour to the extent that there are those these days.How do you tell sort of your own story of being a teacher, coming to found the Florida Virtual School and what it grew into.Julie YoungYeah, it’s a crazy story actually. And, you know, a couple of things that I always like to kind of start off with. Number one, making sure we honor the state of Florida as, you know, the founding state of this full-time virtual program, public school program. I had the privilege of being the founding CEO and then certainly had the opportunity to go do it again at ASU with ASU Prep. Probably the reason that the book is named Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality is really about the fact that I didn’t have a plan. I was an elementary teacher. I became an administrator in the elementary world. I liked change.Starting in educational technologyJulie YoungProbably every 2 to 3 years, I was in a new position and had this really unique opportunity when I was very young. I think I was 32 maybe, and I was a curriculum specialist. And Lee County Schools, which is Fort Myers for geography purposes, had a superintendent with a vision. He wasn’t an educator, and it was back during the days of the IBM-Apple war, for those of us that are old enough to know and remember. And he launched a pilot technology school program, and he granted $500,000, and our school was the recipient of one of those grants because we had dipped our toe in IBM’s Writing to Read program. So we had kind of gotten started. And so overnight, I became the curriculum technology specialist and was responsible for bringing that program to life. That led to me spending a couple of years as a teacher on assignment with IBM, being integral in their sales team as their practitioner on site, and got the opportunity, really had the opportunity, to be immersed in a corporate environment that supported schools and so forth. And I learned so much.I call it my MBA, and although I don’t have one, I call that my MBA. And it was amazing. So when I went to Orange County and they had received this grant, there were very few people in the district that had the experience I had. And also, you know, I was a woman. And that was unusual too. And so when I was asked to come talk about this grant, I was, you know, thought, oh, you know, they just wanna talk about a grant. And then realized I was in an interview and—Michael HornIt’s a great story in the book when you tell this. Yes.Julie YoungWell, it was, it was kind of like, I’m in this conversation, I’m confused. I’m an elementary person. This is a high school. And I’m like, you know, wait a minute, is this an interview? And, Bob Williams, this, the deputy superintendent, wonderful, wonderful person said, yes, it is. We’re looking for someone to lead a web school. And I said, well, you do know the only thing I know about high school is what I can remember. And he said, that’s perfect. He said, we’re looking for somebody to come at this from the perspective of the student. We’re looking for someone to think about the students who don’t like the pep rallies.And so the disenfranchised population that we all serve. So with little thought, I said yes. And I said, with one caveat, as long as I know that you will be by my side… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Mickey Revenaugh, co-founder of Connections Academy, is out with her debut book titled School’s Out: Why Families Are Choosing Unconventional Education. She joined me—and a surprise cohost, my daughter Kayla!—to talk about what she learned from reporting and writing the book. Together we explored the rise of innovative schooling models and their impact on student learning and traditional education systems, from unschooling models to project-based learning and more. Mickey shared insights on why families are embracing these diverse educational pathways, discussed the challenges and opportunities with assessment and public funding, and expressed optimism that Gen Alpha’s passion for learning and adaptability will mean a brighter world in the years ahead.Michael HornWelcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passion, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through how to do that today, I’m delighted we have a repeat guest, a friend of mine who, from my very first days in the education world, was there ushering me in, none other than Mickey Revenaugh. We had her on the podcast in 2023 when she was, quote unquote, retiring.Introducing Mickey’s backgroundMichael HornMany folks, Mickey, know you as one of the founders of Connections, of course. But more recently, you were the author of this terrific new book, and congratulations, called School’s Out: Why Families Are Choosing Unconventional Education. I’ve got another copy right behind me. We’re delighted to— Everyone get this book. I will say that upfront. I’m delighted to have you again and talk to you about the book.It’s good to see you.Mickey RevenaughThank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s always fun to talk with you, and I can’t believe it’s been 3 years. And I also appreciate your wise guidance as an author because this first time out for me and whoo, has it been a learning experience.Michael HornI can only imagine, but we’re gonna come back to that in a minute. Before I get started with my questions, I’m gonna out myself. This is the second time this has happened to me in the last couple years where a friend of mine in the education world writes a book, and then before I can even crack it, my daughter literally reads the entire thing spine to spine before I even open the book. And in this case, she actually drafted a bunch of questions for you, and I wondered, could she join us and actually do the interview with me? What do you think?Mickey RevenaughIt would be my pleasure. I’m a little tiny bit intimidated because, you know, kids ask really good questions, but I would love it.Michael HornThey do. They do. And I won’t prep you, but I will bring in Kayla, this is my daughter.Mickey Revenaugh :Hi, Kayla. Nice to meet you.Michael HornAnd Kayla’s gonna be in 6th grade, she’s at a Montessori school, and, like I said, she’s poured through this book. And so I’m going to ask the first question and then I’ll turn it over to you to ask a bunch of yours. But Mickey, maybe let’s start here, which is, as we talked about when I had you on the podcast the first time, before starting Connections with that team, that incredible team, you were a writer. You wrote a lot about — you were a journalist. You wrote a lot about education. You wrote a lot about technology in education. You started observing all these things.You quote unquote retire. I’m going to keep saying quote unquote. And then you start investing in writing again. My recollection is you took some classes, you start writing at 5:00 AM. And I guess my big question is, why this book? Why did you decide to go out, report, as Kayla constantly keeps telling me, interview a lot of people, see a lot of different schooling arrangements, Why did you write this book?Nurturing children’s natural love of learningMickey RevenaughWell, part of it actually was inspired by the Kayla in my life, who’s my great-niece, Gemma, who went to Forest School for her preschool years. And I had not heard of Forest School. I mean, I was really hip to virtual school and charter schools and all kinds of other things, but Forest School in the Pacific Northwest where it’s just like mud, mud, mud all the time. And I thought, all right, well, I’m really curious about this. Why would her mom choose that? Why would she love it? And so that kind of started me down the path of trying to understand from a family’s point of view, what is the draw of these unconventional forms, which were also at the same time multiplying. As soon as the pandemic lifted a little bit, people were reaching for things that were really different from the normal school that we were all ready to go back to once the pandemic lifted. So my curiosity got the best of me.And I really wanted to kind of follow the questions I had about what would motivate a family to go this direction. And I found out an awful lot of stuff, all of which makes me really optimistic and excited about the future.Michael HornThat’s great.Kayla HornWhen you think about the people who will read your book, how do you hope it will impact them in their lives?Mickey RevenaughThat’s such a great question, Kayla. I actually had the experience of being at a little conference of Black homeschoolers over the weekend. And I had multiple moms who were doing homeschooling come up and say, I need this book for my mother-in-law. I need this book for my cousin, because they’re already starting to do the things that are described in the book, but the people in their world just don’t understand it at all. They’re really either confused and befuddled or dead set against it.So what I’m hoping that the book will do is really provide some permission for people to explore and talk about things that they might not have felt comfortable talking about before in terms of how could education be different for their kids.Michael HornSo it occurs to me, we’re going to have to get one for my parents to explain your Forest Schooling, Jewish religious school, Waldorf, homeschool pod, Montessori. I think I’ve got them all. Yeah. We’ll have to explain that. Well, go ahead. Yeah.Kayla HornSo in your book, you describe a lot of different philosophies of schooling. So could you tell us some of what you saw and what surprised you? What excited you?Mickey RevenaughSo one of the things that tied everything together for me was this idea that kids love to learn by their very nature and that school as we have constructed it often stamps that right out of them as they go through the grades. And so almost everything that I covered in the book started with the idea that we should nurture, protect, and support kids’ love of learning and that that might look a little bit different for every kid that we encounter. One size does not fit all. I think that, and that wasn’t a surprise to me, but what surprised me was how many different ways that people found to interpret that. So everything from Forest School in the mud to these road schoolers that traveled around in their RVs all the time, to unschoolers who, one of the people I admire most in the unschooling world, was not an active reader until she was about in 4th grade.Michael HornOh wow.Mickey RevenaughAnd it took a lot of courage for her and her mom to say, it’s going to be okay. And now she has a master’s degree in social work and she’s working in the mental health field. So it didn’t hold her back. But that was kind of what it came down to, is that every kid’s different, every kid deserves to learn the way that they learn best, and that we as adults need to figure out better ways to accommodate that.Kayla HornSo you started some of your own schools. What are some of your own philosophies of what a school should look like and how have they changed from seeing all the different schools in your book?Discovering diverse learning methodsMickey RevenaughSo I will confess that I was one of those… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Rachael Nemeth, co-founder and CEO of Opus Training, joined me to share how Opus leverages real operational data to deliver personalized, actionable training in over 130 languages through mobile devices to bridge the learning gap for the 110 million Americans who aren’t desk-based. This was a fascinating conversation, if for no other reason than so few companies focus on these front-line workers and that the training Opus provides isn’t your standard compliance-based stuff, but the education that will most benefit individual employees, teams, and sites based on their actual performance on the job. Rachael shared her own journey from the restaurant industry to building Opus. Our conversation explored the shortcomings of traditional training metrics, the importance of manager enablement, and the need for technology that truly serves and empowers America’s frontline workforce.Michael HornWelcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I’m really excited because we get to focus on an area we don’t talk nearly enough, in my opinion, about in the conversation around helping individuals skill up and figure out potential and so forth. And none other than Rachael Nemeth. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Opus Training, which we’re going to hear all about today. But I think the motto is turning training into traction. Rachael, thank you so much for joining us.I’m excited to hear about your story and about Opus.Rachael NemethYeah, thanks for welcoming me. I’m excited to be here.Michael HornYeah, you bet. So, why don’t you just start us off, like baseline, you know, tax, like what is Opus Training before we get into the backstory of how you created it?Rachael NemethYeah, so when you think about the 2,100 learning management systems that are in the world today, it’s obviously just from that number, it is a very fragmented market. Opus is a training operating system that’s designed specifically for the 110 million Americans who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. So, it is a big product for a big workforce that is largely underserved. What’s special about Opus, though, is that we aren’t just helping teams create training, which is kind of, you know, a lot of what you see in a traditional learning system. We’re actually helping operators change behavior in their workflow by using live operational data from the business, which we’ll talk a little bit more about. Yeah. But we’re sort of taking knowledge to the next level, knowing that this workforce is changing.Michael HornOkay, I have so many questions that I’m excited to geek out on this, but let’s back up a little bit. Tell us the story. Most people don’t focus on the frontline, as you said, right? And the people who are not in front of computers when they picture their upskilling or reskilling platforms. How did you decide to build Opus Training? What was the background that you brought to it and the problem that you saw that you wanted to solve?Switching careers to teaching EnglishRachael NemethIt was definitely not an overnight, you know, light bulb moment. Maybe just to rewind, so my background is not in tech. It’s actually early. It was not in teaching either. My background’s in restaurants. So, I worked for 13 years in the restaurant industry, most recently for Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group.Michael HornBest hospitality anywhere.Rachael NemethIf you’re a foodie, you know Danny. And before that, I cut my teeth in baking manufacturing. My mom worked in bakeries for 43 years. My grandfather owned a barbecue chain in Kansas City called Don’s World of Beef. So, I have this sort of rich family history of the food service. And candidly, I thought I was kind of destined for it. And also very candidly, I spent my whole life trying to get out of the industry. It is a terrible industry.You’re overworked, you’re underpaid.Michael HornListeners know my wife’s,, that’s her background and her industry and Some of the work conditions and personalities, shall we say, are not Danny Meyer. So, yes, I get it.Rachael NemethAnd I still eat spaghetti over the sink. Like, I do not go out to fancy dinners. I still eat on the go because that is the life I’ve lived. But maybe just fast forward to about 10 years ago, I was looking to make a transition. And so, I quit the industry to start teaching English as a second language. My second passion is language. And within a couple of months of teaching and getting my certification and thereafter starting to earn my master’s, I got pulled back into the industry. I got a call from the executive chef of Gramercy Tavern, Mike Anthony, who said, hey, I hear that you teach English and you know restaurants.And I said, yes, what’s your point?Michael HornGuilty on both, yeah.Rachael NemethAnd I was like, how did you find me? And he said, I want you to teach English to my kitchen team. And I filed for the LLC for ESL Works the next day.Michael HornWow.Rachael NemethI had always wanted to run a business. I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, but I never was chasing an idea. I’m a big believer in ideas that sort of float around and it’s if you catch them, you do. So, I chased it and the next day ESL Works was born. That was 2013. I basically ran a logistics business. I was hiring green, fresh out of college teachers, and I was teaching them how to teach English in restaurants.They were, I was deploying them across all of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens to teach a 90-minute English class between shifts. So for anyone listening who has not worked in a restaurant, that is the only time you can effectively teach a classroom training. People have second jobs and kids and commutes and all these other things. That was very successful. I wouldn’t call it a brick and mortar because I didn’t have anything except whiteboards that I was taking on the subway, but it was a really successful services business. And when we got to, you know, a few years in and we really wanted to scale, the only options were franchise or license or digitize and productize.And the latter was obvious to me, but I didn’t know how to do it. So, I spent about 18 months in incubators and testing different products. I ended up landing on a product that delivered English language training over SMS and WhatsApp to frontline teams. At that point, it was still specifically in restaurants, but then this is sort of the untold story. So that was, oh my gosh, you know how when you think back on time, you say 10 years for so long and then you’re like, wait, but 3 years has passed now.Michael Horn3 years. Well, and I think COVID has accelerated that. Let’s be clear. I was talking to someone, they were like, how long have you been doing X? And I was like, it could be 3 years, but it also could be 6. I’m not sure. Oh yeah, I get it.Origin of Opus SMS systemRachael NemethSo, so, you know, this is like, I was joking with my aunt the other day, like she was saying, you know, there’s a difference between a biography and a memoir,a memoir is what you recall. And so anyway, this is my memoir of the timing, but COVID happened. So March 13th, I got a call from a customer. We had already launched this SMS product. I was actually in the middle of raising a round of funding, a seed round of funding. And they said, we’re shutting down. And then, of course, you know, the CDC announced and everything shut down, and I said, well, how can I help? And he said, I’m not sure, but like, we obviously don’t need ESL right now.The next day, I went home, called all of our customers, and said, you know, and at that point, the world had shut down.Michael HornRight.Rachael NemethI said, listen, like, we’re not going to invoice you. We know this is a nightmare. Whatever we can do to help, just let us know… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Thomas Arnett from the Clayton Christensen Institute joined me to once again explore why families and students seem to be quite willing to try innovative microschools in the K–8 grades, but considerably more resistant when it comes to high school. Traditional high school experiences, particularly social and extracurricular elements like sports and common rites of passage, continue to hold such strong appeal for most families, even as innovative, personalized, and lower-cost education models expand. Drawing from personal anecdotes and research, we talked about the social and developmental needs of adolescents, the trade-offs families make when considering alternative schooling, and what it might take for disruptive education models to achieve mainstream adoption without reproducing the conventional system’s limitations. I continue to think that thinking through these questions is among the most important facing the emerging sector of innovative, low-cost schools with disruptive potential.Michael HornWelcome, everyone, to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. We have a repeat guest. I don’t know if guest is the right word anymore, but Thomas Arnett from the Christensen Institute, friend, and someone I love to geek out on various topics about the future of education. Tom, welcome. Good to see you.Thomas ArnettGood to see you too, Michael. It’s always fun to be here. Always love these conversations.Debating the Purpose of EducationMichael HornYeah, we’ve got a meaty one today. And I’ll just say, like, we’ve been exploring a couple times on this podcast already and in a lot of our one-on-one conversations as well. Something that I think has stood out to both of us, and I’ll set the table this way and then you can amend it, which is I think we’re both intrigued in a world of education savings accounts that as low-cost private schools, often micro schools but not always, come into the world, that there’s actually a real potential disruptive innovation of schooling as we’ve known it, the creation of new value networks and so forth. And then some of the things we’ve been sort of wrestling over is, okay, they come in at the low end, if you will, people who are overserved by all the offerings of comprehensive district schools. They want a more tailored, customized experience. And now that, you know, they’re sort of government funding, if they don’t choose it, it’s sort of an opportunity cost, if you will, of not taking it. And so these low-cost, at least private schools where you can afford them and then have more money for some other, you know, tutoring, piano lessons, whatever it might be around the sides. Feels like it could be a real disruptive innovation.And certainly the enrollment numbers in a lot of these states that have ESAs have been growing pretty rapidly, Florida, Arizona in particular. And one of the questions we’ve been puzzling over is, okay, so that gets its start there. What’s the upmarket climb such that you can start to serve more complicated problems, more families that require more services without replicating all of the cost and centrality of the school district model where it’s sort of everything for everyone. And in particular, we’ve been looking at this in high school because what I think we’ve seen is kindergarten, first, second grade in particular, there seems to be lots of willingness to make choices that are not in your district school. Middle school, there’s certainly a lot of people willing to do that because middle school in many parts of the country is a pretty bad experience. We don’t have fond memories of it. And then high school, though, a lot of people sort of snap back into a traditional high school. We’ve seen it with our friend and colleague Heather Staker, even like she moved her whole family to Austin, Texas from Hawaii, of all places, to attend Acton Academy for her kids.And then the oldest got to high school and was like, nah, I want football and sort of the traditional high school experience. So, so even there. And I think one of the things we’ve been puzzling over is how do you replicate a few parts of the high school experience, or replicate’s the wrong word, but sort of learn to serve or offer those things that we think people are clamoring for. And I think they fall in a few buckets. One is there’s certainly college fears and pressures, like if I go this alternative route, will I get into a great college? I think the second one is what I would label Friday Night Lights and prom, but it might be better thought of as cultural nostalgia, or we framed it as coming-of-age experiences, rites of passage in a conversation we had about this topic a few months ago with our friend Tyler Thigpen. And he talked about how at the Forest School and Acton Academy in Georgia, they handle this. But what we’ve also noted is it’s not just that, like there is certainly nostalgia at play, but it’s also this sort of clamoring for common experiences that seems to hold people back. And so then the longtime commentator, former schoolteacher, writer, great thinker, Robert Pondiscio, had this very intriguing piece a few months back in May on his Substack that he titled Schooling Alone. It was his commencement address to people at a classical education high school who were graduating.And I guess it struck me because he talked about, his piece was more about the commonalities in curriculum, which we can talk about, but it did strike me that one of the things that I think maybe people are resisting when they, you know, don’t choose different models of high school that might be more personalized or might better engage them or whatever else, it’s maybe that they’re clamoring for commonality. And so— How’d I do on setting the table? And what do you think about that sort of comment? Obviously, Robert’s piece was titled Schooling Alone in a not very subtle homage to Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. But I guess I wondered, maybe, you know, he’s worried about all the personalization in the curriculum. I guess I wondered, hey, maybe actually people are clamoring for commonality, which is slowing up some of this growth and disruption of some of these new models.Thomas ArnettWhat do you think? Yeah, I think that sets the table really well and catches anyone listening to this up to, hopefully up to where we’ve been talking about a lot of the things that we’ve talked about. We had to do a lot of table setting about like, here’s what we’ve been thinking about. So the thing I found interesting when I read Robert Pondiscio’s piece was I think schooling for maybe its entire history has had this, it has many purposes and people debate the purpose of education and it’s kind of complicated because we layer so many purposes of education on top of each other. But I think one that traces back a long time is this idea of having a common experience. Now, sometimes that gets, I think, framed unfavorably of like, in the 1800s, it may have been more about cultural assimilation, about getting immigrant groups, minority religious groups to conform to the mainstream American culture by saying, no, you will go to these schools that are going to teach what Protestant kids should learn. But I think a more generous approach is kind of what he talks about in that piece, students need to have, to some extent, he’s arguing they need to read the same books as everyone else and they need to think about the same big ideas so that when we’re having conversations in our civic and political arenas, that we can be speaking the same language and have the same vocabulary to talk to each other. So I find that really interesting, but it was framed in, I think, as someone who thinks a lot about policy and thinks about society and society’s wellbeing, what would you want if you were taking that almost paternalistic role of how do we ma… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Four of my former Harvard master’s degree students—Ruben Villarreal-Halprin, Matthew Millikin, Jaysan Shah, and William Wiltshire—joined me to discuss their independent study project exploring seven diverse microschools across the United States: the Village School, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools microschool, NuVu, the Levitt Lab, Khan Lab School, Red Bridge, and Alpha School. Several of these I’ve featured here before; others are new. The conversation dove into the range of models, philosophies, and uses of technology and AI within each school to reflect on the spectrum of innovation in schooling, the challenges and opportunities of choice, and the importance of creating learning environments that both lift the floor and blow through the ceiling for students. I look forward to your thoughts and where you all want to learn more!Show Notes:Tomorrow Schools on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomorrow-schools-50881b3b6Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today I’m, I’m really excited. I’ve got four of my former students. I say former because not only did I teach them several months ago at this point, but they’re all graduates now at, at Harvard. So congratulations to them. They all made it through the rapid fire year that is the Harvard Graduate School of Education experience.But welcome guys. We’ve got Jaysan, Matthew, William, Ruben, all just amazing. You’re all amazing. You all come from really cool different backgrounds with education. And, first, welcome. And then second, I, I’ll say the reason I wanted to talk to you guys is because in the second semester you chose to do an independent study with me for some, you know, inane reason of wanting to continue to work with me, but you did it around a series of microschools that are emerging that in your words, like start to allow us to question the principles of what is a school? What’s the purpose of schooling in this era of AI? What are the things that are most important perhaps, or how can we think about things perhaps differently from how we have? And you did these deep dives into these seven microschools around the country and got to visit and spend time in all of them and create some really cool rapport and reflections around them. And I wanted to dig deeper with you on the podcast about it. So welcome.Maybe let’s start, just go around, if you will, the proverbial virtual studio and, and just sort of give the thumbnail sketch of who you are, your background. Why this was an interesting conversation for you to do research in for an entire semester. And we’ll, we’ll start there. So William, why don’t you jump in first?William WiltshireSure, yeah. Thank you so much, Michael, for having us. I was a middle school math and history teacher in New York City before coming to the Harvard Graduate School of Education at a charter school. And charters were thought to be the innovation to traditional education when they kind of started gaining momentum. And in my teaching experience there, I enjoyed my time and loved working with the kids, but there was certainly nothing innovative about the role of a teacher in that school. State test was kind of the North Star and seat time regulations and requirements were super strict. And so as AI was coming on the scene in the world of education. I started kind of expecting change in my role, but not seeing anything meaningful.And so came to Harvard to try to better understand where the profession is moving and kind of where schools in general are shifting and evolving. And met these three great guys in your class in the fall. And we just kind of went 100 miles an hour on this school visits project. And it was incredible. So, really glad to be here. Excited to keep chatting.Michael HornYeah, let’s do it. So, Ruben, let’s go to you next. Tell us your background. We didn’t officially intersect pre Harvard, but we kind of did because you were at a school that an organization I was a founding board member had funded. So tell. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you jumped into this.Ruben Villarreal-HalprinYeah, we were awfully close to running into each other. I spent three years at that school as an assistant principal. It was in Richmond, California. I ran the humanities department there. Prior to that, eight years teaching humanities as well, all around the country. Memphis, Tennessee, San Francisco. Came back to my hometown of Cambridge in the Ed policy program. This project really excited me. My time in schools.I was really just grinding all the time, like William said, like all of these sorts of pressures coming on, coming down from on high, and was constantly looking at my feet, doing one step at a time. And I was just so excited to get in and see schools and some of the things that they were able to do with teaching. And really, for me, this project was all about, like, opening my eyes to what else was out there. It’s so hard when you’re in the classroom, when you’re in the grind of a school day, to really take time to look around at the other amazing things that are happening around the country in schools. And they’re there. They’re happening all over the place. And so this was awesome opportunity to do just that.Michael HornAnd what you just said really resonates for me. I’m struck constantly by how many teachers, when you describe sort of personalization or things that are possible, they’re like, there’s no way that could happen. I’m like, have you ever been to a Montessori school? They’re like, all over the place in your community. And to your point, almost no one gets into a school that looks different from their own. So it’s very hard to find the time to see those. All right, let’s go to the man from Australia down under. Matthew, talk to us about your background, getting into this space and in education, coming to Harvard, then in your journey.Matthew MillikinYeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me so I was a mathematics teacher, high school teacher in Canberra, Australia the last couple of years. A lot of my work has been around the human skills of learning and growing and developing. And so I was working a lot on self perception and self efficacy within mathematics and that really led me to this human development pathway and program. What really fascinated me with this project and what kind of brought me together with not only to your class, but also with the other guys was this idea that if school looked different, what capabilities can we grow in the students when we are given some time and some space to very clearly teach the skills that are incredibly important, that are going to be more important with the way that the world and technology is developing. So it’s honestly just been a pleasure to not only be in a different country and see how things are done differently, but also really be at the forefront of what, yeah, innovation is looking like.Michael HornVery cool, Very cool. We’re going to get into that more in just a moment. But Jaysan, give us your background. You’re the man who wasn’t in a school compared to these three guys. So tell us your story.Jaysan ShahYes, definitely. Yeah, I’m very much the odd one out. I was never a teacher if you don’t count being a student instructor in undergrad. But yeah, I’m a cognitive scientist and I was working in neurotechnology before coming to Harvard, working for a company that had designed its own brain mapping headset. Really interested in studying brains in real life situations. And yeah, a lot of my passion was for how really scientific understanding of how the mind works can be really enabled by new technologies and exciting technologies. So I’m in the technology program. I was in the technology program here at Harvard.And when AI and all t… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Ryan Delk, the founder of Primer, an innovative K–8 private school network focused on accessibility, mastery, and student agency, sat down with me at a Primer school in Florida to help me learn about Primer’s schooling model. Ryan explained how Primer partners with passionate educators to launch flexible, community-focused campuses that prioritize affordability and transparency for families. Our discussion showcased how Primer leverages technology to personalize academics through regular assessment, supports teachers by reducing administrative burdens, and cultivates real-world skills and student empowerment through project-based “pursuits.” And we have clips throughout of teachers and students interacting in the school, as Ryan gave me a tour of the school. I can’t wait to hear all of your thoughts in the comments.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. As I’ve discussed, for the last decade-plus, we’ve seen a wave of microschools and, more accurately in my view, low-cost private schools, emerge across the country. Many are local schools with one or two sites. But a few have scaling ambitions through different mechanisms—names like Acton Academy, Prenda, OpenEd, Wildflower, KaiPod arguably, Flourish, and a few others. And then there’s another school network with such ambitions called Primer. I had long heard about the Primer model from many folks and knew several of the team members. But I had never had the opportunity to visit a Primer School. Knowing I would have the opportunity to interview Gov. Jeb Bush and Primer’s founder, Ryan Delk, in Florida at a Primer School, I was also excited to visit and learn more about the model. What follows is some of the conversation Ryan and I had and a look into the school itself. For those listening, you’ll miss a lot of the video of the actual schools but you should be able to get the basic flavor. For those watching, I hope you enjoy and learn from the accompanying video of students and teachers.Creating a high-agency learning environmentMichael HornRyan, I’ve been wanting to see a Primer school for I don’t know how many years now. We’re here, we’re here at Coconut Grove. Tell us about the Primer model. That’s the first thing I always hear when I hear about Primer schools is you have to understand the Primer school model. What is it?Ryan DelkSo it’s, I’ll talk about it from the family, teacher and student perspective. So from an educator perspective, Primer exists to empower these great educators who have dreamed of starting a school or want to start a school and want to serve their communities. But that’s a quite arduous process if you want to get a school ground. And so we partner with these great educators, we help them open these schools across Florida, now Alabama, soon Texas. And these are sometimes former administrators, they’re sometimes longtime teachers, sometimes Teach for America alums. But they’re people that see that the traditional system is not meeting kids needs, not meeting the needs of their community. But they really care about figuring that out. And so they, they, they partner with us to open, to open these schools.From a family perspective. Most of our families are in some sort of school situation that they know is not meeting their needs. And they’re typically not the families that can afford to move to a private school. These are really mostly working class, middle class, sometimes low income families that really care about their kids’ education. They’re deeply passionate about this. They believe in education as a driver of upward mobility and the importance of it. But they know that the current setup is not meeting their kids’ needs. And so they seek out Primer.They’re able to attend Primer often for free or for a very low tuition cost per month. And then from a student perspective we really believe in this idea of taking kids seriously. That’s like our sort of North Star from a student experience. And so we’ll talk more about that and I think we’re going to go, go see some kids in action. But this idea of when you create a high agency environment for a student and specifically around academics, you give them transparency into exactly where they’re at. Are they above grade level, behind grade level? And so parents, teachers, students, everyone can see, okay, I’m a grade level ahead in math, I may be a grade level behind in reading. Here’s the game plan. You give them agency over, you sort of give them the opportunity to get, to either get farther ahead or to get onto grade level.And so all the software that we’ve built that powers the school day, is really sort of built with that in mind. And so you have this high agency environment for kids. You have teachers who are really excited about serving their community, and then parents that are motivated to find a better option for their kids.Michael HornMaybe let’s back up before we actually get to see what that all looks like and just how many schools are in the network? Like, you’re one of a handful of networks that I think of going to scale right now with your model. How many are there? How many students in a school? Like, give us some of those fundamentals, if you will.Ryan DelkYes. We have 14 campuses across Florida, Alabama and Arizona. We’ll be launching a handful in San Antonio this fall as well, and a few more across Florida. And the average campus is anywhere between 50 and 120 students, depending on the real estate. So it depends on the campus setup and the number of teachers, et cetera. We will open Primers, our model is intentionally flexible from a real estate perspective. And sort of the controlling variable for us is access and cost.And so we have this core value of access as the constraint. And so we start from that place and then we figure out how to deliver a really high quality education in a way that’s accessible for every family. And so we open Primers in spaces like this. We’ll sometimes partner with churches, community centers, charter schools, some property developers, residential developers that want to bring a Primer to a residential community. We’ll do a lot of different things to get Primers off the ground and do it in a way that’s as affordable to every family as possible.Making Primer accessible for familiesMichael HornWhen you say affordable, like, what are we talking about tuition levels and how are, you know, families here? How are they paying?Ryan DelkI think we, I mean, you would maybe know this. It’s hard to know for sure. I think we might be the only private school network in the US that lowered tuition for the majority of our families last year. So the majority of families are paying less for Primer in School Year 25 than they were in School 24. Okay. And my hope is we can keep doing that for a very long time. We’ve never turned away a child for their family’s ability to pay.So if a family comes to us and says, hey, I really want to attend Primer, but 50 bucks a month is too much, like, we will always work with them. We have the Primer foundation that unlocks scholarships for those kids when they need it. And so, so we are, we are really serious about this idea of making this accessible to every family. And then for the families that do pay out of pocket, in addition to their state ESA, they typically pay between $50 and $200 a month. Most families, it’s a sliding scale based on income. And then in some states like Texas, it’s 100% free. So it depends a little bit state by state. But my vision very explicitly is to get Primer to be 100% free or ultra low cost.Some states require some small amount out of pocket, but ultra low cost for every family that attends. And that is, that is our North Star.Michael HornIt’s interesting. Purdue University in the higher ed space got however many plaudits for holding tuition level. You’re lowering it. That’s truly unique, I think. Talk to us about, you know, sort of the day in the life of a student. Right. Are they coming five days a week? What sort of th… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

I hosted a conversation with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Ryan Delk, the founder of the Primer micrschools network, about the evolution of educational choice in Florida and its broader implications for the nation. Our discussion explored the state's journey from the early implementation of school choice policies to the current landscape where over half of Florida's families have the ability to select their children's schools and other educational services. The episode delved into key issues like funding, regulation, accountability, and federalism.Michael HornGovernor, Ryan, welcome to the Future of Education. Thanks for being here.Governor BushGood to be at a Primer school.Michael HornYes, it is indeed. And the history, Governor, of publicly funded widespread universal school choice, educational choice in Florida really gets its start from your time as Governor. You have laws in 1999, 2001, I’d say 2003, with funding following the student to Florida Virtual. You have all these milestones. As you look back now, 2026 at the state of educational choice here, how would you describe where we are in Florida? Where in the movement, if you will, are we right now?Governor BushWe’re not completely there, but we certainly got to scale for sure. When we started, I think we had 80 kids in that, parents went to a private school with public money. And that’s expanded over time. One voucher program, another corporate tax scholar program. Today, over 50% of parents in Florida choose where their kids go to school. It could be we have universal public school choice, we have universal education savings accounts. And so we’re, we’re building what I think is the right way to educate our children by empowering parents. It’s really exciting.Michael HornAnd as you noted, we’re sitting in a Primer school, literally one of hundreds of microschools, low cost private schools throughout the state right now. I’m curious, did you envision this sort of education entrepreneurship that we’ve seen when you were Governor?Governor BushI didn’t envision anything. I hoped that it would happen. My personal belief is that parents deserve to have this power to choose where their kids go to school and if they do that, that there will be schools like Primer, more tools for homeschool kids. Charter schools will emerge. The religious schools that were in decline in terms of providing education to their students would see growth, all of that. I was hopeful it would happen and I’m proud that Florida has been a leader. But it’s also exciting to see it happen across the country.Michael HornRyan, you’ve been a direct beneficiary of really the foresight of these policies that I think it’s fair to say. And you also, as I understand it, have quite an intergenerational connection as well when it comes to microschools, educational choice in Florida. What’s your family connection to the story that’s unfolded here that started under Governor Bush?Ryan DelkYeah, it’s interesting. There’s a very personal connection, but then there’s also this sort of interesting macro connection. And the personal connection is my mom was a public school teacher, so she was very pro public schools. We were zoned for. She took me to kindergarten orientation at the school that we were zoned for. And she quickly realized that it was a failing school. It wasn’t going to meet, you know, her standards for us. We were living with, in my grandparents house at the time in a low income area outside Orlando.We didn’t have, you know, any choice to move. We couldn’t afford private school. And so she just took matters into her own hands. And so she ended up starting one of the first kinds of homeschool microschools in Florida. She got me and my siblings and then about a dozen other kids together and she just willed this thing into existence. And what’s interesting, and this is where it kind of connects to the macro. So I, this incredible education that frankly was like, you know, significantly higher quality than, you know, what I would have, you know, deserved, you know, relative to our socioeconomic status or what you would have expected. And what’s interesting is that she started that right before Governor Bush’s first term.Impact of Governor Bush’s PoliciesRyan DelkAnd so, we sort of experienced, you know, what I think of as the before times and it was very contrarian. We got a lot of questions. I think she was frankly judged by a lot of people, you know, for, for doing what she did. And then when Governor Bush took office, he, you know, sort of decided to, to go to the mat for, you know, a lot of these issues and make it a key priority. And so we, we actually sort of experienced the shift where it was, it was you know, not only just normalized but sort of like celebrated and empowered. And so I now feel this frankly like a real weight and responsibility as sort of the first generation to benefit from these policies. And then now, three decades later, you know, getting to spend my life building schools like this that open up those same opportunities to students with the same, you know, structure and work that, that not only, you know, Governor’s administration, but many, many folks since then have carried the torch to unlock these opportunities for kids. And so the weight of that is not lost on me.And I think it’s quite powerful that we’re sort of seeing the second generation now. The folks that had the, that got these opportunities from, from sort of generation one of these programs now being able to reinvest in the next generation is, is quite exciting.Michael HornWell, and it’s fascinating, right, that narrative of ostracism almost to norm, to expectation, right, for families. And as I understand it, you all at Primer are thinking a lot about the policy and regulatory landscape and some of the critical questions when it comes to things like microschools and the like, zoning, fire safety codes, things of that nature. I know there have been some big developments over the past couple years in Florida around some of those zoning questions. Can you just update us both on what’s happened, but also why it matters so much?Ryan DelkYeah, so we are, we’re one of. There’s a lot of people doing great work on this Excel in Ed. There’s a ton of great, great orgs. And so we are one of many people that are working on this issue. There is one, you know, very narrow and perhaps, I think, very underrated, but maybe, you know, kind of unexciting part of the regulatory landscape that I happen to care a lot about, and that is the regulations around new school supply. So there’s an enormous amount of energy that’s gone into what I would articulate as the demand side, unlocking funding for parents, making sure that the funding follows the student. And that’s, you know, as we discussed, many decades in the making. But now that that exists, the reality is that a lot of the regulations around starting new schools, and I learned this firsthand, like the amount of nights and weekends that I spent early on at Primer staring at zoning maps of cities and counties is far more than I ever anticipated.And the reason for that is that there’s all these regulations that sort of, you know, take as a sort of starting assumption that every school is still a, you know, 60,000 square foot, $30 million build to serve 2,000 students. And so in that framework where every single school looks like that, of course there’s traffic studies and school bus parking and very intense building regulations, that all makes sense in that context. But now in this world where you have a great educator who wants to open up a school in a church or a community center or, you know, a facility like this, those regulations are quite arduous. And they’re arduous, you know, we’re a fairly sophisticated operation. They’re arduous at times for us, but, but in many ways they’re impossible for like a sort of seasoned educator that wants to go serve their community. And so what I care is the sort … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

In a live conversation at WHOOP headquarters in Boston moderated by Rags Gupta, I joined Joe Liemandt, the principal of the much-discussed and debated Alpha School, to talk about the hype and hope behind AI in K-12 education. Our discussion explored how AI, when paired with a redesigned learning model centered on student motivation and mastery, could unlock student growth along a number of dimensions. And we talked about why there’s never been a better time than now to be an education entrepreneur.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Michael HornSeveral weeks back, the Massachusetts AI Coalition hosted me along with Joe Liemandt in a conversation about Alpha schools, the reinvention of learning in general, the role that AI could or may not play in reinventing education. All hosted at WHOOP headquarters in a conversation that was moderated by Rags Gupta. Fascinating conversation. We covered a ton and we have a recording of it, so we thought we would repurpose it for you here on the Future of Education. Enjoy the conversation that I had with Rags Gupta and Joe Liemandt of Alpha School at WHOOP headquarters.Rags GuptaWelcome, Michael Horn. And welcome, Joe LiemandtJoe LiemandtThank you.Redesigning the school dayRags GuptaWe’re going to kick it off. And Michael, we’re going to start with you. We’re two or three years into this AI wave. Where are we and how is AI best being deployed in education today? What are you seeing out there?Michael HornYeah, It’s interesting because I think there’s a couple answers to that question. On the one hand, education, when I started, when we wrote that book, it was thought of as the backwater of technology. It’s where you never saw it, if it was there, it was rarely used, and so forth.I think we are at a very different moment where, for better or worse, AI is ubiquitous in K12 schools across the country, meaning that if you think beyond just a chatbot, or if you do think of a chatbot, it’s embedded in almost every product. Chromebook, Magic School, various apps that are being used. The average school district has nearly 3,000 apps that are being used. AI is somewhere in there, to say nothing of the fact of how students and teachers are using it on their own time. So on one level, it’s everywhere, and on the other level, I would argue that what matters far more, and I think Joe’s going to agree on this, is not the technology per se, but the learning model itself or the model of schooling itself. And so on the reinvention question of how is AI being used, there are a handful of models, I think Alpha being one, that are putting AI at the centerpiece and creating truly new school models. And that is a significant minority of the action. I would argue most of the AI is being leveraged onto the traditional status quo to either reinforce existing processes and priorities, or, frankly, in some cases, the better verb would be to exacerbate them.Rags GuptaI’m going to pull on that thread a little bit, but Joe, you’ve been studying this for a while. Where are we in the cycle of deploying AI in education?Joe LiemandtWell, I believe we’re right at the beginning of it. I do believe it’s ubiquitous. But I believe, you know, I believe there is, in all the debates, I believe there is good screen time, there is bad screen time, there is good AI, there is bad AI. And all the concerns right now about it being deployed poorly are very well founded. You know, 90% of chatbot use in schools is for cheat bots, right? And its chatbots are designed for cognitive offload, literally the opposite of learning. And if used incorrectly, we literally are going to have a generation who knows much less than they need to. Now I also obviously believe there’s good use of it and using it correctly.And I believe part of that is, at least in our whole theory, is you have to re envision the whole school day from the ground up. It enables this totally new model. And that part of it is just at the start. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to a lot of schools all over the place and you know, I, the first question I ask of them is, you know, our first commitment to every kid is that you will love school, right? And three weeks ago when we did our last survey, 43% of our students said, I’d rather go to school than go on vacation, right? Like a high bar of loving school. 90 some percent said they love it. And my first question to everybody, and they say, oh, can I use this Alpha time back model? I’m like, are you willing to redesign your school day so that kids love school more than vacation? And my view is if the answer is no, then using AI to reinforce your existing school system is not going to work. It’s going to have the same failure rate of ed tech over the last 25 years, which is 95% failure rate or something like that.Rags GuptaMichael, you’re nodding your head, it sounds like you agree. And is that what you were talking about earlier when you’re saying that AI could exacerbate existing problems today?Michael HornYeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, I think in Disrupting Class we got a few things right, we got a few things wrong. We can talk about both perhaps, but one of the things we got right was that layered on the existing system would not have the effects that people wanted it to have. That when you layered on into this industrial model as you described, where time is fixed, learning is highly variable, and we have basically advancing kids based on data manufacture, otherwise known as their birth year, that you are not going to get the impact that you want. And I think what we missed frankly in the book was just how bad that could be, which is what Joe’s alluding to in terms of the detrimental impacts sort of incoherence, frankly. Again, those 3,000 apps, like that’s not a good thing. I don’t think we know coherence in terms of curriculum and instruction and knowledge building and so forth is really important. We have a very incoherent school day right now.And then I think the second thing that we didn’t see coming, frankly is with the online usage. You put the Chromebook in front of the kid, the most powerful learning tool ever in front of anyone. And they have a billion other things that they could also be doing that are extremely motivating, distracting and so forth. And the detrimental impacts of that are real. Right. And so there’s a lot of research and Joe referenced it. There’s this 5% problem where there’s some great ed tech solutions, even relatively primitive in terms of the form factor of what you’re asking and how someone can input an answer and so forth, get really good results. And only 5% of kids really use them.Because we haven’t actually re-architected the school models to create the feedback loops and motivation where they say I would want to do that or that’s built into my day. And that’s the core of the experience in a way that actually moves us past that 5% number today.Rags GuptaSo Joe, walk us through how you guys are doing it today. Like what is that? I mean that 2x learning in two hours. It’s a big statement.Joe LiemandtYeah.Rags GuptaHow does that work?Joe LiemandtSo the first thing you have to. We’ll talk about how it works, but the first thing you have to believe is that we’ve known for 40 years how kids could learn two, five or 10 times faster. It’s not the AIs that actually do that, it’s the field of learning science. I’m sure we have some Harvard, GSE students here or Stanford or any of them. Where there have been papers written about how kids can do this. Right. Where if you have, used things like if everybody had a personalized tutor, if you hold kids to a mastery standard instead of a time based standard, if you were able to embed things like spaced repetition, right, instead of cramming, all these concepts have been out, there’s 10,000 papers written about it. But they all started with this model that doesn’t work wit… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe

Steve Kossakoski, outgoing co-founder of the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS), and Natalie Berger, its new CEO, joined me to talk about lessons learned over VLACS’s history and its evolution as a leader in virtual education, particularly in a world of AI. VLACS has one of the most important funding models in education; instead of receiving money based on enrollment or attendance, it only receives funds when students demonstrate mastery.Natalie also shared her vision for expanding career-connected and project-based learning, as well as deepening partnerships with New Hampshire universities to offer more dual-credit opportunities for students.Michael HornWelcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I’m really excited because it’s one of the schools that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from over many, many years, written a lot about it, lauded it many times, but it’s at an interesting inflection point. It’s the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, VLACs as it’s commonly known out of New Hampshire. And Steve Kosikowski, who of course is the co-founder and has led it for many, many years, stepping down as the leader. And Natalie Berger, you’re stepping into these shoes to lead the organization as the CEO. Natalie, Steve, welcome both.I’m excited to get the update from you both and hear all the things VLACs. So thank you so much for joining me.Natalie BergerThanks for inviting us.Steve KossakoskiThanks, Michael.Starting charter schools in New HampshireMichael HornYeah, you bet. So, Steve, maybe like round us and like where the organization is today, as you like, made this decision to step into your next act that does not involve shepherding children and so forth and tell us like, you know, give us a quick arc of like, for those that haven’t followed the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School over the years founding story, where it has evolved to, who are you serving today? How does the funding model work? Some of those sort of nuts and bolts of the school.Steve KossakoskiSure, yeah. So the founding story is, I think, an interesting one. I was assistant superintendent in the Exeter, New Hampshire area and I work for a very innovative superintendent, Skip Hansen. And when the charter school laws changed in New Hampshire, he was the first superintendent to step forward and say, I think there’s a great opportunity to create charter schools that could benefit our kids. And so he thankfully allowed me to do the design work on the Great Bay Charter School, which is still operating today. And then a few years later, he asked me about the virtual side and he said, do you think we could help another group of kids through a virtual charter? And again allowed me the opportunity to do the design work on that. And so it was just that simple, you know, interaction in his office one day that led to everything.Soon thereafter, he decided to retire. And I said, well, it’d be an opportunity for me to do something different. And I stepped into the role. And the first few years were really quite interesting. There were nights when I would go home and wonder if we were going to make payroll and where the money was coming from. And we were always following the policies available at the state level. But since we were doing things in a different way, there were just questions all the time and just always thankful for the commissioner, Lionel Tracy,and always finding answers for us or knowing the right person to ask and really helping us to get off the ground.And then I think the next piece that led to our success was the people we were able to attract and hire, one of whom is here with us today, Natalie, she was in our second cohort, or first. Natalie second. Came in as a teacher and for many, many years just continued to do exemplary work and kind of rose up through the ranks. And I think one of the cool things about Natalie is if there’s a job at VLAC, she’s probably been involved either directly in it or somehow in it. So she really has just a wonderful understanding and an understanding that I don’t have because I’ve never been a teacher at VLAC. I’ve never taught a kid, and, you know, she has. So I think she brings a lot of wonderful things.Serving diverse student needsSteve KossakoskiOver the years, we have grown to a point where now we serve regularly 10 to 12,000 students on an annual basis, you know, 98% or so who are from New Hampshire, the rest are from out of state. We come close to 1000 full time students each year, K through 12, and the rest are part time. And all throughout our history, the question has been, well, who are the kids who come? And people are expecting the answer, like, you know, it’s a certain type of kid. There came a point we stopped asking the question because early on we surveyed, you know, why are you here? And what we found was it wasn’t about only kids who struggled, it wasn’t about only kids who are, you know, on the high end academically. It was just across the board, every type of student you could think of. And you can see that in our graduates. We’ve had kids whose parents have thanked us for saving their child.And there are other kids who are ready to step out and become the next president. I mean, they’re just all over the place. And we’ve continued to be able to attract just amazing, amazing folks. We have about 250 employees, although in the month that I’ve been gone, Natalie’s probably hired another cohort. And we continue to grow, which is amazing. Of course, we went through the pandemic and helped a lot of extra people. Almost overnight, our number of kids increased by 47%. But what’s, I think really interesting is we’ve never went back to the enrollment numbers that we had prior to the pandemic.We dropped, but you know,Michael HornYou had a lot of these new students.Steve KossakoskiYeah, yeah, a lot of them have stayed or more people got to know about us and came to see us. So it’s really been, for me, it was, the last 18 years have just been a highlight of, you know, I can’t think of a better way to cap off a 45 year career than to be able to experience what I experienced and the people that I got to work with. And Natalie may have another thought, but I think it’s pretty, this is pretty true that the school’s in a really good place. The enrollment numbers are still healthy. We’re not seeing 20% increases, but we are seeing regular 2, 3, 4% increases. Financially, we’re in a really good place. We have our own building now for administrative purposes and a really stable staff.So I think things are really in a good place. And I don’t mean that to sound like I did that. It’s really people like Natalie and others who did all the work to put us in that place. So if I left anything out, let me know.Michael HornBut no, no, that’s good. Well, let’s maybe start to color in the lines for people just a little bit more and then we’ll, Natalie will talk about the future. But Natalie, maybe I’ll ask you this question since you’re now leading this organization. Just paint the picture for folks like when Steve says part time students, these are people who are taking 1, 2, 3 online classes. Right. These are virtual students. But you have a very different flavor of how people do virtual learning than most of the virtual schools that are out there.It’s enabled by the policy environment, certainly in New Hampshire you have a very innovative funding model. You have a lot of choices about how people complete learning. So maybe fill in the lines of that student experience a little bit more.Natalie BergerSure, yeah. You’ve mentioned some of the really key parts there. I’ve had people say to me, I wish my state had something like this. Like when they hear about it, we, you know, have students from Massachusetts who wi… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelbhorn.substack.com/subscribe