I’m normally the one asking the questions on this podcast. But when Kelly Smith, founder of the microschools solutions provider, Prenda, reached out with a bigger question around how has disruptive innovation in education evolved since Clay Christensen, Curtis Johnson, and I published Disrupting Class, I was thrilled to join him in a conversation on his KindlED podcast (check it out!)—with the idea that I’d also post it here.

In this conversation, we discussed why technology alone did not (and will not!) produce the student-centered transformation many expected, how entrenched school structures and family habits can slow change, and how microschools, homeschooling, and education savings accounts are creating new pathways for more customized learning. We also reflected on the growing role of parents in shaping educational choices, the relationship between learner-centeredness and rigor, and what a more pluralistic, choice-filled future for schooling could look like. I hope you enjoy our conversation—and look forward to your thoughts.

Michael Horn:

A school doesn’t move to mastery-based learning, but they move to mastery-based grading, which I think is the wrong way to organize the world, but they’ll make that move first. And parents are like, whoa, like rebellion, right? Like, what are you doing? So like, you can see when you jump ahead of them, yeah, you get pushback. But if the parents are in the driver’s seat and they’re sort of piece by piece, like, wait, can I do that? Wait, can I have that? Like, they start to assemble the pieces in community.

Kelly Smith:

Hello and welcome to the Kindled Podcast for another exciting episode. I’m Kelly Smith. I’ll be your host today. I’m excited to be talking to Michael Horn. Michael’s an award-winning author. He’s written 8 books, including a national bestseller, Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. He’s also teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and he co-founded the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, which is a nonprofit think tank, along with Clayton Christensen.

We’ll be talking about that in today’s episode. Michael strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of meaning through his writing, speaking, and work with a portfolio of education organizations. I’ve known Michael for years. He’s influential in my personal story. I’m very grateful that he took the time to sit and talk with us. I think you’re going to love the insights on what’s happening in the education world, How does disruptive innovation as a theory apply to what we’re seeing right now? And where does this all go from here? So with that, Michael Horn. All right, Michael Horn, thank you so much for joining me on the KindlED Podcast. We’re excited to talk today.

Michael Horn:

I’m thrilled to be with you, Kelly. Like, I was thinking about it when you were starting up Prenda, man, what is it like 10 years at this point or something like that?

Kelly Smith:

Pretty close. I think I was in the year 2017, so that would’ve been 9 years ago.

Microschools Nomenclature

Michael Horn:

Wild. So like, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been fun to watch you all grow and redefine learning and, and, and, you know, around the kitchen table for so many families and families coming together and create such cool spaces. So I’m delighted to be with you.

Kelly Smith:

Well, not, not to go too hard on the love fest here, but you were using the word microschool online and I wasn’t sure what to call it. I actually went through a brief stint. You could probably still find this out there. I was writing about nano schools because I thought, you know, some people are saying microschools really. Feels still like a school. I was really talking about something different, like very small groups with one adult. And I used nano schools a couple times. My wife put a stop to it. She’s like, that’s way too nerdy. And I said, well, there’s this guy, Michael Horn in Cambridge, and he’s talking about micro schools. And she’s like, yeah, I could get behind that.

Michael Horn:

You know, so now our, and now our friend John Danner is saying, call ’em low-cost privates. Cause some of them grow big. And I was thinking, wow. I was like, okay, I don’t even know how to call it anymore. But people sort of understand what we’re talking about, I think. And that’s, that’s a sea change, right? From like again, like 9 years ago where, you know, you, me, and a couple others, right? Absolutely.

Kelly Smith:

Well, first you, and then I just kind of picked up the words. So thanks. Another fun, fun story. I got to do Y Combinator in 2019. This is like famous for helping startups get their, get their launch, and they’ve launched Airbnb and some of these big companies. Paul Graham’s the notoriously eccentric guy at the, at the core of this thing. And Paul’s not as involved anymore in Y Combinator. Of course, he’s busy doing other things, but he came for one day and, you know, a few startups got to meet with him. We were one of the lucky few that we had like 15 minutes with Paul Graham.

And I remember it took a little while for him to get the idea. First it was like, this seems crazy. No one’s gonna do that. And then once he caught it, you could see his eyes, like he’s just visceral. His eyes lit up. He’s like, Microschool, Microschool. He’s like, stop, drop the name Prenda. You are microschool.com. Like that is, Microschool is the word. And he was right. You know, Microschool as a, as a word now, Prenda, of course, stands for more than just microschools to us. We have a mission that is really about what we’re doing for kids. And so we kept the name Prenda. Maybe we shouldn’t have, but he was, it’s interesting to see now here we are in a world where everybody’s talking about microschools.

Michael Horn:

So, yeah, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that story. That’s fun.

Forming the Thesis of Disrupting Class

Kelly Smith:

Well, let’s go back in time. I mean, while we’re already back, you know, 9 years, you, I became acquainted with your work because I’m a major Clay Christensen fanboy. You got to work with, with Professor Christensen at Harvard, famous for the invention of Disruption Theory. Talks about business cycles and how new entrants come in. You know, this is like scientific analysis for those of you who haven’t like studied any of this. There’s, there’s rhyme and reason to the way big industries get disrupted and the reason why big companies don’t often lead the innovation in their space. It happens from outside and all of these things. You guys were turning your attention to education as one of these institutions that maybe hadn’t changed that much and you were thinking, how could, how could this theory apply? I mean, I’d love to just kind of, I don’t know, dive in on reflections on this. How were you thinking about it at the time and would, yeah, would love to take a, take a peek back at your thinking and how you’ve updated it since. Yeah.

Michael Horn:

I mean, it’s so interesting to see how it’s changed, right? Um, but at the time, so Clay started working on this in like 1999, 2000, the original folks who had passed the first charter law in Minnesota had approached him and Tom VanderArk, Paul Hill, some other folks had come to him and was like, there’s something here, right? So what I didn’t know when I signed up to start writing the book with him in 2006 was he had like tried to write a book 5 times earlier. Disrupting Class is what it ended up being. But the title is like really important to the story, right? Which is one of the things when I, to your point, took the scientific look at like where could disruptive innovation actually happen? The challenge, frankly, in the United States was like there was not really any pockets of what you call non-consumption., right? Like public schooling was universal, compulsory, largely felt free. It’s not actually, we can get into that because there have been some policy innovations that I think radically changed the game in the last decade. But at the time we were like, so where is this disruptive innovation going to come from? And so we sort of had to wedge into this Disrupting Class, which on the one hand felt great because you’re like traditional classroom model, 1 to 30, like that is not optimized for learning, right? It’s built around this factory model of standardizing the way we teach and test and sorting kids out at various intervals. And then everyone’s shocked when like it does that really well and we’re upset at dropouts and things of that nature. But essentially, right, systems do what systems are built to do. Our schools are perfection, frankly, at that.

And in the knowledge economy, we decide that no longer works. So you’re like, how do you transform the classroom model? And then we’re like, there’s lots of non-consumption of classes that students would love to take within schools. Maybe that’s the opportunity. So we look at credit recovery, advanced classes,, right? Like all these little pockets, unit recovery, if you want to go down to that level. And we’re like, you could launch disruptive innovations within the school system. Maybe, maybe I’ll pause it there, but like, that was where our head was initially of like how you overthrow the, the, the hierarchy of the one-to-many sort of standardized monolithic system. And just to say one more beat on it, the subtitle originally was For Every Child a Tutor. And so that was how like we were thinking about The publishers said we had to have disruptive innovation in there, but the, but that was sort of how we were thinking about it.

It’s not just that you’re moving to digital. That’s not actually particularly exciting. And there’s a lot of reasons as we’re seeing right now that we hadn’t anticipated that aren’t amazing about it. But if you could use it to personalize the learning for each individual and let them move at their path and pace and so forth, wow, that could be really interesting. Ran up against a few realities we hadn’t, I think, fully anticipated that we can talk about. But, uh, that’s why, that, that, that’s why we went with that.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. I love it. I love it. I mean, really, like, I went through and reread this in preparation for our conversation today, and I just was like, there is a very strong thesis in this book about student-centered learning, like putting a kid in the center, activating things like agency. And I’ve heard Clay Christensen talk about this in other contexts and just the role of of an inquisitive learner asking a question and Jobs to Be Done and, you know, all of these things that, um, that really do grab the human and put them at the center. And you guys hit that. I mean, that’s all here in the book. I think the question is, okay, how is it going to come to pass? And I hear you talk about it’s like, yeah, I, I would have, I think, done the same thing.

I would have said, I don’t see a way in a, you know, kind of monolithic, uh, compulsory system. That that could happen, but I’m going to just joke a little bit here. Data suggests, so this is, uh, page 98. The data suggests that by, and this is, by the way, thank you for doing this because I teach kids algebra a lot and they’re like, when will I ever need, I’m like, Clay Christensen uses logarithms to analyze.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, there you go.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Horn:

It turns out if you, if you array it on a 0.1, et cetera. Yeah.

Obstacles to Realizing the Book’s Predictions

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. And you say by 2019. About 50% of high school courses will be delivered online, which is, you know, like a mathematical prediction based on what you guys were seeing at the time. I don’t think 50% of high school courses are being delivered online right now, and I’d love to just sort of, yeah, just get thoughts on that. Like there are more, there certainly are more, and a lot of these things you talk about credit recovery and, you know, all of that.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I guess the one caveat to that one, I’d say where we, well, if you modeled the pandemic, we nailed it. But, um, the, the, the, the one caveat to that is, is in some ways I think what it’s actually really picking up is not virtual, but online, whether virtual or blended, right? And so I actually think we’re pretty close on that if you realize that the data isn’t like a wholly, like, teachers separate from you, right? Most of this is in blended learning environments, and which, which we did say, and then my second book was blended. So I actually think like we’re kind of closer on that prediction. Where I think we fall off the wagon is we wanted it to get to the student-centered learning that you just described. And we had a logic of like how it would, you know, sort of these facilitated networks outside of the world would start to work and things of that nature. And then the system would move from very linear software to something more student-centered and directed with teachers and look at the operating system, if you will, of traditional schools, the time-based nature, the, cover all this in 180 days, how they’re funded, you know, based on butts in seats, not how much you learn. Look for all the reasons in all of our research, and we do say it a couple times, but then we sort of jump ahead and say, well, but it’s going to be different because of this, like has been overwhelmed and sucked into the traditional system, even as those independent classes and like nowhere more so than credit recovery, right? Where I mean, I don’t know how many students, but at its peak around 2019, like tons and tons of students in urban districts are taking tons of online credit recovery courses. But because it’s still based around seat time and not like what you’ve learned, it sort of becomes this synonymous with like a scam market, right? In some ways of like, just like sort of, well, throw them there, we’ll accelerate them in 2 weeks and maybe they learned, but like we have no idea because the traditional system doesn’t care about learning and neither did credit recovery based on how it was implemented.

Kelly Smith:

When you look at this, I’m super curious about this. And now this is not about the book. This is what we’re seeing since, you know, I, you’ll sit with a room of educators and they’re well-meaning and they get this completely. Yes. Learning should be student-centered. I want this to be, they’ll say things like, I can’t because, and sometimes they’ll point to regulation, but it’s interesting to sit with the administrators on the other side, or even legislators or commissioners of, you know, from departments of education. And they’re like, It’s not actually, the regs actually allow a lot more than what we’re seeing. It’s that, you know, people are used to it a certain way.

Kelly Smith:

And I’ve even heard, you know, the third angle of this is the parents don’t really want it to be that different. So, I mean, what’s your, your kind of, how do you make sense of all of this and why maybe we haven’t raced to a world of student-centered, uh, like we, we all kind of hoped we would?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I think, well, the parent piece of it, I think is real, right? And, and let’s maybe let’s park that because I think you’re part of the movement that could change that over time. Right. But it’s like a much longer time time horizon, I think. But on the first one, so the logic of disruptive innovation, why organizations fundamentally don’t change, why systems, like everyone’s like systems change, systems don’t change. They get disrupted by new systems, right? And so, and the reason for that is Clay articulated is that every organization has a business model in effect, dirty word in education, but it’s effectively a business model where you have a value proposition, resources, processes, and then some sort of financial formula that supports it all. And what you really very quickly realize is all of these things become interdependently locked, like as you’ve run it through a few years in a row, right? And process in particular is where culture lives. And it’s almost like grooves in like a, you know, you’re cross-country skiing, right? Like you’re like the grooves in the snow, you can’t even step out of them or the train tracks, right? And like, just organizations become exceptionally good at making process incredibly rigid, which I get, like a good process is built to design to solve one kind of problem.

Well, it’s not built to solve all kinds of problems. If it, if it was, it’d be a really lousy process by definition. But as a result of that, how many thousands of processes unspoken and practices and like, this is just the way things work here are done in schools every single day. Forget to get for, you know, forget like the planning cycles of master schedules and all those things, right? That just cause it to say it’s like really hard to break out of it. So like I would have this discussion a lot of times with policymakers because when I was at the Christensen Institute, which Clay and I co-founded, I spent a lot of time testifying in state capitols and they would create these waivers, right, for, you know, get out of seat time, right? All sorts of flexibility in the law. And then they’d say, well, like, none of the schools are taking advantage of it. And it was like, well, because like, they’re, they have their pro, like, they have their practices and processes that are extremely exquisitely well honed for the existing policies. And I would even go so far as like, K12 Inc, now Stride Connections, right, then got acquired by Pearson, these full-time virtual learning schools that school networks that popped up in around like 2000, they, I mean, you remember this, Kelly, like they exquisitely have built technology systems to map back to seat time laws.

And then, right, exactly. And then like, you were like, well, why aren’t you doing X? And like, I mean, I guess we could have, but we’ve built this incredible technology that is geared around like the traditional and they couldn’t even get out of their own way. Right. In many ways.

Kelly Smith:

And they would say, well, we had to make some compromises. We were up against rules and requirements, and even if one state allows it, other states don’t. And so you kind of go back to, yeah, it’s interesting to watch this all play out. It’s like, no, everyone wants it to change. Honestly, I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t, but can’t. And maybe an example of this that’s concrete is you and I have friends that have done these workshops, right? You’ll get a bunch of educators together and they’ll always start with the same speech, right? It’s a blank sheet of paper. Look at this.

And they’ll physically have a blank sheet of paper and like, let’s design around what we think school could possibly be and how amazing. And people get excited, the energy’s there. And by the end of that session, it looks very similar. I mean, every time it’s like maybe it has Japanese classes.

Michael Horn:

Well, it’s right. And I think that’s what’s unique about say Prenda or like Florida Virtual School, right? When they did these exercises in effect, because they were creating something completely different that was allowed to operate outside. And that is the innovator’s dilemma or the logic of disruption that you led with, which is it really does take independent organizations that do not make those compromises with the existing system or value chain. I remember our early phone calls when you were designing Prenda. Like my big concern for you was, oh, if you partner with a school, are you going to have to make an accommodation? Like be like, that was my big worry for you, right?

Kelly Smith:

Yes, by the way, you were right.

Michael Horn:

Interesting. Okay. Well, so yeah, I mean, that was my big concern, right? Was like, like you have to fit into, and then my, my colleague at the Christensen Institute, Tom Arnett, like, and loves to talk about on top of the business models, you have value networks, right? Where you’re sort of form-fitting into the ecosystem around you and that further constrains. And look, at some point you are form-fitting into society, right? The question is at what level, I think, and what node.

The Impact of Evolving School Choices

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a fascinating question. I want to get back to the theory here and just say, if you were to redo this book now and given kind of what you saw, because it sounds like one of the assumptions you had was compulsory monolithic, you know, a system where there’s not really, you could do things differently in the classrooms, but you can’t really get out of it. Now we’ve seen homeschool rise. We’ve been through COVID. We’ve seen families look at this differently. I think you are seeing parents taking a little bit more ownership. They’re at least awake to it. They’re asking questions. What is going on? How is my kid doing? And, and they’re not just assuming everything’s fine. And then, uh, and then school choice, right? So now there’s this mechanism by which families can get some percentage of the tax dollars that would go toward public education. They can use it for educating their own kid. I think those things have shaken things up a little bit, and I would love to just kind of hear your perspective as you think about that now.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that’s my read as well. I think it’s not in the book, but homeschooling was growing quite a bit when we wrote Disrupting Class as well. It was going through sort of the first boom, I would argue, powered by the online learning, right? That was now, that now made it far easier to sort of give your kid a, uh, an education beyond the couple things you knew really well, right? And, but we did actually that same logarithmic S-curve calculation on the growth of homeschooling and it flattened out at around 10% of families, which I think like finger to the wind is about the upper limit of, right? Families that want their kids at home. But now you couple that with some innovations that have unlocked hey, you can send them over to Kelly’s house, right, for, for learning. You can send them to the church. You can write like these micro schools, et cetera. And then the other piece you just named COVID, obviously awakening a lot of families and asking questions that they weren’t asking before. And then the fourth, which I think is the biggest, is these educational choice.

In particular, I actually think there’s a big difference between vouchers and educational savings accounts. I think the educational savings accounts are a big policy innovation over vouchers because now I have dollars in an account where I’m making a series of decisions across multiple providers and I’m making cost-value trade-offs, right? And trade-offs are really important. And then the other piece of that is now I’m a family in Arizona or wherever, you know, name your state. I could go to the quote unquote free public school, but I’m actually losing out on how many thousands of dollars, right? In the education savings account. All of a sudden it doesn’t feel free. It feels like a negative when I could be customizing my education for my kid. And so now all of a sudden, quote unquote, it feels pricey. And so to me, one of the big unlocks of microschools that was interesting and why I started writing about them before these policies gained steam was I started saying, well, the other place disruption happens is not from non-consumption.

It’s when the existing system overserves families. And you’re like, public schools don’t overserve families. Like, we’re not learning nearly enough, blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, actually not. Not true, right? There’s plenty of families that look at it and they’re like, the academics are like, my kid’s fine on that front, but like, I really don’t care about, you know, the 15 sports teams and the 26 clubs and the, you know, the 5 bands that they like. I just want like the best piano experience coupled with like a tailored learning around this, right? Or whatever it is. And you’re like, okay, so they’re overserved. Plus educational savings accounts now makes it feel more expensive too.

To me, that’s dynamic. And I think it creates real room for, you know, if I rewrote it now, Disrupting Schools. Now we can get out of the system, right? That’s pretty, at least in my mind, that’s pretty huge.

Fostering Family Buy-In

Kelly Smith:

I hope you guys listening at home are recognizing the impact of this. I mean, I think we are at that moment, but it’s interesting to hear you talk about it. I work with a lot of parents. I get to be there often at the, the very first sort of realization of what an ESA even is. And they’re like, wait, what? How does this work? So I’m, we’re not yet at this point you’re describing where, I mean, out here in Arizona, it’s 10% of the kids in, in K-12 in Arizona are doing ESA. So it’s not unheard of, but I’m still, most people, if I just pick a parent and start talking to them about it, they have not heard of it yet. And, and I think. I think as that kind of climbs up the S-curve, there is that tipping point where people say, yeah, there is an opportunity cost to not taking that scholarship.

I think on the flip side, it can feel scary. I mean, there’s all the psychology around, well, now I’m in charge. Once I get that money, it’s like, there’s, there’s at least comfort in sort of just doing what everyone else does, sending them to the school everyone else goes to. Even if I, you know, I personally don’t feel super happy with it, I can at least kind of tell myself a story that feels good. Yeah, the tipping point here is I see enough of an opportunity to sort of quell my fears around that. And it is, you know, I don’t want to just passively sit there and go with whatever the— we wouldn’t do that in almost any other aspects of our lives. You think about health and nutrition and, you know, apparel, like we research the heck out of things.

We study them. We’re agents in our own personal decisions. We’re with our child, our precious child and their whole future 7 hours a day for however many days.

Michael Horn:

It’s, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s, I think I told you this, my, yeah, I think if I can’t remember both of my daughters, but definitely one of them read your book in addition to me, she sort of grabbed it off my nightstand and read it. And she was like, yeah, Dad, like, this is weird. Why don’t you, why aren’t more families doing these things? It was really interesting to like hear her just sort of give her like very childlike, right. Sort of blunt view of like, this just makes sense. Of course you would make these choices. Right. But I think what you just said is right. Like, parents, and you said parents like push back against it.

And you see it like, I’ll give a couple examples where you see it in big, big places, right? Number one is like a school doesn’t move to mastery-based learning, but they move to mastery-based grading, which I think is the wrong way to like organize the world. But, but they’ll, they’ll, they’ll make that move first and parents are like, whoa, like rebellion, right? Like, what are you doing? And so, so like you can see when you jump ahead of them, yeah, you get pushback. But if the parents are in the driver’s seat and they’re sort of piece by piece, like, wait, can I do that? Wait, can I have that? Like, they start to assemble the pieces in community. And I think that’s the big part that you’re pointing to, right? Like with social proof, with others around it, it’s not like data saying, is this a good choice or a bad choice? But like, man, I know my friend did this and now I’m going to like have that experience too. And our friends at outschool.org are like, done some great research right around the importance of social proof in helping people actually use those ESA dollars and actually activate them. To me, that’s like the bit by bit where you start to see maybe that S-curve actually materialize in a way that’s not just like we’ve digitized the existing system, which by the way, not only was that not great, it also like has had a bunch of negative ramifications, I think, within traditional schools. And I think we did actually predict that. I don’t think anyone like took that part of the book seriously.

We warn vociferously about cramming technology into existing, into the existing system, but whatever. But, but I think in a new system, right, piece by piece, parents making these choices, that’s how we start to build a movement over time. And look, I don’t, I haven’t really looked at the calculations. It’d be interesting to do so, but yeah, I think it’s probably a longer timeframe for a full transformation, but, but I think there’s actually way more opportunity now than there was.

Kelly Smith:

Well, I’m now very curious to run the S-curve and the logarithmic analysis again.

Learner-Centeredness in Support of Rigor

Michael Horn:

Yeah, I was going to say, get your students to get some of your students to do it with like the growth of ESAs or something. Look, you’ll have some exogenous factors that are tamping it down, which is, as you know, outside of just a couple states, like they’re not fully funded. So you’re getting weight. So like we’d have to put some assumptions around that. But I think the momentum is there. I will tell you the other pushback. So there are some people who are against student-centered learning. There are a lot of my friends who like believe in science of reading and things of that nature. I’ll just call it out. ‘Cause like they’re very into the whole classroom large thing. And I guess what I would say is like, they want more rigor in academics.

Kelly Smith:

Sure.

Michael Horn:

I’m with you.

Kelly Smith:

Right.

Michael Horn:

But like, I can’t imagine what’s more rigorous than making sure that like Michael understands how to decode, you know, like this set of phonemic things before, like he jumps into some crazy text way above him. Like I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want that. And look, I want conversations and so forth, but I want a conversation around a text where like I can actually participate and have a real exchange of ideas. And I don’t know, like most 30-person environments for that are not that great. But what’s your ratio, like 6 or so?

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, 7.5 is the average per class right now.

Michael Horn:

Okay, so there you go. Like, that’s probably a pretty interesting conversation.

Kelly Smith:

No, and I know these folks too. They’re friends. I’m always curious. It feels a little bit like like just apologetic or it’s basically, it’s hard to be an educator, which I agree with, to really be and do teacher-led. And there’s not that many of ‘em, so that’s what brings them to 25 or 30 kids. But I, I don’t think they would say if you had a great educational experience for 10, I think most people would say that’s, that’s gonna be better. You can dive deeper or you can get into it. And with, with more data, more visibility as well.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah. I don’t know. Do you see those as mutually exclusive? Rigorous learning and student-centered? I mean, are those two competing ideas?

Michael Horn:

I don’t, I don’t even, yeah, I, I don’t personally, I don’t. I get that there have been some parts of the quote unquote personalized learning world that have been less rigorous in the sense of like concepts are a little bit too atomic. They’re like lack coherence, right? Yeah. In terms of like what you’re learning about and sort of like a lot of ping-ponging around and piecemeal. I don’t I, look, I, I helped set up the Robinhood Learning and Tech Fund back in 2015, and the basic hypothesis around literacy was you could use the technology to really personalize, like, the, the mastery of the skills of how to read, right, while creating a really content-coherent, rich set of opportunities for students to, to, to build that background knowledge to access anything. I guess the other thing I would say is there’s a group of folks who I love, but they’re convinced that there is one canon in all of this. And I don’t know how you think about it, but I agree there’s a lot of useful texts that are like culturally helpful across. And but like, I do think that there is an exaggeration of like how common that is.

Michael Horn:

And I suspect that they would be pretty horrified at some pretty foundational texts that I have never read. Yeah. And I think I have gotten by okay.

Kelly Smith:

Well, let’s not expose ourselves too much here, Michael. I don’t want to, I definitely don’t want anybody watching this and judging us, but the same, right? And I think they would also be intrigued to find something that I have read and that’s, that’s made a difference in my life that wasn’t in their list. Right.

Michael Horn:

Oh, that’s interesting. It goes both ways.

Looking Ahead to the Future of School Choice

Kelly Smith:

Who’s to say like, this is an education, you know, that feels very, 18th century schoolmaster in Princeton or something. What do you see as, just as we look at where we’re at and we don’t know where we are on the S-curve, but it’s definitely climbing. It’s rising. One quick test I do on this is I look at Google Trends for the word microschool and I go all the way back to 2004 and it’s just nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s a little blip and then there’s this like spike in 2020, which of course, right? Everyone was talking about microschools in 2020. And then, um, since then it goes back down and it’s just this noisy but consistent, like steady. I mean, we’re well above where we were at peak, peak COVID in terms of just Google searches, right? People are actually looking up this word and thinking about it. And we see this in, in the business.

Like we’ll go out to a new entity, right? Texas has an EFA program, ESA-style program, and we do a webinar about microschools and people come, they show up, and then we talk to ‘em on the phone and they’ve researched and they’ve got a vision for what they want to do and they’re ready to go and making plans. And, and so you can feel the maturity of the concept. Yeah. And I think depending on your interpretation of how parents think about this and what they want, I think we could argue that we’re still relatively very early stage in microschools. As you mentioned, it’s a, it’s a long journey. It’s, it’s a lot going on and it’s going to take, I would imagine, a long time, but I don’t think it caps at 10% either. I think there’s a lot of families that are going to find a lot of value in this. Be curious to just hear your, yeah, your thoughts. Just what are you seeing today? Things that make you excited, things that you’re maybe concerned about.

Michael Horn:

So I largely agree with, well, I agree with actually everything you just said. So let’s start there, right? Which is to me, it feels like the momentum is growing. The numbers are growing. A lot of families want different experiences. And look, I think some families will continue to opt for a traditional experience, but like, it’ll be an active choice as opposed to a passive thing that it’s just because I’m supposed to. And I think that’s part of this is like, I imagine that there’s going to be just a multiplicity, like an explosion of opportunities for students in the future. And where I am in Massachusetts, we’re the furthest thing from having an ESA, I think, probably anywhere in the country. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m like, I am just fighting to have like an array of very different options open for my kids by the time they get to high school.

Like, that’s my mission is to see like, hey, there are 6 meaningfully different options that you can choose that fit like the the kind of person you think you want to go be, right? And then you have the information to make that choice yourself. So I feel like it’s growing though in the other states. You know, you mentioned Texas. By the time this comes out, I think it’s going to be oversubscribed already, right? The number of slots, we’re well on the way to that as of the day we’re recording, day two of having them released it open or whatever it is. So that’s exploding, I think. The things I’m worried about at the moment are a couple things on the policy front. One, legislators who are putting in input-based or accreditation requirements as part of these, I think that is a very bad idea. It’s not been a good quality seal in higher ed where we have a lot of experience about this.

I think that would, like, we want lower barriers to entry. We don’t want to do anything that raises barriers to entry in my mind in terms of education entrepreneurship right now. And then the second thing I would say that sort of like I think goes alongside that is there’s a bunch of the newer ESA laws that make it tuition first for those dollars. I would much rather the families have much more choice on like how they spend it. Look, you come up with your guidelines of what counts in your education marketplace, but then let the families make the choices around these things. You don’t know their circumstances. You don’t know if they need like a one microschool anchor experience with other things around it, or if they are going to, you know, go full à la carte. I think that’s the minority for the foreseeable future, but Certainly in Florida, more families are moving to a lot of interesting experiences around that.

And I think that’s great. Understand, hey, my kid already knows X, Y, and Z because of our home environment. This is the thing that I want them to go chase. Like, that’s awesome, I think.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, no, it’s exciting. And I share your concern. I mean, it’s interesting your point from earlier, and you’re saying it again here that, you know, putting the money in their hand as money. Not like a coupon to go to a private school. It’s like, this is dollars and it has a dollar sign. Now it shifts the psychology. I’m going to think about this differently because, you know, I understand how money works and I understand how markets work. We, this is, this literally just happened yesterday.

I talked to an educator in Florida, 26 years with special ed education. Like she’s deep and she’s so passionate and so caring and she’s frustrated. She’s been limited in her, you know, traditional environment for what she’s able to do, and a lot of emphasis on testing, just things that are getting in the way of her responding to what she sees kids need. So she’s ready to start a microschool, right? And these are the conversations I love. She immediately comes with this question of, well, what about IEPs? You know, what about special ed and how does this work? And it’s interesting, right? One, this is private. It’s outside of, you know, the normal realm. So you don’t have the lawsuits and all the litigious aspects of, of special ed, which is what it turns into sometimes. But then in terms of accommodations, accommodations, you know, if you worked with Prenda, like we’ve built in most IEP accommodations and offered them to every single kid.

So you, you really have so much flexibility, so much ability to just tailor the experience. And then I said services is an interesting one. I actually used to like be afraid in these conversations to say, well, you know, services can be tricky. Like we don’t really have the ability in a microschool to provide everybody with the right therapies and speech and, you know, different things that you need. And the parents are actually like, thank you, I get my money. I have a person I already like, I want to work with them. So the question is just, will they accept ESA? And it’s an easy process for them to get registered as a vendor on the, the system. And so all of a sudden you’re seeing the market kind of evolve to those needs and respond.

And I agree with everything you’re saying about just watching parents feel empowered and intentional, I guess, even in the way they’re thinking about this. So it’s it’s shifting. I guess I didn’t see this coming, but it’s a, it’s a shift in perspective. That’s almost a side effect of the way that the programs are structured. That’s fantastic.

Michael Horn:

I didn’t, that’s a great story also. I don’t think I appreciated half of what you just said, but that’s a really cool evolution. And the people who work in special ed in the traditional system will tell you that the incentives are all backwards, right? In terms of, uh, like if you prize, uh, like an efficiency innovation that makes it way more accommodating and streamlined for a that, that’s a negative in many cases because all of a sudden, like, you did it with fewer dollars and what, what, what happened, right? It’s, it’s, so the, the opportunity to custom build for each kid from the ground up is just a much better way. And Diane Tavenner, my co-host at the Class Disrupted podcast, she always says, like, people think this is more expensive, but that’s because they’re doing it from a system that was built to standardize and they’re layering it over as opposed to designing from first principles around personalization and optimization for each kid. And when you build it in from the beginning, it’s often not just like, it’s not more expensive. It’s actually, forget about even cost neutral, can sometimes be less expensive. Because you really are tailoring it for that kid from the get-go.

Kelly Smith:

1,000 micro schools plus, we’re probably closer to 1,200 now. And our average is $6,800 tuition. So that’s less than half of what the average in the US, you know, Public dollars spent on education. So yeah, I mean, absolutely true. Now we’re also saving money because people are working in free spaces and they’re doing this all outside the system.

Michael Horn:

I want to— sure, but stay with that, stay with that for a second, right? Like, because to me, this will be the other piece of it, which is that the market that you just described innovating to create, say, the special ed marketplace or whatever it might be, I think we’re going to see continued innovation around that. Like, the hallmark of disruption is not that it comes in with its initial offering and that initial offering stays the exact same and everyone moves to it. It’s that that initial offering improves in a variety of ways to tackle quote unquote more complicated use cases or problems. And piece by piece, people migrate out to the disruption as it becomes capable of doing it right. And so in some ways there’s something symbiotic around 5 parents moving to the system, right? And 5 parents are watching it, but they’re like, can they handle my edge case? And then like the system innovates and then they come in, right? And like you sort of have this iterative nature on a very almost one-by-one basis. Right. And so the conversation I was having recently with our friend Tyler Thigpen at Forest Acton was like, you know, high school has been relatively rare in the microschool space. And like my hypothesis has been a lot of families, it’s not the academics that are holding them back.

It’s like high school is a big part. A big part of high school is identity formation. Right. It’s like Friday Night Lights, like all these things that we sort of make fun of a little bit in the culture, but like are actually helping you understand who am I within my community with common experiences. And so we were talking about all the intentional ways microschools can build a, like other kinds of identity forming experiences that, by the way, are more inclusive, I think, but can start to more intentionally pull people and say like, oh, like if that’s the thing you’re trying to solve for, like we can help you with that.

The Role of Districts in a Choice-Filled Future

Kelly Smith:

So interesting. I want to stay on the future where this all goes and just get your look. I know we’ve talked a little bit about this so far, but any other thoughts on that? And one specific twist I’ll throw at you, because I know you’ve worked with the, you know, on the legislative side of this, you’ve worked with leaders from that have heavy ties to the system as it stands, right? The actual incumbent system. Um, maybe this goes back. This is a story from early, early Prenda, and it goes back to your, your comment about train tracks or, uh, cross-country skiing. By the way, I’m in Arizona, so I have to like think about what cross—

Michael Horn:

Yeah, yeah. You have to adapt that. Sorry. I have to come up with an analogy for the warm, uh, the warm environment.

Kelly Smith:

I thankfully have done it before, so I know what you meant, but I had this microschool going in my house and I had already seen by that point, you know, 8 or 9 kids that had had a, what I’d just a breakthrough, you know, like they started to see themselves differently. The student-centered nature of this was taking. You’d see offshoots of their, their young roots growing and it was working. And I’m saying, this is a great model, but like, it’s crazy that I’m doing this at my house and using the park down the street for our playground. And so I went and I was friends with the principal of the school locally. We, I had known her pretty well. And I explained what I was doing. So some of these kids did drop out of your school and they joined, you know, my thing, but I’m not here as like a muscle thing.

It’s just like, I think there’s an opportunity here for them to still get, you know, what if they need free lunch and what if they need counseling? What if they want to participate in PE or be in the school band? And I can’t offer all of that. So I said, what if we did micro schools on your campus? And it was this interesting moment where she, she, you could tell she’s like thinking about it and processing it. And she kind of looked back at me and just said, why would I do that? And I think I have like a, I have a, an ungenerous version of that, which is like, because maybe you don’t care about kids enough or something. But as we talk, I think it’s actually different than that. It’s she was on tracks that would literally have required her to take a whole train off of tracks and do, do something different. I guess I’m curious, just your thoughts on where this goes relative to the the system as a whole. I know in other, you know, in the business model examples that you guys give, like the steel mills go out of business, the mini computers go out of business, but that’s not necessarily where I think I want this to go or anyone wants for schools to quote go out of business. So how does this recover or what happens next, I guess?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it’s a good question. I’m not sure I have all the answers on this. I guess my take is, you know, often look, some part of the incumbents stay around, right? And So that may be part of this story. I think part of the story is we see, you know, in Florida is a good example, right? Where there’s probably been the longest history of choice in all forms and to most students, a lot of districts are starting to innovate themselves, right? And they’re like less wary of the microschool or fractional, you know, the Tim Tebow law, right? Sort of stuff or like offering a set of services that they’re really good at into the ESA marketplace. And so you’re seeing some really cool innovation there. And so I think that might be part bit, I could imagine some district school, like the biggest challenge with the response to COVID in the last several years has been sort of the one-size-fits-all way that districts like met the moment. You could imagine that starting to break down, I think, in the years ahead and then starting to be like, like, what if we had 10 different microschool communities in the, in the building, right? Like there are some examples of school, traditional schools that have done that. They’re few, but if they see that, like, if I don’t do that, I’m going to lose students.

I wonder why not take like the things that they do offer in terms of the community and create these more umbrella opportunities. Right. And so I guess I’m curious about where that goes. I don’t have a strong, I can tell all the reasons why it won’t happen, but I don’t have a strong hypothesis yet one way or the other, because there are some compelling case studies of districts that have made these switches. And I think we should honor those and, and, and like see where it goes. And part of my hypothesis would be the way microschools sort of climb that last part, if you will, of the curve, is that they do create ways of creating bigger communities when that is appropriate for the given, you know, like when being part of a bigger community, it makes sense relative to the activity or, or culture or whatnot. I do think the existing system like provides an incredible umbrella for that gathering space. So can it re-envision itself as more of a community center in effect where there are these à la carte services that you might provide? And look, some kids I think probably need the full bundle, right? And so maybe, you know, there’s a version of this that is more tailored around them because it becomes smaller and more personal where they’re getting everything from that.

And then there’s others that are sort of plugging in, right, in a more à la carte or ad hoc fashion as they’re deciding on the ground makes sense. I don’t know yet, but I do think, yeah, I mean, I guess I will say like in the, in the retail space, right? Like the traditional retailers that have done well, they haven’t done well by like trying to out-Amazon Amazon. They’ve done well by like really leaning into experience, right? And what makes them compelling. And I do think I’ll take higher ed for example. Where I spend, you know, like 40% of my life, which is do you think like, you know, labor markets are regional and people hire based on who you know. And like, I think in the world of AI, that’s actually going to increase. I think it’ll be 80% plus of jobs will be filled somehow by social network. And so creating communities where people can mix and do stuff together, I think will be really valuable and important.

So that is opportunity, I guess, to lean into place and experience and stuff like that. We’ll see what the form factors are that get that done.

Kelly Smith:

Yeah, it’s a, it’s an open question for me too. And in fact, one of my personal goals is to just partner with more of these forward-thinking school leaders. I was just at an event with Tom Vander Ark. He was gathering folks together and just talking about new pathways. And I said this on stage, you know, if you are a school leader, I’ll say it here, you know, to your crowd as my crowd. If you’re a school leader and you think, hey, maybe a microschool would work, I will donate a microschool to, to do it as an experiment and we’ll make this happen.

Michael Horn:

Well, by the way, can we just say it for a second? Like that act alone would, I think, jump a lot, start a lot of this. So like coming out of the pandemic, I was having a conversation with our local superintendent here and, and her cabinet and they’re like, okay, we think we’re ready for a microschool. And so I sort of described to them what it would take for them to do it. And you could see like the blood just drained from their faces over Zoom. And I was like, that was really dumb of me. Like I made it. Yeah. Like I went about this the exact wrong way. I think the more it’s like in a box almost, right?

Clay Christensen’s Impact on Michael

Kelly Smith:

Like here it is, the better. There you go. This has been so fun. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. Really appreciate the work you’re doing, your writing and thinking and just helping shape all of this. It’s, it’s huge. We’d like to ask everybody before we wrap up just to kind of think back in your life and name somebody that’s been somebody who’s kindled a love of learning for you. It could be all the way back in childhood or later in life., but would love the opportunity to just kind of have you reflect on that question and shout somebody out.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. I mean, am I allowed to say Clay Christensen? Because he was certainly the most influential teacher who changed how I saw the world, but then created this desire. Clay loved it when someone proved him wrong because it was an opportunity to learn and refine the understanding of the world. And he didn’t I think when he first came out with Disruptive Innovation Theory, he wasn’t like, this explains everything. It’s perfect. The evolution of that over time through people saying, doesn’t quite work here. It doesn’t quite work here. And I think school frankly has been like part of that humble pie part of it as well, right? Has sharpened our understanding.

And so it’s a cool, like lifelong learning model of not like, oh, you were wrong being like a dagger, but like, oh cool, tell me more. Right? And so he’s one I don’t always live up to, but I try to keep learning from.

Kelly Smith:

I appreciate that. And yeah, I think so highly of him. I didn’t get the chance to work like you did with him and he’s passed away now. I just shout out to Clay Christensen and, and thanks for that. And thanks for being here. This has been such a fascinating conversation.

Michael Horn:

I wish you all the best in, in your work and look forward to staying in touch. Vice versa. The entrepreneurs of the world create the future and, and you all have been a shining light for our families and kids, and I just really appreciate what you’ve done, Kelly.

The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bryan Hassel and Ashley Williams from Public Impact joined me to discuss the Opportunity Culture model, which is transforming the traditional “one teacher, one classroom” approach. We explored how this model extends the reach of excellent teachers through leadership roles, shared practical lessons from scaling the model, discussed challenges like overcoming ingrained mindsets and transition costs, and looked ahead at how technology, policy changes, and innovative staffing can make these transformations more accessible and sustainable for schools everywhere.

I featured Opportunity Culture in my most recent book on K–12 education titled “From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child,” as a major argument I make is that asking teachers to be superheroes and be all things to all students is an insane job description. The work Bryan and Ashley are doing speaks to a great solution—that also makes the job of teaching more motivating and viable.

Michael Horn

Welcome to The Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, we’ve got two incredible guests that is tackling one of my favorite topics, which is rethinking the role of educators in school. We’ll get more into that in a moment. But first, let me introduce them. We have Bryan Hassell, the co-president of Public Impact. Bryan, good to see you.

Bryan Hassel

Good to see you, Michael.

Michael Horn

And we’ve got Ashley Williams, who serves as the vice president of innovation and specialty services at Public Impact. Ashley, good to see you as well.

Ashley Williams

Yeah, you as well.

Michael Horn

I’m excited for this conversation, Bryan. I think I’m going to get the chronology slightly wrong, but I think pretty close. You and I were working on a bunch of blended learning projects together probably 13, 14 years ago or something like that. And then my recollection is out of that, you sort of said like, wow, there are other things we could do with innovation as well. And we could start rethinking the role of the teacher and sort of how they interact with other teachers in the building. And one of my favorite things is like there was the movie Waiting for Superman, and I was like, the biggest problem with that movie is the title that we’re expecting every teacher to be a superhero and do like an unfathomable list of things for kids. And then of course, out of that, I think you and your colleagues created this notion of the opportunity culture staffing design model, and you had a range of models for how to really distribute responsibilities and create teams and management structures and all sorts of things for the adults in the building to better serve kids. And it was, you know, I’ve written about it several times now.

Rethinking Education Through Innovation

Michael Horn

It’s in my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent. The chapter sort of formed around what y’all have been doing with opportunity culture. This notion really of teaching should be a team sport. But maybe, Bryan, in your words, like when you all created this, what challenges were you aiming to address? How do you think about opportunity culture today? And then, Ashley, if you have anything to jump in on, please.

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, Michael, that’s a really good introduction. It really does go back to that time period. And I think, you know, Emily Hassel, the co-president of Public Impact, was really thinking about, you know, the one teacher, one classroom model. I mean, Michael, you’ve written about— with Clay Christensen, you wrote about how kind of hard and fast these notions of schooling are, right? It’s like there’s one teacher for each classroom, we assign kids there, and that’s how almost every single school in the country has worked for 100 years. And so Emily started thinking, what could be different? And she started getting input from people like you and teachers, and that led to a bunch of different models because the one teacher, one classroom creates a ton of challenges. One of the big ones is it’s very inequitable. It means that only a fraction of kids get access to teachers who are really strong enough to give them that kind of high-growth learning. So it’s built-in guaranteed inequity every year.

It also means teachers don’t have a career path to move up without leaving teaching. And so that’s another crisis in our country right now is the teacher retention and recruitment crisis. And part of that is there’s not much opportunity. And then finally, it makes it really hard for schools to implement their vision of what they want instruction to be like because it’s every single teacher for themselves rather than working together. So lots of challenges, all can be addressed, Emily thought, by thinking, how can we extend the reach of excellent teachers and teaching across the whole school?

Michael Horn

Ashley, what would you add to that and sort of how those models have evolved now and sort of the current form, if you will, of opportunity culture that people might see in the various many, many schools that you all work with?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, so I feel like I’m entering this from a very unique perspective because I was one of the first multi-classroom leaders. And so I was there when, you know, we had just some chart paper and some sticky notes trying to figure out where to move teams around. And honestly, when I first heard of the idea, I thought, wow, that’s a really novel concept. I’m really interested to see how this is going to work, but having been in the role and also having done the work that I’m doing now in my role and seeing how this is scaling across the country, I would say that we’ve nailed it down to a few design aspects that really make this work, right? And we are seeing an incredible response from teachers and teacher leaders and their amount of satisfaction, the amount of support they’re getting. It is a culture of coaching and support that schools are adopting when they adopt these roles. And so, it’s no longer, like Bryan was saying, this one teacher, one classroom model where, you know, a principal would be responsible for giving feedback to all of the teachers in the building. Maybe they get around to them once or twice a year, right? Now you have this expert teacher leader who is in those classrooms partnering alongside teachers. I would co-teach with my teachers.

I would, you know, do small group teaching in their classrooms. And it’s really this wraparound support that you traditionally just don’t get in a one teacher, one classroom model.

Michael Horn

Yeah, hearing you say that just occurred to me. Bryan mentioned Clay Christensen, and he used to make the argument in his last class every year that the most noble profession was one of being a manager because you were really directly working with individuals and helping them be their best selves. And how you did that didn’t just impact them at work, it also spilled over into their home and community lives and so forth, right? If you had a bad interaction with your manager or frankly, to your point, Ashley, no interaction at all, no feedback with adults, the way that could spill over when you came home with your kids, with your spouse, with people you were working with could, could be pretty toxic, right? And sort of managers in the ideal sense would really be heavily working and supporting and coaching like in a very supportive way, right, the folks around them. And you’ve created that structure, it sounds like, to enable that and not make it be an act of heroism as well. So maybe talk a little bit about the impacts and the results you’ve seen. Both in the teaching force, but then also like how does it parlay into student outcomes as well?

Bryan Hassel

We’re really encouraged by the results for students and teachers. On the student side, we’ve seen a lot more growth by students because they have that team wrapped around and they have that expert teacher leading the team. So in the third-party studies, kids are learning an extra 2 to 7 months per year when their teachers are part of these teams, which is really strong. Last year in North Carolina, the Title I schools that met Opportunity Culture Certification standards, which we can talk about as well, were 2 to 3 times more likely than non-Opportunity Culture charter schools to make high growth. So it’s really hitting the students really well. They’re learning more. Teachers are highly satisfied. Vacancy rates are coming down 50 to 75% when districts implement this because they’re not losing as many teachers and they’re able to attract more teachers.

And they’re frankly sometimes having fewer vacancies to fill, because, Michael, some of these models involve changing the size of teams to meet the needs more effectively rather than filling every vacancy with a long-term sub or some other kind of emergency certification situation. Schools will use a team to handle the students in a different way and not have to fill that vacancy.

Michael Horn

Ashley, were you going to add in? Yeah, I want to make sure, because you directly experienced these results on your own, in your own practice. So I just love sort of the color on that, to give us a sense of what that felt like and what that could enable for students?

Opportunity Culture Boosts Growth

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say we saw a direct correlation with what Bryan is talking about in the school where we implemented opportunity culture models. The school was a high-needs Title I school in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and I want to say at one point we had over 20 teacher vacancies, right? We were at a point where we really needed to grow students and we didn’t have time to experiment. We needed results now. And so we implemented these models. The team where I led ELA that year, we ended up getting 4th highest growth index out of 160 schools in the district. And I think that is directly correlated to the opportunities we provided to those teachers, that coaching support, aligned curriculum. There were no more guessing games about what lesson plans we were teaching today. As a multi-classroom leader, I was responsible for getting that curriculum, and we had literally rounds of practice where we would stand up and practice those lessons.

And we looked at data very intensively, not waiting until the end-of-year assessment, but really saying week to week, what are our students learning? Where are the gaps? So there was lots of work done on that behalf. And I think that the multi-classroom leader model really just helped to shape all of that so that that work could be done.

Michael Horn

It makes a ton of sense. I’m curious about this. Where are you all right now in terms of scale? How many schools are in the, you know, using opportunity culture models right now? And Bryan, you mentioned the certification, which I don’t think I actually was aware of. So maybe that probably ties in. How many schools, who’s certified, how do you get that, and how widespread is this model, are these models at this point?

Ashley Williams

I can talk a bit about that. So we’re in over 90 sites across 17 states and DC, and it’s not just one type of district. So it’s very large urban districts to small rural systems. So we’ve seen it work, like I said, in places like Charlotte-Meck where they have over 140,000 students, also to those smaller districts with fewer than 10,000 students. And so it’s happening in several places. As far as certification, this is a set of standards that were developed based on over a decade’s worth of data, right? And so it’s thinking about what works and where, and really using this as the driving force for designing the models, right? And so you don’t have to say, you know, I wonder what would happen if we had a team of 4 teachers led by a multi-classroom leader doing these things. Instead, we’re saying we’ve done the data and we’ve compiled it, we’ve done the research, and here is what works.

But it’s also a way for folks to just have a really clear destination of what they’re designing, right? And so it’s, you know, putting a structure in place of, you know, if you follow these standards, pairing it with your local context, of course, we’re seeing that this is what is yielding the highest results for students.

Bryan Hassel

And I’d add that, you know, we’ve got, so Ashley mentioned 90 sites. That means close to 1,000 schools, over 1,000 schools engaged in some way. 250,000 students were being reached last year. So there’s enough data for us to really learn over time. And so that leads to this kind of certification system where we can say, do you live up to these standards? And it’s things like you’re being very selective about who these teacher leaders are. You’re paying them a lot, an average of $13,000 around the country above their salary, which sometimes leads teachers to be into six figures in some places where you’re paying within existing budgets. So you’re not relying on a grant for that. So you can keep going.

You’re giving people time to play these roles differently and be a team and lead. So it’s not just an add-on, but it’s really changing the school’s design in a fundamental way. So those are the kind of certification standards which are like something to shoot for, like Ashley said, a destination to drive for, and yet lots of flexibility. So how are you constructing your teams? Are they subject-based? Are they grade levels? How big are they? What do teachers do within those teams? How do roles change? What kind of specialization goes on? How do you move the kids around and group them differently for small group instruction tutoring and technology-based learning and everything else. So much flexibility, but within some guardrails that are like, we’ve learned from data over many years, you’re going to get better results if you go in that direction.

Scaling Schools: Challenges and Insights

Michael Horn

Well, so that’s where I want to go, because 1,000 schools, so 90 sites, I assume, are like a lot of these districts that have multiple, you know, lots of schools, right, jumping on, quarter million kids. One of the questions I suspect you get all the time is around student-teacher ratios. I know think, Bryan, you’ve written eloquently about student-teacher ratios being sort of the wrong way to look at the world and that it often backfires as a policy response. So maybe you can sort of address that. But I think the larger question that I want to get into is, you know, if you’ve scaled to, you know, 1,000 schools, what are you learning in terms of like what are the challenges to get to the next group? What are the “yeah, buts” you hear? What are the barriers perhaps to going faster and moving? I mean, I’d love us in a decade from now to come back and be like there is no school in America where the one-to-many model still persists. I think that’d be a— that would be a big— that would really be moving the ball forward in my judgment. So I’m curious what you learned about those obstacles as you guys have gone about this work.

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, we’ve learned so much over the years. And I think one, you know, one big set of lessons is around the, you know, the leadership required to pull off the change to something like this and then to maintain and and support it over time so that it stays strong. It’s not Superman. You mentioned the Waiting for Superman. It’s not that you need some heroic principal to lead this, but you do need some commitment at the district level, commitment at the school level to say, okay, we’re going to make a change to something different and see it through, which means realizing it’s not going to go perfectly the first time and you’re going to have to come back and change things and tinker and fix. That’s the kind of innovation cycle that has to go on. And that’s pretty important. It’s not one and done.

So I think that’s one challenge that we’ve seen. I think another big challenge has to do with just mindset. There’s, again, kind of going back to the picture that was in Disrupting Class of that classroom 100 years ago that looks pretty much like the classroom you might walk into in today’s schools. And that’s just so ingrained, and we’ve all been through it. And so it’s, it’s often challenging in these conversations to, to help people see, hey, there’s a different way to do this. Now, having 1,000 schools doing something is really helpful for that. But still, there’s a sense of, well, can this really work in my context? So we’re always working on the mindset.

But then I would say the biggest challenge, and maybe we can get into this a little bit, is just that it’s costly both in terms of time and potentially money to make a change from an old way to a new way. You have to either put staff time onto it or you have to hire an organization like Public Impact to help you get from point A to point B because you’re building it while you’re flying, right? You can’t close the school for a year, rethink everything, and then come back. You’ve got to keep going. And so how can we bring that cost down? That’s really been our mission for the last 3 or 4 years, especially looking at the fiscal situation in the country, looking at what’s happening with funding and enrollment. That’s the imperative, is to make this a lot easier and a lot cheaper to do.

Michael Horn

So how do you do that? What, like, let’s address the transition costs specifically. How do you reduce those or, or make it palatable, right, to a school going through this so that they can actually move to this change? Ashley?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say one of the ways that we’ve lowered the cost significantly is through those certification standards by having that guiding process, that document to say, this is where you are going instead of a longer design process. I would also say that technology plays a role, right? And so we’ve developed an Opportunity Culture Portal that houses tons of modules where districts and schools can go on and they can self-design, right? Aligning their design decisions to those certification standards. There’s tons of tools and resources, Monday-ready resources that they can use with their teams, with their students. And so taking some of that aspect of it and putting it onto our portal has been a great way to really lower the cost. But it also, I would say, increases the amount at which we can scale, right? So you don’t need to partner with us so intensively. Schools definitely still do. They want that hands-on support, but now we’re putting it in their hands. We’re saying you can go on to the self-driven modules and you can do your own design and you can tell us, hey, Public Impact, I actually want your help in designing these stipends, or I actually want your help in how to hire, you know, really, really exceptional talent.

And so that’s some of the ways in which we thought differently around, you know, making sure we still have that support, making sure we have guardrails for good design, and also pushing this out so that schools can access it now so that all of their students can benefit from that excellent teaching.

Michael Horn

So, so in essence, the cost savings, if I’m understanding you, Ashley, right, is, is like, I, I’m going to need some support, whether that’s my staff time or, you know, the outside consultant or whomever it is, right, to come in and guide us. But now, because of the technology layer, the certification, the clarity, you’re basically saying like, hey, I’m, I’m a school and I’m like, I got this part of the journey. Like, I, I don’t need, you know, to buy extra time or, or to get hand-on, but whoa, like, so you want me to have a multi-classroom leader doing this? I need a little bit more support here than just the online module. And so you might come in here. And so it’s sort of more, there’s still a cost, but it’s more targeted. Is that the right way to think about the savings?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would say so. We’ve gotten it down to about 10 to 50% of what it originally cost.

Michael Horn

Oh wow. Okay. That’s meaningful.

Ashley Williams

The lowest end is that DIY self-driven aspect of it, you know, to where schools can go on and make their own decisions.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And, you know, how are you evolving the models themselves now? Like, what’s, you know, what’s next? You’re learning from a lot of these sites. You’re probably seeing, and maybe you can describe some of the different models you’ve seen out there a little bit more granularly. But like, I imagine you’ve said like, Oh gee, you know, it seems like when people partner in this, or, you know, create this particular teaching arrangement or this multi-classroom leader in this particular way, it’s not as effective as when they do it this way or something like that. I imagine you have a bunch of lessons learned around that. How, how’s this all evolving? Where’s it going to? And, and what, you know, what further improvements might we be seeing?

Optimizing Multi-Classroom Leader Impact

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, we’ve learned so much it’s hard to know exactly where to jump in there, but I think we’ve learned a lot about the kind of support that the multi-classroom leaders can most effectively provide to their teams. And so one of the frontiers is just aligning that much better with the instructional strategies that the district and states and others are taking on. So the multi-classroom leader is really the person that can be trained in whatever it is that the science of reading or the curriculum that the district’s adopted or the personalized learning approach that they’re undertaking. And then they can turn around and deliver that effectively to their teams every day in a way that’s much more effective than like a teacher showing up for one training and then being expected to go off and do the thing for the whole school year. So that alignment though is so important for any kind of system, whether it’s a charter school or a charter system or a whole large district. So that’s one. I don’t know what you would throw in, Ashley. There’s a lot.

Ashley Williams

Yeah, I would name that, you know, these are really exceptional leaders who are in these roles. And, you know, some districts who work with us, we go through the design process and they say, but where are we going to find these leaders, right? We’re in this rural setting. We’ve hired everybody there is to hire. What are we supposed to do? And so one of the things that we’ve piloted is a remotely located multi-classroom leader role. That is a mouthful. But it is essentially sharing talent across districts, right? And so you don’t have to physically be in that district or even employed by that district to support students and teachers in that district. So if a district is having, if they’re having a really hard time finding a math candidate for a multi-classroom leader role, they might look to a neighboring district who has several math candidates who might be willing to share talent with them. And so we’ve seen a lot of success just in the pilot stages with that.

We’ve done this in Rockingham County in North Carolina, and the superintendent is showing lots of, I would say, early results. He’s very satisfied with how those results are going. And so it’s just really helping us to think creatively, right? When schools and districts are bumping up against these barriers, what are some other things that we can do to create the conditions to where, you know, still we can have this exceptional teacher impacting more students.

Michael Horn

That’s fascinating, right? Because we’ve seen for years people use a sort of the virtual teacher to plug the gap of we couldn’t offer this particular subject or whatever else. But a lot of those models, at least as I’ve seen them, are sort of still very traditional, one-to-many. In the worst of all the cases, right, they’re beaming in the teacher remotely and like they’re like the native Chinese speaker or whatever. And then there’s like 30 kids somewhat unattended. Maybe there’s an aid maintaining discipline, sort of lockstep learning. But what you just described is like a new managerial model but using the same technology. So you’re actually changing the underlying structure of the school at the same time and bringing in expertise. That seems fascinating as, as sort of an upleveling of the talent at a site and not sacrificing the student experience and maybe bolstering it.

Empowering Expertise in Education

Michael Horn

The other thing I hadn’t thought about as much, Bryan, when you were just talking about, you know, science of reading or personalization or whatever it might be, you’ve created so much capacity in your school now for an expert in that space, right, who’s not just an individual expert, but they’re an expert working with the team to become awesome at whatever the practice is that’s designed to bolster student outcomes. That seems like a significant piece that’s maybe a distinction, and I’d love you guys to reflect on this because the other model that’s getting a lot of attention right now, not nearly as much scale or experiences you all have, is the Next Education Workforce out of ASU. But it seems like that actually is a tangible difference, as the multi-classroom leader has a lot of time to be able to sort of develop and then share and coach this expertise. Is that how you think of the major differences, or are there other things that or maybe they’re, they’re two peas in a pod, right?

Bryan Hassel

Certainly two peas in the pod in terms of getting away from the one teacher, one classroom model. But yeah, the teacher leadership, the highly selective, well-paid teacher leadership, is definitely a hallmark of the opportunity culture model. The team structure in the ASU model typically is a team sharing a roster of students across the whole team, which we do see within the opportunity culture network, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes teachers still have their own kids and they’re supported by that multi-classroom, that’s a little different across the opportunity culture models. And it really depends on how they design it. I think I mentioned there’s about more than 1,000 schools involved in this. Some 700 of them are already implemented.

The others are in some phase of design. So they’re really thinking through, usually as a teacher team, how do we want this to work? And that’s where they make decisions like team size, team structure, what are we doing within the team to share students or not? So there’s a huge important teacher-involved design process that goes behind this.

Michael Horn

Okay, last question as we wrap up here and we think about future scale, future spread, and so forth. We haven’t talked about policy, we haven’t talked about union contracts. What other changes have you all, you know, learned or speculate is needed to really make this sing and spread so we’re having an even bigger conversation over the years ahead?

Bryan Hassel

It’s somehow we haven’t talked about AI, which seems like

Michael Horn

We haven’t talked about AI either. Pull it in.

AI and Policy in Education

Bryan Hassel

Yeah, certainly, you know, that has so much potential both to, we talked about the technology platform for helping schools design, taking that to the next level of, of using AI to make that even more helpful to, to schools, but also the teacher teams. How can they use AI as effectively as possible? We’ve done some development of training on this, but there’s so many possibilities for the adults involved to handle tasks like differentiation of experience for kids much more effectively if they have more technology to help them. So that’s a whole frontier of this for sure. And then we think policy is a frontier as well, as you mentioned, just because states in this country have typically been the agents of saying, hey, districts, it’s time to rethink X, or it’s time to move in this direction. Lots of local control, of course, but they can incentivize, they can provide funding, they can guide towards standards like the ones we’re talking about. And that’s really the path to having your vision, Michael, you mentioned, of every teacher being outside of this one teacher, one classroom. It’s really for states to get involved and try to move this to scale much more quickly. We’ve seen North Carolina do some of that with an advanced teaching roles grant program.

New Mexico recently appropriated some funds for this. And so that’s a frontier as well.

Michael Horn

Ashley, anything you’d add to that that we ought to keep our eyes on or be pushing on?

Ashley Williams

I would echo what Bryan said about states. Right now we’re seeing a lot of districts who are interested in this work. I think we’d be able to scale a lot faster if we had that commitment from the state for them to put policy changes in place that make it possible for this work to scale, to put some funding behind it. I think that would really help the model to scale and it would help district leaders and school leaders as they’re drafting their models to feel really confident in the sustainability of it.

Michael Horn

All right. Well, you’ve heard it here. Let me give you guys the last word of how the educators tuning into this, they want to start to go down this road. How can they learn more? How can they jump on the process? Where should they go to get going on this?

Ashley Williams

Yeah, so we’ve got some free info sessions popping up every single month that folks can register for and, you know, really learn what the design process entails. And so I can share the link for those. We also have a really robust website where you can get a demonstration for our portal and actually see what all it includes. And so there’s like a webinar there and a walkthrough of the portal so folks can kind of see what they’re getting into. There’s tons of resources there on our website if folks want to start their design journey.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, well, we’ll get links to those in the show notes up front, from you, Ashley, so that everyone can check it out. And Bryan, Ashley, just huge thanks for the work that y’all are doing at Public Impact with Opportunity Culture. It’s amazing to see how far it’s come and how far it’s still continuing to grow and have impact. So and huge thanks for joining us on The Future of Education. Really appreciate it.

Bryan Hassel

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having this interesting show for everyone week after week.

Michael Horn

Well, we like to spread good work of innovation that is actually making a difference in the lives of students. So, you all are doing some incredible stuff and really appreciate it. And for all of you tuning in, as always, we’ll be back next time on The Future of Education.

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States across the country are banning cellphones in schools to try and restore order, attention, connection, and more in schools. As I’ve written extensively, my concern isn’t that schools should take this action in many cases, but that top-down bans (even with carve outs for educational uses) will likely (even if unintentionally) crack down on those schools and educators who have found good uses for phones in schools. And there are many of these use cases, as I’ve written.

But how can schools gain control of this issue? Shannon Godfrey and Julia Gustafson, the founders of a new company, The Commons App, joined me to explore how schools can rejuvenate “the commons”—that is, shared spaces for learning and genuine connection—by intelligently managing smartphone distractions.

Our conversation dug into the pitfalls of total phone bans; shared insights from public health and education technology on why nuanced, evidence-driven solutions matter; and detailed how The Commons App uses behavioral economics and geofencing to block the most distracting apps during school hours. Shannon and Julia talked to me about the importance of teaching self-regulation, involving technology directors in school policy decisions, and supporting educators in fostering healthy digital habits among students—and why that is something important for schools to wade into. I found the conversation illuminating and look forward to your thoughts after you’ve listened, watched, or read the whole thing.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we have the co-founders of the Commons app, as they call it, airplane mode for schools. We’re going to find out a lot about that and more in this conversation that I expect to go in a number of places. But first let me say hi to our guests and the co-founders of the Commons app, Shannon Godfrey and Julia Gustafson. Julia, Shannon, great to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

Shannon Godfrey

Yes, thanks for having us on. We’re excited for the conversation.

Julia Gustafson

Thanks, Michael.

Michael Horn

I’m looking forward to it as well. And I’ll give folks a little bit of background on how we got here, which is I had written a piece with an argument that I made a few times, but a lot of my audience probably saw that, in my judgment, a lot of the bans right now on cellphones, smartphones in particular in schools, while they do have an education use case clause, escape valve, if you will, in many cases, in my judgment they create a worrisome trend where, yes, in many cases phones are huge distractions and I would ban them and so forth from my individual classroom or use cases. And there are these moments, there are these teachers, there are these learning models who have created tremendously productive uses with those phones to really, actually engage and create a more active learning environment than they otherwise would. And I reflected on my own teaching practice at Harvard where for the most part it’s a phone-free classroom. We are having Socratic conversation, it’s pretty active. And then every once in a while we have checks for understanding or various polls to set up debates and things of that nature. And I say bring out your phones or your laptops. Let’s you know, do a quick pulse check here.

And then that allows the class to move accordingly. And my concern being, hey, it only takes one person to say that’s not actually educational use case. And all of a sudden you have a major nightmare on the hands of teachers. And so then, Shannon, you and I got connected through that because you basically said like, all well and good, Michael, but there’s a way to get beyond the sort of all or nothing that we’re looking at through actually a technology solution. And I said, wow, that’s fascinating. I want to, I want to learn more. And so here we are in this conversation and so maybe I’ll let you all jump in with that. And Shannon, maybe you take it first.

Just the Commons App, what is it? How did you know? When did you create it? How does it work? What is it doing?

The Commons App: Airplane Mode for Schools

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, I appreciate that. So the Commons app, just a little bit of background and I’m sure we’ll dive more into our backgrounds and what, what really, you know, created the Commons. But Julia and I both had spent many times working with schools on implementing phone free solutions across their schools, supporting schools with their phone policies, the state mandates that are coming out and ultimately, you know, our backgrounds combined and really thinking about some of these nuances that you’re bringing up. There’s so many different exceptions and it’s not black and white on how we can minimize the distractions. I think that’s one thing that came forward to both of us are the existing solutions really allowing that flexibility to adapt to the school cultures and the school needs based on innovative academic technology that is really being used or medical or what not throughout the day. On the other side of it, you know, are we actually developing students in learning the skill sets on being able to manage their phones only in the school day, but beyond the school walls and impulse control, self regulation, decision making, these are all skills that students are developing today and is so critical that they’re developing that when they’re utilizing technology as well. And we felt that that worked was also a gap that we are seeing with existing solutions. So as you mentioned, the Commons is an airplane mode for schools.

It’s intended to be a really simple solution that allows us to minimize distractions during the day. The most distracting apps that are hijacking attention and really causing the disruption and the lack of focus during the school day. That’s really what we’re able to block. Our application automatically activates when students step foot on campus. We’re using proven sciences with behavioral economics and how we’re designing the app to help make the right choice, the easy choice for our students so that they can keep their phones down. We can help schools support their phone policies and the state mandates that are out on reducing those distractions. But we’re also taking it a step further on being able to support students and really developing and putting into practice the ability to learn self regulation, impulse control and have that healthier relationship with their technology and specifically their phone so that they can function in the school that way, but also beyond the school walls, into higher ed, into their career over the weekend on really being able to learn time, place and manner of their technology and specifically their phone in this case.

Behavior, Well-Being, and Technology

Michael Horn

Well, so maybe that’s good. There’s a lot of things you just said that I want to unpack here, but maybe this is a good place to bring in the backgrounds of both of you into this. And Julia, perhaps start with you because I know a large part of the reason this has become such a conversation is actually not the education use case, but it’s the observations around the health challenges that a lot of teenagers, teenage girls in particular, based on a lot of the correlation research at this point, showing a lot of detrimental health impacts. Right. Social media in particular on these smartphones, you come to this as I understand it from a public health perspective. So talk about how that has informed your own background and how that has informed the development of the Commons.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, yeah, thank you for the question. Like you said, I have a background in public health and public policy and I specifically have focused on using behavioral economics to help shape and form people’s behavior, to make the right choice, the easy choice, or in this case the healthier choice. Getting into how this all formulated into the Commons, I was working at the Stanford Prevention Research center all on a project around well being, what contributes to it, what detracts from it. And it turns out the number one thing that influences people’s well being is actually in person, social connectedness, the real relationships that they’re having with individuals. And this was also at the same time that the algorithm based social media apps started showing up on phones, the infinite scroll. And so you really couldn’t separate the conversation between somebody’s well being and their technology use. Mixed with having, you know, a lived real world experience where I was at a restaurant with my friends and I looked up and everyone else was still on their phones. So it was that twilight zone moment where as you know, in education, you can theorize about something all you want and then in the moment in practice, sometimes it shows up right in your face. And so that was the moment that I wanted to take what I was working on at the Stanford Prevention Research center and do something in practice with it.

And so I spent from 2018 all the way through till the present working with schools on student cell phone policies and way to reduce those distractions. And I think one thing just echoing what Shannon said is that through the years of working with schools on very much black and white solutions, and I would say very much a whiplash effect from unfettered access to trying to do something about it, and take action, which the easy button for that and the surrender button is to ban it and lock it away. And so that is not the wrong move, but it’s only the first move in this evolution because some of the unintended consequences that we’re seeing right now is that there, you know, in the classroom, teachers actually want to be able to use the phone for really cool ways to engage more deeply. And students, when a phone is locked away and they pick it up, they’re getting bombarded with 200 notifications from social media. Right.

Michael Horn

That’s just pent up over the course of the day.

Julia Gustafson

Yup. And so the one app that the teacher wanted them to open for the academic purpose is lost in that swirl, that rebound consumption of other notifications. And so locking phones away or pretending they don’t exist is not really the solution here. It’s how do we have more consistent guardrails on things while also having the education around it? And I think that’s a huge thing that’s missing right now is that when you treat something as that it’s scary or shouldn’t be accessed, we’re just pushing it to the side and we’re not educating around it. And I’m just folding this all into my public health experience. When you think about substance use, sex education, and mental health, those are all things that initially started out as abstinence based or just say no or pretend it doesn’t exist. And now schools have adopted them around education models so that when faced with these bigger decisions or choices that they need to make or situations in the future, that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge in their toolbox in order to make the right choice. And cell phones are now getting pushed into that equation and most specifically around social media apps and gaming applications.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Okay, Shannon, let’s go to your background and how you came into this then and you all partnered up to create this.

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, absolutely. So my background has been in education technology, and I’ve seen the positive impacts of how utilizing technology in the classroom can aid in student success. And that is something, you know, that I think is really phenomenal with the evolution of technology in general. When it’s used appropriately as a tool not to replace education, not to replace our teachers, but when it can be incorporated into the classroom, the ability to really use data and insights to help individual students be more prepared, or the repetition that you get, some of it being a little bit more fun and conforming to what students are used to in life, you know, and those are the beauties of where technology can be really, really impactful. And then in general, you know, how much we appreciate technology, the fact that we can even have this podcast all being in three different places, technology is here to stay and it’s only advancing. And so that’s something that we need to be able to adapt and conform to. And being able to put that into our classrooms is really critical as well. With some of those caveats, right, of not fully being a replacement or a crutch and, and making sure that we’re utilizing it appropriately.

Shannon Godfrey

But that was my background. And so when Julia and I were working, you know, helping schools go phone free and collaborating together on this, I think as we were together on thinking about, you know, what worked really well and where are their opportunities, our backgrounds really collided in a positive way. Can technology solve a tech issue and be a more modern day solution? And what I love about the technology side of it is some of the areas that we found really challenging for our schools. How do schools identify students that are circumventing, you know, this policy that is in place? Because ultimately it is really difficult for students when they have created bad habits of impulse control, grabbing their phone for no reason or those notifications hitting them. You know, it is very much a dopamine release. It’s an addiction for some of us. And so how do we help schools identify those students that are circumventing it? Because it’s not a matter of are they going to. No matter what solution they are, when are they going to and how do you correct it so that your policies can be more impactful from a school standpoint and accountability.

But as leaders for the school, we can focus our time on the right students that might be falling off task. That’s something we’re missing with physical solutions. We’re either relying way too much on teachers being the phone police and managing it and then they’re not teaching. And that’s another issue in itself, because teachers are leaving this profession unfortunately due to some of these other behavioral incidents and burdens put on them where they can’t just be teachers any longer. So how do we remove teachers from being phone police? How do we help our administrators identify the students that we need to maybe support that are off task? That’s really difficult to do with a physical solution or a policy only solution. That’s where technology can really, really come to life. And then when we think about what if newer technology continues to evolve where it’s mobile optimized and the better experience is the mobile device or the only solution out there for students is a mobile device or to unlock the laptop you have to use the mobile devices.

You know, as this evolution starts to take shape, how do we start to adapt and mold to that particular school’s environment or that teacher’s environment within the classroom? Again, it’s really hard to do that in a policy only or physical based solution. But with technology it has this ability to adapt and to change. And so that’s where my background really came in, mirrored with Julia’s background on the behavioral sciences. Well, if we’re going to do technology, how do we design it in a way that does make it really simple for students to make the right choice, the easy choice. And that’s where we were able to infuse our two words together to really come out with the Commons and something that just didn’t exist in the market today.

Dropping Distractions and Keeping Learning Tools

Michael Horn

Gotcha. So let me make sure I have. It sounds like there’s sort of two aspects then of the solution that you all have built. One of them, if I’m understanding and maybe we’ll start here to clarify because I don’t think I have a full grasp of it is it’s really around a... lockdown may be the wrong word, but it’s like literally taking certain things off the table or at least making it transparent when a student is going off it. Help me understand what part of it looks like where you’re reducing what a student can actually do before we get into the behavioral sciences part of it, I think where there’s a set of incentives around when they even do pick it up. What they’re sort of motivated to do.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah. I’m going to start the response to your question with a study because the study was actually very instrumental in how we developed our technology. So JAMA Pediatrics now for two years in a row has released studies that show that despite having active student cell phone policies in place, students are still spending an hour and a half of every single school day on average on their cell phones. So that’s equate. We did the math because we are curious. That’s one month of teaching and learning time down the drain per student every school year because of cell phone use. So what’s cool about that study? Not that it’s like super, right?

Michael Horn

Not the great outcome of the study.

Julia Gustafson

But yeah, what the cool part of it is that they dug deeper and they looked at what students were spending that hour and a half of their time during the school day on, maybe they are on academic apps and in that way it’s not a waste of time. Well, it turns out that the hour and a half that’s spent on the phone during the school day is on social media, gaming, YouTube and other algorithm driven apps that are designed to hijack attention, not on academic apps and not the text home to mom or dad because soccer’s canceled or whatever. So knowing that information was really pivotal in how Shannon and I decided to design the Commons because we realized there are a subset of apps that are actually extremely useful during the day like Google Authenticator to get into your Chromebook, Duolingo and language class is really beneficial. Google Classroom to submit assignments during the day, during block periods. And those aren’t what is derailing the focus and attention from our students. And so when we designed our app we talked and we’re like, we don’t want a total lockdown of the phone. We do want students to be able to recognize when the appropriate time or places to use some of these academic apps or medical apps that they potentially need to have access to. Rather, it’s these highly addictive applications that are the one really causing the disruption during the school day.

And those are the ones that the Commons App automatically blocks as students come into campus. Their phone could be in their backpack, their pocket, they could be on it. But our app is triggered through a geofence technology as students come into campus, it runs silently in the background all day. Students don’t need to do anything. Teachers don’t need to do anything. They don’t need to spend the precious minutes at the beginning or end of class shuffling around phones or putting them in caddies. And at the end of the day the app simply releases by the time bound of our geofence or if they cross that geofence line.

Michael Horn

So it doesn’t matter what like, they don’t have to register the phone. It’s literally like whatever phone or technology you showed up with. When you’re in this perimeter, you’re not going to get a Facebook notification or whatever it might be.

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, that’s the cool part. It is a one time app download, right where they then pair their app to the school. But every day beyond that it’s automatic and runs in the background. And that’s where infusing the science of behavioral economics, making the right choice, the easy choice was intentionally designed. If you have to continuously remember to take out your phone and tap it or do this or that. It’s just, it’s too hard. It’s a barrier. We want the default choice to be the choice that the school wants to change the culture, right? So that’s staying off your phone, staying off the distractions on it.

And that’s how we made it the easy choice. And so, you know, it’s not a matter of if, but when students decide they want to try to circumvent this app, right? It’s like doing a large-scale behavior change for hundreds or maybe thousands of students at once. If, when a school does this. And so it’s only a matter of time before students try to circumvent this or test the limits. And so that’s where we, with choice architecture, we decided to put in little nudges for the students. And so if they swipe away the Commons app and go on their phone, we send them a notification that says, oh, you’re at school right now. Time to put your phone away and focus. If they decide to turn off one of the necessary settings that the Commons needs to run, we actually send them another nudge that says, oops, looks like something’s off.

Here’s your opportunity to turn it back on. And we will redirect them to the page so they can make the right choice to turn that setting back on. Always giving students the choice, right? That’s a huge part of this. If they choose the wrong thing, which is to keep the setting off, that’s when we notify them that we’ve let the administration know that their app is not working. And that’s when the administration gets a notification that Michael has now turned off his app and he probably needs a little bit of a follow up.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And I guess if I get a new device or I sneak a new device in that it doesn’t have the app on it, that’s a teacher’s gonna notice. Hey, Michael’s a little more distracted in the hallways at the moment. Let’s make sure that this actually has the app on it and running. Is that the idea?

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And, and also when you’re doing this as a social norm, right, Tier one, every student’s doing this. It’s much more obvious when the phone is out. And so I think the other important aspect to note is when we implement it with the school, we’re not replacing their phone policy. It’s not, the Commons isn’t the policy. They still have a policy where the Commons fits into that as part of the requirements of the policy. So for most of our schools, they still have no phones allowed bell to bell, the intention is to have them put away and we’re making it easier to put away because those distractions or those impulse, they’re not coming to the student.

But if it is used for that academic purpose in the classroom, the teacher can also rest assure that by using innovative tech, my students aren’t going to be distracted by those other, you know, hijacking attention seeking applications. That’s really what we’re also providing. But if the students are circumventing or making it obvious, the expectations are set with the students through the policy, you get a new device, you need to come and get this set up. If you circumvent so many times, there may be some sort of, you know, consequence or something where at some point do you need additional support because you can’t handle this? That’s where, you know, the school and their resources can really step in and partner with the parents, which I think is really important to this, to really help the student get off track. Because most likely the phone is often a root cause to other issues. So now when we can look at the data of the phone use and circumvent the app, what else is happening with the student? Their tardy or their attendance overall, which we know is a major issue right now in the K 12 sector, their grades, their behavioral incidents. Like what else is happening with the student? Is the phone a portion of that, you know, the puzzle that’s missing right now to know so that we can help get that student back on track?

Making the Right Choice the Easy Choice

Michael Horn

It seems like there are other aspects of this, that Julia, you mentioned some of the behavioral science elements of it and so forth, but it seems like there’s other parts of that layered into the experience as well. Can you talk about what, what those other aspects are and how it really makes the right choice, the easy choice?

Julia Gustafson

Yeah, yeah. You know, just adding on to it. It’s like the automatic activation is huge here because people will always default to what’s easiest and, and what the default settings are. So actually, you know, this is science that Apple uses to make the experience on the iPhone so enjoyable. Right. And it’s like there are certain behaviors that they want you to do on the phone and those are the default settings. You have to intentionally as a user go in and try to set different settings to make it something else. But that is why automatic activation of our app is so important, because if people had to do an extra step to even turn it on at the beginning of the day, that’s the biggest point of friction to actually making a policy and program successful at the beginning.

But also we want this to be sustainable beyond the first couple months of implementation. So how do you think about something long term? It needs to be easy. And so that automatic activation was a huge portion of that for us. But it’s always about allowing that end user to make the choices at the end of the day and be able to learn that behavior. So that’s where we layer in some of those nudges to ensure that it is the right choice that they’re making. They are to put their phone down in the appropriate time, place and manner. And then if they’re not doing that, we send them a simple reminder. And like Shannon said before, also how do you make it a little fun? How can we send them little reminders here and there and we put a phone use tracker on there so they can see how much time they’ve actually been spending on their phone during the day.

Because when you think about behavior change, if you’re always in that pre contemplation stage and you don’t actually know what’s happening going on as an issue, you’re never going to get to that awareness stage, which is the first step in actually making a true behavior change. So the minute our students understand that they’re having rebound consumption, that they’re spending 45 minutes of a school day on their phone, that’s actually a huge win because they’re now aware of that. And beyond our technology, we do also support our schools with a four module digital citizenship curriculum that really layers in the why behind this, which is so important when you think of intrinsic motivation on this thing that’s really a true behavior change. And so we see a lot of success when our schools layer in the why behind it and that education component as well as the Commons as a guardrail to help make those choices a little bit easier for the students.

Schools’ Role in Building Healthy Tech Habits

Michael Horn

I’m curious about that last piece and it’s more like what I can imagine some people listening, the devil’s advocate part of this, which is like they’d say, ah, schools, you know, they have so much on their plates already now. There are these habits of success also like, oh gosh, yes, there’s this rebound. I had never heard it actually. Ben Wallerstein, who we all know wrote about how, you know these phone free schools, like the rebound effect after school was just dramatic on these kids. But I can imagine some people saying like, okay, but that’s not the school’s problem. Someone else has to deal with that, right? Why? Why are we putting this stuff on the schools? How do you all think about that aspect of it, like the responsible way to use technology that frankly we’re all dealing with these challenges in our lives with phones and so it, you know, having the school be the place of that education, how do you think about that? Maybe Shannon, you jump in first because you’ve been in schools for so long.

Shannon Godfrey

Yeah. You know, I mean, I think of it as number one. It’s not unusual for schools to consume these societal problems. And it’s happened. You know, Julia mentioned already. Right. Mental health issues, nutrition, sex education, drug awareness, you know, all of these things over time as they’ve morphed in, schools have had to figure out how to help support that because it comes into school. And I think that’s what’s really important is, you know, I know schools don’t necessarily sign up for it and fortunately for them, it is another aspect that gets added to their plate.

Absolutely. But at the same time, you know, I think that’s what we’ve seen and it’s always going to change. And phones right now and the distractions are the thing that needs to get integrated and to get created. And that’s where we have seen, you know, similar models, abstinence based right away as the easy choice. But then they’ve all morphed and adopted more of a scale, skill development, awareness and education model for our schools. When you look at their missions, most of our school’s missions isn’t to deliver academic content.

Their mission is to help shape the whole student. And so I think by design, part of that does mean taking in some of these societal problems and being able to be a portion of that in the education and in the support to help students learn that. And what’s really great about schools is that if we can get every student operating the same way, it’s becoming more of that social norm versus being able to expect and hope that each individual student on willpower alone, when they haven’t even developed some of the skill sets of willpower and you know, to be able to manage it on their own or that every single family is going to know how to navigate this as well, but at the same time, we don’t believe it’s just on the school to manage it. We, you know, really see that the parents, the school, the students all coming together is what changes major public health issues and crises. But from a school perspective, I think them, you know, having to absorb what’s happening is really important because if they don’t absorb it, students continue to be distracted in class and then they do suffer from an academic standpoint or a social connection, so they have to do something about it. But in terms of the mission of the school, shape and mold our students, you know, to be successful for life.

That’s where I think there’s a huge opportunity when it comes to this newer issue coming in for schools to be able to help coach, manage and develop the student.

Michael Horn

And I guess it won’t be too long until it’s all wearable glasses and things of that nature. So having technologies for a solution for that is going to be way more practical than a pouch. But I’m curious. Well, and you implicitly made another point there also, which I think just to make sure people don’t miss. Right. Which are these habits of how you impulse control and study and executive function, et cetera. Right. Actually pretty critical for mastering the academic content as well.

So if you don’t have them, it’s going to be a problem toward that mission as well.

How Technology Can Help Schools Curate Digital Tools and Tackle Distraction

Michael Horn

Maybe as we start to wrap up here, one more question that’s sort of occurring to me is this seems tremendous in terms of fighting the distractions that are plaguing a lot of classrooms and students and so forth right now. I think another challenge that technology has brought is sort of, you could argue, schools already had coherence problems in terms of multiple curriculums and things of that nature. It’s gotten worse, I think, with the number of technology apps out there and so forth. So I guess I’m curious there as well as like, can schools use this to help create coherence in some way to say like, you know, we’re not allowing these sorts of other, you know, apps or can they add other things to the list that they see sort of driving distraction or coherence challenges or whatever they might be grappling with as a school community. Is that something that they can custom build, custom play with it?

Shannon Godfrey

It’s really interesting the way that you’re bringing this up. And I, I mean, I think the answer is yes. And what I feel has been really amazing in this evolution with the Commons is that now the directors of technologies at our schools are actually getting brought into the conversation where prior for phone distractions and physical based solutions, they didn’t really have a place in that or were brought at all in the evaluation. But when technology directors are coming in, it’s really allowing us to create a stronger initiative around how are we intentionally using technology and in our schools. So I do think that that is a layer. How much the Commons plays the role in facilitating that, you know, who knows. And I think that it can morph and change over time, but at least pulling it together. When we think about how are we going to use AI in our school, how are we going to use these different technologies in our schools? What about the one to one devices or BYODs? What about the phones? You know, I think the phone part was almost lost on that, but it fits into the entire ecosystem in that initiative.

How do we think about our own school wi-fi network? You know, all of this can come together and facilitate a stronger discussion and game plan and framework for the school. And that’s what we’re seeing blended with within our app. We can white list academic based applications or medical that are really critical throughout the day. What that’s allowed us to do in onboarding is challenge the school or allow the principal to challenge their teachers on why are we using this technologies, how are we using this technologies? And I think sometimes those conversations are just not happening. So I think that also is a really amazing aspect that we didn’t even consider in the phone that now we are seeing it help to shape and mold it. So yes, I do think it plays that role and it can help schools think about it differently in building their frameworks and designing the way that they want to intentionally use technology. How they best educate, continue to train their teachers, continue to really make sure that we’re utilizing technology the right way, intentional use of the right screen time to aid in the student’s success.

You know, I think that’s still an area of education that we need to get better at and equip our teachers in learning and developing in that way. And it’s difficult when they have a thousand tasks to do. Absolutely. But to that point, you know, I do think the conversation of being able to facilitate it and incorporate us into the overall ecosystem that the school is building is something that is really awesome that our technology solution can do. That just wasn’t a part of the conversation prior.

Julia Gustafson

I think one thing to add on to exactly what you’re saying is that it’s been a facilitator to think about like the technological pedagogy of the school and overall philosophy of how they want to construct that similar and I like your word, cohesive feel through different grade levels and also a starting point on what is appropriate for different technology based use across grades, you know, across ages. And so it’s been cool to be part of that conversation with the school.

Michael Horn

That’s a really cool place, I think to leave it. I’m just reflecting on one superintendent I was talking to and he was bemoaning one of the chat bots, I can’t remember which one. And I was saying like, well, why do you allow it? Or why’d you put it in? And he was like, tell the companies. I was like, well, what do you want the technology to, let’s start with what you want the technology to do for you first, and then let’s figure out the right answer as opposed to, oh, there’s this technology, I don’t like it, sort of snap reaction. So the fact that you are facilitating that conversation, creating a place where they feel like they can be in the driver’s seat seems to me also tremendously important in all this. And so just huge thanks for the tagline again, helping students make the right choice by making it the easy choice.

Abstinence alone isn’t an answer I’m taking from this. And of course, the Commons app, airplane mode for schools. Julia Shannon, huge thanks for joining me and for doing this work.

Shannon Godfrey

Thank you very much, Michael. We appreciate it. And just really always enjoy being able to share more about the Commons. So thank you for that as well.

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The Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology (FC Tech), launched over a century ago out of the estate of Benjamin Franklin, recently had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on its brand-new campus in Roxbury in Boston. As covered recently in the Boston Globe, only six years ago, the school was seeking just to see its mission survive through a merger with the Wentworth Institute of Technology.. But after a big donation of $12.5 million from Bill and Joyce Cummings, the school has preserved its independence and grown.

In this episode, Danny Curtis spoke with the institution’s president, Aisha Francis, about how FC Tech is innovating to prepare the next generation of technical professionals through robust work-based learning opportunities. Aisha shared her personal background in education, the institution’s history, and how FC Tech’s mission has remained focused on broadening access to high-quality technical and trade education. In particular, subscribers will be interested in the discussion around the development and expansion of co-op and apprenticeship models that enable students to gain practical experience and earn income without increasing their time to degree in this two-year, full-time model.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Aisha Francis, President of the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, a college in Boston, educating students who aspire to advance themselves in the technical fields. I have had the pleasure of working with Aisha on FC Tech’s work around dual enrollment and industry alignment in the past and through that experience have gotten an up close look at the mission-driven innovation that they’re doing on their campus. And so I’m so excited to have her today to share about how they’re serving students through work-based learning. And Aisha, especially appreciate you carving out the time to join us because I know that this is a very busy time of year.

So yeah, just thank you so much for being here.

Aisha Francis

Well, thank you, thank you for having me and I’m really happy to be in conversation with you today.

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. So by way of introduction and just because I think it’s always so interesting to hear about college presidents’ paths to the role, I’d love if you could share more about your own pathway to becoming FC Tech’s president and how that path has sort of shaped your leadership in your time in that role.

Aisha’s Journey to Education Leadership

Aisha Francis

Well, that’s a wonderful question. It gives me an opportunity to reflect and share on my early childhood. I am someone who is from Nashville, Tennessee originally and I come from a family where a lot of people, people were educators and a lot of family members were in medicine, specifically in nursing. And I think I’m an example of this adage of if you can see it, you can be it. And I initially wanted to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps. She was a nurse. And then chemistry hit me really hard in the head and I thought maybe there’s some other things that will allow me to lead from my strengths.

And education seemed like a wonderful pursuit. And so from an early age I wanted to be in the education field. That desire evolved and I pursued English literature in college and went on to earn a doctorate. Earned my doctorate in English literature, all in Nashville and did all of my education there really cheerful by this extended family network of folks who were all kinds of teachers, paraprofessionals in preschools, and head start to administrators with master’s degrees. So when I finished that process, I did teach in the academy for a brief period of time and had been exposed to a lot of nonprofit work in various contexts from high school forward. And so I wanted to pivot into a nontraditional academic career. Did not realize that would lead me eventually to presidency, but the skill sets that I wanted to lean on were communications, making complex ideas and theories more clear in order to advance access to education, grant writing, which is a skill I picked up as a graduate student, initially for myself to fund my own education and then thought I can apply this to many mission based organizations that I care about. And then third, I was looking for more practical application of theories and approaches and ideas that I was learning and teaching in the classroom and decided that nonprofit leadership and administrative oversight would get me there.

Along the way, it turns out that I sort of supported a lot of current and former college presidents in various roles in the nonprofit sector. And that’s what initially exposed me to the work and the varied portfolio of college presidency. So fast forward, I finished a career in fundraising and development and I wanted to work in higher administration, continue that work, but from another perch. I became chief of staff at this college and then from the chief of staff position became president in the summer of 2020.

Danny Curtis

Sounds like a really strong foundation of a lot of education and educators exposure across various fields. And I’m sure all comes to bear in this role at FC Tech. So I appreciate you sharing that context. I’m also curious sort of about FC Tech’s story leading up to you as well, especially since I know that this is an institution that has career connectedness baked into its foundation and from its very interesting founding story. And so I think it provides a useful context for some of the conversation around work based learning. And so we’d love to hear more about FC Tech’s history and sort of how it’s evolved over time.

The Mission of Franklin Cummings Tech

Aisha Francis

Well, I was very intrigued by the opportunity to work at a tech and trade college that is accredited by the same national accreditor who oversees Harvard, BU, BC and a range of institutions throughout New England, not just in the greater Boston area. And that choice to be an accredited institution I think is an important distinction for our college. The mission of Franklin Cummings Tech is to deliver transformative tech and trade education that leads to economic advancement. And we are an access college, a broad access college, meaning we are test agnostic and we don’t have a minimum GPA. Our goal is to really broaden access to education for as many folks as possible, in particular tech and trade education. And that’s because our mission, our charter dates to 1790 to the codicil of the will of Benjamin Franklin, who left what many people consider the first estate gift in the Americas. And it was £1,000 that he left to the city of Boston for two purposes. To provide a fund, a revolving loan fund that was managed by an office in the city so that people who wanted to pursue a trade could borrow money to do that and they wouldn’t have to go into debt to be apprenticed.

The secondary purpose was for people who already had a trade, to borrow money from the same fund so that they could establish their own business. And Franklin was very clear that his largesse was created not only because he had a skill, but because he employed that skill to found a business. And so even today we’ve kept the connection to applicable trade education at the center of our mission. We are a special focused institution in terms of the majors we offer. We have 10 majors, we can get into that a little later. But we’re looking specifically for areas of education that will allow someone to get a very good paying job without a bachelor’s degree necessarily. So sub bachelor degree education certificates and associate degrees. So that’s who we are.

It’s a bit of our connection to one of the founding fathers and how we have lived out this mission in the 21st century in a new building here in Roxbury in the center of Boston.

Danny Curtis

Very cool that you know, you have such a strong connection to potentially America’s most famous apprentice. And I’d imagine maybe the industries have, have changed. I can’t imagine there was much H Vac back then, but it sounds like the mission has remained consistent over time. I’d love to kind of double click on the new campus that you brought up at the end there, just briefly because that feels like a big milestone in this history of FC Tech.

Aisha Francis

It is a huge milestone. Something that for the eight years I’ve worked here has been on the horizon and now you know, we’re here. We’ve made it. This building is a LEED Gold certified building. It’s really sustainable, transparent, purpose built for us, for our students, faculty and the majors that we offer. And the move from our former location was really just a little over a mile, but it puts us much closer to a lot of our students. Half of our students are from Boston and half are from other places. But the students who are from Boston do tend to reside in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park.

We’re in Roxbury here. So it’s a shorter commute for a lot of them. And it gave us a chance to think anew about how form follows function, how we design a building that is really industrial in look and feel so that the classrooms, our surroundings can be used as a teaching tool. So we’re happy to be here. This is about 70,000 square foot building on a little bit more than an acre, built to the zero lot line with a ton of windows so that people walking by can see robotics happening, they can see opticianry classes taking place, they can see our automotive repair shop in action. And so we’re thrilled that this has come to pass.

Danny Curtis

Wow. Really exciting times. And I understand you, you all are doing the ribbon cutting for that coming up this week. So very impressed by that and can’t wait to see it with my own eyes next time I’m back in Boston.

Aisha Francis

So happy to have you anytime. And welcome anyone who’s listening to come and take a look at 21st century career technical education in action here.

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you building that context and bringing us to the present day at FC Tech. And I’m really interested to hear more about some of these new forms of work-based learning that you all are building out at the college. Could you talk me through sort of the range of programming that you all are providing in WBL?

Expanding Access and Outcomes through Co-Ops

Aisha Francis

Yes. And so I think to start I want to share a bit about who our students are, who do we serve and what are our, what we call key three outcomes that we’re looking at. Because work-based learning is built in service of our students and in service of those outcomes. So our students are, majority of them identify as men of color. We are an institution that is really full-time focused. The vast majority of our students are enrolled full time, which makes us different than a community college. We are an independent technical institution, so we are not a public college. And the other thing that I think is important to share is most of our students are first generation and very low income.

And so you put all of those factors together and we know that a lot of our students are working. The challenge we were having is not a lot of their work was connected to H Vac and refrigeration, to practical electricity, to construction management. So they were working jobs that allowed them to attend college full time, which is helpful and it put money in their pockets which they needed, but it was not connected to what they were learning. And so the question we had is if we want to continue to see our Key 3 outcomes increase and those are our graduation rate, which is 52%. That’s about twice the national average graduation rate for two-year colleges. Our job placement rate is annually between 80 and 85%. And then our earnings, we want those earnings to go up for our students. Right now the average student is coming from a household income where they’re earning less than 40,000 and they’re graduating.

That individual is graduating in a role that will pay them on average about 58,000. So we know that we’re having a good impact on economic advancement, but we want to see that starting salary increase even more. So what does that require? Requires not a sort of mandate or request to work fewer hours. We know that’s not practical for a lot of folks who are low income and paying for the investment of education. But we also of course know that work based learning, co-ops, paid internships are invaluable to the education experience. And a small portion of our students were pursuing those opportunities because they could not fit them into a full time college schedule with 25 to 40 hours of work on top of that and their family obligations. So we spent about a year, a year and a half really designing a co-op model that did not add time to degree. We know in the higher education space that co-ops are powerful tools for learning.

They also tend to be designed to make a four-year college program take five years. But of course you’re graduating with a year and a half of work experience. And so we needed to tweak that model. We are now a co-op College. About 30% of our students are pursuing co-ops. Our goal is to have that at the 75% level in two years. It is primarily for our associate degree students, which is more than half of our students. And the idea is to have more aligned work experience with our students being able to apply what they’re learning in their co-op.

So that makes the work that they are doing more interesting and makes the classroom learning they’re doing more interesting. And to all of our co-op placements agree to a $20 an hour compensation and to an assessment so that we are checking in on a weekly basis with those students. And the ideas that the experience that our students are amassing will lead to better job placement rates even stronger than the 80 to 85% we have and higher starting salaries. So it’s all interwoven. The way that we are strengthening our work based learning offerings is really interwoven with better ways to serve our students and make sure they know about the return on investment and they’re experiencing that and better outcomes in terms of those key three outcomes that I described.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I really appreciate two pieces that you highlighted there. First it is just around the role of earn and learn and breeding access to educational opportunities. I think so often the conversation centers around career outcomes which post grad career outcomes and obviously that is a huge part of the equation and so important. But also just the ability to earn while you learn for many is a prerequisite to actually accessing the education in the first place. And I think sometimes that gets lost in the conversation and then part and parcel with that. It’s a reality for an increasing number of students in America that they will be working whether it’s through earn and learn or just through a part time role that’s disconnected from their career aspirations. And so aligning that part time work that’s already happening one way or another to their larger career outcomes and to the learning that’s happening in the classroom is so important. So I really appreciate you highlighting those points.

One question that I have in following up with that is you mentioned that the co-op model is not increasing the time to degree as it does in some other programs. Could you talk us through how that works, how you’re able to identify those synergies and get students to graduate on a regular time schedule?

Aisha Francis

Absolutely. Well, we are really looking at course replacement in some cases, so we are giving credit for the learning that is happening in the co-op. In other cases students are using the summer between their first year and second year if they need to take another course. And then third, we in some program models, actually rearranged the order of the way that courses are laid out so that students could really take advantage of learning the subject matter from your major first and then taking their general education aspects in a different order so that we could really accomplish our goal of creating co op programs that don’t take three years for a two year associate degree.

Danny Curtis

Love to hear that you are making use of those vacation periods to help students move on their path and graduate on time. From my understanding, the co-op model is a really exciting new innovation in work based learning at FC Tech, but it is not the only program type that you all offer. Could you speak to the range of the variety of different programs that you all have?

Expanding Work-Based Learning Opportunities

Aisha Francis

Yes, and so I alluded to the fact that work-based learning was important as a career-connected institution. We have long had students who pursued internships and externships as well as co-ops, but not in the volume that we have now. We also have apprenticeships, so we offer apprenticeship degrees which merge the apprenticeship, the federal oversight of apprenticeships with the degree seeking process and a few of our majors. And so what this looks like is we have an assessment that is done in concert with our faculty to really have faculty understand who is eligible and in a good place, which students in our associate programs are eligible and in a good place for what type of work based learning experience. We are also a project-based learning college. And so project-based learning still offers and we consider that form of WBL because the projects that for instance in our cybersecurity program, some of those students are in a project based learning environment where they spent the summer assessing vulnerability and CyberSecurity risk for 45 small businesses in partnership with the city of Boston. That is very much a work based learning experience. But they were doing that in the context of a course.

So those are project-based learning experiences that we also consider an outgrowth of work based learning. So you know, it has a lot to do with the students’ readiness for uptake based on their own schedule and what they want to do, how they want to really grab hold of their education in various ways. The apprenticeship and co-ops, it’s not one versus the other. They are both very fulfilling work based learning opportunities. Honestly has more to do with the company on the other end. Some companies are very well set up and positioned, particularly in automotive, for instance. They understand apprenticeships.

That’s already a registered apprenticeship. They already have a federally registered apprenticeship in play. So we didn’t have to create one with going through the O*Net process and all of that. And so you know how the industries that we are partnering with are set up. It really factors into what we offer, whether we offer apprenticeships, co-ops or both in a major. And then the other piece of that puzzle is who the student is and where they stand in terms of what they can take on. Because it is quite a big responsibility to have 20 hours, 25 hours of your week, be in a job site, at a work site that is related to your major, but also is really a long term interview for a potential employer. And some students would prefer to go through a more traditional career placement process.

A Suite of WBL Opportunities

Danny Curtis

Yeah, yeah. The range feels so important to have that sort of spectrum of options to match the readiness of students, as you said, maybe not every student is able or ready to tackle on a full, full blown apprenticeship, but might benefit from project based learning or an internship. And likewise on the employer side, maybe not every employer is ready to fully engage at, you know, the starting level. It’s maybe something to evolve into, but great to have that spectrum of options to have everyone engage at the level that they’re ready to engage with it. One sticking point that seems to be a real challenge for colleges in developing these types of, of apprenticeship and work based learning experiences is employer engagement in terms of matching up on the same schedules, aligning on learning outcomes, et cetera. And so I’m curious what has been, in your view, the keys to success in engaging with employers and successfully co designing and delivering these programs?

Aisha Francis

Yes, well, I’m glad you asked because it’s quite involved work, very detail oriented work I would say we built on the foundation of an active business advisory councils. And every major has a group of employers who are in the field who advise us and meet twice a year. They are advising us on the curriculum. What elements should we keep, what are they seeing in the field? So we had that in place, had a good group of people for every major. We also had a division formerly called Strategic Partnerships that I wanted to retool and you know, we’ve been grappling with as an institution, you know, how do you engage and meet the needs of employers as an audience. Right. As a service, we are providing the talent force for these employers and in relatively short order, some of our programs are, you know, really eight months and then we have other programs that are two years.

And so the strategic partnerships division was here. We really wanted to take it to the next level. So we added a senior leadership team member in charge of innovation and looking at what are some of the wish list items that we had. We had not quite been able to figure out the best way to apply these models at this institution for the students that attend. And one that stuck out and stood out rather was co-op. So we really did need to hire for the innovation role. That was important. And then once we got here, I think it’s giving that leader whose name is Michael Goldstein, giving Michael the tools that he needed to take some time and really assess how co-op would work, knowing that we would try some things that didn’t work.

So that cohort one, if you will, the very first guinea pigs who were wonderful. There were about 25 of those students and maybe 18 of them saw the co-op through. But that was a really important group, that pilot group who worked alongside the institution, the pioneer employers and those first students who helped us build proof of concept with a nascent team. Fast forward to today and this is only two years later, but that team has five people, the co-op and career team. We actually merged our career services department with co op because we figured that one of the outcomes, we want half of our students to be landing their job placement opportunities through co op. And if that’s the case, then this is really hand in glove with career services. It’s not separate. So that team is now called the career and co-op team.

And three years ago I’m not sure we would have known that we would get here. So we have to start off with a goal. 75% of students participating in co-op and half of those co-op experiences leading to a job offer. And we also are pushing ourselves to have something closer to 90% job placement and $65,000 average earnings. So all of those things, you have to have ambitious goals, got to have the right team and a good listening ear in terms of how we work with our corporate partners.

FC Tech’s Enrollment Growth

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I know that just serving students and keeping things running out of college is enough work on its own. And so I’d imagine having the dedicated personnel to be innovating and thinking through that next chapter, as well as the dedicated personnel to be engaging externally with employers is probably a huge help in keeping things running and continuing to evolve. You mentioned your big goal for work based learning and engaging with co ops and I want to circle back to that in a second. But first I want to focus on the progress that you all have already made as an institution. I know that over the past few years your enrollment has grown significantly. And when we talk about these types of innovative programs and I see those types of enrollment growth numbers, I naturally sort of draw that causal line. But I’d love to hear from you. What do you see as those drivers of the enrollment growth at FC Tech and potentially what role do these types of innovations play in that?

Aisha Francis

Yes, well, I think the transformation into a co-op college is really important and it has been and continues to be something that we are becoming known for. But our enrollment growth actually started before we made that commitment to invest in co-ops. And what we did, we took the horrible experience of the pandemic to assess, as we were among many colleges that needed to really tighten our belts. We went through a very difficult reduction in force, but we did that with an eye towards what the marketplace was already demonstrating throughout this public health crisis. What were the most resilient roles? If you remember, there were massive layoffs, you know, a lot of industries that retrenched. However, in the tech and trade areas of operation and maintenance, we were already seeing even in the middle of 2020, that, you know, building operations, building maintenance, H Vac, auto repair. These were resilient careers where there were not as many layoffs. In fact, you really needed these, what were now termed essential workers, and broadening of that term to include operations, maintenance, and trade staff beyond the typical emergency services, health workers, and service workers.

So, you know, that was a very moment, you know, kind of an existential moment for this institution is who are we going to be? How do we retain our relevance in a very rapidly changing world? And in order to make this, you know, kind of decision that, and feel that we have the integrity to continue to ask students to invest in this institution, we wanted to make sure that those were the majors that we had, were ones where we felt very confident that we could prepare students for the workforce of today and the workplace of today. So all of that to say we reduced our majors, reduced our offerings by almost half, that’s a very difficult process to go through. Those are real jobs that were lost. And it also allowed us to focus, to do what we knew we were going to be able to excel at. And I think because of that shift, you know, we really led from our strengths. And we almost, the very next year in 2021, started seeing amazing growth in more of our majors. So we had kind of uneven growth.

We had 20 majors and maybe three where there was a strong demand, and the rest really languished. And now we offer 10 majors. We’ve got wait lists for four of them, really good, strong demand for others. And that for us was the game changer. It’s really matching, thinking of ourselves as an institution that has two audiences. We serve an audience of students and their families. We also serve this audience of employers. And if we’re going to be a workforce or intermediary as an institution, we have to offer opportunities in education, in fields that are in high demand.

And so because we did that, we were able to really meet the student demand side as well. And I think it was that perfect combination. And so now we have twice as many students. We served almost 1200 students last year, as opposed to 500, 550 during the pandemic. And that’s been organic growth because we’re meeting a need that the market has displayed. Seeing that need and meeting that need is really important work, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.

Scaling Co-Ops

Danny Curtis

Yeah, well, listeners of this podcast will be very familiar with one of Michael’s strongly held beliefs that, you know, one of the keys to success for colleges is focusing on what you do really well and nailing that, investing resources in those areas and it sounds like that’s exactly what you all have done here. Looking to the future, now, as we wrap up our conversation and circling back to your mention of your 75% goal of engagement in the co-op programming, I’m curious as you look forward, what do you think it will take to reach those goals?

Aisha Francis

Well, it’s going to take more companies so we’ve got to, we are actively scouring the market for more companies that are eager to have paid co-ops or eager to start apprenticeships. We’re also asking the 100 or so companies where we have paid place folks in work based learning opportunities if they would take more students. So if you’ve hosted three, can you take five? And then I think the third piece is we need the testimonials. So in May we have a whole suite of students who are graduating and some of whom are anticipating their job offers from their co-op matches in a few months. And once we have more of those students, more of those stories, then you know, success begets success. So the word gets out. So those are the elements that I think we’re really counting on. And you know what, I’m going to add a fourth one which is the customer service aspect.

Aisha Francis

So we have to be very attuned to the student needs and also to the needs of our other customer. Who are those employers who are putting a lot of time and effort into building a co-op that is meaningful and that is on time and effort that we respect and we want to meet those employers where they are. Some of them are very sophisticated and large places, you know, enterprise mobility, some of our large general contractors here, Delbrook, JKS and places like that who have done co-ops before. That’s the point I’m getting at. So some of them have large, you know, sophisticated HR enterprises and they, they have done this and then there are small and mid sized companies that haven’t and so we want to give all of them the same customer service experience from the standpoint of FC Tech faculty and the staff of the, the career and co op team.

Danny Curtis

Well, as you said it, success begets success and success also begets scale. And I’m sure that more and more students will be flocking to this as well as employers. And I’m looking forward to watching as you all continue to support students and innovate on work based learning and just really appreciate the work that you do and really appreciate you carving up the time to do with me here today.

Aisha Francis

Oh, thank you, thank you for your interest, and we hope that this episode does pique the interest of others. We’re always happy to be a demonstration college. We have this open source playbook and would love that to be helpful in other institutions who want to proliferate this type of model.

Danny Curtis

And it seems like they have a lot to learn from you guys. So really appreciate that openness and all your sharing.

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Two past guests of mine—Tom Arnett and Tyler Thigpen—joined me on this episode for a wide-ranging conversation on what it will take for microschools, or low-cost private schools, to “go upmarket” and attract more high school students. Our conversation revolved around whether one of the key current stumbling blocks is too many of these schools don’t offer enough “Friday Night Lights” and prom-type events—and if the reason those things are important is because of the critical role they and other such traditions play in identity formation and community connection for high schoolers.

Our discussion dove into the challenges and innovations around helping students develop a sense of identity, community, and belonging within smaller, learner-centered school models. Tyler shared practical strategies from his perch leading the Forest School at Acton Academy, including student-led sports, theater, and flexible approaches to high school structure, while Tom reflected on the importance of supporting identity formation and building a strong value network around alternative school models. After listening, we’d love your take as well. What will it take for microschools and other self-directed learning environments to go mainstream? How might they tackle issues of scale, social connection, legitimacy, and supportive ecosystems without undermining the things that make them valuable to the students and families initially enrolling in them?

Michael Horn

Welcome everyone, to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through an aspect of that, today I’m bringing back two friends who’ve been on the podcast at least a couple times each, I believe. We’ve got Tom Arnett at the Christensen Institute, and of course Tyler Thigpen, CEO of the Forest School at Acton Academy and of course the leader of the Institute for Self Directed Learning. We’ve had Tyler on, talking about that in his fantastic book on the topic of self directed learning. So, Tyler, Tom, great to see you both.

Tom Arnett

Good to be with you, Michael, great to be with you.

Rethinking Education and Identity

Michael Horn

Well, we’ll see how we all feel by the end. But the topic I want to get into today is really this question of, you know, Tom and I have observed a lot of times that microschools have a lot of the characteristics of disruptive innovation. They look, you know, by traditional metrics in terms of the scope and breadth of services that your comprehensive schools can provide. They look primitive. They don’t have all the, you know, every single offering you can imagine, from cheerleading to football to volleyball to science labs to bands to choirs, you know, five different versions of beauty shop, quartet, et cetera. And so they come in at the low end, right? And the theory of disruptive innovation says for them to actually over time change or disrupt traditional schooling, they have to actually improve. And so the way disruptive innovations typically do that is by using some sort of technology enabler, they start to creep up the Y axis, if you will, and pack in more and more functions and features, but without replicating all the traditional trappings of the existing paradigm. They don’t replicate the cost structure.

They don’t replicate, in this case, we would think the time bound sort of nature. I would think of the existing school districts and sort of the grammar of schooling that David Tayak and Larry Cuban have historically written about when it comes to K12 schools. And I think a real puzzle, Tom, for us has been what will it take for these schools? And microschools may be the wrong word. I think that’s sort of too small an idea, no pun intended. But these new schools, like, how would they go up market, right, to start to displace the way of education that we’ve typically seen. And one of the things that we’ve both talked about is that in some ways they have to speak to in high school, in particular, this notion of identity formation, that a big part of high school, middle school as well, is sort of learning who you are. And so we can sort of joke, oh, those schools, these startup schools, they don’t have football and Friday Night Lights and they don’t have prom and things of that nature. But I think for an individual family looking to say, hey, am I going to make a jump to one of these schools, those sorts of things are actually very important.

Not just because of the traditions, although that’s probably part of it, but also because of the coming of age experiences that they provide and the way individuals sort of learn, who am I and how do I relate to the rest of my community? And these sort of shared experiences that you can talk about in the cultural lexicon. So we’ve been wondering, how do you tackle that? And we both wanted to talk to Tyler because we think he’s done such a thoughtful job of thinking about this in the context of the Forest School at Acton Academy, as they do run secondary schools. So, Tom, what would you add before we get Tyler’s voice to make us smarter here and we all sort of bat this around?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, I think I’ll just add an anecdote from my own family.

Michael Horn

And you’re telling your own personal story. Your son’s story.

Tom Arnett

Okay.

In that it’s really ironic. I spend all my working time thinking about studying, learning about really innovative school models. And my own kids attend the traditional district schools that they are assigned to based on where we live. And I have advocated to my kids for finding better options or creating better options. But the real holdbacks for them are there’s nothing that they’re struggling with to the point where they feel like they need an escape valve. Right. Like they’re getting good grades, their teachers like them, they have friends, they’re not getting bullied. None of those issues have come up for them.

And for them, they don’t want to give up that common school experience. In other words, they want to be on sports teams with their friends. They want to be in the band that their friends are in. They want to just be able to speak the same language as their friends so that when kids say, hey, did you, you know, did you see what happened at the football game last Friday night? Or did you, you know, what did you think of so and so’s class that they can relate to that they’re not like, I don’t know what you guys are talking about…

Balancing School and Sports Option

Michael Horn

Before you move on from that, just one question because like my observation is a lot of towns like the youth sports and stuff like that, it’s happening less at the schools. Like it is getting unbundled into various leagues and stuff like that. So I’m, I’m like. That still held sway for your boy?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, but it’s funny because we participate in both. Like they participate in leagues and they participate in the school sports. And so that does make a little bit of it. Like. Okay, so to get real specific, over this last winter break we had a conversation about like our district has an independent study program where you can do your classes independent study but still participate in the sports teams at the school or there’s an option through the community college where you can do something similar, but you don’t have access to the sports. And one of the things that came up as we were, you know, there’s different constraints and different challenges that each come with. And we talked about, well, you could do water polo just through the club instead of through the high school. Like he does both of them right now and a lot of his friends are at the high school.

So he doesn’t want to give that up. But he does have friends in the club league and it is an alternative. So I will say like the barrier is lower than maybe it was in the past. But it still is, there’s a sense of like I have to give something up if I want to do this. It’s not just all upside.

Michael Horn

Okay, Tyler, let’s bring you in on here because you’ve, as you all have operated your school network which goes K through high school, right? You all have thought a lot about how to run a thriving high school and get skeptical, maybe parents say, yeah, like I want the benefits of that self directed learning experience and not maybe give up some of these things. And, and you’ve thought about a lot of these identity forming rituals and some other pie it. So, so I, I don’t know where you want to take it, but I’d love to hear your opening reflections.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, well, we’re, we’re trying and we’re trying hard and once we get them, we’re trying to keep them. You know, I think one of the interesting, in my mind at least, differences between the league sports, the club sports and the school sports is the audience. You know, for so many of the league and club sports, you know, the audience is really just kind of parents, caregivers, you know, coaches, referees. But for the school sports, it’s their friends. And that’s just, I think that’s a game changer, you know. And I’ll say, I think the two biggest reasons why high schoolers would leave our high school at some point, is the, they sort of cite the social, you know, friends wanting to have more quantity because we are a microschool. So we got 45, 50 high schoolers on average at our school. And then sports opportunities, you know, that they may have.

So what we’ve done over the years to, you know, address this is. And it’s evolved, but number one is we sort of said, hey, if you want to start your own sport or start your own club, all you need is a critical mass and a parent volunteer and let’s do it. And so that’s how basketball got started. And they actually went to state in the first year.

Michael Horn

I was going to say you had a, you posted, I mean your, your team was pretty good. I saw the video you posted recently. There’s passes and shots there.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, and I’ll tell you, I mean I, and folks who’ve come into our environment from traditional environments will say something similar. But like, because it’s a school trying to really teach self direction, like they’re very resilient. And so even though they start out losing a lot, they have this mind, this growth mindset, you know, and they want to get better. And so like our volleyball team for example, which by the way, girls volleyball started because they saw the boys, were jealous of the boys basketball and were like, we got to start our own thing. Well, can we start volleyball? We were like, yeah. And so anyway, the first season they lost every game but one. Second season they lost every game but one. And then this last season they went nine and four and made it to state, you know, and just never gave up.

I mean they kept improving, you know, so I think that. But, I think the learners feel like they can start their own thing. And, and what’s cool in our state in Georgia is there is a league that accommodates small schools like ours. It’s called GAPS, Georgia association of Private Parochial Schools. A lot of them are faith based schools. We’re religiously diverse. But it’s awesome. And you can even have homeschoolers kind of play on your team as well.

Student Activities Encourage Growth

Tyler Thigpen

So some of our friends, some of our high schoolers have invited their friends, you know, to play. So that’s kind of how we’ve addressed the sports thing. We also, the learners have done shared dances, you know, and reached out to other partner small schools and you know, gone into downtown Atlanta. We’re trying to get them to come to us on the south side, you know, this time and, and that’s been fun. I think the apprenticeships that we do in an interesting way is an identity forming thing because the way they’re structured is you can sort of do it whenever and miss school and it’s not an unexcused absence. And you have to do so many of them that I do think they come to know themselves in a way that ends up being valuable. There’s no real comparison I think in the, you know, in the more traditional settings for that, that’s a one to one, but I think that’s valuable.

The other thing that’s interesting is when we launched the online school, we, our high schoolers now especially as they, because they really value the freedom, they really value going at their own pace, they. They don’t want to lose that and sometimes they only want to come into school. They’re just like, I want to get it done, you know, at home or at the coffee shop. And so they’ll actually jump into our online school for a while or make use of some of that online curriculum and then kind of parachute into the in person environment. Especially we see seniors doing this a lot, you know, which I guess is equivalent to working off campus, you know, working, doing an independent study or something off campus.

Michael Horn

That’s like a very interesting thing, right Tyler? Like they’re willing to, I mean, in some ways the gravitational pull, I guess it works both ways. Second semester seniors, you know, you got a lot of burnout and a lot of folks doing other stuff. But like that’s when a lot of the rites of passage, right happen. The connections to prom, college, right. Like all these things we sort of. All the movies in Hollywood, you know, down, down where Tom is, make us think are sort of America pie, right? Or apple pie and Americana. And so that’s interesting that you would see seniors going for that full online experience at that point and parachuting in when they want the connection.

Is that because they’ve sort of acclimate, right, like their, their definition of success has changed by being part of your community? Or is. Is it that you’ve, you’ve sort of cracked this nut of being able to provide enough connections into and sort of identity formation opportunities?

Tyler Thigpen

I don’t know. What my observation is is these learners who are older, some of them have the ability to drive, you know, and maybe have access to wheels or at least the ability to get around. They’ll see value in some of what’s happening in person and in groups at the school and they’ll want to be there for that. And then outside of that, they kind of really enjoy that independence of just being able to go, you know, vote with their feet and go eat where they want to eat, be at home if they want to be home. Just, you know, which I think is a good sign of independence. It’s almost like college. It’s almost like a college-like atmosphere in your senior year of high school, if you will. That’s my observation.

Michael Horn

But let me ask this question. It seems. So we went immediately to sports, I think, right? And then you brought in some of the other aspects. I’d love both of you guys to like jump in on this. It seems like sports, right, is often ridiculed among the educators of like ah geez, we also have to do sports. But it seems like a lot of these things are stand-ins, I guess is this is the, are we crazy for having this conversation, right? Because it seems like they are a bigger part of learning about who you are, building a community around you. Rites of passage, you know, it’s like we like to joke about the person who’s still living the glory days of their high school football, you know, game saving catch when they were, you know, 40 years earlier. But, but there is something about that that grounds you and, and, and gives you a narrative and connects you more broadly and, and look, story, you know, stories are part of life.

So, I guess I’m curious is, in your views, is there something deeper here like I painted and if so, what else, you know, do we need to be thinking about for high schools to sort of attract or these alternative student centered, self directed high schools. Maybe that’s a better way to call this movement. How do they start to attract more families and signal to them not only is it okay, but you won’t be missing out on these deeper things? Tyler, why don’t you jump in first and then Tom, go wherever you want to take it.

Tyler Thigpen

Communicating and actually living out the reality that the learners really can have agency and can create the kinds of experiences that they want. I think there’s a ton of value in sports. I agree with you Michael. The level of, you know, working on a team. I mean even just from a rite of passage standpoint. I remember our varsity and middle school girls this year and JV girls for volleyball got their, for the first time, like warm up jerseys in addition to regular jerseys and then a backpack, their name on it. And just that, I mean, that was an absolute core memory.

Michael Horn

Well, it’s like the letter jacket, right? I mean, the cool kids, quote unquote, had letter jackets.

Tyler Thigpen

Totally, totally. We actually are starting theater now, you know, in a similar viewpoint, we’ve got some learners who are interested in theater. That’s an incredible avenue for communication and for academics and just like, well being in general, you know, and, and so now like, and again, we’re in our eighth year as a, as a small microschool, but we now we have in the fall basketball, we have in the winter volleyball, and in the spring, you know, we’ll have, theater. But I think it’s about giving them choice, giving them agency. I mean, interestingly, you know, we’ll do field trips with them too. And it’s actually easy to do field trips.

Community-Driven Learning Experiences

Tom Arnett

Right.

Tyler Thigpen

If you could just get some volunteer folks to drive and they’ll go to colleges and museums, you know, and workplaces like some of our parents and caregivers who have interesting jobs. That’s also identity forming, I think, because it’s a great way for them to just rub shoulders and to figure out, oh, I might could see myself working here. And then interestingly, and I try and cultivate this as much as I can as a head of school. We’ll try and identify parents or caregivers who want to self organize some things for groups of high school kids. I’ve led field trips to colleges, like out of state. You know, it wasn’t necessarily like formally a part of the school, but it was like, hey, I’m doing this as a dad with my son, on my own. Who else wants to go sort of a thing. And you know, there have been rites of passage, like, you know, weekends that have been like literal rites of passage weekend that have been put together by men and women, you know, in our community.

And there’s things that we can do as school leaders to like, encourage that and to celebrate that and try and, you know, through celebration, cultivate the things that we want to see. But to me, it comes back to just helping them feel like it’s a blank canvas and that it is possible and to make creative connections. Tom, what do you think?

Tom Arnett

So what’s popping into my mind right now is, do either of you read David Yeager’s book 10 to 25? No, the book. Yeah, for sure. Great book. Yeah. So probably one of the most influential books.

Tyler Thigpen

On my list right now.

Tom Arnett

So that was. That was a book I read last year that really shaped my thinking about these kinds of issues. And on one hand, I think identity formation. I guess I’d parse it two ways. One is that even. Even in the conventional, traditional high school experience, there’s lots of kids who don’t have the traditional identity formation, you know, that aren’t all about wearing the leatherman jacket or being at the rally, because a lot of those spaces, like, there’s just not room for everybody. So kids have to form other identities. And I think there’s a lot of other healthy identities that people could form.

Like, I think of, like, the identity that you form when you work at an internship and you learn. Like, here’s my value in an organization is probably more value. I mean, I’m biased, but I would say that’s a more valuable identity than the identity of, like, I’m really cool because I wear the right clothes at school. So I think there’s a lot that could be improved on identity formation. But what Jaeger’s book makes me think of is he talks about how, just like, infants have developmental milestones of, like, you know, learning to have, you know, coordinate their limbs, learning to speak. He says the developmental objective of adolescence is to learn how to earn status and respect.

And the reason why is that people, like humans, thrive in society. Like, we, you know, we’re not all just lone wolves. We accomplish things as a. As humans by working together. But in order to be able to work together, you have to be able to figure out, how do I fit into a group? How do I show the group that I’m of value to that group? How do I essentially, like, that’s. You earn status and respect in a group by. By figuring out, like, what is my value to add, and how do I signal that to other people? And so to me, that’s the big question that you have to tackle for a lot of kids is how do you give them the experiences that let them earn status and respect, but in a context of other people? This is where sometimes I think, when we talk about learning, being really individualized, like, individualism, if you take it too much to the extreme, means, like, everyone’s doing their own thing, and it doesn’t matter to everyone, anyone else, because you’re just.

You’re doing your one thing you’re passionate about, but no one else cares. And I think a lot of kids, like, they don’t actually want to do that. They want to do something that they’re passionate about, but they also want to do something that others care about, that other people say, like, that’s cool, that’s valuable, you’re. Or you’re a valuable contributor to what the rest of us care about. So that’s, I guess that’s one way I frame this question of like, what, what kind of innovation and improvement needs to happen to make this more appealing to more people? So that’s one side. But then I’ll say, what about, I think for this to truly go mainstream, there are the people who are getting that fulfilled in a conventional setting. Like, you’ve got to figure out how to fulfill it for them as well. Not, you know, make it, make it a compelling alternative to them so it doesn’t feel like they’re giving something up.

And that raises for me the question of like, so is the future some kind of hybrid approach? And Michael’s, I see him squinting. Michael’s written a whole, you know, one of his first paper I read when I joined the institute was about hybrids and disruptive innovation. Like, is the future a hybrid approach where kids go to a conventional setting for some things and then they get other experiences elsewhere? Or is it, is there more of, going to be a tipping point where like these new identity forming experiences just become the new cool thing and people, you know, see that as the new cool thing and they want to do it because it is a new cool thing?

Redefining School Rituals

Michael Horn

Well, let me ask the question this way and either of you can jump in, because I think building off what you just said, Tom, which is interesting, Tyler, as you were starting to name all the things, all of a sudden I wrote down, like, oh my gosh, like, how do we provide all these things without becoming sort of the thing we’re trying to replace? Like, could, you know, could you accidentally fall back into the grammar of schools with all the trappings of it? And so it occurs to me, Tom, one of your points is a lot of these, I’ll call them artifacts of identity formation and figuring out how I add value to a group and so forth, have become more the artifact than the original reason that they were probably created, right? We sort of lost the, you know, the high school today. I suspect if you ask the average educator, you know, they might name at a surface level, like what athletics does or things like that, but probably not the depth or when thinking about dance or tradition, various traditions, right? Like they, they’re, they’re somewhat decoupled, I think, from this larger thing we’re trying to do with individuals as we help them build identity and awareness of how they fit in with others and so forth. And so I guess my, my thought is if, if there’s a more intentional building of these rituals and so forth, maybe you don’t construct sort of the, it looks different in some ways but like there will be some overlap and that’s okay, right? Like there will be some sports teams that are still there and, and, and there will be some dances that are still there. Or you know, as Tyler, you were saying, like, it doesn’t sound like you’re replicating everything yourself. You’re partnering with a few other schools to create a dance and think right. Like, it doesn’t mean you’re, you have to bite off the whole enchilada and then recreate, create the very thing that maybe had become too depersonalized and, and sort of unintentional walk through these rituals. Maybe that’s the way to think about it.

Michael Horn

I’d love your take on it, it resonates.

Tyler Thigpen

What you’re saying about some of them being similar, some of them being different. And even because we’re a small environment, even the ones that the rituals that we’re creating, you know, could be, I think they are uniquely set apart than the ones in the more traditional setting, but it might not be able to be discerned from the surface. Which reminded me one of the things that we did create that is fairly new and we participate in as a business fair and whether our high schoolers, almost all of them have participated in that, launched their own public business and sold stuff and made a profit or if they’re not participating, they’ll come, you know, and support their friends and buy stuff or whatever. But that’s just another example of a sort of, you know, they’re getting to know themselves for sure through that experience. But I think what further complexifies it too is especially in the more, you know, some of these new high school examples where they’re doing away with grades as we have, you know, and instead embrace the mastery, you know, a more mastery based approach, competency based approach. The, Tom to your point in Jaeger’s book for looking for status and respect, I’ve found it helpful to carve out with the learners and their families like new ways to be able to do that and even new ways to prove quote unquote rigor for college or employer audiences. And some of the ways we answer that are, you know, maximizing the number of things that you prove mastery of over your time in high school and going super deep, you know, in something and that being a real badge of honor. Another would be like really maximizing the number of independent studies that you create, you know, for yourself.

Another would be dual enrollment. You know, many of these progressive microschools or all schools, like, have the opportunity to participate in the state’s dual enrollment program and you know, get a taste of college and do it on a pretty flexible schedule. And I think that’s a nice opportunity. And then obviously you can, you know, for us, we. People can just do crazy and a ton of apprenticeships and then badges for. We use badges at our environment instead of grades. You can max out the number of badges and that’s a form of sort of status and what have you. So it’s interesting.

I mean, your question, Michael, is making me think that what we’ve done is some of it feels like the traditional, but there’s a. There’s one or two or three things about it that are unique and different, that are meeting a difference, like I’ll give you an example. So for our dance, you know, we created it for the high schoolers, but then the middle schoolers heard about it. We’re like, we want to do that too. So we actually created a schedule where for our fall homecoming dance, the middle schoolers come for the first hour and a half and then the high schoolers can come and then the middle schoolers have to leave. But there’s an hour of overlap, you.

Tom Arnett

Know what I mean? Oh, that’s cool.

Tyler Thigpen

School systems that have that kind of a. But that way the middle and high schoolers get to hang together for a little bit. But then the high schoolers get their own, you know, time and space, which they desperately want middle schoolers, like kick the middle schoolers out the door. They’re so, you know, like they want to stay, but like it’s just little nuances like that, I think that is when you just. I think it’s when you open up a conversation to kids and the parents and say, what’s the ideal? How can we create this? That’s when some really interesting stuff starts to happen for us.

Michael Horn

Well, and it strikes me like having dances like that that maintain continuity across generations, right? Like that’s a good thing. And then your spin on it, Tyler, is like a little bit more culture passing right between the different grades, a little bit more intentional mixing, which is in keeping with your general culture of how the kids are learning as they’re self directed there and not sort of. I’m a ninth grader, I’m a tenth grader. Right. And therefore I must be doing this. That makes a heck of a lot of sense. Tom, what are your reactions off that?

Tom Arnett

Well, the dance example, I was thinking of some ways that’s also a way that signals status and respect is like as a middle schooler, you’re like, this is, this is lame that I have to leave the dance early. Won’t it be so cool when I become a high schooler, I can move up and get to stay for the whole thing. I mean, in a lot of ways.

Michael Horn

Or will the high schooler dance with me during the hour overlap?

Tom Arnett

That would be the real, that’s the real status. Right. If they’re like, I can get a high schooler to dance with me. Yeah, yeah. But I think it’s, it’s funny because a lot of those are, you know, the idea of earning status and respect because we have like these age based rites of passage. Like that’s, that’s not an old idea, but it’s interesting to think, like, how can you take those old ideas and rebundle them in some new ways?

Michael Horn

Let me ask a question a different way, Tyler. I’m curious. Like, you’ve been recruiting families, right, for a long time. We’ve honed in on one of the barriers or a set, I guess, of the barriers. Right. That, high schoolers in particular are reticent to jump to these models. It seems like we have a lot of examples in the elementary school years, middle school, somewhat. I would have actually expected more because middle school feels like a time where most traditional middle schools work pretty poorly for most kids.

And they’re still very low stakes with the decision around college and things of that nature. But I think a little bit less than elementary and then high school. Significantly less, it seems like. So have what we’ve been talking about today. Does that feel like some of the biggest barriers? What are the other ones? And how are you all thinking about those?

Tyler Thigpen

Yep, it does feel like that one barrier. The peer pressure, you know, are young people wanting to, to, to be with their friends, to have more friends, to have the potential for more friends. You know, I think another dynamic there is when you are in a smaller environment, you know, you really do have, I mean, one of our pillars is learn to live together. Like they learn that, you know, you gotta. And that can be vulnerable and hard and frustrating. And you know, as parents and caregivers, we really value the learning that happens there for them, they’re like, it might just be a little easier to like ditch this friend group and go form another friend group or find another friend group, you know, and you don’t have that option at a small school. So I think that’s something that needs to be addressed.

And then, you know, a lot of these school founders, too, that will try and wrap middle and high school in together as they’re starting just from a financial model standpoint because they can’t afford, you know, a full staff for high, full staff for middle. And that’s not a great solution because at least in the United States, most high schoolers are like, I don’t want to be with these middle schoolers, you know, but that’s a barrier. Another barrier, I think, is founders’ fear and concerns. A lot of founders and school heads, you know, maybe don’t have the experience with high school and are concerned about legitimacy and making that connection between college and career and just the complexities, you know, that are involved in running a high school, that’s. That’s a barrier. I think parents are concerned about legitimacy. You know, a lot of the questions we get, that’s the first thing that they’re asking about our high school, like, what’s, what are the outcomes? What’s the legitimacy? What are the college career paths, you know, that sort of thing. And so parents are concerned.

And a lot of the coaching that I do with microschool leaders, too, is, you know, making sure that they are just being, you know, really clear about their own pedigree and experience because it’s so valuable, you know, and often they, like, shy back away from that and don’t want to talk about it. I’m like, no, you need to talk about it because you’re. You’re building trust, you know, and you’re building confidence with these, these families and caregivers. And then the last barrier I think I would name is, you know, some accreditation constraints where there, a lot of the accreditation processes that are in existence in the United States right now closely connect, you know, people and deep subject knowledge, expertise with expectations of, like, seat time and, you know, how many and which adults have to be in the room for a high school to operate, and there are creative ways to make sure that the expertise is there, but not in the traditional sense. And if you’ve got either an accreditor who has not bought into that, or if you’ve got a school leader who can’t quite figure out how to put the square peg in the round hole, then that could be a barrier.

Michael Horn

And are families asking for the accreditation? Like, are they, like, oh, if you don’t have accreditation. I’m not sure I want to do this.

Tyler Thigpen

They are. Most are, but only to tick that box. It’s not like they know anything about accreditation. There’s like, are you.

Michael Horn

It’s like a question I’m supposed to ask.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Horn

Interesting.

Tyler Thigpen

So it’s exciting to, you know, evolutions, like, you know, Middle States that has created, you know, an accrediting pathway for microschools and some other organizations that have, you know, have thought about it and are doing it. That’s exciting, you know, for flexible pathways for high schools. I think that’s going to help.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Tom Arnett

Tyler, let me say thank you. Because as I think about from a research perspective, in disruptive innovation, you know, I think a lot about, like, okay, what are these little steps on the upward innovation improvement trajectory that disruptive innovations need to go. And you’ve just laid out, like, here’s a whole bunch of things we have to tackle. So that’s. Anyway, I was eating up what you were saying.

Michael Horn

We have a solution for the accreditation, one through Middle States, and now it’s the other. Okay, keep going.

Future of Microschools

Tom Arnett

Yeah. I was going to ask, going back to the very first thing you mentioned about, like, kids wanting to be with more friends, do you think that potentially means that microschools in the future will not necessarily be micro or that there’ll be some version of, like, getting the best of both worlds? Like, I could. I could imagine one scenario where microschools grow and they’re not micro anymore because they grew as a school. Another scenario where it’s like, microschools still say micro, but you find some way to, like, bring together groups of microschools so that you can provide those, like, hang. Have the big group of friends. Because let me be more specific. Like, imagine, like, 20 microschools all located in the same, you know, same geographic hub. And now you can have big experiences, you can run big programs that require that kind of scale, but you still have microschools because everyone’s still part of a subunit that’s small.

But anyway, I’m curious how you think about that. Not just in, like, what is. What is your school doing today or tomorrow, but, like, 10 years from now as this whole space evolves. Do you think we’re going in that kind of a direction?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, I mean, from your research, too, I’d be curious, you know, what you hypothesize.

Where my brain went when you asked, it actually had less to do with the building or the network or the connectivity between schools or even the size of schools. And it had more to do with decision making, power and agency, and whether or not the high school was self paced, whether or not there was freedom. Because I think once the high schoolers live and move and have their being in a space where they can decide, they typically do not want to give that up, even for, you know, the social, the component. Now, some will, but. But most are like, they value that more, it seems like. And maybe it’s because this developmental stage that they’re at, you know, where they’re really valuing that independence and that freedom, and they just don’t want to go back to an environment where they’re having to, you know, listen to whatever and follow whatever.

So that’s where my brain went. And so whatever. I guess my answer then would be like, where the fish, they’ll flow, the school will flow wherever there’s like, agency and freedom, you know, I don’t know.

Michael Horn

It’s interesting, Tom. I think John Danner is the one that wrote, instead of calling microschools microschools, we ought to start calling it the affordable private school sector. I frankly like that because it tags it more with disruptive innovation. And it doesn’t limit us. I mean, Con Lab school is no longer less than 100 kids. It’s like 300 kids. So is it a mic? It’s not a microschool, clearly. Right.

You look like you wanted to get in there, Tyler.

Tyler Thigpen

I did. I just had a conversation before our call today. We were coaching a microschool leader up in Canada, and we were talking about conservative budgeting, you know, as a microscope leader and the COO that I’ve hired, who’s been with me two years, who’s awesome. His experience prior to this was he was in IT in corporate America, and then he pivoted over to independent schools in Georgia. And he’s been at a number of different independent schools as a CFO and COO. And I was so excited about hiring him because he’s seen a lot of different options for, like, as we, you know, become more established, as Forest becomes, you know, even more efficient. And so this thing outlives me and all of us, like, how do we systematize? He’s seen a lot of options. And what’s interesting is to hear his reflections, coming from an established independent school background on the way that we have handled finances and the unique mindsets that we have brought to the table to budgeting, to admissions, you know, to all this.

And it’s very entrepreneurial. He keeps saying that word over and over. He’s like Tyler, I really appreciate the entrepreneurial approach that is being embraced here at Forest. He actually created a document that lists these mindsets that he’s now coaching leaders, you know, with. And I was like, I need to see that document, Johnny. That sounds amazing.

Like, I feel like I might need to remind myself of it, but I’m going to be writing on this soon and putting it out there. But I agree. I mean, and I’ve. I worked in one established independent school back in the day, and I definitely do not run the finances here like we did back there. You know, back there it was almost like we felt like we had, you know, endless money. It’s just not the case. But, you know, we very much bootstrap here.

Michael Horn

Well, you’re speaking to something else, which maybe we end up at this part of the conversation. And we finish up here, which is. So you all are thinking about identity formation. You’re thinking about how to tackle that list of five or six things you named, Tyler that Tom is now going to research around. How do you climb the Y axis of improvement and disruptive innovation, if you will. But you say you coach a lot of these school entrepreneurs and so forth, right? And so part of the thing that I’m interested in is it’s not clear to me that one school, you know, cracks this and magically disrupts all of American education. I think more likely the sector together comes up, right? And we have lots of different options and versions and flavors of what schooling in the future looks like in this sort of affordable private school sector. And you just named it a few times.

Like, that means coaching them. So it means coaching them to be intentional, to be forthright and not shy away from, hey, this is how we do X, right? This is how we think about college admissions. We’re not afraid of. We’re not running from this. This is how we do finances. And it’s actually not something that’s just a product of us being a startup, but it’s actually part of our DNA. It makes us different. And as we, as a movement scale, we’re not going to replicate, right.

Sort of the, the trappings of an Andover or Exeter or something like that.

That’s not the goal here. So. So I guess that’s where I, where I want to leave it with both of you is reflecting on, like, how do we take some of these things that you are doing in an entrepreneurial way? Tyler, how do we take some of these things you’re coaching entrepreneurs on and start to make it more systematic across the field. So more people are saying, like, it’s not good enough just to start that school that serves 30 kids. I also probably should start thinking about, you know, year two, year three, year four, how I start to fill these other voids that are meaningful and important.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah. Resonates deeply, Michael. And our accelerator that we add virtually and in person, it, it addresses these things, it tries to do those things. And, you know, I really appreciate the National Microschooling center, you know, the work that they are doing to, to them, they care deeply about this same, you know, same question. And they’ve put together cohorts of folks that, you know, you know, what I like to call, share ideas willingly and steal ideas shamelessly, you know, from, from one another. But, but no how do we codify that and share it at scale and keep the learning going and continuous improvement. I think there’s still work to be done there for sure.

Michael Horn

Tom, what do you, what lessons can we draw from other fields, you’ve looked at disruptive innovation. Like what should we be thinking about that we haven’t talked about maybe?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, well, to nerd out a little bit.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let’s nerd out. Like, final word here. Got for it.

Tom Arnett

Well, so I spent a lot of time thinking about this concept from disruptive innovation called the Value Network. And Clayton Christensen talked about how the biggest, most transformative disruptive innovations. It’s not just about a new enabling technology or a new business model. You have this new Value Network that exists around those business models. And Michael and I, we had a colleague that used to be at the Institute, Horace Dediu, who he did a bunch of research on, like, why is it that some disruptions happen quickly and some happen slowly?

Michael Horn

I’ll give two quick examples if I can. Right. One was the dryer in your house that was slow compared to the refrigerator, which was fast. And, and Right. And I’ll, I’ll let you go to the punchline, Tom. I won’t ruin that one. But just to give people a mental model.

Tom Arnett

Yeah, good mental model. So, yeah, when you think of like a dryer or I think of like a washing machine is probably even more so. Like, those appliances required changing the hookups in a house. Right. Whereas a refrigerator could just plug into the wall. Houses at that time already had electricity, so they could just plug in. Whereas these other appliances required, you know, a new water line. Yeah.

Sewer line, a new venting system. Like you houses weren’t being built with those things. And so there was like a time, like the transition was much slower because the system sitting around the appliance had to be adapted for the appliance to really make sense and to really be easy and convenient to plug in. And so when I think of school systems, I think it’s kind of the same thing, is that we. There is a value network that sits around conventional schools. Think of like all the teacher prep programs, the accreditation systems, the higher ed system, state policy, like all those things have been designed for nearly a century to fit around a conventional school space. Right.

Building Networks for New Schools

Tom Arnett

And these new models of schooling, they really, you know, one big challenge for them is that there isn’t, you know, tons of teacher prep programs all over the country and policy on all the states and, and higher ed, you know, admissions programs that are all set up that are just accommodated to these new models of schooling. And so I think what’s going to make this slower as a, you know, as a disruptive innovation is the fact that we’re going to have to build that new value network around it. But I think that’s the exciting thing to look for is where do you see people like the National Microschooling center or Middle States as accreditation system, you know, these new things that aren’t necessarily schools, but they support the broader ecosystem like popping up to make it so there’s more plug compatibility for programs over time so that you can just plug into a new value network, a new system as you launch a new school, instead of having to figure out, well, how do we cobble it together with the limited stuff we have right now.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, just two quick anecdotes on that to be my final words. You know, one very promising, exciting as a partner of ours is the Indiana Microschool Collaborative. George Philhauer and Eastern Hancock just in August launched the MicroSchool K12 that has 68 learners. Eight of the learners come from the traditional environment. The vast majority of the others come from homeschool or an independent school. And they’re loving it.

And the school has a number of innovative features. And the children that go there feel like the school was designed for them. Because it is what George regularly says. And that’s the first of what’s going to be many. Right. And so George and his team are really thinking meaningfully about exactly that. Tom. It’s like, how do we provide that? So it’ll be fascinating to sort of watch what gets centralized and, you know, what doesn’t and then the other thing is our institutes leading a project in Georgia where up to 10 districts are going to be over the next three years designing new models that better meet the needs of parents and students who are currently like outside of the system.

And I think a lot of them will end up being, you know, microschools. It could be anything. Could be like an elementary school for dyslexic kids or early college, high school or self directed learning center, doesn’t matter. And you know, to see how they end up shaping and what flexibility they end up requesting, you know, and then what support they need to stay alive. That’s something that we’re super curious about too. But what’s cool to me at least is that like the leaders in these spaces are feeling the invitation, you know, to do something new and more innovative.

Michael Horn

That is a good thing. It occurs to me also you mentioned Mastery Transcript Consortium Tyler. Like that’s another one of these entities that I would love to see focus almost exclusively on this learner centered, self directed space as opposed to the old ground. And I get why they’ve played in both. But I would love these entities solving the problems of this new and being really focused on this value network because I think that’s where the more folks we have focused here, the faster I think this value network will grow around it to scale and grow together. I’ll name the other one. I was laughing when you were talking about all the different ways that people can prove mastery Tyler in your ecosystem. And I just got off a call where someone was like, ah, but we can’t do assessments around like, you know, bespoke things like we just don’t know, like the science isn’t there, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, well you ought to write an article that explains to idiots like me why that’s true because I like, I mean, I think I see lots of examples of that and I can also point to plenty of microcredentials that have no meaningful assessment behind them and are worthless. Right. And so, but I just think, right, that’s another area of velocity of assessment that people trust in some way. And that doesn’t mean Scantron test. That means like authentic, you know, real demonstration of learning through, through some sort of, you know, product or performance or something. Right. And so the more and more though I think we get of that in this ecosystem, the more I think people will buy in and say like, oh yeah, I had a friend who went through that and it sort of starts to spread. I think as we get that and frankly the, the technology platforms, right, that are helping connect demand to supply in these ESA states, they ought to be listening acutely, I think, to the supply side as well, of like, what do you need to grow? It should be in their interest to help the really, you know, the really good providers there get scale and maybe connect to different services and create informal networks and things like that to better serve the demand side.

And so the more listening and cooperation I think we have in this value network right now, to me, all hands on deck because that’s a good way to go up market.

Tyler Thigpen

Well said.

Michael Horn

All right guys, huge thanks for joining us. We would love people to come in on the heels of this and tell us what we got wrong, what other ideas we ought to feature, what we ought to learn from, because I think it’s a really important topic that’s not getting enough air time. And so this is the first conversation we’ve had about this, but it’s one all of us are interested in further in. So appreciate you all and we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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Two of my former students and now entrepreneurs Abdi Guleed and Kedaar Sridhar of M7E AI joined me to explore how they’re using AI to make math curricula more accessible for all students, especially those facing linguistic barriers. Abdi and Kedaar shared their personal stories and the research that inspired them to create M7E AI, a tool that works with curriculum providers to streamline and clarify math content before it reaches classrooms. Our conversation highlighted challenges districts face when evaluating curriculum, the platform’s innovative seven-factor framework for language accessibility, and the ways AI can help districts, publishers, and educators create more equitable learning experiences.

Michael Horn

Hey, Michael, here. What you’re about to hear is a webinar that I hosted for a company, M7E, that full disclosure, I’m an advisor to. It’s two of my former students that founded it. And it’s a very cool AI tool that does something different from a lot of the tools out there on the market. It’s not student facing, it’s not teacher facing. What it does is it works with curriculum providers to take their math content specifically and use the AI with a set of clear rules to reduce the language complexity so that the curriculum is actually teaching and assessing on the math skills rather than some of the language things that might run interference for multilingual learners in particular, I hope you enjoy the webinar that we recorded, find it interesting, informative, and that it sparked some questions for you about how else might we use AI that sort of steps out of the typical notion of just, hey, it’s a chatbot, and where are the applications that might take off that could make an impact in education. Let me introduce the two folks first who have been digging into this problem from both the research and product perspective. First of all, we have Abdi, I’m looking for you on my screen.

There you are, Abdi Guleed. He’s a Harvard Education Entrepreneurship fellow and the co-founder of M7E AI. And we also have Kedaar Sridhar, also a Harvard Education Entrepreneurship fellow and also the co-founder of M7E AI both, as I said, former students in my class. And together they’ve built this company and product that really evaluates these existing math problems and tasks for linguistic clarity and accessibility. They flag hidden barriers that can trip up students and then they suggest, I think, importantly, revisions to keep the mathematical rigor intact, but while making the language and design more equitable. So I’m excited to bring them in. And Abdi, Kedaar, welcome. I want to get into it.

The way we’ll do this is I have a couple questions for you guys up front and then I’m going to sort of give you the stage, if you will, to maybe show what you guys have developed and how you’ve been using it with some curriculum companies. But I think your own personal stories to this, I got to watch it a little bit up close. But for those that don’t know, you tell us your own personal stories about how you came to build this tool. Why did you see it as a big problem worth solving? Because I know a lot of folks don’t even tend to think about these challenges a lot of times. So Kedaar, Abdi, whoever of you wants to take it first.

AI Tool Enhancing Math Curriculum

Abdi Guleed

Thank you so much, Michael. And thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Abdi. I grew up in Norway and like Michael said earlier as well. But I remember very clearly how math content was created and how that shaped my experience as a learner. And a lot of that stuck with me as I was growing up. And then I came to the US as a student athlete in track and field and built a career always around the core theme of using technology to make learning and organizational process more effective. I spent years working with data and AI, especially my master’s program with Kedaar, where most of our work was focused on how AI can streamline complex manual processes.

So M7 education is a natural extension of that work and curriculum creation is one of the most complex and time consuming processes in education. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. And we think AI can dramatically improve both the speed and the quality. And because I personally know the impact of curriculum design, this mission is really, really important to me as well as is to Kedaar. So over to you, Kedaar.

Kedaar Sridhar

Awesome. Thanks for that Abdi. And thank you Michael. And thank you everyone for being here today. We’re excited to chat about what we’ve been working on. So I’m Kedaar Sridhar, also an international student who grew up in Oman in the Middle East. And I sucked at math like it was. I just wasn’t, I just wasn’t doing well.

And turns out a lot of the things and the questions didn’t make sense from a lot of these big publishers, questions about lacrosse which I had never known or played, questions about skiing and I live in, you know, in a very hot country. And like all of these different contextual clues and things that were actually distracting me as well from what I was actually trying to do. Fast forward to, you know, I ended up coming to the US and doing my undergrad at UCLA in computer science. And I ended up in the STEM field. And I think a big focus for me is how can I improve access to that field and to those oriented careers. My career is in product and tech, but specifically I worked as well at an undergrad admissions for UCLA focused on improving access to higher education and then ended up at a nonprofit focused on STEM literacy, digital literacy, AI literacy, helping people bring into more technical careers as well. And, and so this passion, this through line for both of us has been how do we now provide a way for students, for people to access content when the thing that is being tested for is the wrong thing being sort of expressed and shown, you know, people spend more time decoding language instead of actually testing their own math ability in this specific case.

And so with Abdi, you know, our master’s was in learning, design, innovation, and technology here at the School of Education, and we worked across the board, you know, across Harvard, across MIT and rest of the Cambridge schools as well, to continue diving into the space, doing research, and figuring out how do we best tackle this problem, that was very close to both of us.

Michael Horn

So I think it’s perfect, lLifts off, and I love that, well, you probably didn’t enjoy it Kedaar, that personal story of a kid struggling with math. But when I think a lot of people think about AI in education right now, I think a lot of people, like, the thing that comes to mind is chatbot, right. And I think a lot of people are fearful of, like, the student facing chat bot in particular. What I think is so interesting is that you all have built a tool, actually, that is like a couple layers before the student, right. To make sure that the curriculum getting to them. What I think is so interesting, though, right, is before we get to the solution and what.

How AI, you’ve been able to use it to help districts and so forth, let’s focus on the problem first. And where do you see districts, schools struggling most in their current evaluation processes, especially when they’re comparing multiple math publishers or frankly, like the homegrown materials that we see or materials that teachers are taking from other teachers in all of this. Kedaar, why don’t you start off on this one?

Kedaar Sridhar

What we’ve heard and what we’ve also sort of experienced while, you know, speaking to district leaders and just speaking to all the, you know, all the people in the system, right. Whether you’re a teacher, district leader, or part of assessment teams, researchers, editorial teams, or, you know, publishers themselves. There is the core problem of I am a district leader or I’m an instructional specialist or a curriculum manager, and my district has its own needs, right? In my district, I have a specific type of students. Maybe there’s more bilingual students here, or maybe there’s more students that, you know, with a lower average literacy rate or a lot of these other things, but every district has such a different profile, and yet content is sort of dispersed equally to everyone.

And so for something that we’ve been trying to tackle as we’ve gotten into more of these conversations, is how can we help district leaders specifically and districts themselves have visibility into all the publishers that come to them, be able to see which story aligns with their populations, which publisher and material best speaks to. And best shares that voice with the students themselves and the educators themselves. And in general. And Abdi will expand on this as well. There is just right now a very manual process and there’s limited bandwidth in general when looking at how this is best aligned not only with my district and our goals, but also coverage in terms of the broader, you know, the broader ecosystem as well.

Aligning Curriculum with Diverse Needs

Abdi Guleed

What we’ve seen, just to add to that is we’ve been talking a lot with district leaders, a lot with Kirkham developers and editorial teams, with teachers, with principals across the board. And there’s the idea when it comes to district leaders and schools mainly is there’s a heavy reliance on that idea that these curriculum developers know, kind of best. But then there’s this almost sort of like a little bit disconnect when it comes to the diversity of students in the classrooms that is changing dramatically. And we’ve been looking at it from multiple aspects of how can we help build something that could help the district leaders and others to evaluate the content, to evaluate the curriculum and be part of the design process before it reaches their specific district. And again, there are 50 million K12 students. America is very, very large. So different districts have different needs.

And like Kedaar was alluding to, how can you make sure that my district and my students and the community that I’m supporting, how can we make sure that they have what they need in order to excel in their path as learners? So we’ll cover more on that in a few minutes.

Michael Horn

No, no, no, perfect. So I think that’s a good framing of the problem or challenge, if you will, that schools are facing. And with that, I’m going to give you guys the metaphorical virtual stage. I guess these days it is in zoom, but like three sort of central questions that we’ll have you answer. One is briefly framing what you’ve learned from the research and from working with publishers and districts. So one, briefly frame what you’ve learned from the research and from working with publishers and districts. Second, then let’s go to show, but not show and tell. Show, not tell.

I want you to show a concrete demo of M7E on real math problems, what the platform sees that humans might miss in sort of a quick review. And then I think, obviously give us the, this is a tool, a free tool at the moment that schools and districts can use during adoption cycles, RFPs, internal reviews, and so forth. So show us how that actually can be used. So I’ll kick it to you with that framing.

Abdi Guleed

Awesome. Thank you so much.

So I’ll walk through a little bit about the backstory. We touched upon that already, but give you a little bit of background on where we got started, the problem that we’re seeing. And then I’ll hand it over to Kedaar, who can show you how the platform works and how you can take part of it. So as I said earlier, there are. The first problem that we see here is the comprehension crisis. There are 50 million K12 students and 61% of them are below grade level in math. We’re seeing that one in four students are bilinguals. The thing that we’re seeing is that when you’re looking at math comprehension, it’s not just the bilingual students, but also, especially in the United States, where you have zonings and you can have a specific curriculum developer provide the curriculum and content to a community.

Math Struggles Rooted in Equity

Abdi Guleed

And in that community could be, half of it could go to a public school that has less resources. And then the other half could be an affluent community that have more resources, but they’re both getting the same curriculum. What happens is the affluent one will get probably better scores than the other one, even though they are could be bilinguals, but you also have a lot of native speakers that live in that community, which then adds to a lot more, many more, millions of the students that struggle with math because of linguistic barriers, because of the exposure they’re getting to their personal experiences. Like Kedaar mentioned earlier, lacrosse, if that’s one thing, or badminton or whatever it is, if you don’t have been exposed to that or don’t have experience in that, it becomes sort of a barrier to you to solve the math word problems. When we did a lot of research, we found out that this also has been done before us. But we highlighted and we improved upon it, which is the problem is not so much about the students mathematical ability, but more so on the content and the way it’s presented to them. Then when we had conversations with teachers across the United States, we also realized that teachers don’t have a lot of time to scaffold every single student.

We’re talking 20 or more students in the classroom. So what they do to try to make things work is simplify the word, the problems in a simple way to the students, use Google Translator or other methods to help the kids to get through the problem. Again, there’s not enough time for that level of scaffolding. But then this creates more teacher burden, extra work and inconsistent instruction across the classroom. And then when we had conversations with the publishers, we see they spend a lot of time with the editorial team to build the curriculum for that specific state and that specific district. But at the same time, the editorial team is also. There aren’t enough people in the editorial team who have the experience from these different classrooms in this diversity of classrooms that is growing in the United States.

So there’s a lack of scalable workflows to evaluate and revise that content for every single student. So we’ve seen that as a problem in conversation with the publishers and then the districts. One of the most important piece there is how can you as a district leader or person, part of the district evaluation team or procurement team, how can you evaluate multiple different publishers when they’re coming with you with curriculum materials in order to make sure that this content actually fits with your student cohort? And of course you all have your own rubrics. But how can we make, how can we elevate that and try to figure out ways to stress test it before it even hits adoption or any decision making? Our journey started from a product practicum here at the Harvard Ed School. A publisher came with a problem. They have 15 million plus students and they looked at we had this growing 25% bilinguals and a lot more many students that are in the classroom. How can we make sure that the language is not a barrier and are there things that we can do to build and develop so the workflows of every area becomes simplified and more comprehensible? We, like I said, we spoke with educators, researchers, editorial team, district leaders to confirm that it’s a systemic issue. And then we went through 300 plus research papers as well as publishing our own research that came out a few months ago.

And essentially the mission for us as we touched upon multiple times is to make sure that we can remove the unintentional linguistic barriers without simplifying the mathematical rigor. So when we’re saying making it easier or more comprehensible, we’re still making sure that the mathematical rigor is there, but we can use a different language that is maybe more universal and not cultural. So research highlighted that precise vocabulary plus clear syntax equals better comprehension. So our solution, which Kedaar will show you more about, is to evaluate and to revise curriculum language before even reaching the classroom. These are some of the feedback that we’ve been hearing from the teachers across the U.S. again, every student struggling with math word problems, even native speakers. Some of the teachers, because of the not enough capacity, they ask other students to help their friends to see if there are ways to help everyone in the class when they’re not, when there’s not enough time. Curriculum developers don’t have that insight.

That’s what I touched upon earlier in terms of the editorial team could consist of few people, but not everyone has that experience from every single classroom. So what you’re seeing with M7E and we’ll explain what the seven criteria in the M7 is is to strengthen the math content before it reaches the classroom. So it’s an AI powered curriculum intelligence platform to evaluate and revise based on the seven factor framework that we built through this research. And then making sure, like I said earlier, we keep the mathematical rigor and without altering the math, maintaining standard alignment, original cognitive demand and rigor, helping the editorial team from the publisher aspect of it to streamline their workflows but also offering a clear and reliable signal of student content comprehensibility to support adoption. And HKI aligned procurement decisions for the districts and review teams. And then of course along the way they’ll also help reduce the teacher burn and then create something that can scale across the systems upstream. And we’ll see, we’ll show you how it works pretty easy with publisher schools, districts and others. And I’ll give you over to you Kedaar.

Kedaar Sridhar

Awesome. Thanks for that, for that Abdi, for that framing to kick off how we’re thinking about this from a system level. So the actual seven factors that come in and you can see them on the screen here are what we’ve been able to synthesize through all of our research and our interviews and looking across the fields of translanguaging to linguistics, to mathematical language routines to best pedagogy and learning sciences. And a lot of it as part of what we’ve been doing in classes and research labs and sort of associations involved with the Harvard Education School and beyond as well, we figure out that sort of synthesize these seven criteria in order to create comprehensible math language. And it’s all about like Abdi touched upon, removing the unintentional barriers or the hidden barriers, specifically things that were not intentional pedagogical choices. Right. If something is meant to be there, that’s great, but if something sort of slips through and then creates this hidden barrier that can impede student comprehension and learning, that is what these criteria are working on sort of preventing to happen in the first place.

AI-Powered Educational Content Optimization

Kedaar Sridhar

These criteria are then further broken down into 60 to 80 different sub criteria as well, all aligned with, you know, with sort of the latest research and our own findings and interviews in the field as well. To dive a bit deeper, we’ve actually built our own linguistic comprehension model. So this is where, you know, where we see the value of AI. How can we build something that is scalable but is fully based on the research and how we’re able to fine tune this with not just our criteria but also the common core standard guidelines, different state guidelines specifically, as we’re trying to make sure that we have that alignment there. Being able to get live classroom feedback so from our testing on the ground, along with the research that we’re working with, taking in teacher observations, taking in student comprehension, and then being able to sort of iterate upon those outputs as well, getting editorial teams to review our outputs as well, and constantly evaluating if you know that what we’re producing has those benefits and has those sort of increases in comprehension that where you set out to achieve. As we sort of train this, the goal is can this LCM be something that evaluates math content for comprehension and those barriers and identifies misalignments in general with what the actual guidelines and whether it’s grade guidelines, state guidelines and those kind of factors as well there. And then being able to produce that revised content that is optimized for this comprehension, but specifically focus on reducing cognitive load when it comes to things that don’t concern the math part of it or the math comprehension part of it. So I’ll stop sharing the slides here and actually just dive into what we built and the actual platform itself, which is live, which is something that we have educators and districts already employing here. So this is M7E AI.

This is the curriculum evaluation platform that we’ve built here. And the goal is again, as we’ve said before, how can we now provide an easy way for districts to upload sample units, word problems assessments, any sort of curriculum content, sample items that they’re getting from publishers as publishers are making their claims or sharing content as well, and then being able to get a district summary and sort of the high level features, the strengths and the weaknesses of whatever has been uploaded, getting deep evaluation based on the criteria and then even getting revisions that can help support student learning at a broad level as well. So we’ve built this for superintendents, curriculum directors, review committees, you know, sort of school boards as well, anyone that is making those adoption procurement, an evaluation oriented decision specifically. So just as an example, we’ve uploaded an open source math curriculum. It’s grade four fractions and something that you’re able to do, whether it’s uploading a bulk set of files or different sorts of components that I highlighted earlier, you’re able to pick the specific grade level from K to 12 and then even the state standard. So whether it’s California Common Core, Florida Best, Texas TEKS, and we’re working on getting more and more, you know, specific state guidelines in there as well. But most of the country uses the Common Core. And what we found important is actually the learning goals and standards not just for the curriculum, but what are my goals as a district or what are my goals that I’m trying to sort of enact across this, this curriculum as well.

And this is helpful to share more context about the profile of the district or things that we’re looking to achieve in general. So for this great four fractions content, we have a couple of learning goals as well as a couple of standards that align to sort of the Common Core there. And what we’re able to get is a summary report. And I won’t go fully, you know, I won’t read this out to you, but at a high level it’s giving you a snapshot of what actually makes sense in the content you’ve uploaded. What does that linguistic structure look like? What are the main issues and key strengths as well? What I will say, and I can scroll down just for some, some context here is when we revise it, we take an original problem and then revise it based on all of the factors that you saw in that sort of linguistic comprehension model. So in this specific case, you know, here’s an example of two kids that are planning on going for a run, right? And immediately you’re able to see soccer practice, after school activities, these sort of different names as well. And what our goal is, is with testing with students that we were, you know, working on with, they got stuck at, oh, soccer practice, I don’t do that. And also after school activities, my school doesn’t offer that.

Right. So being able to even again universalize what we’re doing across the field here and then making it very simple in terms of they just want to measure these distances, we’re still keeping the students and we’re able to get to the core of what the math problem is asking specifically. And now there is no, you know, it’s still a three part math problem. Comprehension is not changing, but we’ve already removed a lot of those contextual barriers that actually prevent them from comparing a lot of those fractions there. So if we jump back to the District report. We’re now able to see, you know, there are strengths in terms of cohesion and labeling, but really gaps in terms of those contextual references, different formats as well, and you know, any exclusionary measures that might be taking place as well. We follow up with implications for district adoption and review, in terms of how this matters for the guide, how this sort of aligns with the Common Core guidelines for that specific state and what might be helpful in terms of revisions, as if this is something that you’re choosing to adopt as a district.

And then finally recommendations that districts can sort of follow in terms of how to revise, what parts of it to adopt. Maybe there’s parts of it to adopt and parts of it to revise, a lot of factors like that as well. And then that’s sort of the high level overview. And then it’s sort of a deeper evaluation based on the criteria as well that, you know, the seven criteria that we identified earlier in terms of why or why not it passes each criteria and sort of general notes in terms of the main issues that were found. So this is more the instructional design, you know, curriculum developer oriented level, instructional issues specifically, and then recommendations for further improving it as well. So we wanted to give all the context as district leaders, you know, and as curriculum managers in general.

We are trying to create a transparent model that is clearly showing why we made revisions or why we made changes or how we’re doing a lot of this evaluation specifically. And that’s why we’re able to explain all of this. And then these reports can be exported. So at a high level, this is what we’ve been able to accomplish so far with M7EAI. And we just want to be able to help, you know, districts make better decisions and give them, you know, empower them with the tools that can help them find success for their students.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah. And Michael, before you jump in, you asked the question, how can school industry leaders use this kind of tool? So essentially where I think I said in the email as well, we’re offering for free to district leaders and schools to use the platform. The way you would do it essentially is just contact us and then we’ll help you set up and get started and then.work with you from there.

Michael Horn

Perfect. So they can just reach out directly over email from. From that response. Perfect. Okay, let’s go to Q and A. Elmira. I think that they may have answered the role of AI in evaluating this, but if so, I’m going to go to the second question, but if I have that wrong, I’m going to bring you back in. But we have a question around. So the tools aren’t evaluating curricula in terms of pedagogy, like linguistic scaffolds, math language routines, teacher moves and so forth.

Is that correct? And so just I think tighter definition on what, where it is reviewing and where it isn’t.

Kedaar Sridhar

Okay, I can tackle that. Perfect. So we actually. And this is, this is, again, this is just an example here, but in terms of the recommendations, it’s not just the language recommendation, but it’s also pedagogical recommendations and also the formatting of content. So we’re providing feedback on even the images used or the diagrams or anything in that sort of context there. A lot of times our revisions actually end up providing more scaffolding because again, if something’s an intentional pedagogical choice, we don’t want to be eliminating it. We want to be further explaining it at a high level as well. So whether it’s providing visual support, clarifying instructions, providing more scaffolding, those are the things that we’re also looking for in addition to the linguistic side of things, and also checking for math correctness and the math principles there as well.

And sort of what we want to be very clear about what each revision is supporting, whether it matches the learning goals that were put in and the standards, but being also focused on the linguistic side of things, comprehensive wise. Hopefully that answers that question. But we are definitely working to provide more visibility as well into the pedagogical side of things.

Michael Horn

Perfect. Let me ask this next question that is in the Q and A. And then, Christian, I’ll get to you after that. This question has to do with AI mediated personalization. As tools like this become more common, do we risk siloing students’ learning experiences? So take the point about content delivery being responsive to context. Right. Like Kedaar, your observation around, you know, skiing while living in the Middle East. But if most students mediate their learning in this way, you mentioned scaling this technology. Do we risk opportunities for negotiated understanding? Do we lose something important if 30 students in class engage with a given math problem by interpreting 30 different personalized descriptions of the problem? Would it not be beneficial to everyone for students in Oman to learn something about skiing, while North American students gain exposure to Omani racing or falconry or something like that? So I will let you both answer that question or whichever one wants to take it.

Kedaar Sridhar

And just to be very, very. Just to clarify what we’re doing here, we aren’t personalizing for every student. Right. The goal is how do we make content universal across various groups of students? Because this all started with the static textbooks that we were. The publisher came in and these textbooks are published and they don’t have review cycles for maybe it’s four or five years, different cases for different publishers. But how do you turn content that is static, printed, even supplemental digital content to some extent as well, into something that could be understood by various groups of students? Because like Abdi mentioned, an affluent, you know, an affluent area will be getting the same sort of curriculum as a less affluent area. So how do we sort of equal the playing field on that aspect? Abdi?

Transforming Education Systems

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, I think there’s so many products that now are hitting the classroom for teachers, for students. When we looked at the ecosystem, we’re thinking more of if the ecosystem consists of four players: you have the students, you have the teachers, you have the curriculum developers and district leaders. Where can we make a system level change? And we didn’t get out there to say we’ll create a personalized product for students or for the teachers. It was more so when we started with this at the Harvard School, the practicum, the publisher was doing, what Kedaar just said is textbooks, depending on what publisher it is, they review them every two years, every four years. And those are the core programs that students learn. So we’re looking at how can we make you, how can we make the content, these textbooks, more universal so every student can bring their own, can leverage their translanguage and like Kedaar touched upon in order to understand the content in front of them and not let that be a barrier. And if we, we spend a lot of time figuring out what are these seven criteria. It was actually five in the beginning and then it became six and then became seven.

And then we changed what the seven and the six was based on the feedback from the researchers across UC Berkeley, UCLA, MIT, Stanford, etc. And we came to understand that this is something that these seven criteria can be helping across the board, every student to understand any content in front of them. But yeah, nothing very personalized to every student. It’s just across the board, every student should be able to understand any type of math if they leverage the M7 framework.

Michael Horn

One other quick thought and then I want to go in. So Christian, I’m going to come back to you in a second. I want to go to one other question in the Q and A because it streams perfectly. And then I haven’t forgotten about you. Just one other observation, which is this is always relative to the content or standards objective that is trying to be taught. Right. So skiing for Omani students might be something worth teaching, but it might not be part of the math purpose. Right.

It might show up in social studies or something else. And so it’s not to take that out, but it’s to make sure that relative to the objective that is trying to be taught, that we are making sure that we are, in fact teaching that. And then when there’s intentional interference or complexity, you can say, yes, we’re keeping that because there’s an instructional purpose here, as I understand it. I think this goes into the next thing, because this is actually already done a lot with people who write standardized assessments. They have whole teams that are trying to make sure questions are not biased or unintentionally asking something, testing for a different objective than the one that they hope to. And so it goes to Rebecca’s question, can this resource be used to review assessments? So, Kedaar, Abdi.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Horn

Short answer is yes.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, it could be used like. It’s like anything from overall curriculum to teacher notes to any instructional, you know, external scaffolds, worksheets, problem sets, anything that is content based, that is student facing, that is, you know, that is sort of in those different sort of categories as well. And we take a lot of account into specifically, you know, looking at an assessment versus an instructional material. Right. Because an assessment is more in the silo of the student, whereas an instructional material is in the context of a teacher and being able to understand what the teacher’s role in the classroom is as well. And so these are all things that we’re continuously building into the platform as well.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, and we’ll share with the group here. We tested grade four, 17 units, 17 lessons plus four assessments. And we’ll share that after the call is 200 pages long. But quickly you can review and see how the original was and how we revised it and the context around that. But, yeah, assessment can be also used absolutely.

Audience, Partners, and Reception

Michael Horn

Okay, perfect. Let’s do lightning round. We’ve got three questions that I think all connect and then we have two questions that are somewhat different. So the three questions that connect are who’s your target audience? Right. Sort of. There’s publishers, there’s schools and districts. How do you think about them? The related one is: has or would M7EAI ever partner with another established organization with a similar mission? Are you all a for profit company? How would that work? So still. And then Julie asks how has this been received by the publishers? So maybe you can sort of walk through each of those relationships because I think you have precedent on all of them.

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, I can jump in, Kedaar. So it’s been received very well by the publishers. It’s been more like almost very surprising that they’ve been very. They essentially love the way we approach the problem because there’s stuff that they’re already working on. And if you go back to the whole story, it started with a publisher coming to us and sharing the issue that they are facing, the challenge that they’re facing. And now we’ve been across multiple publishers in this space and it’s been just received really well and we continue continuing to work with each and one of them.

Michael Horn

Let me give my answer of what I think it is for you guys and then you can correct me since it’s your all company. Yes, for profit, but yes you have partnered with mission aligned nonprofits in particular as a tool to help them evaluate curriculum. You can give some specifics in a second but I think it’s a commercial relationship with the publishers and right now it’s giving this tool away to schools and districts to sort of up level the field and help them ask the question of publishers more, more, more to bring it into the criteria. Is that, how did I do guys?

Abdi Guleed

Yeah, perfect. So yeah, essentially going back to the system level of change, I don’t think that would happen just us working with the publishers. I think it’s like a whole community drive. So working with schools, doing the RCT and then also working with district leaders, seeing the value of it. Working with a nonprofit, working with other organizations. You asked the question about other organizations that are similar. We were absolutely open to working with them as well. It’s more like anyone that’s helping with making the change and improving the comprehension level for students.

We’re for that. Publishers. Yes, there is a commercial piece there, but for schools and districts there’s a free product.

Michael Horn

Okay, let me ask this question. I’m going to switch gears. So there’s a question. Could a homeschool parent or a small micro school use this tool doing math with their child or would it be too time intensive?

Kedaar Sridhar

Definitely. I mean, this is, the goal is how do we now reduce the time that it takes to figure out if content is good and if it isn’t, you know, best serving my child or best serving the students, how can we now revise it to make sure that it has a lot of those, those factors in there, given my child’s, you know, age and developmental sort of persona and, you know, the main, the key learning goes, I want to get there. So whether you’re a micro school or a parent, there’s definitely scope for, you know, uploading, you know, content that you would be teaching anyways or being able to revise it to best meet your child’s needs in that sort of aspect as well.

Michael Horn

Okay, perfect. So then Peter has an interesting question. Can the technology go the other way? For example, could content become very specific for an art school or a ski academy or a tennis academy where young Olympians or similar athletes are being taught? Which is perhaps not something you guys have thought about, but I don’t know, maybe you have.

Kedaar Sridhar

Yeah, it’s. I mean, yeah, it’s not something we’ve necessarily thought about, but it’s definitely very doable. Right. I think it’s very making, you know, it’s. The goal is how can we best transform content to best fit the needs of the audience. Right. Or the needs of the learners themselves and cater to them. So I think in that respect, you know, if the goal is, oh, wow, we actually have a focus now, let’s now shift language to best serve that focus or that content area, that domain sort of area.

Yeah, Very, very doable.

Abdi Guleed

I’ll just add to that. I think it’s very doable. Peter, I think if you, in what Kedaar was shown earlier, we have this specific area that can essentially help the output, the evaluation and the revision. So in the learning space, if you can focus on and say, I am very specifically focused on art school or ski academy or etc. And these are the learning goals that we have for them, then the will take into account that with the standards and then give you the evaluation in a series. So we haven’t done it, but it’s absolutely doable.

Michael Horn

Okay, let me ask the last question and then we’re going to let you guys have the final word as we wrap, which is M7E intended to be used by students with dyslexia, ELLs, other learners with specifically defined needs, or do you see applicability for all students?

Abdi Guleed

So currently, the way we’ve been thinking about M7E is to be used by district leaders to evaluate the material that they’re thinking of in their district, to be used by curriculum developers as they’re thinking of creating new material. But also in the study round that we’ve been doing and still doing, teachers can use it, but it’s not a student-facing product. And it’s also not a teacher-facing product, even though teachers are using it to give us feedback. If you guys remember, very early on we were showing you the linguistic comprehension model that we’re building and on one side of is classroom, feedback that fits into the model to give us feedback on how to improve it, how to continue to develop something that is really relevant to the classroom. But it’s not intended to be used by students or teachers. It’s more for the ones creating the product.

Kedaar Sridhar

And what I mean, what I’ll just add there, in terms of the beneficiary, it is all students, right? The content that we revise or, evaluate, is best, is intended to serve all students, regardless of their linguistic background, regardless of where they’re coming from. Because if we can improve it for some students in terms of these buyers, it actually helps and you see improvements across the board for all students. So that’s the goal.

Michael Horn

Perfect. All right, so we’ll wrap there. Huge thanks for a series of really interesting, thoughtful questions. Huge thanks to Abdi and Kedaar both for sharing the original research that went into this. And then the practical side of this work as we explored how to make sure that math materials aren’t just aligned to standards where there’s a lot of good work already, but also that students can be able to understand them by getting the linguistic complexity correct and getting away from these hidden linguistic barriers, especially for multilingual learners. But as Kedaar and Abdi just said, for all.

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Lynn Liao and Taryn Campbell from Cambiar Quest joined me to talk about their approach to scaling real-world work experiences for secondary students through micro-internships. This is an important topic because while people like me have been arguing for more real-world learning opportunities for middle and high school students, how to source those opportunities and make sure they are meaningful such that it’s not a burden on businesses and other organizations is a real challenge.

Lynn and Taryn discussed how Cambiar Quest handles this in their partnerships with schools and local businesses to create team-based, class projects that help students develop essential “durable skills” like communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. They shared insights on how the program reduces burden on partnering businesses so that it’s widely accessible, the scaffolding provided for both students and educators, and the strong positive outcomes they’ve seen so far. It’s early in their learning journey as you’ll hear. Highly recommend.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today, I’m delighted. We have two guests who’ve been at the front lines, I think it’s safe to say, of really thinking what that looks like in the current era, current age that we are entering as a society. We have Lynn Liao, she’s the managing director at Cambiar Quest. And Taryn Campbell, the director at Cambiar Quest. And so first I’ll just say Lynn, Taryn, welcome.

I’m delighted to have you both here.

Lynn Liao

We’re thrilled to talk to you. Our mission is so aligned with what you just described.

Michael Horn

Well, it’s going to be a fun conversation because you all, the three of us, had a chance to talk maybe a month or so ago and frankly, I had no idea the breadth of the work that you all were doing. And I think it really answers a key question that I think is so important at this moment in time. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Maybe let’s just set the foundation for folks. And Lynn, I’ll start with you. Just what is Cambiar? What is Cambiar Quest, sort of set the stage for our audience so that they know the organization in which you work and the work you’ve been up to.

Essential Durable Skills for Success

Lynn Liao

Sure. So Cambiar Education is a venture studio that is seeking to change the marketplace for education so that the products and services that truly make the biggest difference for students and educators and parents really succeed. And we know that that is not always the case in how the marketplace works right now. Our goal, our, our big vision is to have a life changing impact for more than a million students. And we do that both by incubating entrepreneurs who are creating these new ideas and supporting their development and growth. And we also direct run programs. So Quest is an example of a direct run Cambiar program. Quest is solely focused on career exploration and development for students, very much in line with what you described your mission is.

So we are really, we have multiple programs where we help students really build the durable skills necessary for career exploration and for them to really be the ones navigating their way to the future that they are seeking. And then we can dive more into the micro internship, which I think is the program we’re focusing on today.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely want to do that. And before, before maybe we jump in that you mentioned durable skills. As we discussed when we had this offline conversation about a month ago, everyone has a definition for durable skills. Maybe ground us in how you all think about durable skills and how they port from one context to another or maybe which don’t and have to be specifically engineered.

Lynn Liao

Sure. I’ll toss it to Taryn just so we make it a three way conversation.

Michael Horn

Perfect. Go ahead, Taryn.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. I think we think about durable skills like, what are the key things that kids need to be able to do to navigate their life? They need to be able to communicate with people that they don’t know. What does it mean to work in a team and to work alongside others? How do you think critically about the decisions that you’re making and understand how to break problems down into smaller pieces? What does it mean to take initiative? Right. And so I think there’s a million different definitions and words for some of these core key concepts. Whether people call them durable skills, 21st-century skills, sometimes it’s pushed into social and emotional learning. Right. There’s a million definitions out there, but we’re really talking about the foundation that really all kids and all adults need to be successful both in school and the workplace.

Michael Horn

And what strikes me about that and Lynn, this may be the perfect place then to start talking about the micro internships is one of the things that I’ve come to is for, you know, kids to really understand how to communicate real world context is incredibly important. Being in real world situations, but also frankly, like to develop agency and things of that nature. They need to know what’s even possible in the outside world. And most of us as high schoolers, middle schoolers, just don’t. So maybe that’s the.

Lynn Liao

Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. So our micro internship is a team based project where students work with a real employer on a current business challenge they’re facing. And what’s different about it is it’s actually embedded in class time. So when you think typically about an internship, a student goes off site. Maybe they’re learning from osmosis, like many of the things you’re talking about. But because they’re very brand new to the world of work, there’s really limited time for a manager to truly support someone at that skill level. So students are picking up things, but they’re not really digging into the skills that Taryn was talking about. So we’ve created a really scaffolded experience where we’re hyper focused on Students building those critical skills.

So critical thinking, communication, collaboration. And because it’s in that work context where they’re directly talking to an employer, it raises the stakes in such a way that it actually really juices the learning. I was stepping back to reflect because we have 30 hours for our micro internship. That’s typically what we spend in an average school year. For a high schooler, it’s about a thousand plus hours. I bet you if you ask an average high schooler, they do not remember anything about most of those hours. And our goal is completely the opposite. We want every one of our 30 hours to be high impact, sticky, memorable.

Learning Through Challenges and Growth

Lynn Liao

And that’s oftentimes where the deepest learning comes from. It’s like context rich, it’s unique, it’s something they, they’re slightly uncomfortable, but we also work super hard to support them to get through that so that on the other side, they’re reflecting exactly what you had mentioned, Michael. Like, they’re able to say, not just like, oh, I worked on some project. Instead they’re able to say, I supported a client to figure out how they’re going to reach more customers for this new product. And I was able to actually take in this really tough client feedback and do a 180 and come up with a new presentation by the end. And I was really proud of myself for being able to do that. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re really seeking, that students can talk about their own competencies, whether that’s to a future employer on a college app or even frankly, just to say it to themselves. Right.

To feel like they have that sense of personal power and sense of agency as a working, working professional.

Michael Horn

Can you talk a little bit about maybe a couple case studies? Right. Just to give our listeners a sense of what kinds of businesses are they working with. It was a pretty diverse group, as I recall. So maybe just a couple examples. And Taryn, maybe I’ll kick it to you for this, to give a few examples, but then also maybe you know that scaffolding that Lynn talked about, like go deep into one of them where like day one, how are you making sure that they’re able to competently do this so that they’re actually getting something out of it.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. So the first thing I’ll say is all of our content is industry agnostic. Right. So we have built it to make sure that there are no technical skills that students are required to have to be able to engage. And so we have worked with really small mom and pop shops like a local ice cream shop that is around the corner where they were trying to figure out, how do I get more of the foot traffic passing by my store to actually come in and buy ice cream, to really large advanced manufacturing firms… who’s trying to figure out, you know what, we have a talent pipeline challenge that we’re trying to solve. How do we get more young people interested in advanced manufacturing? So what does that look like? What insights can students help us gather and synthesize? And so those are two totally different ends of the spectrum, right? One highly technical and industry related, one really community based. And we see engagement from students regardless of the type of project that they’re engaging in. And what we do at Cambiar is we help right size.

What’s the right grain size for a business challenge? We write up a project brief alongside those employers and then they come in at three specific points in the project. So they come in at the beginning to launch the project, live with students. Students get to ask questions based on their project brief and say, okay, who are these people? What are they asking me to do? What do I need to be clarified? Then they work with their teacher. Every lesson is scaffolded. So there is very much a, like, how do I introduce myself to an adult I’ve never met? What does it look like to write a great question to an employer that’s coming in and giving me a business question? They practice it with each other, then they practice it with others to get feedback, and then they do it live. I think another sort of hallmark when we talk about scaffolding skills here is we have a hallmark of the program is that they all have to do, every student has to go and do live interviews with a client or a stakeholder related to their project challenge. So that means they are interviewing adults, students, community members that they may or may not know.

And that is terrifying for students, right? They’re like, wait, what? I can’t text them. Wait, I have to do it in person, live? And so we really break it down, right. What’s a great interview? What does a great question look like? How do we write some of those questions together? How do I come up with my own question? They practice with each other. They practice with mentors and others who push into the classroom. And then they go out and do it live and get feedback. And they’re doing this collectively in teams. And so that’s what we mean when we say we really break it down. We don’t just say, go forth and do an interview and come back to us.

We help them every single step of the way so that the next time they have to ask somebody a follow up question or introduce themselves to an adult, they’re like, oh yeah, I’ve done that before. I know how this works. Right. Lynn, curious if you have anything to add.

Lynn Liao

I think the one other thing I would add, I know Michael, we had talked about the importance of scalability. This is sort of a micro aspect of that. But we really think a lot about what is the skill that we want students to build. And as Taryn was breaking down, it’s around. It’s essentially a form of active listening. It’s maybe not the most exciting thing, but I think most on the surface. But if you think about what it takes to be successful in life, being able to access somebody else’s understanding and knowledge is absolutely critical. And so being able to think on your feet, really take in what are they saying to me or not.

That’s really core. Spending time finding people to schedule interviews, like scheduling and coordination is a necessity, but it’s not the core thing. So in our modeling, part of the right sizing is finding a business challenge that has stakeholders that students can interview that are widely accessible. So that’s one of our screens when we think about it, because sometimes we’ll have a potential client that has kind of a niche product like let’s say it’s a medical service. And it only applies to people who have this certain condition, you couldn’t interview anybody versus we’ll go to somebody like our regional hospital. They were asking anybody under 18 what their most pressing health needs were. Right. So like that, that’s a way that we address it at the front end so students can spend their time on the thing that’s actually the highest value add to them versus something that could end up being a blocker or hurdle for execution.

Michael Horn

I think that’s super interesting. It gets into something else that I was thinking as you guys were talking about, which is like lessons learned as you guys have implemented this. And Taryn, maybe I’ll go to you first on this. But I’m also thinking, not just the lessons you’ve learned, but also how you help a teacher in a school put this into action. Because I think something we’ve talked about in the past is, you know, teachers are really good at their instructional, you know, their content area. I teach ninth grade, you know, math, whatever it might be. Doesn’t mean that I know how to help scaffold a student through these sets of conversations or set them up to build social capital in the ways that you’re all describing.

So I’m curious, like, lessons you’ve learned both to really help this go smoothly and be implemented well and maybe to get the spread up, as Lynn was just talking about, in terms of scalability.

Taryn Campbell

Yeah, I think we’ve learned a lot with each different sort of cycle that we run. We take a look back at our content curriculum and training and say, okay, what worked and what didn’t? I think we have created really detailed lesson plans where we have set the content and then you sub in the different client challenge or business problem that students are working on. And we’ve gotten it down to scripts, if that is what teachers need, as well as accompanying slides. So really, they are only focused on understanding who is the client and how do I serve as a coach. Actually, right to your point, it is a shift from direct content teaching to how do I support students to wrestle through this on their own? Because there is no right answer. And so we’ve created a hybrid training for all of our facilitators that has a pretty condensed, asynchronous component that walks them step by step through all of the materials, all of the coaching stances and coaching moves. It’s essentially a playbook for how to facilitate. And then we supplement that with live facilitation training.

So really, walking each facilitator through, we’re going to go through the exact same activities that your students go through, and you’re going to wrestle with it, and we’re going to do it with past student work products and past client challenges so that they can try it on because it is new for them. And we’ve actually seen pretty awesome results with facilitators who are brand new to teaching, go through the training. And when we look at the scores coming out of their student surveys, we see that students are still gaining at the same rate that other students are. And so that’s exciting to us because it tells us that there is something in our content that has solved for some of the variation in facilitator experience. We’re still working and improving and tooling, tooling up on that front, but it’s really, really promising early signs.

Michael Horn

Well, I want to get to impact in a moment, but maybe a dumb question, which is how many cycles have you gone through? How many students or teachers, businesses have you been working with? Give us a sense of the scope so far.

Lynn Liao

Yeah, for, let’s see, last spring. Oh, Taryn, you might have to help me with this one for I think it was about a couple hundred, about 200. And then we’re on track this school year for about a thousand and next school year we’re, our trajectory is about 3,000.

So essentially.

Michael Horn

Yeah, yeah.

Lynn Liao

So we kind of like our approach was to go really slow and close with the first spring set. And then we did a major overhaul for the summer, got really strong results and then we felt really ready now to be growing it.

Michael Horn

Well, so you just mentioned results. So maybe talk about impact that you’re starting to see from the program as you’ve gone.

Impactful Program with High Approval

Lynn Liao

Yeah, absolutely. So are immediately like what Taryn mentioned that we do a post program survey right away with kids and have consistently got really strong feedback from them. So with over 90% recommending to a friend, 96% saying that it’s more engaging than the typical coursework. And really importantly, given our focus on durable skills, every single student, 100% of students say they’ve grown in at least one durable skill. But even better, 87% say they’ve grown on three or more. Because we’re really trying to get them to grow in all of these. So that’s really important. I think what’s intriguing as we’ve had and really kind of meaningful to us is that not just right at the close of the program, now that we’ve had a little distance, we’ve stayed in touch with our partners. Another good sign of our impact is all of our partners, our implementation partners, meaning schools after school programs, intermediaries have all continued and most of them have increased their enrollment.

So with that we’ve been able to. They’ve been able to keep track of some of their students, like if their students were sophomores or juniors, you know, versus seniors who had graduated. And they’ve shared that students have said, have retained the kind of what I described earlier that they were. It was so great to hear that there were students who were juniors who did this program in the spring who were writing on their college applications about the experience. Like exactly what we had mentioned, like these. This is what the challenge that I faced going through it. This is what I learned about myself. This is what it means about my skills.

So really good to hear that there’s been retention essentially of the core learnings and students are able to talk about the impact.

Michael Horn

Super interesting. Oh yeah, go ahead, Taryn.

Taryn Campbell

Yeah, the other thing I’ll add is we also have client partners who have actually gone forward with student suggestions to implement them. Right. So some of their folks are actually continuing to work with that school and some of those student groups to implement their ideas on how to expose more students in high school to advanced manufacturing to get them excited about it so students get to see the full arc. I was asked about this challenge. I actually came up with a solution that my client enjoyed and now we’re getting to put it into an action which is really, really cool.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that’s, have you seen any students get internships then as a result with some of these clients and so forth is like. Is sort of their stage two in some cases.

Taryn Campbell

I think that’s the goal, right, is maybe not for every single one. We go in saying that we don’t. That is not part of the expectation. But I will say in all of the ones where I have at least pushed in, there have been students who have followed up with employers say, like, I am interested in helping you run your social media strategy. I am interested in helping you figure out how to connect with more community impact and X, Y and Z strategy.

And often the businesses that we work with are open to those conversations. Right. For several of those that we have that are seniors, where that would have been a possibility. The seniors were like, I wish I had done this earlier because I’m going off to college now and I can’t spend my summer doing this. But that is definitely on our roadmap.

Lynn Liao

Michael, I just wanted to break in. Can I share just a couple student quotes? Because I think this captures what you mentioned around identity and a sense of agency. So this came from. Yeah, two different students. I feel more prepared for college and careers after high school because this felt like a real job where I was held to certain standards like you would for a job. Another student said, I feel a lot more confident because I now feel that I belong in these big spaces. So I think that speaks to what you mentioned at the beginning, which is there’s such a divide between the world of school and just a lack of transparency. It’s just like

A world that’s behind a wall for many students. And this micro internship is meant to give them a boost so they can walk forward into the opportunities you’re talking about. So a lot of their feedback is indicating that they’re having a mindset shift to be much more open and feeling more ready to dive into those next opportunities.

Michael Horn

No, it’s really cool because you’re, the fact that students would feel more comfortable right. In those settings talking to those people, making those connections and then the employers or the clients. Right. If you will on the other side, excited to continue to engage, do this again, implement an idea, whatever it is, in some ways, that’s the end customer. Right. Like, so you’re getting both sides of it. I want to go back to the clients in a moment, but the other question that’s occurred to me as we’ve been talking is how you integrate this in a school. Like, you know, there’s not a ready block in many cases.

There’s blocks for college preparation, there’s blocks for all sorts of things. One of the big arguments that I’ve been making is that middle and high schools need to become much more permeable with the outside world and have a lot more opportunities for real work experience. Because my observation, frankly, is students with means are going to get access to that in a world of AI where we’re requiring several years of experience before that first job. And if you don’t have that, I’m not sure where you get it unless your school does it. But I’m curious, like, where do you, you know, where are the modular interfaces where you find time for that?

Lynn Liao

Yeah, totally agree with what you’re saying. And that’s actually why we fought really hard in designing this is, we wrestled through what to do, because when we think about a scalable solution, I think many in this, like ed take age, think, like, put it online, just package it, and like, roll it out everywhere. And when I think about that, I think the students who have access to other opportunities are going to be the ones who take that online opportunity. So by placing it into a school, it then became incumbent on us to figure out where does it go in school. So we’ve really designed it to be flexible and easy to implement. So it’s 30 hours. It can be implemented however the school thinks it makes sense. So we work with them to kind of think through that.

A typical might be twice a week over, you know, 10 to 12 weeks, just depending on what their blocks are. Some of them have extended them. Some of them do it really, like, in a tight burst. We’re just learning right now, I’d say about, like, what really works best in all varieties of classes. So we’ve definitely been working with different CTE pathways. So it can fit in as an introduction or as a capstone project for some CT courses. It can go into other kind of core classes like economics, financial literacy. We’ve done an English class, we’ve done a Spanish class.

I think Taryn, you maybe rattle off a few others. But, like, we’re pretty open and it’s really just wherever the teacher feels like they can dive in and have like a meaty project based learning experience for students and where the school is seeking a career, a supported career connected learning opportunity.

Michael Horn

Let me ask this question which is let’s, let’s flip to the client side now and maybe, Taryn, I’ll start with you on this and Lynn, jump in. It strikes me that it’s great to say schools need to be doing more real world work. Career connected learning for all. Like all the slogans that I can imagine that I’ve probably written at some points as well. But you all have made the observation several times like, hey, a manager is really busy, they’re not going to be able to give this kind of feedback. Right. And we know that a lot of managers like, I mean take my town offices.

Right. I’m sure there’s dozens of problems that they would love to solve, but they’re like, yeah, I’m not having a 17 year old come in here because I gotta execute against this thing tomorrow. Right. As opposed to train up someone with how to even present themselves at a workplace, an interview on our behalf, et cetera, et cetera. So like talk a little bit about how you’ve reduced that friction. I mean if I’m doing the math right and you have say even with the 200 students that you ran through the program at first, that’s probably like 40 or something different projects that you’ve got going or something like that. Maybe I’m wrong on that, but. So I love you to talk through how you’re enabling so many different clients to work with these projects.

Taryn Campbell

Sure. So we actually have an entire class of students attached to one client and one project.

Michael Horn

Okay, gotcha.

Scalable Project-Based Learning Process

Taryn Campbell

One, it allows the teacher who might be new to this project based learning to this coaching stance. Focus on really understanding one core client challenge and then working with the whole class to scaffold and understand. How do we write these questions? How do we ask our client X, Y and Z? Right. And it allows for the groups to compare against each other how things are going. Every group, depending on who they interview, ends up in a totally different place, which is also very cool. There’s a value add for our clients at the end when they don’t have to sit through the same presentation over and over and over again. They actually get five, six, seven ideas that are brought back to them based on what student teams come up with. And I think one of the ways we make it scalable for local businesses is we say that the all in-total time is about six hours.

That’s inclusive of prep time. Right. So we get on the call, we all brainstorm sort of what are some business challenges? How do we right size up for high school students? We write the client brief for folks. We are working to figure out how to leverage AI to help us do that in the future. But we write the client brief for folks and the client comes in three times. They come at the beginning to launch it live with students. They come in at that interim point that Lynn had talked about to give feedback. And let me tell you, they give real feedback.

Collaborative Student Projects Simplified

Taryn Campbell

Sometimes it puts students on their heels a little bit and then they come in at the end to get the final presentations and to hear what students have ultimately come up with. And so that’s really manageable and really reasonable for folks. We try to work with organizations and companies who have more than one individual. So even those mom and pop shops, if there’s like at least two or three employees that are employed there, so that if there are scheduling hiccups, which we know are all too common in schools these days, there’s always somebody to fill in and come in and do the live portion because we think that matters. And so six hours, people like, oh yeah, I have six hours across two months. I can do that on three different dates. And we’re not asking them to manage the students. We’re not asking them to walk students through the project.

We’re asking them for their viewpoint and their feedback, which they don’t actually have to prep for. Anytime the client has come in, we’ve created playbooks and guides to say, hey, here’s what you’re walking into, here’s what students are doing in their class, here’s what’s expected of you, and here’s a template for how you might structure a conversation with the student so everything feels like it’s plug and play and designed to be really easy for clients to come in.

Lynn Liao

One additional thing on the value prop for the businesses. Oftentimes this right size business challenge is one where the business is in particular seeking youth perspective or perspective of people our students have easy access to. So like the. We’re not purely saying to the business, do this because it’s a nice thing to do for your community. We are thinking do this because it’s a nice thing to do for students in your area, but also because it’s great for your business. You’re getting fresh perspective, you’re getting access to early talent. So some of the organizations we work with are seeking a talent pipeline and want more exposure to students. So like there is a real win for them that’s pretty concrete that we can pitch and make more explicit to businesses too.

Michael Horn

Very cool. Let’s wrap up with this question that’s on my mind which is look, if schools want to learn more, they want to put this into place, right? Like how should they get in touch with y’all? What’s, what’s the process from their end to get this up and running? Because I think that’s the ultimate goal, right. We want a lot more schools, students, local employers engaging in these projects together. So what’s the first step for schools that are interested after hearing this?

Lynn Liao

I think the easiest thing is they contact one of the two of us. We have a smallish team right now, so we’re heavily based in Los Angeles initially, but we’re also in several other states right now. So in Tennessee, Texas, we’re in St. Louis, Missouri, New Orleans. So like just depending on the depth, there’s different places we can go. So they should just like reach out to us. We’re open and like our whole goal is expansion. So if you can find the right size and scale, we’re happy to dive in.

Michael Horn

Perfect. So jump on, Cambiar Education contact y’ all and then go from there. Basically. Terrific. Lynn Taryn, any final thoughts that you all want to make sure we hit as, as we wrap up and then we’ll, we’ll conclude from there. But this is, I, I’m fascinated by a lot of facets of this, so I could keep going, but I want to make sure you guys have the last, last word, if you will.

Lynn Liao

I think the thing I want to say is like we don’t see this as a replacement to a deeper internship or a true job where a student is really diving into something that is aligned to their personal interests and passion area. Because even the way we’ve constructed it, because it’s a project for the entire class, some students are going to be more interested than others. But I do think this experience fills a big gap in kind of the current career connected learning, work based learning offerings that are easy for schools to do because essentially most of those are easy for schools to do because they’re passive. It’s like a career panel or job shadowing. Students just sort of have big eyes and are listening but they’re not doing. So I really do think we’ve worked hard to make this something that is super high leverage. Again, like every hour of the 30 hours makes a difference for students and the hurdles for both employers and educators. We worked so hard to slim down, so it should be very low friction.

So like, maybe this is just encouragement to any of the listeners who are interested in implementing to come talk to us. And like I said, every partner who’s worked with us has wanted to continue working with us and to expand. So that’s probably a good sign that it is meeting that bar.

Taryn Campbell

I think the thing that I would hope to leave folks with is the in person still matters. And I think there’s especially for some of these core skills around communication. You can practice all day with an AI chatbot and that’s great, but unless you actually go out and put it into play with a real person in front of you, it’s all for nothing. Right? And so how do we get kids more of those opportunities to like to do the hard thing? They all drag their feet. They’re like, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this. And then the confidence that you see on the other side where they walk taller and they actually want to keep going to do more interviews and more interviews and you have to stop them. I think that’s that to me is the exciting energy that you see when you do programs like this. And so just really excited to talk to you, Michael, and share the work that we’re doing.

And hopefully this inspires more people to get into the career connected learning space.

Michael Horn

Well, thank you both for the work that you’re doing and frankly the doing of it for students I think is really what’s so exciting about this. And all these skills you mentioned, not the least of which active listening you said, gee, that can be sort of a throwaway. It’s not right. Like we need more individuals in society being able to do that and you all are facilitating that. So huge thanks, Lynn Taryn. Check it all out at Cambier Quest and thank you so much. We’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

One programming note: I will be publishing just one more general update before the end of the year—on Friday, December 26th—which will be free for all to read. I hope many of you are able to unplug for the most part and spend some time with loved ones over the next several days. I’ll be back in your inbox in the new year on Monday, January 5th with an article for paid subscribers. We’ll then get back to our regular publishing schedule. Thanks for all this year—and happy holidays. For now, enjoy this conversation that my colleague, Danny Curtis, hosted. — Michael B. Horn

Danny Curtis sat down with Tommy Hodges, dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education, to discuss the innovative CarolinaCrED teacher education program. Tommy explained how the program leverages a competency-based, micro-credential approach to better recognize the skills that aspiring educators bring from diverse backgrounds, while personalizing their training to fill specific skill gaps. The conversation explores the collaborative design with school districts, the data showing strong retention and instructional quality among program graduates, and the unique advantages and challenges of developing such a program within a large university.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you’re joining the show where we are committed to creating a world in which individuals can build their passion, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today we are so excited to be joined by Tommy Hodges, who is dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education and recently the interim Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences. And I’m so excited to have him on to learn more about the innovative commodity based teacher education program that he helped to create at U of SC called CarolinaCrED. Tommy, thanks so much for joining us.

Tommy Hodges

Danny, thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Competency-Based Teacher Education

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. So I’d love to start just by hearing in your own words what Carolina CrED is and how it’s different from other teacher certification programs in the state.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So Carolina CrED is a broad umbrella with a number of outreach programs. So we’ve encapsulated a number of different entities that are grounded first in community based needs. So it includes the Carolina Teacher Induction Program, which provides induction supports. It includes an alternative preparation program which is really where much of the focus today, I can talk in some detail around the microcredential work that we’ve done there. That is a career changer program that’s predominantly focused on rural regions across the state, but it also has personalized and tailored degree programs that are offered through it. So we see a number of our different outreach efforts in the College of Education having their intellectual home inside Carolina CrED.

And then one of those is the MCrED or the Microcredential Enterprise. So that is something that’s now supporting upwards of nearly 300 aspiring educators across the state. To date, the Carolina Teacher Induction Program has supported nearly 1,000 teachers. And then countless individuals have participated in those contractual degree programs too. So really has these multiple arms of it, one of which being really grounded in the microcredential enterprise and then others of them also picking up pieces of that.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And I want to stay with the model here. Could you talk through a bit, the role that competency-based assessment and education plays within the Carolina CrED model?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I would like to believe that teacher education has always somewhat been competency based, certainly through accreditation. We’re deeply interested in the outcomes that we have for our teacher candidates and their ability to engage in high quality instruction with kids and children in the community. But what I would say we’ve lacked is a recognition of the skills and competencies that individuals already walk through the door with. So we design degree programs as if everyone needs the same kind of thing at the same pace, at the same dosage. And where the competency based learning for us has been a key driver, again through the alternative preparation, where it has its origins, is that we’re able to identify an individual who maybe was a paraprofessional inside the school, or an individual who maybe was a wildlife biologist, a park ranger doing educational programming. Individuals from a multitude of different fields and disciplines, they bring skills with them to the table, that one we don’t need to replicate, but more importantly, we need to harness and build off of to help build out and round out their skill set.

And so when we design the microcredentials associated with our alternative preparation, it’s done so in a way that we identify the skills that an individual already walks through the door with, and then we can in some ways prescribe to them the kinds of things that they need to help build skill gaps around in order to be competent educators. They do that. Some of it’s independently, some of it’s with practicing teachers, and some of it’s with the institution, but all of it creates a hyper personalized experience for the learner.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, that’s a really helpful overview and really excited to dig into a number of different pieces in there. But before we do, I want to go deeper on some backstory. So taking us back to the before times, what were you seeing in the state that gave rise to this idea and motivated action on it? And I’m also thinking if this were easy, we would see a lot more programs like this in other states. What were those barriers or those changes that needed to be made that you were able to overcome in the creation of this program?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, part of it originated in policy. So prior to 2019, there was no mechanism for an institution of higher education to be able to deliver an alternative preparation program or any preparation pathway recommend for certification an individual that was not a degree completer, meaning they had to complete a bachelor’s degree, they had to complete a master’s degree, Unlike other states where they may have like a postbacc certificate that has a certain number of hours. And so we had one hand tied behind our backs up until 2019. And there was a policy change. So we were thinking deeply about what we wanted that to look like. And we had a partner at the time, it was the Center for Teaching Quality. It’s now known as Mira Education, a national nonprofit who had already gained a good bit of ground in competency based learning for the in service space. And through our partnership with them, they pushed us to consider what might it look like if you foregrounded microcredentials rather than traditional three credit-hour courses and a 36-hour master’s degree.

Alternative Teacher Certification

Tommy Hodges

Fortunately, our state department of education was willing to think creatively with us as well. And so we put forward a plan and gained approval for an alternative preparation program for individuals who held a bachelor’s degree almost exclusively outside of education to be able to gain teacher certification at a timeline that was up to them, that it was paced according to their need and according to the kinds of skills that they came in the door with. And then that was approved in February of 2020, which is a very interesting time to try and launch something in the months that followed. So a lot of our beginning thinkings were done in rooms, kind of like we’re in right now, in some sort of a virtual environment with one another, but trying to think through what we wanted this thing to look and feel like. But what we knew from the very beginning was that it was an antiquated model to think that again, the three credit hour course and 36 hour master’s degree was going to be tenable both from a cost efficiency for either districts or individuals, or perhaps more importantly, philosophically about the kinds of skills that individuals entered with. So that’s where we began. What we didn’t really anticipate was the momentum that that would gain inside of districts to engage in learning for their in service teachers. So once they saw the modularization of the program for pre-service teachers who wanted to gain teacher certification, they loved it for their practicing teachers just as well.

So they were able to develop thematic learning experiences. We were able to tailor the microcredentials according to their needs. And then we engaged with some nonprofits in the state that also wanted to engage in microcredential learning. So then it became about supporting organizations in their professional learning in ways that the traditional academic offerings in an institution just don’t afford.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I want to stay with this professional learning piece. Yeah, obviously these microcredentials afford a new way of certifying new learning and upskilling. I’d be curious to hear how are districts engaging with your library of microcredentials to facilitate that type of professional development?

Collaborative microcredential Development

Tommy Hodges

Well, one of the things that we committed to early on is that we were not going to have to come visit our website, type in a credit card number and buy a microcredential and have it scored. That our engagements were going to be at the organizational level because we’re committed to systemic change, not one off kinds of pieces. And so our engagements with, particularly at the school district level, we’re doing a deep dive into essentially a needs assessment around where do they want to take their school, what are opportunity gaps, what are ways in which they want to see their professional staff in the school grow? And then how might we take our existing menu of microcredentials or in some cases help build out new microcredentials that supports the kinds of professional learning that go on inside the schools? Those microcredentials were developed hand in hand with those district partners. In fact, at times we would rely on district expertise to help us develop them and in fact score them as well. So it’s not an enterprise in which the college is simply saying here’s a solution for you. It is a truly interwoven collaboration with those districts and defining what’s needed, defining what would count and be valid for them, and then working with at the state level, ensuring that there’s recognition, the competencies that teachers are developing along the way.

Danny Curtis

So now that we are a few years in, I’m curious to hear what are you learning and what are you seeing in terms of the impact of this preparation program?

Tommy Hodges

One of the pieces that we can look pretty directly at is the staying power of educators who go through this pathway. One of the concerns with many of the alternative preparation pathways that exist right now is that they tend to have individuals who come in for one or two, maybe three years and then they’re back out again, and then you’re having to replace them with yet another novice individual. And we know that the long term health and success of schools and the kids that they serve is built upon having a stable workforce that’s there over an extended period of time. And so again, we’re five years in. But what we see is when we compare the retention of educators who come through the alternative preparation pathways that are more conventional programs, they are essentially the same. We know that there’s staying power with the alternative preparation. We know that there’s quality there because we have the data on their teacher performance as well. And we’re able to make those comparisons in addition to their ability to be retained.

So both in terms of instructional, the quality of instruction that’s being delivered as assessed by school principals, we know that it’s on par with our traditional programs as well as their longevity in the field.

Danny Curtis

With any competency based program, obviously a big part of the challenge is in the certification of learning. It is so crucial and so difficult to identify and validate learning that is happening across very different contexts with very different learning products and evaluate that against a common learning standard. So I’d love to just kind of double click on that process you all are using and hear more about how you’re validating learning within the program.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, so certainly we are doing validity and reliability checks on the assessments that are included there, as well as the rubrics that are included. Multiple individuals score each piece of assessment that comes in to make sure that there’s some consistency in that. But we’re also a part of the microcredential partnership of the states. It’s a connection of states that are invested in this competency based work and seeking to make sure that we’re not engaging in sort of a wild west enterprise where everybody has their own sort of version and there’s not some level of consistency. Certainly we want to retain autonomy. Part of that autonomy allows you to innovate rapidly. But there ought to be an overarching framework for what constitutes sort of a bite-sized piece of learning. How it’s measured and how it’s accumulated and valued.

Personalized Coaching Drives Success

Tommy Hodges

You’d want some degree of consistency across the enterprise. And so we worked with again that microcredential partnership with the states, with four or five other states in addition to our own to help really think through that and create some standardization. So I think that’s helped. At the end of the day though, I think the difference maker in all of this is the extent to which there’s deep personalized coaching. So it’s not just the standalone competency pieces. Is there an individual who’s shepherding that process in an intellectually honest way? Not someone who’s got a full time job? And oh, also in addition, I’ll moonlight as a coach or a mentor, but truly making sure that individuals have dedicated FTE time that they’re providing modeling, coaching, feedback and direction to those novice individuals. At the end of the day, to me, that matters as much as, if not more than, the accumulation of that knowledge.

Is it being directed in such a way that supports that individual? And the only way I have seen in multiple iterations, whether it be traditional teacher preparation or more alternative that I’ve seen that work abundantly well is through robust coaching.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. The theme that I’m hearing throughout is this really deep partnership between schools and the university from identifying the credentials that would be of value in terms of the microcredentialing and upskilling to the shared process of assessment. It sounds like you all have really forged this together with districts as well as your other partnerships.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, it’s truly been a joint venture. And again, it’s not the ivory tower. Swoop in and say, here’s what you need to be doing. We’re the university and we’re here to help. It’s really doing a genuine partnership with those districts to make sure that we’re delivering in real time the things that they’ve identified as a need.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And that leads into one of the other differentiating factors of this program is that you all are doing this out of a large university system, which is different from many other alternative certification programs. And so I’m wondering, what are those different considerations that you need to make within your context that others and other large university systems might be able to learn from?

Rethinking Higher Education’s Responsiveness

Tommy Hodges

Well, I can say at the very beginning, it took a commitment on the part of central leadership of the institution to say, yes, you can do things differently and you can think about this differently, and we’ll support that within our ecosystems. Because quite frankly, higher education as an enterprise is not exactly the most nimble of organizational structures. So I have my concerns with the industry as a whole and the extent to which it has changed the way that it thinks about the ways it brings its knowledge to bear in the service of communities. I think that part of the challenges that higher ed faces today with its value proposition, with some of the threads of anti intellectualism that we see are, are fair critiques, although I think they’re misplaced. They’re fair in the sense that we haven’t exactly been very responsive to the needs of communities and thinking about how we diversify the ways in which our knowledge is put forward to the general public. Our products again are three hour courses and they’re 120 hour bachelor’s degrees and 36 hour master’s degrees. And what if an individual doesn’t want or need that, but they want to engage with the university in a substantive way to help build out skills to either upskill or career pivot, whatever that might be, and how can the institution serve those individuals well? And I think higher ed has a ways to go and being responsive to that because of some of the bureaucracies that exist. But we were given a great deal of space to think and think differently.

So we were able to prop up an ecosystem that allowed us to think nimbly and responsively and then to support individuals as they engaged in that work in a way that was different than many conventional sorts of programs. So central commitment being one of them and then two, I think we harness the power of a team of people who were hungry for doing something different as well. And so I think we had a, we’ve given the space and a coalition of people that really wanted to see it get done and we were able to do that.

Danny Curtis

I’m curious to learn more about what does that space look like in this context. What are the areas in which you were able to gain some autonomy and maybe be more nimble outside of the larger university system?

Tommy Hodges

Yes. So everything from platform LMS to the CRM for gathering individuals and the ways in which we collected interested individuals and marketed to them around possibilities, did matchmaking with districts. So all the platform work, we were able to work in distinct platforms that gave us a level of flexibility that the conventional post secondary platforms couldn’t. And so oftentimes our platforms are ones that are used outside of traditional academia and those have been very fruitful for us, but done so in a way that matches our institutional branding and look and feel. And then we were able to develop a team of individuals to help guide that work that sits a little bit outside our traditional academic departments. And that’s where that Carolina CrED ecosystem comes from. But we also have interface with faculty too, who either help lend their own expertise to that enterprise, help lead it in some ways, or conduct research with the data. So there’s a lot of different intersection points that faculty can have in there too.

Integrating Standalone Systems Efficiently

Tommy Hodges

The danger that you run into, and I said there’s always these tensions, the danger that you can run into when you create something that’s kind of standalone like that is that it continues to stand alone. And then it does. Its knowledge and its experience doesn’t bleed into other parts of your enterprise. It doesn’t learn from others and others don’t learn from it. And so I can say that part of. And it was easier to kind of keep it separate in this first few years because you’re trying to upstart something new and it needs its space. But as it’s began to mature now, we’re beginning to think about how do we better integrate this into our sort of quote unquote traditional way of doing things at the institution and how can we create a more modular environment for every student that interfaces or every individual, maybe we don’t even categorize them as a student here, but every individual that interfaces with the institution. And so I think there’s a willingness to think about that now too.

But certainly in the early days, I would say it was startup-ish and had its independence and had its own sort of ecosystem and support from central administration to do that. And then at the same time, I think now we’re kind of looking for that bleed.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So it sounds like this integration and continued evolution is part of what you’re seeing down the road. What else is in this vision for how this program or others like it continue to evolve?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I think some of the questions. And so I’ll put on my arts and sciences hat for a second and my leadership in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences here at USC and say one of the concerns right now is the liberal arts and the humanities. And there’s some real concern with regards to the value that individuals are seeing in society right now around the liberal arts degree. I think we’re looking at higher education as preparation for workforce in many ways, which can be a good look, but I think it’s a narrow look at what post secondary attainment can afford an individual. I look at it more as preparation for life and civic engagement. And part of that life and civic engagement is employment. So it’s important, but it’s also important to recognize our rich histories, our art, the accumulation of human knowledge across a range of disciplines, and to be able to imagine employment in fields that don’t even exist today.

Liberal Arts: Bridging Skills & Purpose

Tommy Hodges

And what better place to do that than through a liberal arts degree? But again, some individuals are looking at it like this major has a one to one correspondence to this job, which has this income, which relegates post secondary attainment to a very transactional sort of relationship with an individual, rather than this constant sense of becoming an understanding about who we are and who we are in relation to our histories, our cultures and humanity at large. And so I think that for me, the next iteration of this work will be to help individuals see how that genuine core liberal arts degree does in fact help prepare one for the workforce. And so I think if we begin to look at some of the competency based pieces that employers are looking for, and then we marry that with those traditional liberal arts degrees. Now we’re coupling together two aspects of the work. One sort of civic and societal readiness and contribution with workforce and skill based readiness as well. If we can accomplish both of those together through that layering approach at the undergraduate level, then I think we’re really onto something. And so that’s really where I see us headed next in terms of the microcredentials working with industry partners on those.

So those aren’t, again, those aren’t an internal endeavor much like the ones for educator preparation, but we’re really thinking deeply about how do we engage some of our large employers who can give us some keen insights into what they’re seeing with individuals who are coming out and then ensuring that we’re gap filling there and for students to be able to illustrate saliently when they’re in job interviews how those experiences that they had while they were at the university help contribute to their readiness.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So interesting to hear you talk through this, know, tension between job readiness and, and more liberal arts oriented education that has always been present in postsecondary education, but is really magnified by AI and, and other technologies that are accelerating changes in the workforce.

Tommy Hodges

And I would say AI is the perfect example of, you know, key triggers that we don’t predict particularly well that a good liberal arts education is nimble and responsive too, and actually probably prepares one even better than some of the more professionally directed degree programs that we might have on campus.

Danny Curtis

Well, I look forward to watching as you and your team down in South Carolina try and strike that balance and continue to evolve these innovative programs and really appreciate you joining us today.

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Amanda Kocon, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at Edmentum, joined me and Danny to explore how digital curriculum can help scale career-connected learning for all students. Amanda discussed the driving forces behind the shift toward career readiness in K–12 education and emphasized the need to close exposure gaps and lower switching costs for students exploring different career paths. She detailed Edmentum’s recent acquisition of MajorClarity and their partnership with Interplay, which is enabling districts to integrate CTE courses, simulation-based trades training, and comprehensive college and career planning tools. I was excited to dig into how exactly we can scale opportunities for all students to have broad, student-driven career explorations in every district to ensure every student graduates with valuable skills and real career options.

Michael Horn

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us illuminate that today, I’m thrilled that my co-conspirator Danny Curtis is here because we’ve got a very good conversation teed up today. Danny, good to see you.

Danny Curtis

It’s great to be here, Michael. Always nice to chat with you and especially today because we get to talk about one of our favorite topics.

Michael Horn

Exactly. And you and I wrote this piece, I don’t know, about a year and a half ago at this point, I think, for Education Next, where we said, look, career-connected learning really should not be a “for some,” it’s really a “for all,” increasingly. And I think we’ve also though, been puzzling how do we help schools actually execute on that vision? And we’ve found someone that I think can start to shed some light on that. So I’m excited about this conversation, Danny.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, me, too. We wanted to bring on a guest today that is going to help us think through one approach to scaling up more career connected learning and helping districts overcome some of those challenges that they encounter when they do make the decision to move towards career connected learning. And so we are really delighted to have Amanda Kocon, the chief strategy and operations officer at Edmentum, a K12 online learning provider, join us here today. Amanda, welcome.

Amanda Kocon

Thank you. It is tremendous to be with you, Danny and Michael.

Elevating CTE for Workforce Readiness

Danny Curtis

Amanda, as we mentioned up-front, we along with many others nationwide have been pushing for more career-connected learning in K–12. And as we’ll discuss you all at Edmentum, have a big announcement and have been doing a lot of work there. But before we dive into the work you’ve been doing, I want to start with the big picture “why.” In your view, what is driving this shift towards career readiness in K–12?

Amanda Kocon

It’s the question right now. Right. So if we think back to when Edmentum started this journey of really leaning into career connected learning for all, which is an important part of the story, we started paying attention to what was being provided to kids. So we are at our core a digital first curriculum company. We are a 60 year old plus ed tech company. We’re one of the oldest. We actually started our journey in workforce redevelopment and then focused many years later on the K12 space. But it’s always been sort of part of our DNA.

We have always provided CTE courses and curriculum as part of our sort of comprehensive catalogs of offerings. And one of the things about almost four years ago now that we started talking about was what’s the sort of quality of offering that we have and how do we make sure that the same level of intention and rigor and learning design that is going into our core courses, so think your core four, your electives even, is also going into CTE. And so we started this build out in part to say what kids that are thinking about a path direct to direct to the workforce, whether they stop at college or not. Very few people exit high school and retire. It really is career for all. And so how do we get kids better ready with better materials, if you will? And so that’s where we started the journey. I think a huge part of the why for us was paying attention to the nearly 50% plus of that, like really won’t go to college and how do we make sure that they exit high school with something of value? So that’s when we started really building out our own CTE course catalog that we’ve built out over the last three years. And a huge part of that for us was then beginning to realize that as you think about what’s available, how do we combat, two things in particular, so we had started with like, what’s the curriculum that we need to deploy? And then we said, there’s two issues.

One is a massive exposure gap. Kids actually don’t have a sense of what’s possible. The second thing we really focused in on is what’s the switching cost? So if we move kids, any kid, through a program of study, if you will, where they don’t learn academic, technical, durable skills and they don’t have a sense of what’s possible post secondary, we probably are going to continue to fail these kids. We will exit them from high school, but they won’t actually be future ready or job ready.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, you lay out a really compelling rationale for this movement towards career and connected learning. And now I want to really zoom in on the offerings that Edmentum is providing in this area. You all just made a big acquisition, the MajorClarity College and Career Readiness platform. And there’s a lot to unpack here. But I want to start with the vision behind the acquisition and the opportunity that it represents. Wondering what challenges have you seen districts face as they implement and scale these programs? And what is the role that digital tools and curriculum play in helping them to address those challenges?

Scaling Work-Based Learning Solutions

Amanda Kocon

So I think one of the big challenges you laid out, actually, in the intro, which is how do you at scale, bring sort of the level of awareness, exploration, planfulness, curricular apps and programmatic options and then begin to manage what is the holy grail, which is work based learning for kids, in the middle school and high school arena. We, as I said before, started with what is true to us, which is we could become really good high quality digital curriculum providers. So we’ve built up as a starting place over the last three years, well over 200 semesters of CTE courses that is inclusive of 57 pathways and building. And that was an important starting place for us. But we also knew that in order to land a solution that allowed teachers, educators, counselors, superintendents to think about the programs that they offer and how to do that, not just in one building, but across all of their buildings. And we can get into a little bit why that matters in a second. We needed to actually bring the tooling and the solutioning that surrounds our curriculum that sort of integrates better with what is available in a brick and mortar, plus what we can bring that can be digitally or virtually available. And so for me, the whole vision has been let’s bring these two things together.

How do we bring the workflow, the tooling, the planning, the career exploration starting in middle school and integrate that with the curricular options that are additive, not reductive in a place so that you have truly an interconnected solution of content, curriculum and tooling. And so the putting these two things together, it has been the vision. And so we’re very excited about the acquisition of MajorClarity and putting these two companies together.

Michael Horn

So I want to make sure I’m understanding the different pieces, right? Because 57 pathways, 200 semesters of content is already a lot.

And so that’s like, I think if I’m hearing you right, that’s like the additive we can’t give exposure to learn about X. Here’s a way to do it. And so then now you have the MajorClarity piece of it that it sounds like makes this more integrated. But I want to make sure you’re putting a pin in it, like, how does this actually work for schools? And sort of what differentiates the Edmentum approach from, you know, because this is a hot space, as you know, a lot of folks are doing different stabs on what college and career readiness mean to them. What differentiates this approach with this integration?

Amanda Kocon

It’s a great question. So for us, our ability to use MajorClarity really as the entry point. So I’m going to just take you through the student’s journey. So starting in, starting in middle school. And that is where we have decided to start for now. It doesn’t mean we won’t move down into elementary, but you all know that in middle school is really the first opportunity the kids have to change classes. There is actually truly time for things like college and career exploration. And career exploration in particular, whether that’s advisory or in electives.

We have interesting inventories that allow students to really think about what they are interested in that generates over time, both in that moment and later, sort of a fit score. Here are some things that you might want to investigate. Edmentum has built out elective courses which help students. Actually we’ve done these with America Succeeds. So they embed durable skills. We’re the first ones to bring it down to middle school. We think middle school is particularly important for students as they start to understand what are those work based skills, terms, terminology. How do you think about and understand what it means to develop communication skills and collaborative skills and even metacognition? How do you understand how you learn starting in middle school? As you start to think about what you might be interested in.

When I talked about switching costs, this is a particularly important moment. And the reason it’s particularly a moment for students is the sky’s the limit. We still have plenty of time. If you have a student who’s behind in reading or who needs some help in math, now’s the time we can begin to do some interventions so that they can have the job they really want versus the job later. In high school they are left with right because they only have one or two options at that point. And so we started in middle school with assessment beginning early exploration. As you move through, you begin to think about how you’re planning your programs of study, your academic study, whether you’re interested in pursuing a particular pathway. We have the digital courses to both allow you to do that online.

That includes one of the biggest pressure points we hear from schools is I don’t have consistent CTE curriculum and or I can’t get a CTE teacher. So Edmentum as also the operator of two fully virtual schools can work with districts to ensure that we have a CTE teacher who is available to do virtual instruction, if you don’t have somebody in person. As you move through that, you start to do things like test drive activities so you can get a sense of the day in the life sort of rich video, rich understanding we’re going to continue to build that out. We’re very excited to do more than just here’s a doctor, here’s a lawyer, here’s a veterinarian. But here, when you think about what you’re interested in, what your particular assets and leanings are, are other ways you can think about curating both a program of study and a job. As we move through. All of this is localized to the local labor data and so you’re starting to see what’s available locally. That’s not to say that kids in the future won’t also have virtual work experiences, because they will. But we want to localize it as much as possible as well.

As you move through from a learning perspective, that’s where I’ve talked about sort of the rich catalog. It reminds me, and you guys will appreciate this, of the early days of blended learning where you have to sort of talk to people about, yes, you are curating some experiences which are taught very explicitly by a CTE teacher. You are going to do welding in person. Some of the things that are part of that journey, however, in the early pathways are things that you actually can do in more of a flipped classroom model that you can actually do digitally that kids can do asynchronously. This is one of the places where we have partnered with Interplay, which is one of the key providers. We met with them. They are somebody who really focuses on helping skilled trades employers get employees ready to be job site ready. We brought that down in high school.

Career and College Readiness Pathways

Amanda Kocon

Those have rich simulations so you can get a pathway around plumbing and electric mechanical, early on and get exposure so that you’re actually job site ready. So think about academic CTE programming, which we’ve talked about, as well as the skilled trades, and begin to get some exposure around those things. As you move through that, you then have all the tooling that you would expect out of a college and career readiness. So we’re not asking kids to pick one path or another. We’re actually saying when you’re doing your programming and you’re thinking about your academic planning, we will lead you into a set of tools and capabilities that allows you to plan your college. So which colleges of our interest, which community colleges might be of interest? How do you think about scholarships, fit, application? We integrate with a common app and that sort of set of tooling. And on the career side, you’re able to do technical school exploration, you’re able to focus on work based learning. And ultimately all of this is building a portfolio over time.

So that kids have something of value and that something of value is everything from micro credentials, sort of mini courses that they can take, I think like four to six hours of mini courses that can drop into a resume builder. So they’re beginning to build a resume which I will tell you is as important if you are going to college as it is if you are going directly into the workforce.

Michael Horn

So Amanda, a lot of what you just described, right, is like a broadening of horizons followed by a series of student driven exploration to make choices. Let’s start at the beginning of the funnel because you mentioned the durable skill piece of that and I’m super curious just to have you question quickly drilled into like what do you mean by durable skills? Because it’s a bit of a catch all term and people mean lots of different things and I, I’ll just give my bias up front so maybe you can answer the question, respond to it a little bit is. Some of the durable skills, it seems to me, are more vocation specific than we might admit. Right. And some are pretty generalizable. And so I’m sort of curious how you think about what do you mean about it and which ones transfer and which ones are actually like this is what this means in this context. This is what it means in this other one.

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, we’ve tried to focus, I mean it’s an interesting question both for durable skills and where we’ve tried to focus, even the curricular decisions we’ve made. So we’ve tried to focus, not to double use the word, on those things that are actually durable. And so how do you think about building again it’s like communication. How do you understand what it is to have good collaboration skills, good problem solving skills, good those things that actually are transferable, across not just a job, but across industry. And so we focus there in part because we wanted to make sure we’re anchoring kids on really that understanding of what are the skills beyond the academic skills or the technical skills.

Michael Horn

So it’s more about helping them even recognize what it looks like when you do this. Even if how you do it might change.

Amanda Kocon

How you do might change, how you demonstrate it might change. But to be able to think about how do I understand, let’s say like a communication skill, what good communication skills look like? How do I demonstrate that in my work and how do I begin to build just the recognition of those things so I can build towards that. Similarly, on the curricular side, we’ve actually really tried to focus in on what are durable higher paying jobs. That is where we have focused our energy in terms of there’s lots of providers that can provide other things. But we’ve tried to focus on just from a pure mission and landing what is going to be kind of evergreen in a rapidly changing work environment. How do we think about those things?

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And you mentioned before that you had an eye toward the 50 plus percent who are not going to go to a traditional college. But are you targeting all schools or is it like segmented? How do you think about that?

Serving All Students Equitably

Amanda Kocon

We are targeting all schools. And again, the reason I raise that is because we want to serve all kids. Edmentum has always, as a company that really is about learning acceleration, who does a lot of work in intervention. In particular from elementary school to high school, we’ve often served kids who have been under-resourced from the quality of the resources they get. And so when we focused in on where can we be uniquely positioned, what’s sort of at the core of what we do well? It really is, those are our kids, the kids that need something different. The kids who may or may not go to a four year college, they may go directly in the workforce. They may enlist, they may have other paths. What I would say is, and I know I’m speaking to the converted on this, that is increasingly more and more kids.

Right. Like, and so I think that moment is one we’re working hard to meet. We really do think though that, like informed decisions as early as possible is super important. So with the help of our partners in the school district, not only are we able to say this kid is interested in this and wants to pursue this, and we can sort of tap into that intrinsic, not just extrinsic, motivation. And we use that then to help kids actually catch up. Right. And get ahead and chart that path that we think is possible for all kids.

Danny Curtis

Amanda, you talked earlier about the possibility that opens up when you get students started down these paths at an earlier age. And I agree that you’re getting students to test drive and to be thinking about these potential paths at an earlier age in middle school, there’s a lot of benefit to that. And I think there’s probably a balance to be struck because, you know, career planning is not linear for a few different reasons. One, job markets are dynamic careers. Jobs are always changing. And so developing a static job and career identity in a dynamic job market can pose some problems. And then also students are young and still developing and so their minds are likely to change. And so I’d be curious to hear how you think about building these services and structuring these services when these plans are so subject to change.

Amanda Kocon

We want as much as possible, everything we are doing and how we are partnering with educatives to be expansive and not reductive. And so we’re very focused on, it’s not this career path or nothing, that the job market we are moving kids into is going to continue to evolve and has been. I would say that the pace of the change is actually probably faster than ever. And what I would say, Danny, is that’s important truly for all kids. I mean, to the extent that you can get. That’s what I was talking about a little bit, those two things. So one of them was, you know, what is the exposure gap? Early on you have kids, particularly kids from less resourced environments, not actually even having a sense of what’s possible from a jobs perspective.

You know, I sort of have a running saying, if you go into an elementary school classroom, you will usually hear kids want to be, you know, a doctor or veterinarian or a teacher. And it’s because it’s what they have most exposure to. Right. And as they develop a sense of possibility. I will also say, though, that it is our, I think it’s our duty increasingly in the high school arena to make sure that all kids come out with something of value and they are able to demonstrate why, I think that the soft skills, the durable of the professional skills, which reduces that switching costs. I am, let me just say this. I can do math.

I can do math. I am literate when I talk about academic skills, those help kids learn and relearn. You want these learners to relearn and relearn throughout their life. I’ve got some soft skills, some professional skills. I can talk about those and know what they are, and I can show up with them on a resume in an interview. And I’ve got some technical skills. I actually have a sense and have learned how to acquire and develop those. If we do that, I think we’re doing better when we think about what secondary education in particular needs to look like.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, the breadth of exposure is so important. And I’m also really excited to learn more about how you are deepening experience with this partnership with Interplay you mentioned earlier. You all are partnering with Interplay to create simulation based coursework aligned to a number of professions, specifically in the trades. And so I’m wondering, could you talk us through what the trade prep program is and how it figures into your larger suite of offerings and would love to hear about how it’s scaling access to these professions it’s aligned to.

Skilled Trades Education Initiative

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, this one is in its early days. I would, we like to call this year the day, the year of working really, really closely with school districts on how do we bring these, how do we bring these to life. So there are very few school districts that can set up true programs around the skilled trades for a bunch of reasons including age, right. What age kids can actually get hands-on experience in some of these industries. What’s really exciting is we are bringing down into our sort of pathway the ability to use interplay courses and curriculum both directly with a student, but also to be mixed in with a CTE director on the ground. That allows kids to get exposure both in terms of taking just an overview course of what are the different kinds of skill trades, how do I think about those? What might be of interest? Then being able to go through some of that coursework with the simulations. The simulations are pretty slick.

It was the first company that I saw that I thought really landed it without the hardware. A lot of the companies you need to have very specialized hardware. This you do not. You just need to have a regular laptop. And that was pretty cool. It is also one of the few that is being used as much as it is by employers. Now with MajorClarity, what I’m able to do is connect that workspace learning opportunities. So employers in a place in the skilled trades, you all know that it’s very hard right now to get an electrician or a plumber.

Interplay is coming at that by helping those employers build a pipeline. We’re trying to connect then that pipeline in K12. I was out in a district just a few weeks ago and I asked the question, you know, I spent a lot of years as the head of strategy for an organization called TNTP. We did a lot of teacher work and teacher recruiting work. So one of my favorite questions to ask a superintendent or a head of HR is what’s the hardest thing to recruit for right now? What I did not expect was that the answer was boiler operators. And I said, well, I’d like to hear some more about that because that’s not typically, I hear, you know, special ed.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I was gonna say special ed, Math elementary.

Amanda Kocon

Yeah, exactly. And that was the first thing out of this head of HR’s mouth. And I said, well, tell me more. And he said, they’re all retiring. All of the folks who maintain our facilities are retiring. And I said, well, what about a grow your own program? What if we could bring Interplay into your CTE programming where you could get kids job ready, field ready and we could partner them with some of these folks who are retiring as their work based learning in your school district. And you only have to keep them for a couple years post graduation and then they are amazing. If we partnered this was particularly, you know, we partner with some of the union and the employers in this particular place.

We would be amazing, you would be an amazing path. Not just you know, for, for these employers if you will and for these kids but frankly a path into the middle class because these are very high paying jobs. The other thing to really focus on is these are not, these are not low paying jobs. These are very high, family sustaining jobs. And so you could see their eyes light up like wait a second, I could, I could do something right by kids and get them literally a pretty incredible local job, help fix the pipeline problem that these employers and that the union themselves have come and said like is an issue for these skilled trades. And in the meantime I could have some assistance maintaining my buildings.

Michael Horn

Love it. All right, last question as we wrap up here. I’m curious. You’ve been dancing around in a variety of ways but like how schools should or do integrate these offerings and you’ve talked about the room for electives and things of that nature. But just like maybe impose your own view of what a good integration looks like and what’s like sort of a bad integration right where it’s not maybe a strategic or giving these kids a true view of what college and career readiness that on ramp looks like for students.

Thoughtful, Planful Programming Matters

Amanda Kocon

Listen, I would say a good integration is where we see really thoughtful, it doesn’t need to take a long time, but thoughtful top down programming. You’re really thinking about what’s the connective tissue in terms of the tooling, the insights, the data, the reporting that allows me to understand what kids are interested in, how I get them in the courses and the programs that are of most interest and then how do I get them some work based learning experience. And I mean that for all kids. And that thoughtful programming I think is our best implementations, I would say our poorest are where you’re transactionally trying to solve for a particular program you don’t have in sort of a half hearted way or serving up CTE as just a way to get to graduation. And so it’s a last minute effort versus a planful program. And so I would say, you know, increasingly we’re seeing folks really want to do more planful programming. I do think like anything, implementation and planful programming are often hard to pull off. And so we are working really hard to make sure we’re getting, whether it’s us or somebody else that’s coming in and helping to advise on how we stand these up.

We are working really hard to do that. And if we’re going to really bring the promise of career, connected learning and opportunities for all, it has to be about really rethinking what the sort of job of a high school is at the end of the day and how do we think about landing that in the day to day. It’s not sexy, but it is the day to day planfulness, programming, scheduling that happens with kids.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it seems like it is the question to be asking right now because we see the disengagement and so forth. This seems like a way at that. It seems like a way at the pathways. Like it just seems like a big answer to a lot of problems right now that high schools are facing. So Amanda, huge thanks for coming on and talking about these efforts and we’ll keep a close eye as it continues to develop and you continue to move forward in these different directions giving this comprehensive suite of offerings. So thank you and for all of you tuning in. We’ll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

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Jamie Rosenberg, founder and executive chairman of ClassWallet, joins me to explore the evolving landscape of education savings accounts (ESAs) and the broader push toward education choice. Jamie shares the origin story of ClassWallet and discusses how the company is innovating digital wallet solutions that streamline the flow of public funds to families, educators, and nontraditional providers. The conversation sheds light on the challenges families and entrepreneurs face in navigating new ESA programs, the delicate balance between agency and accountability, and how states can design effective policies that empower both families and innovative education providers.

Michael Horn

I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, delighted to bring Jamie Rosenberg to the show. Jamie is the founder and executive chairman of ClassWallet, which we’re going to hear a lot more about the show. And Jamie and I were in a conversation a few months back with a bunch of others around this growing education savings account space with a bunch of insights that really struck me around the market and how to create a really robust one between demand and supply.

So delighted to get into all of that today. Jamie, welcome to the Future of Education. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you being here.

Jamie Rosenberg

It’s great being here, Michael. I appreciate the invite.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, I’m delighted to learn from you. And before we get into some of the ways that the market is emerging, I, I want to start out with ClassWallet origin story, if you will. You all were founded in 2014, well before education savings accounts was sort of the movement I think that it’s becoming national at the moment. And so I’m just curious, like, what did the company start out as? What was the opportunity that you saw that you felt like ClassWallet can really fill this need in the country’s ecosystem?

Jamie Rosenberg

Sure. This is my second company. So to understand the formation of ClassWallet, let me just share with you how I.

Michael Horn

Yeah, origin story. Good.

Jamie Rosenberg

Yeah, of course. So my personal and professional mission has always been to try to get the dollars as close to children as possible. I started my career as a lawyer, at one point in time was mentoring a student at a nearby school in Miami for mentally and physically delayed pre kindergarten aged children. And during that experience, I really just had a life changing experience and really wanted to understand how I could help children in an educational environment as much as possible. So I started my first company in 1998, which was Adopt a Classroom, which was a crowdfunding platform for teachers as a way of trying to get philanthropic dollars as close to that child and in that learning environment as effectively as possible. So I grew that to be one of the larger education philanthropies in the country. By the time I left, I had raised and distributed about $25 million to teachers in 30% of U.S. public schools.

Education Funding for Children’s Success

Jamie Rosenberg

The origin of ClassWallet germinates from there because in that journey I had developed a way of getting money in a compliant, impactful way as close to that child, and realized that I could help more children, more students by taking that technology and delivering it to the system, the school systems and state systems. And that was the impetus and catalyst to start ClassWallet in 2014.

Michael Horn

And so what were those initial customer relationships like what was the dollar flows funding from to and so forth?

Jamie Rosenberg

Yes. So the initial focus and hence the brand name was really helping LEAs and school districts get their funding down to the classroom more effectively. K12 is a trillion dollar budget, yet teachers spend $1,000 out of their own pocket every year. I mean, it’s just a huge disconnect. So we started out selling to school districts and today about 6% of public school teachers in America actually have a ClassWallet account, almost like a teacher savings account, where they get access to a wallet and can purchase the learning goods and resources they need to meet the learning needs of their students. And then in 2017, we evolved to sell ClassWallet into the state agency space, really solving similar problems for education savings accounts. And since then we have become a market leader in school choice, but have also been used in other agencies like early child care, workforce development, and health and human services.

Michael Horn

Yeah, I noticed that. And before we get to the ESAs, just, just say a word about those other three areas because I think it’s interesting that you get to serve those as well as sort of this core K12 ESA market.

Jamie Rosenberg

The underlying theme is that it’s all the same problem. The challenge in trying to get public money to the right people and ensure those people not only use it for the right purpose, but ultimately have the biggest impact for that program lies in a point of intersection where policy intersects with rubber hits the road implementation and compliance. And our innovation has been able to unlock that friction point and maximize that impact of that dollar. And that applies to a dollar reaching a family for ESA equally as it implies reaching a family who might be getting early child care subsidy or an adult learner who has a grant from an agency to further their career journey. So it’s all the same problem. And our innovation has been able to maximize outcomes of programs across various types of programs.

Michael Horn

Say more about that because I think then as we get into the ESA space, sort of the counterfactual right. If ClassWallet hadn’t existed, I imagine would be we have dollars theoretically flowing from state coffers, to families in a private wallet to spend on education providers, both schools, as well as other options, tutoring and so forth. I can imagine that would have been a very bureaucratic application, paper and pencil, sort of heavy set of things like that. Friction would have been really real. How do you all come in there and facilitate and streamline those dollars reaching the families themselves? What’s the innovation there itself look like?

Jamie Rosenberg

So to talk about our innovation, I’ll give you just a touch upon briefly what existed before our innovation.

Michael Horn

Perfect.

Jamie Rosenberg

So you can understand the impact. So prior to our introduction of digital wallet technology, states really only had two choices, a debit card or reimbursement.

Michael Horn

Yep.

ESA Funding Solution

Jamie Rosenberg

So how does the state get $100 million to, you know, 30,000 families on a debit card? Not only that ensures using it according to the rules, but can get the data it needs. You can imagine how challenging that might be. And reimbursement of course is equally challenging, forcing families to spend their own money and submit receipts. So that was the ESA market prior to ClassWallet. What our innovation does is a digital wallet that gives families immediate access to the funds and allows them to spend those funds within vendors and for goods that the rules of the program are already embedded in the system. So they have agency to get what they need, but also the ease of knowing that what they’re doing and what they’re buying is compliant to program rules.

Michael Horn

So you’re effectively solving the compliance thing proactively. So it’s hard coded, if you will, into the digital wallet and the set of market options that they’re seeing has already been vetted. And you have solved that sort of question in their mind of if I’m allowed to do this, is that a fair way of saying it?

Jamie Rosenberg

I’m saying that we solve an outcome problem, not a compliance problem. The compliance is the root cause as to why programs don’t get the outcomes they want. But what we’ve been able to do is by solving the compliance problem, we create a two sided marketplace and give families access to the breadth of innovation and all the providers that can support that child’s unique personalized learning needs with an incredible powerful market. If that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. So then talk about how many states are you supporting today in their ESA policies out there? Just give us a sense of the market that you all are serving at the moment.

Jamie Rosenberg

We currently serve nine ESA programs and in addition we serve other programs that give money to families but may not necessarily be used for tuition. So they’re not school choice under the classical definition, but they are what I would call education freedom, where families are getting funding from, from state agencies and can self direct how those funds can ultimately improve their children’s outcomes.

Michael Horn

Gotcha. And then so you have this fascinating bird’s eye view effectively into these markets that are getting created, the supply side, new school models, tutoring, right, entrepreneurs coming in and so forth. The demand side, families getting comfortable with this option, with using the dollars to get whatever set of services they need for their students. I’d love maybe let’s start on the supply side and thinking about lessons of regulation and policy. And you can go either way, positive or negative. I guess I’m curious what you’ve learned that really facilitates a robust supply side. And then the flip side, what stymies it, what holds it back or gums it up? And as we think about what, what are the right set of policies and regs to really make these marketplaces flourish.

Education Market: Innovative ESAs

Jamie Rosenberg

So first, I would appreciate that what the education market is doing with school choice is in my opinion, leading-edge innovation. It really is. When you really look at the entire scope of government programs, very few ultimately get that dollar into the hands of that beneficiary, that citizen, and give them agency in the manner that ESAs are doing today. So first, just understand that it’s incredibly innovative. My view of the market in ESA implementation, the supply side and the demand side is I really slice it into three pieces. There’s the before, before the family gets that dollar and we call that awareness, activation and navigation. How can we get as many people aware of the program, help them navigate the complexity of the program to ultimately meet the demand that the program has? There’s $100 million, how do we give enough families activated to take advantage of the full program? The middle part is using the money and the third part is the data.

How did they use the money? And how can we quantify the impact? Your question is on supply. So there’s a lot more emphasis on marketing, a lot more emphasis on helping these families who come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, who may not speak English as a first language, who are for the most part taking agency for the very, very first time of their child’s education journey. And I am happy to elaborate on what we and other demands in the market are there, but that’s the dynamics of what sort of creates the demand for the program.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess I’m curious if you want to go demand side first. Right. What really facilitates these families to be able to effectively exercise that agency? And where have you seen examples that maybe are hindering or creating more friction than needs to be done, if you will, given the policy set in place?

Jamie Rosenberg

Yes. So what’s creating more demand is marketing and grassroots efforts. Data will show that families really trust their places of faith and schools. And so we’re seeing a lot more investment in grassroots advocacy, coalescence and coalition among the non-public school communities and the organizations around them that support that ultimately can reach their families where they are. Okay. In addition, air coverage on top to create brand awareness. So I’ve heard of the ESA program three or four times now. I’m hearing it from my pastor or my rabbi, whoever it might be.

And I’m becoming engaged and educated. The second part is navigation. It’s complicated. The policy rules are complicated. So there’s a lot of emphasis on educating those grassroots channels to help those families navigate the complexities and ultimately make the leap. I’m going to apply, I’m going to submit my tax return if I have one. I’m going to submit my individual educator program, my IEP, if I can get access to it. Those are the dynamics that help them get and cross that line and those are sort of the players at a high level and that ultimately accomplish this sort of market demand that we all desire for.

Michael Horn

And are there policies in that space or regs that are creating more friction than is necessary in your view? Are there, are there certain states that are doing things that are great, that are actually making it easier to find that IEP and submit it and so forth to provide the evidence to get whatever dollar flows the family may be entitled to?

Jamie Rosenberg

My opinion is that the policies and the regulations definitely come in many, many different flavors.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Jamie Rosenberg

I would say that the different flavors aren’t necessarily exacerbating friction. You know, at some point in time, if there’s some federated standard, would that ease friction? I think that would be a healthy debate to explore. I think the dynamics of the variation of policies do not necessarily supersede just the quantum leap of taking that decision for the very first time for this family, for this parent, single parent, or two parents in a home, going from a public education, more passive experience, I’m going to, you know, more or less. Sure, right.

Michael Horn

I live where I do and I go, yeah, yeah.

Overcoming Barriers to ESA Use

Jamie Rosenberg

And so if I had to emphasize, you know, what is the, you know, greatest area of friction that I would, you know, really invest in to try to overcome, it’s really creating that, that level of comfort for that family member to, to take that leap. And the variations and the complexities of policies are true, but I believe that they’re surmountable for the most part. And just to finish. For the most part, 70% of families are using the ESA money to send their kid to a private school. It’s not that complicated. Once you get beyond private school tuition, the types of tutors you’re allowed to use, the types of therapists you’re allowed to use, the types of educational goods you’re allowed to buy, that’s where you’re touching upon all those complexities. And I believe that complexity, that friction really happens in the use of funds, but not necessarily serving as a huge barrier to get them to apply for the program, if that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, no, that does make sense. Before we turn to some of those other providers and thinking about some supply side or the innovative space of what’s called today microschools, maybe it won’t be in the future. I’m curious what the role of ClassWallet is in terms of helping families feel more comfortable with the navigation feel that they have the ability to exercise that agency that they’re giving you. Like what’s. I assume it’s evolved over time that you’re probably rolling out different features or changing the look and feel of the product and so forth to help them feel more ability to find the right option for them and use those dollars. What’s that evolution look like?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. It really comes down to data and relationships. So when a family first gets the funds, ClassWallet’s investing heavily in giving them access to data to make the best use of those dollars. Let’s say you have a second grade child who might have some reading deficiencies. What are other families with children with second grade of age who also might have reading challenges and what are they buying? Would be just one very simple example. Second, ClassWallet has relationships now and have integrated every major education e-tailer in the country. I mean 300 plus of the leading companies have all integrated from Amazon to Staples to Scholastic to School, Speciality, the Lakeshore and many, many, many more, all accept ClassWallet as a form of payment.

So we work very closely with them on how they can present their catalogs in a way that is an active, engaging experience with parents so that they’re finding items that are more and more closely correlated with their needs more easily than just simply an e-commerce experience. So it’s really about data, relationships and tailoring an experience for that family that they can most easily meet the unique needs of their child within that marketplace dynamic.

Michael Horn

It’s really cool to think about what that can look like then from the families navigating this and sort of taking away some of the breadth or complexity to help them find the thing that’s maybe most likely to be the fit for their kid. I’m curious on that supply side because you just talked about the integration with a lot of these suppliers and so forth. One of the pieces I’m curious about is the entrepreneur side of this supply side. Right. We’re seeing a lot of educators across the country leave their roles as public school teachers and so forth, saying, I can create a school. Right. That will better serve. And my understanding, in the early years of some of these places, I think, frankly, before you all were in some of these states, they were saying, like, hey, the dollars don’t flow to me right? Until six months later and I’m sitting out there trying to pay staff or whatever it might be.

There’s all these cash flow questions, friction around that and so forth. What have you learned about creating a robust supply side that supports entrepreneurs and innovative approaches as they come into this market to meet this new burgeoning demand? Or, or not new burgeoning demand, but burgeoning demand now backed by dollars?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. So I’m going to break your question into two pieces. One, how do you ensure that those stakeholders, the needs of those stakeholders are met so they can actively participate in these programs? And then two, how do we support entrepreneurs? So, for example, there are many important stakeholders. So the schools themselves are incredibly important stakeholders. And so one lesson we learned is not only do they need to get paid quickly and effectively, but they need to get paid in a manner that reconciles with their accounts receivable systems.

Michael Horn

Sure.

Streamlined Payment System for Schools

Jamie Rosenberg

So when we, when we first started, we would ACH them, you know, one payment, you know, every day. We then learn from them that they need to reconcile that payment against 37 different students who each have unique student IDs against their bank accounts. So we altered our payment mechanism. So now every school gets a batch of 37 payments with student IDs so they can quickly reconcile against their accounting systems and their bank accounts. Two, we’ve invested heavily in payments, so we actually process payments every 30 minutes. So every school gets paid literally the next day on ClassWallet. So we’ve eliminated all cash flow and all reconciliation issues for one of the most important stakeholders in the ecosystem. Second, we’re the largest payment system to microschools in the country.

Okay. We have facilitated tens of millions of dollars to microschools. As an example of how ClassWallet has facilitated the ease, removed all the barriers and friction for the entrepreneurs in the space who are trying to meet needs on the edges of a traditional school environment, i.e. a traditional private school. So we work with all sorts of those types, whether it be microschools, learning pods, online curriculum that is also learning and tuition. And we have, I would say, facilitated probably well over $150 million of payments just to non traditional private schools, but tuition type programming for families.

Michael Horn

Wow. And as you think about that facilitation and so forth, I imagine, but maybe you’ll correct me, the states also have to like have a lot of trust, right, that you have verified the family is in fact eligible, the dollars can flow like there’s a whole bunch of trust or proof, I guess that as you’ve developed for the states that they’re saying, yeah, like, you know, ClassWallet is good to run with this. Just talk about that evolution of the process in working with the states to create that smoothness between demand and supply that you just characterized.

Jamie Rosenberg

Sure. So first, the state is the ultimate author of the policy. Right. So for example, a state might say the school must exist for two years, hypothetically. And ClassWallet then can implement that policy and, and in the workflow, capture the information from the school during the onboarding process to ensure that it meets the straight criteria, for example. One state might say microschools are okay. Another state might say microschools maybe are not okay, for example. So we have all the flexibility and all the scale to implement policies in a frictionless, highly efficient, scalable way. So once they establish the groundwork and the framework, ClassWallet then can hit the ground running and then execute.

And that’s been one of our core strengths and why we’ve been so successful.

Michael Horn

So you’re essentially taking whatever the policy’s regs are and basically hard coding it so you can quickly verify and you essentially are the agent, right, of verifying these suppliers as yes, you’re eligible to participate in this market. The state, after they’ve created the rules, is letting you run with that. Is that the right way to think about it?

Jamie Rosenberg

Right. And I think a better example of that, Michael, tutoring. And I’ll just give you the three different flavors of tutoring. And generally across ESAs, about 15% of all funding going to families is spent on tutoring.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So one state might require a tutor, have a valid teacher certificate. Another state might require that the tutor have a valid bachelor’s degree. Another state might require that the tutor be a subject matter expert. Okay.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So ClassWallet in state A will require that the tutor upload their teaching certificate and we will validate that it’s legitimate that it is current, we will monitor it, so if it ever expires, we will either deactivate that tutor or give them the opportunity to update it. In state B we will require that tutor to upload a bachelor’s degree, ensure that that’s valid, et cetera. So that’s what I mean, where the state sets the policy, and then we’ve got the efficiency, the scalability and the workflow to onboard. So, you know, in one state, for example, we onboarded 3,000 tutors across the country across that particular state to meet that particular program’s needs.

Empowering End Users with ESAs

Michael Horn

Gotcha. Okay, last question as we wrap up here. You talked about one of the big philosophies that you’ve had, you developed is getting the dollar as close as you can to the actual end user and really giving them the agency over it. As you know, one of the, I don’t know if it’s pushbacks, but concerns maybe from critics of ESAs has been, what if they spend it on stuff that doesn’t make sense for their kid? Right. And so forth. How have you thought about those questions? How have you helped reassure states around those worries that they might have and that you have the right protections in place and so forth? How have you thought about that conversation? That I think comes from a different philosophical point of view, from where you’re entering into it, but you are obviously bridging it all the time.

So I’d love to hear how you, how you talk about that.

Jamie Rosenberg

I mean, that is our core competency and that, that is our innovation. The digital wallet ensures that the funds get used according to the rules. And what is the ultimate balance is among the policymakers is how to provide maximum agency and impact, but also ensure there’s transparency and compliance. I mean, that’s the ultimate, ultimate tug. And what I’ll say is this. For the most part, there’s been very little fraud. You’re always going to have a bad apple or two. What happens is the families are trying to do the right thing, but may inadvertently purchase something that’s not within the framework and the rules.

I’m going to give you a very specific example.

Michael Horn

Okay, great.

Jamie Rosenberg

A family buys a laptop. That’s according to the rules.

Michael Horn

Right.

Jamie Rosenberg

They buy a second laptop, fourteen months later, the rule says you’re not allowed to buy a laptop more than once every 24 months.

Michael Horn

Okay. Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So oftentimes, and I would say it’s about between 20 to 23%, it’s not fraud. They’re not trying to commit fraud. They’re trying to do the right thing. But because the policy and the rules can be complicated just like that slight nuance, they buy something that is just not according to the rules.

Michael Horn

Okay.

Jamie Rosenberg

So that’s what ClassWallet does. We take a complex rule set, something as basic as you’re allowed to buy a laptop, but you can’t do it every 24 months. And also something is very black and white. You can’t buy liquor.

Michael Horn

Right, right.

Jamie Rosenberg

And everything in between. And we try to help the parent be able to check out with confidence so when they check out, they know, and we can provide them information and data at that point of checkout, knowing that what they’re buying is not only compliant, but also within the rules, so they don’t have to wait for some retroactive reaction. So holistically, it’s been our experience and we’ve processed 1.6 million ESA transactions, we’ve processed close to $3.6 billion of ESA funding since 2017 over the last eight years. And I would just repeat that, for the most part, there’s very little fraud happening beyond what you would intuitively think is the bad apple events happening. But it’s families trying to do the right thing against a complex rule set in which, you know, technology is constantly getting better to help them solve if that makes sense.

Michael Horn

Yeah, it makes total sense. And I lied because it brings up one last question, I think, I promise on this one, which is, it seems to me you have gained a ton of experience around what that rule set can look like for a state and to advise and guide new states coming into the ESA world about, hey, like these are the big decisions you’re going to face. Let us help you do this and get it up and running quickly. What, what’s your role in those conversations and what have you learned about that?

Jamie Rosenberg

That’s a great question. I mean, we very much view ourselves as, as a thought partner and not just a software provider. Yeah. And you have to remember these agencies are doing it for the very, very first time. Like what I said in the beginning of the interview, this is bleeding edge innovative stuff. And often these agencies have no experience doing anything like this in this type of manner. So we can help them think through all the what if scenarios. You know, I always use one example.

Navigating Nuances for Public Good

Jamie Rosenberg

Or, you know, sneakers might be allowed. Clothing is allowed. Is that Converse sneakers for $60 or is it Michael Air Jordans for $800? Right. Even the little basic things that you think, of course, would be easy all have various nuances of color. So because we have seen so many different flavors in so many different transactions, we do come in as a thought partner and help them think through all those scenarios and ultimately help them avoid unforced errors. I and everyone we’ve worked with have always seen that everyone is trying to do the right thing. We all align to the same mission is to help children maximize their opportunities and chances of success and we very much enjoy and take a great deal of pleasure in helping agency leaders fulfill their mission which is public good.

We believe in that and so we enjoy that aspect of the work we do.

Michael Horn

Amazing. Jamie, huge thanks for joining us. Huge thanks for the work you continue to do and ClassWallet continues to do enabling what I agree with you dollars following to the point where they’re actually spending and educating kids. So really appreciate all that you’re doing.

Jamie Rosenberg

I appreciate the opportunity. Michael, thank you so much.

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