aiEDU Studios

J.C. Brizard: Making a more humane education system

• aiEDU: The AI Education Project • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Teaching at Rikers Island isn’t a typical origin story for a future school district leader. And yet, it demonstrates that education works best as human development, not a test-prep machine. 

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO J.C. Brizard joins aiEDU Studios to talk about modern-day school systems and what to keep, what to scrap, and how to move faster than technology that's reshaping our jobs and lives. 

We got candid about why AI has finally brought school to the dinner table. When a novice can ship working software and a manager can draft team evaluations within hours, the question shifts from “Which tools?” to “What makes us human?” The answer lies in durable skills: curiosity, agency, communication, problem-solving, and the courage to navigate ambiguity. 

Those aren’t “soft” skills — they are the skills that help students change jobs, create value, and lead with judgment as machines take on more tasks.

If you care about students thriving in an AI-shaped economy and building a more humane one, this conversation offers a roadmap you can use now. 

After listening, let us know what route you'll take in your class, school, or district! 

Learn more about J.C. Brizard:


aiEDU: The AI Education Project

Alex Kotran:

JC, thanks so much for coming to my humble dining room, which has been turned into a studio, a bit makeshift. But you know, we're kind of you watched me get everything set up. Um I I still feel like totally out of my element, but it's been fun sort of learning about all the tools. So thank you for joining. We've crossed paths, I feel like almost every other month. We're at an event together. Um, but we usually don't have time to sit down and really catch up usually between keynote sessions and closed door meetings with decision makers. Um yeah, hope I'm hoping to use this time to to nerd out with you a little bit, pick your brain on some of the stuff that I've been smulling over. Why don't you just help us get started by telling us about who you are and how you got to uh help the helm of digital promise, one of the leading education nonprofits in the country.

J.C. Brizard:

I I agree. We have to make time for these kinds of conversations because we tend to be always running from one place or one thing to another. And the work really requires a kind of um sort of retrospective conversation, reflection, I think, for us to actually move move forward. So again, impressive uh sort of setup you have, you have here. Um, you know, having a photography in my past, so I'm quite impressed with with the setup you have here. So it's been it's been a while um in this business, um in this work. Um, not one I ever intended to be a part of. My parents were teachers. My mom was a secondary school teacher, my dad was a school principal um in Haiti. And um I fell into teaching. And my mom convinced me when New York City was desperate for teachers. Uh, one August, there were short like 2,500 teachers for the beginning of school. Imagine that mid-August. And she goes, give it a shot. Um, you know, stay for a year or two, and while you get, you find your way. Um, that was more than 35 years ago. Um, that I went to teach um in New York City public schools. And the first place I was assigned was a high school in Queens, and I got displaced, you know, last in, first out. Um, and then they reassigned me to Rikers Island to teach. Um, I take some time to talk about this because it is has been the foundation, effectively, for my thinking. Um, so I got to Rikers um and I met a young man who looked just like me. Uh, I was barely 22. Um, and uh he was 19 years of age, uh, my physical size, et cetera, but couldn't do read, couldn't do basic math, basic computation. And I was hired as a chemistry teacher. And, you know, so we ended up doing math and basic science. Um, and make a long story short, and when I write my book, that book is going to call be called The Sandwich, because there's a story there, which I'm not gonna give away. Um, but um, this young man in many ways changed my life. Um, and um, you know, brought a lot of joy for me in a place that terrified me because I looked just like them. I grew a mustache and a beard, I wore a tie, so I wouldn't be mistaken for an inmate. Um, I said I had to make a difference in the lives of a lot of young people because in one semester, this young man went from doing basic computation to algebra. Um, really, really smart, smart kid. And we lost a mathematician, I think. Um, so I I've been uh I went to a middle school in Bushwick, Brooklyn, uh, taught for four years there, went to a high school, became principal at high school, and then just kept moving up the system. Um, and I tell people that um I applied for two jobs uh initially, one of being teacher, one of being superintendent of schools in Rochester, New York. So 22 years in New York City, never applied for anything, and just kept getting offers to do things differently. I was very lucky. I had amazing mentors um in New York who taught me, who godwelled me into making good decisions for myself. So principal, head of high schools, um, regional superintendent where I learned elementary schools. I knew nothing about those in those days. Um, then went to Rocherson Young as a superintendent, did Chicago as a superintendent. There's a book called The Prize. Chicago Public Schools? Yes. There's a book called The Prize by Del Rossakoff that talks about the Zuckerberg 100 million in Newark. I'm on page 99 to 101. I don't know if you think you know this, Alex. Uh I was supposed to go to Newark um as superintendent, but Chicago, uh I guess one manual convinced me to come to Chicago instead. Um, so I I did make friends with Cory Booker when that happened. Uh I'm I I I love him dearly. I think he's an amazing leader. Uh, but I was meeting with Corey on a regular basis about just entry into Chicago. So getting fast forward, um, leave Chicago college board uh for a while as an advisor, then joined joined the Gates Foundation. For how you were at Gates. Yes, loved my time there, nearly four years. Um I think the only reason I left the Gates Foundation was because I got uh tired of traveling back and forth to Seattle. I I still tell people I was just traveling to work and for work, which is not the ideal thing to do in life. But I I I loved my time there. And from there I came to Digital Promise. Um, and it's been an amazing transition. Um, and I love this organization and what it does. Were you were you traveling from New York or from so I moved to California because my wife took a job at the Chen Zuckerberg Initiative. Um, and then um I was initially I was consulting at the time and I was on the red eye every Sunday night, go to the East Coast. I had portfolio work in Nashville and um in Illinois um and in Connecticut. It took me on the East Coast. Um, and I quickly found that to be not not not conducive, frankly, to family life. Um and then um yeah, I left that.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, and you're in the the valley, right like Menlo Park or Palo Alto?

J.C. Brizard:

Uh not live in Los Altos. Los Altos. But I should live in Menlo. Um so we moved to the peninsula because again, uh CZI in those days was in Palo Alto, then moved to Edwards City. Um, so California, here we came. Um and uh I love living in this state. Um and uh my wife was like, Do you mind moving to California? And I said, No, it's a bucket list thing, man. I said like I'd love to live in California. Um so I've been here for eight years here in the beautiful city of California.

Alex Kotran:

I'm pretty close, actually. I think I'm like almost coming on 10, maybe nine and a half. But also I grew up East Coast and just and yes, it was definitely a bucket list for me. But I just was going back and forth to the East Coast this past week. It's it's hard enough. I do it like once every two months or something like that. I can't imagine multiple times a month. Yes. Yeah, yes, absolutely not. Yes. That was helpful. I don't always ask people, put people on the spot to kind of walk through their resume. I think it's it's important grounding because what I'm really interested in discussing with you is sort of this experience that you've had as all these issues that in your various roles, and it's worth for our audience. Uh Chicago Public Schools is what, third biggest district in the country?

J.C. Brizard:

It was. I think Miami just passed it. Um it was the third biggest. About 420,000 when I was there.

Alex Kotran:

Okay.

J.C. Brizard:

Okay.

Alex Kotran:

I think that's the total number of K-12 students in Arkansas or something. What one of the maybe North Dakota. Yeah.

J.C. Brizard:

I used to I used to say that we had more dropouts in New York City than most systems had kids.

unknown:

Right.

Alex Kotran:

Well, because New York is a million. Yes. Yes. So you've been in the education space, you know, as long as anybody. And and all of a sudden now, people who've never really thought about education are talking about the future of work and the skills and what should education look like. And I'm curious how much of it in, and obviously AI is driving a lot of that. And I'm curious how much of that is, are you like, yeah, like this is what we've been talking about? And how much of it is truly like novel. Yeah, just from your vantage point, like how have you reacted to sort of the this sight gased moment and you know, the excitement, but also sort of just like the the noise?

J.C. Brizard:

Yeah, it's a great question, Alex. You know, uh I did a talk this morning um and described dinner I had with a bunch of my students uh two weeks ago in Brooklyn. About 40 of my kids uh joined me in Brooklyn. We all had dinner. Um, and uh these were my kids in my class, my physics class. And we talked about really where they are today, um, and uh what we talked about. What I realized um in their description description of my work as a teacher, as a as a principal, was that I laid the foundation for them for their future. Um, one told me that every decision he makes now, he thinks about what would Brisard say? Uh, what would he have said if I did this? So you never realize the kind of impact you have. And when you're looking at everything we talk about today about the future of work, talking about redefining success, it goes back to what many of us have done, and I'm not putting myself on the pedestal here, but many of us have done for eons, right? Because we know that education wasn't just about academic proficiency, it really was about lifelong outcomes for young people. And and I think even the AI revolution is a latest iteration of pushing us there. So let me qualify that. When I became a principal, and that story, by the way, is still on the web. If you Google Chief Information Officer magazine, Brizzard, you'll find an article called The School Grows in Brooklyn, was published in 2001. It is still on the web. It talks about the reforming redesign of George Westinghouse High School, a school that used to be called Hip Hop High, because Jay-Z, Buster Rhymes, Look Kim, Biggie all went to that school uh before my time. Um be qualified that because Jay-Z is about my age. Um but when you, when you I was I was a teacher, I became principal uh of that school, but the redesign of the school is is chronicled in this article by Shell Benson about a school moving from old-fashioned vocational education to career tech or frequently technology-based work. Again, AI was not part of our verbiage, but certainly we talked about technology-enabled um education. And the discussions we have about the future of work, what technology is doing to the future of work, that was part of our conversation. And I remembered my first PTA meeting in the redesign of the school. I was warned they're coming for you, be careful, because I was closing down certain programs in the school like jewelry making, for example, right? Um, and I walked in there with the Daily News, the New York Post, the New York Times, all the newspapers in New York City, and before online ads or big at the same time. And I asked the all the parents and some teachers who were in the audience, can you help me find a job here for jewelry makers? There were none. But there was jobs for CCNA, for CCNP, for all the networking technologies, et cetera. And we're looking to create these kinds of programs in the school to really give kids a future. When that scaffolded to post-secondary and the post-secondary to work, I didn't fully appreciate and understand the non-academic importance. When you look at the portrait for Alpha for graduate right now, you see these things showing up. Didn't fully appreciate that. But at the same time, we knew we had to put kids on a path toward a meaningful life and a meaningful career. In a dead and esoteric job, one that was being taken over by technology, right? Most costume jewelry is made by tech. I mean, very few handmade things these days, right? We saw it coming. So we prepared, we prepared for that. So for me, this is the same discussion, slightly iterated, for the latest technology, right? That we keep having about really redefining success and a future to go beyond proficiency, to think about what is it that we want kids to be able to do and thrive in 20 years and 10 years. That was always part of our discussion and conversation when I was a teacher when I was a principal.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, and this this grounding is important because I think there is one. I mean you tell me, but my my sense is that there's something different between 2001 or let's say 2007, with like mobile, um 2013, with like sort of cloud and big data, uh and ML like 2014, 2015. Education leaders were long talking about, you know, uh uh what is the portrait of a graduate? You know, what does school transformation look like? We heard a lot about 21st century skills. I think it was it's interesting, right? Like maybe we we didn't know what we were really talking about. It turns out we were talking about AI, right? This 21st century skills. Um my sense is most people were not at the dinner table having conversations about school transformation. Um and today I'd I'd wager that most dinner tables parents, teachers, superintendents, everybody's having a conversation about this because they're touching it, they're feeling it. And I I have mixed feelings about what that means. It's exciting that this is now getting people's attention. Um, but it's also that there is a lot of hype. And whether we're in a bubble, I don't know. That's a that's a separate discussion. Um, but there's a lot of hype to sift through. And I'm I'm curious if you think like, is it is it helpful to have more attention? Um, or does it actually make it more complicated and confusing to get to the sort of like the clear, so what? What are we supposed to do about it?

J.C. Brizard:

No, it's always to have, in my opinion, it's always good to have more attention, but cutting through the noise, I think becomes more of the challenge, right? There's a reason I think you're seeing or hearing this discussion at every dinner table is in the past, you know, thinking back to 2001, the kids I was serving in Brooklyn, mostly black, brown, poor kids, were the ones many of us were worried about. The middle class or upper income kids, they were on a river to post-secondary in careers that were pretty solid and that was going to be around for a while. But now when you look, so the the thing about AI, and I agree, it is a similar conversation, but an accelerated one. It's really an exponential growth in technology. So we argue AI has been around in education since 1975. But when you look at the speed at which it is moving now, it is accelerated, it is exponential. And now we see it's going to impact my kids, right? Uh, and and my kids go to a Silicon Valley school, right? That's attended by many Google employees uh and their children. So these are the kids of what my kids are surrounded by, right? But now I think a lot of parents, even the middle and upper income parents, are seeing the possibility that the jobs that they have are going to disappear or will change, fundamentally change. You know, um, I mean, I there's a guy named Andrew McAfee from um it was to be at MIT. He talks about this idea that they're coming for our jobs. He showed an article written for the Wall Street Journal that was written by an algorithm. And he said, and I quote, um, wait till this algorithm wins a pullator. Um so we're saying that even the white-collar positions, jobs, have the potential to disappear. So many parents are worried about the future. So when you look at the kinds of portrait, the kinds of things many of us are talking about now, we didn't fully understand them, but now we much more understand now. Because again, the School of Psychology has always known about this, but now the School of Education is catching up with the school of psychology. They're talking to each other. We know we have to develop in young people the kind of skills and mindset and competencies that allow them to change jobs, that allows them to grow with a job, that allows them to see um a future perhaps we don't see today. Uh, and there will not be an esoteric den in job if we build those skills. The the hard skills are important, but we understand now those kinds of companies, and please don't call them soft skills because they're the ones who beg success. Um, those are the skills we have to teach uh for successful people. To give you a quick example, when I got first got the digital promise, I put uh a Google Sheet on the screen and I told my leadership team that I have high-end sort of uh, I mean, R1 institution, MIT, Stanford graduates on my leadership, PhDs, et cetera. And I asked them each to write down three things that were instrumental to their success. And I gave them 15 minutes and I came back. No one listed their academic credential.

unknown:

Oh.

J.C. Brizard:

And I say, why is that, right? Um they talked about it.

Alex Kotran:

Can you give examples of some of the things I listed?

J.C. Brizard:

They talked about curiosity, tenacity, they talk about being able to extrapolate from content, be able to navigate a room, right? Um, all the stuff we used to call soft skills, right? Um, they didn't even notice they were doing that, but they were articulating the kinds of stuff you now see in a portrait. Yes, the portrait does include academic and cognitive development, but now we're beginning to fully appreciate and understand what has always begotten success are the kinds of skills that require you to um invent a job, grow with a job, right? Um, the kind of leadership tenacity, um, stuff that we know is critical for success. Now we know it needs to be part of the curriculum, needs to be part of the pedagogical practice and and development. A lot of middle class parents find ways of giving their children that kind of experience. My three boys just came back from three and a half weeks of sleepaway camp in upstate New York. Um, my middle guy, who's, I know, is yeah, he's he's interesting, but he's a brilliant kid. Sunglasses, jacket, and tie speaking in front of 400 people. He's 13 years old. Um, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about, right? That a lot that I know he'll be successful because he can navigate that kind of environment. So that's why I think you're seeing this discussion at the dinner table, and folks are worried. Um, some have dystopian views of AI because of that. Um, some are trying to stop it. You're not gonna stop it. It's here, it's gonna move. So elevate the pedagogy, elevate the work that we do in schools, we can prepare young people for the future.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, I mean, I will say that I've had conversations with you know, folks at some of the companies that we, you know, talk to and you know, senior executives who can pick up a phone and like basically guarantee that their kid is at the top of the list, you know, the top of the stack of resumes. They're like, yeah, my son is looking for a job for six months, computer science degree from Berkeley. His friends are all struggling to find jobs. And this is this is what like Derek Thompson's been covering, right? Like the record high unemployment rate among new college grads. Paradoxically, in especially in like computer science and physics, um, anthropology is always number one. Um, this poor anthropologist. Um but computer science is on is it that is surprising to people because we um you know, my parent my parents are both immigrants, you know, Lebanese immigrants. So it's like doctor, lawyer, navy engineer, and God help you. I mean, I was getting my political science degree, my mom was like, oh, pre-law, pre-law. And then after I she she knew that I wasn't gonna be a lawyer, she's like, Well, you can still get your PhD. I was like, what are we gonna do with the PhD? She's like, well, it's just important to have, you know, you have this degree. And and that's because for what, like a hundred years, there was this period where, you know, having credentials and like specific domain expertise was that differentiating skill that companies were looking for. And so now AI comes into the language model specifically, sort of the sort of like general purpose, not AGI, but sort of general purpose tools. And so a lot of the expertise that we thought would sort of differentiate our kids and put them on a path to be able to command value in the labor market. And I people sometimes push back and say, education, the purpose of education isn't just getting a job, which I completely agree with. Um, but that is really top of mind. I mean, like if you're a parent, you do care. There's all these secondary things that you really should be and and are concerned with. But the first thing that you will say is like, I want to make sure my kid, as you said, is able to have a job and have dignity and have the and and you mentioned the ability to change jobs, which is really interesting. Because like this idea of agency is important, right? If you're just really good at pushing the button or using the tool, but you don't have that transferability, like that's I think that's part of this whole like idea of like dignity and thriving that goes beyond just getting a job. Um so so AI can is is increasingly going to be able to do maybe not the jobs, but the tasks. Um it is really good at writing code, it is really good at writing you know grant proposals and pitch emails and Doing like backend this database integrations. My husband actually just did this 20 hours and he used Lovable. He never written a line of code in his life. And he just like vibe coded this like Tinder app for venture capital. So now he just like swipes through his companies. And when he finds a company he likes, he clicks on it. It auto-populates, I think these Apollo and like Affinity sort of auto-populates their CRM. It pulls as scrapes, does a Google search scrapes all the relevant information, I qualifies it, you know. And he's like, you can buy this tool for like $12,000 a year. Um I think there's lots of stories. You've probably seen stories in climbing, there's lots of stories in classrooms. You know, those stories are starting to, people are starting to come across that more and more. And if you're astute, your mind immediately goes to like, this is just the beginning. Um how old is your oldest? Um 24. And the youngest is nine. Nine, okay. So I mean, even your 24-year-old, you know, you know, six, seven years from now, they're still the early part of their career. Um we've had AI for what, like three, three years now? Like LLM sort of in the general public. Um how do you so how do you think about that trajectory? I mean, like we've seen a lot of change, but there's a lot more to come. Like, how do you how do we sort of have a conversation that's coherent given the uncertainty?

J.C. Brizard:

It's funny, I spent some time with a Boston College professor in upstate New York um, gosh, two weeks ago, um, week and a half ago, and we're talking about this. And um he kept asking, what does it mean to be a student today? I said, no, what does it mean to be human today? How do we define what differentiates us from the machines, right? I think is the thing we have to keep thinking about. Um, what is it, what is the value add we bring? What is the human ingenuity to this work? That's what we have to make sure that we keep leaning on. Uh, because the machines are going to keep um iterating, getting better, um, behaving more human-like, taking more jobs and changing jobs. I'm thinking about even my own personal, like I just finished last week doing all of my my nine leadership team members' evaluation. Last year took last year took me, I don't know, 10 days to go through writing them, summarizing everything they've done for the year, etc. This year took me a day. Because I was using a tool, an AI tool, to help me with the summary, with the collecting of data from my archives, right? Um, because like we keep, we we meet once a month, twice a month, and I keep notes. I didn't have to mine all of them. I had yes, I had to be in the middle, make sure that it was accurate. But my work was made hugely easy or easier compared to that. So you think about everything else that's happening. Look, I'm a commercial pilot. I can tell you machine learning has been part of my world for a very long time. Uh, I fly a plane that can learn itself, right? I mean, not a 740, 757, or 737, a Sirius, right? A small four-seater. It's pretty fast for a four-seater. But that's been part of my world now for years. Um, and I remember when I moved from analog to digital and two giant iPads and I'm flying a plane at 200, 250 miles an hour. It's amazing. So it's gonna keep doing it, make it keep making our world safer as we do that. The question of what it means for that kind of lifelong understanding, how we keep making sure not just reinventing ourselves, but making sure we understand what it is to be human that differentiates us from the work. Do we not become afraid of the technology, that we embrace it as a tool to support us? That is the challenge. I used to show uh educators Andrew McAfee's videos, uh, they're coming for our jobs, and I would say, this is like 12, 13 years ago. Say, are you scared or are you excited? Um, and of course, million would say we can't we struggle with basic math proficiency. That is scary. Um but at the same time, I think what's been happening, which is what I think folks are even more afraid of, the the acceleration of attack is there. Um, the acceleration of the education pedagogy is not keeping up. And that's terrifying. The car I drive, I mean, I I own a I own a self-driving car. Uh, not a Waymore, but a self-driving car. Um, this thing took me home. I wasn't feeling well, 270 miles from Central California back home. I remember this story.

Alex Kotran:

You were like, you were at like a conference and you were like at 100, like four-degree fever or something crazy.

J.C. Brizard:

Yes, it was um a league of innovative schools. I had a high fever, it wasn't 104, I'd go to a hospital uh for sure. Um, and I had to get home. And uh I pressed summons, the car came to me and I got in the car and I pressed it. Yes, I had to stay awake and make sure that I was an integral part of the of the journey, but it took me home 270 miles. Um, so I mean, it's here. The world is here. What is what it means, frankly, for what we do and how we think about the future of work or the present of work, how we think about P12 and P16 work, all that becomes part of the way we have to uh really not just reinvent but accelerate the changes in education to catch up to what is happening in technology. Or as Andrew McAfee says, we're gonna leave a whole population of people behind. Um, that's what I I worry about, I worry about most.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, you haven't really what I what I haven't heard from you is this idea that, like, well, what we really need to do is make sure the kids are all using AI. And I'm not not to say that you don't believe that, because you've also said you can't ignore the technology. But you're talking about critical thinking, you're talking about I like this idea of like hard, durable skills as opposed to soft skills, um, being able to communicate or just like sort of problem solve. If I think about like Thomas's example, um, this this vibe coding app that he built, it's um there's a lot of troubleshooting and problem solving and, you know, agency built into that. And I would guess that he would say this idea of like agency comes up if you were to, if you were to be asked, like sort of like what's been most important in my role in my career. Folks outside of education might say, well, yeah, well, it it. I mean, like these things are all are all important. Are school teaching and centering critical thinking in curriculum? Like what does it look like today if you could just paint a picture?

J.C. Brizard:

Yeah. I mean, that's that's the challenge. I think look, and NCLB no child left behind in many ways we know now the curriculum. And so many of us are fixated on reading and math proficiency while we need to really quickly evolve to a broader definition of success, right? That's a big part of the challenge. We're still trying to catch up to 1975 and we need to be at you know at 2035, frankly. That's part of the work that we need we need to do in education. Um, when when you look at the work, first of all, and and that in I in a professor's on a regular basis, education is human development. Um, you can't remove the human in the loop to be part of the interaction. I'm watching these schools trying to replace folks with AI, etc. That's gonna be a dangerous, and I'm hoping a failed experiment, right? Because you can't outsource the educational work. So I argue that every system or every school needs to have a coherent instructional system. How are you thinking about curriculum, pedagogical practice, or instruction assessment being embedded in pedagogy and that loop remains? And how do you think about ubiquitous learning, what's happening at home and outside the school and within school? Um, I think the four walls of a school are really designed to be the socializing aspect of education. I said this nearly a decade ago in Aspen at the Aspen Institute, and people were like smiling and laughing at me. I'm like, nah, it's coming. I mean, the physical building becomes a place for socialization. Education is everywhere. Um, one, we have to capture that learning. I think AI can help us actually do that. Um, we need to understand how to graduate. Captured the learning in the sense of being able to measure. Well, or recognize the learning, right? Um, because the kids who are learning outside of school that is not recognized. We think sitting for a three-hour test is the way to do that, which is nonsense, right? We also understand that there is no such thing as neurotypical people. We're all neurodiverse. Todd Rose taught us that, right? Um, with his book, The End of Average. Yet everything is built around the average person, the three-hour test, the 40-minute period, that needs to completely be abolished. The Carnegie Foundation for the visual teaching is abolishing the Carnegie Unit, which since 1906 has conflated time and learning, right? So I think it's an amazing thing. Um, so when you look at the portrait of a graduate, right, now the states who are pushing this across the state. And look at the portrait, look what it says. Yes, it's academic, cognitive, but you see a lot of other stuff in there that is sometimes referred to as the doable skills. Also, the doable skills framework, I love, but it's too many of them, right? Because it's like to the wheel and it's like way too many. But what I'm talking about, they need to be scientifically based into the definition. We have a definition of powerful learning at digital promise that lists some of the key things like curiosity, agency, et cetera. But every word you find in that definition is scientifically linked to the learning sciences. It is not something someone invented, it is part of what we know about neuroscience. So, Inya, so when you think about coherent instructional system, one baking this idea of the portrait, one that looks at the non-academic in the academic, right? Um, then you can begin to understand the role of AI and technology in enabling that to actually happen. But the coherent system needs to be first and foremost. I'm meaning just name two school systems who do an amazing job of maybe this three, I can name, who are doing an amazing job of integrating the portrait into the every single day. Uh Tardega County, Alabama is one, right? Um, Fayette County in um um in Pennsylvania is is another. There's a few Pennsylvania districts who are doing this. One has this thing called the portrait of a Talbot, the dog, right? But when you walk into that school or the school system or the schools, every child knows what that is and what it means. If you ask them, Alex, show me how tenacity they show up in this art class, they will tell you. In Talladega, they they get so granular, they can tell you what this looks like Monday morning 9 a.m. fourth grade math class. It is embedded in the pedagogy, in the curriculum, in the units of study. Teachers own it, kids own it. Right? It is not the superintendent. She did her job. So my point very simply is that when you look at what we need to do, it needs to show up in a granular way in the fabric of schools to prepare kids for a future that we don't really understand yet what's going to happen. I did walk into a school into a school um a year ago, I want name where where one of the pathways was truck driving. I walked out with with like a pain in my stomach. I'm like, that job will disappear in about four years. Um these are high school kids. What are you preparing them for? So the idea of making sure that we're preparing young people to be malleable, um, to to really move and change and grow and navigate, that is the work for us in education.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, this idea of being granular, I think, is just alludes to it's easier said than done. You know, actually, and you're at Chicago Public Schools. I like so at New York City's 100,000 teachers, so CPS is probably what, 40,000?

J.C. Brizard:

And then 28,000 teachers. 28,000.

Alex Kotran:

Okay. It's a big human machine to move. Um, and so I think part of why we cling to assessments and specific standards and you know, learning outcomes, you know, subject by subject, is this that that feels like the one thing that we can measure. And you know, we also have just gone through this period of session with data. I think for good reason it's important to have data. But it's hard to think about data collection for something like critical thinking. Not impossible, but it's not something that's just intuitively going to happen without either a characteristic. And so with with Teladega, like what was the driver that went from you know, zero to you know, fourth period, you know, seven, you know, eight, eight thirty a.m. The student could tell you where tenacity is showing up.

J.C. Brizard:

So so the driver was not the summative state assessment, whether it be smarter balance or park. That was not the driver to making this happen. It was when you look at the design of the portrait, um, and it's done typically with community, with teachers, with students at the table design what they want the portrait to be. Just in the design process, you create agency and ownership of the work. So when you look at Tadega, there was a deliberate three-year process of integration that really involved the teachers and the students in really the design of the units of study. So that kind of, so it's not, you go slow to go fast, basically, right? It can't be a mandate to say you must do this, but you involve people so they understand why this is so critical and important. What is frustrating many educators is that we have not had the same investment in assessment. So this is where when you look at the conditions for powerful learning, it can't be put on the heads of teachers or principals, or for that matter, even the superintendent, right? So there is a um, as as Michael Fullen described, the outside, inside, the inside, outside story or the three stories of school reform. Where is the state house? Yes, the feds have a role. This is where perhaps I disagree with our our Secretary of Education. The feds have a role in this. The state have a bigger role in this in terms of setting the conditions for success. You think about the investment in assessment. We have we've made some investment in curriculum, like HQIM, or high-quality instructional materials. We've made investments in standards, and we did it with the common cost state standards. We have not had the same requisite investment in assessment. We said we have a myopic measuring tool against something we know is critical and important. But at the same time, when you look at ETS and their work with Carnegie and others, um, they are looking to do this. Right now, Carnegie just launched this high school redesign process, right? Um and when you look at the work they're trying to do, is to go back to the pivot, the fulcrum of education reform, which I think is the high school, and come back to what we have failed to scale and begin to remove the constraints, right? Um, let me give you a quick story, Alex. When I was at a high school in New York City, I kept staring at the regulation. And to get a Carnegie a credit in New York, Carnegie in New York City, New York State, you have to meet two criteria: mastery of content and seat time. So I called the commissioner's office and I say, what if you earn a failure? Meaning you come to school every single day or you have the minimal attendance and you fail the class. Do you have to sit for the class again? Or could you just demonstrate mastery? It's of course you can just demonstrate mastery. So I ran up to Joel Klein's office in India, like, look what I just discovered. And everybody around him, Joel, of course, I love Joel. He was bullish, like, yes, let's go do this. But everyone was like, slow down. Do you know what this means if you do this? Like, tell me. I said, summer school jobs, et cetera, are going to be lost. Um, so the bureaucracy clamped down on innovation, thereby not creating the conditions of that kind of powerful learning. Again, maybe I'm stretching this a bit, but when you think about the role of the system in creating those conditions, investment that we have to make in assessment, the feds can do this with NSF and IES. Let's get next generation assessments. Because right now, assessment is a thing, it's a place, it's an event. It does not really measure really learning. So one last quick, quick, quick story. My 13-year-old two years ago blew up map, you know, did it really well in mathematics. Last year it tanked. Like, what the hell happened? You know? Um, he goes, Oh, you mean that test? I don't care about that thing. You know, he never took the assessment seriously because he saw no value in it. Right. So if we change that, then we have a chance, frankly, and AI can actually help us get them.

Alex Kotran:

Your your anecdote about, you know, all the disruption that would have to happen in that school system to make even just like just one change, not all the change, but even just like one change. Um, so this is the challenge of school transformation, is it's like there's 14,000 school districts in the US. There's some states that can be quite impactful, top-down. Many states like, you know, in Ohio and Michigan, and I won't throw any more in the bus, but I can say in Ohio and Michigan for sure, it's it is not top-down. Colorado, same thing, right? Like there's there are mechanisms that the state can use and standards and all these things. Um but even with standards, right? Like Ohio created, you know, computer science standards to, I would say, like, mixed effective for being gratuitous. Um, you're going district by district, and each district has its own context. This is really, really hard. And this is why uh I was talking to somebody at um one of the big elite uh philanthropy consultancies. And I didn't realize this, but actually like K-12 philanthropy has decreased uh over the last 10 years. And I was like, well, what like what's behind that? I mean, the the need is more important than ever. And they're like, Yeah, but at these funders, they've been funding school transformation. And they're like 10 years later, they're seeing, you know, at maybe at best you could call it stagnant. I think actually the nape score suggests that it's even sort of a trend in the wrong direction. And there's this sense of like, well, we just can't. This is this is an impossible task. Let's focus on something where we can actually move the needle. Which brings us around back to this whole whole conversation about the dinner table, because I'm curious about how we can, I think our orgs do this really well. This is why we sort of are such kindred spirits, both you and I, but also AI edu and digital promise. Um, you know, our our readiness framework is just to sort of like, you know, uh give you some accolades. Like we really started with digital promise portrait of a graduate and your AI literacy framework. But you had the you had the portrait of a graduate that underpinned it. It wasn't just about, okay, what do we do with this AI thing? It was holistic. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna rather then pose this as a question. I don't want to make it a loaded question. I have a perspective. So maybe you can just refine it for me or maybe give me some feedback. So my my theory is people are having conversations about AI at the dinner table. They have a lot of concern about work and the future of careers. There's other stuff that they should be concerned about. AI companions and deep fakes might start to get up there. Not it's not quite there yet, but it will. Um, but jobs and careers, that is really what parents are asking about. Um how do we use this moment to, you know, while jobs are not the only point of school, you can actually justify a doubling down on all of the durable skills, a human advantage that you're talking about. We cannot directly connect that to success, post-secondary, and success in your career because these are now one of the same. Companies are are not going to pay you if you have some, if you have a skill that AI can do. They're gonna be looking for what do you add? What is the value that you add as a human? How can we sort of like basically harness that excitement, that energy towards moving the needle on systems change and like bringing in some of the people that maybe weren't showing up to the school board meetings, but now actually, you know what, they might come and the question is like, what how do we enlist them? Like, how do we enlist parents and maybe even policymakers that are wondering whether this is a sort of a legacy building moment for them?

unknown:

Yeah.

J.C. Brizard:

And so what you're describing is a level of frustration uh amongst parents and amongst funders, et cetera. But let me start with the first thing you push around funders. And as a former funder, uh, we need to take some responsibility for what we what funders are frustrated with, meaning funders taking some responsibility. One thing I heard very clearly at Gates as I traveled my communities and my portfolio was called the P16 community investment team. So we're much more on systems, design systems change. And we had a group tell us you guys fund programs. Then you expect systems change. That is so many of us in the funding world look for these magic elixirs, these silver bullets, or these one thing that will change is technocratic solutions to very complex problems and challenges, right? We have to take a step back and say, really, what are we for what were we funding to support the kind of transformation? So there is some level of responsibility on the part of funders as well for the frustration. But the frustration is real. And I completely agree. And this is where perhaps Linda McBenn and I align that trillions have been spent on education in the past X number of years without the results for it. Michael Fullen's about to publish a book, 50 Years of Education Reform, and we've not moved the needle. And the question is, first of all, what needle are we talking about? That's a part of the problem too. How do we define success? We don't have a good definition of success. And there are lots of reasons. But as I met with the Lego team in Denmark and they asked me to talk about US education and the balkanization that we see in this country. And Chicago is a perfect example of balkanization, right? Where, and that was our push. We can show this in Philadelphia, in Chicago. I can show you two kids to different parts of the city, vastly different outcomes based on traditional measures. And we know that has to do very often with the resource allocation. I don't mean money, but quality of teachers, quality of curriculum, quality of dollars coming into a system. I can show you in Chicago. When I got there, chemistry one in one part of the city was not chemistry one in the other part of the city. Yeah, standards changed that. So you can move a large system. It requires real strategy, not firefighting. We're taking a look at even if a state, yeah, I'm a big fan of Ohio, love that state chief. And um, my my good friend in Utah just retired, Signet Dixon. He's another powerhouse. When you look at these kinds of states who have a clear sort of, and they understand what we call strategic agility, how do you actually move up another system and pull the right levers to get to get things done without forcing just a top-down initiative? So it's possible. Joe Klein demonstrated that in New York City. He may not like what he did, but he moved that battleship with a paddle. He made it happen. It can happen, it can work, uh, but it requires deliberate action and deliberate um strategy. Um to the other parts, I think um, and I'm losing my train here, but the second part of your of your push around the table, parents, et cetera.

Alex Kotran:

Connecting connecting the the this like new wave of interest in the future of work to creating more of the conditions for the good exemplars that you've shared. Because there's lots of different people behind it. Like, is there like a a big sort of public awareness campaign or like like and who matters to this? Because you know, most people would say, Well, I don't know a superintendent that I could talk to. Um, like who's impactful in sort of like pushing schools in the direction that you're describing?

J.C. Brizard:

It's it's that's a great point. You know, I think that's missing right now, frankly, in America, right? So, like, who's the voice? Who are the voices of this conversation, especially given the fact that the feds are looking to the evolution, saying that we no longer own this, the states need to own this. It is a is that a critical inflection point in education in this country where things are moving faster than we are keeping up with, without that coherent and cogent voice. Again, you may not like Arnie Duncan or what happened with race of the topic, et cetera, but there was clear, clear voice coming out of Washington, right? We don't have that right now and we need that desperately. Um when when people tell me they are frustrated with public education and they're looking for alternatives, right? I mean, the vast majority of parents in this country go to public education, right? They can't afford to go elsewhere. So it is still the place to make the changes that can be, that can be happening. I know groups like AAA, the Association for American School Superintendents are trying to figure out. I was part of a group that helped design their new sort of uh framework around education. So all that requires leadership in terms of really articulating the next framework that we need to worry about. And that framework needs to take a look at the granular work of curriculum of instruction of pedagogy, leaning on the portrait of a graduate that really builds a human ingenuity into work that embraces technology. It helps us understand the role of AI in education, right? Without outsourcing our work to the machines, right? But it requires that kind of deliberate understanding of the major levers we have not pulled. Investment and assessment, redefining success, um, the redefining an accountability framework, which right now is very myopic, right? Um, when I was in Rochester, New York as a superintendent, my blue ribbon, my only blue ribbon school, my best school in the city, World of Inquiry School number 58, right? Was an EL school, expeditionary learning school. They focus a lot on what we call now the portrait. Their reading and math scores were above 90 percentile proficience for the entire school, 78% poverty. They didn't focus on the test, they focus on on developing the capacity of young people. I watched a fourth grader lead morning meeting for the entire school. You walk out there, you're crying because to see a kid that old, you know, 10-year-old leading four or 500 people in conversation, right? That does not come from focusing on just reading and math proficiency, is building the kind of human ingenuity I'm talking about. So we know how to do this. The question is, how can we execute on that at scale? That is the challenge for us.

Alex Kotran:

Our organization is very focused on the grassroots and sort of like building that like the field game, as it were. And what I keep hearing, I I'm hearing you center leadership. And I and I have to say, like, that there is it's not that it's missing. There's there are a lot of amazing leaders out there. I think what's missing is AI is so novel and it's been gatekeep. I mean, when I started in AI, when I when I founded AIDU six years ago, six and a half years ago, um, there's some funders who quizzed me, they're like asked me like you know, technical questions, which I actually I got one wrong. It was really embarrassing. And that has been the vibe. You know, it's like, well, this is really this is for the technologists. Like, we're gonna figure this out. And even think that the biggest AI company, some of the biggest AI companies, so there's like this this laser focus on AGI. It's kind of like we don't even have to worry about sort of like these interim challenges because we're going to this other place. It's so you can't even I this is kind of the rhetoric, right? It's like you can't really even imagine what it's gonna be like. You have to take our word for it. And it's very chilling if you're a school leader and you you want to take action, um, but you feel like you don't have the depth. I don't know that we've quite even cracked the code on like how do you equip because the superintendent can't sit is not gonna be able to sit through 20 or 30 hours of PD. A small number might be able to, but most will not. How do we cultivate that next generation of leaders who who understand this is a legacy once-in-a-generation moment? This is a thing you're gonna be telling your grandkids about. They have that desire, but they feel frozen in terms of, well, I don't feel like I am equipped to dictate what to do. And then so you lean on these, you know, tool providers who have lots of ideas about what you should be doing, but it's not necessarily very, very different from what you're describing.

J.C. Brizard:

Where, yeah, where do we start? So I don't want to rely on the next generation of leaders first. We don't have the the luxury because the world is changing too quickly. We have a cadre of leaders, yes, we have many good ones, but we have folks not picking up the ball. And and I said this to the secretary that even the state strategy, there's some amazing state chiefs, and we name some, right? Ohio, Utah, et cetera. But the vast majority, the well, the majority of states are compliance machines. They're not innovation machines. And how do we change that? We have a cadre of leaders now we've got to push to understand, andor we need to provide the kind of support to the systems to catch up and move quickly. Otherwise, the folks who are frustrated with public education are gonna find ways to bypass teachers, to bypass schools, right? Um, and that I think is gonna be a disaster for many of our kids, especially the kids who don't have access to these places or to be left behind, which is gonna create the kinds of issues, this the sort of moral fabric of our country will continue to decline, right? Um, that is part of my worry that what you're seeing in many parts of the world right now, around this leaning toward fascism, is because many of these folks do not have access to economic mobility. So they're angry. And you McAfee predicted this back 13 years ago, where you compared two white guys. Um, one is a blue-collar truck driver, one is a white-collar Silicon Valley tech person, right? One is thriving and one is tanking. Um, we've got to worry about with the future of work, we have to worry about making sure the access is not just around race um lines, it's around economic lines, right? Rural Ohio, rural Pennsylvania, rural Alabama is as important as what's happening in Manhattan, New York, right? So we've got to make sure that our systems are prepared for this. And the leaders we have right now, we've got to push them and make it happen. Sometimes it requires the kind of work you do and even convenings or working with regions, which I think frankly might be the solution. How do you think a regional cluster of leaders and build a capacity to really understand one, the work of education, right? A coherent instructional system and the work of technology in accelerating and supporting. Um, we have to help create coherence in the ways in which we approach reform. And that might be being done with the kind of work you do in regions, the work we do, the digital privacy in regions around the country. One last thing very quickly. I was in Uruguay uh maybe six, seven weeks ago. I saw a nation that is moving. Um, and they what the first thing they did was to close the digital gap. Then they closed the digital learning gap. Um now they're moving computational thinking across the country. Uh I saw it.

Alex Kotran:

Really CT specifically, not specifically.

J.C. Brizard:

Yes. I they took our framework of digital promise and they build a scoping sequence around it. We we saw the policy, we saw the the national conversation, then we visited classrooms and we saw the through line, right? This is happening across an entire country, a tiny country in South America. They have closed in, they're closing the gap. They're about to build an AI lab for the nation. Um, and so they they think great large, and what they did, by the way, was create this organization called SEBAO. I call it a cousin organization to a digital promise because we do very similar things. Um, this organization is not the Ministry of Education. It has three board members: the president of SEBAO, the Minister of Education, and the Minister of Finance. The president of the country appoints the president of Sebal. So three individuals, and their job is to agitate and to demonstrate and to make happen with support from the ministry, but their job is to push on the ministry. The finance minister provides his support and funding to make it happen. They're becoming quickly the envy of the world because they have done it. We can, we're the most powerful country in the world. If you can do it, we can do it here.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, I I I just wrote this very long. All my pieces are long. It's how I think. I just write if I don't write it down, um, it's hard for me to get it. Which is a whole separate segue about I've learned a lot about the future of work as I've failed to use AI to write. It can actually, it can write quite well, but it doesn't I don't get an I don't get I don't benefit from the process. Um and one of the things that uh that I sort of like just sort of fell into as I was kind of looking, I was writing about the American AI Action Plan. And I was around for like the very like when I got into the AI space was right after the US-China pivot. This is like 2017 um National Security Council, you know, like like formerly now China is a competitive risk. Uh Huawei was added to the um special entities, what's it called? Uh there's there's a list of like companies, companies you're not gonna be able to get. Um and in that year, China put out this big push on AI and education. The next year, 2018, they they put out an action plan for artificial intelligence and education, I think in higher education. Um and you know, as I was sort of going through this process and sort of like the going through the translation and they do a control left to see like how many times you know, education, a workforce and like reskilling are mentioned. And it's like all throughout the document. Um and I had this realization that like, you know, we've you know, and then Biden comes in, the Biden administration is very it's still a line. They capped the um uh uh uh the export controls on like semiconductors, um, essentially maintained course. But there wasn't as much of this. Uh I I think that there was a reticence to really lean into like the US-China conflict as a driver. And certainly we did not, you know, we were we thought we thought about this a lot, like, oh, is this something we pitched to funders? Is like we were in a race against China. And and at the time, me and my team were of the opinion that this is bad vibes, right? Like we're trying to we're talking to educators, to school leaders, coming in and trying to like paint this in this like broad geopolitical, you know, uh like zero sum frame. Just what wasn't didn't what that wasn't our brand. Um but I feel like now the the US government has made it very clear with the American AI action plan that this is, I mean, like the the preamble is explicit. It's like we are in a race. Um I suppose there's a question of like, oh, should we push back? And I don't think our organizations, that's not what we do, right? We're not we're not so there's the whole political strategy, but absent that, this is the status quo. But hearing you talk, I feel like there's maybe there is some power in this because like if we're trying to really motivate leaders, a little bit of competition, maybe even a lot of competition, like that might be something that is sort of gets them out of their seat. And I wouldn't uh but what you're describing isn't necessarily US China geopolitics, you're even describing like you know, Ohio and Michigan, you know, maybe it actually is okay for them to feel a little bit of pressure. Like, do we really want to be behind? Um, and that actually is what happened in Michigan. They we we have this like statewide strategy in Ohio, and Michigan's like, we we could totally do that. Like, what what's what's required? The answer is we just need a line, do we just need literally leaders to step up, initially philanthropy and civil society, and then yeah, and then in Michigan, especially it's like Detroit Public Schools and then the long tail of rural districts.

J.C. Brizard:

But I mean, Alex, the parts of this country where they work is easier, right? So like New York, like New York, for example, has what over seven or eight hundred school districts. A little harder. Illinois, too many school districts. I mean, it can be done, but much difficult, more difficult. You go to Rhode Island, you know, you can fit the entire state in the conference room. And Helica will tell you that. And um, at one point I was a finalist for the state job in in Rhode Island. In my research, I discovered, I think like 70% of teachers came from one university, from one college in the state.

Alex Kotran:

University of Rhode Island?

J.C. Brizard:

Uh I forgot which one it was. It was not Brown. But I but I can tell you that once you discovered that, my God, if I change, if I work with the School of Education on pre-service, I can impact the lives of 70% of my teachers, right? So there are places like that in America where you can demonstrate quick movement around reform. And it would have been describing in in a much, much more cogent, cogent place. So it can be done. Um, this thing with with China, by the way, so we've had, I think, in my opinion, many Sputnik moments after Sputnik. We've not captured them, or it's not been as some examples. I mean, look, this this some of it has been soft. Let's use China as the example, right? Um, where they're quickly becoming the the world leader in technology, right? So it's not like a moment, but several small moments. What someone used to describe as the boil boil frog syndrome, which frogs by the way don't sit in the water, they'll jump right up. Um, but but when you think about it, it hasn't been as marked um as as pronounced. I was part of a discussion last week in Aspen um with the Aspen Institute and the China Fellowship was there. We're all talking about China at their at their threat or they're frankly on something you learn from. I mean, China at one point in history was top of the world in GDP, right? Then he went through a few hundred years of extremism. So you went quite far back, but yes, yeah. Poverty, right? In 30 years, they've moved 800 million people out of poverty.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, the average GDP uh in China, this was like uh around like, I think Deng Xiaoping uh early on in his tenure, it was like $200 per capita.

J.C. Brizard:

You look now, I mean, yes, I mean it's flattening out a little bit, but my point is that love or hate China, whatever you want to do, right, there's a lesson there that we need to learn. As a nation, as the most powerful country in the world, we can make it happen for poor people. And we have to understand that we're never gonna be really successful until the poorest part of our country actually move forward. But the bottom line is when you look at the work of against states and regions, um, it can be done in a way that is can demonstrate success. I don't know what's gonna happen with Mo Green in North Carolina, but the last state chief, I know more from his work in Guildford, but the last state chief was somebody we were talking to, quite progressive as well. North Carolina is one to watch if they keep moving in that direction. I'm heading to a rally in about a month to talk to leaders in Rally on the research triangle. So they are parts of the country who are pushing. Let me come back to Pittsburgh. Uh, our last League of Innovative Schools meeting was in Pittsburgh. 13 school systems supported by the Gribble Foundation are banded together to create a regional innovation hub. I mean, so it we have these catalysts in America, but we have not really learned how to leverage them in a way that pushes the kind of scale we're talking about. And this is where I'm begging our secretary. This is the kind of leadership that we need from Washington. Yes, do whatever you want with the money, et cetera, you know, but support these kinds of regional hub. The state of Alabama is doing amazing work around cybersecurity with the Walton Foundation and our team. Uh, you've got these things happening in the US. We've got to highlight them, we've got to leverage them for scale reform in this country.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, and I wanna the good interviews. What I've learned is um the key to being a really good interviewer is to just have a good, a good guest um with a lot to say. Um so the time flew by. Um I do want to close with a bit of a call to action. I'm gonna be explicit. I think you and I can be explicit because we've we've done this work together. I think we both have a clear view of like what needs to be done. I've had a several meetings of the White House talking about the A literacy, executive order. And, you know, I I don't know what the chances are of shifting their perspective. It seems quite clear. Like they see this as something for states to lead on and public-private partnerships. And then you have, you know, like in Oregon, Nvidia partnering with the Department of Education. And the headline was like, you know, uh, it was it was like a this big flashy headline, but then you look into it, it's like, no, this is NVIDIA's deep learning institute, which is NVIDIA's thing. It's like this is training people to be in the NVIDIA ecosystem. That is not what you are describing. That is a that is that is capture, right, by technology companies. Not saying NVIDIA shouldn't be working in in Oregon. That's great. It's good, but it's like they can't be the only organization, you know, only company. Um, so you have these, you have, you have education philanthropy. Um, sure, maybe there's some learnings to be had from the last 20 or 30, 40 years. Um, but now it's, you know, like it or not, they're being handed, you know, this incredible responsibility. You know, our organizations I think work together quite well because we we're just complimentary, we're just so complementary. It's like we don't have the bandwidth to be in Pittsburgh. And I think the way that you've designed your frameworks, Porsche of a graduate, the way we've designed our framework, the idea is to be able to go to a school if they're working with Digital Promise, if they're in the League of Innovative Schools, it's not choosing a framework. There's lots of frameworks. And I think some of this sense is like, who's going to win the framework battle? It's like we're just now trying to figure out how do we make it as interoperable as possible? Because like what we want to be able to do is go to a school and say, whatever you've done, that is awesome. Let's help, let's identify what else you need to do to keep moving forward. And so setting up exemplars, we're, we're aligned, right? Like we need more of them. Um, how do we like like how do we convince philanthropy that yes, investing in tools and AI for blank, it's it's important. And we need just like we need philanthropy to balance, you know, corporate investment in education, we also need them to balance corporate investment in the tooling. But how do we get them to sort of like widen their aperture and really think about like the systems change, investing on the ground, investing in leaders, investing in direct program work? You mentioned pre-service. I mean, it's like there's a lot of like really ripe areas. And I am not hearing as many funders as you'd expect, like identifying those. And it's not because they don't believe it. I think they're still see themselves as in learning mode. And it's like, how do we shift them out of this like, you know, sitting back and like waiting for the world to happen to like really seeing themselves as like, I'm going to lead back to your sort of sort of the thesis of this whole conversation.

J.C. Brizard:

And I asked, and they are, there are many funders I know who think broader and bigger. They still have a layer of accountability that they have to have with the money they're giving away, but they do think about the bigger, broader uh picture. When I was a geese, there was something that Warren Buffett used to say to the all-hands meeting once a year that I've never forgotten. You go swing for the fences. You guys can do this. Um, you can afford to do this. So swing for the fences. I mean, I always took that to heart. Um, it's something that I've always believed around. It's taking bigger, taking broader. And it's a fund I'm dealing with right now. I love talking to her because she sees things even beyond where I see it. Like, oh my God, yes, let's think five years down the road. How are we going to b fix this, this, this work in this ocean? Also, don't expect a single funder to be able to do that. Let's be clear about that too. I think no one can do research or fund research like the US government. That's what's made us who we are as a country. Um, and and I'm really hoping that, you know, as we move forward, um, Natural Science Foundation, IES, yes, we need to be retooled. There's no question about that. And we don't forget, frankly, our place in research in the world. Let me just maybe say one more thing that I heard last week in Aspen with my friend Patrick Aua, who's a Makarta genius, created a session university, gave up his leadership career at Microsoft and moved to back to Ghana to his home and build an amazing university. He said we have to um scale to the size of the problem. And no one institution can do that. It's gotta be a collective. And this is where I think AIEDU, digital promise, and others working together can make a difference in the world. Um, but we have to bend together. And I want to push on funders, maybe a call to action for funders too. And I've always loved this idea of funder collaborative. Um, and when funders get together around a BHAG, a big hairy problem, right? And you get the right nonprofits together to work together and doing this kind of work, even for profits, you can get somewhere. Yes, I love what Nvidia is doing. I like the fact that OpenAI is partnering with the AFT around Teacher Academy, but it can't be bespoke. It can't be about a single product line, right? Because you got you got Google, you got others who are doing amazing work in this space. This has to be about education, not about NVIDIA, not about OpenAI, right? If that makes sense. Um, so that's an important piece. But this idea of funders coming together as a collaborative and supporting big Harry Challenges in education, and sometimes do so with the US government. We've done projects with NSF, Gates, Walton, etc. We need, we so desperately need more of that.

Alex Kotran:

Yeah, and this is, I mean, and you know, folks can look at our organization's funders for, you know, like the there's a a very like there's a there's a good cohort of early movers who sort of have that bigger lens. And there's a lot of funder collaterals. You've actually, I know you've spoken at probably many of them. Um, so it's not, it's the the reality that doesn't to me seem like funders are not doing their job or they're they're they're they're failing. It's it's that we're still in sort of this moment and the question is still what's gonna happen. Um I guess moving together de-risks it. It also allows you to achieve the scale because funders are they're they're maybe they're not that big, right? Like New York City public schools, what is the budget? Like 40 billion? Is it that much now? It was 28 with that left. I think it's 40. I think it's 40 billion. So you see this like 23 million dollars, you know, like that's a big headline, and that's and that's also for leasing space in New York City. So I don't know what the what the lease is gonna cost. Um so uh yes, this this idea of sort of like how do we bring everybody together? Um I mean for folks who are listening, if they're if they're in, you know, curious, and I would say, you know, JC is the person to talk to if you really want to have a sense of like what is possible. Um your organization is not new to AI. Um and and yet you're not a techie. You're tech you're tech literate, you're a tech forward, you're an innovation innovative thing, but you're an educational person and you're a teacher. Yes. Um, and that's why we need as you know, this is why I was so excited to have you on the show, and this is why we need we going back to sort of this this idea of like building leaders, like if you're as if you're a school principal, if you're a teacher, if you're a school board member, if you're a superintendent, like this is your moment. Yeah. Um it really is. It really is.

J.C. Brizard:

I see. And it requires collaboration amongst them as well, too. Right. Thank you.

Alex Kotran:

Um excellent, that was awesome.

J.C. Brizard:

Thank you.

Alex Kotran:

It's a bit easy.