The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Joe Liemandt: Alpha School and the Future of Education

Starting point is 00:00:00 This AI world is coming and we're all terrified of what it means. Why does education seem fundamentally broken today when it didn't 30 years ago? The biggest picture, I think, if you talk to parents of like why there's agitation for change is this AI world is coming and we're all terrified of what it means. But what we do know and we don't know exactly what it means, but what we do know is the education system that we all went through isn't going to prepare the kids for that world. And I feel that as a catalyst for people to say the old system wasn't working or the old system needs to change.

Starting point is 00:00:46 That's just a huge driver. Like if, you know, I talked to lots of kindergarten parents, you know, and they're just looking and saying in a dozen years, you know, if I put my kid in standard school that I went through, is that going to prepare them for this AI world? And they're like, no, that's not. So there's a drive that we need something different. But even 10 years ago, it was different like your daughter, right? Before AI even hit the scene, I felt it, you felt it.

Starting point is 00:01:14 Like something is not working with the school system. Yeah. Well, and schools are failing, you know, that if you look at, you know, just pure academic results, just take academic results independent of AI. You're right. Test scores keep going down every year. How is that possible? We keep spending more and more money.

Starting point is 00:01:32 It's, you know, there's a lot of reasons around it. It's a, a school is a complicated bundle. And academic performance is only one element. And it's one fundamentally that schools have basically say it doesn't matter that much anymore. And so everybody's willing to let, everybody involved in the ecosystem has been willing to let the standards drop. And I believe part of it is because. the way our system is built today, you know, there's basically a couple truisms about, you know, the standard school system. The first is the way it's structured is a time-based system where you move

Starting point is 00:02:11 up every year and you have a teacher in front of a classroom. There's basically, you have two attributes for people who do well in that system. One, it's IQ coded, which is higher IQ is better, is better. And second, it's Big Five conscientiousness coded. Are you a natural grinder? You know, sort of. And if you have those two attributes, you do really well in our example. school system. But if you don't, you don't do well. And so, and the system doesn't adapt for anybody who doesn't do well in those two, those two elements. And so you have that as sort of one dimension of why the system's not working, because it's, if you're not one of those two. And then the second dimension over here is fundamentally about resources and factually, independent of any,

Starting point is 00:02:56 you know, political or anything, is just factually, you know, one of the strongest, determinations of whether you learn, your educational outcome and how much you know is based on your family's income. And the whole system is just geared that way, sort of, just look at the results. And so you sort of have these just two systems like this. And that's why there's like, okay, we'll spend more money and all these things. But fundamentally, it's just broken because those elements, right, aren't being changed. Right. If you have a time-based system that's based on IQ and conscientious, you can pour all the money you want into it. And, it doesn't change those, right?

Starting point is 00:03:33 It doesn't make kids more, I can give them higher IQ, give them more conscientiousness. And so it doesn't fix the problem. And so that's a lot of the issues that you have. Do we admit as a society that there is a problem or is it just sort of like? Yeah, this is, I think, where it gets complicated. At least in, and you have U.S. versus Globe is a little different, which is as a society, everybody in America is like, wow, our schools suck. You know, it's just there's every article, right, just constant.

Starting point is 00:04:00 stream of, and there's an unending stream of, look at how bad all these school scores and grades go down and everything in that COVID was even worse, but, you know, just everything's bad. 80% of the grade inflation, everybody knows, you know, 80% of people at Harvard get A's now. It's like, oh, just give A's out to everybody. And so we all know that the standards have been dropped. But the thing in the U.S. that's different, especially if you look globally, is in the U.S., there's a big disconnect between educational outcomes. and your earning potential,

Starting point is 00:04:33 which is they're not as tightly correlated as they are in the rest of the world. They're very tightly correlated in the rest of the world and not in the U.S. And so there's a big thing among parents who are just like, the academics don't matter that much. There's all these other things,

Starting point is 00:04:48 the life skills and all these other skills that matter more than the academics. And so I don't really care as much. And I guess a good story about this was when, you know, I became principal three years ago And, you know, our first product, the way I positioned it, you know, was 2X learning. Your kid will learn twice as much. And fundamentally, I got incredible pushback from parents about that.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Like, surprising amounts of pushback. And I was so surprised. I mean, I was doing hundreds of parent teacher meetings, right? With, you know, and explaining it. And I'd be in a meeting, you know, and I'd be like, you know, mom, dad and Johnny. And I'd just be like, look, Johnny's not learning. 2x because you know when he misses the question the video that comes up that explains why he missed it and how he can do the next one right he skips it he just skips it you know and but he could learn

Starting point is 00:05:40 two x twice as much if he just watched the video and then they're they're probably like why are you pressuring him why are you yeah why are you pressuring johnny to learn 2x and i'm like well i okay got it and it took me hundreds of meetings to realize the parents don't value now 10% of the market does 10% of the market totally cares about great academics, right? And so those guys, they demand it. Like, they don't like two hour alerting because it's not enough alerting. But we switched. So that was my, our big product market fit. If you had to say the biggest pivot, you know, from a marketing point of view that unlocked, you know, sort of all the, all the stuff around Alpha was, and I was slow, but hundreds of meetings in, I'm like, I'm going to change this message. And I'd

Starting point is 00:06:22 have mom, dad, same Johnny, same mom and dad. Look, I'm trying to get Johnny out of here in two hours so he can do all the cool stuff the rest of the day. I'm trying to get him out of here. And, you know, he skips the videos. And if you just watch him, he'd be done in two hours. And then mom's like, Johnny, what's wrong with you? Don't you want to get out of the learning, right? People want to get out of the learning, right? They want to get out of the academics. And when it's only two hours, then everybody's aboard. And now we still teach two X and two hours, right? We just emphasize the two hour part. That's just how you position it.

Starting point is 00:06:53 No, we literally took, it was 2X and two hours. And I'm like, let's just drop it and call it two hour learning where you learn 2X in parentheses. Well, let's talk about Alpha School. What is Alpha School? So Alpha School is a high-end private school, expanding nationwide. We'll have 25 campuses around the country this year. And the way to think about Alpha School is if you could revisit and just say, we need to build an educational system that's going to be ready for when AI comes. You know, when this, whatever world's going to be here in a decade, right?

Starting point is 00:07:26 What would you do? Just ground up rewrite. Ignore everything you and I went through, right? Yeah. Six hours a day in class and homework and all that. And just rewrite it of what are the skills the kids need? How should they spend the day? How do you do that?

Starting point is 00:07:40 What would it be? And so that's what we're doing at Alpha School. The other part we do is we also say we definitely took off budget constraints. It's a high-end private school. We're like if money's no object, which gives us a sort of our high-end design. Now, we're going to get the cost. cost down and drive it down, but for the first version, this alpha school, it's, it's, it's the high end. And so we, we, we have built a school that is totally different than I read the school out there. And the principles that we underlie, that underlie it. You know, first, you know, we said, if, look, if you're going to redo school and we're going to put our kids in this for a decade, the number one rule is kids must love school. They must love school. Right. And, you know, You know, that is our core principal, and it's what makes everything happen.

Starting point is 00:08:25 And when I talk about, you know, to principals and superintendents and other heads of school, I'm just like, if you don't believe that, all this other stuff you hear about, you know, to our learning and it's not going to work. You have to believe that core value that kids must love school. And we got our ranking, like, I think it was like 96 the last. We survey our kids every eight weeks. It was, you know, 96% of our kids said yes. But we actually raised, it got too high. It's not a good metric when everybody says yes.

Starting point is 00:08:53 So we added a second question, which was, do you love school more than vacation? Right? And we get about 40 to 60 percent of our kids, 40 to 60 percent of our kids who say they'd rather go to school than vacation, which is that's the metric now that we wake up every day is we're like, we have to build a school where the kids want to go instead of vacation. The highlight of my time as principal, three years ago was when I started in May of this year. two-thirds of our high school kids sent me a note and they're like, Mr. Leemont, can we keep the school open this summer? Because we don't want a summer break. And I hated high school. Like the school plan, I would never have asked ever in the-

Starting point is 00:09:32 A million years. Ever. And I was just like, okay, we are, you know, and there's a lot, the ton pack why they wanted it and all that stuff. But that's the core. If we're going to put our kids in for, right, a decade, 12 years of this stuff, we as parents, right, should just say they should love it. Like, you know, and there's this view that, no, it's spinach, you know. And that, I had that view, you know, that, you know, I wasn't the founder of Alpha, but I was talking to McKinsey and Brian started it. And I was talking to Brian when I first put my kids in it.

Starting point is 00:10:04 And I was like, what are the things I don't know about education that I should know? He's like, kids must love school. Like, love school. And I'm like, hmm, it's spinach. He's like, you don't get it. Your kids are going to come here and you're going to figure it out. And now I'm like total religion, right? That they absolutely have to and it makes all the magic happen.

Starting point is 00:10:23 And what's interesting is when I talk to other business executives, you know, about this, no, it should be spinach. I'm like, is that what you think for your employees? Do you like wake up and say, man, you know what? This job just sucks and it should suck. And no, I'm not going to try to make them like this job. Just suck it up. But literally they turn around to their kids and say the same thing. Like, dude, suck it up.

Starting point is 00:10:44 Yeah. Right? No, it's ridiculous that you. should like school. That's just insane because we didn't like it and we went through the system. But if we're rebuilding it, we just need to totally undo that thought process we have that, you know, kids should hate school. They should love it. I think that was the moment where I started to question the school system, which was just about pre-COVID. And, you know, I was made to feel like my kids were the problem. And I was like, I don't, like, they're not a problem at home. Why are they

Starting point is 00:11:14 all of a sudden a problem at school? Like, what's going on in the classroom. And then when it shut down and we all get to peer inside what's going on in the classroom, I'm like, oh my God, like 100% agree with my kids. You know, this is crazy. Is this what you're doing all day? Like, is this what they're learning and how they're learning? But before we get to all of what you're doing different, like, what are the results? Yeah. So let's talk about the result. So the alpha school, you know, one, our kids love school. It's just they're phenomenal results. When you talk about academically, we're the best academic performing school in the country. Just bar none. So you can measure us on, we are big believers in

Starting point is 00:11:52 standardized tests because no one, when you hear about the whole how alpha works, nobody believes it will work. And so even, you know, a lot of parents don't believe in standardized tests when they come in. And I'm like, okay, your kid's only doing two hours a day. And they're like, well, how do I know they're learning? I'm like, trust me. They're like, no, I don't trust you. Right. And so when they score, you know, top of 790 and 800 math SAT, they're like, oh, okay, it's working or on NA map test is the one we use NWA. You know, when they're top 1%. Every single class, every single subject is top 1%.

Starting point is 00:12:24 Every single year. Every single class, yes, every grade, every subject, top 1%. And we publish them, right? Back to we publish all these results. We also are kids fundamentally in the two hours are learning twice as fast as if they sat in school for six and did homework. And so, like, for example, on the map test, you know, it's a 300 point scale. And so if you have like a 220 in your fifth grader, you know, 75th percentile, you know, coming up to alpha, you know, it's going to say you're going to go off five points.

Starting point is 00:12:56 You know, if you're a normal kid, you're going to go five points this year. Okay. At alpha, you're going to go up 10 points. Okay. Right. And so it's just quantifiable so the parents can log in. Yeah. And be like, wow.

Starting point is 00:13:07 Right? My kid learned twice as much. And they only had to spend two hours a day doing it. And so, you know, and so the, the, you know, and so the. The part that is just amazing about Alpha is, you know, there are a lot of private schools that just select for good students, right, which is one way to do it. The other way is to make them, develop them. And so ours is all about growth. We'll take kids, right, and get them from bottom half to top half to top 1%.

Starting point is 00:13:30 That the growth rate of Alpha is what the just unbelievable parts are. Like if you can go download off our website, like our results, and you can put it into chat GPT. and you're like, analyze the growth rate of alpha versus any other school in the country. And it's like, it's like four standard deviations off the track because nobody does this. Because we take people who are behind and catch them up. Yeah. But we take the top 1% and we move them years ahead because it's the same thing. There's, you know, even a GT program at normal school, what do you get one year ahead?

Starting point is 00:14:03 You know, I have third and fourth graders who outscore 50% of the high school graduates of this country. That's amazing. You know, and the end, our products gotten better over time. My oldest daughter was in the school. And she's now at Stanford. And she was back. And she was beating some of the third and fourth graders. And she was looking at some of their scores.

Starting point is 00:14:23 And she's like, they are getting the scores I got in seventh and eighth grade. Oh, wow. Right? And she's like, so we're even improving the product. Like, we're not done. Like, when we get into learning science, if you want to talk about that and stuff. Like, it's human potential is unlimited. And we are tapped in and have that.

Starting point is 00:14:40 improvement cycle going. So the amount kids can learn in a great environment that they love is just, it's going to explode like what our generation thought was knowing a lot. You're in meetings all day. You're trying to stay present, but you're also worried you'll forget the decision, the action item, the important next step. That's where granola comes in. Granola is an AI powered notepad for meetings. You jot down rough notes like you always do. And in the background, Granola transcribes, and turns them into clear, useful notes when the meeting ends. There are no bots joining your calls, no distractions, just a clean notepad that helps you focus. During your after the call, you can chat with your notes.

Starting point is 00:15:22 You can ask Granola to pull out action items, help you negotiate, make a decision, write a follow-up email, and so much more. I even use it when I'm listening to podcasts. Once you try it on a first meeting, it's hard to go without. Head to granola.a.ai slash Shane. And get three months free with the code Shane. That's granola. AI slash Shane. You know people talk a lot about product market fit, sales tactics, or pricing strategy.

Starting point is 00:15:49 The truth is, success in selling often comes down to something much simpler, the system behind the sale. That's why I use and love shop pay, because nobody does selling better than Shopify. They've built the number one checkout on the planet, and with shop pay businesses see up to 50% higher conversions. That's not a rounding error. That's a game changer. attention is scarce. Shopify helps you capture it and convert it. If you're building a serious

Starting point is 00:16:16 business, your commerce platform needs to meet your customers wherever they are on your site, in store, in their feed, or right inside their inbox. The less they think, the more they buy. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. If you're serious about selling, the tech behind-the-scenes matters as much as the product. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use. sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash knowledge project, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash knowledge project upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash knowledge project. Imagine the pushback.

Starting point is 00:16:57 I mentioned to somebody I was talking to you today and this is probably common pushback, but they were like, oh yeah, they're self-selecting. It's a bunch of rich kids in Austin. And, you know, so their parents care. have tutors, they have all these resources, and I don't have that. So have you, like, what's the pushback on that argument? No, so here's, selection effects are a great discussion, which is, I'll answer that second part of, okay, what if you're not rich after it, but before, you know, in most education, there's a view.

Starting point is 00:17:29 And this, maybe it's my background, because I'm not, and I'm a product guy. You know, when I came into education, there's a view that you must serve everybody. all at once or you will serve nobody. Right? That's just sort of the view around everything. You have to serve everybody all at once. And that selection effects are bad. I am like as a product guy,

Starting point is 00:17:51 I'm like you must use selection effects to build your product. Which is you have to select for the right person who you're designing your product for. Right? And so yes, there's no school that doesn't have selection effects. And yes, at alpha we select for. for those. And we absolutely have, you know, an easier cohort than there's other cohorts that we'll

Starting point is 00:18:14 talk about that are harder than with the ones we get. But compare us to every other high-end private school in the country. Right. I agree. Don't, don't compare us to really hard situations. Have us go compare us to the best. Go take other 99% kids and see why ours are learning three times faster than those kids, right? You can get the score that says, we benchmark our 99% kids, not against the average kid. We benchmark them against the top 1% kid. And our top 1% kids kill everybody else's top 1% kids. So I, and design, you know, so selection effects matter. So for example, we have another school that's not alpha. So we have to get this down to everybody. You know, Mike, I'm going to spend 20 years on this. I got to get to a billion

Starting point is 00:18:57 kids. So I got to solve all the different, right, demographics and, and issues. So we have a school rolling out. We have a dozen that we've opened so far. Texas Sports Academy, right? And so on this one, back to selection effects, our tuition is going to be $15,000 for this school. It is $15,000 for the school. And with the vouchers, it's in Texas, and Texas has a new voucher program that they announce billion dollars of vouchers. So it'll be $12,000 vouchers. So any family who's income eligible for it, rich people can't get it. But if you're income eligible for it, you get $12,000 check. So it'll be a $300 a month parent pay to go to school. We're going to have generally people who come in the bottom half academically.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Yeah. Right. But they're all people who love sports, right? And it's it's a middle school for D1 aspirational athletes, right? People who wake up and they're like, I love sports. Because back to us, I have to build a school they love more than vacation. Yeah. So I need to know what like lights them up. What drives them? And so I'm like, great. So we can do that. So we already have, you know, and we'll have a You know, we'll publish all the results, but these kids come again. They go in to the same app set that you get it out. Yeah. Right. They do the same two hours, right?

Starting point is 00:20:19 So now we have a wider funnel of kids coming in from a academic backgrounds. Different academic backgrounds. And you're going to be able to see, and we'll be able to publish those results, that those kids can learn too. Right. Back to the thing is, you know, we talked about why the kids are learning machines. It's almost like we get in the way of it. Yes, Adol. And the problem with the kids learning isn't the kid.

Starting point is 00:20:42 It's the system. Like we talked about that at the beginning where the system's coded in high-acue conscientiousness and how do you unlock those. We've built a system that breaks those two things, which is if you have a mastery-based AI tutor, right, that only allows you to advance after you've mastered the material. Right. Right. Master the basics, right? Which everybody in sports understands, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:05 If it, that's what our system does, that makes it independent of IQ. That makes it effort based, not IQ based. And we have a ton of results, which is we run a program and we have a school, you know, back to the schools. Every kid can get 100% on their state standardized test. And we run this program called 100 for 100 to teach these kids. So we'll have middle schoolers coming into our sports academy. Yeah. And they'll go into the system.

Starting point is 00:21:37 And we'll be like, well, we'll pay $100 if you get 100% on the test. And there are seventh or eighth grade. They're like, I can't get 100 on the test. And we're like, no, no, no. Pick your grade level. They're like, you're going to let me do a third grade test and get 100? And we're like, absolutely. And so they go take the third grade test and they do get 100 on the third grade test.

Starting point is 00:21:59 And they're like, can I do fourth grade? And then you do fourth grade. Then on fifth grade, they only get a 75 because they have holes. They didn't learn all that material in fifth grade. And then the AI tutor, they're like, do you want the AI tutor to generate the lessons you're missing? And they're like, let me see how many. And they're like, I can do that like in a week or so. And you're like, another hundred bucks.

Starting point is 00:22:22 And so we get more hundreds on state standardized tests in a building of 200 people than a school district of 100,000. And back to this concept that you have to change with parents, if you interview alpha parents or any parents and say, can your kid get 100 on the state standardized tests, fewer than 10% of parents say yes. Because in our generation, like only the GT kids did that, right? None of us got that. Right. And if you ask alpha kids, they're all like, of course. Of course again. I got one.

Starting point is 00:22:54 Right? Because it's effort based, not IQ based. Right. There's nothing like, and if you back to that whole correlation, it's just, you know, there's no concept. in US Common Core through the eighth grade that everybody can't understand. Right, it's built that way. So it's just a matter of do,

Starting point is 00:23:09 and if you're having trouble, it's usually because you don't have the prerex, right? And that's all, and that's the difference between a time-based teacher in front of a classroom model and a mastery based AI tutor. Well, it's interesting because as you're saying that, it strikes me that part of the problem is

Starting point is 00:23:26 for a teacher in a normal classroom, who's standing at the front of the room in teaching, let's say, grade sevens. You have grade sevens who are, you know, effectively in the 1% of each. You have the 99th percentile and you have the 1 percentile. And you have teach. Not only do you have to teach to that classroom and try to keep everybody's attention, which sounds impossible. I have a ton of empathy for teachers. On the flip side, you're supposed to be teaching grade seven. But the student that we, you just like said this, well, they passed grade three, but in grade four or five,

Starting point is 00:23:58 you know, they only got 70. So they have gaps in their knowledge. that you're not, and everything is so cumul, especially with math and reading and all knowledge. It's cumulative. So if you can't do that, you're going to fail in high school. You're going to hate math by the time you get to high school, but it's because you didn't learn something in fifth grade. That's 100% of the problem, which is you have holes in your knowledge and knowledge is cumulative. And so when you start slowing down, it's because of your prerex. And the system is set up the teacher.

Starting point is 00:24:30 It's not there. Teachers are awesome. Teacher in front of the classroom is terrible, right? You have to separate these two concepts. And that's one of the parents, we all sort of put them together. But there are two separate things. And that's why everybody's trying to get small class sizes, because you basically want a teacher to give your kid individualized lessons. I mean, for the rich families who hire tutors after school, all the tutor does is give them the fourth and fifth grade lessons. That's all they're doing. It's just going back and saying, oh, you don't know fourth and fifth grade. Let it do it. But you're a sixth grade teacher. But you're a sixth grade teacher. you have to hand out sixth grade material. Like we were working with a school with bottom 10% kids, right? And, you know, back to me being new, I go with my first day to see the sixth grade teacher teach. There's a sixth grade teacher. And bottom 10% in America means you can't read. You don't know seven times eight, right? And, you know, I go into the classroom and she's handing out sixth grade material.

Starting point is 00:25:24 Well, I'm like, they can't read. You know that's going to be ineffective. Yeah, it's just they can't read. And that kid needs a first grade phonics lesson. Yeah. Right. And that guy needs a second grade math question, right? And you can't, but the teacher, they can't sit here and every kid give them, right?

Starting point is 00:25:40 It's just, that's not. They're a six grade teacher. There's actually laws in states, various states that you must teach at grade level. Like, it's illegal for a teacher not to teach a grade level, right? Which is just totally insane, right? And so you have all these problems that are systemically designed in the system. And it's one now that parents, because they're, you know, and it's, you know, If you talk to people, we've known this back to learning science.

Starting point is 00:26:03 For 40 years, there have been papers written about how kids could learn two, five, ten times faster. But they don't work in a teacher in front of a classroom model. Bloom's 2 Sigma, which is a famous one and everybody fights about it. But it's a good paper, which is, you know, in this is when I was in high school, it's like if you do AI, not an AI tutor, a human tutor with mastery based, you get 2 Sigma better performance. Okay. Right. Just crazy better performance. But, you know, the problem with that paper is you can't give everybody a human tutor.

Starting point is 00:26:36 Right. Right. And then second, you also have to enforce mastery, which is hard in a lot of ways. What does what does mastery mean? Mastery means do you know the material cult? Like, think of, whenever I talk about mastery, think about sports. Just move to sports, which is if you're a point guard and you're going down the court, what percent of the time is the coach going to let you lose the ball?

Starting point is 00:26:59 Right. Right. And whatever that number is, is mastery, right? Because it's not very often, right? Versus in academics, kid gets an 80%. You're like, oh, he seems to know, got to be, you know, in this thing, sometimes an A now, you know. And if a point guard was losing the ball 20% of the time going down the court, the coach would be like, master the basics. We're not working on dunks. Right. We're not working on new stuff. Right. We're going to master the basics and you're going to get up to 99 point whatever. And so, do you know it cold? And there's a view, though, in a time-based system that you're like, look, it's time to move on. And we all grew up in a non-mastery-based system, which is then as you don't have mastery, you know, the holes compound. And then all of a sudden, the reason, like, if you look at the learning curves in the U.S., they start to slow down in middle school and basically flatline in high school. The average kid in the U.S., like on this map score, this NWA map, There's a 300 point scale. If you take, I can't remember exact number, but if you take an eighth grader, they will go up one point by senior year.

Starting point is 00:28:08 How is that the median? One point, like they learn nothing. That's four years. Yeah, four years of learning nothing. Now, your top 1% back to this inequality kind of thing, the top 1% probably go up six points a year. Right. So your top 1% kids are still learning like this, but your median person in the U.S. is not learning in high school.

Starting point is 00:28:28 It's just based, there's no academic learning going on. And that's why there's a paper, I'm trying to think you, I think you see San Diego, run of the top schools, universities in our country, right? Just published a paper

Starting point is 00:28:41 that like 50% of their freshmen can't answer fifth grade questions. Like back to holes and all this kind of stuff. Like the fact of how bad it is. It's like, you know, the learning and the holes that are in the system. Because once, you know, in the part of what happened with COVID,

Starting point is 00:28:57 You know, everybody's waiting for the bounce back on COVID. There's going to be no bounce back on COVID because what happened to your point was the span. It used to be years ago. Okay, I'm a teacher and I'm a sixth grade teacher. I got this GT kid who needs some seventh grade material and I got someone who's little behind, need some fifth grade material. Post-COVID, you're like, now it's a seven-year span. Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 00:29:18 You have people in middle school who can't read. It's crazy. I mean, if you can't read, you can't, it's just going to schools, it's waste time. Right. Unless, you know, if you're not, if you're in middle school, it can't read. All that matters is that somebody's teaching you to read. And everybody gets socially passed too, right? So it's like, oh, you're another year older. Therefore, instead of addressing the actual issue, we're going to kick the can to somebody else. And we're going to start fresh with this different. Well, and that's, and the pressure, I totally feel if I was a, I could not do the public school job. I could not be a principal at a public school. Because it is really hard. Because the product you have is this bundle. Right. And. And. And there's political and there's political on all. It's just, it's totally impossible.

Starting point is 00:30:00 And, you know, and you do. You have, so there used to be rules that you couldn't pass third grade if you couldn't read. Right. And the problem is social promotion where the people are just like, okay, you are going to psychologically damage my kid if you hold them back. Right. And so then you just promote them to fourth grade for all these other reasons. Which is more damaging. With this concept of, oh, okay, someone's going to teach them, right?

Starting point is 00:30:26 Yeah. But the problem is. The fourth grade teacher's not set up to teach third grade reading. They stop teaching reading in grade three. Right. Because K through three is learn to read. Yeah. And then fourth through 12 is read to learn.

Starting point is 00:30:38 Right. That's the flip point where you're like, okay, I'm bootstrapping to learn how to read. And then in fourth grade, you're like, okay, we all know you read now. So now you're going to learn science and social studies. And, you know, you're going to get word problems on your math test because you can read. And if you can't, if you miss that bar, then all of a sudden, you're all of a sudden, And you're all of a sudden in all this material and it's just, you know, it could be like me handing out Greek to you. And then it's like a negative flywheel, right?

Starting point is 00:31:03 Like every year it gets worse and worse. And then you probably feel like I want to give up. There's nothing I can do. So like, why bother it? Why try? And then I'm disruptive to the class. I start skipping class. You know, my life takes a very different path.

Starting point is 00:31:17 Exactly. Exactly. And with a mastery-based AI tutor, you can go to those kids, right? And just say, I'll make sure you get the third grade phonics. So explain the mastery-based AI tutor. It's basically like, okay, we're going to start, everybody's going to start in sixth grade. We're going to figure out what you're strong at, what you're weak at, and then we're going to go teach you the things you don't know. And we're going to maybe not get you ahead in the things that you do until we've caught up in the things that you don't know.

Starting point is 00:31:44 Yeah. So you should think. But you don't know we're teaching you a third grade level. So there's like no social stigma to it either. Correct. Yeah. So you just think about, you know, back to learning science, there's 10,000 papers. written about learning science about how kids can learn better. The zone approximate

Starting point is 00:31:59 development, like give them questions where they're getting them 80 to 85% correct, where if it's like 99, they're not learning because they already know it. If you get down to 50, like they disengage because it's too hard. So you want this crate zone. Every video game developer knows this. Keep the kid engaged. And so what you really want in a perfect world, you know, is imagine an AI tutor an app, whatever you want to call it, giving your kid an unending stream of questions at 80 to 85% accuracy, right? Where if it gets harder, they're going to tune it up, down. And it's going to be, and think of the knowledge graph of everything they need to know.

Starting point is 00:32:39 Here's the third grade curriculum. You can ask AI tutors are good to figure out what you know and don't know, right? Assessment, so are tests, right? And so you can just have the kid take a test and be like, oh, you don't know this stuff over here. Let's give you these lessons until you know it. Right? And then you can, then once you know it, we'll move you on to the next grade. Same thing at the next grade and just keep progressing you up at whatever rate you go at.

Starting point is 00:33:02 Right. And this is the, but here's the part that's just crazy town. Kids can learn 10 times faster. So if you take, like just here's a metric for you, our subjects, like take seventh grade science. In a normal standard school, you have 180 school days. Yeah. So an hour a day. maybe some homework, a couple hundred hours, right?

Starting point is 00:33:29 The average kid in our system with time back, which is our app, learned it in 22 hours to mastery, to mastery. Math, science, right? Between 20 and 30 hours. If you're thinking K through 8, you should think between 20 and 30 hours, you should think between 20 and 30 hours per grade level per subject. That means you can basically be done in September. like based on the current model. If you were going to, now part of the problem is if you put kids in it for six hours a day, they're going to disengage and we'll talk about why we designed the two hours and how we came up with that. But the material is just not that much. And that's why our kids can do 2X, right?

Starting point is 00:34:12 Because everybody's like, it's just too much to know. And you're like, it's really not that much. And when you get it, right? You know, for parents, anybody's looking, you should go, there's a great math app out there called Math Academy. They wrote a 500-page book that you can download, Justin, who wrote it, that goes through all the learning science. They also publish how many hours it takes. Their app, I think, starts in fourth grade. You know, but from how long fourth grade math, fifth grade bath, sixth grade math, right?

Starting point is 00:34:39 And it's, I mean, it literally is. It's like 28 hours and 22 hours and just not many hours to master material at these subject levels. And so that, when you talk about the unlock, it's just, you know, when you say, Why do kids? And we, you know, think of your kid, you know, where he's bored out of his mind in school. Yeah. We waste 90% of their time. Like, we know that teacher in front of the classroom is the least effective way to teach.

Starting point is 00:35:07 You know, you can argue whether it's 5% retention. But literally, we're wasting 90% of the kids' time because we're teaching them in a very ineffective manner. Now, back to the thing, we didn't have a better way for the last 40 years. You're like, you know, if you're head of, you're like, you know, school, you got to have a teacher in front of a classroom because I can't give everybody a tutor, right? And so there was nothing better. So let's not just tell everybody like you could learn 10 times faster, but sorry. Now, now there's no excuse for it.

Starting point is 00:35:36 We can get everybody learning that fast. And I guess the hitch is like, well, we've always done it this way. So there's an inversion. And then you're starting something from scratch. You're like, well, I have no sunk costs in the way that teaching should be. So I can experiment with something different and head these results are off the charts. and we're crushing everybody else. Look here, we should all be doing this.

Starting point is 00:35:57 So why aren't more public schools reaching into this and going like, we should be experimenting with this, even in one subject, if we don't do it for everything, maybe math class looks like synthesis or math academy or something like that, where you're using an AI-based learning system instead of a teacher. Why don't they do that? It's really hard to change the system, right? Which is the first off, first off,

Starting point is 00:36:22 Nobody believes it. So the first thing you do when you look at alpha, right, in CR results is you're like selection effects. It's only rich kids and that's it. And so you sort of reject it and don't seriously consider it. But even in places that do, there's a lot of high-end private schools who their largest donors are like, I want my kid to have this two-hour learning. Go take a meeting. Right?

Starting point is 00:36:47 So I spend my time like there. I definitely do. I've met a lot of boards and heads of school. of the top schools in this country, private schools who charge, you know, $50,000, $75,000. And they really struggle to sort of believe that this works. Because fundamentally, learning science, this concept learning science, they're not trained in it. They haven't read the 10,000 papers. They haven't built and seen it.

Starting point is 00:37:14 They don't know the world. They don't have a team like we do of seven of the 10 best learning scientists in the country working on it, right, who have all these others. unlocks, and they definitely don't have the data loop that we have. Like, we know, because we measure every single thing, how long the kid took to do it, and what the scores are, and what are the results, and, you know, that whole closed loop. And so there's just massive skepticism, you know, around it. And they're, you know, it's a classic disruptive problem of.

Starting point is 00:37:40 I wonder if I'm less skeptical by default because my kids grew up playing Prodigy. And I watched how much of an impact that had on their math skills. And actually, more importantly, they're loving. of math. Like they, they loved playing that game and you had to answer questions to like cast spells and stuff. There's a, there's a group of people and those are our early adopters, right? Who comes to an alpha? It's going to be, you know, families like yours. We call them founding families, you know, because they're like, I think I've seen enough. Homestchool families. Like if you ask the average homeschool family, they know two hours is all you need. Right. There's actually

Starting point is 00:38:17 that's all they've ever done. That's all they've ever done. There's two groups actually when you talk about who believes the two hours versus not. Traditional school just doesn't believe. They just don't believe it. The people who do homeschool people, absolutely, whatever. Their view is why is Alph's so expensive because I do homeschool. Yeah, I did the same thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:35 And so, and absolutely. The other group actually is athletes, which is IMG, which is our head of high school actually came. He used to run academics at IMG because for big time athletes like at IMG, you do the academics the morning and play sports all after. Yeah. right? And that's why our sports academy is all is being designed. It's just they know it too. Yeah. Because that's how they catch up, right? Because they got all this time already used. And so, so there is a small set of group of people. There's others. You know, if you, you know, there's a couple, you know, real experts of learning science, you know, Dean Schwartz, who runs Stanford School of Education, he's published a book on learning science. What do we know, like, about learning that, so AI customized. I want to get into, like,

Starting point is 00:39:21 like how you know kids are doing effective behaviors versus ineffective behaviors. But like what do we know about teaching them through AI? Like what makes, like I'm not just giving you a same math lesson that I would give somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, well, it's important that more important than the AI is the learning science. Like if I had to pick the two, but it's the combination. Right.

Starting point is 00:39:42 So how do they? But let's let me be clear. Let's let's dive into what I don't mean by AI. Chatbots is I am not talking. Our school does not teach people by giving them chat chvety. Chatbots are cheatbots. 90% of kids who are using chatbots for academics are cheating and not learning. And, you know, in our schools, you know, we do the academics in the morning and then we do all these great life skills in the afternoon.

Starting point is 00:40:10 And, you know, for that world, we say, if you're using a chat bot in the morning, you're probably cheating. And if you're not using it in the afternoon for your life skills. all that stuff, you're probably failing. So AI needs to be chatbots have a use, just not on the academic side. Right. Now, how we use AI in the morning to teach is what AI, it's the generative AI part, not the chat part. It's we generate personalized lessons for every kid, right? That's the part. And so imagine if you had an LLM and you fed it the following. You fed it the curriculum you're trying to teach, right? You fed it the kid's knowledge graph. What do they know and what do they not know? You also feed it the kid's interest graph. What do they like? Oh, they like

Starting point is 00:40:57 baseball because then, right, one of the fastest ways learns analogies, right? Back to engagement. If I'm teaching you in something you love and that you're good at, you learn both faster and more engaged. It's sort of a combo effect. And then there's a fourth one, which is we're adding it. It's not in our current one, but it will be in 26, which is cognitive load theory, which is a whole set of learning science of how your brain works. And you should think your brain's like a chip, a register, where you have these working memory slots. And everybody has a different number. And so, you know, you have four working memory slots. And then you, every person needs a different number of reps to take something from short-term memory and put it into long-term memory. Think of how

Starting point is 00:41:37 many times you have to look at a flash card. Right. An easy way. But these person's different. But you could imagine an LLM that sits on top of all that data and generates the perfect next lesson for you, right? And so that's where we use the generative AI, not to have kids do a Socratic, you know, tutoring thing, because they're just, you're instead saying, I'm going to generate a perfect lesson. And those lessons are all based on learning science. So I'm going to make sure that they're engaging and not passive, right? It's going to be a worked example in math, because that's actually the best way to teach kids. You know, I'm going to be measuring if it's too hard. If it's, you know, and you get it wrong, I'm going to go back, you know, and I can tell from

Starting point is 00:42:19 the other questions, you know, even if it's multi-choice, the AI is going to make them so that if I'm unsure if you really know it, I'm going to put some questions in there. That'll tell me whether you know that prior knowledge or you don't, right? All of those things are all baked into what we're generating and creating as a lesson. You know, we can do it as a video, right, with text and audio overlay, right, make sure it's short so it's not, you know, passive and disengagement. So we can do all that as generating those lessons. And that's the key to the unlock. And you might be getting that second grade lesson. Yeah. And I'm getting the first grade lesson, you know, because we're in the same class because the AI is just giving us whatever we need. Or maybe you probably need the 12th grade

Starting point is 00:43:02 lesson. I need the first grade lesson. But, you know, it's generating that. Now the second, so that's one element. And then there's a second element, and this is actually the most expensive part of our AI. One of our limitations right now is we burn a lot of AI. 10,000 bucks a kid right now. And we'll get it down to less than 1,000 and then 100. We're driving it down. But think of basically streaming the screen to a soda model, to one of the best ones. And having, and then we have set things up to prompt the kid. how to learn. It coaches. It's a coach. So it's like, look, kid, you're skipping those videos. You keep skipping the videos, right? You're not learning as effectively as you could.

Starting point is 00:43:53 Yeah. And so literally in the bottom of the corner, there's a little waste meter where it tells the kid, you're wasting time. And so this is back to the whole product design you have to do. Right. Where, you know, when we, our product name is time back. The most, the most important part, to motivate a kid is motivating. Yeah. So to educate a kid, every educator will tell you, you need a motivated student and you need to put them in lessons of the correct difficulty.

Starting point is 00:44:19 Now, AI does that second part well. It knows what you know and don't know, and I'll give you second grade or fourth grade. It'll put them in your right difficulty. But how do you solve motivation? Yeah. Right? How do you solve motivation? So on my first week, as principal,

Starting point is 00:44:32 you know, I have to make the kids love school. And so I went up to the fifth graders, and they were brand new to school too. school too. And I was like, do you love school? They're like, no. And I was like, well, it would make you love school. And they're like, less school. I'm like, how much less? And they're like, none. And I'm like, okay, that's right. And we basically negotiated two hours. I was like, look, if I would you engage in the apps? Because I need you to engage in the app. If you don't engage and you're spinning your chair, you're not going to learn. Would you engage for two hours?

Starting point is 00:45:03 If I gave you the four hours back to go do awesome stuff. And they're like, okay, that seems pretty fair. And I went to my team. I went, great, we got two hours, right? Let's get every learning science paper. Let's read the crap out of them. Let's figure out exactly what we need to do so they can learn all the material in two hours. Right. And so that's sort of the design of how we got the engine. And the waste meter, so if you're a student, and when you first come in, you're sort of screwing around and you're not really engaged. And so all of a sudden, your two hour learning is three hour learning. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought this was two hour learning. And you're like, you're waste meter is at 50% you're wasting 50% of your time dude right and then all of a sudden it's like

Starting point is 00:45:44 well go change these behaviors and you'll get out of here in two hours so the unlock is like at the sports academy right it's a little meter and they have to be in the lessons until it goes green yeah and then they get to go play basketball or soccer or whatever right you know what the sport is then you can go do the other and their coach the coach is like guys stop screwed around like get it done so we could all go play yeah and their friends are playing and so all of a sudden you have motivation where they want to go do what they want to do. They just have to, and it's not hard because we keep them at 80 to 85%. They just can't screw around.

Starting point is 00:46:17 Stop wait, just use effective techniques. Every kid, like, they scroll, you know, if they have a lesson, they're trying to read. Yeah. They scroll to the bottom, look for some questions, search. You know, they try to skip reading the article. You're like, look, you actually have to read the article if you want to learn how to read. Yeah. You know, and, you know, we also now can generate the article so they're interested back to

Starting point is 00:46:38 engagement, interest levels. You can take that second, third grade boy. He's like, I hate books. And then you're like, no, no, what's your favorite movie? The Avengers? Who are your buddies? And all of a sudden, you're doing to choose your own adventure where you and your buddies are saving the world.

Starting point is 00:46:52 And that kid will click page by page for an hour. Yeah. And you keep the Lexile level, right, within 10% of his difficulty level. So he doesn't get, it's not too hard. You can funnel new vocabulary words to him, right? All these kind of things where you can, these AI tutors, when you solve the motivation problem can fill these kids head with awesome knowledge, right? And, you know, one of our design principles is we're given 12 years, right? Parents give us 12 years to fill their kids head

Starting point is 00:47:20 with awesome knowledge. Because we think we should make kids heads an interesting place to hang out in because they have to hang out there for the rest of your life. Right. Right. And that's we've, we've reserved as societies, right, this amount of time. And it is great to fill it up. And the kids actually are engaged, and if it is interesting and applicable, right, they do like it. And then there's also just a learning science concept that the more you know, the faster you learn. So acceleration curves, like where the average American in a time-based system, right, or it's not even American, global, slows down. Yeah. Ours accelerate.

Starting point is 00:47:59 Like if you actually took our high school kids. Yeah. Right? And measured them on how fast they're learning versus 2x. one because the denominator is going way down because the other kids aren't learning, but also how much our kids learn, right? We'd be like we'd be at five to 10x like at high school because it's sort of you have this effect going, right?

Starting point is 00:48:19 And that's why you can see some tweets I did where I have all these kids like 790, 790, 790 math, 800 math, SAT, you know. And it's all very doable. And it's just you and I in our world are like, this all sounds like magic and hocus focus and all that stuff. And that's what sort of my job now is and why we're getting it out and opening the alphas and getting this everywhere is we have to educate everybody that this is possible. Like, you know, if, you know, if I, to your, if I was, if you have a parent in your audience, and there's three things that I could put in their brain, right, that they don't believe today.

Starting point is 00:48:56 Like with their, if they have a kid in school, I need them to think A, not B, right? A is your kid can love school, must love school, like more than vacation. That should be the standard you hold. Right. Second, they can crush, crush their academics in just two hours a day. This six hours a day in homework, it's not necessary, right? We have the highest test scores in the freaking country, two hours a day, right? If you're going to go more than that, it's because you have to really catch up because you're behind.

Starting point is 00:49:27 Right. And, whoa, okay, you got to do three to catch up, you know, two hours a day. crush it. And then third is the key to your child's happiness is high standards. Right. And that is one that, you know, it's a hard one because I struggle with it as a parent too. I have two daughters. Right. And you know, you want to hold high standards. But when they're struggling, it's hard. Right. But that high standards is why our kids love school so much. Talk to me more about the high standards part of it. Yeah. So generally, you know, if you're trying to build a school, around that they love.

Starting point is 00:50:05 There's this view of, oh, just let them play all day, right? But that's actually not going to make them want to come during the summer, right? They have to be working on things that are ambitious, right, and significant to be able to do that. If they're just scrolling TikTok or playing Fortnite, they're not going to come, right? They can do that at home, right? Kids want to do awesome stuff. They do. Right?

Starting point is 00:50:26 Kids are awesome and they want to do awesome stuff. And we need to give them an environment. And we start in kindergarten. Like our kindergartners, like here's the, you know, the thing that freaks everybody out, right? And we do this like on a shadow day because we're like, come test it, right? No one's going to just drop their kid in this weird thing. Come test it. And so we do a shadow day.

Starting point is 00:50:44 And one of the things we do is like we have a 40 foot rock wall for kindergartners. And parents are like, oh, my kid is not doing that. Right. That seems scary. I'm kindergarten. And it's all safe. I mean, they're all right in. Harnessed in and stuff.

Starting point is 00:50:56 But, you know, we teach the kids growth mindset, right? and then you mic them up, you know, they're climbing up. And they're like halfway off and they start to struggle. And you can see the parents. But our guides, right, our guides and coaches who this is what they do all day, right? Our guides and coaches, their whole job, when you say, what's the different role of the teacher? Because we don't sit in front of the classroom. Think of a mentor who's going to guide and coach you.

Starting point is 00:51:20 And their job is to hold high standards, but give you high support, right? To help coach you through it, just like a great coach. and then they'll see the kid get to the top. And when that kid gets down, they're beaming. They're beaming because they accomplish something hard. Yeah. Right. And every child development expert in the world will say the struggle, the cycle of you need to struggle and fail.

Starting point is 00:51:45 I add in as a principle, sometimes cry. Yeah. On your road to success supported by a caring adult. That loop is what child development is. right and it builds self-confidence it builds resilience right it's what why people 50% of America puts their kids in after-school sports because everybody expects that cycle to be run in sports but in schools it's just not run right and we're like every kid needs this right shouldn't just be in sports we should just they want to go to do hard things and so like we start in

Starting point is 00:52:18 kindergarten but we'll talk middle school is like when we talk about middle school you know we have a middle school epidemic of scrollers, what we call consumers, right? They've been caught in the dopamine TikTok or the Fortnite playing, right, loops. And they're just not engaged, right? And so when you come, when you move into an alpha middle school, we run a program, right, which is, well, what, what, what, what are you interested in, right? How are we going to engage or how we can get you out of that? And, you know, as a society, we create a world where all those kids sort of get stuck in it. So, we do a values chart, a Japanese Ikega. Right.

Starting point is 00:52:56 Think of a vision board, you know, fifth or sixth grade where you're just like, who do you want to be? And if you ask all these kids, they want to do awesome stuff. Yeah. They want to do awesome stuff and they diagram it out, right? And it's just like, I want to be this. And it's awesome. Right.

Starting point is 00:53:10 And then you say, okay, we make them do a 168 hour project. Track every hour of your week. And then they're like, oh. And then because you are what you do. Yeah. You are what you do. And so literally they then come in and are like, oh, I guess I'm going to be the world's best TikTok scroller. And they're just so disappointed because they realize this is who they want to be, but this is what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:53:31 This is how I'm spending my job. Yeah. And I'm just like, well, that's our job as a school, right? Our guys and coaches, this is what, because you're not spending all your day in academics, we have afternoon workshops where they're able to go figure out their passion project where they can get out of it. You know, and why the world has to change and why everybody wants to change education is, because, we have too many people. There was a kid who came in and he was talking to our high school because he went through our program, but he was talking to the next set. And he's just like, you know, if you had told me, like when I first started, you know, the whole program and said, I'll pay you

Starting point is 00:54:07 $100 an hour for the rest of your life to play video games and just till you're dead. And like literally just like plug into the matrix. He's like, I would have sold my soul for that. And he's like, and then I went through the program. And he's like, now I don't even have. have time to play video games, right? And he's like, because he's engaged on stuff of who he wants to go be, right? And that's what's happening to a lot of our kids, right, in society. And you totally can break them out, right? But that's what we have to do as a school.

Starting point is 00:54:35 And back to high standards, the kids want to do it because it's hard. That guy, kids has never worked harder, right? On that project that he's doing that's transformed him to pull him out of the video game, you know, loop. And the kids want to do it. We have, you know, our second graders. You know, our afternoons are all these great project-based workshops that teach life skills, right? And our life skills are leadership and teamwork, storytelling and public speaking, grit and hard work, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, and socialization and relationship building.

Starting point is 00:55:07 So there's five categories of those. And, you know, our second grade teacher, right, Faith, this was a year ago. She's like, all my second graders can run a 5K. And I was like, oh, I don't that. She's like, kids are limitless. I'm like, oh, because parents, right, back to the standards, you don't want to see your kid fail. Parents naturally, it's right, protective. You don't want to see him struggle and fail.

Starting point is 00:55:36 I'm like, oh, the parents are going to really don't like this. She's like, don't worry. And I'm like, how are you going to get him to run 5K? First of all, she's like, we're going to teach atomic habits. And, you know, most of us as adults read it, what, 25 or whatever, you know, after college. But she's like, second graders understand 1% better every day. They do. And so she gets all the kids.

Starting point is 00:55:56 You know, we teach growth mindset, right? And so she's like, how many of you think it's impossible? And all the kids are like, oh, it's impossible. It's faith. You know, can't do it. And she's like, well, I signed you up for the jingle 5K at Christmas. This is in August. Signs you guys all up.

Starting point is 00:56:08 We've got to go run it. And she brings them out to the track. And they're all, oh, this is impossible. And she walks the track the first day with them all. And every single one finishes. And she's like, okay, so we've all established we're all going to finish the race, right? And then she comes out the next time and they run a quarter of the lap, walk the rest. And half a lap, walk the rest.

Starting point is 00:56:26 Every time. And by December, they're all running 35 minute 5Ks. And when they cross the finish line, you know, at the jingle 5K to their parents, they're just like, oh, look. They're like, Dad, I can do anything. Yeah. Because I can just 1% better every day. I can do 50 pushups. I'll do one today, two tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:56:45 Right. And they just learn these life skills that we don't learn until late because school doesn't teach them. But when you have all day, when you're not sitting in class, you can teach these things. And you teach it via hard things that the kids love, right, that they're engaged in doing things that they think are impossible and learning how to do the impossible. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever center. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your

Starting point is 00:57:22 business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Munis, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite in Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them, Hal and lowest demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. A special four-part event. Streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus.

Starting point is 00:57:56 It sounds like guides and teachers are very different. What makes for a good guide? Yeah. So, you know, when I think of a spec, you know, there's a huge teacher problem, right? Teachers are burned out. They can't hire enough. You know, it's just, it's tough, right? You know, and just once again, me coming from the outside, right?

Starting point is 00:58:15 general HR, you know, HR 101, if I'm a business person, you know, okay, you can't hire a spec, you know, what's the problem? Either the spec's too hard, you're not paying enough, whatever, you're targeting the wrong one. So there's five things, really, if you're going to be a teacher in a standard school, right? Standard teacher in front of a classroom model to do well. First, you have to be your domain expert in seventh grade science. Second, you actually have to be good at teaching. Like, what are the effective teaching? We all know researchers who know a lot, but they're really bad teachers, right? Third, you have to connect and motivate with kids.

Starting point is 00:58:48 Fourth, you have to deal with parents. And then fifth, and a lot of our schools, you have a lot of administration and, you know, school systems. And those are five hard things to be good at, right? And so when you have a hard spec, then we go and say, okay, let's underpay them. And you're like, and it's a surprise that no one applies for the jobs, right? And that's why there's huge to fall and all the stuff.

Starting point is 00:59:09 And so in our world, I'm like, okay, well, how would I fix that, right? we're re-envisioning school. So how do we re-envision the role of a teacher? Well, we take, you know, what do teachers really want to do? Right. And if you go talk to teachers, teachers did not become teachers to grade seventh-grade science quizzes. They became teachers to connect and transform kids' lives.

Starting point is 00:59:33 And we all had one or two teachers who did that for us. And it wasn't because she marked her paper up well. It was because she connected with you and got you. to go see a bigger picture, right, and just inspired you to greatness and pushed you, right? And that is what great teachers do. And that's what they want to do. So we just narrowed the scope where we're like, nope, you don't need to know seventh grade science because AI does that.

Starting point is 01:00:00 You don't have to know the 10,000 papers that are written on learning science of how to teach kids well and all that's AI tutor, learning science based will do that. Connect and motivate kids. Okay, you need to be the world's best. Are you the best at connecting and motivating kids? Can you hold high standards and high support? Right? And if you're great on that, we want to hire you.

Starting point is 01:00:20 And then the parent side, we actually have a dean of parents. So we designed the school where they don't have to do that. Because when I first got in, the guy who was going through the teachers is like, oh, this teacher is great with kids, but not good with the parents. So don't promote. This person's not as good with the kids, but they're great with parents. so they should be promoted. And I was like, okay, no, I'm going to, we're going to build a school where they're great

Starting point is 01:00:48 with kids and we'll find a way to deal with the parents, right? Because they're different skills. Yeah. And then the more important skill is the kids. No, all you care about skills. I mean, I'm parents obviously wish they were good about it, but you really care that these kids connect, right, that these guides connect with your kids. And we call them guides and coaches because they're not doing academic teaching, right?

Starting point is 01:01:08 So what's their background? Is it like coaching and sports? So it's a set of a, one, third, the best, we get the top one percent of teachers who want to move over and, you know, come on over. So we get those and we're just like, you're not going to be teaching. And, you know, that's always the biggest surprise. They're like, this is what I want to do all day. During those two hours, you know, since you're not in front of class, they're pulling the kids out one-on-one, you know. What are those conversations look like?

Starting point is 01:01:32 So those conversations are going to be like, you know, back to connecting, hey, how was your weekend? How was the softball tournament? Did you win? Did you not win? You know, we've been working on this. goal setting about your, you know, vision, you don't seem to be engaging in it. Is do you really not like it? Is it too hard? You know, they connect with the kids and then sit there and help them understand, you know, what are you trying to do? How am I helping you hit your

Starting point is 01:01:56 goals? Just what you would call coaching. It's absolute coaching. So how much of the kids' success, then, would you describe to, I don't want to disappoint this person who's now paying attention to me versus like if you go into a classroom of 30 kids, it's like, I can get a, away with almost anything. Yeah. You know, I can, like, sort of like check in a little bit. But now this person knows my name. They know what I'm doing on the weekend.

Starting point is 01:02:18 I'm going to get questions on this. Yeah. No, there's, I mean, our guides have great relationships with the kids. I mean, if you really want to get into it, like at high school, when we, we ask quite, we measure everything because if we're going to scale, I need the metrics to make sure the quality stays high. You know, so in, in middle and high school, we actually ask the parents, do you trust your alpha guy so much to hold high standards so you as the parent can provide can only have

Starting point is 01:02:49 to provide the unconditional love and support right because you want to hold high standards but you also want to provide support and as kids get to adolescence it gets hard for a parent to be both when you're holding high standards they rebel against you right yeah and i'll just take myself as a personal example so my oldest daughter you know she's putting her Stanford application in and i'm like can i read it. And she's like, no, right? She does not want to be judged by parents. Kids, adolescents do not want parents judging on them. And I was like, okay, and I just gave her hug. I'm like, good luck. Because I knew Chloe, her guide, was going to hold high standards. And, you know, Chloe, back to we get really the best in the world, right? She's a Harvard grad. And I know she knows the

Starting point is 01:03:33 standard, you know, to get in. And Kate, my daughter, has a great, such a relationship with Chloe. she trusts her. And she trusts her to get her in, right? And, you know, even now, she's in college. And when she comes back to Austin, she goes to lunch with Chloe still. Right. So she has, you build these great relationships with them. And it's, you know, everybody when they think of AI tutor, they think of robot terminators and all that.

Starting point is 01:03:58 And the answer is, you know, in 20 years, you know, predict the future, what's going to be the same in 20 years. Parents are going to drop their kids off at a building. In the building are going to be. other kids and adults, right? We're not, you're not getting rid of school. School is going to be there. Now, if we do our job, what happens in those six or seven hours is totally different. And the roles are different and it's 10 times more awesome.

Starting point is 01:04:24 But you're going to drop your kid off at school because you want them around other kids. And you need kids don't grow up on their own. They need caring adults who are going to mentor and coach them, right? And help, you know, build, hold high standards. And so that whole loop is going to continue. And when we talk about building schools, that's going to be the future. It's just right now the whole day of six hours in class, right? And where we waste 90% of the kids' time.

Starting point is 01:04:52 And we're like, okay, let's just stop that. Let's just stop that. Right. And so that's what back to our thing of how we design school. The first part was, you know, they must love it. The second part was they need to learn 10 times faster. They can't sit in class all day. Right.

Starting point is 01:05:06 And so that's this engine we built that teaches kids 10 times faster. That's the time back. That's time back. Our time back engine. That's 10. And today it's at alpha. You know, in 2026, everybody in the world's going to be able to access it. And so everybody who wants to build a school based on time back is going to be able to next year.

Starting point is 01:05:23 You hear that development team? The whole world's waiting. My kids are waiting. Everybody's waiting for that. So that's the second part, the time back, right? The engine where they learn 10 times faster. The third is there's a set of life skills that we think really. matter to kids that aren't just pure academics. And we went through them. But you do care about

Starting point is 01:05:44 leadership and teamwork and entrepreneurship and financial socialization and relationship building. Those skills socialization and relationship building, right? They matter so much. And we don't teach kids. Now, you experience socialization in school, some good, some bad, right? If you're at Westlake High School and you're the quarterback and the homecoming queen, it's really great. Yeah, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. You mean girl high school, right? Cafeteria. There's tons of movies made about it, right? But you can teach kids skills, right? You can teach them all these relationships. How do you teach the life skills? Are you doing anything different there than we would think? You would think these great project-based workshops in the afternoon to teach these skills.

Starting point is 01:06:21 So we're like, okay, how do we teach one percent better? How do we teach Atomic Havage? Like, okay, let's have them run a, you know, 5K. You know, we teach financial literacy. It really is. Like our fifth and sixth graders launching food trucks, running Airbnbs, right? And so you can teach them when you have all afternoon you have all this time to teach them now the biggest thing we do versus probably most others is we try to quantify everything a lot of life skills are very soft right and that i i can't run a scalable system if everything's hey you know maybe it works so like we talk grit everybody wants her kid to you know have grit right you can't read like angela duckworth's book and okay grit right right

Starting point is 01:07:07 that doesn't mean anything. So every third grader in our school can do a Rubik's cube. Every kindergartener can do a hundred-piece puzzle. And so we, right, every eighth grader has passed a teamwork grit test, which is they all run a tough mutter, if you know what three years are. Yeah, yeah. Tough mutter and pass cross the finish line at the same time. Oh, right?

Starting point is 01:07:29 That's awesome. And, you know, and back to bonding and hard things. You know, and parents back to, they're like, you know, especially at a high in private school, some of these moms are like, my daughter's not rolling in the mud. That's never happening, right? And then at the end of the race, they're all covered in mud. And, you know, they have all the pictures of they all, you know, bonded as a team to go through this really hard challenge. And so you're teaching. So we have metrics where, and we try to make them quantifiable. All our fifth graders, fourth and fifth graders can pass Wharton's leadership and teamwork simulation challenge that Warren, MBA.

Starting point is 01:08:06 take. Amazing. Right? And so we have all these, you know, quantifiable metrics across those skills, right? Entrepreneurship, can you make $1,000? Can you go raise $10,000? You know, all those kind of things. You know, character building, which is character building is always the hardest one

Starting point is 01:08:21 because it's really hard to measure. But it's the only thing parents care about. It's my kid a good kid, right? But like our example, we just, we have examples, which is our, we have middle and high schoolers who are building an app where they're trying to convince 100 million teenagers, the key to their happiness is contributing to their community. Right. And just that whole concept of how contributing your community as a great character-building

Starting point is 01:08:46 exercise, they all have been experiencing. They're like, oh, we can build this into an app and get this out to everybody. Yeah. So you have people learning how to vibe code with cursor, right, in their afternoons. Or those are the kind of apps, right? And they're working with some of the biggest influencers on the planet to do this, right? Where they're like, okay, I want to come in this weekend. or I don't want to go on somewhere right because I'm working on something hard and significant.

Starting point is 01:09:10 The hard thing is really interesting that when my kids went back to school after COVID, I switched schools and I put them in a different language. So they didn't speak it. They went to a French school. So for grade seven, they started and they didn't speak very much French at all. And if I had to sum up the difference of that school from the one they were in previously, it would be high standards. And it was they were consistently on the kids.

Starting point is 01:09:34 they would be like, no, you should be getting 100. I'm going to teach you how to get 100. And it was small classes, but it was a very strict old school, French school. And I did that because I wanted my kids to wake up. They were sort of like sleepwalking through school a bit. And I was like, oh, well, you're going to go learn a different language. And for three months, my oldest kid came home and he was crying, like almost every night. This is so hard.

Starting point is 01:10:02 Like, I got the word right. I'm like, but you miss the accent. He's like, yeah, well, they give me a zero. They should at least give me like three quarters of a point. And I'm like, well, you have a choice, right? Like, they're telling you what the standard is. You can choose to live up to that and push yourself or you can choose to fight it for the next two years. And which of those do you think is going to result in a better?

Starting point is 01:10:24 Anyway, but the end of December, so they have exams. So they test the kids like crazy. So these kids have never taken a test before. And by the time they're done these two years, they've done over 200. So they just like there's no stigma around testing or anything. By the end of December, he's going into exams, he's like, oh, I love this school. Like, this school's amazing. I know exactly what's expected of me.

Starting point is 01:10:45 And I know exactly how to accomplish what's expected of me. So I love that story. That is, now, if every parent thought like you, we would have a different school system today. We would not have this academic results at our schools. One of the things I've learned as principals is your mindset that you just described. is very rare, that parents in general want low standards at their school. And part of why schools, even private schools, right, react. Why does Harvard have grade inflation? Harvard. Right. And it's because there is pressure from parents and students to lower standards. And that it is hard to keep high

Starting point is 01:11:25 standards. That's the participation award that, you know, everybody seems into these days. And the problem with that is it doesn't you know when I where it really starts to manifest is in middle and high school where you're like these kids are disengaged they are addicted to tick to ticot and fortnight and they have mental health problems and all these issues that are occurring and they're the outcome of low standards not high standards people think it's no it's too hard if kids don't engage if humans don't engage in challenging things right that they love that they can go do and accomplish right they do you lose meaning. There is no meaning in a TikTok loop. And eventually it catches up with you. You just, you can't eat sugar all day, right? It just eventually it's going to catch up with you.

Starting point is 01:12:12 And instead, right, we need schools where we show kids. It can be so fun. Like, you know, if you took out our core, our first one, kids must love school more than vacation. Parents would not send their kids to the school because they'd be terrified of the high standards. And it's only because their kids come home every day. And they're like, this was the greatest thing ever. I don't like, you know, they do. They're like, parents are just like, my kid used to never, like, you know, these middle school sports kids.

Starting point is 01:12:40 They're like, they used to skip school all the time, never on time, all these things. Absenteeism is a huge thing. They're like, they wake me up and they're like, we better not be late. Like Alpha kids are like, is it Monday yet? Yeah. Why is it? Why do we have to go to school on week? Why don't we go on school on Saturday?

Starting point is 01:12:54 That's incredible. And that's, and that is one. There was, there was one where those stories are just, they, they do love doing hard things. Totally. And, you know. And they can do hard things. And they can do hard things. They love it.

Starting point is 01:13:07 They have to be supported by an adult. So you have to have a guide who's awesome. You can't, if you just throw them in the deep end, that's not going to work. Right. But get a guide who's going to bond with them. Right. And we spent enough money. Right.

Starting point is 01:13:19 We pay teachers, right. Just let's shrink, let's refocus their role around what they want to do anyway. way. Transform kids lives, right? Let's get them all focused on transforming kids lives where they're supporting them high standards, right? Exactly the one or two that we knew, right, that transformed ours and just get that going in all the schools. But to do that, you know, back to it's a tough one. Now, that's why we have to go build. We're going to go build 10,000 schools, right? We're, you know, I want to talk about scaling in a second. I should, I do want to come back to my son for a second. So when he was coming home crying, I was also very supportive of them. Like, you can do hard things. I don't want to

Starting point is 01:13:57 be reported in child services or anything like that from people listening. You know, this is me and my life. No judgment about how you raise your kids. Totally. The video monitoring thing sounds super interesting. I want to come back to this for a second. As a parent, I'm like, this is amazing. You're teaching my kids effective behaviors and effective behaviors. As an employee, I'm like, oh, wait, what? Talk to me about that. So let's talk about the monitoring, which is, it's actually really interesting, is, I just went through this with some of our middle schoolers, which is kids like the monitoring and the coaching because I want to get better. So are parents?

Starting point is 01:14:38 Parents don't like AI monitoring. They're terrified of it. Oh. Right? There's this boogeyman of AI monitoring. Kids, they're like, I want a human to do that, not an AI. The kids are like, I don't want a human to look at me ever because I'm judged by it. adults. Kids don't want to be judged by adults. They're like, let me talk to the AI.

Starting point is 01:14:58 Like, if you tell, like, we have an app that grades your public speaking, and you're like, do you want to practice with the human to give you the feedback? Or do you want to practice with or I, this app, you know, until you get to 90%. And it does, you know, filler words and, you know, pacing and all that. And they're like, give me the or I. Yeah, my kids would 100% should. Because they all want the AI because it's not judgmental to them. They don't feel all. that pressure. Parents are the opposite. And so it's this very dynamic where I make, guys, the kids want this. And I know you don't like it, but you got to get over it because your kid wants it. And it's, let's do what they want. And so the kids love the AI tutoring, right? They

Starting point is 01:15:38 love the feedback. They love the monitoring. Okay, I'm wasting time, how to do better. Right. And now, the second part is, if you don't have a motivation on the coaching, like on why they should do it, like, because I tell, like, other school districts are like, great, I'm going to go put this in my class. Let me give me this time back thing and get magic. I'm like, if you put this in a standard school day of six hours, it's not going to work. Like, ed tech generally has failed. And it's generally failed because the kids aren't motivated to engage with it. If you don't give them their time back, they're not going to engage. And that's why it might be part of the problem with like normal schools adopting it. You know, you're the principal of a school ahead of school. And you're like,

Starting point is 01:16:17 what am I supposed to do? Like two hours a day and they're not really teaching. And what do they do the rest of the day. It's a whole, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a fun time anyway. And so you have all these good excuses to, to slow it down. Now, if you look at Alpha's like, we're the most talked about school in the world, right? It's just give us one more year, right? Give us one more year and everybody's just going to be like, okay, we, we need to do this stuff, right? And so we're, we're, we're, that's part of our job. And that's part of why I, I, I, I, I'm, I, I'm, I, I'm, I, I'm, out there is just educating parents, right? Our schools educate kids, our marketing department,

Starting point is 01:16:57 we have to educate parents that this is all doable. But that's when you look at sort of this whole loop is, you know, it's hard to put it in a normal school right now because you do have to do a rebuild. They need more proof and data. But why don't they babysit, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. Like why don't they just say, oh, we're gonna do math tutoring.

Starting point is 01:17:20 We're just gonna do that. So math class now is going to be an AI tutor, whether, you know, whatever product that is. And then we're going to see how that goes. We don't have to switch the whole curriculum. We're just going to take the 30 minutes or 40 minutes. We've assigned a math class. So there's a few different reasons on that. Just tactical, practical reasons.

Starting point is 01:17:41 First is they've been lying to their parents. So I don't know public schools much, but let's talk about high-in-private schools, right? I know the high-in-private school market. The high in private schools are all lying to their parents by giving kids A's when they don't deserve it. So like we pulled in, you know, so we had hundreds of kids joined, you know, whatever a couple months ago across the country, right? And these are people coming from 40, 50,000, $75,000 private schools. And we give them our assessment test, right? And if you had an A, if your transcript was an A coming into Alpha, you are from, there's some students who are one grade level ahead, super awesome, all the way and more.

Starting point is 01:18:19 Many more of them were three years behind. Oh, what? Three years behind. So this is seventh graders who when we give them the fourth grade test are missing a significant number of problems. If you got bees, you are from three years behind to seven years behind. So these are high schoolers who are like, okay, I need to have you in third grade. There's third grade material you're missing. And that's a B.

Starting point is 01:18:45 And so the problem is parents, in our world, A's and Bs, like, A's are good. B's, okay, do better next time. But they don't give out C's D's and Fs anymore. So A's and B's have to cover the whole range. And so parents basically are being lied to because they're using their old point of reference 80% of kids at Harvard get A's. Just they've had such grade inflation that the school is like, oh my God, I can't do the AI tutor because I'm going to show the kid needs fourth grade material. And the parent doesn't know that. And as soon as they put it in, it's going to be obvious. The assessment's going to show them. Right. That's actually what causes lots of people to move to Alpha. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:19:26 Just give them the assessment. They're like, what's going on? Like if you go to our website, we have testimonials of people, you know, we open San Francisco, right? And this guy's like, I've had my kid in a $50,000 school

Starting point is 01:19:35 for eight years. And he couldn't answer some fourth and fifth grade questions. It's not the kid's fault, right? And the parent didn't know because the school's given a raise as his good brand. Good brand thought he knew it.

Starting point is 01:19:47 Everything's working for aides. Everything's fine. Yeah. And so you have that. That's number one. Let's get over that one. Now let's get to the second one. There, and this I fought, like this was that hundred for a hundred we were talking about. I went my first year to the seventh graders. And I'm like, guys, you have holes. I got to get you to do earlier work. You got some fourth and fifth grade holes. You got to go fix it. And let me tell you about motivating a kid and making them love school. When you tell seventh grader, they have fourth and fifth grade material. non-starter. Non-starter. There's only one person who hates it worse, their parents. Oh my God.

Starting point is 01:20:23 I was yelled at so many times by parents. My kid must be at grade level. Why are you putting them in earlier stuff? Every parent's been trained. My kid must work at grade level, which is just the learning, that is not, right? They just don't know learning science.

Starting point is 01:20:36 That is not what the learning science says, right? You got to go back and fill, right, mastery of the basics, master of the basics. But the parents hate it. That's why eventually I still, to this day, know how to fix the parents. So I sort of went around them. And that's when we came up with 100 for 100. I'm like, guys, I got to get you to do it. And that's how we came up. That's how it came out. I'm like third grade. They did it. Fourth grade. And then they moved up. Right. And that does,

Starting point is 01:21:01 it also has this other real thing about academic performance. The self-confidence it does. All these kids are like, okay, I can get 100 on any standardized test back like your son. The same thing where once you show them how to do it, you give them the ability. They're like, oh, I can get 100. Like, so we, we have a thing now where we'll advance you at 90% to the next grade level. So when you score 90% on a standardized test, you know, your state standardized test, it shows you have mastery. We'll let you go to the grade above it. But you get 100 for 100 if you get 100. And so all the kids are like, okay, that's a couple extra, right? And you're like, oh my God, a couple, an hour or two, and I'll get the extra questions. Because even if you miss them,

Starting point is 01:21:42 you can go back and learn them and retake. And so, but it just sets that mindset of every kid's like, of course I could get 100. The reason we get so many 790s and 800s on the SAT is all our kids are like, of course I could get a perfect score on the SAT. It's just how many hours is it? It's an hour question, not a capability, which is that unlock we did about IQ. Most people think it's IQ and I'm like, it's effort. It's effort, not IQ.

Starting point is 01:22:07 Well, this is the fundamental thing, right? Because a lot of people just look at that and they're like, some kids are smarter than others. And I think we, you, I think my hypothesis is that we could get 90% of kids, if not more, to effectively perfect SAT scores. Totally. There's a little, SAT has a little bit of IQ coding. At any time test has a little bit of IQ coding. But yes, fundamentally, you should think 1350, which is top 10%, no problem. 1550, which is your top 1%, it gets, it gets a little dicey on, you know, Well, it's a 90% then, right? For 90% for sure, like just off the charts.

Starting point is 01:22:47 And we're, right, we measure all this. And we're like, well, how many can we get to 1550 plus, right? If you're on our honors, our high school program, non-honors is 1350 minimum. Okay. Honors is 1550. And the difference is it's three hours a day to do honors, which is 1550 plus fives on your APs. Yeah. 1350 and a four or five on your AP, that only takes two hours.

Starting point is 01:23:09 So it's just, and to kids, it's an effort issue. You want two hours. You want three hours. Just pick. It's extra time. That's it. And so, but anyway, but that whole thing, you change their mindset. But back to this, this why a standard school can't do it.

Starting point is 01:23:25 The kid, how do you, you have the parents screaming at you if you try to put your kid to do, you know, the whole filling, as we call it, right, to go backward and do fourth grade. They're like, I want the teacher to teach my kid seventh grade. Because that's, you know, and it's just, so you have that problem. The schools are just like, you know what? You want the outcome. I want my kid to be educated. Right. And well, and the problem is a lot of parents are like, my kids get, just give me the A.

Starting point is 01:23:47 You get the, look. It's an A, right? And then what happens is then when they take their PSAT or SAT, it's not as high as they want it. Yeah. But then it's like, the school's like, well, too late. And then some parents hire, you know, massively expensive after school tutoring, right? I mean, the after school tutoring works like $50 billion. It's insanely huge because schools, parents, even at high in private,

Starting point is 01:24:11 schools, like the percent of kids at a high and private school who also have a tutor, right? When I was like, this is insane. Aren't you sending your kid to the school to like learn? Yeah, why do they have? Why do they need a tutor? Why is there a huge afterschool tutor market? I'm like, we commit that your kid will learn during the day. They don't need that time and you don't have to hire a tutor. That's insane. I was asking my kids last night, what questions I should ask you. And they came up with two. So one asked, how do you teach physics to high schoolers? and what program you use. And let's tackle that one.

Starting point is 01:24:43 And then we'll talk about it. Great. So there's a great, so Math Academy is the best math app out there. And they do physics 12. There's a new one called Physics Graph, who they're online. And they are the physics version of Math Academy. Okay. And so I would go get it. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:25:02 I think, you know, back to AP, I'm trying to remember exactly their product. There's like physics, I was ABC, one, two, three, whatever it is on the AP test. The first one is based on algebra. And then the third one is based on calculus. Okay. And so I don't know if they've released the calculus one yet, but on the algebra or the other, you just use physics graph. Awesome. Physics graph is the way to go.

Starting point is 01:25:27 I know a couple other products that are about to be released next year. But if you're in it right now, if you're, if you're... That's the one. Great. Then I would do that. And then the other question was, what are you? happens after? You've had a couple years now if students graduate, they go to university or grow up in the real world or whatever it is they're doing college. What happens? Because now they

Starting point is 01:25:47 go from the structured environment, high coaching, high standards, a lot of hands-on to good luck. Yeah. So, well, one of the things, even though we have high support, all our kids are self-driven learners, right? They have to, during the two hours, learn how to be able to learn on their own. right and so that's one of our tests of are you a self-driven learner our eighth graders all know how to get a five on an AP on their self like every eighth grader actually knows everything I want to learn is on YouTube right everything yeah and so you're just like okay pick some random AP that you're interested in you know not one of the core hard ones but just pick one right and go learn it and go figure out and there's all the resources are available and then you know so

Starting point is 01:26:37 that's how we show, okay, you're a self-driven learner. You can learn anything for the rest of your life, you know, without somebody spoon-feeding you, you know, the material. But at the college level, so we had, let's see, here's one where, where do people go? So our first class was we had 12 graduates, 11 and went to college. The 12th is one of the world's best water skiers. And so he's building his meaty empire while he water skis. It was like, I'm not going to college. The other ones all got into their first choice colleges. We get into Stanford or Vanderbilt or NYU Shanghai or wherever you want to go. Because our academic scores are just through the roof.

Starting point is 01:27:14 Then we also have these killer Alpha X projects in the afternoon where kids have four years to work on a passion project. We didn't even get into this. And so they look just, they look like a completely different character. Right. Than the average college grads. They stand out. There's a huge contrast.

Starting point is 01:27:31 And super impressive, right? I mean, this one, she'll probably kill me because I'm not. supposed to talk about it. But, you know, we may have, no high school student has ever been the lead researcher on something published in nature. And we have an alpha kid who's submitted, it hasn't been accepted yet. And so that's why she doesn't want to mention it yet in case it does it. But literally, like, no one, right, that's usually, I mean, if she was a PhD, that would be considered like one of the most impressive things of her career. And she's literally 17 years old in high And it's because they have four years to work on awesome things and do just amazing things.

Starting point is 01:28:11 And so anyway, so in college, I six months. But now it's not two hour learning now. It's college. No, so here's what they did. No, so they do. So we went. So I met with them at Christmas after they all, the 11 who went. And it was six or seven of them.

Starting point is 01:28:26 And I was like, okay, guys, how are we doing? Everybody had a four-oh. They were crushing it. They loved college, the whole social environment and stuff. And, you know, some are in sororities. And, you know, they're doing all the different things and they loved it. And I was like, well, what's the worst part? They're like, okay, those lectures are a total waste of time.

Starting point is 01:28:43 They are a complete waste of time. Literally, I sit in there and they're just terrible. Four of them had written editorials to their school papers about, can we stop the charade that are these lectures? Literally, there's 200 people in a class. None of them are paying attention. They're all on their computer, like scoring TikTok or just doing other stuff, right? The teacher is terrible. is not a good teacher, right?

Starting point is 01:29:06 And this is just a waste of time. And they all learn, you know. So like back to my daughter is a math English major, you know, and she's like, I just use math academy. She's like, you know, I used to skip classes when I was, I didn't like school. I was not like my older daughter. And she always had disdain for me where she's like, you should go to class dad. And now that once she finally went, she's like, okay, I get it.

Starting point is 01:29:32 I get why. You skip class because it's totally a waste time. And so I believe in college, you know, Harvard published a paper that their best teaching classes, their physics 101 class, one of their best, you know, teachers. And they did an A.B test with A.I. Tudors versus them. And they published that Harvard, you know, there's a great paper. Harvard says AI tutors better than Harvard teachers. And, you know, they learned twice as much using the AI tutor as going to class. And so it's just facts, right?

Starting point is 01:30:05 And so 100 series classes in university are going to go away. Like as soon as everybody figures out the state of tutor stuff, they're just going to go away. Now, small group seminars, they love it, right? You know, a small group writing seminar that's super awesome in her writing classes and stuff. So it's not like universities are going to go away because some kids still need time to grow up, right? And they need socialization and all those other things. but the big lecture classes, those are gone. Those are a waste of time.

Starting point is 01:30:33 What were you like as a student? The world's worst student. Tell me more about this. I was, you know, academically, you know, people would definitely say, I can't believe Joe's doing education if you knew me at Stanford. I dropped out. You know, this is, you know, back to every kid has a passion for learning. it's just not always academics.

Starting point is 01:31:00 And that was me, right? I just, I didn't care. I hated school. And I'm just like, I don't care about these classes. Right. And, you know, when I dropped out, you know, and I started my company, I went from, I used to do the minimum amount of work. I mean, I literally like, in my high school, the way our grading system worked is you got four points for an A. but there's no a minus no a plus no nothing just right and an 89.5 rounds to a 90 which was an a

Starting point is 01:31:33 and i literally would do the minimum work to get an 89.5 like not an 89.6 i remember one time i didn't turn in i didn't answer all the questions on a test because i knew i didn't need to finish the test to get the 89.5 in the grade and my teachers just like what right i was just a nightmare because i just whatever the minimum was And, you know, my parents weren't really excited about. Now, it was a minimum bar of, okay, I'm still going to get in Stanford because I wanted to go there. But I wanted to go there because I wanted to start a company, right? I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Starting point is 01:32:07 And so I go, and then I'm in class at Stanford. I'm like in some Spanish class. I'm like, okay, what do I do? And so anyway, I drop out. So there's nobody who thinks I was a good student, including. I wasn't a good student, but there wasn't like, oh, like nobody. It was just misunderstood. Right?

Starting point is 01:32:21 No, no, no. It's definitely not a good student. And then I drop out. And then I started working 100 plus hours sleeping under the desk, right? Super passionate. Because you're motivated. I loved it. I found, right, my spark.

Starting point is 01:32:33 I found what I loved. And I'd never worked harder in my life. Like it was insane. And my dad who, you know, there's this, he was not happy that I dropped out, right? But 18 months later, when we were talking, he's like, God, I'm so glad you dropped out. He's like, you know, and he's like, you know, I was so worried. that you were a lazy little shit. Your whole academic career,

Starting point is 01:32:56 you were just a shirker, right? You just, you never engaged in anything. You know, as a parent, like, you don't want your kid to be just, you know, a slacker. You want, and he's like, and you found it.

Starting point is 01:33:06 You found what you love, and you're working your ass off on it. And it's just great, right? And our, my view of that is that concept. What I found after dropping out of college, we want to get that into kids in middle and high school. Like, what do they love?

Starting point is 01:33:21 Like as they hit an adolescence, who do they want to be? What do they love? And let's get them started on that. Right. Now, there's some minimum academics you have to do, right? You want to start a business plan. You've got to know some math. You want to write good proposals, right?

Starting point is 01:33:36 You have to be able to write. So it's not like you can skip all the academic side, but you do it motivated by stuff that you love. Right. And back to if we want to get kids, we're competing with TikTok and Fortnite. But kids' vision of who they want to be is awesome. So let's go get, right, associate with what they want to be there. Right. And that's what's going to drive and motivate them to, you know, learn all the skills they need.

Starting point is 01:34:06 If you, you know, if you look at our kids doing these huge Alpha X projects that are so impressive, right, it's because they're working on stuff. I mean, it's harder stuff than we ever worked on in high school. For sure. They don't think it's work because they love it. You know, no, we have a girl. And you didn't think it was work when you were sleeping on the floor. Exactly. Works on it's like my now job, which by the way, just is a sidebar. Everybody should go into education.

Starting point is 01:34:32 If you're like wondering like what you should do the next 10 years, come into education. It's awesome. But because it is fun. But we have a high school. She's doing a Broadway musical, right? Launch all team produced Broadway musical. She sourced all the singers off TikTok, million streams the first week when they went. They can fill, they filled like four times.

Starting point is 01:34:54 They filled a venue. It's not big enough to be on Broadway. It's still like not quite big enough. But they're doing it. And you know, you listen to her. And she's like having to learn about music rights, right? And legal conduct. Right.

Starting point is 01:35:03 And all the stuff. I mean, it's harder than any high school class. But that's how we should teach. And this girl will spend endless hours on it because she loves it because she's putting on her musical. It's hers, right? And the team and all. And just think of those projects for all kids.

Starting point is 01:35:18 Right. Everybody can do that. Right. And so, and that's where when we talk about with this, if we're going to get them ready for this AI world that's coming, that's what we need to get them ready for, not borum for six hours a day in class where we waste 90% of their time, you know, learning a bunch of material that is becoming commoditized, right? LLMs are reducing, right, the value of that knowledge. Now, AI also, it's taking it away on that side, but it's also letting you learn 10 times faster. Yeah. So, you know, it's sort of this balance of just you got to, you figure out what point. part you want to learn. I remember Elon

Starting point is 01:35:52 in interviews had something that made a ton of sense to me. It's like traditional schools teach you like, here's a wrench, here's when you use it. When they should be like, here's an engine, let's fix it. Oh, you need a wrench to like take that off. So like we got to figure out what it's used for. And like, it's sort of like that's the approach that you're taking.

Starting point is 01:36:09 Exactly. You take, so like let me, I'll give you example, like our sports academy. Like we want to teach public speaking, right? Storytelling and public speaking is such a great skill, right, for kids or for adults, everybody. And, but you go to a 10-year-old boy and you're like, we're going to teach you public speaking. You like, okay, they've turned off.

Starting point is 01:36:26 But at our sports academy, post-game press conference, are you ready for it? And these kids are like, okay, right? And you're going to learn all those skills, those same public speaking skills where a rise going to grade you and do it. Of course they want to do that, right? Or you're going to learn financial literacy. Roll the eyes. We got to work on your Nike $5 million.

Starting point is 01:36:50 contract. All of a sudden, they're ready to, right? They're going to learn, they're going to dive in and become the world's experts in all those skills. And so the thing that when you talk about stuff, associating it with stuff kids love that's in their interest, right, back to I understand their interest graph. Kids will love it and work because it's, and everybody knows it's, right? If it's related to what your interests are, you'll spend endless time on it. There's kids, like, just think of how long they spent on YouTube on some obscure thing where you're just like, oh my God. Like, no, we have, we have a kid who can, like, he knows everything about World War II battles.

Starting point is 01:37:29 And you know, like, those geolocators who know anything in the whole world and it's a little picture and it's there? This kid knows it for every World War II battle. Like, you can show him any picture from a battle. He's like, oh, that was in Poland in 1943. Oh, that's crazy. I mean, it's just insane, right? But he's interested in it, right?

Starting point is 01:37:49 Kids will learn endless stuff if they're interested. And what we have to do is schools and say, okay, this is what we want them to learn. Because there are fundamental things you want to learn. But we need to do it where they're doing projects that are hard and have meaning to them. You mentioned your father. Is it true that he didn't invest in your company? Yeah, no, that's totally true. My dad very much was worried about me being a spoiled kid.

Starting point is 01:38:13 He grew up with nothing and then got to success later in his life. And so he was terrified of that. And so, you know, he's like, look, if you have a good idea, other people are going to invest in it. And if I'm investing in it, right, it just means no one, it was such a crappy idea. No one else would give you money. He's like, so go convince people that it's a good idea. You know, back to the standard, which is a true statement, right? If your parents, you know, if your parents leading, right, or giving you money, then.

Starting point is 01:38:45 If they're leading you around, maybe it's a good idea. You don't have a good idea. You don't have a good idea. Go convince somebody else. And so he used to work for Jack Walsh. Yes, he did. And so he was Jack's strategic planner. Mark, his son, you know, we play hockey, go skiing together. And so I had a business background upbringing, which is maybe why I knew I wanted to be.

Starting point is 01:39:04 Well, tell me more about that because I remember reading one anecdote. Actually, you had two conversations. conversations with Jack Welsh, one when you were 12 above gross margins. Do you remember that one? I had a lot. I spent a lot of time with Jack. So Jack, you know, my dad passed when I was 25. And so these will probably be the later ones you're talking about. And Jack called me and is like, look, I'll be your mentor going forward. And so every year I would actually fly up and spend a couple days at GE and at Jack's house with him coaching and helping. What was the most memorable conversation you have with him? Oh, gal, there was a lot.

Starting point is 01:39:38 So, you know, between he and my dad, there's a ton of it, if you want to, which is, you know, one was, Mark and I were playing hockey and we were small for our age, and both our dads played hockey. Jack and my dad. And so we weren't good at it. And so we're like, we want to switch to skiing. Don't tell a hockey dad that you want to be a skier. Okay. My dad was from, I was born in Minnesota. And so, you know, hockey is.

Starting point is 01:40:09 I'm from Canada. It's like religion for us. It's the religion. And he's like, and so Jack's like, okay, I'll only do this. There's a, there's a race at the end of the year. And Jiminy Peak was the name of it. He's like, you two need to come in first and second.

Starting point is 01:40:24 And if you guys are willing to do that, I'll let you switch over to skiing. And he gets, he's on the phone with my dad. He's like, Greg, our kids are going to be first and second in the race. So they're going to have to work really hard. So buy your kids some ski. you know literally we would literally you know during the summer like you'd run up the mountain literally after school they drop us off weekends drop us off ski end of the year mark came in first i came in second and jack's like wasn't it worth it you know and just back to high

Starting point is 01:40:56 standards like that guy crazy high standards um gross margin you brought up that one you know where they had sold their um they'd swap their business with uh i think it was thompson medical at the where they had TVs. Gee, he had TVs. And they swapped it for their CAT scanners because they had, G, medical and one of these deals. And I was like, dude, like, TVs is the only cool thing you guys make, you know, when you're young, right? Cat scanner, really boring. And Jeff's like, let's talk about gross margin, right?

Starting point is 01:41:25 Because TVs have none and CAT scanners make a lot of money. And so I was learning about gross margin. And I'm going to bring that back. I'll go back to the story, but I'm going to bring it to a related one. So we have kids who launched a food truck, our fifth graders. like launched a food truck at Alpha. And so I was talking with them and I was like, why did you guys, you know, pick breakfast foods,

Starting point is 01:41:47 you know, for your food truck? They're like, have you seen the gross margins on a breakfast food? And I was like, okay, this is the most awesome thing ever, which is because they're building a real business and you've got to know gross margins, right? And these are fifth and sixth graders, right? And so kids loved it. Just like I learned and loved it young,

Starting point is 01:42:03 everybody can learn this stuff if you're, if they're interested. We have other kids who don't like, you know, know, launching food trucks. But for those who do, it was awesome. And then once I, once, you know, back to my 20s when I was building my business, you know, Jack, Jack was both super, you know, harsh, you know, when you talk about high standards, high support, it's both where he would just be like, I remember this particular story was I was the youngest self-made member of the 4th 400 right and with a cover and so I'm flying up to uh you know where my annual

Starting point is 01:42:43 mentoring thing that I was going to do with them and I'm all like right check this out right I'm all that and I do you want to sign copy yeah exactly Jack I'm sure you want to cite copy of this right and I mean I full of myself obviously and I get there and you know he's we're talking about stuff And he's trying to understand because he's astounded by, you know, how much my company was worth and all that stuff. And so at the end of he's like, okay, so I guess if I had to classify you, you're like a, I'm trying to remember the G levels. You're like a level eight project, product manager. You know, like that's why, like, he's like, that's sort of like your skill set, right? And at the time, realistically it was, right?

Starting point is 01:43:29 I had this set of skills, but fundamentally that's what I was. And he's just like, you know, Joe, you have to decide whether you're going to sit here and, you know, be full of yourself and decide that you're awesome. Or if you're going to decide you are now at the case where you can go spend the rest of your life and freaking crush it. Right. Is this your first step or your last step? Right. Are you done? Have you just declared victory and, hey, everybody, look at me.

Starting point is 01:43:56 I won the race. Or are you like, oh, my God, I'm only on the last. the first step of the race. And then he is the most inspirational person because he sort of had to, he shocks you a little bit with the, who are, you know, and then inspires you to greatness, right? Where I remember I was flying back from that trip. And I, that whole plane ride back, I had, I was writing a hundred things down that I had to go do, right?

Starting point is 01:44:23 That I was on the, I was sure, I made sure I was going to be on the first step, not on my last step, right? And so just that kind of great inspirational he was amazing at. And other level setting, like this was a big one for me was in 97, we won e-commerce product of the year. And 97 was back to dot com. It was a big e-commerce year. I'm like, I won the e-commerce part. That's why we're very successful one of the things. And, you know, GE had used it. G. Medical had used it in Melt's group. And literally, I met with Jack and he's like, yeah, I hear Med doesn't like your product. I'm like, It freaking won e-commerce product of the year. And he literally was like, Joe, I don't care if it comes from heaven above.

Starting point is 01:45:08 If GE doesn't get an ROI, your product, you and your company suck. That where's our ROI? And it was like an eye opener to me where I was literally just a product guy where I was like, I delivered a good product. And he's like, if your customers don't get value, nothing matters. Right? And I was just like, huh. Right? And it totally reset my whole view of like what a company would have to do.

Starting point is 01:45:37 And, you know, if I had to apply it to education now, education thinks their job is sort of just to put kids through school. Ours is to actually have learning. Right. Kids have to love school and they have to learn. Right. and when we designed our educational system, I think we're the only school in the world who if a kid's not learning,

Starting point is 01:46:00 it's our fault. It's the system's fault. It's not the kids, right? If our kids aren't learning two hours, that they're failing, it's my fault. What did I do wrong? Is my motivational model not right?

Starting point is 01:46:15 Do I need a different guide? Was the lesson I gave them not the right level? Was it not a good lesson? Was I not coaching them the right way? But what did I do wrong versus a lot of school systems? I'm like, oh, kids fault. Right? And you can draw it sort of back to his resetting me of, are they getting value out of what you're doing?

Starting point is 01:46:34 And I'm like, oh, it's my responsibility to make sure all the kids learn these days. So anyway, so yeah, I had all those kind of things. It was awesome. What a crazy experience. At one point you were going to IPO trilogy and you IPO PCorder.com, right? Yes, we did. And then you ended up buying it back. I want to hear the story about that.

Starting point is 01:46:53 And then what changed your mind about being public with Georgia? The PC order story helped me realize I didn't want to be public. So PC order was actually one of the trilogy co-founders, Christy, you know, had this idea of, okay, I'm going to build PC order, which was online, selling computers online back in dot-com days. And, you know, built it up, super successful, had all the biggest resellers aboard. And then she went public. and then basically Dell put her customer base out of business. And so then she, her business went terrible.

Starting point is 01:47:30 And so the stock went from 50 to 5 or something. I can't exactly remember, but down 90 plus percent. So it went public, you know, ran up in all the hype and then imploded. And then we bought it back and just, you know, said, okay. And, you know, for me, so I've kept Trilogy private. But to this day, it's still private. And a lot of it is just, I prefer just to be 100% in control. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:01 Frankly, just my daughters give me, you know, Marcus Limonis on The Prophet, if you know that TV show, he has, I'm 100.0% in charge. That's pretty much my attitude. Is it like that with everything or the things you're completely hand off, like, are you hands off or completely hands on, but nothing in? between. Correct. Yeah. I'm, I am, I'm in charge or, hey, I'm your biggest supporter. Good luck around it. But yeah, I don't do well on the 50-50 consensus kind of stuff. I'm just, I push the edge on radical stuff. And I'm like, I don't want to vote. You don't get to vote on this, right? We're

Starting point is 01:48:43 going to do this. Yeah, it's not a democracy. Yeah, it's not democracy. We're going to do this. And if you want to come bored, we're going to do this. Like, if you want to come and start a school, right, on time back, you're going to do two X and two hours. And there's a whole set of people who are like, well, how about we do one X in one hour? Because one X is as good as every other school. And I'm like, well, go do that with somebody else's offer. If you're going to use mine, all these coaches who are setting up these sports academies, they're like, well, some of the parents don't care. I'm like, sorry, we're going to do it this way. We delivering awesome academic outcomes, right? Yeah. That's just, it's who I am. And that's just,

Starting point is 01:49:20 I don't want to vote around that. It reminds me of something Alan Mullali said, which is like when he was turning around forward, he was like, here's how we're going to do it. And if you don't want to choose to be a part of that, that's on you. But if you're here, this is how we're going to. Yeah. No alignment. Like, we like, you know, the three commitments to the kids, your kid will love school, they'll learn two X and two hours and then life skills. Those those three commitments.

Starting point is 01:49:45 Every kid. Every kid. We have to do that for every kid. And if you're in my organization, you wake up every day and say, I'm going to deliver that. And you can never blame the student. You can never make an excuse around that. And if you don't like that, just don't come because that's what we're going to be about, right? We lose about 50% of our educators when we tell them they're accountable for the kid learning.

Starting point is 01:50:06 Oh. Because they're not used to it. Right? And they're like, no, it's a kid's fault. What if he doesn't do this or what about that? I'm like, our guides are measured on do they deliver the three commitments to every kid. every kid, right? And that's, you know, it's just really important. And you have to have that, you know, focus. No, I, one of my public school, one of my, there was a teacher, when I first came in,

Starting point is 01:50:31 you can imagine there was skepticism, you know, because I would say crazy stuff. There'll be no adults academic teaching in this building. You know, I just, if now with hindsight, you're like, well, duh, it works. But before that, that's crazy talk, whether you're a parent or a teacher, right? It's just, It's, it's, and, you know, but the set of teachers and parents who stayed, you know, who were like, okay, I'm in. I was, there was one who was, you know, basically from public school. And I was like, you know, and I'm an evil billionaire, you know, and so every evil billionaire does education, all those, all those, you know, appropriate memes. And I was like, eventually, what was it that won you over to stay and be part of it? And she was like, it was because you're just constant focus that it had to be every kid.

Starting point is 01:51:23 That we'd come in and we'd like, okay, we got 90% of the kids there. And you're like, let's focus on the ones we want and what do we have to do and what do we have to fix to get that for every single one. And that's back to building a system that if we're going to get this out to a billion kids, that's the mental, that's the model we have to have. And that's, you know, back to being 100.0% charge that makes it so great. is, you know, if you're going to be on timeback and using this system, it's going to be every kid. What's the biggest problem with scaling?

Starting point is 01:51:54 There's a lot. So scaling's hard. This is, you know, this is sort of back to your Elon example. This is, you know, building your first prototypes really easy. And how do you build the factory that churns it out? And so a lot of what I've been doing in the last three years is how do I build the system that's going to allow this to scale? And so timebacks, you know, a key element on the academic side. But that sounds like it would scale.

Starting point is 01:52:15 pretty easy. Once you figure out the compute and bring the cost to compute down, like it's, that's the part's going to be easy. That's easy. You could add a billion people to it effectively if you had the compute power for it. Yes. And that wouldn't be. Exactly. So that parts, we've commoditizing the six hours a day down to cover. Got that. Now, let's talk about all the other hard parts. Let's talk about there's physical and then virtual. So on physical schools, how do you measure guides and how do you have the metrics so as you open new buildings right new schools that you're sure what happens in all the other schools right so you know we we we call them painfully insightful metrics so we we wake you know our org you know every summer when we're

Starting point is 01:53:05 redesigning you know for the next year we sit down and we say what are the painfully insightful metrics that we need to know such that we know that new school we opened that we've never visited is as good as our Austin flagship, right? And all our guides, you know, and everybody in the org is like, every year they get better. Like, how do I know I don't have a bullying culture, you know, somewhere, right? What's the question? What's the survey question? What's the metric I can collect to know that? So obviously on the academic side, right, we have the best closed-loop system in our, you know, that collects all the data. So I know on a daily basis if you're learning. Right. And so I have all that. But how do I know if my culture is good? How do I know if I've

Starting point is 01:53:49 hired the right guide? What if I have a wrong guide? Right? How do I measure all that? So we have the same level of metrics that we do around our school and our system that we do around our academics. Okay. So I know within eight weeks whether my guide's good or not. And a lot of this, So a lot of it comes from results. Are they delivering three commitments to all the kids? But it's everything also surveys. We ask the kids. Every adult had one or two teachers who transform their life.

Starting point is 01:54:20 Is your guide that for you? Right? To the parents, do you trust your guide to hold high standards so you can provide unconditional love, right? You know, at kindergarten, do you love your guide? But we ask, you know, so you just are asking these questions, right, to get the data that you need. We have quantified all the metrics on the life skills. So I know it's not just, oh, yeah, our kids have grid or, oh, they're good public speakers.

Starting point is 01:54:47 I'm like, no, everybody in our class scored 95% on our eye and every fifth grader beat a Wharton MBA in teamwork and leadership. And so we quantify everything, right, so that we and measure it and then can react to it if we have a problem. Because you do, right? Every guide's not perfect. but then can we swap one out quickly? So part of scaling it sounds like is quickly identifying servicing problems so they can be addressed while they're small, not letting them fast.

Starting point is 01:55:18 Exactly. And it's asking the hard question. It's easy to ask easy questions, right? It's why we move the question from do you love school to do you love school more than vacation? Because do you love school, my comparison, when you say that to a kid, it's like, well, it's better than my old school.

Starting point is 01:55:32 My old school sucked. Yeah. Right? But you're like better than vacation, though. That's a harder standard. your old school, if you're compared to your old school, it's too easy. Better than vacation, that's a hard thing. As a parent, I would also feel like I'm not giving my kids a very good vacation if they want to go.

Starting point is 01:55:45 Well, that's, back to our thing, right? Your kids are with their friends all day doing awesome stuff. Doing the stuff they love. And they're doing the stuff they love that's hard and challenging with a guy who's supporting them, right? It is hard to be. That is why on Saturdays they're like, God, I wish I could go to school. Just building all that kind of stuff. So, but you're always trying to figure out what is that extra question, right?

Starting point is 01:56:05 Like, how do we know if the parents really love the school, right? What is it? Like, will the parent create testimonial videos, you know, of their school? Because it's totally crazy, right? Because people are always like, you go to that weird school where they don't have teachers and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, like, we went through back to our standard, which is we opened all these schools, all these new locations. I'm like, how do I know if they're good? Well, we have six and a half hours of testimonial videos from families who joined the last 10 weeks.

Starting point is 01:56:35 about them saying, you know, it's only been 10 weeks and my kids life's transformed. And so you just, you're out there trying to figure out, what's the hard question to ask? You show it publicly. We show all our grades publicly. We give all the, you know, all these testimonies. We see everybody around it. And that's our control group, right, for that. And then the other part's just core culture, right?

Starting point is 01:56:57 Just your core culture of do you believe in delivering the three commitments to every kid? and if you don't believe in that, don't come, and everything's based around it. And if you're a guide, you have to deliver to your students. But if you're on my academic team creating lessons, you do too. So like if a kid is struggling and can't get through your lesson,

Starting point is 01:57:19 the guy who did the lesson is going to get on a call with them. Yeah. Right? Back when I lose 50% of them, when you have some of these learning science researchers and they realize they have to deal with kids and are accountable. So much easier on paper. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:57:32 And you lose some because they don't want to do it. But you build that culture of, you know, and back to even growth. So like our growth team, right, because we're expanding, you know, they wake up every day. And the first thing they work, you know, we have three concentric circles. The first is, is there something you need to do to deliver three commitments to every existing child in the school? And if there is, go do it. Like, if there's a problem at an existing campus and you can fix it, don't worry about some new campus. Go fix it.

Starting point is 01:57:58 Then the second is, have we filled every school? that we already have. Because the number of classmates is an important part of school, right? And when you start a school, it's smaller and then you want to grow it. And so the second thing we're doing is we want to make sure for our existing students that we're giving them awesome classmates, right? And then and only then, after you do those first two circles, do you say, should we open to a new location?

Starting point is 01:58:24 Right. And building that culture is hard, especially we have, we're the most talked about school in the world. We have demand, you know, through the roof. We're called from every country. Secretary of Education's down here. I got 10 governors who are coming down. Everybody wants this model.

Starting point is 01:58:39 And I'm like high quality at all times, right? Never relent on quality because we have to deliver every kid and we'll get it to everybody. So those are our physical school rules, right? Now, I'm not going to be able to get to a billion kids next year if I have to build the schools. And so then I get to the second when we talk about virtual, how can I, you know, scale it without that? So one way is, you know, the timeback software works. So we're going to let people build on it. Right.

Starting point is 01:59:10 And so anybody who wants to build a school, now's the time, right? If you have an idea of what the afternoon should be, right, come do it. We're hiring a thousand coaches, right, through Texas, in Texas for Texas Sports Academy for these middle schools. Right. We have, you know, 500 GT schools for gifted talented kids. I have somebody who loves Montessori, so we're going to have a Montessori school. We have a wilderness school, right? Where if you think the wilderness in the afternoon.

Starting point is 01:59:35 So there's all these great opportunities for entrepreneurs, right, who want to go then build schools. So there's just going to be a, think of Shopify for microschool or for schools, right? That's what time back's going to be and it's going to explode it. And then there's the pure virtual, which is, well, homeschoolers. Yep. Right. And everybody else. That's what my kids want.

Starting point is 01:59:55 They want the two hours on the weekends. Great. Well, so here's what they're going to get. So here's what they're going to get. And here's our problem and what we've been working on is, you know, if 10% of it is the ed tech, you know, the time back, how are you, if I let it out of my environment, I no longer can give the kids a time back. If I own all six hours and I give you four, I got the motivation. But at home school, I don't have that. Or after school, no one, you know, I can't tell you how many.

Starting point is 02:00:23 My daughters are like, no one's go to school after school. Yeah, my kids will. Right? You'll make them, right? But no, I need to make them love it more than vacation, right? Not just, there's a set of parents who will make them for sure. Well, I know what will happen. They'll start doing it.

Starting point is 02:00:36 And then they'll be like, why do I have to go to school? Exactly. And that's what I want, which is, so how do we, 90%'s motivation. So how do we solve it? So we've spent all our time. And when we were released time back next year, the set of motivations for these kids are going to be awesome, right? Like, give me an example.

Starting point is 02:00:53 So, well, let's just take what, let's take middle school, boys, their number one motivation is video games. So imagine if you got some of the world's best video game designers, like the best, not your prodigy guys, right? The best ever who made the world's best video games. And you got 150 of them in a building and said, go build the world's best video game on top of this, where the kids are going to play at two hours a day and become top 1%. Right. I bet your kids, if they're video gamers, are going to love to play that. Right. And be super interested in that or let's talk about like an after school for kids who need after school tutoring we just ran this uh as a test imagine they like kumon if you know some of these students everybody hates it

Starting point is 02:01:44 right yeah oh my gosh it's all terrible they're in dingy building what if you just went to dave and busters yeah and then in the dave and busters like in the little you know birthday rooms or whatever they did their hour with the tutor and you earned like and you earned your little card and then you went out in the afternoon. Or what if online, after you did that, you were able to go into a 10,000 person's Twitch stream with some of the best video gamers in the world, right? Who's the streamers you like? Right? Who are the influencers you like? So imagine there's influencers, right, where you're getting social cred, right, based on being able to do this. Now, and if you want, as parents, what if I allowed you to do 100 for 100? So,

Starting point is 02:02:29 just take our system and you as the parent could put in the money right and all of a sudden the kid gets it right and what if especially when i took that money and i didn't let him spend it it went into the robin hood for kids account to teach them financial acumen and investing in financial literacy yeah what if it was that right or what if i had an associated life skill project where it funded your trip to New York so that you could go meet the producer for your musical, you know, or it funded your robot war that you were going to do, all ideas. Or just more mundanely, what if it was what manager screen time? So every parent struggles with how much screen time. Well, what if there's just the time back that's like, guys, let me be in charge of your kid's

Starting point is 02:03:19 screen time because I'll make sure they get to top 1%. Yeah. And if they're top 1%, you're going to give them some more screen time? Yeah. Totally. Right? And so it's going to manage all that for the parents, right? And the parents are going to be like, oh, my God, my kid's top 1%. And they're super happy because they hit this and then, oh, my God, I got some gaming time or I got some TikTok time or whatever it is.

Starting point is 02:03:39 I was able to control, you know, those kind of elements. So wrapping in all the motivational stuff, there's just, there's a hundred ways to motivate kids, right? There's going to be social peer gaming. Like we have a multi-user version where the kids are just competing. right? Think of video games, but just, you know, you're competing on academics and, you know, the 10% of kids who really love academics. They love that. I mean, oh my God, those kids, you know, they just run out of curriculum. There's just not enough to teacher. Like, they're just, you know, they just, they blow through the top of the charts. What does the science say, I can imagine this would be controversial about paying kids to learn?

Starting point is 02:04:19 Yeah. External and extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic. There's, a huge debate about it. And I believe we'll have the biggest real data set in the world. And so here's, there's, there's both, there's, there's, there's, there's both sets of papers, which is, um, there's a paper that literally that you should, you could look up that says there's no such thing as intrinsic motivation. Because even if you're intrinsically motivated, it's because of something. Yeah. You know, even a good student, they want the accolades of being a good student. Is there a true love of learning or is there a true love of accomplishment? And what's the accomplishment getting you? So you can go read that paper and have a very

Starting point is 02:05:00 strong view of there's no difference between paying kids and booze. It's why in sports, parents often hold their kid back a year. So they're bigger. So then they win a little bit. And then once they win, they get jump started and then they're good. And now they like it because they keep getting accolades that they're good at it. Academics is the same way. You just need to jump stardom on paying. And then like those kids, so in our middle school, we'll pay any kid a thousand dollars to become top one percent. You know, so when they transfer in, oh my God, top one percent is too hard. You pay them $1,000, they get to top one percent. It changes their internal view of themselves. That I'm like, oh, I am a good student. Then you don't have to pay them

Starting point is 02:05:39 anymore. And all of a sudden they're going to do it themselves because they change their internal view. And so part of all of this stuff is when you talk about extrinsic and intrinsic, is if you can change the kid's internal view of their capabilities, it's worth using whatever motivation you can, right? Back to our guides. They use whatever lever they need to pull with the kid to break through. Kids have part of education is kids have blocks about what they can do. I'm not a math science girl.

Starting point is 02:06:10 Yeah. Right? And you're like, that just doesn't exist. There's no like brain chemistry that like I'm a middle school girl. I can't learn math science, right? Yes, you can. So our guides have to break through that. And they'll do whatever it takes.

Starting point is 02:06:23 And if paying them $1,000 is it, or bringing them out to an event or let them go to an off-campus lunch. What's their currency? Oh, you guys want to do an off-campus lunch? You know, whatever the currency is, social peer pressure, oh, my God, all the other girls are there. Whatever it is, our guides will use to get them there. Then once they're top 1%, right? Boom, right? They're there forever.

Starting point is 02:06:45 Our kids at college aren't getting paid. They're all 4-0 students. Right. It's just you change kids capability to become self-driven learners to do that. But there is a fear of it. And there is, I'm sure there's a bad way to do it. But, you know, starting in kindergarten, our kids earn alphas. Because if you want to teach financial literacy, which every parent wants, you know, you earn alphas, you learn how to save, earn, save, spend, invest, and donate. And they start that cycle in kindergarten and then move it all the way up. And it gets bigger dollars as you get older. but you want your kid in seventh grade. Like if you give them some phantom stock thing to teach them to invest in seventh grade, I can tell you that's terrible. Yeah. Because one, it's not real money.

Starting point is 02:07:33 They didn't earn it. And they're going to yolo it. Oh, totally. It's like a casino. It's not investing. It's just gambling, right? Versus, wait, I just earned this $1,000. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:07:44 That's mine. Real money. And it was hard. Yeah. And it's mine. And I'm going to invest. it, right? Now, we do let them yolo it and do something stupid and lose all their money. Yeah. But then they've lost real money. And it's the best lesson. And it's better to learn that

Starting point is 02:07:59 in seventh grade than 27 years old. Right. And so all those things around it where trying to take out, you know, one of the things is there's a bunch Montessori, right? Maria Montessori in Montessori schools, she very much believed that kids should be involved in real world things. She actually has things where she's like kids adolescents should earn money right and you know that this having them do work and the value of work and that their work has value is a good thing for child development and we find you know I think if you the best thing you can do is ask alpha parents are like no this is all really good this isn't we're not poisoning the kids and getting them to be this coin addicted person who if they don't get paid they won't do any learning right instead

Starting point is 02:08:46 That's not how it works. It's just not how it works. I mean, and you could get kids on this. And it's not like there aren't times where the kids like, okay, I'm going to do some extra things because I want something. Yeah. Right. And so, you know. But that's life.

Starting point is 02:09:00 But that's just correct. No, the, the musical, Maddie, who's doing the musical, she wasn't wanting to do the 790. She got a 790. Her math is 18. She was below it. And sorry, Maddie, I just outed you. You know, she was below it. But she wanted, she needed money to go fly to New York to meet the producer so she'd get money to do a whole thing.

Starting point is 02:09:25 And I was like, well, what does time back tell you how many hours, right? It's going to take you to get to $7.90. We were actually trying for $800, right? And it was like X. And I'm like, okay, go do it. And you'll earn the money and we'll buy your plane ticket up there, right? To do it. Right.

Starting point is 02:09:43 And so she did. And then she got her plane ticket, right? And it was just, and it's just this concept of, oh, it was work. And, you know, she was happy at 750 or 760 or whatever it is. And then you just move it up. It's work, but she also knows and learns that she's capable of doing more. If she pushes herself, puts in an extra effort. It's just, it's effort-based.

Starting point is 02:10:01 Do you want to do it? And back to just how life is. She's like, yeah, I want this thing. And now I have the world's best Broadway musical. I'm going to change my work, right? Change what, you know, she's going to go back in college. And she's like, I'm going to go, you know, be arts theater. forever. And that's why the math, she was like, it was enough on her because she's an arts

Starting point is 02:10:18 theater girl. It also sounds like a small enough effort, you know, like whereas before, even with a teacher or guide, it's like this ambiguous thing. It's huge. It's big. It's far away. I'm not even going to try because it sounds like a lot of work. Well, it's 200 hours. Yeah. Right. I mean, we're 20 hours, not 200. Right? We're 10 times faster. And so there's the two parts. There are two, both things you said were totally correct. It was ambiguous. So I could just put a bunch of time in. And if you don't have an AI tutor, you can study for a long time and your SAT scores don't go up. Right. And so the first is we're not ambiguous. We're like, here it is. You're 17 hours away. You're four hours away. Like in our dashboard, it literally says,

Starting point is 02:11:00 you know, you're six hours from finishing, you know, six or six weeks from finishing it. If you go do an hour of homework, you're like a week away. Right. So it literally can just tell you based on your work, how long, you know, to get there. And when you put the goal setting in, it'll tell you, you know, all of that. And so not being ambiguous, right, and being definitive to the students, critical. And then the second, the numbers are small. It's definitive and small. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:11:25 Right. So it's manageable. It's super manageable. Math Academy. Every parent, go look at Math Academy. It's going to be like, oh, 28 hours away. I want to say they've just released, like, their SAT program. They've been updating it.

Starting point is 02:11:36 And I want to say it's 100,000. 80 hours. We're going to try that this weekend. My kids want to explore it. Well, you should. You totally look at it, but I want to say it's like 180 hours. Matt, like, that's it. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:11:52 But, you know. And then you're, it's crazy. That's it. Joe, this has been a fascinating conversation. We always end with the same question. And I think I have an idea of what you're going to say here, but what is success for you? that we transform education for one billion kids. So that's nothing like what we had.

Starting point is 02:12:12 And the tagline, if I had to give my tagline, is our job is to make this the best time in history to be a five-year-old. That's incredible. That might be the best answer ever. Thank you for taking the time today. This was fascinating conversation, one that brings true to me. So I really appreciate it. I loved it. Thanks for the time.

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Joe Liemandt: Alpha School and the Future of Education

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.