SPEAKER_01 0:34

So I'm so uh delighted to have the opportunity to visit with Mackenzie Price, the founder and CEO of Alpha School. The last time I saw you uh live, we're both uh coincidentally on a plane heading from Dubai.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I'll tell you what, the interest in education is global, right? So I'm glad that we could meet on this side of the world today.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Exactly. It's a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

You know, a lot to talk about, a short amount of time, but I think it's important for people to appreciate kind of what motivated you. What's sort of the origin story here for how alpha school got going?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I will tell you, Michael, I am obsessed with education, and it really started um from a place of just being a mom for my own kids. Uh, and also I think so many of us, our views around education are shaped by our experiences growing up. I was one of those kids who was very good at school. Were you good at school?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

I was good at school, but I focused on sports. I mean, I was uh yeah, it drove my mom crazy who went to Stanford because she felt like I wasn't paying enough attention. Enough attention. But I did, I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Well, I was very good at school because I really wanted to go to Stanford, but I hated school growing up because I never felt like school provided me with that opportunity to find the intersection of my passions and my talents. So when my daughters were off to go to school, I just very quickly was reminded that it is impossible, no matter how devoted and talented and well-trained the teacher is, in a time-based classroom of one teacher teaching the many students that are at wildly different levels. You just can't meet every single student. And, you know, it's unbelievably sad to understand that less than a third of students in our country are even doing math or reading at grade level. Uh, it shows the system's not working. And so I kind of realized that, you know, we need something different. And uh I took my girls out and we started the first alpha school in 2014. And years later, I think so many families are realizing that education can be done differently.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

And then is your oldest daughter the one at Stanford?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

No, I have an oldest daughter at Vanderbilt. And then I've got a senior in high school who'll be managed, by the way. Yeah, it's uh it's been a great experience. And you know, it's interesting when you think about what is the goal of university, you know, at this point in life. And I think that there's so much that's gonna change in education landscape, uh especially with the world of AI. But what I fundamentally believe is gonna stay true is that it is critical to have core knowledge in our brains in order to be great critical thinkers. And the skill that we want to develop in young people and that colleges need to continue developing, and certainly in K through 12, we need to uh work with is learning how to learn. Because we have all of the information in the world right there in the palm of our hands. So, how are we gonna make sure that kids have this desire and motivation to go out and seek knowledge and then use that knowledge to uh, you know, build and create.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, well, when you talk about learning how to learn, um, your thinking is so aligned with what I believe, because that is the core skill, because you're gonna be learning from the time you're born to the time you retire, if you ever retire. And so how you acquire that knowledge and apply it is gonna be that's the fundamental thing you need to know.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, and it's so exciting with what's happening in AI, not just in education, but just in the world, you know, AI tools that couldn't do something a week ago now can. Right. And AI tools that are gonna be super instrumental a month from now don't even exist yet. And so the knowledge acquisition cycle is so much faster than it used to be. And as a result, we need our young people to be given lots of opportunity and exposure to go and build with these tools, not to use Chat GPT to outsource thinking and you know cheat on their tests, right? Not use a chatbot in that way, but instead understand, oh wow, I can use OpenClaw to build businesses. Um, I can become a better public speaker by using AI tools. There's so many ways that we teach that. And at Alpha, in addition to using, you know, AI to provide the personalized uh and very precise assessment, measurement, and uh lesson planning for students, uh, in the afternoons, we're helping kids become AI first and really learn how to use these tools to give them superpowers.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

So, I mean, you've gotten a fair amount of attention with alpha school. So some that are that are hearing this might already know the model, but why don't you describe sort of um what the key components of alpha school are and how it's different from a traditional school? And let's start with that.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Well, the key component uh that I think is different than what uh most education uh endeavors have not focused on is all around the idea of motivation. We believe that if you can motivate a student, uh you can unlock incredible opportunities for them. And when you think about traditional schools, um it's really on the student to figure out if they want to get motivated, right? Um I was motivated because I wanted to go to Stanford. You were motivated to get out on the sports field, right? But for those kids who aren't, it's sort of like this is your problem. And at our schools, we fundamentally believe that school should be a place that kids love. And when I say love, like rather go to school than go on vacation, which I certainly never was like that. I don't know if you were, Michael, but um I think when you have that, what it does is it unlocks the ability to have kids do really hard things. So at our schools, um, we first of all focus on making sure the environment is a place that has high standards along with high support. Our kids come into school every day and they are using an AI tutor, not a chat bot, but an AI tutor that um is able to understand exactly where they're at. There's a difference between age grade and knowledge grade. So, you know, a fifth grade student uh might be needing to do third grade level math, but sixth grade level reading. Um, and then from there, they sit down every morning during their core academic block and they uh do exactly the lesson and pace and level that is right for them. As a result, what we're seeing is in only two hours a day, our students are learning twice as much as uh the rest of the country. And our classes are top 1% in all grades and all subjects. And what's really interesting about that is we don't select students based on them already coming to us at a certain level, right? We can take a student who's in the bottom 25th percentile and get them up above the 90th percentile by giving them that one-to-one mastery-based tutoring experience. Um, and then we can also take that student who's 99th percentile and give them growth rates in the 80s and 90s, which is also unheard of. Um, and of course, it's all done by lunchtime. So then in the afternoon, uh we have our students focus on developing life skills, relationship building, socialization, leadership, teamwork, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, storytelling and public speaking, and grit and hard work. And we do those skill building exercises through group and project-based workshops. So we'll have students doing everything from you know communication and teamwork challenges that have them uh completing tough mutters uh together to building businesses. Uh, we've got students all over the country right now that are uh working on vending machine businesses and they're learning financial literacy and entrepreneurship, they're learning rejection training and receiving feedback, marketing skills. And uh what we found is that that formula for the day creates a really exciting thing. All of it, though, Michael, is made possible because we have transformed the role of the teacher in the classroom to being focused on motivation and emotional support. So it is our humans that make this entire experience so successful and really help the people who have devoted their lives to working in schools uh really have that positive impact that I think they got into this business to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

So you covered a bunch of important things.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

So I'm gonna see if I I'm a talker, aren't I, Michael? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yes, we're very um very good talker, but a lot of important things you said. So let's try to isolate a few things. So one, this whole idea of motivation, which you don't hear school teachers and education systems really say how that's a priority. Yeah, that's where you start. And I know back to the origin story, I think your daughter came home with some water of school, and that was like killed it because like it did.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

It was so sad because my daughter was the kind of kid that was like tailor-made to want to show up at school with her backpack and get excited about what she was doing. And just so quickly she was hit with walls that would say, you know what, just sit still while we work on this other thing, or redo a worksheet that you already know all of the information on because that's what we're doing, or you know, you have an interest in something, but that's not part of our second grade curriculum. Yeah. And so it just was taking a kid who was really naturally motivated and curious, which by the way, I think all kids start out that way. Right. And the traditional system, unfortunately, it just burns kids out. So even kids like me growing up who want to continue to do well, I was just checking the boxes. What do I need to do to be successful? And then you think about so many kids who check out. And, you know, it's understandable why they do when they're sitting and getting um information in a classroom that doesn't match what they need to know. Either it's too hard or it's too easy, you end up with disengaged students, and schools aren't addressing that. And that's part of the reason that I think we're seeing, well, it's really the major reason we're seeing so much success. Otherwise, we would just be another example of an ed tech vendor that, you know, promises great things and doesn't deliver. It's not our ed tech, it is that focus on motivation.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

It's a redesign of a system that that that gets, you know, reemazes or prioritizes how people learn. You can't learn if you're not engaged. Now just talk about me for a second. I mean, I I was bored in school. I mean, I did well because it wasn't that hard. Yeah. But well, one class that actually changed my whole interest was a social studies teacher. It was one of the one of the first games. We got this game, we got to play this game where we all owned the beer company and competed against each other. Oh, beer company. Yeah, it was so much fun. I learned a lot of fine demand and pricing and marketing, and all and but it was really all of a sudden it was fun. And I learned all these economic principles, all of a sudden, you know, I guess I have an interest in this. But I would have never known that if it just had sort of like the regular boring ways that you know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Well, and your teacher was a great example of someone who really said, let's get creative about how to teach this. And unfortunately, that is not super replicable or scalable, right? You have teachers who are doing that kind of magic in their classrooms, unfortunately, they're few and far between. And if you find one great teacher, you can't necessarily just recreate. And so um, that's why we have to create more of these experiences on a larger scale that allow kids to really see that real-world application of things they're interested in.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So, another thing you talked about was this idea where you could come in at any point because the technology, the AI can basically level up, you know, where students at, so that you get this truly personalized experience. Yeah. Talk about what first of all, of the students that you have in the different alpha schools, is there any what kind of common denominator profile are they all over the map?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

We are currently operating as a private school model, and one of the criticisms that I will hear people say is, well, they're just self-selecting, they're already taking the kids who are top 1%. Um, and that's actually not true. Now, most private schools do something like that. They, you know, they have a certain profile of kid that they're looking for. Um, what we're looking for in our students that that come to our schools is basically coachability. Are they willing to kind of engage and and and get coached on something? And so um we get students who come from, you know, all levels academically of where they're at. And the other thing that's really interesting, the reason I'm I'm saying all levels is when we do assessments. But one thing that we've realized you can't really correlate is how students did in past schools based on their transcripts. So I'll give you an example of this, Michael. We onboarded hundreds of students uh this past school year, and we saw that kids who had A's on their transcripts from their previous school were anywhere between one year ahead and three years behind. If they were B students, they were between three and seven years behind. On average, the students that came in alpha were about 2.2 grade levels behind. Um, so I think it's an example that even kids who are coming from other, you know, high-end private schools, they're not getting the education that they need to be receiving. Now, parents get a little stressed out when they hear this. Oh my gosh, I've been sending my kid to this school for years and they were A students and suddenly they're they're behind. And we say, here's the good news. It doesn't actually take that long to catch up, right? When you give a sixth grade student, you know, third grade math because that's what they need to learn, then suddenly they fill those holes, they go to fourth, they go to fifth, they're back in sixth grade math, and suddenly the math makes sense because they've got that fundamental mastery-based understanding that makes this possible. And, you know, I think a lot of us can remember and relate to examples of, you know, it's really hard to learn algebra when you don't have your multiplication tables memorized, right? And the worst time to be learning algebra is in your AP chemistry class, right? And so that's where we are making sure the kids are matched. So what we're seeing is growth rates for students, no matter if they come in 10th percentile, 99th percentile, will be in the 80s and 90s in terms of how quickly they're able to learn. Uh, and again, we're doing it in such a shorter period of time. Uh, I think I talked to some educators who say, you know, the answer to getting better uh results for students is just more class time. Get them in school and more. And we've taken the opposite approach. Uh when we get those two hours of focused time at their level and pace, uh, that's where we're able to get so much happening. And it also hits the motivation button, which is that we say, hey, kiddo, do us a favor, give us this two hours of kind of focused time, and then you get the rest of the school day to do all this other cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah, which again makes all the sense in the world to me, and obviously the results that you're getting to prove it. Just to go back, uh the quick story. Um, I played college football, and when I was a sophomore, we're the worst division rank football team in the United States or America.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

We were literally that bad. Um, and our practices would last forever because the theory was, well, you just gotta practice more.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

And then we had Lou Holtz came in to be the head coach my junior year.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

No way.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

We did. I just well, yeah, it was being a little couple weeks ago. Um but anyway, all of a sudden was like this disaster. He's cut these practices go, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. All of a sudden, they were the shit, they were an hour and 45 minutes, and they were like everything was in the whole speed, but you were intense, you were focused, you were, and all of a sudden, you know, results were dramatically better and different.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

So that's incredible. Well, you know, sports is actually a great analogy for so much of what we do in our classrooms too. And when you think about mastery approaches, in sports, parents understand that you're not gonna have a kid work on dunking if they can't dribble the ball down the court, right? They're not gonna work on their three uh three-pointers until they know how to how to do basic stuff. And yet in academia, we don't have that same approach. We move kids along and have them work on things that they're not equipped to be able to be successful at. Uh, and so one of the things that we're seeing is when when parents kind of see education through the lens of sports and the understanding that mastery and repetition and you know, regular kind of practice is is really important, it starts to make sense. And I think what we're starting to see is more and more people are realizing that AI in education doesn't have to be this scary, dystopian, uh bad thing. It can be used as a tool that really allows us to provide that tutoring experience.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

So a little bit more just on the system itself. You know, you talk about mastery as opposed to kind of progressing toward by age and grade. Um how um so when you when a when a parent you know gets a report card, what's the report card say, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yeah, we don't have what you would think of as traditional rope report cards in K through eight. Uh what we're really looking at is they are our uh learning summaries that help uh families understand. And actually what we say at the very top of our learning summaries is this is not a report card on this is not a report card on your child. This is a report card on alpha. Are we delivering to your child? So we go through by each subject and show how are they progressing, how are they mastering material, what are they understanding, what are their growth rates that they're doing in their different assessments as well as in their their map assessments. And then most importantly, our guides who have so much more time to be able to get to know these kids are able to add in, hey, here's what happens when this kid finds something challenging. These are the things they say to themselves, and this is some of the growth mindset strategies that we are working on incorporating. Um, and that's where I think parents just are loving this. Now, we certainly get to the point in high school, you gotta have a transcript that translates on a university, and we're able to do that from a variety of things, but we really rely on a lot of third-party assessments. So, you know, our AP uh courses, I think were one of the best performing schools in the country with regard to our AP scholars. Our SATs, uh, you know, average for our seniors was 1550 in the 25, 26 school year. And across the board, it was like 1430 for freshmen through seniors. So when you give kids that academic knowledge at their pace, they know the material and they're able to learn it. Um, and then what we also focus on is this whole other aspect of our transcript or report card, if you will, which is how are they doing in developing life skills? So, as an example of that, we have workshops every afternoon where kids are learning teamwork or communication or grit or hard work. And we have something called a test to pass. Because you need to understand, well, how do we know if a kid's really developed grit? You know, what does that look like? And I will tell you, when you can see a group of fifth graders that are crossing a triathlon line all together because they're committed to teamwork and they have been working hard to train for this, you see, okay, these kids have developed grit. Uh, we don't just give them the book by Angela Duckworth and say, read this book and write a write a paper on it. The we put it into practice. And here's the other thing that I think it's really exciting about that, whether it's in academics or in the life skills workshops, what we find is that when kids get to do hard things and they start building up success, they they develop competence, and that competence fundamentally changes how they see themselves. They develop confidence that's really rooted in in results, and they start to realize that you know what, if I put in the work, I am capable of doing so many things.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah. So you you talk about sort of the difference role, the teacher, and actually you call them guides. Give it a little bit more of that.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

We get a lot of uh slack, I think, upon initial um understanding about, you know, when they hear about our school and they think they don't have teachers, this is horrible and terrible. We're they're replacing teachers, they're gonna get rid of human jobs, and that it couldn't be further from the truth. But we do not call uh the adults who work in our classrooms teachers because they aren't delivering academic content. They're not subject matter experts who are are teaching uh to a class. RAI tutor is doing that. Instead, what our guides are doing is they are focusing on that motivational connection. They are really guiding kids alongside them to develop the skills of learning how to learn, learning how to become experts, developing growth mindset strategies that help them be successful. And uh we're seeing just an incredible result, not only in the classroom, but the people who are coming to work at our schools, they love this. And I think that's what anybody who gets into education, they come because they want to make that positive impact on kids. But the reason we're seeing teachers leave the field in droves and they're struggling to uh attract high talent in the teaching field is because we've given them such an impossible job of take 20 plus kids all at different levels, get them through curriculum that they're not prepared to get through. Uh, and we're gonna pay you very poorly as part of that as well. So at Alpha, we've changed that. First of all, we believe they should be paid very well. So they start a minimum of six figures in order to um attract really great talent. And then they've got the agency and the power within the classroom to really make that positive impact on kids. Uh, in the 2025, between May and December, we had 80,000 people apply for our guide positions. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah, and and they're just getting $300,000, people would be able to do that. Yeah, and you get great people.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

And yeah, and and I'll tell you what, there's a lot of things that we don't Know about what the world's gonna look like in five, ten, twenty years. But Michael, here's something that I would absolutely bet. In 20 years, parents are still gonna want to drop their children off in a building surrounded by other kids and loving, caring adults. Now, what they're doing in that building, I think, is gonna look a lot more like what Alpha is currently doing, and the role of those adults is gonna look more like our guide role. Um, but it's not gonna be any less critical to make sure that our kids are well educated and have developed skills that help them be successful. And even more importantly, we now have to make sure that kids are connected with a passion and an interest and an engagement because um as we continue to develop and more and more is gonna become automated and and kind of figured out in this world, we need to give people a reason to, you know, feel a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. And what better way to do that than to help connect kids with things they're interested in?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, 100%. You know, it's it's just so interesting what you've created because I it's exactly the type of things that I felt need to happen. So I'm a you know, you had me in a low, you know, it's it's it's it's awesome. But anybody who's doing something that is different, in particular, I think it's true by human nature, but education maybe especially so. There are a lot of critics. Yes. So one of the criticisms or one of the things people say, oh, yeah, I can work with maybe the selected group of students or a small number of schools, but it won't scale.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

How does it how do how do you how do you answer that? How does this scale? Well and what and what is sort of the vision for alpha schools?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yeah, first of all, when I think about the selection bias, I think there's um there's selection bias in so many different things that happen. And my biggest answer to when people say, well, this only works in your private school system for families who you know are are paying a certain amount of tuition, my answer to that is great. Then just compare us to those other private schools that are similar in our demographic and see how we're doing compared to them. Um, but in order to truly make an impact, we are going to have to scale and we're gonna have to make this model of education more accessible. And one of the ways that we're really excited about doing that, and I think you're gonna hear a lot more in 2026 about, uh, is through our Texas Sports Academy. So we are taking, you know, the young Michael who would have been excited to get out on the field starting at noon instead of four o'clock. And uh, we're creating uh school models in Texas where we've got educational savings accounts that just were passed. And the families that have signed up for our Texas Sports Academy that will be starting in the fall uh were the ones who received uh these ESA accounts. They come from families with less than $65,000 a year in income or special needs. Um, and so these kids are gonna be getting the same alpha time back learning platform that our alpha students are getting with the ability to do it in two hours and spend the rest of the day out on the court or the field doing whatever it is they love uh for no charge. And so I think we're gonna have thousands of students that are going to be testing that model out. What I hope is that this will serve as an example and blueprint that other states might want to say, hey, this is something that we could do. Uh additionally, we're working on um just showing our model to more places in the public sphere. I did spend a lot of 24 and part of 25 um attempting to get charter status in multiple states. I was bru I did not have them at hello. Uh I had they were like goodbye as soon as I walked in the room. So unfortunately, Arizona is the only state that that approved us. Um what I realized is we're not gonna try to go where we're not wanted. And I think in the public sphere, it's very important that they uh understand and have time to understand what the model's like, see what results are, and then invite us to come in at different things. So I think there's gonna be some more things that you'll hear about in the coming years uh that are gonna help get this model of education out to millions of students.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

So Joe Lamont has been your part business partner for some time and has gotten more active football. Yeah. What is he bringing to the to the to the party?

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Well, it's interesting. Joe Lamont is our principal of our school, but his background was in enterprise software. Um, and I think this was really an incredible um union that happened. Uh, we were just friends. Um, my husband and he are best friends and have been for many years. We had daughters that are the same ages. And so when we first started the school, um, you know, eventually he and his wife decided, you know what, I think this makes sense for our kids to attend the school too. But in 2022, when Agentic AI came out, he realized, okay, we can scale this. This doesn't just have to be a school for kids in Austin, Texas. We can make this uh bigger. And so so much of what he is just an expert at is uh building the systems that allow us to create this at bigger scale, bringing in obviously the technology that is and allowed us to really hone in our results. And so the alpha of 2022 was very different than the alpha of 2026. Uh, we have really evolved and our results have gotten better and better and better uh over time. So I uh I feel very fortunate to have, you know, a principal who's willing to get in the mud every day and connect and understand what happens when you know two fifth graders get in an argument, you know, what happens when parents, you know, don't agree with what their kids' passion project should be, you know, how do we work on that? And so it's been a lot of fun to uh really reimagine. I think what he and I both have very much in common is we're obsessed. I think there is such an exciting uh future ahead of everybody when it comes to education. It's finally time for the education industry to innovate. And it's been so slow to do that. And I'm sure you're an expert in seeing, you know, what the last, you know, 20 years of education looked like. And I just think there's never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old or to be a teacher than right now.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

I am couldn't agree more. We're we're we're at a really special inflection point. Yeah. And I and I'm very optimistic what the future is. Last thing I want to ask you a quick lightning round, a one to three sentence reaction uh to just things that I'm gonna ask. Ready?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Favorite podcast.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Ooh, uh, Dak Shepherd, Armchair Expert.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

What's the best book you've read?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Well, my favorite all-time book is called A Prayer for Owen Meanie. It's uh written by John Irving, and I think I I read it first when I was about 13 years old, and I I'll reread it about every five years. Um, and the theme of that book is that um God has a plan and puts people on earth for a certain thing. And and I guess I haven't actually thought about it until just now, but I think that I'm um getting to experience uh some of the same things that main character did. Love it.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Who's your hero?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

My hero? That's a really great question. My hero. Who is my hero? Well, um, my mom is pretty freaking awesome. I have to tell you that. She really is. She um was probably the most devoted, strong mom. She was a single mom uh growing up, and she really made sure that my brother and I, no matter what was going on, uh, were well taken care of. And hopefully I'd been a little bit of an example um and taken some of that into my uh world with my girls.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

What's the most interesting thing you've seen at the summit so far?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Oh, well, I was downstairs in the main exhibition room, and uh I ran into an educator who is the principal of uh a high school in the Bay Area, and she was talking about the book that she's just come out with uh around what AI looks like in education. So I think what I'm gonna say is the most exciting thing I've seen is the difference in the way that AI is being embraced in education compared to even a year ago. I had people snarling at me here a year ago, Michael. And now I feel like people are a little more smiley at me. So I think it's really exciting to see what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Well, Mackenzie, uh, this has been awesome. Uh I love our conversation to be continued. Great. Enjoy the summit. Thank you so much.