Does AI Help Teachers or Replace Them? | MacKenzie Price | PragerU

Imagine what would be possible if we were going to reimagine school. What is Alpha School and how did you get here? In only 2 hours a day, our students are learning twice as fast as students in the rest of the country. Only 2 hours a day on academics. What we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling us to raise human intelligence. And ultimately, we had our kids sail from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas over 5 days. I'll tell you what, that is what we call a test to pass. Most people think that the future is grim for their children. Education is going to get better. And I think the best way to do that is really turn the teacher in front of the classroom model on its head and allow technology to do what it can do really well. McKenzie, let's talk about innovative education that works. That is my favorite topic to talk about, so I'm glad I'm here. Awesome. Well, so many of my episodes are about things that we need to warn people about, right? parents need to find out about what's going on. And this is the episode that people can just relax and hear some really good news and some real good innovative uh experiences that you can share with us. Let me tell you some really great news. There's never been a more exciting time to be a 5-year-old. And this is also a really exciting time for teachers. So have no fear. Like education is going to get better. Okay, let's get this party started because I think a lot of people will find even that statement pretty surprising. I gave a a speech a few months ago and I asked parents to raise their hand and tell me if they think that the future of their children will be better than their lives as children and most people did not raise their hand. Most people think that the future is grim for their children. So you have a different perspective. That is absolutely true that and if you think about the current state of the world, I can see why parents arrive at that. Right? When you think about how academics has been doing in the in the K through 12 world the last several years, it's really been abysmal. A lot of the things that are going in and being focused on in schools is stuff that, you know, is not where we want it to be. But I think we are at this incredible precipice where we are going to see a change. And uh and I always talk about the future of education and I believe the future of education is here now. Amazing. Well, the reason you are an innovator in education, you started Alpha Schools was because you almost went in that direction, right? You almost had that despair that so many parents around America are having and then you did something about it. So share with us what is Alpha School and and how did you get here? Yeah. Well, I'll take you way back uh to just my experience going to school. And I think that's always something important because we all had our own personal experience, you know, being educated and it shaped so much of how we think about school and what we believe school should be for kids. Um, I was one of those kids who was really good at school. I knew how to jump through the hoops. I knew how to get the grades, but I hated school. Did you like school? Yes, I did because I identified as a troublemaker from the second I was born. Okay. And so for me, that rigid experience of of school was just an opportunity to cause trouble everywhere. But you got to have a very specific personality. Rebel. Okay. Well, I was like the dogooder. I knew how to follow the rules, but I was always that kid who would raise my hand and be like, why do I need to know this? Like, how does this apply to whatever it is that I'm interested or how I'm going to go out in the world and what I'm going to do. And so, um, fundamentally, I didn't feel like my school experience prepared me well to be able to figure out like that intersection of my passions and my talents. Um, so that was kind of the backdrop. Now, I went to a great university, uh, graduated, kind of went on the, you know, treadmill of life. Uh, but then it was time for my girls to go to school and I live in Austin, Texas, and my husband and I were both products of public school education. And so we said, you know, it's time to send him down, get him on the bus and go to the school district uh near our house, which is a phenomenal school district in Texas. Um but what I also found is that my little girl who I dropped off at kindergarten the first day, who had this like incredible insatiable curiosity and desire to learn and and just want to kind of see how things worked, which all kids have. All kids start out like that. After a while, I just saw the spark was like kind of dying. And the reason is because there wasn't a lot of ability in that classroom experience to have any sort of personalization. And that was everything from like, you know, if she was already reading in kindergarten, you know, she'd come home with worksheets that were like A is for aunt, B is for bat. And it was like, well, is there anything we can do? And I really felt for the teachers in the situation because, you know, this poor teacher had 22 kids in the classroom who all came at totally different levels. And you know, it was hard to figure out how do you personalize education for every kid. Um, but ultimately that culminated about 2 and 1/2 years later in second grade. My younger daughter was now in kindergarten and experiencing the same thing. And uh, my daughter came home one day and she said, "I don't want to go to school tomorrow." I looked at her, I said, "What do you mean you love school?" Mhm. And she just looked at me and she said, "School is so boring." Mhm. And I just had this moment of like, "Oh my goodness, in 2 and 1/2 years, they've taken a kid who's like tailor made to be enthusiastic and excited about school and they've wiped that passion away." And I went and talked with the principal of our school who was a really great administrator and had become a friend of mine at that point. And I had expressed more about my concerns and she looked at me and she said, "Mackenzie, I got to be honest with you. this is like trying to steer the Titanic. It just can't be done. And so at that point, I knew it was my time to exit. Uh because I didn't want to see my girls go through the same experience I had. Uh where it was just like go through the motions, do what you need to do. Um I wanted that 12 years of my kids' lives to be something exciting. I mean, they're going to spend 5 days a week, 9 months a year for hours a day in school. It should be a place that is invigorating and exciting and it should be something that like unlocks our kids potential and that wasn't happening. And actually, did you know there's been research done on the level of enthusiasm between kindergarten and 12? And can you guess the highest level of enthusiasm? Like day one of kindergarten, literally kindergarten. It goes down every year until junior year of high school when they finally start to see like a light at the end of the tunnel. And that is not the way our kids should be experiencing, you know, so many of those formative years. Um, so I looked around and I will say I knew I couldn't homeschool heroes, the people who are able to homeschool. And I didn't see any other school. For me, it wasn't about a public school versus a private school. It was really fundamentally the model of a teacher in front of a classroom uh teaching a group of kids in a timebased system who are all at different levels. It's just an impossible job. And I think teachers have been given this very impossible job where they've been asked to like empty the ocean with a bucket full of holes in it. They can't possibly meet every kid's needs when they're, you know, saying I also am responsible for delivering third grade curriculum. So I looked around and I kind of imagined like what would be possible if we were going to reimagine school? And the question I kind of asked is like how high is high? what are kids capable of when you give them great levels of support and you hold them to high standards? Uh, and just what are what are they able to do? And um I decided in 2014 to start my own school. Well, how do you do anything that's different? Right? You still have a group of kids that are coming in. They have different levels of abilities. They're still in one place. How do you create this personalized learning that you're saying that the other schools couldn't give to your children? Well, here's what's really exciting about the time that we have been in. Um, and this was true in 2014 when my girls were in third grade and first grade when I started the very first school. Um, technology has enabled us to do so much more. And more recently, in the last 3 years, with the advent of generative AI, we have the ability to provide a truly personalized onetoone masterybased learning experience for every single kid. And you know, if I take you back, you know, want to go way back in history for a second. Um, you know, think about the way that Socrates tutored Plato, who tutored Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great. Um, that was this one to one very mastery based like follow the interest, you know, really teach people in depth. Now, of course, that was only reserved for the very very elite. Um, and a couple hundred years ago when it was time to figure out, okay, the industrial revolution is here. We got to create factory workers. We need to create compliant people who are educated at a base level that we can understand how do we educate the masses. And that is when that teacher in front of the classroom model was really born. Um and you know what it did allow more people to be educated. Um, and it did that, but in a couple hundred years, nothing had really changed, right? And there have been learning science papers written by leading universities that talk about how kids can learn two, five, 10 times faster when they're in a onetoone mastery based environment. But every single one of those papers starts or ends with the same thing. Unfortunately, these results are not possible in a teacher in front of the classroom model. And so, uh, what's really amazing now and why it's such an exciting time in education is that artificial intelligence is the tool that is going to finally allow learning science to become a really precise and measurable science. Just like when, you know, the microscope was created and what that did for biology, right? There is so much potential now because um basically what we do at our schools is every student receives a personalized learning plan that is created based on assessing what a child knows, what don't they know, and then creating a lesson plan that combines both the knowledge that they have as well as the ability to take interest that a child has and give them that learning. And so what we found is that when kids are learning at the level and the pace that they need, uh, they're able to do great work, but it's only part of the solution, which I I'm happy to tell you about, too. Well, you mentioned AI, which I can't not focus on that because there's a lot of fear around AI. Oh my goodness. So much what what about the cheating? What about the human connection? What about the child's ability to actually sit down and read and write themselves? If you expose them to AI, they're going to be cheaters for the rest of their lives. I can't even tell you how many things I've heard about the concern of AI replacing humans. And you as a head mistress of multiple schools is you're actually bringing AI to children. I know. Can you believe it? No wonder you're getting all this hate. Well, so here's the thing. Um there is no question that there is so much fear um and a lack of understanding. And one of the things that um I'm helping families understand and become aware of is that um it's not this dystopian robot terminator teacher standing in the front of the classroom, you know, teaching a bunch of kids on this. Um what it is is we're basically using um LLMs um that are feeding K through 8 Common Core and then at the high school level AP curriculum um through these personalized learning experiences. And then uh we use a vision model to make sure that we're able to understand how accurately and how efficiently a child is learning. Here's what we don't use and this is what so many people associate artificial intelligence with a chatbot. Okay. Uh here's the thing. A chatbot. Think chat GPT or Conigo. It would be amazing if every kid interacted with a chatbot and said let's have a Socratic discussion to learn more about World War II history and and go deep into that. Unfortunately, the reality is that when kids use chat bots, they tend to use them to cheat, right? They will copy and paste the question and answer and that's what they do. So, that's actually the one aspect of artificial intelligence that we don't use with our students. Instead, these personalized learning plans are what um kids are able to learn and go with. Now, here's what we see as far as results. In only two hours a day, our students are learning twice as fast as students uh in the rest of the country. Uh our classes are in the 99th percentile uh across the board in all subjects. In fact, I don't know of another school who's delivering the kind of academic results and especially when you add that we're doing it in 2 hours. Um and here's the big question that kind of comes up. What in the world do you do with the rest of the day when you get academics done in a couple hours? And for us, the answer is we spend all afternoon developing life skills. And and that's kind of the short summary. We we can go into more detail on what that is, but let me tell you the secret sauce of what makes this all successful. It is our teachers. We have transformed the role of the teacher in our classroom so that instead of having to spend their time creating lesson plans and delivering lectures and grading papers and homework, they are able to focus all of their attention on motivational and emotional support and mentorship. And what that does is that creates that motivation that a child needs in order to go and crush their academics. And so what we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling us to raise human intelligence both for children from an academic perspective as well as the time and ability to develop life skills, but also because we're taking those teachers and we're putting them right at the center where they can spend time getting to know every single child, understanding what makes them tick, what gets them excited when they're struggling with something. what are the things they say to themselves and how can we incorporate better growth mindset strategies and that's kind of where the magic is happening and why we're able to really unlock the potential for every single kid that comes into our doors. Wow. So interesting. So one thing you said is that is it academics that the alpha students only spend two hours a day on only two hours a day on academics and and what is it an app that that your team developed? Is it a software? Because they're obviously not going to outside apps that anybody can just go and download, right? Actually, they are doing some of that. What our curriculum or what our um we call it time back. That is our learning platform. And what our learning platform does is we use an AIT tutor that we built uh that creates the lesson plans that match uh for each student depending on their level and where their pace is. Um, but what our students experience when they sit down in the morning, uh, they come to school first of all, just to kind of set the stage. Um, it's a full day school program because we know need that, right? And and there's so many other great things that do come from school, right? Opportunities to socialize with with other students, all of those things. Uh, but they start school every morning and we do a 15minute limitless launch. Think Tony Robbins for kids. This is a chance for kids to come together and get excited about the day. There's usually some sort of physical activity and some sort of maybe impossible challenge that helps us introduce some sort of a growth mindset concept so that when the kid then goes to sit down for their academic part of the day or whatever else they're doing, they've taken this energy and this attitude and they're like, I'm ready to go. Right? So, we start every day like that. Then our kids go into the 2-hour learning block of the day on their own. Uh well, they're together in a class and they've got teachers. We call them guides, but our teachers are in the classroom. So, these kids are able to be with, you know, similarly aged other children. Uh but they do they grab their computers and they go and they uh are able to click on the learning plan that they need for math or reading, science, English, whatever that is. uh they go in there and then we practice something called the Pomodoro method where they spend about 25 minutes of focused time in that subject. Then they get to go and take a break, go run around, have a a recess, they go back to the next subject. And what we find is that in 2 hours our kids are able to co cover all of their academic content uh by receiving this personalized thing. And the other thing that's really cool about it is, you know, you can have two seven-year-old kids sitting right next to each other and one seven-year-old is working on algebra while the other kid is working on his addition and subtraction. Um, these kids are able to go exactly where they need to be and yet they're they're hanging out with each other. And during that time, our teachers, they're not teaching academic content, but what they're they're doing is they're coaching and supporting these kids as they're going through their academic lesson to understand like, have you looked at the resources you need to learn something? Have you read the explanation? Have you watched the video that that helps? And what we're really doing is we're creating self-driven learners who have the life skill of learning how to learn. And that is a skill that is so important especially in today's world where we really do have all the information in the world right at our fingertips. How do we take that information and use that to uh do something bigger? You know, one of the things I think Marissa is true now is it's no longer just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's about what I call the four Cs. It's critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration. Those are the skills that we want our kids to really learn. And so when we have all of our academics done in the first half of the day and then the rest of the day is filled with life skills workshops and collaborative project-based really interactive kind of activities, it is a fun place to be. Um, and actually that kind of goes back to our our number one commitment that we make to our families is that kids will love school because when a kid loves school, it unlocks the ability for so many other big things to happen for them. Well, then they remember what they actually learned, right? Mhm. So, I I I just kind of want to envision myself in that classroom during those two hours. So, is it it the kids are sitting in front of a computer and you have these motivators? I'm going to call them motivators. I know you have your own name for it, but basically their job is to motivate the kids to complete whatever it is that they're doing. Is it like I excel? Is it like that kind of stuff where they make the progress, but it's it it is reading and writing and arithmetic essentially during those hours. Yeah, they're the core academic skills that they're doing. They're using a combination of um apps that we have built ourselves as well as thirdparty apps. Um you know, things like math academy is a great math app. Il is something else. uh Grammarly, egump, there's all kinds of different apps that have been out. And here's the issue with edtech over the last 15 years because, you know, as as I mentioned, when I started the school in 2014, we were using those apps. Um but just giving a kid an app and kind of saying, "Hey, go to town and just work on it." Uh doesn't necessarily ensure great, you know, academic results. Um kids can waste time on it. They can just not even be engaging with the app. And so what our AI tutor is doing is really making sure kids are learning through that process very efficiently and then feeding in um the the knowledge that they need to be learning to create these personalized lesson plans. Um and so yeah, if you come into one of our classrooms in the morning when kids are are working, um each kid is working on their own computer and um they're working in kind of groups together near each other and our teachers, our guides as we call them, are you know supporting them as they need it. But I will tell you one of the things that's so fun to see, especially when you walk into one of our younger classrooms, uh, like a kindergarten or first grade classroom, you'll see some kids that are sitting at a table with one of our guides and they're working on it. And inevitably, you'll always see some kid who's like sitting in the corner like on a couch with his feet up and his computer upside down doing his work. And you might think, what's he doing? And what we've realized is this kid knows how to get his work done and he has got that like autonomy over himself to be able to say, you know what, I'm comfortable when I'm able to sprawl out and do this and get that work done. Uh I will say our schools are very much merit-based cultures where we teach kids early early on how to set goals and how to work towards accomplishing those goals because they really are in the driver's seat of their education. Um, and as a result, uh, from an early stage, our kids become really aware of like, hey, this is the, you know, the math that I want to learn today and here's how I did on that. Um, and it creates really a great sense of ownership, uh, and control that they have. Um, and as far as motivation, we are willing to do whatever it takes to get a kid excited because if a kid's not motivated to learn, then you're kind of up the creek. And so that could be anything from, you know, we had a little girl this past year um who whenever she would get one of her goals, she and her guide would go in the corner and they would do a 15-second Taylor Swift dance party. And that was enough to get that little girl excited, right? Um we pay our students a school currency uh for when they hit their goals. And you know, that's one thing that people go paying paying students to learn that seems wrong. Here's the thing. It is an incredible motivator and one of the things that we find is that um extrinsic motivation uh will eventually lead to uh kids performing well and competence uh leads to confidence and suddenly when you're good at math you're like I kind of like math. Math is fun and it's interesting and that invariably leads to intrinsic motivation as well. And so it's a really beautiful kind of system that that we've been able to create here where you get kids that come in and maybe they're not excited about, you know, school or they're feeling behind or they feel like they're not smart. And when you show them the ability to say, "Hey, when you work at your pace and your level, you can be really capable and you can get great results." And then suddenly these kids turn on and they get excited and they have time to develop those interests and you know figure out that that intersection again between their passions and their talents. I love that motivation is the number one ingredient because it's so true, right? It's 90% learning experience and and we do get motivated by by rewards. I what you are saying just brings me back to my life when I was an educator and I was actually going through ed school where we were taught and this is a long time ago that you should not give extrinsic motivation to to to students that's what teachers were told that you you know words of affirmation or you know equality and equity and all of that kind of stuff and and so I am curious given that the teachers at alpha schools are so unique right they have to uniquely it's it It's almost like a coach, right? It's almost like those those sports coaches that you like you're talking about a Tony Robbins type of a personality, right? How do you find those kinds of teachers? Do they have to be everything? Do they have to be um a motivator and they have to know their subjects and they have to be credentialed and like I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, like I who does your human resource, but how do you find these kinds of teachers? Well, it's really incredible. Our our teachers are amazing and they come from a variety of backgrounds. So about 15% of our teachers come from a traditional teaching background. Um but what we've also found is that we have really attracted people who maybe wouldn't want to be in a traditional school experience. Uh they came from the business world or they came from an athletic or coaching background and they are really excited about the idea of saying hey I get to focus on motivating you know young people and doing that. So, because our teachers are not teaching academic subjects, we don't need to have like a math teacher, but what we do need is someone who says, "Hey kiddo, I'm going to come alongside of you and I'm going to coach you to greatness to whatever it is that you're wanting to do." Um, and people are really excited about that. I also fundamentally believe teachers need to be paid well. you know, back in the, you know, in the mid 1900s, um, the top 15% of, you know, uh, especially women coming out of college, uh, would go into teaching, right? And now a lot of the teachers that are coming into our industry are from the bottom 15%. And I can understand why because teachers are overworked, they're underpaid, and they're underappreciated. And that's why we're seeing teachers leave the field in droves and we're having a hard time attracting highquality people. Um, and we fundamentally believe that teachers need to be well compensated and they need to be put in an environment that allows them to really focus on making that great impact. Um, and so that's one of the things we think of. And I'm curious since you have a teaching background, tell me if you you think I'm I'm right on this. I feel like in a traditional school experience, there are two things that determine how a child does uh in school. One is just simply how smart are they? You know, generally higher IQ relates to better academic performance. And then the second thing that kind of comes in is a big five trait, conscientiousness. Are you willing to study for the test? Are you willing to write the paper and turn it in? Are you willing to do the homework? And so in a traditional school environment when kids aren't thriving, I think it's often considered kind of the kids' fault. It's like either they're not the sharpest, they're not really good at school, or they're lazy or they're disengaged, so they're not doing what they need to do. And I've taken the opposite approach in our school. If a kid is not thriving, it is the school's fault because what it means is we have not figured out how to properly motivate that child and what to do. And motivation is such an important factor in this. And when our teachers can spend all of their time focusing on how do we motivate instead of, you know, lecturing to 20 plus kids, that's why we're seeing, I think, such incredible results. Yeah. The first thing that comes to my mind is when I meet people today who tell me that they're bad at math, the first thing that comes to my mind is, well, you must have had a pretty weak math teacher when you were a child, right? because then you labeled yourself as not good at math. Anybody can learn basic math, but when you label yourself at an early age that you're terrible at something, mostly because you didn't have the motivation to realize that you can do it, then later on you think that you're bad at math for the rest of your life. Well, and it's not even about one bad math teacher. When you think about how a student learns, you know, they come into kindergarten and they start learning addition and subtraction, basic numbers, right? And then pretty soon it's multiplication and division. It goes from there. And if you miss any of those concepts, you start building a tower and that tower doesn't have all of its foundational concepts. So then by the time you're getting to algebra, if you don't really know your multiplication, division tables, like it starts getting harder. And that's why so many people will fall off what I call a math cliff. You know, at a certain point when when topics get harder, it's because they didn't really have that strong foundation. And so one of the things that's really incredible about what AI is enabling us to do in education is we can take that eighth grade student who comes to us and isn't, you know, performing where we we want them to be and we can go back and we can analyze, you know what, this kid needs to go back and revisit a little bit of fourth grade concept, some fifth grade work, some sixth grade work. And one of the things we found is that oftentimes the fastest way forward is to go backward to go back and learn those fundamental skills. And so, you know, that's just inevitable in a traditional system that's timebased where no matter what, you know, a teacher explains a concept and at the beginning before she's even explained the concept, there's 20% of the kids who already know it and they're like right so bored. And after the concept has been explained, there's a bunch of kids who are like, I have absolutely no idea what she's talking about. Either way, they take a quiz or a test and they move on, right? And that's where you end up getting so many holes in knowledge. And when we are able to use a mastery based system, that's why we can see kids do so well. And here's the thing, we can take kids from wherever they show up to us, 10th percentile, 99th percentile, we can raise the floor and just blow the ceiling off of what's possible. And if you contrast that to what's happening in a traditional school system, uh here's a question for you. Um if you take a 50th percentile student, let's say freshman year, how much do you think they learn by the time they're seniors? A 50th percentile kid in in government schools. Let's Yeah. Well, well, yes, sure. I'm going to go government, but I'll even say traditional, in fact, where I'll just to kind of base the conversation, we use something called NWA MAP uh tests. Maps are a map tests are dynamic tests. So they move based on how much a kid knows. Um they're taken by about 10 million students across the country. Private school, home school, public school, you name it. It's a great kind of a great way to compare in that. So 50th percentile in math freshman year to senior year. Can you guess how many points they might go up like on this? Unless they have unbelievable amount of help. Four points. You're exactly right. Actually, 230 is what a 50th percentile math uh student comes in at, and they're at 234 when they when they graduate. And here's another crazy thing. 234 is the score of a 50th percentile senior in math. Do you know who else gets a 234 on math? A 99th percentile third grader. So, you can literally say that like half of the students in this country, you know, like a third grader knows more than half the half the students graduating high school. It's a terrible thing. And that's why we're seeing such horrible results academically in our country. It's a it's a mess. And so, you know, we get back to the very beginning, which is that a lot of parents are have a doomsday view of like education is bad. And it is. And you know what? It's time for us to change. We have to go in and repair and fix this system. And I think the best way to do that is really turn the teacher in front of the classroom model on its head and allow our teachers to focus on the motivational aspect of this and allow technology to do what it can do really well. I'm really glad you mentioned the MAP test because I think so many parents just don't have the visibility for what is happening. And what I love about the MAP test is that when you look at these numbers and you look at the questions that are being asked in the test, you have such a better sense of what your child could do, right? But the problem is when you send kids to schools and you have no idea what to even expect, the teachers, the schools, the administrations, they'll they'll just say, "Listen, this is the Titanic that we're in." And that's what you should expect and the bar should be that low. And once you have visibility like we do, I just think I get so upset about it because it's so upsetting that parents don't have the visibility that you and I had. For years, I've been say you you say two hours. I used to say three and a half hours. I used to say, you can teach your child everything they know academically in about 3 3 and 1/2 hours max. And if you look what these tests are really asking for, a a fourth or a fifth grader could probably do what an eighth grader could do even if they're not a genius. And so I love this use of technology because it also gives parents visibility. Like it doesn't require the school to take extra time. I I have to assume that you're okay providing parental visibility to how their children are performing as opposed to these, you know, parent teacher conferences where somebody is just sitting in front of you and saying, "Look, he's doing great. Next." Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, we think about report cards. Rapport cards are these completely subjective assessments that for younger ages, it's like satisfactory moving, needs improvement. Yes. Or or grades. And there's there's just no meaning for that. In fact, California issued a report in 2023 that said, "Great news. There has never been higher grades in California." Meanwhile, their test scores had dropped. And so, it was just this complete example of grade inflation. And here's the thing, it's happening all over the board. It's happening in public schools and it's happening in private schools. There's a lack of transparency that parents aren't able to see. And when we think about like MAP tests as an example, um, and the reason that standardized assessments have gotten such a bad reputation in traditional school is deserved. Because here's the thing, teachers spend all year trying to teach this test, a child takes a test, uh, nothing changes for that child based on the results of that test. Nothing changes about their education system. And so I often will ask parents, uh, I'll say, "Hey, does your school do MAP testing? And if so, do they give you the report? Oh, yes, they do. They give us a report. And I'll say, well, how long is the report? Oh, it's about two pages. Well, really, MAP reports are like 18, 20 pages because they will go in detail about every concept and every subconcept. Here's what a child knows. Here's what they don't know. Well, the reason in a traditional environment they don't give you that assessment is because it might make a parent say, "Well, how are we going to go fill these holes?" And the answer is we have no idea. in our system, we can take all of that information and we feed it back into our AI tutor and we can go and create lessons that fill those holes. And that's what is truly incredible about using technology in this way uh to create truly a mastery based learning experience. Um, and I think it's something that, you know, parents should demand. They should want more of that. Um, but it's a hard kind of thing. And as you hear me describe our schools, you know, we've really changed the day of school because when kids are done with academics in the morning and we get to spend all afternoon doing these really fun, exciting life skills projects. Um, you know, that is something that I think families want, but it does change everything we've ever known about school. Okay, I can't wait to hear about what life skills means at Alpha Schools. So one of my biggest criticism of America's education system is that as a CEO when I inherit potential employees, one of the hardest things for employees to do is to build discernment and create an overlap between different tasks. Okay? And the reason I think this happened is because I'm looking at the whole world as an educator and I say, "Well, if you taught first hour English or literacy, second hour math, but you never had a chance to actually live life and blend it all in together as life is, then you're going to really hard have a hard time building discernment and then later on being an entrepreneur and building a business or being able to even problem solve on a life skills way because math and literacy and social studies and and everything is truly blended. And so when you're talking to us about spending the vast majority of a child's day on life skills, are you able to provide a solution for this lack of common sense and lack of discernment that we are seeing in in America right now? Well, I think what you're seeing and especially I've noticed this too with with young people who come in uh you know to work, they're used to doing what they're told to do, right? And you think about education, it is very much a get in the seat, put your seatelt on, and just memorize memorize forward, right? And so often times you might hear someone say, you know, well, I didn't learn that well because I had a bad teacher. I had a this. And it's like, no, that is not the way to do it. Because guess what? In the working world, you can't say, "Well, I had a bad manager." It's like you have to figure out, okay, I've got to go find a way to be useful and be valuable and take the skills or the pro problems that I'm I'm working on and go find a solution to that. And so, part of that does come down to really taking charge of your learning journey and understanding like I do have the ability to be in control. And so when we think about from an academic perspective again when a student and a parent can go in and see every day here's what my student learned here's what they worked on here's where they were uh struggling or distracted right what can we do that gives so much ownership that then kids can carry into other things so we then think about life skills and I will tell you as much time as we've spent on academics uh most people don't actually care that much about academics it's not really the number one priority. What I find that so many more parents care about are those realworld life skills that they have realized just like you and I have are so important to be successful in the world. And so for us that's things like leadership and teamwork and financial literacy and entrepreneurship. There's so much you can learn through entrepreneurship, uh, you know, and, um, and socialization skills, grit, learning how to deal with failure, learning how to take, uh, feedback. That's an important skill, right? Big one. Oh, another skill that we love to focus on and I think is so valuable in life is storytelling and public speaking, right? When you combine all of those skills and give kids time to go develop them, that is what helps them take just it's like rocket fuel to uh making kids successful. And so the way that works at our schools is our kids spend their afternoons doing these life skills workshops. And so that could be everything from our kindergarteners who did a fivemile bike race uh as a team where they're working together and they're developing grit. Um, you know, our kids as they get older, we we did a sailing workshop where they were learning about adaptability. And one of the things they had to learn how to do was how to build their sailboat, you know, and understand what like what is what are all the components of that, then work as a as a team, learn how to uh navigate. And ultimately, we had our kids sail from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas over 5 days. I'll tell you what, that is what we call a test to pass. Like they have learned a lot of skills of how to work together. uh when they've done that. And so uh what we've found is that we can teach these life skills in really fun ways. Uh for example, there's a workshop. It's called how to be a spy. Do you think a average elementary kid might be interested? Um so it's how to be a spy, but what we're really teaching is it's a socialization workshop. We're teaching kids how to uh read body language, how to make eye contact, how to engage in conversation, um you know, how to understand uh you know, how to how to connect with a person. And so it's a really fun uh experience where kids get to do all these cool things, but then they're learning those skills that are going to carry them so far. And so when you think about discernment and you can combine the idea of life skills like adaptability and grit and you know financial literacy and then you combine it with all of the academic information that they fill their brain with. What you really create is great critical thinkers who are able to look at a new problem and say let's let's break this down and let's figure out how to create a solution. And that is going to be even more important in our new world, especially as we see technology take over so many of the jobs, you know, that are happening. And and it is a different world than when we were growing up, right? The kids today are going to do jobs that don't exist yet, right? And they're going to have to get a lot more creative about how we can, you know, as I say, it's like, how are we always going to make sure humans can stay smarter than AI? And one of the things about AI is AI is very good at the black and white. It knows what's out there. What it doesn't know is the gray frontier of knowledge. And that's where we want people to live, right? We want people to be saying, "Hey, let's push that frontier." And so, you know, a great example of that is I remember, you know, many months ago, uh, I was looking in chat GPT and I said, if you were going to design a revolutionary new K through2 school that was the best in the world, what would it look like? And you know this this GPT came back and said well it would have highly trained teachers and it would have this and it would do that. And then I said well what if you designed a school where teachers focused on motivation only and you had technology teach all of a sudden it was like well that's a new idea and then it came up with another great thing. But that's a perfect example of where humans are infusing the new idea and that's what we want our young people to be able to be great at. Well, your school is known as the AI school, but you obviously do more than AI. You just kind of do the I guess baseline stuff through AI and then the rest of the day you you actually do. So, we covered reading, writing, arithmetic. We covered life skills. I don't know how we talk about education without talking about ethics and morality. And so, how does that play into your school? Right. There is classical education which is very focused on ethics and morality. What is true, what is beautiful, what is noble. Is that a contemplation for you as you run a school? You know, I think when um when I look at the goal of school, um I do believe that we are wanting to raise critical thinkers and I think someone who's a great critical thinker is also going to be taking into consideration things like ethics, what are what are truths, what are understandings. But the other thing they have to understand is how to operate in this world where there are people from so many different opinions. So I'll give you an example of one of the skills that we create through workshop. We have a concept called both sides. And we start this uh this concept of teaching our kids in kindergarten. So for example, what we'll do with our kindergarten and first graders is we'll ask them to say pick something that you feel very passionate about that you think should be the case and I want you to build a presentation that you're going to give to your classmates and to your parents about this. And here's a really hot hot button topic in kindergarten and first grade. I want a later bedtime. I need a later bedtime. Right? So, they have to come up with their presentation for here's why I think instead of going to bed at 7:30, I should get to go to bed at 8:30. And they they put their all into it. Then what we tell them is, okay, I want you to give the presentation for why you should not have a later bedtime. And then what we do is we see both by parent feedback, classmate feedback, and we use AI to grade this. Did they put their all into arguing the other side that they don't agree with? So you think about like, you know, that topic of of, you know, what time they go to bed. And then as kids get older and suddenly that can go into things like politics, you know, pro-choice versus pro-life, so many different topics that come up where that skill of a person being able to say, "Let me passionately advocate for something I believe in and let me be able to see the other side and explain." That right there would create such an incredible uh experience. And there are so many adults that I wish would take our both sides, you know, workshop and learn that skill. And so what I really believe, you know, what we believe in our schools is that um families are setting the belief systems that are needed to be. And our job as a school is not to dictate what a child should believe or what a family should do. Our job is to infuse these children with knowledge and with skills that then they can take home to go and develop what their ethics uh compass looks like, you know, what they view morality and to get exposure to great works, right? And to be readers, right? And uh you know, one of the things we always say with reading is to develop a love of reading is to read what you love. And what we want to do again is just give kids so many different opportunities for exposure to, you know, information uh that then they understand how they can discern what that is and make those decisions. Well, it sounds like you have a deep partnership with the parents and the parents are quite involved. And so I'd imagine that people who hear about your school would say, well, a lot of kids can't afford to go to a school like Alpha. I mean, I read that it's $40,000 a child. It's a lot of money. plus parents who are willing to lean in or can even lean in and be as involved. And so as we sit here and we think about America in general, how can we take the things that we've learned from you and from your schools with people who've had access and were able to maybe be the first responders on this issue of education and provide some of this advice to other Americans who either can't afford to send their kids to alpha schools because of of the cost or simply don't have an alpha school in in their community. Well, you know, I think that becomes even more important when we think about how to scale and how to make this kind of education model more accessible. Um, and when we think about how much money goes into uh the public school system, right? Uh, it's kind of crazy. I mean, there are states that are spending $40,000 a year per student that are in public schools. Um, and so I think it's going to require kind of a reimagination and a reallocation of how we're spending our resources and time and what our priorities are. And I think if we fundamentally think about two things, which is high standards and a high level of support, um, I do think it's going to be easier than maybe we would imagine to uh reimagine that system. Now, there are there's no question we have phenomenal families in our school organization. Um, but there's always gaps in, you know, what kids can need. And I think the people that our kids spend time with at school are important, right? Who they are with. And so part of what I believe is when we can take our teachers and we can change their scope to focus on that motivational connection that can provide so much of the needed um help that a lot of kids aren't necessarily getting at home, right? And so it becomes an even more important role. Now, of course, we want to make sure that the teachers that are working with our kids, you know, are providing that positive um mentorship that, you know, families want to see. Um but we could do this. And you know, at Alpha Schools, uh we are redefining what parents expect from a private school experience. And so we do these amazing life skills workshops where kids get to, you know, sail to the Bahamas. Uh they get to do a lot of travel. they get to to build things. Um, but they also get to spend time just going and doing sports, uh, doing artwork where they're, you know, learning about adaptability and receiving feedback. And these are things that I think in a traditional public school system. If you put me in charge of it tomorrow and said, "Okay, McKenzie, you're in charge of K through 12, you know, public education. Here's what I believe we could do." Yeah. Uh we could take this learning platform, use technology to provide the personalized learning that can be done more efficiently, train our teachers and our coaches that we have in these schools to focus on that motivational mentorship uh kind of role. And then starting at noon, these kids could be unleashed to go do those things they're excited about that they usually start at 4:00. So maybe that's playing football or basketball or it's going to the robotics club or the theater department. Whatever those activities are that they usually end up doing after school, we could do that during the school day. And that would allow us to reimagine the the hours of the day and do it in a way that schools already have those resources. Uh they already have people who are operating in those roles. Um, now it just it again it requires a little bit of new flexibility and thinking and I love talking to teachers uh because one of the things that I I always find interesting about my conversation with teachers is they will start out with all of the concerns like oh my gosh is am I going to lose my job to AI? Technology could be bad. Screen time is bad for kids. What is it? And then as I talk through kind of the vision and what what can be reality? they get really excited and they realize, oh my gosh, this could be a a possible thing that we could we could translate. Now, the question is, how do you take that huge gargantuan system and get them to all to do that? I don't know. Um, it is a hard thing, but that's part of the reason that I appreciate getting to share um information about how we're doing school with other people is to have them start seeing this as something to do. The other part that we, you know, haven't really talked about that I think is so important is in this new world, we also need to train our young people about how to use AI tools, uh, to their advantage, not to cheat, but to become successful. And so for us, a lot of times in our life skills workshops, um, you know, we'll have kids who are working on businesses and they'll use an AI tool to give them feedback on their business plan, right? or uh give them feedback on the art that they're working on or help them make something bigger and better to code drones, you know, and use artificial intelligence. And that is a skill in and of itself that we need to make sure to do. And so, one of the things I always tell parents to do is start practicing these things at home, right? And you know, you can take something as simple as saying, you know, hey, let's get excited about reading by creating a prompt where you, the child, get to be the main character in a choose your own adventure, you know, heroes journey, and your best friends from your soccer team are your sidekicks. And we're going to create this reading at the level that is just challenging enough for you, but not too hard and not too easy. And suddenly you get that little boy who maybe doesn't want to read and all of a sudden he's like I'm reading about this and you can do that at home in a few minutes you can ab I mean in a yes in 15 seconds it's incredible and um it's really fun I think as a family to be able to start testing those things out. Another thing that we do is uh we really encourage our kids to become experts to do deep dives in some subject that they're interested in and then we'll say can you beat AI? Like do you know more about your subject than an AI does? And uh it's a really fun test that kids will get up and they'll say, "Okay, I've studied everything I could possibly know about the possum." Uhhuh. And then their classmates can say, "Okay, let me let me see what questions I can ask." And does a kid know this? And those are fun. It's almost like game show. Yeah. Stuff. And those are things kids and families can do at the dinner table. Um another thing that's really fun is, you know, use AI to create songs that help you memorize things. one of our students. Um, yesterday I was with one of our 8-year-old students who was doing all of the capitals of the United States through this awesome song that was in the form of a Taylor Swift melody. Of course. Right. Of course, it's all about Taylor Swift these days, right? Um, it's it's those things, but it's uh it's a really exciting thing where we can use these tools to help help get kids excited about studying something. And we as adults can do the same thing. Well, I even with math, I I don't know how many people know about Google Lens, but you can basically use Google Lens to teach your child how to do the math that you don't remember how to do anymore, right? And it's like you're calling every friend, you know, to try to help you with math. And meanwhile, you can lean on these tools. So, I do say that AI can be harmful, but it's like typical technology, right? It's Prometheus. It it it can destroy or it can build you, right? Like fire. fire can be very very dangerous, but it could also be in incredibly innovative. And I think we kind of have no choice. It's already out and it's already there. And so if we don't create kids, you know, opportunities for kids to succeed in in these jobs that haven't even been created yet and we're so afraid of it, then our kids will learn to be afraid of it and I think they'll end up being behind. Well, it's the same way we think about when social media came out. And you know, social media is the printing thing. Well, yes. But I mean, social media is this thing that can be absolutely terrible and harmful, but you know what? It's also here to stay. And so, one of the things we teach our middle school students and our high school students is um to to figure out how to become contributors and creators and not just consumers, right? Instead of doom scrolling Tik Tok all day, how about go and create something that's putting a positive message out in the world? Instead of just playing video games all day, how about you learn to code a video game, right? and create your own shout casting tournament. There are so many skills that can be learned from these interests that that people have and we find young people really crave that ability to become creators. We all want to create. We want to do things and AI tools can help us do that. And um and the other thing that I just think is really important when we think culturally what's going on with young people um I think there's a sense just of like they're kind of underrated. Like kids are not there's not a lot expected out of them. They're kind of just a little bit aimless. And I think when we can help kids find something they get excited and fired up about, they get busy, they get passionate, they get ambitious about it, they spend their time creating and building and then connecting with each other over something. It creates, at least what I'm seeing is this really healthy culture where it's respected to work hard. It's respected to try something and fail and then try again. You know, one of the things we really believe is that struggle is a great thing to experience, right? And that sometimes you fail and you get up and you try again and you learn from it. And when you have a teacher who is right there next to you saying, "Hey, what did we learn? How can we go keep going from that, it it's a really fun and exciting thing that gives people that energy. And I think back to years ago when I was sad about my daughter just not having that spark or that fire. And instead, what we've been able to do is help her and her sister and a lot of other kids um just get that that excitement going and showing up every day. And when kids love school, it doesn't mean that every day is Disneyland. There can be hard things that happen. than they can be. But when we help them see that they can develop competence, that they can be strong and courageous, that they can learn things and try things and fail, and that they've got adults in their corner to help them, it just makes them feel like, hey, I can take on the world. And fundamentally, I believe kids are limitless, and it's our job to build an environment that unlocks that potential. So, let's go one more time back in history. If you could go back to those first days where you took your daughter to school and you felt that despair or frustration and you could give advice to McKenzie of I don't know how many years ago it was. What What did you need to hear? There's somebody out there like you. There absolutely is. And I hear about that a lot. And one of the things I hear people say is, "Wow, well you went and started a school. Like how in the world could I do that?" And first of all, um, I don't think there's anything as strong as like a mama bear who cares about what's going on with their kids. And I'm probably a good example of that. I didn't have the background, you know, I wasn't an educator. I wasn't a teacher uh, to do this, but I did know that there was something better out there. And I think one of the things we're really fortunate about now is we have so many more options available than like when we were growing up. I mean, there wasn't even a consideration to like, you know, send your kid somewhere random or separate siblings to find out which school is right for which kid. And, you know, I have two daughters and a husband. We can't even agree on what cereal to buy when we're on vacation. No cereal. It's bad for you. There you go. But there's like that's why there's 50 different kinds of cereal in the cereal aisle. And I believe there should be 50 different types of schools to find what's right for you. And so if you are a parent that is sitting there saying, I just I I want more and I believe that there's something better for my kid. Um I think there is. And you know, homeschooling, there's been so many things that happen. And one thing I just want to clear because I think there's probably a large audience that thinks about homeschooling. And one of the things I hear from homeschoolers is like, well, we can do this inexpensively. But what they're not counting is, you know, most homeschooling parents are pretty sharp, right? They're pretty thoughtful. And there is a price that they're paying. They could be out, you know, earning money and doing something like that. Instead, they're choosing to be home, you know, cultivating that that work with their child. And that's a phenomenal thing to do. But there are so many new resources that are coming out to help make maybe that parent who doesn't feel equipped to homeschool be able to do that. We have a program uh called Alpha Anywhere that allows parents to use our learning program uh to homeschool and then parents can figure out what does the rest of that day look like. Um there are a lot of different co-op groups where parents can come together and do something where they're supporting with each other. And so it doesn't necessarily have to look like, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to go start a school that's eventually going to, you know, do this, but it might be getting together with some other like-minded families and saying, how can we uh, you know, connect? how can we find a teacher that we're really excited about, maybe do something on a smaller scale with our kids. Um, I think that trying to get in and help in your school. I will say I did I struggled in that and I wasn't successful. That's why I ended up leaving. But I did spend a couple years trying as hard as I could to change that system and I'm spending that time now kind of trying to do that on a bigger scale. Um, but I would say I guess my advice to a parent is like if you believe that your kid is not thriving. Um, figure out what you can do, what you can do at home, what changes you can make at school, and if there's another opportunity. And I do believe there are more opportunities than we might initially think of. We just have to be willing to be a little bit creative about that. And sometimes it also includes letting go of what our expectation for the way our kids would be, you know, educated is. It's not always going to look like the way we did it, right? It might be something different. And I love when I talk to a parent who says, you know what, I realize my kid does need a different experience and I'm willing to go and seek that out. Yeah. Well, that definitely takes a lot of courage to kind of migrate away from the herd, but that's what innovation looks like. Well, bless you. Thank you, McKenzie. Super interesting. I hope a lot of people are inspired to just take small steps that build, right? Thank you very much. Thank you. [Music]