MacKenzie Price on AI-Powered K-12 Schools

27:15Maybe the school gets a grade, you know, as they're an A-rated school or an F-rated school, but nothing changes for the student. Whereas in our system, what we can do is we can take the results of that assessment. We can go pull them into our personalized learning platform and have our AI tool create the lesson plans that need to go and fill the holes. You know, we'll have a student come and spend basically what we call a shadow day with us. We'll have them do about 30 minutes of work on a computer. And the amount of information we have about that student is so impressive to a parent that they're like, I didn't get this all year from my kid's classroom.

27:55Right. And it's based on real data, not a grade that a teacher put on a report card that said, you know, this kid's a B plus student or a satisfactory student. When you think about generative AI and the fact that you can move to a point where we're going to be customizing lessons where we can teach math and incorporate a kid's interest in fashion design or baseball stats, that's something that's amazing. Right now, to be clear, our curriculum is K-8 Common Core and then advanced placement material at high school. We're not having chat GPT create math problems. We haven't been having to deal with hallucination issues or things like that.

28:32we're using the same curriculum that's being taught in a traditional classroom. We're just doling it out at the right level and pace that makes it most effective for learning. We have a program called Teach Tales that we built, and it basically allows us to customize reading for a student. So you can take that second grade girl who's reading at a ninth grade level, but doesn't need to be reading ninth grade content. She can still be reading about, you know, an adventure in the park with her friends from her soccer team while being challenged at the proper Lexile level that works. You know, and actually that's something that, you know, with our high school students, one of the things that they're doing is learning how to use AI tools to give them superpowers.

29:16Like our students who took AP art history, they did make up Taylor Swift inspired songs that they memorized the 50 cannons to, right? And they were basically making a new version of Hamilton to do AP U.S. History this year. And, you know, that's where education is going to get really fun and exciting. Can I plus one that strongly enough?

29:46So Mackenzie just gave us an overview of what students at her fast-growing network of AI-powered private schools are up to. And now we're actually going to hear from one of those students, a high school senior named Alex, who is in conversation with Google Gemini. Alex, welcome to Possible. Can you start by introducing yourself? Hi, guys. I'm Alex. I am a 16-year-old senior at Alpha High School in Austin, Texas. What was your educational experience like before Alpha? I started off at a public magnet school here in Austin, Texas, and it was ranked like, you know, top 40. It's a really good school, very rigorous academics.

30:24But you were spending eight hours a day at school, and then at the very least, three to four hours after school, doing homework or studying or just learning inefficiently because of all the busy work. That 12 hours of time suck, plus the smattering of extracurriculars you're trying to do in the afternoon or trying to fit in passions or talking to friends can become pretty unsustainable. There's only one really defining metric of your life, which is grades or your likelihood of getting into a good college. That's rough. Before we get into alpha, tell us about how you first started getting exposed to AI.

30:58There was actually this one class that I took in my freshman year. And this was all before like ChatGPT came out. And in this class, we were learning how to do graphic design. And so we were introduced to like MidJourney and LLMs. We used OpenAI's playground to write some of our story and get like a feel for it. And so that was super cool exposure. Later that year, ChatGPT came out and it exploded. Then my school bans it from our Wi-Fi. You weren't allowed to use it for anything. And so I would just talk to AI in my free time. I wanted to learn about it, how it worked, but most people were just using it in the wrong way.

31:32And so AI was very stigmatized in my old school. And how exactly did you end up at Alpha? When I heard about Alpha for the first time, my mentor actually introduced it to me in ninth grade, but I was at one of the best schools in the U.S. And so I was like, there's no shot. I'm leaving my school. And then I finally heard about it again in 10th grade. And so I went to an event, met all the amazing people. They kind of convinced me. So I applied to a scholarship and I got it. What has your experience been like? For most students, it's two to three hours in the morning, depending on your grade. So in high school, it's three hours because we're doing AP classes.

32:04And then after the three hours of schoolwork, we'll have lunch together. We're usually off screens then. And then the afternoon is really where it gets exciting. We basically do something called our Alpha X project. So this is a project that you do for all four years of high school. We're doing these big, ambitious, entrepreneurial-style projects. Tell us a bit about your project. So as you know, because of social media, because of COVID-19, a lot of young people are feeling more depressed or more anxious, or they're comparing themselves with other people more. After my experience at my old school, I knew I wanted to solve this problem in a lot of teenagers.

32:42The teen mental health crisis is very real. And my spiky point of view that I found when I was doing my research is that AI is going to replace therapy. And so a big problem with AI replacing therapy right now is that it's this validation echo chamber. When you talk to ChadGBT, it's like, oh, I hear you. That's so tough. And we do need some of that. Don't get me wrong. But we don't need that all the time. We need pushback. We need action. We need to change our mindset. And so I've decided to build Barry, which is an AI-powered plushie that you can talk to about your mental health problems. And it's kind of meant to be used as a reflection tool.

33:16You talk to it for five to ten minutes a day, and you're able to improve your mental health. Very cool. One last question. In what ways has your experience at Alpha surprised you? It's been so exponential. You know, when you first hear of an AI-driven school, you think that it's a school in the morning, you sit down with your computer and you're just talking to ChatGPT, right? Like that's what you think it is. But it's so much more than that. And so rather than in the morning, you're just sitting down talking to ChatGPT, you're actually like doing practice problems or watching videos and taking notes.

33:48And the AI part of it is all baked into the back end of the apps. And so the AI is personalizing what lesson you do today and how you should be learning it to make sure that it's, you know, custom to who you are, who Alex is, so that he can learn in the most efficient way, most optimally. And so that was a super big, you know, switch in my perspective. I was really surprised that there was a lot of thought put into how we should be learning, which I think is so cool. That's awesome. Thanks, Alex. Now back to McKenzie. One of the reasons I started with AI was kind of scale and expansion. You know, based on what I'm reading, it's 12 plus new campuses in 2025 alone.

34:28So it's getting a lot of traction. What's enabling the scale? Well, Reid, you're very right. As a businessman, there are a lot of things that go into, you know, scaling. Market demand is something that we're seeing families are hungry for education that works. We have found when it comes to hiring our teachers, our guides, there are so many people who are craving a work world where they get to be paid well to positively impact and mentor students. Honestly, the biggest challenge we've had is real estate. Real estate is really, really hard to find. And it's not just real estate. It's real estate that then is zoned properly for a school and educating students.

35:14And so we have been very fortunate in the last couple of months. We signed a deal with a Montessori chain that allowed us to get into some school buildings across the country. And so as a result, we've got 12 new schools that are opening fall 25. And then we're probably going to be putting about 15 more schools in 26 that we'll be able to expand and grow on. At some point, we'll probably start raising money from investors to do larger scale expansion. And then, as I mentioned, we have other school models that are at lower prices. And if you can get into a world in states that have educational savings accounts, we think we've gotten to a place where we can get private schools up for$5 ,000 per year out of pocket for a parent, which becomes more reasonable.

36:08Can you talk a little bit about incentives? How does Alpha School approach incentives, whether those are monetary or otherwise? Yeah, we're a huge fan of incentives because, again, when we have a motivated learner, the sky is the limit. So, for example, starting in kindergarten, our students, when they hit their academic goals, they earn Alpha currency. So not only are they motivated to get their academic goals done, but they're learning how to earn. They learn how to spend because we have a little emporium at the school where they can go and buy a squishy or a Rubik's Cube or a sticker or whatever that is.

36:46They learn how to save. They learn how to invest. In fact, we offer opportunities for our students to invest. And they learn how to donate. And so those financial literacy skills are so important. You know, it'd be amazing if every single person were just always internally motivated at all times to go and learn for the sake of learning. But, you know, most of us aren't always like that, right? And I think in a traditional school setting, you can tell me if you disagree, but in a traditional school setting, there are generally two factors that determine how a student does. Number one is just plain IQ.

37:21How smart are they? And number two is a big five character trait, conscientiousness. Are they willing to study for the tests and turn in the homework and write the paper? And so in a traditional system, if a student's not doing well, it's usually considered the student's fault. They're either not the sharpest knife in the drawer or they're just not motivated. They're disengaged. At our schools, if a student isn't thriving, it's our fault. And it means that we have not tapped into that right motivation to get the kid excited. We have kids who, you know, the guides know them so well that they say, you know what, this kid just loves words of affirmation.

38:00And when you can look at this kid and say, hey, good job, you really worked hard and you did your best and look what you accomplished. That's enough for a certain kid. Other kids want cold, hard cash. And actually, we allow our students to turn in their alpha currency at the end of the year for real cash. By the time our kids really are in fifth and sixth grade, they're not so motivated by the Emporium and the Alpha Bucks anymore. But you know what they are motivated by? Getting to earn money to put towards their special afternoon projects. One of the things I loved about what you said earlier was that actually, in fact, having these external incentives is part of life skills.

38:39And so I think that's really awesome. What are the ways in which the ability to do these other projects also reflect that? Because they're not just like hobbies. They're things that are very useful for prepping for adult life. You know, I think sometimes people are saying, gosh, are you trying to grow these kids up too quickly? You know, they're running an Airbnb as fifth graders or they're launching a food truck or, you know, it's a second grader who's made$500 in profit on a jewelry making businesses and is working on a business plan to raise, you know, investment opportunities. And here's the thing.

39:17These are fun projects, right? They're really fun ways for kids to kind of dive in. And, you know, for example, our food truck kids are learning how to cook and they're learning how to grocery shop and they're trying to figure out how to menu plan and how to market and how to work together, you know, with a hot stove, all these kinds of things. And so what we're doing is we're kind of building the scaffolding that helps kids when they go launch to be successful. And they're doing it in sort of a low stakes environment where it's OK to fail because there's so much that people learn when they fail.

39:51Traditional school encourages kids to stay away from anything they could fail at. You don't want to take that class that you're interested in because you might fail. In fact, the role of school should be a place where kids get to find the intersection of their talents and their interests. And we want to encourage kids to find that. Our middle school students, every year we start with an Ikigai Values Workshop where kids figure out what are they good at, what do they love to do, and what is the world value. We also have them do a 168-hour workshop. And so our students will look and categorize, okay, how am I spending my 168 hours in a week?

40:28And guess what they start realizing is, oh, my gosh, I'm spending way too much time playing Fortnite. And instead of playing Fortnite, I could be coding and building my own video game, right, and hosting my own tournament, whatever those things are. I believe young people, they crave to be creators and contributors, not just consumers. And so school should be a place where we help fuel those interests so that they can be creators. You know, in kindergarten and first grade, we are working on instilling the belief in kids that they are limitless, that they truly can do anything that they want. And then in second and third grade, it's not just that they're limitless, but they're actually backing up this belief with real examples.

41:10Then as the kids get a little older, it's really important to start establishing independence. And then teamwork becomes a really important skill. And then by the time our students are in high school, they've developed a lot of these life skills that allow them to go deep into an interest or a project that they want, which one is helpful for continuing to develop life skills. Two is helpful for helping them find the things they're interested in pursuing. And three helps them to get into a great college because they've got something special and deep that they've done. I mean, I love thinking about people having mastery around different things and being able to try out the different life skills and being an excellent chef.

41:50You also launched a new venture, GT School. It's an online afterschool program, and it's designed to help gifted and talented kids thrive. How do you think about labeling some kids gifted and talented, some not? I mean, I totally get your focus on motivation. How does that work with that frame? Yeah, so GT School in the fall of 24, we turned it into a full-time in-person school, and it's located in Georgetown, Texas. And here's the big difference. The kids that want to go to GT school are the kids who are like, hey, can we do a third hour of our two hour learning in the afternoon? Like, can we do a little more math?

42:26And their idea of fun is spending their afternoons in workshops that are more academically focused, like, you know, robotics and chess and coding and poetry writing and history bowls and spelling bees and things like that. So that's really one of the only differences we find with, you know, a lot of our students that are at GT school versus, let's say, our students are at Alpha who are like, hey, I want to go do a life skills workshop where I am learning how to build a fire. Or our sports academy students who are just like, get me out on that field. I'm excited to be kicking a ball. That's kind of what we see.

43:01But those kids who are in our GT school program, they were learning our average across the board is like 2.2 times faster learning. We measure that with with map tests. Those kids are at like five, six X faster. You know, it's just insane because again, when you give a kid the right level and pace of learning, they just take off like a rocket. And when you think about tracking, you know, one of the other issues with traditional education, you know, by the time a student is in third grade, that's a really pivotal moment because now they've gone from learning to read to reading to learn. So if you're not a great reader, you're kind of up the creek the rest of your career.

43:40And unfortunately, in a traditional model that's a time-based system, when the train's left the station, if you're not on it, you can't get on. Whereas what we can do is we can take a kid no matter where they're at and say, let's go fill these holes. You know, I don't like the word tracking. In fact, the other thing, you know, criticism, they'll say, well, you're a private school, so you're hand-selecting which kids you let in. And I'll tell you, kind of our admissions process, first and most fundamentally, what we look for is families that are aligned with the model. Because if you're a person who says, no, no, you must have a great human teacher to do your math teaching, well, then you're not going to like our model.

44:16The second thing we're looking for is just coachability. So we'll have a student come and spend half a day at our school experiencing what an alpha day is like. And what we're looking for is just, is the kid kind of like, oh, this is kind of interesting. when I'm going through my app-based learning or we had a seven-year-old boy during his shadow day, the guides had him put together a piece of Ikea furniture. And, you know, he was so excited. And we're like, this is a great alpha kid because he was just so excited about like getting to try something. And so we're looking for coachability as opposed to give me a transcript, you know, that shows what a seven-year-old knows and doesn't know.

44:55Yeah, I could not agree more strongly. You know, your podcast, The Future of Education, You know, all kinds of folks should listen to it, not just educators and parents and students, but also entrepreneurs and other folks. So what have been some of the highlights of doing that podcast for people to come listen to the future of education? The reason that the future of education has been so exciting is because I want to serve as kind of that light that says, hey, this is what education could be. And it's been so fun to meet lots of people from all different arenas who really can spend time talking about what their school experience was like and what they wish they had learned and the life skills that have made them successful.

45:36So, you know, I've had everybody from a contortionist who came in and talked about her parents allowing her to homeschool. I remember she said, you know, I was six years old and I was sitting watching TV with my legs over my back, over my head. And instead of my parents saying, that's weird, you know, you're going to hurt yourself. They said, let's get her in some gymnastics. This kid's got a talent, right? To business people who talk about things that they've learned through entrepreneurship, you know, that are just amazing. And we see that with our students. Our students learn so many incredible things through the mechanism of entrepreneurship.

46:11And, you know, we get accused of raising young capitalists, which I think is a totally great thing personally. We have these missed memories where we kind of romanticize what our school experience was like. And, you know, as much as we wish every day had been like Dead Poets Society, you know, and people are standing on their desks, you know, just excited. That's not really what probably most of our experience was like. But why not try for a world where kids do come home every day just fired up? But when we say that kids love school, it doesn't mean that every day is Disneyland. There are days that are hard.

46:46There are days when getting that math done is challenging or you just weren't feeling it and you were distracted, you know, or you couldn't get your hoverboard to float. But I just love the idea that our kids can come home with a fire in their bellies. They're psyched and they're challenged and they're doing things. And I do believe, again, holding students to high standards and giving them high levels of support creates a motivated, engaged young person. Why do you think that subject matter experts aren't good? Why are we calling them guides? Like, dive one step deeper into the teacher issue, because I'm sure that's where a lot of the pushback, especially in public schools, is going to come.

47:29You know, I think Reed said it very well, which is that teachers are scared that they're going to be replaced, right? They're worried that they're going to lose agency. When you imagine what education is like, you think about the knowledge transfer is a subject matter expert who teaches a student something, and that's the way education is done. But, you know, I always think about it like if I wanted to learn about how to launch a rocket, I don't need to have a conversation with Elon Musk to learn that. Let me start with a Wikipedia page because that's how much I know about rocket launching, right?

48:02That's one of the things that we're also seeing in our experience with our students is there's so much fundamental academic knowledge that we want to get kids to absorb. And then once they have that fundamental knowledge, it allows them to engage at a much deeper and more sophisticated level with other people. You know, for example, we have a student who graduated a couple of years ago from Alpha, but he was a water skier, a competitive water skier. And he did all of his physics with our apps and an AI tutor experience. But then he and his guide would sit down together and they would analyze his water skiing footage and use physics principles to figure out how he could get higher speed and take inches off the rope.

48:48What a beautiful experience. We saw kids, you know, running our food truck who realized, you know what, math skills are pretty important when I'm trying to calculate, you know, what our revenue is. Now, to be fair, not all of our workshops have an academic tie, right? A lot of our workshops are teaching a life skill. It's not saying, oh, well, here's what you learned in English this morning. Let's do that in the afternoon. And here's the other thing. There's always going to be people who say, no, this is not the way I want to do education. I can guarantee you the teacher in front of the classroom model is never going to be completely abolished.

49:21Have you experimented at all yet with how AI is useful on the soft skill part of it, like motivation, psychology, engagement, conversational coaching, encouragement? And what have the lessons been from that? One of the things I could certainly say when it comes to our elementary students is things like public speaking. You know, we're using AI tools as a way to give really nice, constructive coaching to our students. You know, think about public speaking is like most adults' biggest fear. For example, we had a workshop. It was speaking in the wild, and it was for our fifth and sixth graders. And the first thing that they had to do was write a compelling six to nine minute talk that they were going to give.

50:04First draft is on pencil. Then they type it out. And then they got feedback from an AI tool. that said things like, hey, here's how you can make your story more engaging. Add a personal anecdote, you know, whatever it is. Here's something. Cut this part. You know, do that. Then we used an AI tool called Ori, which basically gives them feedback on their public speaking. Then the students went to the Humane Society in our town and they gave their talks in front of cats because it turns out cats are a pretty unintimidating audience. Then our students went to an assisted living facility and they gave their talk in front of all the old people that lived in this assisted living facility.

50:44Then they went to one of our local bookstores and did an open story time and gave their talks there. And then ultimately those kids ended up flying to New York City and they did an open mic night with a bunch of strangers, right? And that's an example of kind of the scaffolding that we give and we use some AI tools to do that. Great.

51:10So let's go to Rapid Fire. Is there a movie, song, or book that fills you with optimism for the future? I guess I'm just going to be real honest and tell you there's a movie called Bring It On. It's a cheerleading movie from when I was, I think, in college. And that gal was optimistic. She was a team player. She was a leader. And I think that's kind of a fun one. How's that? Love it. Also, unique answer. No one's given that before. So it's a new wreck. what is a question that you wish people would ask you more often? I think I wish people would ask more often those hard questions, the things they are critical of, because I actually believe I've got good answers for all of them.

51:52Like, I don't get scared off by questions. I will tell you one thing. I've really drunk the Kool-Aid on AI and education. Like, I truly believe this is the coolest model. And like, we have built a school that I wish I could have gone to. By the way, I wish I could have gone to as well. It's really amazing. Where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industries that inspires you? You know, where I live in Austin, Texas, we've had the most horrendous tragedy go through our larger community in the floods. And we have had so many people that are friends of mine and people in our community who have rolled their sleeves up and gone out and raised money and moved wood and, you know, cleaned up debris and all that.

52:34And I think that might be a mental shift that's happening in our culture where people are realizing, like, I can make a difference in my own community today. Well, can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible to achieve if everything breaks humanity's way in the next 15 years? And what's our first step to get there? When it comes to education, we are going to see a huge step change in both what's achievable and the results that come. And for anybody who is wary or scared or nervous that they're going to be replaced or they're not going to be prepared, the future is here and it looks really bright.

53:17And, you know, that's one of the things I believe the future of education, it is happening right now. Mackenzie, I hope that everyone pays attention to what you're doing because it's important for all of the elevation of humanity. So thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me to speak more about this. I truly appreciate it.

53:52Asi Dilos, Sarah Schleid, Vanessa Handy, Aliyah Yates, Paloma Moreno-Gimenez, and Mulya Agudelo. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor. Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Sayida Sepieva, Ian Alice, Greg Beato, Parth Patil, and Ben Relis. And a big thanks to Anna Devlantis, Jay Lyons, Alex Matthew, Grace Price, and Carrie Huang.