This transcript is generated with the help of AI and is lightly edited for clarity.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
We’ve been known as the school with no teachers. I will say we don’t call our teachers “teachers”, we call them guides. Their sole focus is motivational and emotional support and mentorship. We’ve finally enabled that role to be transformed. Artificial intelligence is enabling us to raise human intelligence and really bring more humanity back into the classroom, allowing the teachers to be able to focus on what I believe almost all teachers get into the field to do. But, boy, is it hard to get the average public to get on board.
REID:
Hi, I’m Reid Hoffman.
ARIA:
And I’m Aria Finger.
REID:
We want to know how, together, we can use technology like AI to help us shape the best possible future.
ARIA:
We ask technologists, ambitious builders, and deep thinkers to help us sketch out the brightest version of the future—and we learn what it’ll take to get there.
REID:
This is Possible.
REID:
When MacKenzie Price graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s in psychology, she had no intention in pursuing a career in education. Then her young daughters told her that school was boring, and everything changed.
ARIA:
MacKenzie started doing research. What was the science behind the traditional eight-hour school day? What if the structures we’ve built around learning—like age-based grade levels, and one-size-fits-most curricula—simply aren’t designed for the world that kids are coming of age in today? And what might it look like to start from scratch? What began as MacKenzie and her husband Andrew’s quest to find a more engaging way for their kids to learn has—a decade later—evolved into a fast-growing network of AI-powered private schools—along with a movement to fundamentally change what going to school looks like.
REID:
MacKenzie co-founded the first accredited Alpha campus in Austin, Texas, in 2016 and launched several more locations across Texas and Florida. She also co-founded the AI tutor software 2 Hour Learning, which Alpha students use for two hours a day to learn core academic subjects—without human teachers. Students spend the rest of the day pursuing passion projects and learning life skills, from cooking and debating to triathlon training and playdate planning.
ARIA:
And so far, the results appear promising: Alpha says its students score in the top 1-2% nationally, with over 90% reporting that they love going to school. They’re developing AI-powered mental health tools, testifying before Congress, and launching social movements—all before graduating from high school. In 2025, Alpha has announced a dozen new locations across the U.S. from New York City to Raleigh to San Francisco. Supporters—including prominent technologists who send their kids there—see the Alpha model as the future of personalized learning and the reform we so badly need.
REID:
But MacKenzie’s approach to K-12 education has also sparked fierce debate. Critics call it a “Silicon Valley fever dream” that could drain resources from already underfunded public schools. The debate is important, but I strongly believe that her approach is the path to our much more elevated and human future of education. Today, MacKenzie joins us to talk about launching and scaling AI-first schools across the U.S., along with what it actually looks like for students to grow up learning with AI.
ARIA:
MacKenzie, it is so great to have you here.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I am so excited to be here.
ARIA:
One of the things that I am definitely most excited about for AI is the transformation of education. So, I want to go back because you didn’t set out to create a school when you were at Stanford studying. And this all started, I think, because your daughter said that school was boring and you wanted to do something about that. So, take us back to that time, and how that was the jumping off point for Alpha School.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I will. Well, when I was at Stanford, I can tell you it definitely was not in my prediction deck that I was going to be starting a school because I hated school growing up. I was one of those kids who was really good at school. I knew how to jump through the hoops, I knew how to get the grade, but I hated school, and I was so excited when I got into the working world. But yeah, when it was time for my girls to go to school, we sent our kids down the street to our local public school, which is considered a fantastic school district in Texas. And so to be clear, I think—when it comes to traditional school—it was top-notch. But what I found—and I think this is true—is that we deliver these five- and six-year-old students to school, and they are so curious and excited.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
But very quickly, I just saw the light starting to go out in my daughter’s eyes. And halfway through second grade, she came home from school one day, and she said, “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.” And I looked at her and I was like, “What do you mean? You love school.” And she just looked at me and she’s like, “School is so boring.” And I just had this moment of, “Oh my goodness, in two-and-a-half years they’ve taken this tailor-made, excited kid and they’ve knocked that passion out of her.” And I saw the future, which was going to be what I was. Like, be a good soldier, do what you’re supposed to do, but it’s not exciting. Think about the amount of time that our kids spend in a classroom over 13 years—five days a week, nine months a year.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And when you think about the motivation model that we give to kids, we literally tell this five-year-old kid, “Okay, you’re going to go to school. You’re going to learn how to sit quietly. You’re going to learn how to raise your hand, ask permission to go to the bathroom, or get up to get ketchup at the lunchroom. And you’re going to do this for 13 years. You’re pretty soon—within a couple years—you’re going to start also doing work at home every night. And by the time you’re in high school, that’ll be two to four hours of work. And if you’re really good, and you do a great job, you might get to grind it out for four more years in college.”
REID:
Amen. And you’ve been making an argument, very similar to a point that I’ve made, that America’s educational system has hardly changed since the Industrial Revolution. And that, as AI changes the world around us, so we can view that as a threat or as an opportunity. So tell us more about that, and then maybe also briefly bring us up to speed on what you see as the state of K-12 education in the U.S. right now.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Well, Reid, I think great minds really think alike, which is when we do look back at history, our education system hasn’t changed in almost 250 years. The Industrial Revolution came about. We had to figure out, “How do you educate the masses, and how do you raise compliant, good citizens who will do the work that was needed?” And there were a lot of great things, and I think there was a lot of great motivation for that model, because it did figure out how to not just have education be for the elite. But it wasn’t necessarily focused on human flourishing and helping every single person unlock their potential. And so I am telling you there’s never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old, and there’s never been a better time to be a teacher. But what we have to do is be willing to embrace the technology that is now available to us that allows us to truly meet every single student exactly where they’re at. And that’s what artificial intelligence is allowing us to do in the classroom. And we’re doing it at our schools.
ARIA:
For those of us who perhaps didn’t read the New York Times article about you—or any of the press that’s coming out—take us through what makes Alpha School special. From what I understand, students spend the first two hours of the day learning core subjects from AI tutors, on the 2 Hour Learning apps, and there’s no human teachers. And then they spend the rest of the day focused on passion projects, and that can be cooking or entrepreneurship. Is that right? And what is the special sauce that makes Alpha School different?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Yes. So, going back to when I realized I needed to get my daughters out of their traditional school experience, I knew it wasn’t about just switching schools or going to a private school from a public school. I realized it was very much that traditional teacher-in-front-of-the-classroom, time-based system that was the problem. And so I looked around and I said, “Okay, let’s do something.” And the question is, if we were going to reimagine education from the ground up, what is it that we believe? And first and fundamentally, I believe kids are limitless, and it is a school’s job to build an environment that unlocks their potential. Then the next question is, if you build this environment where you’re holding kids to high standards—because I believe high standards are really critical and should be true for everyone—and, key here, also provide high levels of support and mentorship, then the question becomes, “How high is high? What is possible? And what can kids do when they’re met with high standards and high support?” And the answer is Alpha School. And so you are correct. Our students—even though it’s a full-time in-person school—what we’re able to do is we have a personalized learning platform that provides the pace and level of academic education to meet every single child where they’re at. So one of the huge advantages of that is that we can take a kid who shows up to us in the tenth percentile—which by the way, most private schools would be like, “We can’t take that kid, they’re too far behind,”—or we can take a kid who’s in the 95th percentile and is sitting bored in a traditional classroom, and we can tailor our lessons to be able to match what that student needs.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
A couple of things that are important, that I think people get confused—and the New York Times article even implies—is, we don’t use chatbots. So, our AI platform is really a behind-the-scenes measurement tool that is guiding students efficiently and effectively through that. And as a result, in only two hours a day, our students are crushing their academics. Here’s the secret sauce, which is, we’re giving kids their most valuable resource back, which is time. Instead of having to sit in class all day doing academics at lunchtime, kids get to go do all these fun things. And the big question that we always ask is, “Well, what would we want people to learn when they have all this extra time?” And, pretty unanimously, people want kids to learn life skills. Things like leadership, and teamwork, and communication, and socialization, and grit.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
How to deal with failure, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, storytelling, and public speaking. And so our afternoons are filled with workshops that are project-based, collaborative, teamwork-type things. They get tons of time with each other—and with our teachers. Even though we’ve been known as the school with no teachers—I will say we don’t call our teachers teachers, we call them guides. And the reason is because they’re not doing any academic teaching. Their sole focus is motivational, and emotional support, and mentorship, and really helping answer that question of, how high is high? What are kids capable of? We’ve finally enabled that role to be transformed so that instead of having to spend their time on lesson planning, and lecturing, and grading papers, and homework, and trying to figure out how in the world they’re going to possibly meet 20 plus students who are all at wildly varied levels. Instead, they spend their time saying, “I got to get to know Aria, and I got to get to know Reid,” and understand what makes them tick, and what do they get excited about. And when they get frustrated, what do they say to themselves? And how can we help them adopt a growth mindset and take on whatever challenge they’re doing? It’s the way I wish I’d spent my growing-up years.
ARIA:
I want to dig into that two hours. Because I feel like when I talk about my excitement about AI and personalized education, people are always like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve heard about MOOCs, we’ve heard about all of these things for years and years that sort of tech was supposed to deliver, and it’s failed.” And so what’s happening in those two hours that makes it so magical? And then I’ll also add, is this only enabled by the latest and greatest in AI—since ChatGPT was launched, and LLMs—because you’ve been doing this for a lot longer?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
We have. So there’s quite a bit that goes into kind of answering that question. First of all, EdTech has long been promised as this holy grail solution—for 15 plus years—and it’s never delivered. And “EdTech” is not the solution. For example, our platform is great. We built a really good platform, but it would not work if you just handed it to a kid and said, “Here you go.” The key is that we’re building in that whole motivational model that gets a motivated student. Because 90% of what creates a great learner is having a motivated student. If you have a kid who’s not going to even engage on the computer, they’re not going to learn. There’s nothing I can do to get that. But when you combine the ten percent that technology provides—which is giving kids those personalized lessons that match them at their specific rate and speed of learning—and you combine it with the motivation model that we have in our systems, that’s where the magic happens.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
When I started the first school in 2014, we were using apps—things like Khan Academy, IXL—but we didn’t have the scaffolding in place that now our AI platform provides us. That makes sure that when a student goes into their two-hour learning session, we basically have them do a Pomodoro technique where they take 25 minutes and they say, “Okay, my first 25-minute session, I’m going to go to math,” and I click on a button and it takes me directly to the lesson, and the specific app, that we have determined is best for that child based on where they’re at. And then make sure they’re going through it. And then what our AI is doing is, it’s analyzing, “How quickly is a student moving through this information? Are they reading the explanation when they get a question wrong, or are they just guessing?” And then it can provide coaching to them of how they can learn better.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
The other thing that’s so incredible about what’s happening in education now is we can finally take all of those learning science principles that for 40 years people have known can result in kids learning two, five, ten times faster, and we can implement them. So, for example, we can make sure that we are never overworking a kid’s working memory. Because if you start overworking that working memory, it turns down learning. And then the other option is if it takes Reid only five reps of a concept to learn that concept, he shouldn’t have to sit through ten reps. And if I need 15 reps of a concept, I shouldn’t only get ten reps. And it also makes assessing a student so much more valuable, because when we give that student a standardized assessment, we can feed the results of that assessment back into our AI system and personalize learning plans. But when you can give kids the ability to actually have success—and we call them confidence anchors—not only do they become more confident in that subject, but then when they’re going and tackling something else hard, they have that connection of, “You know what? I’m 99th percentile in math. I bet you I can crush my English if I put my time and attention to that too.”
REID:
I recently saw a framing from an Alpha grad who went on to study math at Stanford—our mutual alma mater—that said, “AI is to learning science, what the microscope was to biology.” What you’re doing at Alpha school is the wedge that all educational institutions are going to have to go through. I mean, you’re literally the advanced scouts, because it’s the best learning, teaching, assessment technology invented in human history. So, what have been some of the key lessons with AI so far?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
It’s like doing a CT scan of a child’s brain, being able to understand what they know and they don’t know. There’s so many different variables that you can’t control for in a traditional classroom. Because you’ve got kids who are all at different levels. You’ve got teachers who are better than others. And so it’s really hard to know what they learn. But when we can now take this information, it’s constantly assessing, “Does this child know this? Do they not know it? Do we need to hop back and fill in a different hole? What do we do?” And that’s what’s so exciting about it. But the big thing that I just think you can’t underscore enough is the human element. And artificial intelligence is enabling us to raise human intelligence, and really bring more humanity back into the classroom, allowing the teachers to be able to focus on what I believe almost all teachers get into the field to do.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
They want to make a positive impact on the next generation, but then they get so overburdened with the enormity of the job, and the fact that they’ve really been given a bucket with holes in it and told to empty the ocean—it’s so impossible. And that’s part of the reason we see teachers leaving the field in droves. And I also believe that if a child doesn’t want to do reading for three months because they like math more? No, we’re going to make sure you do some reading as well. So actually that was an early, early on, lesson that I learned. We had a first-grade student who loved math. He was doing eighth-grade-level math, but he needed his guide to read the math problems to him because he hadn’t been reading! And a couple months in, we’re like, “Yeah, no.” This is where we got into this idea, in fact, that’s where the 2 Hour Learning came up, is that it’s 25 minutes of math, 25 minutes of reading, 25 minutes of language, 25 minutes of science, and then an extra 20 minutes to do whatever subject you feel like you want to work on more. I do believe we are at the forefront of innovation and education, but boy, is it hard to get the average public to get on board.
REID:
I published a book at the beginning of the year called Superagency, and part of it is because when you look at how people encounter new technologies, especially AI, they experience it first as a loss of agency. So it’ll be a loss of agency for the teacher—”I’m being replaced.” A loss of agency for the student—”I no longer have to stretch myself, and do things, and grow my capabilities. I can become a mediocrity, and just use this cognitive crutch in order to do stuff.” And so part of the thing that we need to do as leaders is to help people understand this has been the way human beings have responded to new technology forever. We had Socrates being unclear on the written word. Like, “Oh, this is a dangerous thing.” So you have to say, “No, no, we embrace this technology and help it make us more human. Technology does that all over the place. You know, I am wearing glasses! Before glasses, think about the loss of human agency and human vision.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Yeah. And that’s what we say is, our students understand that AI gives them superpowers. And they’re not superpowers to cheat, they’re superpowers to increase even what they’re able to do. And I think in this new world we’re in, it’s no longer about the three Rs of reading, and writing, and arithmetic. It’s now about the four Cs. It’s critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity. In the afternoons, as part of our workshops that we do, not only are kids getting to do things like triathlons, and bike races, and firefighting challenges, and wilderness survival training, but they’re also getting to learn how to use AI tools that are going to supercharge them. And you think about that—how every one of us in the working world today is having to learn, “Okay, how can I use AI to help me be more effective and better at my job?” And one of the things we’re teaching our students is that things like ChatGPT are terrible writers, but they’re fantastic feedback partners. And when you’re practicing your speech that you’re giving, or a TED Talk, there are some really incredible AI tools that can help you with intonation, and pacing, and understanding your filler words. And, by the way, just be a friendlier audience than getting up in front of 50 people for the first time.
REID:
100% percent. And just to build on something you said earlier, it’s not only does the competence lead to confidence, but then the confidence leads to competence. It’s a growing virtuous cycle. Well, you could say, “Hey, I’m not going to get in the car, I’m only going to walk into town.” Well, it’s going be very, very long journeys.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And hot in Austin, Texas, where I am in July, that’s for sure. Well, and I think the other thing that’s really, when people notice again, that ability to add more humanity to our day. This was a scary thing, I just read this research—and tell me if you can guess—how much time does the average school teacher get one-on-one with their students per day? Each student?
ARIA:
Five minutes.
REID:
I was going to go with ten.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
22 seconds. 22 seconds! But think about it, when we were all growing up in class, you might get a chance to go up to the teacher and say, “Hey, I was noticing this,” or, “Can you give me an extension on my homework,” or whatever. That’s it. And in our classes, our guides get 30-minute, one-on-one meetings every week with their students. Plus the individual time throughout the day. And our guide’s job is to really help build the life skill of learning how to learn, so that there’s more, really, agency. And I think that is a skill that is only going to get more and more valuable in our world, especially when you think about the fact that we have access to basically all knowledge right at our fingertips in the form of our phones.
ARIA:
So, I want this to be successful more than anything in my bones. I mean, you’re hitting all the greatest hits. It’s, “Develop a growth mindset, ensure kids can go at their own pace—because people learn at different levels—create connections with adults.” There’s so much research about real connections with adults and what that does for young people. And so, actually using AI to have less screen-time, and more interaction, social-emotional growth. And then—you’re expecting this question—what do we do when New York City has a million public school kids—more kids than San Francisco has people? How do we get a change in the system at scale for the millions of young people who can’t afford, truly, to go to an Alpha school?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Totally agree. And I love answering this question because I actually think when we get more awareness out there, people are going to start to realize, “You know what, this isn’t as huge of a mountain.” I’m not saying it’s not a mountain, but as huge of a mountain to climb. So, first of all, I am absolutely willing to concede we do have a self-selected audience that’s in our schools. No question. Understand. But here’s the other thing, is, I believe, that if you take the average kid in the United States—average is definitely a harder situation than a lot of kids there—how much more important does that role of the coach, guide, teacher in their lives become? And how much more important is it for that kid to get that personalized learning experience that meets them where they’re at? So, I think the model is something that is so crucial to bring out to many.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
With regard to Alpha School, there’s no question. We are a super-high-end private school that is redefining what families expect from their kids’ private school education. And there’s a few things that go into the costs that we have. First of all, I believe teachers need to be paid well. So our teachers start at a minimum $100,000 a year salary. And I think that should be true for all teachers, as much as possible. The other part is, the AI technology is expensive. We’re spending about ten grand per student, per year on our AI tech platform. I do believe that price is going to come down over time, as the cost of AI goes down and gets better. And then the other part about Alpha is we put a lot of resources into our life skills workshops.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
In fact, I was having this conversation with my dad. My dad is very frugal. He knows how to save well. And we were having this conversation, I said, “You know, just because not everybody can afford to stay at a Four Seasons hotel, doesn’t mean a Four Seasons hotel should not exist, but how do we bring this to the masses?” We have models of schools that are as low as $10,000 a year. And if you put me in charge of K-12 education tomorrow and said, “Okay, MacKenzie, you’re in charge of this,” here’s what I would do: I believe you could, still restructure—spend that $10,000 on the technology—have them do that personalized academics, in the morning. And then at 12 o’clock, unleash those kids to go do the things that they normally start doing at four o’clock—football, and baseball practice, and band practice, and speech and debate, and theater and arts.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
All those extracurricular activities that are usually put after the school day could be done in the school day. And they could be done in a way where schools already have those resources. They already have the facilities, they already have the teachers and coaches. And that right there could be the motivation model. That said, it has been hard for me to get into the public sphere. And there’s a lot of just, again, there’s fear, there’s misunderstanding about what this is. What I hope is that this is something that works. And I hope that other leaders in the industry will follow suit and say, “Hey, let’s go create our own version of this as well.”
REID:
Well, in terms of industry transformation, you always have people who are like, “No, I’d rather continue to do this the way that I know how to do it. I don’t want to stretch myself, I don’t want to change myself.” And part of what I find is useful when I’m talking to teachers is say, “Look, here is how it’s going to change assessment. Here’s how much time you spend in this.” Every teacher hates grading papers, grading exams—they hate it. It’s a lot of solo work. What have you learned about AI assessment? How do you make that more human? Where is that currently within the Alpha School learning clock?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Well, when it comes to assessment, we are using a lot of standard assessments that are things that schools across the country have access to. And I’ll give you an example of that. We use something called the NWEA MAPs assessment. MAPs is given to about ten million students in the country each year—public school, private school, homeschool students. One of the things that’s great about the assessment is, it’s dynamic. And so it basically will keep moving until it exhausts a student’s knowledge level, as opposed to just saying, “Did they master fourth grade, or fifth grade,” whatever it is. What we’ve done, though, is we’ve taken this standard assessment—which in a normal traditional school world, there’s a reason that assessments are a dirty word nowadays, is because nothing really changes for that student based on the result of the assessment.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Maybe the school gets a grade, as in, they’re an A-rated school, or an F-rated school, but nothing changes for the student. Whereas in our system, what we can do is we can take the results of that assessment, we can go pull them into our personalized learning platform, and have our AI tool create the lesson plans that need to go and fill the holes. We’ll have a student come and spend, basically, what we call a shadow day with us. We’ll have them do about 30 minutes of work on a computer. And the amount of information we have about that student is so impressive to a parent that they’re like, “I didn’t get this all year from my kids’ classroom.” And it’s based on real data, not a grade that a teacher put on a report card that said, “This kid’s a B plus student, or a satisfactory student.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
When you think about generative AI, and the fact that you can move to a point where we’re going to be customizing lessons where we can teach math, and incorporate a kid’s interest in fashion design, or baseball stats, that’s something that’s amazing. Right now, to be clear, our curriculum is K-8, Common Core, and then Advanced Placement material at high school. We’re not having ChatGPT create math problems. We haven’t been having to deal with hallucination issues or things like that. We’re using the same curriculum that’s being taught in a traditional classroom. We’re just doling it out at the right level and pace that makes it most effective for learning. We have a program called Teach Tales that we built, and it basically allows us to customize reading for a student. So you can take that second-grade girl who’s reading at a ninth-grade level, but doesn’t need to be reading ninth-grade content. She can still be reading about an adventure in the park with her friends from her soccer team, while being challenged at the proper Lexile level that works. And actually, that’s something that with our high school students, one of the things that they’re doing is learning how to use AI tools to give them superpowers. Our students who took AP Art History, they did make up Taylor-Swift-inspired songs that they memorized the 50 canons to. And they were basically making a new version of Hamilton to do AP U.S. History this year. And, you know, that’s, that’s where education is going to get really fun and exciting.
REID:
Cannot plus one that strongly enough.
ARIA:
So MacKenzie just gave us an overview of what students at her fast-growing network of AI-powered private schools are up to. And now we’re actually going to hear from one of those students, a high school senior named Alex, who is in conversation with Google Gemini.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
Alex, welcome to Possible. Can you start by introducing yourself?
STUDENT – ALEX:
Hi guys, I’m Alex. I am a 16-year-old senior at Alpha High School in Austin, Texas.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
What was your educational experience like before Alpha?
STUDENT – ALEX:
I started off at a public magnet school here in Austin, Texas, and it was ranked like top 40. It’s a really good school, very rigorous academics. But you were spending eight hours a day at school, and then at the very least three to four hours after school doing homework, or studying, or just learning inefficiently because of all the busy work. That 12 hours of time suck, plus the smattering of extracurriculars you’re trying to do in the afternoon, or trying to fit in passions, or talking to friends, can become pretty unsustainable. There’s only one really defining metric of your life, which is grades, or your likelihood of getting into a good college.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
That’s rough. Before we get into Alpha, tell us about how you first started getting exposed to AI.
STUDENT – ALEX:
There was actually this one class that I took in my freshman year—and this was all before, like ChatGPT came out—and in this class, we were learning how to do graphic design, and so we were introduced to Midjourney and LLMs. We used OpenAI’s Playground to write some of our story and get a feel for it. And so, that was super cool exposure. Later that year, ChatGPT came out, and it exploded. Then my school bans it from our Wi-Fi. You weren’t allowed to use it for anything. And so, I would just talk to AI in my free time. I wanted to learn about it, how it worked. But most people were just using it in the wrong way. And so AI was very stigmatized in my old school.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
And how exactly did you end up at Alpha?
STUDENT – ALEX:
When I heard about Alpha for the first time, my mentor actually introduced it to me in ninth grade, but I was at one of the best schools in the U.S., and so I was like, “There’s no shot I’m leaving my school.” And then I finally heard about it again in tenth grade. And so I went to an event, met all the amazing people, they kind of convinced me. So I applied to a scholarship and I got it.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
What has your experience been like?
STUDENT – ALEX:
For most students, it’s two to three hours in the morning, depending on your grade. So in high school, it’s three hours because we’re doing AP classes. And then after the three hours of schoolwork, we’ll have lunch together. We are usually off screens then. And then the afternoon is really where it gets exciting. We basically do something called our Alpha X Project. So this is a project that you do for all four years of high school. We’re doing these big, ambitious, entrepreneurial-style projects.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
Tell us a bit about your project.
STUDENT – ALEX:
So, as you know, because of social media, because of COVID-19, a lot of young people are feeling more depressed, or more anxious, or they’re comparing themselves with other people more. After my experience at my old school, I knew I wanted to solve this problem in a lot of teenagers. The teen mental health crisis is very real. And my spiky point of view that I found, when I was doing my research, is that AI is going to replace therapy. And a big problem with AI replacing therapy right now is that it’s this validation echo chamber. When you talk to ChatGPT, it’s like, “Oh, I hear you. That’s so tough.” And we do need some of that, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t need that all the time. We need pushback, we need action. We need to change our mindset. And so I’ve decided to build Berry, which is an AI-powered plushie that you can talk to about your mental health problems. And it’s meant to be used as a reflection tool. You talk to it for five to ten minutes a day, and you’re able to improve your mental health.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
Very cool. One last question. In what ways has your experience at Alpha surprised you?
STUDENT – ALEX:
It’s been so exponential. When you first hear of an AI-driven school, you think that it’s a school in the morning, you sit down with your computer, and you’re just talking to ChatGPT, right? Like, that’s what you think it is. But it’s so much more than that. And so, rather than in the morning, you’re just sitting down talking to ChatGPT, you’re actually doing practice problems, or watching videos, and taking notes, and the AI part of it is all baked into the backend of the apps. And so the AI is personalizing what lesson you do today, and how you should be learning it, to make sure that it’s custom to who you are—who Alex is—so that he can learn in the most efficient way, most optimally. And so that was a super big switch in my perspective. I was really surprised that there was a lot of thought put into how we should be learning, which I think is so cool.
GOOGLE GEMINI:
That’s awesome. Thanks, Alex. Now back to MacKenzie.
REID:
One of the reasons I started with AI was scale and expansion. Based on what I’m reading, it’s 12 plus new campuses in 2025 alone. So it’s getting a lot of traction. What’s enabling the scale?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Well, Reid, you’re very right. As a businessman, there are a lot of things that go into scaling. Market demand is something that we’re seeing—families are hungry for education that works. We have found with when it comes to hiring our teachers—our guides—there are so many people who are craving a work world where they get to be paid well to positively impact and mentor students. Honestly, the biggest challenge we’ve had is real estate. Real estate is really, really hard to find. And it’s not just real estate, it’s real estate that then is zoned properly for a school, and educating students. And so we have been very fortunate. In the last couple of months, we signed a deal with a Montessori chain that allowed us to get into some school buildings across the country.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And so as a result, we’ve got 12 new schools that are opening fall ’25. And then we’re probably going to be putting about 15 more schools in ’26, that we’ll be able to expand and grow. At some point, we’ll probably start raising money from investors to do larger-scale expansion. And then, as I mentioned, we have other school models that are at lower prices, and if you can get into a world in states that have educational savings accounts, we think we’ve gotten to a place where we can get private schools up for $5,000 per year out-of-pocket for a parent, which becomes more reasonable.
ARIA:
Can you talk a little bit about incentives? How does Alpha School approach incentives, whether those are monetary or otherwise?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
We’re a huge fan of incentives because, again, when we have a motivated learner, the sky is the limit. So, for example, starting in kindergarten, our students, when they hit their academic goals, they earn Alpha currency. So, not only are they motivated to get their academic goals done, but they’re learning how to earn. They learn how to spend, because we have a little emporium at the school where they can go and buy a squishy, or a Rubik’s cube, or a sticker, or whatever that is. They learn how to save. They learn how to invest—in fact, we offer opportunities for our students to invest. And they learn how to donate. And so those financial literacy skills are so important. It’d be amazing if every single person were just always internally motivated at all times to go and learn for the sake of learning.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
But most of us aren’t always like that, right? And I think in a traditional school setting—you can tell me if you disagree—but in a traditional school setting, there are generally two factors that determine how a student does. Number one is just plain IQ—how smart are they? And number two is a big five character trait: conscientiousness. Are they willing to study for the tests, and turn in the homework, and write the paper? And so in a traditional system, if a student’s not doing well, it’s usually considered the student’s fault. They’re either not the sharpest knife in the drawer, or they’re just not motivated, they’re disengaged. At our schools, if a student isn’t thriving, it’s our fault. And it means that we have not tapped into that right motivation to get the kid excited. We have kids who the guides know them so well that they say, “You know what, this kid just loves words of affirmation.”
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And when you can look at this kid and say, “Hey, good job, you really worked hard and you did your best. And look what you accomplish.” That’s enough for a certain kid. Other kids want cold, hard cash. And actually, we allow our students to turn in their Alpha currency at the end of the year for real cash. By the time our kids really are in fifth and sixth grade, they’re not so motivated by the emporium and the Alpha bucks anymore. But you know what they are motivated by? Getting to earn money to put towards their special afternoon projects.
REID:
Well, one of the things I loved about what you said earlier was that actually in fact, having these external incentives is part of life skills. And so I think that’s really awesome. What are the ways in which the ability to do these other projects also reflect that? Because they’re not just hobbies, they are things that are very useful for prepping for adult life.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I think sometimes people are saying, “Gosh, are you trying to grow these kids up too quickly?” They’re running an Airbnb as fifth graders. Or they’re launching a food truck. Or it’s a second grader who’s made $500 in profit on a jewelry-making business, and is working on a business plan to raise investment opportunities. And here’s the thing, these are fun projects. They’re really fun ways for kids to dive in. For example, our food truck kids are learning how to cook, and they’re learning how to grocery shop, and they’re trying to figure out how to menu plan, and how to market, and how to work together with a hot stove—all these kinds of things. And so what we’re doing is we’re building the scaffolding that helps kids when they go launch to be successful, and they’re doing it in a low-stakes environment where it’s okay to fail. Because there’s so much that people learn when they fail.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Traditional school encourages kids to stay away from anything they could fail at. You don’t want to take that class that you’re interested in because you might fail. In fact, the role of school should be a place where kids get to find the intersection of their talents and their interests. And we want to encourage kids to find that. Our middle school students, every year we start with an Ikigai values workshop where kids figure out, what are they good at, what do they love to do, and what does the world value. We also have them do a 168-hour workshop. And so our students will look and categorize, “Okay, how am I spending my 168 hours in a week?” And guess what they start realizing is, “Oh my gosh, I’m spending way too much time playing Fortnite. And instead of playing Fortnite, I could be coding and building my own video game, and hosting my own tournament.” Whatever those things are. I believe young people, they crave to be creators and contributors, not just consumers. And so school should be a place where we help fuel those interests so that they can be creators.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
In kindergarten and first grade, we are working on instilling the belief in kids that they’re limitless. That they truly can do anything that they want. And then in second and third grade, it’s not just that they’re limitless, but they’re actually backing up this belief with real examples. Then, as the kids get a little older, it’s really important to start establishing independence. And then teamwork becomes a really important skill. And then by the time our students are in high school, they’ve developed a lot of these life skills that allow them to go deep into an interest or a project that they want. Which, one, is helpful for continuing to develop life skills. Two, is helpful for helping them find the things they’re interested in pursuing. And three, helps them to get into a great college because they’ve got something special and deep that they’ve done.
ARIA:
I love thinking about people having mastery around different things, and being able to try out the different life skills, and being an excellent chef. You also launched a new venture, GT School. It’s an online afterschool program and it’s designed to help gifted and talented kids thrive. How do you think about labeling some kids gifted and talented, some not? I mean, I totally get your focus on motivation. How does that work with that frame?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
So, GT School, in the fall of ’24, we turned it into a full-time in-person school, and it’s located in Georgetown, Texas. And here’s the big difference: The kids that want to go to GT School are the kids who are like, “Hey, can we do a third hour of our 2 Hour Learning in the afternoon? Can we do a little more math?” And their idea of fun is spending their afternoons in workshops that are more academically focused—like robotics, and chess, and coding, and poetry writing, and history bowls, and spelling bees, and things like that. So that’s really one of the only differences we find with a lot of our students that are at GT School, versus, let’s say, our students who are at Alpha, who are like, “Hey, I want to go do a life skills workshop where I am learning how to build a fire.”
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Or our Sports Academy students who are just like, “Get me out on that field. I’m excited to be kicking a ball.” That’s what we see. But those kids, who are in our GT School program, they were learning—our average across the board is like 2.2 times faster learning, we measure that with MAP tests—those kids are at like five, six times faster. It’s just insane because, again, when you give a kid the right level and pace of learning, they just take off like a rocket. And when you think about tracking—one of the other issues with traditional education—by the time a student is in third grade, that’s a really pivotal moment. Because now they’ve gone from learning to read to reading to learn. So if you’re not a great reader, you’re up the creek the rest of your career.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And unfortunately, in a traditional model that’s a time-based system, when the train’s left the station, if you’re not on it, you can’t get on. Whereas what we can do is we can take a kid, no matter where they’re at, and say, “Let’s go fill these holes.” I don’t like the word tracking. In fact, the other criticism they’ll say is, “Well, you’re a private school, so you’re hand-selecting which kids you let in.” And I’ll tell you our admissions process, first and most fundamentally, what we look for, is families that are aligned with the model. Because if you’re a person who says, “No, no, you must have a great human teacher to do your math teaching,” well, then, you’re not going to like our model. The second thing we’re looking for is just coachability. So we’ll have a student come and spend half a day at our school experiencing what an Alpha day is like.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
And what we’re looking for is just, is the kid like, “Oh, this is kind of interesting when I’m going through my app-based learning.” Or, we had a seven-year-old boy, during his shadow day, the guides had him put together a piece of IKEA furniture, and he was so excited! And we’re like, “This is a great Alpha kid because he was just so excited about getting to try something.” And so we’re looking for coachability as opposed to, give me a transcript that shows what a seven-year-old knows and doesn’t know.
REID:
I could not agree more strongly. Your podcast, the Future of Education, all kinds of folks should listen to it. Not just educators, and parents, and students, but also entrepreneurs and other folks. So what have been some of the highlights of doing that podcast for people to come listen to the Future of Education?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
The reason that the Future of Education has been so exciting is because I want to serve as that light that says, “Hey, this is what education could be.” And it’s been so fun to meet lots of people, from all different arenas, who really can spend time talking about what their school experience was like, and what they wish they had learned, and the life skills that have made them successful. So, I’ve had everybody from a contortionist who came in and talked about her parents allowing her to homeschool. I remember she said, “I was six years old, and I was sitting watching TV with my legs over my back, over my head. And instead of my parents saying, that’s weird, you’re going to hurt yourself. They said, let’s get her in some gymnastics. This kid’s got a talent.”
MACKENZIE PRICE:
To business people who talk about things that they’ve learned through entrepreneurship that are just amazing. And we see that with our students. Our students learn so many incredible things through the mechanism of entrepreneurship. And we get accused of raising young capitalists, which I think is a totally great thing—personally. We have these mis-memories where we kind of romanticize what our school experience was like. And as much as we wish every day had been like Dead Poets Society, and people are standing on their desks, just excited. That’s not really what probably most of our experience was like, but why not try for a world where kids do come home every day just fired up? But when we say that kids love school, it doesn’t mean that every day is Disneyland. There are days that are hard. There are days when getting that math done is challenging, or you just weren’t feeling it, and you were distracted, or you couldn’t get your hoverboard to float. But I just love the idea that our kids can come home with a fire in their bellies. They’re psyched, and they’re challenged, and they’re doing things. And I do believe, again, holding students to high standards and giving them high levels of support creates a motivated, engaged young person.
ARIA:
Why do you think that subject matter experts aren’t good? Why are we calling them guides? Like, dive one step deeper into the teacher issue? Because I’m sure that’s where a lot of the pushback, especially in public schools, is going to come.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I think Reid’s said it very well, which is that teachers are scared that they’re going to be replaced. They’re worried that they’re going to lose agency. When you imagine what education is like, you think about the knowledge transfer is a subject matter expert who teaches a student something, and that’s the way education is done. But I always think about it like if I wanted to learn about how to launch a rocket, I don’t need to have a conversation with Elon Musk to learn that. Let me start with a Wikipedia page, because that’s how much I know about rocket launching. That’s one of the things that we’re also seeing in our experience with our students is there’s so much fundamental academic knowledge that we want to get kids to absorb. And then once they have that fundamental knowledge, it allows them to engage at a much deeper and more sophisticated level with other people.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
For example, we have a student who graduated a couple of years ago from Alpha, but he was a water skier, a competitive water skier. And he did all of his physics with our apps and an AI tutor experience. But then he and his guide would sit down together, and they would analyze his water skiing footage, and used physics principles to figure out how he could get higher speed, and take inches off the rope. What a beautiful experience. We saw kids running our food truck who realized, “You know what? Math skills are pretty important when I’m trying to calculate what our revenue is.” Now, to be fair, not all of our workshops have an academic tie—a lot of our workshops are teaching a life skill. It’s not saying, “Oh, well, here’s what you learned in English this morning, let’s do that in the afternoon.” And here’s the other thing, there’s always going to be people who say, “No, this is not the way I want to do education.” I can guarantee you the teacher in front of the classroom model is never going to be completely abolished.
REID:
Have you experimented at all yet with how AI is useful on the soft skill part of it? Like motivation, psychology, engagement, conversational coaching, encouragement. And what have the lessons been from that?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
One of the things I could certainly say when it comes to our elementary students is things like public speaking. We’re using AI tools as a way to give really nice, constructive coaching to our students. Think about public speaking is most adults’ biggest fear. For example, we had a workshop—it was “Speaking in the Wild”—and it was for our fifth and sixth graders. And the first thing that they had to do was write a compelling six- to nine-minute talk that they were going to give. First draft is on pencil, then they type it out, and then they got feedback from an AI tool that said things like, “Hey, here’s how you can make your story more engaging. Add a personal anecdote,” whatever it is. “Here’s something, cut this part, do that.” Then we used an AI tool called Auri**, which basically gives them feedback on their public speaking.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Then the students went to the Humane Society in our town, and they gave their talks in front of cats because it turns out cats are a pretty unintimidating audience. Then our students went to an assisted living facility, and they gave their talk in front of all the old people that lived in this assisted living facility. Then they went to one of our local bookstores, and did an open story time, and gave their talks there. And then ultimately those kids ended up flying to New York City, and they did an open mic night with a bunch of strangers. And that’s an example of the scaffolding that we give, and we use some AI tools to do that.
REID:
Great.
REID:
So let’s go to rapid-fire. Is there a movie, song, or book that fills you with optimism for the future?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I guess I’m just going to be real honest and tell you, there’s a movie called Bring It On. It’s a cheerleading movie from when I was, I think, in college. And that gal was optimistic. She was a team player. She was a leader. And I think that’s a fun one. How’s that?
ARIA:
Love it. Also, unique answer. No one’s given that before, so it’s a new rec. What is a question that you wish people would ask you more often?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
I think I wish people would ask more often those hard questions—the things they’re critical of—because I actually believe I’ve got good answers for all of them. Like, I don’t get scared off by questions. I will tell you one thing: I’ve really drunk the Kool-Aid on AI and education. I truly believe this is the coolest model. And we have built a school that I wish I could have gone to.
REID:
By the way, I wish I could have gone to, as well. It’s really amazing. Where do you see progress or momentum, outside of your industry, that inspires you?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Where I live in Austin, Texas, we had the most horrendous tragedy go through our larger community in the floods, and we have had so many people—that are friends of mine and people in our community—who have rolled their sleeves up, and gone out and raised money, and moved wood, and cleaned up debris, and all that. And I think that might be a mental shift that’s happening in our culture where people are realizing, like, “I can make a difference in my own community today.”
ARIA:
Well, can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible to achieve if everything breaks humanity’s way in the next 15 years? And what’s our first step to get there?
MACKENZIE PRICE:
When it comes to education, we are going to see a huge step change in both what’s achievable and the results that come. And for anybody who is wary, or scared, or nervous that they’re going to be replaced or they’re not going to be prepared, the future is here, and it looks really bright. And that’s one of the things I believe—the future of education. It is happening right now.
REID:
Mackenzie, I hope that everyone pays attention to what you’re doing because it’s important for all of the elevation of humanity. So thank you for joining us.
ARIA:
Thank you so much.
MACKENZIE PRICE:
Thank you for allowing me to speak more about this. I truly appreciate it.
REID:
Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It’s hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Thanasi Dilos, Sara Schleede, Vanessa Handy, Alyia Yates, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, and Melia Agudelo. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.
ARIA:
Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, Parth Patil, and Ben Relles. And a big thanks to Anna Davlantes, Jay Lyons, Alex Mathew, Grace Price, and Karrie Huang.