The Future of Education: The Big Opportunity to Flip Things | MacKenzie Price
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Hi, welcome to the Futurist Mom Podcast.
I'm Nancy Ano, and I'm ex thrilled again to introduce you to another person that I think is shaping actively the world in which not we are only going to be in, but our children are going to be in.
Uh, as a futurist, I get to run around the world, meeting the people who are actively designing, building, shaping our future.
One of these people is our guest today, McKenzie Price.
We'll be talking about the future of education and introducing you guys to a really big concept that she has piloted, which is Alpha School and some of the other ancillary benefits around it.
Um, and describing it.
What if education wasn't just about preparing our kids for tests, but preparing them for life in a world where the pace of change outstrips any kind of static curriculum?
Today's learners, you know, our students crave that.
They relevance purpose, the freedom to solve real problems that matter.
I mean, they're really curious about how the world works and what their place is in it.
In this conversation with McKenzie, we explore how education can shift from rigid systems to di learn dynamic learning environments that are AI enabled, and really change the clock in a day.
When you think about how our kids go to schools, it's not just about having an AI tutor, but if you imagined, uh, AI very differently.
And compress the amount of time that they spend on academics and give them an entire afternoon to work on life and personal skills, how that could shape their outlook on the future and what is possible as we move ahead.
It matters because the most important test our kids will face isn't on paper, right?
It's how they feel about themselves and how prepared they are for the future, both with skills and mindset.
Education is rooted in relevance and autonomy.
Prepares students to navigate uncertainty, not just past standardized tests.
And when our learners, you know, our students, our kids are treated as capable problem solvers and not underestimated.
They build the confidence to shape, not again, just survive the future.
The world our kids are entering in won't reward rote answers.
That is easily found now in almost any computer system for no amount of money.
Instead, it will demand bold questions, deep curiosity, really like understanding empathy, and most important to have the confidence to create the world that they wanna see.
So at that, we launched into this conversation with Mackenzie Price.
There we go.
So, Mackenzie, I am thrilled that you or have made time to join us for this podcast.
'cause I've been so eager to meet you.
Many of the people that are gonna be on it are people that I've had long relationships with, but instead I've been stalking you.
MacKenzie Price: I love stalkers.
Bring them on.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Enthusiastic, happy stalker.
I'm a, I'm a I positive stalker.
But I ran into your work at South by Southwest in 2024 when you were speaking inside the exhibition hall on this corner.
And I was like, why aren't you not on main stage?
Like, this is such a fascinating concept of what you've been doing.
And I got introduced to alpha schools and have spent more time than online learning more about it.
And now when I go around the world speaking and talking about the work of the future.
Kind of talk about what that means in terms of then the future of education.
I put on a screen two things, you and Alpha School, and right now I've been using the headline from the New York Times that we'll talk about, and then my friend Worley.
And I was wondering, do you know Worley in.
MacKenzie Price: No, I don't know.
Worley sounds like someone I should know based on the name alone.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: A hundred percent.
Well, his William Hurley, who now has become Worley for many years, he's brand himself, just swirly, but he's a quantum strategist and entrepreneur and a big, huge figure in Austin.
And he was speaking at the Dubai Futures Forum on the need, the, the opening our eyes to the fact that their children aren't our future.
There are now citizen scientists and that you could have a 12-year-old that could become a Nobel laureate because their curiosity means the technology and allows anything to be possible.
So really this idea of, of.
Recognizing how capable our children are at a younger, younger age and, and helping them understand these tools and be more fluent in
MacKenzie Price: Well, Worley, Worley and I would have a lot in common 'cause I truly believe kids are limitless and I think they are very much underrated in our society and culture today.
And that's one of the things that we see all the time.
Kids, kids can do so much more than we give credit for and.
They're constantly surprising their parents.
In fact, one of the things we always tell parents at our schools is you're gonna see your kids do what you think are impossible projects.
And even just last night I was at an event and there was a girl there who's 10 years old, and I just asked her, you know, spur of the moment.
I said, Hey, would you mind getting up and speaking a little bit about your experience?
And she proceeded to give up.
Get up and give this phenomenal talk that one would've thought she had prepped.
And I told the crowd afterwards, I said, just so you know, 38 seconds ago I asked this girl if she get up and speak and public speaking and storytelling is one of the life skills we teach.
And her mom afterwards said, I can't believe she just did that.
I cannot believe the transformation I've seen in a year of her time at school of being able to confidently do that.
And I think it's one of the really exciting things for parents when they see, oh my gosh, my child.
Can do so much,
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Right, and this is
MacKenzie Price: This is
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: I've been such a
MacKenzie Price: a champion.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: you and your work and being able to show other people around the world.
I think it's probably one of the most hopeful things they see when they hear me talk about the future.
But it comes from not just that we, you know, invest in our children and tell 'em they can do it.
You have really radically.
It reinvented or reconfigured or reimagined what education could look like in the future of learning.
So, we will link to this New York Times article that came out in July.
But as you describe it to people, like, I guess how, how accurate was that article in capturing what you want people to know about it?
MacKenzie Price: You know, I think it's really interesting.
I was a little wary about the New York Times because, you know, the New York Times is definitely leans a certain way and generally probably isn't, isn't interested in, you know, a high-end private school, which there's no question that is what Alpha is.
And it was very exciting because I spent time with the journalist who, who wrote the article and she was.
Really excited about the school.
And she said, you know, I came in very skeptical.
And she said, but I cannot believe the energy that these kids have and the excitement, and the enthusiasm and just the buzz of just creativity and collaboration that happens at our schools.
So when I read the article.
I was generally pretty happy with it, but what I felt like probably happened was she turned that article into her editor and the editor's like, we gotta tone some things down and kind of go a different direction on, on some things.
So there's a few places that are a little bit misleading that we have to do.
And actually I had two of our students, our Alpha students who had graduated reached out to me the week after and they had each written kind of a rebuttal.
To the New York Times piece of saying, Hey, here's a few things that they got wrong.
And I actually think there's no better rebuttal source than a student who lived through the experience themselves and can say, well,
this isn't really accurate, but this is so in general, I think that New York Times article was, was very positive for us for a lot of it.
Now, the comments on the other hand,
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: of them as of this morning.
MacKenzie Price: Yeah, and they're, they can get a little feisty in the comments, but I really find most of the time, and, and this may, may be your experience as well, if you've been talking about alpha upon first glance, people get stressed out.
Oh my gosh.
Robo ai terminator.
What's happening.
Kids shouldn't be, you know, isolated on computers with no adult interaction.
And then when they take about three minutes to actually understand what we're doing, suddenly the lights come on and they realize, oh wow, this really could transform the educational experience.
And that's part of the reason that I love doing things, like having conversations with you and being really transparent about not only the academic results we're getting.
But the types of experiences that our students are getting to have and how they're developing life skills and how this way of education creates so much more space and time for our
kids to interact not only with each other, but with these incredible adults who serve as mentors and supporters while holding kids to high standards to help them do the impossible.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: So let's back up for a moment because I ag agree with all of that and I get very excited about it too.
But for those who don't know anything about it, can we just give a little description?
The way I describe it is that you have built a model in which kids still go to a place.
So this is not being done necessarily.
Home, although it could be, but right now they're still going to a campus or to a building with other students and they spend two hours in the morning working with adaptive apps to help them learn the core curriculum.
They need to know at the schedule and pace and the way that they each need to learn, and then they get to spend the rest of the afternoon working
on both life skills and creative skills and entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy, all the other components that aren't even like all external.
A lot of it can also be internal, right around resilience and around understanding
MacKenzie Price: Yourself.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: that a fair description?
MacKenzie Price: I think you've done such a great job of explaining what our school is and one of the things when we talk about the future you know, there's so much that changes constantly.
And 10 years from now, who knows what's gonna be new.
But I can tell you one thing that I absolutely believe will still be true in 10 years.
Parents are still gonna wanna drop their kids off somewhere where they're with other kids and adults for an all day experience.
School is a bundle.
There are so many aspects of school besides learning academic knowledge.
It's socialization and friendship and.
Babysitting, daycare, everything there.
And so I think that's one of the things that when people imagine, how could education change with the advent of artificial intelligence and technology that's available, while there are going to be
more and more options for students to do virtual school experiences, which we already are able to offer that through a homeschool program, fundamentally school is still going to be a community center.
Where kids come together and are able to learn with and from each other.
And again, the, role of the teacher in the classroom, I don't believe will ever be replaced, and I wouldn't want it to, but I do believe that the job description can and should change
. nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: So that's an interesting thing is when I first heard you talk about this a few years ago, right?
It was like we don't have teachers, we have guides.
So it's like still very capable, very well resourced, you know, people that you can trust that are working with our students, but we're not necessarily describing them as teachers.
And I wondered if they even had a different kind of credential than the traditional type of teacher that goes in.
So we start talking now about guides and teachers.
How do you think about the adults that are there?
MacKenzie Price: The most important thing to understand about our model is that the key to our success is the adults that are working with our students each and every day.
It is true.
We do not call them teachers, and there's a few reasons for that.
Number one, they are not teaching.
Academic content.
And when you think about a teacher, you know, that is, that is very much a primary role that a teacher does.
A teacher says, I'm a subject matter expert in X, Y, or Z, and I will bestow knowledge upon one or a group of students with that and.
That's not what our adults are doing.
Our adults are really working as guides and coaches and mentors.
There's the saying of the sage on the stage versus the guide on the side, and our guides are absolutely doing that role.
They come alongside students and figure out what motivates them, what is going to help support them When a child is having a struggle and they're.
they're.
having a hard time doing something.
What are they saying to themselves and how can the guide work with them to maybe develop a better growth mindset and help them find that intersection of their passions and talents.
And I will say it's been really interesting.
I think the no teachers thing has been, in some ways helpful for us, but it's also kind of bitten us in the butt because people get scared that, oh my gosh, there's no teachers, they don't have anything.
And we actually went to our guides in April of.
2025 during our staff days, and I said, Hey everybody, you know, we're getting a lot of heat.
People think that, you know, we're just being weird for the sake of being weird, maybe we should just call you guys teachers instead of guides.
And we, we talked through kind of all of the different points around it, and then we gave a couple of days and we sent out a survey, and in the end it was something like.
96% of them said, no, we want to be called guides.
We are not teachers, we are guides.
And so we decided, you know what?
That's something we're gonna be doing.
And I will tell you a funny story.
I just was with a, a very leading educator in the country the other day, and she also has made the decision to call her.
Her teachers' guides and there was an article that came out and she had apparently been quoted as saying, we don't have teachers, we have guides, but as the press is likely to do they did not include the second part of that sentence.
They just included the, we don't have teachers and they're supported by a major university.
And the university president forwarded that article to her and said, it sounds like you've been spending a lot of time with Mackenzie Price.
And her response was.
Thank you.
And and so what I believe is that as we help people understand that adults can provide immense value to young people when their time is freed up to be able to connect on that personal level.
And I believe most all teachers got into their career field because they wanna make a positive impact on kids.
And I think the best teachers often realize themselves that.
What makes them so successful is when they're able to connect with a kid and get them excited.
In fact, I was just having a conversation last week with my favorite teacher of all time.
He was my junior and senior of high school business teacher, and he's probably 80 years old now.
And we were chatting and he said, you know, in my 31 years of teaching, I, I remember the most important thing is.
Not what you say, but it's how you make a student feel and how you connect with them.
And that's the reason that he and I are still in, in connection, you know, 30, 30 plus years after I graduated high school.
And that's what our model allows.
People to do, and I think that's the reason I get so excited about what art artificial intelligence can do in the classroom.
Artificial intelligence allows us to raise human intelligence, not only from an academic knowledge perspective, where we're able to give kids.
At the exact pace and level of academic knowledge that they need in order to learn effectively.
But it's also increasing human intelligence in the form of relational and social skills and connection that's made possible with their
classmates because they have extra time and extra opportunity to be able to interact in a group setting as well as with our guides.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Well, and then hopefully you're also not thinking about your classmates as competitors, right?
You're thinking about your classmates as collaborators and co-learners and co-teachers, because I'm sure at some point they're also guides with each other for some of the things that they're doing.
MacKenzie Price: They are.
And yeah, I mean from an academic perspective, everyone is learning to mastery and so there's no such thing as, well, this kid got the highest grade in the class or he set the curve or something like that.
Or even really when we think about the identity with which a person looks at themselves.
I think one of the saddest things to hear is when I'll have a new student who will come, you know, into our school, and let's say it's a fifth grader who just says, I'm, I'm dumb, I'm bad at school.
You know, I'm, I'm bad at school.
And you're like, no, no, no.
That's, that's not what it is.
And when you can change.
The way that a person looks at themselves, not simply because we told them, you are great, you are great.
But we actually show them evidence that, wow, I am competent and I am capable of learning and I can get to 99th percentile when I put in the work and the time and have that level and pace.
That is such a beautiful thing to happen for kids.
And then the other thing that's really interesting at the high school level, I was just talking to a bunch of our high school.
Students about this the other day.
At the high school level, we really focus on helping kids go find that intersection of their passions, their talents, and what the world needs.
And so every kid is working on something so different.
I mean, we have one girl who is, you know, building a huge TikTok audience and a, and.
Positive kind of health coach for young girls.
We have a boy who's doing a mental health AI plushy.
We have a girl who's building a Broadway show.
We've got a guy who's doing a computer, you know, generation business, another kid who's doing a video game thing that they're so different.
You know, we've got a girl who's doing a, a, a makeup line for athletes.
Everything is so different and they.
Are able to support and cheer each other on.
And then of course that brings up just the other part when you have a culture where kids are realizing like, I'm capable and I can do hard things and they feel a sense of ownership.
They call themselves on each other just to a higher standard and they support each other and that's really been helpful.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: and that's why, again, when we talk about what we want kids of the future to be prepared to do, right, it's a, this is the way I describe it, right?
Your cur curiosity is as unique as your fingerprint.
So really being able to own that.
And not feel like you have to compare yourself to everybody else and do the same things everybody else is doing, but to really, really own and then, you know, create action around your curiosity and to be able to collaborate and to build with each other.
And we say those words, but we don't ever teach kids how to do it.
And I think that your program naturally.
Does that, which is why I get very excited about it too.
You posted something recently, you know, 'cause you're very prolific in sharing your enthusiasm for this alternative way of thinking and, and educating our kids.
Something about the biggest misconceptions about the failures that currently exist that parents just don't wanna admit, right.
That you're addressing.
It's not like you're just coming and going, Ooh, AI is cool.
Let's just jump in and start doing ai.
Many systemic breakdowns in how things currently exist that this becomes a solution for, or at least, you know, partially a solution for.
The way I describe it too is like, I'm noting this is the only model, but it certainly is a provocative one that gets us to think differently.
So do you wanna talk to some of those things that parents don't wanna
MacKenzie Price: What's currently happening to their kids?
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: to their kids and the current model?
MacKenzie Price: I think that there are so many misconceptions about what makes great education and what doesn't.
And one of the reasons I think that happens is because education is such a personal experience, not just for us as parents raising kids, but we all went through this ourselves.
And what we often find is parents will kind of say, well, hey.
My kids should be educated.
The way I was educated, I turned out great.
So you know, I, this should be good enough for them.
And I actually was in the same boat.
My husband and I were both products of public school growing up.
We were successful students.
So when it was time for our girls to go off to school, we sent them to our local public school district, which is considered one of the very best in the state, if not the nation.
But what I realized quickly was an inherent flaw in the model.
The teacher in front of the classroom teaching in a time-based system, one size fits all, one teacher to 20 plus kids.
It just doesn't work.
It's so wildly inefficient and it used to create a, or I should say, I. The reason that model was created originally during the Industrial Revolution was they had to figure out a way to educate the masses.
Prior to that education was reserved for the elite, and they had to figure out how can we educate the masses, and it did do a very good job of that, but it also did a very good job of.
Creating the type of people that were needed for that day and age, which were people who would be compliant, who would follow directions, who would listen and raise their hand and ask permission and think inside the box.
And our world is just totally different.
And so when my girls were plopped in that classroom and I started seeing what their day-to-day experience was like, it reminded me of my own.
And it also reminded me of how much I thought.
School was really dumb.
I did not like school, even though I was good at it and was willing to do the work, to get the grades, I didn't like it.
And I just looked at my kids and I'm like, I can't watch them go through 12 plus years in this system.
I, I just, I can't do it.
And so I think that's one of the things that I noticed now what a lot of people will instead interpret flaws to be are things like, well, there's not enough funding, there's not enough school funding.
And that's actually.
Not true.
In fact, so many school districts are spending anywhere between 18 and $36,000 a year per student.
Now, one of the things that's tricky about that, a lot of people say that's not true.
Well, what happens if you really look at the budget of a school?
Schools will do things like, well, we don't include facilities, we don't include administrative fees.
We don't include this.
This is how much we're spending in on the student in the classroom.
But when you look at the whole picture, money is actually not the issue.
I also think teacher training is, you know, not the result.
And you can see years of philanthropic money that has just gone down the drain with trying to work on this end.
What's really exciting about where we're at in history is we finally have an opportunity to totally turn over that model of the teacher in front of the classroom.
One size fits all and that's what it can do.
So I, you know, I had the Secretary of Education visiting our school in early September, and one of the things I told her is I said, I really hope that as you guys are considering trying to be an AI first education beacon, that you don't just put a chat bot.
On a kid's computer or give the teacher some AI training tools and then say, you know, put some band-aids on the same model.
Use this as an opportunity to finally deliver the one-to-one mastery-based tutoring experience that technology enables kids to have.
That's not possible in a current system and train change that rule.
So, you know, I.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: advantage is the compression of time, because I think that's what you're saying, right?
If I just have a chat bot that still takes me through six hours of traditional academic stuff.
And whether I use condom amigo or I use another, you know, thing to make me feel as though maybe I have a little less homework at night or maybe I can advance my, you know, or tutor me.
Like I, my, you know, my kids were fortunate enough that they were able to get some support if they needed it, or maybe even advanced stuff.
You know, we
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: math with some woman in the neighborhood because I thought better way of getting over some math challenges or math phobia.
MacKenzie Price: Well, the challenge with the chat bot is it's really a cheat bot.
Unfortunately, the majority of students will use a chat bot to cheat.
They're not having Socratic discussions with Conmigo.
They're instead saying, what's the answer to this?
And our experience that our students have from an academic perspective.
They're not interacting with an AI tutor per se.
The AI is just under the surface, creating the lesson plans, assessing, and then provides coaching on how they can more effectively engage with that.
And I think that's something that.
Is important to notice.
But yeah, there's a lot of, you know, misconceptions and, and unfortunately, you know, in, I live in Austin, Texas, and I'll give you an example of something that's just in my mind, mind-boggling.
There is an a rated school in a very very nice part of Austin, central South Austin, and it's closing.
And when I asked, well, why is this school closing?
They said, well, it's a rated.
And so what they're gonna do is they're gonna farm all of these kids out to the more poorly performing schools, and that will help raise up the, the thing.
And I thought, what a, what a crazy example of.
You know, it, I, I just, I don't understand it.
And then the other thing I will tell you that's a little bit shocking, you might be surprised to hear this, but we have a number of students join our community this past fall.
And as part of when a new student comes in, we, we do assessments to understand where they're at.
And these are kids who are coming from very high end private schools.
And these are students who are getting A's and B's on their report cards.
And here's what we found.
If a student had an A on their transcript in a subject, that means they're anywhere between one year ahead and three years behind.
If they were a B student on their transcript, they're between three and seven years behind.
And what we will just say very directly.
Private schools are lying to families about how their kids are doing.
And it is, it's an example and of, of the fact that it is very, very, very difficult for a teacher who's got a group of students that are the same age, but completely varied in their knowledge grade to be able to meet each student where they are.
And I think teachers are underpaid, they're overworked, and they're underappreciated.
And no wonder our system doesn't work.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: like, we just interrupt.
But you know, we were in LA when my oldest one was going into middle school.
We went and toured all the schools and man, those teachers were tired.
Right?
And this is before COVID.
This is before a lot of other things, but when we started talking to like, do you have a robotics program and do you have whatever, they were looking at us and like, are you crazy?
trying to get through the day.
I like, wow.
And so we ended up moving to Austin because we wanted to be in one of the.
It was highly resourced public school districts that was there, and it did end up meeting the needs of my children.
But I kept thinking they're at the very,
MacKenzie Price: Very, very.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: of the old, they get, they had the best bit of the old system, right?
Like within the old system.
I found the very best version of it that I could find, but it was still the very old system and we knew that it was going to be.
Some point disrupted and changed and done differently.
So I think just again, I wanna make sure people who are listening to this get it two hours a day are really spent on the academic portion of it, as opposed to, again, having a chat
bot that helps with you for the six hours, which then lets 'em accelerate across whatever level they are or get whatever additional support and encouragement or their learning style.
You know, I've been in AI for 10 years.
We were helping this guy named Doug Leonard build a learning would've software a zillion years ago, right?
The fact that you can do this now, so, successfully with each student, across each subject and be able to do that so much quicker than we were working on this 10 years ago is really amazing.
But then it leaves the rest of the day for all the rest of the things that they also really wanna learn.
And, you know, I. I mentioned this again, but no matter where I go, I try and talk to students and when I talk to
MacKenzie Price: I talk to students.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: age and we ask 'em what they really wanna learn about, they wanna know about taxes, like how do taxes work?
I sat with a 19-year-old guy in Tanger who's heading off to university to study comp side, but he is like, I don't understand taxes.
You know, how they just understand how the world works in general and how they can feel more competent in it.
And certainly as we're trying to rebuild the future and every single industry will be up for redesign and reimagination, we want those brains in their reconceiving them not just, you know, somehow adding some tech layer to them.
MacKenzie Price: And.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: you're.
MacKenzie Price: That save time in the school day where kids aren't having to sit in academic classes all day is where I think so much magic happens.
And I'll give you an example.
We have a school that is doing basically outdoor wilderness survival work in the afternoons and they're learning life skills.
And I'll get, here's, here's one of the things that they're gonna be doing.
So they're gonna be raising chickens.
And in order to even start with raising chickens, they have to build the chicken enclosure that they're gonna be in.
And that chicken enclosure.
They'll have to build it and then it'll go through three tests.
The first is gonna be just a shake test.
You know, if you pick it up and move it and transport it, does it, does it stay together?
Secondly is weather testing.
So we're gonna hose it down and we're gonna take a wind blower and, and see if it does that.
And then third, we're gonna stick a rotisserie chicken in there and set up a trail cam and see if predators are able to attack and get to that chicken.
And.
Once those three things have been met, then the kids will have been able to earn the right to go get, you know, hatch chickens and then raise chickens and then figure out how to go sell their eggs at the local farmer's market and make a profit.
You know, what do you do?
And that example of a workshop is not only something that's really fun and interesting, but it's gonna teach so many different life skills that kids can then translate to what.
Ever else that they go to do.
And they're gonna be learning financial literacy while they're at it.
And there are just so many ways, endless ways for kids to learn life skills.
Sports is one of them.
Performing arts, entrepreneurship just physical activity.
There's so many different things that can be done.
And I think that is what we are finding.
Our families just get so excited about their kids having the chance to learn leadership and teamwork in.
Public speaking and storytelling and financial literacy and entrepreneurship and relationship building and socialization and grit and hard work through these experiences, and it's a very bright, optimistic.
Environment to be in.
And I think that's another thing that has been interesting.
I've been talking to a lot of other educators as of late, and so many of them, as you mentioned, they are tired.
They're like, it's hard.
This is hard.
And I don't think we're finding that to really be the case.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Right.
MacKenzie Price: I think that there's no question, our guides, they leave it all on the table every day in terms of finding ways to connect and motivate and encourage our students and come up with great ideas for workshops.
They're very hardworking.
But I think what they're noticing is that they're seeing such incredible growth in these students and they're getting to know them and understand them.
Yeah.
Engagement.
And that's, that's something that, you know, that's.
The whole reason back in 2014 that I set out on this journey is I didn't want my own girls to come home from school at the end of the day.
And when I say, how was your day?
Fine.
What'd you do?
Nothing.
What was exciting?
Eh, lunch, recess, my friends.
You know?
That's it.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's shift for a second for parents who are curious about this.
There's two things that I think that if I were a parent I'd be thinking about.
One is like, how do I quote unquote measure success?
And I think there's a unique way in which you do that.
And then how do we make this more democratically available?
Because you could argue, yes, not every private school is as competent, but private school already gives you an advantage in some way, shape or form around some of these things.
So first is in the form of like, again, I'm really.
one of the things that, just to change the future, you gotta change metrics and think about metrics very, very differently than we have.
So I don't know what is even measurable around what it is that you're doing, but it sounds as though you guys do chart checks instead of report cards.
Do you
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: describe that?
MacKenzie Price: I really believe that having measurable outcomes is important, and we do that in multiple ways.
So first, academically, the bar in US education system is so crazy low, right?
The 50th percentile senior in high school graduates with as much math knowledge as a third grader in 99th percentile.
The bar is very low, and while I understand that there are a lot of people who don't necessarily put a huge priority on.
Rigorous academics.
We've taken a very different approach.
We believe that you can deliver rigorous academic experience and 99th percentile outcomes in a very easy way, and I really think that the vast majority of kids are able to hit that bar when they're given that personalized learning experience that.
That results from one-to-one mastery-based tutoring.
And so we measure our academic results.
We use something called NWEA MAP assessments three times a year.
And we are basically gonna say, okay, if the anticipated growth rate for a student in, you know, the 75th percentile would be, they're gonna go up three points in math in a year.
We will say our student is gonna go up six points, and it gives parents a very easily measurable way to understand, are we generally learning two x?
It gives students an easy way to do that, and I think the interesting thing about that assessment is that standardized testing.
In the traditional world has gotten a very bad reputation, and I understand why.
Because there's all this stress.
All of this preparation put towards the standardized test.
The kid takes a test and then nothing changes for that child.
Based on the outcome of that test, the school might get a grade saying you're a D rated school, or you're an a, a-rated school, or whatever it is, but nothing changes.
Whereas in our model, we can take those assessments and we feed them into our AI tutor, and it allows us to go and pinpoint here's the holes in academic knowledge that a student has, and let's go fill those holes.
So it's a very, very helpful tool, and it's something that our students come to really value.
They're like, oh, this MAP assessment is just, it's a tool that gives me feedback on what I know and what I don't know.
And it goes that way.
Yeah.
And so.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: one.
MacKenzie Price: So, so that's a way we measure, you know, our, we have three commitments at our schools.
The second commitment is that students will learn two x in two hours.
And that is a very quantitative way for families to understand.
Are we delivering on that?
Our first commitment is that kids will love school, and we are also able to put quantitative assessment to that.
We survey our students every six weeks at the end of a session and say, do you love school?
Yes or no?
We usually get about.
95% of our students saying that, we take it even further.
We say, would you rather go to school or go on vacation?
And we get between 40 and 60% of our students say they would rather go to school than go on vacation.
In fact, before I came to this podcast I just got sent an article that was posted.
I haven't even read it yet, but the headline was.
A school where a kid said he'd rather go to school than go to Mexico on vacation with his family.
So it was some sort of LinkedIn.
I'll learn more about that, but that's something that we can measure too, our kids loving school.
And then our third commitment is that kids will learn life skills.
We're able to assess that as well.
And so let's take an example, like grit.
The idea of being able to stick with something even when it's challenging, even when it's hard over a long period of time.
Life skills have typically been something that are considered very soft, and so it's hard to understand does a student actually know how to do this?
At our schools, we don't give kids the book Grit by Angela Duckworth and say, read this book and write a book report on what grit is.
Instead, we have kids participate in all kinds of different activities that will display grit.
So one of our ve very famous examples of grit is a grit triathlon, where our students have to do three things.
They have to be able to solve a Rubik's cube.
They have to be able to juggle three items for 30 seconds and they have to run a mile without stopping.
And what happens when we first will introduce this challenge that kids have to be able to accomplish?
You know, the kids will say, oh my gosh, I can't, I can't possibly solve a Rubik's cube, or, how am I ever gonna run a mile without stopping?
And that's a perfect opportunity for our guides to introduce growth mindset strategies, like the power of yet, Hey, I can't solve a Rubik's cube yet.
But when I learn that there is an algorithm and I practice this algorithm and I take time to do it, and if I start juggling scarves, eventually I'll get to the point where I'm juggling three balls.
And if I incorporate atomic habits and walk a mile and then start adding a little bit of running, pretty soon I am running that mile.
And when you watch a kid do this grit triathlon, and they have solved the Rubik's cube, juggle the three items and run the mile that shows that that kid has developed.
Grit.
It's a great example of something.
And so what we do for all of our life skills workshops, we have an event at the end of each session for each workshop that's called a
test to pass, and it's something that we open up to parents as well as we'll actually invite people from the public to come as well.
And the kids will do something that kind of shows, hey, this was a life skill that, that they were working on in this workshop.
For example, I was in Scottsdale this week and the test to pass event was kids were going to compete against their parents to be able to change a tire on a car.
And, you know, they were learning a teamwork skill and.
And things like that are happening.
So there's measurable ways of actually understanding, did a child learn this life skill or is it something they need to continue developing?
The other thing that's really interesting when you think about life skills is that grit for a kindergartner.
Might look a little different than grit for a fifth grader or a 10th grader.
How do you kind of scaffold those things?
Financial literacy for a kindergartner starts with a certain amount of information and then grows to when our fifth and sixth graders are running food trucks or Airbnbs, and so we can basically help students as they.
Grow and age and experience continue to develop those life skills at sort of the next levels.
And by the time our kids are in high school we really are shooting for our kids to be not just good for their age, but good in general, you know, world class.
In fact, we ask our students to work on Olympic level projects, right?
That are, that are truly impressive.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: I mean, again, and I get, when I brag about your students, when I get the opportunity, the difference between starting a skateboard
park versus doing a tri-fold report and what we like to have a skateboard park, nine and day difference between those two things, which is basically the, the contrast.
But for those who are listening who either don't have access, 'cause your schools are growing now across the south.
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: I think.
Right?
I met somebody in Santa Barbara who was all excited about Alpha Schools.
I'm like, oh my God, they're
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: I didn't know that.
So, but they're growing around, but they're still private schools for the most part.
But there are ways in which you're building all these other brands and other ways of access to this way of understanding that helps make it more accessible for
MacKenzie Price: Yes, let's talk about that because that is, that is really the elephant in the room is, you know, 99% of people can't go to a super expensive private school
like Alpha, which to be clear, we are, you know, our, our tuitions for Alphas are between 40 and $75,000 a year, and that's astronomical for the vast majority of people.
Now, there's a few things that go into that experience that we have.
One is the life skills workshops that we are doing for these kids are pretty amazing, right?
In terms of what we put the resources our, our, our guide to student ratios are, are very good.
Our facilities are great, those types of things that happen.
We also believe in t we also believe in paying our guides very well.
So they're making six figure salaries.
So, but, but I recognize this is sort of a utopian environment.
And the key is how do we take this model of education and get it out to the rest of the world?
And there's a few ways that we're working to do that.
One is we've opened up other school models at lower price points.
The lowest we've gotten to so far is $10,000 a year.
And.
Yeah.
And in states that have educational savings accounts and have implemented school choice, that would enable a parent to take advantage of an ESA and have zero tuition.
It's still a private school but there could be a way to do that.
We've
also been able to take our.
Time back learning platform and make that available
for other entrepreneurs who would say, Hey, I wanna go start a school.
I wanna use the academic model that Alpha has created, and then I'm gonna go do whatever I wanna do in the afternoon and I'm gonna, I'm gonna charge whatever tuition allows them to operate.
And
Think that there are ways for more, more people to get involved in this education revolution.
On the public side, we've had a lot.
More challenge on the public side.
And I understand why the public system really wants to, to see years of research and information to show something works.
There's, there's a lot of competing factors that go into making decisions.
So, I've applied for several virtual charter applica.
I've, I've applied for several virtual charter licenses in numerous states.
We've only been approved in Arizona.
So we do have a virtual charter school, which means it is free for students to attend.
And it's going very well so far.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: It online though, for the two hours?
MacKenzie Price: So, yeah, it's, yeah.
So it's an online program.
It's a full day school program because it is a charter school.
It's still full day.
But you know, for whatever reason, there are families who've chosen to educate their children in their own homes and have wanted to take advantage of a virtual charter program as opposed to homeschooling themselves.
And I think that's a great thing that'll help us show results.
In fact, I had a conversation with a reporter the other day who was.
Fairly antagonistic and definitely was out to try to get me.
And you know, we were talking about that and one of the things I said is that's great about the public system is we are accountable for providing results and if we don't deliver great results, then we probably won't last very long.
And that's one of the reasons I'm, I'm also very transparent about our results in the private system too, because I believe that if we can.
Show people what this model can do.
It eventually will become more democratized and maybe it will be adopted in a public system in order to make it more accessible.
The other thing that I think is an interesting conversation, you know, that often people will have and, and this antagonistic reporter you know.
Ask me the same thing.
Well, of course in your private school you're getting great results because you've got a selection effect.
And you know what I say to that?
You are absolutely right.
Any parent who has raised their hand to say, you know what, I'm going to send my kid to something else, instead of just putting 'em on whatever bus comes by my street and takes them to our neighborhood school is obviously, you know, just.
Looking a little bit deeper or wanting something different than what, what their local education option is.
But here's the other thing I really believe, and I would love to have a conversation with someone who can help me see the other side of this.
Why would we not take something that's working really well and just try it?
For something else.
Right.
Just try it in another system and you know, again, if, if, if, if it works well here it feels like maybe we should allow more people to.
See if it works.
And, and so hopefully we will, we are doing some pilot programs with some intervention in public schools.
And again, those are actually outcomes based programs where they don't pay unless they get the outcome that we are saying they will.
So I think that we're gonna see a big difference.
The other thing I think that is gonna happen is I believe the cost of ai right now, our cost of AI for the learning platform is about $10,000 per student per year.
I believe that that cost is gonna go down drastically in the next five years.
In fact, in the next five years, I believe that every kid will have access to a tablet that they can hold in their hand for a thousand dollars a year that will be able to teach them everything they need to know.
So you know, the future's bright, and that's one of the things you said is you're an optimist about this and I am too.
I get so excited and I believe there's never been a more exciting time to be a 5-year-old.
There's never been a more exciting time to be a teacher because there's so much that we're going to be able to incorporate and do.
I also think that the opportunity for innovation that's happening in education right now is going to attract a lot of high caliber talent.
And I think doing it in the private market is actually going to help that endeavor.
And for those who kind of say, well, I disagree, you know, education should always be nonprofit, it should be a public thing, it should be available to everyone.
My my response would be.
Well, look how poorly things are working.
We have to do something different.
We have to figure out a better way because what we're doing right now where two thirds of kids can't do math or reading at grade level, whatever we've been doing, we gotta change.
Change it up.
And AI is going to offer us this opportunity to really change things.
And I always tell people here, the water is great.
Jump in.
Right?
Come and jump into this.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: we're learning things along the way, right?
We're not just jumping in without having some consideration about how to do it.
Well, and I think one of the distinctions about what you're doing is you're using AI in this really thoughtful way as opposed to necessarily teaching kids about ai, which hopefully
MacKenzie Price: Mm-hmm.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: right?
They're gonna learn about AI too.
But we're making a distinction about what AI and education really means or looks like.
And for me, it's also really interesting when you look at it around the world.
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: aspect to this that countries that are putting tremendous amount of effort and energy and funding behind it.
And we want our kids to be able to be able to thrive in a global world that's going to become more and more, you know,
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
Well, and, and that's the whole other part of ai, that our students in the afternoons are getting exposure to AI tools that are going, that are helping them, that they're going to be able to understand how to use in order to give them superpowers.
So for example, there's all these great public speaking AI tools that will help.
Give kids feedback on how they can make their talks more engaging, how they can improve those things.
There's incredible AI tools that help kids make graphic novels and create movies and write, you know, write stories and all these things.
All kinds of things, and when we also can give students enough exposure and understanding about these AI tools that they start to learn.
You know what?
Chat, GPT is a terrible writer, and I should not have it write my paper for me, but it can be a great feedback provider.
It can be a great editor.
It can give me some,
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: I mean, I think that's the thing is I
MacKenzie Price: yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: to also build the literacy or the confidence to be able to go build their own thing with an ai.
MacKenzie Price: Yes, yes.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: to actually build an AI informed tool or an AI fuel
MacKenzie Price: Mm-hmm.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: allows me
MacKenzie Price: Yeah.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: and such.
And I think that's the big thing is becoming a builder versus just a consumer of these things.
It's a really critical part.
So I think your work's gonna continue to grow.
I know we're running outta time, but I just wanna say again, McKenzie, I'm so grateful for the work that you do.
I am jealous that I don't get to have children in the school district that are only five and 10 years old.
They get to be beneficiaries of this.
'cause I think this work is really going to fundamentally change things.
But hopefully this conversation is part of the expansion.
Of the work that you're doing, it gets you more support for it.
I'm sure people will raise critical questions, but do it from a place of curiosity as opposed to a place of fear.
And the last thing I'll just say is that I, you know, when, on days when I get frustrated that people can't see the future the way I can, the guy who helped you know, in germ theory get surgeons to start watching their hands as they were delivering babies.
It took 50 years,
To get them just to like literally, instead of like working with it on their thing and then going to deliver a baby, that they would stop and wash their hands in between,
MacKenzie Price: Great.
Well, I'm 49, so if you're telling me I can retire at 99, I guess I'm good.
That's great.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: it's gonna take much less time this time, but it does make me think that in the most simplest thing, it was hard to get people to change their minds, right?
So this is a little bit more complex.
It's gonna take a little bit more time, but I think that you are right on it, and I'm your big champion and anything I can do to support you, and I will introduce you to any of the people I know that I think will also be big champions for you.
So
MacKenzie Price: Thank you.
Well, congratulations on your amazing podcast and all the work you do, and it's been such a pleasure.
Thanks for having me
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Hopefully we can grab lunch someday in
MacKenzie Price: in
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: love to hang out more.
MacKenzie Price: Austin.
Sounds great.
nancy-giordano_1_10-03-2025_131123: Great.
Thanks so much.
