The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 491: MacKenzie Price—The Most Talked About School in the World

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

What if school could be reimagined from the ground up? This week, Mike sits down with entrepreneur and education innovator MacKenzie Price, the founder of Alpha School, a model that's attracting global attention for helping students learn twice as much in half the time. Using artificial intelligence, personalized learning, and an unconventional approach to education, MacKenzie is challenging nearly every assumption about how kids should be taught. She also makes the case that meaningful change in education won't come from top-down mandates, but from bottom-up solutions created by parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs willing to rethink the status quo.  From test scores to life skills, she explains why some believe the future of education has already arrived—and why the world's most talked-about school may be just getting started. Learn more about Alpha School at: https://bit.ly/4xGuTNU Big thanks to our awesome sponsors PureTalk.com/Rowe Pure Talk is matching donations dollar for dollar until they hit two hundred fifty THOUSAND DOLLARS for America's Warrior Partnership, who is on the frontlines of supporting our veterans. ZipRecruiter.com/Rowe to post a job for FREE. NormalFolks.org/Podcast to check out Army of Normal Folks, the podcast making service easier for all of us.  Digs.com Less rework. Less confusion. And a much smoother build experience for homeowners.

Hey guys, it's the way I heard it. I'm Mike Rowe, and the title of this episode is not, let's get edjimicated, even though. It should be. I know. Yeah. I mean, there's still time to change it, but. I don't think so. I don't think so either.

We're going to call it the most talked about school in the world. My guest is McKenzie Price, who I know through an organization called Stand Together. And what McKenzie has done is built a series of schools over the last decade or so. They're called Alpha Schools. And, you know, I don't know if we actually said this in the conversation, but what I was left with, and this is an amazing talk, by the way, if you've got kids or if you were one, once upon a time. Or if you know any.

Yeah, or if you've ever been to a school or driven by one. The time has come to at least consider the possibility that everything you know about education is, I won't say wrong, but subject to review. I would have gone with entirely wrong, but... Well, see, that's the problem, Chuck. As broken as our public schools are, you and I are still products of them, and we're sentient, we're functioning.

I think they're different. I think they changed because when we were kids, I remember, like, giant kids who were in a grade that you thought, you should have a job by now, dude, and you're, you know, you're in the ninth grade? What is happening? Yes, there was a time.

when if you failed, the consequences were not moving forward. Right. You were left behind. But then there was no child left behind, and they took it quite literally. And so the results today, as many of you know, are just some of the most dismal test scores imaginable. We've got giant cohorts of high school graduates who can't do basic math and who struggle with basic literacy. And if it's not a national scandal, it ought to be. And as we wait for the scandal to unfold, well, not everybody is waiting.

You know, we featured a couple people on this podcast who have really taken it upon themselves to find a better way to educate our kids. And McKenzie is one of those people, but she now has a tool at her disposal that really nobody's ever had before. And that's essentially an AI tutor. And so for me, what really does. really came out of this is that the greatest form of education that ever existed was Socrates and Aristotle, you know, and the way that Alexander learned how to be Alexander, the great who went on to conquer

the world. That was a mentorship program. It's the opposite of a cookie cutter approach. It's the opposite of a teacher presenting a lecture to a room full of kids. And my guest today believes that AI can fundamentally replace the Plato and Socratic method and be a proxy for that. And the data is crazy. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're finding that a two-hour lesson with a guide and an AI approach that is bespoke to the kid in question is just so exponentially more effective. active in what we're doing now. Yes, the students in her school, according to the stats, perform in the top 2% nationwide and

learn two times faster. Yeah, which begs the question, what do you do with all that spare time? And we will spend a fair amount of time talking about that because these kids at these alpha schools are engaged in ways that, I think at one point I say, it sounds like the Boy Scouts, it sounds like the Merit Badge program, so many different ways. It's not just athletics or speech or school plays. It's everything you can imagine. The engagement levels are off the charts.

And look, it's pretty unique right now. I mean, there's a very small percentage of people who are going to these schools, but the schools are growing rapidly. And at the very end of the conversation, she just casually mentions that Alpha is the most talked about school in the world. And according to the very AI, with which we've been focused on. It is. With which we've been focused on.

What a great example of a sentence fragment that is the product of a public education. Folks, we can do better than this. But I doubt you'll hear a more passionate conversation anytime soon. McKenzie's on a mission. Totally. It's the way she heard it. It's the way I heard it. And hopefully, in mere moments, it'll be the way you listen to it.

McKenzie Price right after this. I hate to say, I told you so, but do you remember last year when I started telling people that Pure Talk was the best wireless company that I'd ever used? Well, some people were skeptical, and that's fine. People should be skeptical. People should do their homework. But I thought it might be worth mentioning that consumer reports just asked 120,000 people to rate every wireless company in America, including the,

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slash row. That's puretalk.com slash row. Yes, I'm sorry. I can't help it. I told you so. We rolling? Yep. Fantastic. Look at this. Look at you. Look at all this press, man. It's crazy, man. I'm out there. What is, like, when did this happen? When, I mean, everywhere I look now, people want to, they want a piece of McKenzie. Change in education, one kid at a time. That's what we're trying to do. This journey began over a decade ago. I'm reading from, what do you guys call this? Like a leaf behind? What do they call? It's like a press kit, some sort of a press package that tells you a little bit about who I am. I guess you guys look at that and decide, do we have?

actually want to talk to this lady? I did not look at this. Okay, well someone on your team probably did. Unlikely. And we do, but I will tell you, I think I'm more interesting than a piece of paper. There you go. I have it right there as well. You know, oh, you do? I'll look at that. Okay. That's page one. I didn't print that up because it had, well, photograph basically. Wait a minute. Is that how you spell your name? Yeah. We got it right? Yeah. First and the last name. That's it. Good. That's my name. For the record, it's McKenzie Price. All she's doing is changing education as we understand it in the free world. I have some. I have some. I have So many questions for you.

Full disclosure, no. I didn't see you interviewed on any of these things. I first heard your name from friends at Stand together. Oh, wonderful. I love those guys. And they were like... And they were like... They connected me last year with an organization called Vela.

Yes, I've heard of them. And I thought this whole notion, you know, they're all about bottom up solutions in lots of different categories. And I just can't imagine. a category more in need of a bottom-up solution than education. So I sniffed around, saw what you were doing, saw you interviewed in various places. And I listened to a guy called, I think Joe, who must be your principal. He was fabulous.

Yeah, he's pretty great. So before we talk about how you're fixing it, what's busted and how bad is it? How long do you have, Mike? How long do you have? I mean, honestly, this tapes cheap and Chuck's asleep already. Wait, what? Sorry, do we talk to me? We got all the time you need.

Well, so I think education is such an interesting area for a couple reasons. First of all, everybody has their own personal experience with education, right? We all grew up in it. And really, we all grew up in a relatively similar situation. So I think you and I could probably say we went to, you know, a school. I actually went to kind of a one-room schoolhouse for a little bit, my early days. Yeah, public school, because I was born in North Dakota, lived out in the country. and then went to like a little farm school, you know, country school.

I actually rode my horse to school. And then during recess, we would ride horse. And it was, that was awesome. We should bring that component totally back into schools. But here's the story with that. I was one of those kids who was really good at school growing up. Were you good at school? I was clever.

I was facile, I think. I didn't really like the structure, but I adapted. Yeah. I was good at it. I knew how to get the grades. I knew how to do that, but I hated school growing up. And I was always that kid who would raise my hand and be like, sorry, why do I need to know this? Like, how does this apply?

What do I do? I would sometimes get in trouble with my teachers for being a little too smart back to them in terms of just like that questioning, and they didn't like that. And I think what I noticed is what I think is a bigger issue in education, which is this one-size-fits-all, teacher leading a group of kids who are all at wildly-duty. different levels through material in a time-based system. And that system was born out of the Industrial Revolution. So Todd Rose talks about this. Todd is such a smart, smart dude. He understands it. And it's really not that hard to understand the benefits that came out of that system when it was

started, you know, 200 years ago. They needed to raise compliant, obedient, rule-following workers who would, you know, follow rules do as they're told. And that system was really helpful for educating the masses because prior to that, education was for the elite. What every parent dreams of for their kid, right? A subservient, one-dimensional drone. But yes, however, I'm going to just, I'm going to compliment a little bit of it. Kids, you know, kids were learning basic reading and writing and math skills, right? They were doing that. But what's interesting is in the last 200 years, nothing has really changed in that model. It's the one place where we haven't seen a difference. And if you go to a rural school,

in India or you go to some high-end private boarding school in Connecticut, you're gonna see basically the same thing, which is a teacher leading a group of kids that are all about the same age through material at the same pace. Building might be nicer in one versus the other, but it's that model. And that model is something that I as a kid,

notice myself as a problem and we're seeing it as a big issue. Now, not to mention the fact that, you know, it's not preparing kids for this new world we're in. It's not even doing a good job of people. teaching the academics that it used to do better at. And that has become something that is so apparent that more and more families are realizing like, okay, school needs to change. And it's the one place that has been so resistant to change. Why? I think that, first of all, we have this feeling of, well, hey, I grew up in it and I turned out fine. This is just something you do. And another attitude

that people have around school is that school is like spinach. It's good for you. You may or may not like it, but that's just the way it is. You're just going to spend your time. And for me, I questioned that during my experience growing up. And then when I became a mom and watched my own two girls embark on that journey, it's where the alarm bells started going off and like, is this really, is this really what we need to expect? Well, the other thing Todd wrote about, I mean, he talks a lot about the impact of the industrial model on the academic model. Everything from bells ringing to just all the rigor you would expect to find on an assembly line, and somehow got pulled into the way we teach kids.

Crazy. He also talks about the end of average, you know, and this idea that the average thing becomes the target. But average doesn't really exist. And so in your example, if there's a teacher in front of 30 kids, a percentage of them are confused because they're not getting it. And another percentage are probably bored because they already understand it. And I can't imagine a bigger enemy of education than boredom or confusion.

Which are both primary characteristics of our traditional education system right now. Because who's left in the way of a student in that 30 student example who actually is just sitting there getting it? I don't know that anybody really is. Yeah, it used to be more than it is now. And if you look at our country, you know, less than a third of students are reading or doing math at grade level. So you think about that fifth grade teacher who is expected to teach fifth grade math curriculum, and she's got two-thirds of her students who are behind grade level. She's got some kids who are sitting there bored stiff because they could be doing more and a very small percentage of kids that are at that curriculum. How in the world is that teacher supposed to go in and catch these kids up while teaching fifth grade material when it's like, and by the way, you've got nine months to do it, 180 days, that's what it is.

And so I think that's part of the reason we're seeing so much trouble in the teaching industry. Teachers are leaving the field in droves. It's hard to attract good talent to come in because they have been put in this model that is such an uphill battle. It's impossible. So we see burnt out teachers. And of course, our answer to that is let's make sure we also pay you very little amounts of money. And so it's just a broken system and it's not doing the service that we need. And of course, it's only gotten worse since COVID happened because everybody talked about we're going to have a COVID catch up.

You know, get kids back in school and they'll catch up. And the problem is if you're a student who has missed fundamental, you know, knowledge in first, second, third, fourth grade, you can't go do the more sophisticated concepts. The worst time to be learning, you know, your multiplication tables is when you're trying to understand algebra, right? And so when you think about education, it is very much this, think of a jenga tower, right? your building blocks, kindergarten first, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, you know, doing more on that. You can see where my math skills end. I can't go beyond division on this. But you look at that and then you realize, okay, when kids miss certain foundational pieces, you're building a Jenga tower that's got holes in it. And at some point, that's when you're going

to see people fall off this cliff and they don't learn. And I'll tell you what. You're going to see the whole tower come down. The whole tower comes down. And on top of that, that's where you also see just more and more disengagement. People sit there and go, what is the point of this? I'm literally not learning anything. I am confused or bored. And add to it a whole other side of it, which is how is this applying to what I might go out and do in the working world?

So what is my future going to look like? All that tracks for me. I mean, how else would you realize the system was broken unless you were self-aware enough to test and watch and observe? and then ultimately conclude. We've done all those things, but we're still doing it. We're not only still doing the same thing, the same way that's been demonstrably proven

to leave the majority of kids behind. We're just doubling and tripling down. Well, you think of the trillions of dollars that have just been put down the drain, and the challenge is that everyone thinks, okay, the thing to teach us, we got to do better teacher training, lower student teacher ratios,

do that. But what all of that is, it's like trying to put lipstick on a pig, right? You can't change the fundamental issue, which is that this one person teaching to many, same size fits all, it doesn't work. And we've actually known for 40 years, researchers have done studies to understand that kids can learn two, five, ten times faster if they're put in a one-to-one mastery-based tutoring experience, right? If you and I were sitting here and you were able to teach me math at exactly the level and pace that I needed. And when I had a question, I could say, wait, Mike, I don't understand this part. And you could either say, let's go over it this way, or you know what, let's go revisit a concept that will help you understand this new concept better.

Well, isn't that how we got? Isn't that how we got Alexander the Great? Absolutely. I mean, from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, yeah, to Alexander the Great. And, you know, people were doing amazing things. The other thing that's kind of interesting about that example with Alexander the Great is young people were doing big things. back in the day. And today's society, I think we so underrate what young people are capable of. And as a result, we treat them like they're kind of in prisons at school. It's like you don't have permission to go to the bathroom. You've got assigned seats at lunch. You've got protection around what kind of recess you can do, what activities. And that's the kind of thing that's just like...

I mean, never mind learning. The system is designed to make you conform to the system itself. And I guess the devil's advocate would argue, well, Look, the alternative is chaos. You've got 30 kids in a room. You just can't have them getting up and leave whenever they feel like it. And, you know, raising hands, maybe that becomes a doorway to manners. You know, I mean, it's not like it's completely nuts. It's just that it's all been weighed and measured and found wanting.

Yeah. Now, there are still fierce defenders of this model, but I will tell you, I wasn't one of them. I realized there's got to be something different. And that really hit home for me when I was watching my kids go through the experience. You know, I want to say too personally, when I think about the Aristotelian or the Socratic method of teaching and learning, like there is a corollary in modern times. It's called the apprenticeship model. It's not like we lost it. We just took it out of the kind of learning that you're describing that typically takes place in public schools.

And maybe, I mean, we kind of brought it on ourselves. We took shop class out of high school. Oh, yeah. Which was really, like, that's the gateway to an apprenticeship model, you know. Do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. What would you say a majority of employers consider to be the most important quality in a new hire? Experience? A long list of compelling references?

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Well, and it's also, you know, schools should be a place that helps unlock your potential and helps you find that intersection between your passions and your talents. Like, what are you good at? What do you love to do? And what does the world need? And there are so many different ways

that we need to get young people out there in the world trying things instead of saying, you know what, maybe you'll be interested in this when you graduate college, have a bunch of debt that comes out of it, and finally get your first job to then realize, oh, I don't like this job. I don't like what I'm doing. And I think, you know, so much of what we've thought about when we're kind of reimagining what education can look like is trying to get better answers to those challenges and give kids that time to go get their hands dirty, try something fail? I mean, how great is failure as a lesson for people? And when you think about this, you know, you said you were a pretty agile student growing up. I was a great student growing up,

and I will tell you the relationship I had with failure was stay away from anything that might hurt my GPA, right? That might hurt my ability to have this facade of like, I'm a good, smart, talented student who should be able to get into Stanford University. And that's the exact opposite thing we want. We want kids to have to go out and try things, see what, again, they're good at, and take that experience with them, and failure is a huge part of it. And the school itself, it just seems, it's so, schools get all the press. You know, when we talk about the Ivy League, when we talk about Harvard Westlake, when we talk about, you know, these premier schools, it just seems like the real rock stars are the teachers. Like, I remember three or four teachers who affirmatively changed my life. had nothing to do with the school that they happen to be teaching in

or that I happen to be attending. Again, back to the human hands-on model. And I would even go further, and this is a question we ask our students. We say every adult would say they have one or two teachers. It sounds like you had three or four. We say one or two teachers that changed their life is your guide, who's the equivalent of a teacher in our school system, that person for you.

And I think that's something that is so important. but I'm going to challenge you a little bit about this too. Think of how many teachers you had throughout your school career. Sure. And that you say, okay, three or four made a difference. For me, my fifth grade teacher was awesome. My business teacher in high school was great. But I'll tell you what I liked about them most.

It wasn't how they taught business to me, right? It was the way they made me feel connected. And they had enthusiasm and engagement, and that's what I think matters. And it's part of what we've taken the magical part. parts of the education model, which is, first of all, socialization in terms of having your friends around, and adults that now have time to actually connect and mentor and focus on motivation, which, unfortunately, teachers in our traditional system, they just don't have that time. I had an English teacher who said something that was so impactful to me.

I got an A-minus on a paper that I had written. And she told me later that that's the highest grade she ever gave. She does give A. She only A minus is the highest grade you get. Amazing. And she had a whole thesis for that. But her only comment at the bottom was she said, Mike, you have a big decision to make. Dan Rather had a career that you could maybe have.

And so did J.D. Salinger. Wow. And I wasn't super familiar with either of these, you know. And you couldn't Google them. at that time. You had to go hit the Dewey Decimal system. I had to go to the library. I had to go to the library. And I realized it was such an extraordinary compliment to get as a senior. And it certainly wasn't anything to do in, you know, the compendium or the curricula or, I mean, that's, this is a, such a bespoke thing to say. And it really impacted. Yeah. She showed, she believed in you. She said,

you are capable of greatness. She believed in a version of me that didn't exist. Right, but she was like, there is something here. And that's what, you know, adults, when they are freed up to really make that positive impact that I think everyone who gets into education wants to do, they just need to be put in a situation where they can have that time to really get to know their students. Do you know Carol Dweck? She's a professor at Stanford University.

She's all around growth mindset and grit. She teaches those things. Oh, yes, grit. And yeah. And she does a lot of stuff around growth mindset, and she was working on trying to figure out how we could help improve outcomes in algebra classes. And here's the story she told that was so interesting. She wrote a script that the teacher would state on the first day of class and then about halfway through the semester. And it was basically real short.

It's like a minute and a half long. I believe that you're all here in this class because you're capable of being algebra superstars. And, you know, you're going to be able to put in the work and we're going to work together. to make sure that you understand this material. And if you're ever struggling, come into my office hours, and we will walk through and go through this because I believe you are capable and you can do it. And so what she found was the teachers who read these scripts

during this semester, their kids' reports and results were way higher than teachers who didn't. Here's the biggest problem she had. She couldn't get the teachers to read the scripts. And I looked at it. I'm like, what do you mean? And she said, yeah, they're like a minute and a half long, twice in a semester.

Can you guess why teachers weren't reading the scripts? I gave you a hint in that story. Because they're illiterate. No. You know why? Because one of the pieces in that script was come to my office hours. And teachers don't have time. They are so overburdened that they were like,

oh my gosh, if I tell my kids like come to my office hours, I might get to, you know, I don't have time to do that. I don't even have office hours. I was on Twitter yesterday and there was a teacher talking about, we don't have scheduled bathroom breaks. Like, we can't do this. And you think about how hard this system has been built to actually produce, you know, excellent results.

And I would argue that even those kids who do succeed in the system, and I would be an example of one of them, I still think most often they're just learning how to play the game, how to check the boxes, how to do the thing, and puts them on sort of this path of just go grab the next carrot, you know, versus really use school to help develop who are you going to be as a person? And what are the skills that are going to take you out in life? All right. We could spend hours talking about what's broken. Yes.

Yeah, it's way more fun to talk about what works. Yeah. I mean, but it's also shocking. So the results you're saying, in your own words, go ahead and tell me how you want me to process it because it's a lot. Sure. Sure. Well, let me tell you first what it is. Because I think people are always wondering, they hear something about the AI school and they think this robot dystopian human void environment and kids isolated, you know, locked in computers. And couldn't be further from the truth.

What we have done is we have really reimagined what school can be around a few fundamental concepts. First, kids should love school. And when I say love school, we even ask like, would you? you rather go to school or go on vacation? Would you have ever gone to school over vacation, Mike? As a rule, no. As a rule no, but every once in a while? There were times. Chuck and I went to the same high school. You did? Wow. Longtime friends. We had a music teacher who made it great. I mean, it was really, really fun. And he was, but he's an outlier. He was Mr. Holland. And every day was Mr. Holland's opus. Right. Yeah. And so when we were engaged in, projects or plays or whatever.

Yeah. You like going there. Oh, yeah. That's great. I love that. Then, you know, God bless that teacher. Love those people who are able to do that. I will tell you, I was so glad when I graduated and I literally tipped my head and said,

there's no more school in my future. Like, I'm done. But we think that school should be a place that kids love being at because when kids love school, we enable them to go do hard things. They'll take on challenges. It doesn't mean every day as Disneyland. at school. Sometimes kids will struggle, they'll fail, maybe even cry on their road to success. But when you have this kind of fire in the belly engagement where kids are excited to be there,

that's super important. Now, what do we do in that day to make kids love school so much? Kind of our second commitment is kids can learn twice as much in only two hours a day. And this is kind of the magic difference. We do not use academic teachers to teach academics. So we're not doing a six-hour school day, 45 minutes of math, then you go to science. Instead, we are using an AI tutor to do a few things. Number one, very precisely and accurately measure and assess what a kid knows and what they don't know and then create the lesson plan that puts them in the exact level and pace in that subject that is right for them. So I'm still in a room with 20 other kids? You're still in a room. You're hanging out with your buddy sitting next to you. And what's cool is you can

literally see two kids sitting right next to each other. One seven-year-old is working on algebra while the kid right next to him same age is doing his addition and subtraction tables. Are they on a screen? Are they got headphones? They are on computers. Yeah, some kids are on headphones. One of the things that's great about this way of learning is you can have kids learn with auditory visual support. They can be watching videos. They can be reading. They can be engaging in this stuff. And that's the key right there is what this AI tool is enabled. us to do is put kids into these adaptive app learning experiences where it's hitting them at exactly that right level that keeps them engaged. Not too hard where they kind of turn off and get overwhelmed

and not too easy where they're just sort of like do, do, do, going through the motions. And what we're finding is that these students are able to not just complete academics in two hours a day, but crush their academics. So our classes, top 1% across all grade levels, all subjects, And one of the things that's really interesting about these results is we don't select students based on they already have to be great, right? We'll take kids from wherever they are because we can meet them at their needs. So we can take a kid who shows up to us in the 95th percentile and we can have them growing at rates in the 80s and 90s, which, by the way, is unheard of in a regular school that a kid who's already really excelling is excelling even more. Usually they're told to like, chill out, you know, like you're learning. well, but we can also take that kid who comes to us in the 15th percentile, and we can show them

with growth rates in the 80s and 90s. So what AI has enabled us to do is raise the floor for the kids that need help and just blow the ceiling off of what's possible. And we're doing all of that in that two-hour period. In the same classroom. In the same classroom. Kids are there. So wait a minute. So what happens to gifted and talented? They're hanging out right next to the kid who need some extra, you know, extra help. And that's not a, that's not a, doesn't pose a social. No. And actually, this is the best part about it.

Every kid is working at their own pace. So there's not this competition or this feeling of like, gosh, I'm dumb because I don't understand what the teacher's saying, but my friend here is already finished with the test, you know, in five minutes. Everybody's put on there. And fundamentally, that's what we're doing. We're creating self-driven learners who are developing the skill of learning how to learn. and they're very proactively finally in the driver's seat where they sit down and say,

okay, these are the goals that I have for my academics each day. Here's how I'm doing against those goals versus sitting in a traditional classroom where you go into your seat and you sit back and you go, all right, I'm here for 45 minutes. I'm just going to listen to what comes. And by the way, once we get through it, I may never see that material again because it's over. It's done. Whereas for us, we're teaching in this mastery experience where kids, don't move on until they've mastered the material.

And that's what makes such a difference. Hey, if you were a fan of returning the favor or people you should know, you need to be listening to a podcast called An Army of Normal Folks, because you will love it. This is done by my old friend Bill Courtney, famous football coach, and the subject of a documentary called Undefeated. The doc told the story of Bill's impact on the football team at a very poor school and a very poor part of Tennessee. I think it was. You should watch it. It is terrific. Anyway, Bill is hosting an army of normal folks.

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Listening to Bill and his guests has been known to inspire in his many listeners an overpowering desire to make a difference in their own communities. It could happen to you too. heads up. Listen and subscribe to an army of normal folks wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah, I'm super interested in retention and memory and the way sometimes you would think six hours of intensive focus and work would lead to a stickiness, right? That might be a little more profound. Well, except six hours of intensiveness and focus, that's not what's happening in schools, right? Think about your 45-minute math class that you used to sit in. Well, first of all, there's 10 minutes of getting your books out and sit down and teacher saying, oh, get over here

and, hey, did you turn your homework in? There's a few minutes to, you know, to kind of clean up at the end. And then during this time, you know, again, the level of information you're getting may not meet you where you need to be. And so we have this mistaken kind of memory of what school is and it's just not happening, you know, at that level. Whereas what we're able to do is take all these learning science principles, everything from, again, mastery-based learning, the one-to-one go at your pace, as well as like space repetition, which is that whole thing of you study a concept and then you revisit it again, you see it later, you don't miss it two months from now. If you're learning a new concept and we realize, okay, you're struggling with this concept, you know why?

You got to go back and fill some holes from third or fourth or fifth grade. And that is something that is so easy to do with technology. So what's the cohort? Is it? K-12? So we have, yeah, our youngest students are four and our oldest, our seniors in high school, and we're seeing that this is working across the board. You know, we are able to make this work. Now, I want to just make one thing super clear. It is not our ed tech that is making this work. There is a huge graveyard of failed ed tech, you know, experiences that have not proven to be that holy grail answer in schools. This is educational technology. Yeah, educational technology. That does not work. Here's the secret

for why this works. Two things. We have focused on giving kids their most valuable resource, which is time, time back to go do the things that they love in the afternoons, which is what they get to do at our schools. Starting after lunch, they're doing project-based group workshops, they're doing physical activity, they're doing passion projects, all those kinds of things. That's one of the things. But number two, we are focusing on the motivation issue. the motivation challenge. And the way we're able to do that is because we have transformed the role of the teacher in the classroom instead of having to spend their time planning lessons and delivering lectures and grading homework and trying to figure out how to meet 20 plus kids at different

needs. Their whole focus is motivational and emotional support and figuring out how to get kids connected and finding their why and implementing growth mindset strategies, all of that. On a percentage basis, where does motivation fall? Well, I will tell you, I think it's 90% of what creates a good learner. 10% is getting the right level and pace of learning. And think back again to traditional school. If a kid's not doing well in school, it's considered the kid's fault. You know, it's either like, oh, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You know, he's not, or he's not willing to put in the work. He's not willing to study for the test. He's not willing to spend time writing the paper. He doesn't turn in the homework. whatever he doesn't pay attention in class you know those are those things at our schools we take the exact opposite approach in fact our quarterly kind of accountability reports that we put out every seven weeks at the top of it it says this is not a report card of your child this is a report card on us how are we doing of delivering to your kid because we realize if we can't figure out a way to motivate your child that's on

us and we are willing to do anything to motivate kids to get them engaged because When you get a kid who's motivated and you pair them with the right level and pace of material, the sky's the limit on what they can do. Well, say it the other way, too. If you get a kid who's not motivated, who cares how good the delivery system is. Sure. It doesn't work. You're not going to.

Yeah. And that's why, again, sitting a kid in front of our time back learning platform, if they're spinning in their chair or they're not even in front of the computer or they're just going, D, D, and randomly guessing, that's not going to work. And so the reason we've had the success is because of that transformed, empowered role of the adult in the classroom. And so what you see in our schools, these are full day schools in person. You know, you've got kids all hanging out next to each other. And you'll have what we call guides.

They're not teachers. They are guides. Although about 50% of our guides come from a traditional teaching background, they are there to coach kids on how to learn. And they are there to motivate kids. And that's everything from, did you know we pay our students for getting their academic goals done? I did not know that. They make cash, baby. So they actually get paid in what are called alphas.

It's one alpha is equal to a quarter. So four alphas to a dollar. And they can take this money. And first of all, they're learning the life skill of earning, right? They earn based on hitting their goals. Then they can take this alpha money and they can go buy stuff in the Emporium. That, by the way, the guides have specifically curated. knowing that, you know what, Mike loves tractors,

and we're going to have a tractor Lego set in there because he's excited about this. You've got a curated emporium in every alpha school? We do. How many alpha schools are there? Oh, gosh, we're getting pretty big now. We're kind of going all over the country. It's hard to keep track, but we'll probably have like 30 open in the fall of 2026.

How many students are so far? We've got over 1,000 students that are in our in-person schools. And then this is pretty exciting. We've got a whole other thing called Texas Sports Academy. A little bit different thing. Same academic model, same learning platform. The difference is what kids get to do in the afternoons there. And when you think about motivation, they get to go out on the sports field or the court

starting at noon instead of after school, you know, doing this. And we're giving kids, again, time back to go do the things they love and are excited about. We've got thousands of kids who will be a part of that program. So it's kind of spreading and it's going there. But I think what we think about with getting these kids excited about, you know, financial literacy, right? When you can earn money based on the work you put in, go spend. We also teach how to invest. We teach how to save.

That's its own course. Well, it's just baked into the whole culture because kids are earning their alphas every day. And then they're learning that they can invest in, you know, they can invest in something. We've got kids who invest in Bitcoin, real Bitcoin. they are able to put their money in a savings account. We even have a credit card system where kids are able to borrow and then also learn the realities of high interest rates

because the alpha credit card is pretty steep. All right, it's great. Can I just kind of be a douche for a second? Let's go. I mean... That's what I think, micro-dush. I've heard it before. Wow, not from me.

Maybe that was... You've said it before. Maybe that was Jade who said that. Okay. Quite likely. So I've been spending a fair amount of time talking with some real eggheads over at some of the biggest Silicon Valley companies, I mean, from NVIDIA. Everybody in the AI space. Yeah.

And I'm painting with two broad a brush, which, of course, is the exact reason we're here today. One size fits all makes no sense. But let me generalize and just say that it seems like two-thirds of the country is deeply skeptical about. the Cracken being unleashed, right? And we're scared. We're not sure what kind of bargain it is. We're in the midst of making. And a lot of the guys I'm talking to with these big companies, they've realized that, you know, and they're looking at a $10 trillion infrastructure buildout, and they need to hire hundreds of thousands of electricians and plumbers. And so they've got skin in the game all of a sudden. But the reason there's such a threat is because we haven't accepted this new tool

yet. And I guess maybe in the same way, a microscope or a calculator or, you know, or maybe it's not quite the same, but there's always a, there's a period of time where we have to get through that skepticism. And so I think. I mean, remember when writing was going to to ruin the art of communication and storytelling. I mean, that really is true. I don't recall that, but I do. I remember reading something about it. We're not that old. Yes, exactly. But I think you're right. And we are at this tipping point right now where everybody's talking about what is AI going to do to our world. What is it going to do to our skill set, our jobs, everything. And we are on the precipice of making a decision. We can either use this for good or we can just get run over by it. But the Cracken has

been let out. It's out. Okay. Well, we'll circle back and really dig into the AI. I don't feel like you were very douchey in that conversation. Well, I didn't get to the douchey part. Okay, got it. Okay. All right. He likes to warm up to it. So, you know. Well, you did say it takes a while, like you in small doses and then as they get to know you better. Okay. So at the end of the podcast, we'll see how it goes. Yeah. To really know me is to be ultimately disappointed. Why am I going to send my kids to this janky school where they can learn about Bitcoin and dive into a screen. that I'm already nervous they're spending too much time in front of and what's going to happen to collaboration and aren't they going to go there's the juicy part now i get it all right but aren't they

going to be aren't you going to turn them inward yeah at a time when i i want my kid just completely immersed and engaged and you know i'm not so sure i don't feel nervous about him not feeling as smart. You're doing such a good job of getting like every single critical, skeptical thing into that one statement. And I love it. Well, you're such an upbeat lady. And it's also, there's so much technical stuff going on. And I love this, this line of questioning because here's what I find. And I talk to thousands of people around the country now about what our schools are. And there's always this initial fear, skepticism, and even just downright disgust. And, I know I would never want to send my kid to a school like that and then what I find is when they take just a couple of minutes to really look under the hood and realize a few things

First of all giving kids the ability to really have great academic knowledge in this world with AI You have people going oh I guess is it time to just outsource all thinking and not do that and the answer is absolutely not We need to make sure that people are always going to be on that gray frontier of what's new knowledge acquisition AI knows the black and white of what's there. How are we gonna make sure that people have the critical thinking skills and the knowledge in their head to go out and create new knowledge?

Because I'll tell you what? People doing critical thinking without knowledge in their heads. You know what that's called? Hallucination. Right? It is. It's hallucination. So first of all, it's imperative that we make sure kids are learning. They're not learning in this current system. If that model worked, then it would be awesome, but they're not.

We're showing that it does. And we're doing it in such a shorter time. Yes. That's why I think it's really important to set the table. Yeah, you have to set that table. We're not in some sort of, like, hey, it's all the same. Which flavor do you prefer? Everybody also compares things to like Prince Charming.

You know, like there's this version of this perfect education charming that's all perfect. And unfortunately, that's not the reality of what the current system is. But when you can sit there and say, okay, we have a way to deliver academic knowledge that meets every kid where they're at and leads to that success and do it in a shorter time to give more room for, I think, so much of what you described, which is engagement with others, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, you know, all of those things are what people are going to need to have those skills. Well, you mentioned athletics.

I mean, athletics is a big deal. That's where a lot of kids learn how to grow up and leadership. It's actually probably the main place that people learn, you know, those skills, sports, But you know where else they learn them is in those after school activities? Speech and debate and the performing arts, band, music, all of those kinds of things. And what we're doing is we're giving kids the ability to spend the majority of their school day engaging in that stuff with each other, with other kids and with caring adults who are serving as mentors and coaches and connecting. And then add to the fact that, you know, there's no homework to do at night. And I'm going to throw in one more thing.

You talked about this cracking that's been on leash AI. what are we going to do with it? Most schools around the country are bearing their heads in the sand. They're saying, okay, we're going back to pen and paper. We are going to not allow any AI. Here's what we need to do. That ain't going to work. We need to teach young people and old people too.

How do you use AI tools to give them the skills that give them an advantage, not to outsource their thinking, not to cheat, but instead be able to say. And so examples of that is when you can help kids learn tools like using open cloud to create businesses that are generating revenue of four and five figures. a month for a 16 year old, those are some of the skills we want. And really what it fundamentally gets down to is that idea of learning how to learn, learning how to put in the work and finding that thing, which is going to be honestly even more important in this new world where we could at some point just plug into the matrix and just kind of hang out. You got to find what's the

thing that's going to get you out of bed every morning and excited to go contribute. And we are raising creators and contributors, not consumers. As most of you know, I don't build houses for a living. But I know a lot of people who do, and aside from hiring skilled tradespeople, they all have the same primary complaint. They're drowning in information. Their days are spent chasing down PDFs, scrolling through text threads, or trying to figure out which version of a plan is the most current. That's why builders across America are turning to digs. Diggs is an AI-powered platform that connects everything into one visual workflow, plans, documents, selections,

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I keep quoting this thing because it was on the other night. Okay. There's so many great moments. But what you just said reminded me of my favorite beat, which is when Morpheus or maybe Neo asked Trinity if she knows, how to fly that helicopter. Oh, yeah, and she's like, not yet. She says, not yet.

Now I do, right? And you talk about compartments and, like, people's brains, as I understand, like, the basic IQ testing. Part of what that evaluates is how many compartments you have and how you're able to access those compartments. And, I mean, God, I'm just hoping a question comes out of this free association, but isn't it ultimate, like, like, when do you figure out if you're, smart. Oh, this is such a cool topic. Thank God I got to it. You did. That was good, Mike. I was worried

about you, but I felt like I brought you out. I brought you to where you need to go. If there's one thing is worse and being duchy, it's being in coherent. And you know what you did? You threw me a softball because I'm so excited about this. Here's what you're actually talking about. We're talking about working memory and something called cognitive load theory. It's a learning science principle that basically understands how can how much information can a person take on and at what point does their information they're learning go from their working memory to their long-term memory. Now, you might have like 12 slots available of working memory, and I only have four. And so the way I come at some new material is going to be different than the way you come at it.

And again, in a traditional school, we're getting it thrown at us at the same time, whereas when we can really personalize education where it's like, okay, McKenzie, I get it. You're a little bit slower on this, but they don't say that, right? We can go in and we focus on making sure that your working memory gets put in your brain so that you can put it over into your long. long-term memory, and I'll give you a real practical example of that. Let's say you're taking on a harder, you know, let's say you're actually looking at the revenue for your TV show for the year, and you're calculating what was your net profit, what were you doing? And if it takes you while to go, well, wait a second, what's 100 minus 63? That's working memory that's going on here, versus if you just know, okay, that's 37 and I am able to go on, that moves your brain available

to go do higher order thinking. You play darts. I will say, I don't really play darts. Have I played darts? Yes, my brother's a farmer in Minnesota, and we do sometimes find ourselves in the little rural town bars, and they seem to always have darts,

but no, I don't. There's a game. There are a lot of dark games, but the big one is called, it's either 301 or 501, and you basically race to zero. Okay. And you start it, whatever number of this.

Oh, yeah. When you see these guys playing, you've got to double in or double out, And there's trips, and of course, there are all the numbers there. And, you know, you've got to work your way down to an out that you can cleanly hit. My point is that there's so much math that's going on in a game of 01. I know they don't teach that in school. That is a great workshop idea.

We can do fast math with darts, right? And you're exactly right. That's the thing. We want to make sure that people have that kind of knowledge just embedded so that it's quick. And did you know, by the way, they're not teaching. fast math in schools. They have stopped teaching multiplication tables in schools. What do they teach in this? They, well, so there's a couple of things that this gets into a little bit bigger debate

that happens in education. We at Alpha are big fans of direct instruction, which is just like, hey, memorize your multiplication tables, right? So we have, we have games, we've built, we've got apps where we're just doing it, we even do calisthenic physical exercise where our guides are having kids go through their fast math. But I think a lot of other theories that have come out about school in recent years is kind of like, hey, kids will learn math by like going to the grocery store and calculating how many apples and how much does it cost and they'll kind of like figure this out. And it's really been a move towards like project based learning. And I think project based learning is great. But the problem we've had with some alternative schools is they've

gotten rid of like direct instruction and worked examples, you know, in order to do this. And what we found and I think why our model is doing so well is we're really taking the best of both worlds. Again, rigorous academics and doing it in less time to open up time for all those other really cool things. So it's reading, writing arithmetic, still the basics, but what's replaced reading, writing arithmetic? I mean, is there another, I don't know, something. Like I read something about collaboration and like the C's. I forget what they are. Oh, yes. Thank you. You've kind of done your homework. Yeah, I always talk about the four Cs. I've always kind of done my homework, McKenzie.

No, it's creativity. It's collaboration, communication, and... What is my other one? I always forget. The other C? Character? That's a huge part, right? We think about character, but creativity, collaboration, communication, and, I don't know, critical thinking.

You have to have all those things. Yeah, critical thinking. And those are such important skills. And, you know, again, when we have all of the information that we could possibly know, right there at the tip of our hands on our phones, what are we going to teach people to do with that information? And our answers, we believe you still have to have it and you have to know then what to do with it,

how to become an expert. And I don't know if you've seen this in your day-to-day world, but I am finding every day something new is coming out that I'm like, okay, I didn't even know about this, and now I've got to go learn. Like the days of saying, you know what, I've learned everything I need to know to be successful at my job, and it's going to get me through the next 20 years.

The half-life of knowledge is like three months, right now. And the jobs we're going to do are so different. I'm exhausted. This is another one of those conversations where I've been, I've been really lucky for the last 25 years to interview a lot of people and work on a lot of different shows. And, you know, I've written a lot of stories about people who were consequential in our time. And I forget, I'm starting to think something's, I mean, I've been drinking from my own fire hose. That sounds dirty, but you know what I mean? I've been so busy saying, hey, America, get a load of him, get a load of her. Yeah.

And then the next one comes along. And maybe it's my random access memory. Like, people are getting pushed out before I've had a chance to fully appreciate the, again, if there's a question in here, it's like, how much time do you need to have as a student to sit with whatever enlightenment, just smacked you over the head. And does Alpha give you enough time to do that if the whole lesson thing is happening in two hours? Well, I think it absolutely does, especially when you add the fact that kids are learning to mastery.

Right? So it's not like, okay, you do your two hours of learning on this topic and then the next day the topic is different. You go back to what you're doing. And I'll give you an example of this. Okay, on a Monday, when a kid comes in and says, okay, I've got my two hours of work to do, I'm going to do 25 minutes and I'm going to earn, you know, 25 XP's.

That's what kind of experience points. We borrowed a game from video game or a term from video game knowledge around this. They're saying, okay, I'm going to focus on learning fractions. Well, at the end of the day, if they're not finished with that unit, they come back the next day and they're still working on their fractions. So what's happening is they're taking the time that their brains need to truly absorb and remember this information. and then it's something that they revisit.

There's no world where it's like, I took one test and then that was the end of it, no matter what I got on the test, right? Think about in school, if you get a 70% on a test, you know, teacher maybe curves it and you move on. You don't learn all of that material. And so that idea of having kids really be able to sit down and think through the academic core knowledge that they're getting and learn its mastery makes for better retention. It makes for more success as they go in.

to more sophisticated topics. And then there's some level of connection that kids are able to get in the afternoons when they're doing things like creating food truck businesses. And the number of kids that we had who said, oh my gosh, now I'm connecting some of these math skills that I'm learning in the morning to how we're calculating what our profit margins are going to be

on our breakfast foods, right? And how much does our permit costs and how much are we paying people, you know, those types of things? And this is the kind of thing that I think really cements for kids what I would consider practical learning along with that kind of academic knowledge. And not only that, but how about this just on a more fundamental level? Giving kids time to just have fun, play, be outside, do physical things, get brain breaks. Those are things that are missing in our schools.

I'll give you a little test here. Do you know what the average time for recesses in the United States right now? 45 minutes 22 minutes there are school oh here's another I was 100% off let me give you another one that's absolutely crazy did you know that a lot of not a lot of schools

but schools have started implementing silent lunches oh no during lunch in the cafeteria no talking no talking and you know what they'll do then based on who's been the quietest they will release tables based on like the most quiet table you get to go out first for the rest of your recess or whatever and I will tell you for the

life of me. I've heard parents and kids tell me that their school has silent lunches. I've never gotten to meet one of these administrators because I'd love to know what in the world are you thinking that this is the right answer to do? It's crazy. But this is something we've got to do is give kids that time to go try things, play to get that. We've got to school. Wait a minute, wait, no, wait, no. Yes. I'm ready. That fire hose I was talking about. You got to, there's so much. There's just so much. There's so much. There's so much coming at me. I can't. Okay.

What's the argument for sending a kid to the fifth grade who has clearly demonstrated he hasn't mastered anything in the fourth? Yeah. What's the argument? Well, the argument is what are they going to do with these kids? You've got to move them through this conveyor belt system in the traditional world. Because our schools aren't built to have 17-year-olds who are sitting back in fourth grade, right? And actually, there's policy decisions that were made years ago, no child left behind type things that say you've got to do it, which now has resulted. The grade inflation is insane, Mike. You talked about like, oh, getting a C or something like that. That doesn't really happen anymore. It's the worst example of everybody gets getting a trophy I can think of.

Participation trophy award. And let's move. In fact, we have a really good public school district in my hometown in Austin. And they have just rolled out in basically K through 8. They've got. gotten rid of grades. Here's what they're doing instead. A's and M's. M's are mastered. A's, which, you know, sound really good to parents when they're looking at a report card, is approaching mastery. Approaching mastery. Now, that could mean... I thought it was asshole. That might be the people making up these ideas. But 1% if you fail a test, you're approaching mastery. You're not there yet, but don't worry. This is like you're getting closer to being a fully actualized person. You're almost mastered here. What are we doing? And that it's like the whole world is decided to just dig its head in the sand and just say like we're going to pretend la la la la. Now again,

I understand why they were doing it because they didn't have a better solution, but we finally do. And that's why one of the things I will say, I take it as a compliment. A lot of people when they spend time with me, they're like, you're so optimistic and you're so happy. And I'm like, yeah, because what? You are an upbeat lady, man. This is freaking awesome what we have enabled kids to do. And we see this when we've got 96% of our students say they love school. And when we've got, you know, 100% of our kids and little things, I won't say that high. Let's say, I think I looked at the last survey. It's like, you know, in the 90s of my guide is changing my life, right? I love my guide. It's a fun place to be. And when you can take that kid who's been struggling and comes in so

far behind, and then they can literally go up three grade levels in a matter of months, that's fun. And you can take that kid who's like, I could be doing so much. much more. And you're like, great, here you go, go for it. Well, what do you do if, I mean, do you even deal with kids who aren't motivated? Or is there a win? Absolutely. Now, here's the challenge. This is what our guides get paid the big bucks for. And when I say big bucks, we do believe they should be paid well. So they all start at a minimum of $100,000 a year. Because anyone who is going to devote their time and their career to working in a child's classroom, they should be paid well. So that is the guide's job is to go, okay, how do I take a kid who really strong?

struggles with motivation. They're not having any of it themselves. How do I get them connected? And that can be everything from, like I said, paying kids to, you know, we have a kindergarten classroom where I walked into recently and this little girl taps her nose and that's her secret sign with her guide that she's hit one of her academic goals on her computer. And that signals a 15 second silent dance party. And that's enough to get that little girl excited. Why does it have to be silent? Well, sometimes they actually, I was in another classroom once where they went and did a 15 second Taylor Swift dance party in the in the corner. But here's why, because they're sitting here.

All these kids are focused and locked in. And it's just, it's not disruptive. So it's not like a lunch where you should, you got to be talking. It's 15 second. Just like, hey, I see you and I see that you're crushing it. Good job. And that gets them so excited, you know, to do that to that squishy that's been, you know, curated into the Emporium to do that.

Or how about things like when kids hit their goals, it earns them the ability to go work in the tent in the classroom, like, or go have... The tent? Yeah, we've got cool tents. We've got, you know, beanbags. We've got couches. We've got comfortable chairs. You know, all these things.

We give kids a lot more autonomy. And here's what we... Criticism we get, Mike, is, oh, you're so reliant on, like, extrinsic motivation. What about that, you know, intrinsic motivation? And here's what I say, you know, it'd be amazing if everybody was just intrinsically motivated all the time. But I can tell you, every person in this room, they're showing up. because they're getting a paycheck. They may love their job as well.

Yeah, about that job. But they're also getting that. He'll talk to you about that later. But and so first of all, it's not reality. And then the other thing is, great. So are you going to just say, sorry, if you're not in terms of motivated, back to that earlier point, it's your fault. And our answer is we got to do this. What do you do for the douchey kid? I mean, is there a dunch cap? Is there the clapping of erasers? No, let me give you some examples of things like that. No, that's, we're not quite in that, that day and age anymore. That's probably one that's been left better in the past. Although, you know, my old

school, like back when I was a little kid, they did do some of the paddles. Sure. It's crazy. And I, you know, I was like, I was born in 1976. That's not that long ago. It's insane. But I was born in 1970s. I'm very young. No, no, I get it. And so, yeah, so there's things, so first of all, there's a few things that we've incorporated in order to create behavior standards so that kids can realize, okay, number one, it is a work-hard culture. It is a meritocracy culture. So, for example, if you don't hit the goals that you have for a workshop, if you don't pass a workshop, you may not go on the snowboarding trip to Utah because you didn't hit your goals. And that's something that sometimes parents go, wait, what? We're going to miss this.

But again, we believe that kids learn so much when they try something hard, when they fail. and they're surrounded by support and coaching to help get them better. We also have something called Town Hall. This is our basically student governance system where kids are able to come within their grade level, basically, and say, all right, here's an idea or a proposal I have for the community, or here's a problem we're seeing in this community, and here's what we want to work through.

And here's what we find is that when kids have a sense of ownership in their community and culture, they raise themselves and each other to a higher standard than when it's this top-down, authoritative, you will do as I say, you will sit where I say on that. And one of the most beautiful things I see is when new students come into our culture and they might try to do the things that were cool in their old school like goof around or heckle or kind of not pay attention. And pretty quickly it's like, oh, no, actually, you know, what's cool to do here is to try

something and to, you know, achieve your goals and to connect. with something you're interested in. And that it's almost like they're able to take off this cloak of trying to fit in and instead truly embrace who they are and what they want to be. And it gets back to another point of socialization. I think almost every parent I talk to would say probably the most important thing about their school is that kids get socialized. They get to be with their friends.

But think about, again, traditional education, the way we socialize kids, just throw them in, hope they figure it out. good luck to you hope you find your place in the pecking order we believe that kids can get coaching and development around relationship building around connecting with others around being interesting and interested in other people and so we help create so much space and time and time kids get to do here's an example of a project our kids do have you ever done an escape room every day every day well next time i'm in town what do you think this place is oh wow this is going to be really fun. I've got a flight this afternoon. It's fun. So we have kids do escape rooms. And what we're

really doing is we're teaching communication and basically upholding community standards. And so we will mic these kids up after they've gone through a lot of our coaching and work they've done over a period of six or seven weeks. They'll go into an escape room and we're micing them up and we are measuring how much of their language is considered uplifting. They have to get basically a positivity score above 80%. And I will tell you, you take a bunch of fifth graders and put them in an escape room without that coaching versus after, you see significant differences because kids are starting to be thoughtful about, oh, what is the best way to be a leader? What is the best way to be a team player? Those are things that we want everyone to be able to develop. I will tell you, there's probably

some adults that could use a little AI coaching when it comes to how they communicate, you know, with other people on their teams. And these are just some of the skills. In addition, grit and hard work. You know, our kids are doing firefighter challenges. They're running Spartan races as a team. We've got kindergartners who are learning how to climb a 40-foot rock wall or ride five miles as a team. We're teaching, you know, leadership and teamwork. We're teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Think how many great lessons come out of trying a business, right? And then public speaking and storytelling, being able to communicate well with others and get your point across, those are the skills that we're going to need to have kids be ready to go do.

But does that teaching occur in the time you freed up, like in the afternoon? Yeah, in the afternoons. Because I get a little confused going back and forth between what I'll just call extracurricular kinetic, tactile teaching. But take me back to those first two hours, right? And because I'm not quite clear, like what happens in the second grade, the fifth grade, the eighth grade, seniors, are you still? teaching a rigorous kind of curricula, at what point do you let the student go, look, I'm

curious about this. I want my guide and my AI proctor to take me in a deeper dive, maybe toward a humanities. Yeah. Right? I mean, how do you like... Yeah, we're not really doing that. What we're doing is we're saying, all right, let's get all of the core content that you need. So if that's whatever, kindergarten and first grade, that's, you know, learning how to read and, you know, math numbers. And then in high school, that's things like APUS history and AP English literature and biology and chemistry and calculus. All of the same kind of classes. Advanced placement, which is something that, you know, basically it's kind of an honor student track that can give you college credit or in college credit. And so our students are taking the same kind of curriculum that students,

a traditional class are taking. They're just able to ingest it more efficiently and more effectively. And then in the afternoons, they can take whatever their interests are. So I'll give you an example. We have a fourth grade girl who loves physics. She's very fascinated by physics. She certainly loves science when she's doing science in the morning. She does her academics. And she has decided she wants to create a podcast that teaches quantum physics principles to other kids in a way that's relatable. And so her podcast is called Quantumplations. And in the afternoons, she's spending the time learning how to be a podcast

host. And that's doing everything from figuring out, what's my subject material, who am I going to interview, how am I going to communicate this message around quantum physics to an audience for ages 10 to 15? That's an example of a kid taking an interest that she has. Here's another example. And applying it to something to something practical. And relevant.

Well, maybe not practical, but yes. No, it's practical. Yeah, it's practical. Not to say it's not practical, but yes, taking something and go, oh, I have this interest and I'm going to create a podcast around it. 10 years ago, there were 10,000 podcasts. Today, they're 4 million. I mean, that I would think is, you know, to be able to see that whole ecosystem

evolve and explode right in front of me, of course they're going to be interested in that. And, you know, back when I was in high school, I couldn't even contemplate such a thing. Yeah. We just never had anything, I don't think, blow up quite that quickly. Right. Which is back to the tech. I mean, this is where, and back to drinking from some sort of metaphorical fire hose. Yeah.

There's just so much crap. I wanted to ask you about apps and how they differ. Well, you were mentioning, like, what does this two hours look like? Yeah. And here's what it is. I'm going to walk you just through a very quick day at one of our schools. 8.45 a.m. kids all come in and we do a 15 minute limitless launch. Think Tony Robbins for kids. This is the time where kids come together. They do some sort of usually a challenge.

Sometimes there's a physical component. It's like figure out as a team how you're going to build a tower out of these things that goes the highest. What we're doing during that time is first of all, we're getting the kids just kind of pumped up and excited. And then our guides are usually incorporating some sort of growth mindset technique or strategy that these kids can then take into the rest of their day and their life. Then at 9 o'clock, it's time for our students to go into that two-hour core learning block. This is when they're doing the math, reading, the writing, the, you know, language, the history, the science. Chemistry. Chemistry depends on it, whatever it is. And by the way, whatever they need to do. So, for example, I mean, we had a kindergartner who's doing seventh grade

reading. Now, whole other thing that apps allow, she can be reading seventh grade hardness of reading that's not the content that might not be appropriate for a six-year-old, right? And that's another example of the benefits of personalized adaptive technology. But they spend basically 25 minutes in what we call a Pomodoro session, right, 25 minutes of focus time, working on their computers, all hanging out together, guides are nearby and they're working with them. Then they take a break, they get outside, and they play, they go do recess, they come back, they do the next thing. They do that basically for 120 minutes. You know, they have 120 minutes of focus time. Then it's lunchtime, get outside, play, have some lunch, and then they jump into their workshops in the afternoon. And so these are workshops

like, you know, learning how to code self-driving go-karts, where you also learn how to build a go-kart. I mean, how cool is that, right? In fact, one of the really fun events we did at the end of that session was we had a contest between the parents and the kids where they had to do it was like called pit stop and they had to go and do a full you know change of tires do everything within a certain amount of time a spoiler alert the kids beat the parents at it uh you know it's things like that they're getting to go out and build um they're doing you know physical activities they are learning some sort of life skill in some sort of way that is exciting we did an adaptability and teamwork uh life skills workshop where the kids were learning to sail and at the end of this event, these kids' final tests to pass was they sailed from Florida to the Bahamas,

manning a boat, right? These are things they do. How old? These were fifth, sixth, seventh grade kids. Here's another one that we just did. So you got a guide on the boat with them? We had guides kind of around in there. I mean, we were making sure it's safe, but these kids were doing everything. You know, they're working through that. Here's another one that was really fun. It just, it happened in Orange County and in Palm Beach this year. This was a Navy SEAL training. And so the test to pass for these kids, and I'm talking second, third, fourth grade level kids, these kids had to be able to swim two laps, dragging a body with them. In some cases, an adult or a baby.

Then they had to perform CPR, life-saving measures on them. They had to dive to the bottom of a 13-foot pool and bring up a lockbox and use actually do a math logic puzzle to open this lockbox and do this. They're learning, first of all, they're learning to swim, they're learning CPR, they're learning. They're learning life-saving techniques, but they're also learning how to work under pressure. They're learning grit. They're doing all that kind of thing. There are so many ways you can teach kids these life skills

that are super fun. That's called the Boy Scouts. Exactly. That's called Merit Badges, at least when I grow up with it. We have a school in Texas that's a wilderness and outdoor school. And so kids are learning everything from fishing to building, lodging, to growing, actually, we do this at all our schools, growing food, selling it at a farmer's market, donating profits to a local food bank.

There's so many cool things that kids can do and get out work hard. And, you know, for me, that is something. I grew up kind of a country girl. I worked at hog farms every summer. My mom had a very strong belief that I should spend part of my summer doing hard work, and she equated that to manual labor, which I think there's so much that comes out of knowing how to get dirty. Well, you're from North Dakota. Yeah, it's that.

And so it's like things like that when you give kids a chance to go. In fact, this past session, one of the themes we were focusing on is that the key to happiness is contributing to your community. So when kids are out there building, you know, homeless packs and working with kids or building tiny housing for, you know, one of our communities for formerly homeless people, like there are so many awesome skills that kids can learn. And again, all of this can be done between the hours of 845 and 3.30. They don't have to be saved for weekend activity or I hope you figure out time when you're at home to, you know, get out to do this. Give kids their time back to then spend their evenings just hanging out with their friends and their family and getting sleep. What's the data say? The data so far is very positive, but it's small, right?

We are private schools that are just spreading around the country. And what we're seeing is that our test results are crushing. And one of the common criticisms we'll get is, well, you're a private school and an alpha school, which is what we're most known for, is a super high-end private school, right? Tuition between $40,000 and $75,000, you know, less than 1% of the population is even considering going to this. But here's what I would say to that is, great, just compare our results to other high-end private schools. How are we doing compared to Harvard Westlake? That's why I'm asking you. How are we doing?

We're crushing them. You know, this is what I think works. Now, add to that the other factor, which is if you're really going to change education, which I truly believe we are, you have to get it out to the world, right? You can't just serve the top 1%. That is not going to do anything, right? No, actually, it will do something. Well, it does help, but it's not going to get to a billion kids. And so here's what is, though.

When we're doing things like we're taking our Texas Sports Academy schools in Texas, Texas is a state that recently passed school choice. So families are able to apply for education savings accounts. And this first year that it's doing, all of the applications, basically the ESAs are going to go to families that make less than $65,000 a year or have kids with special needs. Texas Sports Academy will be the largest recipient of those applications for kids. And so we're going to be able to serve families who are getting the exact same academic model that our alpha students are getting for free. And that's the kind of thing. And go get to play sports in the afternoon. I'll tell you what's going to make a lot of people excited when they realize, wait, my kid can get out on the field or the court starting at noon.

That's amazing. We've got a guy, Germain O'Neill. Do you know him? Germain O'Neill. You know him. Okay, great. He owes me money. I have to say, well, great, you're joking with me.

He is a, what, how many time NBA All-Star? Basketball, All-Star. He's super great. He runs one of the schools called Dynamic Prep outside of Dallas, Texas, and his kids are doing our academics in the morning. in the afternoon, they're out on that court. And I'll tell you what Germaine O'Neill knows how to do. He knows how to coach. He knows how to get kids motivated.

And he knows how to teach kids to have high standards and work hard. Well, let me tell you about Germaine, O'Neill. It's like a boy named Sue. Somebody names you Germain. You got to step up. You got to be great. You do. Because you're going to take a lot of crap.

Yeah. I think that's exactly right. Well, I don't think he took a lot of crap because he's like six, seven. The first time I met him, I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. But it's very powerful for a kid to get essentially a lesson from an undeniable expert in his field. Sure, but you know what? You don't even need to have that. That's a unique situation.

How about this? How about having a caring adult who you know is in your corner come alongside of you and say, okay, this is something you're interested in pursuing? Let's go figure it out together, right? And that's why our guides and that role doesn't require them to be a subject matter expert in, you know, science or eighth grade math or whatever it is. Instead, they are going to say, all right, I'm going to get to know you. I'm going to understand what it is that you're interested in developing or pursuing. And we're going to work through this together.

And that brings back that skill of, again, learning how to become an expert in anything that you do, which we have to have to have in this day and age. When these kids, you know, the jobs that they're going to do haven't even been created yet. Well, for sure we need experts, but I think we really need generalists. I mean, isn't that what the humanities are, like a broad-based understanding of a lot of different disciplines that might not have any real practical use for me day in and day out, but nevertheless, look, I spend a lot of time defending my foundation because in a sound bite world, a lot of what I say, gets translated as anti-college or, you know, anti-four-year degree. It's not true. My liberal arts education, I think, served me pretty well. But in 1984, the whole thing cost

13 grand, right? Yeah. So, like, I'm going to get back to the money, too, in a second. But this just has to do with the idea that I don't, I think skills-based training is certainly at the heart of what my foundation is all about. But I never meant to suggest or imply. that a person ought to enter the world with no appreciation for a liberal arts degree or no understanding for the humanities? Because to your point, if we want people who can think critically, you know, they have to pick up Kierkegaard. They have to read the Stoics. They have to at least be able to hold up their end of the conversation around the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, right? Well, you know, E.D. Hirsch has this concept, 5,000 coroner.

knowledge basically 5,000 facts, ideas, concepts that an educated person needs to know. And that's one of the things we're able to start incorporating into these learning. So when kids are learning reading comprehension, right, they're able to get exposure to Shakespeare, to Kirkagard, to those types of things, and give people that exposure. Here's what I fundamentally am trying to do with the kids that come through our system. When they graduate at high school, I want them to be prepared to go do whatever it is they want to do. And if that means they want to go to a four-year degree at an Ivy League school or they want to go to their big state college or they want to go straight into the working world they have the skills and the abilities to go do that whatever that is

can you teach virtue can you teach like you know nature and nurture and all of that stuff so that's one of our kind of five pillars we've got five pillars that we focus on at our school you know again love school learning our guide relationship life skills and character classmates and culture And I actually think as a parent, at the end of the day, what I really care about with my kids is that they're good people. I want them to be virtuous. I want them to be kind. I want them to be thoughtful. And I think there are a lot of things that you can teach.

And it's everything from, you know, our kids give 360 feedback to each other, right? And there is nothing, which I didn't have this growing up, but the power that has when you can read, okay, this is how my classmates see me. Am I uplifting to the community? Am I contributing? We asked kindergartners, would you trust Mike to take care of your favorite stuffed animal? You know what? And if it's like, no, I wouldn't. It's like, okay, well, what can we do to earn that trust?

How can we show that we are respectful of other people's things or of our things, right? It's everything from learning how to play a game fairly and not cry. I had a parent come up to me the other night and said, Alpha has been so transformative for my kid. And here's one reason why. game nights with my seven-year-old used to be kind of brutal because he'd throw a fit if he didn't win or he'd want to change the rules or whatever. And we're having a game night the other night and he loses and he high fives his brother and he says, failures, fuel. We'll get them next time.

And those are the kind of things that I think do start reaching towards virtue. The idea of looking outward and contributing to your community. I was at one of our schools where the kids were doing a workshop where they were connected with senior citizens from a senior center. The goal at the end of the seven weeks was they surprised their senior citizen grand pals pals with a graphic novel book that they used AI to create that had the stories that the grand pals had been telling them. So these kids are learning interview skills. They're learning to connect with someone from a different generation. And they're making something that's wholly unique. Oh, totally unique. And they'd painted, they'd done painting together. So we're doing art stuff and we're doing that.

And then to have that kind of connection and for kids to walk out and say, well, that's a lot. I was really special. And you know what? Sometimes it's great to sit down and talk to somebody that I wouldn't think. We have a great video on my future of education where this old guy's telling him about how he used to keep a chipmunk in his pocket, you know, and take him around there. And this kid's like, huh, okay. And those are skills, by the way, that I think have almost become lost arts, you know, the idea of learning from a different generation and connecting with people that aren't just, you know, in your immediate family. Sure. Getting feedback. Here's another one. Rejection training. How many times have you had

someone say no, you know, when you're, well, you're better off than I do. I have not figured it out. People say no, I was lucky I got my husband to say yes to me, right? I'm in the entertainment business. My entire, the entire rubric is based on. No. And here's the thing. We have to make sure that kids are willing to go put it out there. So one of the things that we have our kids do, and this is, this true for fourth, fifth graders, they have to go become an expert in something that they're interested in. And then they have to reach out to, 50 experts in their field. So we had a boy who's interested in ornithology. Birds. Birds. Loves birds. And so he's learning all about birds. And then he goes and he's researching,

identifying who are all the experts in ornithology. And then he has to learn how to create a professional, well-written email that reaches out that doesn't just say, hi, professor, so-and-so, can you please tell me about birds? Actually, have an intelligent, you know, question. I was reading the paper you wrote on this. And I was curious, how did you collect that research, whatever? And guess what? Out of 50 emails, he got probably six responses. So you're starting to learn that, you know what? You just keep trying. You just keep going.

You don't take no for an answer, right? See, Chuck takes it real personal. You know, we might have guests here that we want to come on and we reach out. Yeah. And sometimes he doesn't hear back from their people. Oh, I'm so sorry. And you would think somebody just, like, took his blankie and kicked him in the throat. Well, come spend a week at Alpha and we'll teach you that.

You know, this is another thing. One of the checks we have for our kids, for our kindergartners, is that you can, you can receive feedback without crying. And I'll tell you what, we have high school students who come into our school who cannot pass that kindergarten check. They're like, I get feedback and I cry. And you know what? We believe feedback is fuel. Feedback is great. How are you going to get better if you don't have feedback? You know, how do you get better if you're not building whatever it is you're working on in public so that you can find out what do they want? What are they needing to make your product better? we have our students in middle school go through an exercise. It's called dream launcher. And here's

what they do. First thing they do is they do an Ikeye values chart. What do I love? What am I good at? What does the world need? Right? And they look at those things. Then we have them do something called 168 hours where they track the 168 hours of their week and they see how do I spend my time. And then what's really amazing about that when they had their ekeyei guy values chart and then they actually see how they spend their time. There's a realization that kind of can happen there. And we'll have kids go, wow, I got bad news. I guess I'm going to be the world's best TikTok scroller because I spend a lot of time doing that. And they start seeing, wait a second, who I want to be is not matching up with how I spend my time. And what can I change on that?

And then we have them go through and say, all right, let's take this interest you think you've identified and go spend two weeks going down a rabbit hole and learning as much as you can about that. And you know what? Sometimes at the end of that two weeks, kids are like, oh yeah, it turns out I'm not interested in that. Or, wow, I really am interested. We had a kid this fall who had said to us, you know, he goes, if you told me that you'd pay me $100 an hour for the rest of my life to play video games, I'd be like, sign me up. And months later, he's like, I am so busy learning how to code and build and create video games. I don't even have time to play video games anymore. Boy, I'm glad I can move this mic around because I'm about to eat from the fire hose, I guess.

And so imagine being me. Yeah, and so this is what, I just think that, you know, these are the kind of opportunities we want people to have. And I think, I think adults should spend some time going through that dream launcher exercise. Heck, yeah. What's it called the Japanese word? Ikigai values workshops. Ikigai values charts. Yeah, I've heard of that with a masagi.

Are you familiar with that? I need to become more of an expert on that. It's the deliberate attempt to do something that has, a high likelihood of failure. Yeah. Right? And it's this idea that it's, failure is so important that the only way to truly challenge yourself in a meaningful way is to get the stakes high along with the failure rate.

So you've really got real skin in the game. You know, Fred King, this teacher that I mentioned earlier, he would do this thing. I mean, these are high school kids and he would say, okay, this is, This year for the big concert, we're going to do the Hodee by Ralph von Williams, which is a mother. I mean, it is 10, 10, 10 beauty, 10 difficulty. No high school has any business. Same thing, box mass, and B minor.

By the way, I heard you were an opera singer. Yeah, I mean, it was a doubt. I did a little of my own research, too, so cool. Well, I sang in the opera. That sounds like an opera singer to me. You know what I did once too? I went down a hill on skis. But nobody says, here comes Mike Rowe, the skier.

I disagree. I think that we need to. I went golfing once too. We work through your identity, which, by the way, that is a huge thing, too. Just go back to your story. But when kids start doing hard things and they start having success, it builds competence and confidence and it changes the way they see themselves. But it's like the Russian judge, you know, who sits there.

Like, God, he's so strict. You know, it's like my old. Mrs. Backshyter, A-minus. Never give anybody more than an A-N-A. Doesn't matter what you do. There's something, it's all connected in some weird way. The feedback, the fuel, the failure that you're talking about, those things are so important. But if we grade on a curve, who are we helping? If we pass that kid to the fifth grade who still doesn't know when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, what are we doing? No, well, it's lowering the standard. And actually, Chuck, if you want me to give you a connection for a great podcast guest.

There's a guy, his name's Dr. David Yeager. He is like the rock star of the psychology community. He's a professor at University of Texas. And he wrote a book called 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating Young People. And basically it's looking at how do you motivate this age group, which again, 10 to 25, but you can take this all the way across, which is he has found that the secret to motivation is holding people to high standards and also providing that high support. to help them be great.

Now, the other opposite thing is you can have low standards and high support. Oh, honey, everything's perfect. You're perfect no matter what. Or you can have high standards and no support. And then you're just like a military drill sergeant. But you mentioned the SEALs. Bud's training. That's a great example of a thing that only matters because the majority wash out.

Yeah. I mean, how awesome is that? I talk a lot about the different ways the military will recruit. It's really telling when you think about what the Navy is offering. It's an adventure. And the Army is like, hey, be all you can be. And when you come out, you'll be that much smarter and you'll kill it in the civilian world. Coast Guard has their things, so forth.

You know, the Marines, probably not for you. And you know what, though? They have their backs. You know, they have each other's backs, too. That's the other thing that you're creating when you get back to that whole classmates and culture and virtue, right? and sometimes doing hard things together, right? That's the thing that gets kids excited.

When they know they're part of a bigger team, and we put our kids in situations like this all the time at our schools where they know like, hey, I got to show up and do my best because my team's counting on me. And isn't that what we want? Well, look, if failure is the fuel, and you also said feedback, I guess everything's fuel over there at Alpha. I think a lot of things are fuel.

Okay. Well, I just, it just seems. seems like such a fundamental point to make, but so many parents are afraid that when their kids fail, the cost will be nothing less than their self-esteem. So many others believe if their kids don't fail, the cost will be nothing less than their self-esteem. Somebody is not just wrong. They're really wrong. I mean, profoundly wrong. And it goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Something is profoundly wrong with our knee-jerk desire to make sure we don't wind up with, you know, a 16-year-old in the fourth grade. I get it. That's bad. That won't work for a bunch of social

reasons, but the solution can't be no child left behind because that just is another way of saying no no idiot doesn't get a diploma. Yeah. And I think that's something that hopefully we are an example of a new way of thinking around that. And, you know, we come back to sports. You know, no coach has kids work on their dunks if they can't dribble the ball down the court, right? And mastery learning is such a big part of sports development, of music development.

I'm sorry to interrupt your amazing opera story we were going through. I didn't bring it up, really. That was your story. But it's like these are the things we've got to bring them back into academics. Here's another thing we do. Our kids actually go back and they review kind of their game film from their academics. Like, okay, today, I didn't hit my goals, and here's why.

I was struggling with focus on here. I had an extra hard concept that it took me a little while to, like, go back and find. And when they have that attitude where they're, like, reviewing game film, you know, think about in sports how often the coach has you go back and say, let's go look at what happened in this game and where we could go better. For some reason in academics, that's not a thing we do. And I'll never forget I was in a classroom, in our kindergarten classroom. And at the end of the day, as part of the payouts, when they're paying the kids, their alpha

bucks, our guide gives each kid, here's how much you earned. And this little boy stands up and he says, you know, okay, today I hit only one of my four math goals and two of my four reading goals. And the reason was I've struggled with being focused. And so tomorrow, I'm not going to sit next to Gus. This kid's five years old. Five years old. And not only was he able to articulate, here were my goals.

and here's how I landed in comparison with my goals. Here's where I struggled, and here's what I'm going to do differently. And I think that kind of lesson is just critical. You can bring that into so many other places. And we have to get academics in a place where kids feel that sense of ownership, where they're actively moving through. No, I'll buy that. On the other hand, it does sound like Gus took it in the neck there.

I mean, what the hell did Gus do wrong? Gus is just trying to live. Gus was poking him. They're playing. And you know what, by the way, sometimes. You know, sit next to your friends when you're in, you know, I've learned this. I'll tell you what, if I ever go to an opera or classical music thing, I know to not sit to my next to my best friend from college, Zanobia, because she and I, we crack each other up.

And once we get started, it doesn't end. So I, like, we go to things. I'm like, you're sitting over there. I sit here. Hey, I was Gus, man. I get it. I was that kid. I want to be respectful of your time.

I know we've been at it for a bit, but I got to come back to the quasi-dushy thing. I got right here. Oh, yeah. I've been waiting all this time. Well, you brought it up. It's money. I love what you're doing. And I don't want the audience to think, you know something, this is way too precious.

It's way too bespoke. It's way too pie in the sky. Yeah. But if you're going to pay your guide's $100,000 and if you're going to charge, would you say, $40,000 to $75,000 a year? For one of our particular schools. Okay. But in general, like, how does the tuition sort of net out at this point?

Yeah. Well, we'll have actually starting this fall, we will have about three times as many students that will be paying no tuition for our school model as we currently have. That is thanks to education savings accounts that have been made possible. We are also starting to see some interest from some public districts. And, you know, one of the things that's kind of crazy when you think about how much money school districts are spending per student, they have a lot of fancy ways. where they'll kind of take the math and say, well, we take our administrative budget out. We take, you know, our building budget out or whatever. But it's basically between about $18,000 and $36,000 a year that goes towards an individual student in our country. Again, results questionable. And so we've got the results on academics in our country. Oh, you're saying questionable as dubious. Yeah, there are.

I'm saying, no, they're not questionable. No, no, they're terrible. Yeah. They're crystal clear. Yeah, you've got, I mean, there are schools in Illinois, $36,000 a year per student. It's like less than 8% or something are doing math or reading a grade. Or actually, there were things no one was proficient, right? And so there is money to go out there.

It's got to be allocated differently. And so we've got school models that are as, you know, as low for tuition base as $10,000 a year. And we've also got some interest from the public sector. Now, here's the thing. The public sector is going to need time. They're going to want to see data. I actually applied for charter status in 10 states, and I got brutally rebuffed. I got major rejection training in that 9 of the 10 declined to use this. And so it was a way, okay, we're not going to go in this path. What I'm trying to do is just build a distribution model, make it as open to as many people as possible.

And we're kind of starting with that Tesla business model, which is, you know, we've started at this high end, I think we're getting a lot of attention, a lot of traction because a lot of people in the United States, you heard about it from, you know, stand together from all these things that are hearing about this. And what's going to happen is we'll build more and more models that are going to spread and be able to do this. And I had the Secretary of Education at my school this past fall, and I got to tell her something. Yeah, McMahon. And I got to tell her something that I'd said many times before, but I said, you know, if you put me in charge of, you know, education in our country, here's what I do. And then I got to say Secretary McMahon, here's what I do. So everything I just talked to you about,

motivation, connecting with kids, you can take kids, put them on this academic plan, and at noon, instead of maybe, I mentioned that, you know, we had kids sailing to the Bahamas, we've got rock climbing trips to Italy, we're doing all these crazy things. You could also put kids out on the sports field in the debate team, in the performing arts thing, in the music class. The things that public schools are doing with kids, at 4 o'clock, they could start doing at 12. And guess what else they already have? They've already got coaches and teachers who are playing in that field around motivation connecting. It's going to require a transformation of how they spend their time. They're not going to be teaching science, but they're going to be focused on, hey, let's go do the robotics workshop, you know, or the lab in the

afternoon that kids are really excited for. I believe that so much is already baked into the system that could be a way for kids to go find that thing they get motivated about and enjoy learning. If they're willing to say, hey, school doesn't need to last all day from an academic perspective, we could fit it in this way. And we're willing to let AI and technology do the academic teaching instead of assuming a teacher has to be the one disseminating information. Are we going to live to see the public schools saved by AI? I very much hopeful, and I am waking up every day to work to do this. that in the best way I can. Now, it's a big battle. There is a system that does not want to die.

I think there are so many great devoted people that want to see change. And really what I hope is that we can be that example that helps people say like, wow, this works. And I'll tell you, Mike, there's never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old. There's never been a more exciting time to be a teacher if you're willing to say, wow, there is potential for change. And just like every other industry that we're seeing change, you know, five years of go, if you'd have told me that I was going to have some computer do a scan of my body to test for, you know, moles, you know, and skin cancer, instead of a doctor look with her magnifying glass, say, this one looks good, this one looks sketchy, whatever. I would have been like,

what are you talking about? There are so many other places we're now accepting that AI can do a better job. And I think education is that mountain that we need to get through. And so what we are continuing to do is just be transparent. Show our results. We've got more, a big result thing, will come at the end of the school year in June, we'll publish our results. And we believe that as we continue to learn more and more about how kids learn, how we can develop the best systems, we're attracting incredible talent. We've got the best learning science team in the world assembled. And they want to work with us, not just because we're this one little school doing something, but because we've got the ability to go make a big difference. And fundamentally what we're

seeing is we're igniting an interest in families who are going, oh my gosh, school doesn't have to be spinach. I don't have to send my kid to a place that he's like, I don't want to go. Why is the week so long? Instead, it can be this place that kids are excited about and that they're learning these useful skills that will take them through. And that's going to be a fundamentally important question that we ask, you know, as we're going to this next stage of our society. Why do you give it to them? Why do you care so much about this? Well, I started because I am a mom of two girls and I love these kids ferociously and I couldn't watch them go through the system that, you know, that exists. So when I farted, whoops. Can we cut that? Cut it. We're going to cut it into the

open. Yeah. When I. Up next. It's McKenzie Price working through some issues. When I started the first school when my girls were in first and third grade, you know, I just knew I wanted to see them lit up and excited and the first day of school, they get in the car at the end of the day, and we had had them do a boys versus girls lemonade business war. And they were like, oh my gosh, they're like, the boys made more money. Now, here's what they did. It was a five-day challenge. The boys started on the first day, and they were selling a lot more volume because they were able to make a lot more lemonade because they were using hose water, whereas the girls were like making pictures and running back out and doing this. What happened? So they were mad because they were like,

the boy sold so much more, we didn't have enough. But then their repeat customer business was way better for the girls because it turns out hose water lemonade, which you and I probably grew up on, not great. And so that was an exciting thing. Now, you know, it's been 14 years. I've got a 20-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old who's going to graduate from Alpha this year. And what's been so cool is to see these thousands of other kids around the country who are having the experience that I saw my girls have and have that.

I just want to say like that fire in their belly and that glint in their eye that's like, I am excited, I'm engaged, I'm passionate about something, I know how I want to use my talents and make a difference in this world. And could we ask for anything more than to wake up and feel like you're living what you're supposed to be doing, your purpose? And so it's a fun place to be. What happens to the universities as a result of this? Ah, that's a really exciting thing.

We're actually doing something pretty cool. We're going to bring down about 100 Stanford and MIT freshman. and sophomores to Austin, Texas this summer, and they're gonna run through a program that we have that's basically gonna help make them AI first. We believe that in that 10-week program, they'll develop skills that will be more valuable than a four-year computer science degree

from Stanford or MIT. I think the higher ed system is going to be right for change. And I've actually talked to university presidents from around the country or starting to reach out and realize like, huh, we gotta do something different. And so the very quick version, is that imagine if you could use an AI tutor, similar to what we're doing, to teach all of your base level classes and get kids up to a certain level. And then you could have students spend

time with their professors who don't really want to be teaching those basic classes, doing the discussion seminars and the research and the development and building businesses and working on startups. That is something that I think will become a lot more valuable. And by the way, the gauntlet program that our college kids are going to go through this summer that's something we started originally for adults and it's free and companies at the end hire these people and they pay that recruiting fee and I think that changes again how are we going to upskill you know our people and it shouldn't be with a bunch of debt that they walk out with and no job prospect amen final thought back to the money for a sec because I I suspect there are a lot of people listening or watching

who are just like, look, awesome. But the bottom line is, I don't have 10 grand. I need a free solution. I want my kids properly educated in accordance with the social contract that we all signed on for. I want my public schools to be better. I want the free option to have this. And I imagine some of those people probably feel left out of the conversation. And I would just say, you hit it, but you glossed over.

it, the Tesla model, right? I mean, so people really understand. The first microwave was $68,000 that Raytheon accidentally built. You know, it took a long time to get a microwave in the homes of the very people I'm talking to now. I did a story 10 years ago with a woman, a French chef, kind of famous.

Ariane Dogan was her name. She had this chicken. What was it called? Taylor, what kind of chicken was it? Like Green Ranch, Circle Ranch? Yeah, Green Circle Circle Chicken. Now, these are all organic, you know, like free-range chickens living their best poultry lives, right? And everything, they were just all just wonderfully cared for. And then by the time you eat them, you know, it's literally like a $70 chicken. Okay. Like for a serve, like on a menu, it's 70 bucks. Okay. And people were like, what's the freaking point, man? It's chicken. Why are we, you know,

why are you showing me something that I can get for free over here? Yeah. And it was the same basic answer. Like all good ideas come in the way you're coming into the market. It's not cheap. And to get it to scale, to get it in every classroom, to get it in every kitchen, you know, that's the trick. That first Starlink was pricey. And now you see people walking around with them in their backpacks.

Precisely. Yeah. So the final question is, and I won't hold you to it, but when will there be a guide in every public school instead of a teacher? And when is the average kid going to have access to this? I don't think there's ever going to be one model that fits all. So I don't think that, you know, the traditional school model will ever die. But what I think will happen is more and more options will become available that families can then decide what is right for the school. them. So for example, we are starting to move into the public school system, which again, will be free.

Families will have the ability to decide if they want to go into that system. It's got to be an opt-in type of thing. I mean, school choice, it's a thing. Some people don't have the choice. No, this is different. School choice gives money to go towards private education. We're going to be going to public education. So these are public schools where in these situations where superintendents and the boards have said, we like this idea and let's try it and let's give options to families in the district who want to be a part of this. And I think that's going to be an important thing to do. And, you know, I think more and more people will start to see this. But one of the things we've got, futureofeducation.org is a resource website that we've created that gives free resources for

not only things that families can do outside of school to help their kids learn, whether it's adaptive apps or AI tools and training, but also the ability to reach out to their leadership, to their politicians, to their school board, to say, hey, we want to see this type of education come in. And as we start to just get people more and more comfortable with knowing that we're not going to replace teachers, we're not going to take humans out of, you know, the equation. There's a lot we don't know about what the world's going to be like. But here's what I can tell you, Mike, in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, parents are still going to want to drop their children off in a building, surrounded by other kids, and loving, caring adults.

And then pick them up six hours later, smarter. Now, what they do during that day may not look the same. You know, like what they're doing at Alpha does not look the same is what you're doing at a school right down the street, you know, a traditional school. But I think when people realize, okay, and we have teachers, you know, come to work for us, and they're just like, it's like the most wonderful ability to finally empower them to do the things they've cared about doing in terms of impacting kids. And I think as we start to share that, you know, the teachers union, I'm sure hates us, right? They're not there. But as teachers start

to realize, no, no, no, this system is going to allow me to do a better job at my job. It's just going to look a little bit different. And I think more and more families are going to see this. We need to have a bottom up approach. You've started that, right? A bottom up idea when parents come together and say, hey, we want this. And that's part of what we're seeing at our schools around the country is we're having parents who are leading the charge to say, hey, we'll help you guys find a building. We'll bring the people together. We'll, you know, we'll bring the community in. And we all are going to start to see that at different models and in the public sector. And then I will say, Mike, you might want to have me on in a year or so because we've got some other pretty fun, exciting things up

our sleeve that are going to work on that. Well, let's see how it goes with this Yeager guy. Chuck, have you booked him yet? Yeah, yeah, he's going to be here tomorrow. Excellent. Is that the website, where you want people to go? There's a lot of ways I've got Future of Education. I think I'm another one of those four million podcasts along with quantum plations and the way I heard it. Future of Education podcasts, Instagram and is Future of Education as well. I'm on X under McKenzie Price and I've got a substack called Future of Education. And then of course, Alpha School.

And I think we're the most talked about school in the world right now. And it's because kids are doing cool stuff. And by the way, there's a lot of things that families can say, you know what, I can incorporate this idea of a workshop into what we're doing at home and acting that way. Is that true? Because if it is, that'll be the title of this episode. The most talked about school in the world? I believe it is.

You should do a Google search to make sure I'm not lying on that. Well, I mean, gosh, if the AI says it's true, it's going to be. I'll tell you what, we have a lot of that. I'll check with my guide. It's very highly talked about. And again, it's because, you know, I think when you're willing to just say, hey, let's bring some optimism and some results and allow kids to be limitless and unlock their potential and that's what a school's supposed to do and I'm really honored to get to be a

part of doing that and want to do it for more people I'm glad you're on the case thanks for change in the world what did I just call it the most talked about school in the world I think it was the douchey part no no that's not going to be our title no yeah you said the most talked about school the most talked about school in the world I love it but it's also the future of education dot org the future of education sorry yes you can also go to the future of education dot org and we've got all these free resources for families to be able to learn about ways they can incorporate adaptive apps and AI tools, and they can reach out to their politicians and their school board to say, hey, we want to see this in our schools.

You're on the verge of being late for your next appointment. You know that Jay's dying to get you out of here. He's chomping at the bed. Looks like it. He's pretty excited. Thank you for your time. I mean, it's really, it's consequential, important, and I'm rooting for you. Thank you, Mike.

Appreciate you. See you. Open the whiskey. Like it's not already. When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. And before you go, won't you leave? Stop.