Alpha Deep Dive

All right. Hello everybody. It's so good to see all of you. Welcome to the academics deep dive, uh, with our wonderful principal Joe Limont. Uh, I will just warn you ahead of time, if you don't love talking all about academics, you're in the wrong place. This is, uh, Joe's favorite subject. My name is McKenzie Price, and, uh, it is such a pleasure to, uh, see all of you. Are you guys having a good year so far?

>> Okay. More importantly, are your kids having a great year? Yes. All right. Good. We are all about the three commitments. Love school, learn twice as much in two hours, and develop life skills. That is, uh, everything we're about tonight. We're going to be going more into the second part of that. Uh, but it's been a really, really exciting year. I also want to welcome, uh, those that are tuning in virtually. We have people in California, uh, throughout Texas, in Florida, in New York, in Arizona, in Washington D.C. area, in North Carolina. Uh, am I missing anything? I think think we've got people probably from all over the country. It is so great to have all of you here. Uh, we'll also have a recording of this that will go out. Uh, so we'll be doing that. Uh, there are a lot of exciting things, uh, that are happening. One thing I want to let you know about that is happening one week from Tuesday, the Secretary of Education is going to be coming to Alpha Spy Glass. Uh, we're excited to be able to host her. Uh, she is, uh, curious, like a lot of the world, about what's happening here in our schools, uh, and what the future of education looks like and how it's going. So, uh, that is something that'll be happening on Tuesday, September 9th, from 9 to 11:30. If you have any questions about that, uh, feel free to find me afterwards. I'm happy to address any questions, concerns, anything that you might have on that, but we're really excited for that to happen. Uh, and this is going to be great. I want to see, uh, where are my GT school parents? Got a got a couple of them. Awesome. Where are my sports academy parents? Amazing. I love it. Where's my NextG Academy parents? There we go. Any Nova parents? Awesome. Thank you for being here. Uh, Alpha parents.

>> Amazing. I think that's great. All right. We're super excited to dive in. What you're going to learn tonight is going to be helpful, uh, across the board. Questions are going to be, uh, asked anytime. And without further ado, the principal, Joe Lemont, come on up.

>> Thanks. Um, I have, uh, we have about, uh, hour and 40 minutes, uh, which, if you've been to any of my prior academic talks, is going to be the shortest one we've ever done. Um, uh, but how we want to do this is, uh, we're we're going to do a little exercise here to start with, which is the problem with the teacher in front of a classroom model is exactly the problem we face here. We have some people in the audience who've been here since my first, uh, presentation three years ago, and they are deep, deep into it. We have parents who log in every day and look at what their kid learned and doesn't hasn't learned. When we rolled out new apps this year, they were sending me screenshots telling me what they thought of it and feedback around it. Uh, and have deep, deep knowledge. We also have a lot of new parents who this is the first time that they've gone to one of these and are at the questioning level of, does this really work? Do you really only need two hours to learn all of this? And so we have a full range, right? And this is why it's hard to be a teacher because every teacher in every school has that same problem. Uh, and so the other problem is, you probably retain about 5% of what I tell you. Um, that's about, if you sit in a lecture class and passively listen, it's about 5% retention. So we will be sending out some active learning activities for all of you who want a deep dive afterwards. So everything that I present, we will be sending out, uh, over, I think it's about eight hours of video content that you can dive into, lots of written material. So whatever level of depth you want to get into, you'll be able to. But in the meantime, what you should do is ask questions. Right? Just like a good student, where you wouldn't want your student to sit here and be confused. If there's something I'm saying, if it's not clear, raise your hand and we will dive in and answer questions during the presentation. You do not have to save them up. Uh, so let's, uh, and and before we jump into academics, I thought we'd just start with just a little bit of, um, sort of the reality of what, uh, Alpha's been happening this summer. Is obviously the press around Alpha has gone crazy. Um, it's completely over the top. We're the most talked about school in the world, um, by orders of magnitude. Uh, it is completely non-standard, which is driving a lot of this, and you're reading a lot of things that, if you're a parent at Alpha, you're going to say, "That doesn't seem right." I have parents call me and say, "You know, you really got to coach that New York Times reporter because those, that wasn't accurate." Um, if you're really good at that, I'll put you in touch with them and see if you, if you're more successful than we are. There's going to be lots of things that are said about Alpha that just aren't true. And so if you're wondering and read something that's like, "I didn't think it was like that," just reach out to your dean of parents, and we will give you, here's what our official position is. And yes, lots of things that are being written just aren't true. Um, and there's nothing we can really do about it. Um, uh, and so, uh, just we we want to make sure that you guys have access to to what's really going on. And if anything worries you, let us know. Uh, independent of the press, right, we're doing expansions. When she read off all those cities, um, if I was sitting in the audience in your shoes, I would be very worried, right? Because at the end of the day, you don't actually care if Alpha grows. You actually sort of shouldn't. What you should care about is, is Alpha delivering the three commitments to my kid or kids, right? That's what you should care about. And so if there's one message that you can take away from tonight, it's actually not academics. It's hold us accountable to delivering the three commitments to your kids, right? That is the number one thing you can do to help us, which is we we don't have to grow, right? There's no financial pressure to grow. We have huge demand and everybody wanting it. Uh, but we need to gate our growth based on only when we can deliver the three commitments to every student at every existing campus at every existing place. And so, just that's the best thing if you could take away. And our signal is you guys. Like when I'm sitting there and someone's like, "Okay, we have 25 people who want to open a new campus." You know, uh, I'm like, "Are we delivering to everybody we currently have? Let's not grow until we crush and deliver to, uh, every existing student." And so, and the way I know is because you call me, um, or you talk to your dean of parents and and let us know. So that's, uh, that's the most important part of this. Uh, and now let's talk a little bit about, um, for new parents. So there's going to be a wakeup call for new parents. Um, uh, we've onboarded hundreds of kids across the country from all sorts of different schools. Um, and if I had one topline message, if you're a new parent, it's, uh, your school was lying to you about your kids's academic performance. Just flat out. What has happened with grade inflation and the messages they communicate to parents is just not right. So, if you have an A and you're one of these kids transferring in, right, an A means you are everywhere from one grade level ahead to three grade levels behind. So, we have people who have straight A transcripts transferring in, and when they take a test, they're three grade levels behind. And when we say three grade levels behind, that means a seventh grader is taking a fourth grade test and missing a significant number of problems. If you are getting a B, you are transferring in at from three grade levels behind to seven grade levels behind. This is at the high school level where the, you know, and and and basically what's happened, you know, when you think about grade inflation, when I when I grew up, you know, A's and B's were good. You know, my parents would be like, "Oh, if I got a B, I can get an A next time," but it was fine, right? Uh, they've taken away and mostly don't give out C's, D's, and F's anymore, right? They just, they don't. And so they basically, teachers have two grades. Do I give this kid an A? Do I give him a B? Right? Something like 89% of Harvard students get an A. Right? When they last rolled out the GPA at Harvard, the faculty laughed because it was so ridiculously high because things have just gone. So the grades that we all grew up with of how your kids are doing, right, is just, it's just wrong. Um, that's sort of, it's, it's not a useful, it's actually worse than a useful signal because it tricks us because it's using what we think is is a grade level. It's why when we get into what we do at Alpha, is we don't give grades, right? In K through 8, that you will get a MAPS results, which will tell you on a nationwide ranking what your percentile is because that's, it's not a judgmental call. It's not judgment. I don't, I don't get to make that up. Uh, and so you're going to get, when your kids, uh, some of the grade levels, they will be getting work that is their age grade, and their knowledge grades are different things. Um, and so now, here's the second part of the message, though. Don't worry. Don't worry. It's, do not panic about it. Right? This is the magic of Alpha. Right? That this is where the power of personalized learning and two-hour learning comes in because we can catch your student up in incredibly short periods of time. And so we'll go through this when we're going through, like, at different subjects, but here's what you should take away. To finish an entire grade level of material for one subject, fifth grade, uh, math, as an example. Fifth grade math is 28 hours to get through the material. That's it. When you are learning, back to our system, kids learn five or 10 times faster where they can learn twice as much as two hours as sitting in class for six plus homework. There's only 28 hours of content and, uh, to master it, right? To master it where you will be able to get between a 90 and 100 on the Texas STAR or whatever state you're in, whatever the state test is for that grade level, 28 hours. So when you think about how far away you are, right? It's measured in weeks. You're 28 days. You know, we do for kids who are multi-year behind, you may want to sign them up to do one hour of homework instead of the two hours in the day. If they're really behind, you can do one hour of homework and 28 days later, they'll be caught up per grade level. If you're a couple years behind, right, you're a matter of a couple weeks, right? You're 60 hours behind, right? It is not, when we think of being a year behind, we think because of our history, schools, there's 180 school days and I sat in class for an hour a day and then I had homework. So being a year behind was hundreds of hours, a couple hundred hours, right, to get through the material. And the answer is no. It's between 20 and 30. When we get into some of the high school stuff, it's a little, a little more. Um, uh, if you're trying to do AP track, you know, AP Calc, um, AP World History, and you know, AP US History is sort of like 75 hours. So, not the hundreds of hours that the normal curriculum you'll get at a Westlake track. Um, calc, um, but just dramatically less time than you'd expect. And so, uh, so you're going to be shocked, I believe, by some of the data you get about the questions that your student can't answer and where they are. Not to worry, we'll catch them up in record time, right? And get them to mastery of grade level, right? And that is the part about the Alpha system and why it's so effective, why it's so different, and, um, you know, why the teacher in front of a classroom model can't, you know, uh, teachers are great. Teacher in front of the classroom is the problem that if I'm a sixth grade teacher and I have all these kids who are one, two, or three years behind, they're all A students, one, two, or three years behind. I'm delivering sixth grade material. That's my job. But they need fifth grade material or fourth grade material. So what does that student do? Well, they sit there confused and don't learn it, and then they keep moving through, and they keep having these holes, and it just compounds, right? It just keeps compounding. And if you go back sort of the original, you know, why it's gotten so bad lately, it's because of COVID. There's just gaps, and it just, it's just the gaps have never been filled, right? The gaps have never been filled. Um, and that's what we do. We who fill and, uh, get the kids, uh, raced up. There's a good explanation of this if you want to go through. I just did sort of my first podcast in 20 years. Uh, it's long, two and a half hours. Um, it's more than just academics, but I have a segment about, you know, the number one thing we can do in education is how do we fill kids, right? And get them caught up to where they are. And it's, it's our program. We call it 100 for 100. Um, at the end of this program, uh, when you, when kids go through it, it gets them up to mastery. It fills, you know, all their gaps, and it shows them all, independent of IQ, they can get a 100% on the state tests, right? One of the other parts of our model that's very effective is great grades always were limited to the GT smart kids, right? In the Alpha system, it's literally just a matter of work, right? And our students know, "Oh, I have this much work I have to do, and then I can go get a hundred." Um, our mastery standard, though, just to educate you, is 90. So, to move on grades, kids have to get a 90 plus on it. Um, we have an incentive. If they get a hundred, we give them $100 bill. Um, and so most kids actually try to get the hundreds, and if they don't get one, they're allowed a retake. The AI will say, "Give them a little post-test coaching." You'll hear about this where after they take the test, it's game film. Just like an athlete watches game film and says, "What did I do right?" After a test, you sit down and say, "Did I miss this question because I didn't know the material, or was it careless errors?" Right? Was it a careless mistake? And then if it's, "I didn't know the material," they'll get a personalized lesson plan of, "This is what you didn't know. Go learn it and take the test again." And so that's our, that's the model if you're a new parent coming in, that your students going to be going through is they're going to be getting this. They're going to be seeing at whatever grade level they're at, right? Their knowledge level and their age level are different, but they will be given material that's right for what they know so that then they can fill the holes and master all the content, uh, as they do that. The kids love it because it shows that their learning accelerates. Right? The reason learning slows down is because you just have too many holes of prior knowledge. Right? If you're in chemistry in high school and the world's falling apart, most of the time it's actually you just don't know the algebra. Right? Chemistry is sort of algebra with really advanced word problems, right? Um, physics is sort of the same with calculus. It's sort of advanced word problems on calculus. If you're in algebra, it's actually massive math fraction manipulation. If you don't have mastery of fractions, you struggle. You can actually predict someone's algebra score by giving them a fraction test, right? And fractions are division and multiplication, right? And do you know your multiplication tables, etc. And it just goes all the way down. So when you have a hole, you know, because, "Oh, I missed this," right? It just compounds for the rest of your career. If you look across America on learning, learning in America, and take the median, just, but it's, uh, this is basically true for all learning except the 98th and 99th percentile, um, in this country, which is in high school, the median student doesn't learn anything. So on an NWA MAPS test, which is one we use, but it's true across all the, all the standardized tests. NWA MAPS is a 300-point scale. Your median student from the eighth grade to the 12th grade goes up one point on a 300-point scale. You don't learn anything, right? Uh, the 99th percentile are going up six-plus points per year, if, just as a comparable. Um, but the average student is not learning, and it starts, learning starts to slow down in middle school, and then by high school, sort of stops. And the reason it's slowing down is all those prior holes just are compounding. If you have students who do poorly in algebra, right, it's usually the third, fourth, and fifth grade material that's getting them, not the eighth grade algebra. And so we go fill that up, and then all of a sudden, you're like, "Wow, everybody can do algebra." Um, so any questions on that? All right. Uh, so then for this year, sort of getting getting everybody, uh, mapped up to this year. So this year we're having a big change. Um, you get to see all the logo stuff, time back. Um, so we are rolling out our new academic platform. This is going to be the platform for Alpha for the next decade. Um, uh, up through now, we have been peacemealing apps together as we built this. Um, but this is the platform that we believe will actually allow us to accelerate learning, right? And take advantage of all the new things coming with AI for the next decade. It is a big platform. We've invested over $100 million dollars in it. Uh, like any big platform shift, there are going to be some issues. Um, for the last two months, all the guides have been pounding on it, right? They all had to sign off on both the platform and the apps that they had to say, "Yes, this is better for my students than what we were using last year." That said, there will still be issues. Um, uh, but overall, I can confidently, as a parent, you should feel our second commitment, we will deliver twice as much learning in two hours a day. There's absolutely, we are going to do that, right? There is zero doubt. The learning is so much better on this new platform that even with the hang-ups, you're still gaining it. When we get to math and I dive into the math subject, we actually believe with our new math stack that we'll go through, kids will learn more in 20% less time, right? That there's just, there are still lots of gains to be made on efficiency, uh, and how well kids can learn. Uh, we're not at the peak. And so, uh, for example, kids will be learning more in less time on the on the new platform. We're doing more. We, you know, if you actually ask our academic team, they're like, "Okay, I I need to fill more stuff into the two hours." We're not going to lower the two hours. We're not trying to go to one hour learning. Um, there's no six-minute abs here. Um, uh, it's, we have two hours, right? That's our design goal. And our job is to get as much into kids' brains in that two hours as we can, right? We look at it as, you know, our job. We have a dozen years, right? To fill kids' brains with awesome stuff because they have to hang out in that brain for the rest of their life, right? So, let's make it interesting, right? And they've dedicated time, and once you get out of school, you don't have as much time. And this is it. This is what the point of education is. And so, that's what you're doing. So, you'll see new things like we're rolling out Alpha, right? And, you know, enhancing our curriculum. You'll see more science and history curriculum, more things that will be going in, uh, uh, because we have the new platform and can do it. Uh, so the, um, back to scale, there's one other one. This is going to be a platform that's, you know, our goal is to get this and not just help everybody at Alpha, but get to a billion kids. Um, this time back is actually a platform that can do that. Um, it's not ready to go out broadly. We hope next year it will be. Uh, there are still, back to when I say there are issues, you know, uh, today the AIs, you have hallucination problems. And so today, for all the static for K through 8, um, sorry, for all for K through 8, the AI generates static lessons, right? Static articles, static content that is human reviewed before it goes in front of your student. And so that's how we do our quality control. Our goal next year is get the hallucinations down so we can do more dynamic content. But that's the core of what's the the issue with the platform today. Now, at the high school level, it's a little different. Um, if you're in, like, I have a guide group. I have 12 high school kids. Um, and if you're in my guide group, uh, you actually get dynamic content. Um, you, it was opt-in if you're going to be in my guide group, you get dynamic content, and they are taking screenshots and are like, "Okay, look what AI said today." Um, and it's not, it's definitely, they're beta testers, you know, extremely on it, um, but that's the, the, the static today. It's all static. It's all human reviewed, um, so that we can make sure it's there. If you want to get a flavor, though, of what we're hoping to build, right? And sort of the visionary side, is go, you can go to teachtales.com, T E A C H T A L S, teach tales, and that is a dynamically generated AI system that, uh, is the goal of that is to inspire a love of reading. It's actually not that good at teaching kids to read, but it is great at fostering engagement and a love of reading. If you take a second-grade boy, a third-grade boy, who's like, "I hate books," and then you put them into Teach Tales and say, "What's your favorite movie? Who are your soccer buddies?" and it generates a choose-your-own-adventure novel where they're saving, he and his buddies are saving the world, right? They will sit and click through that for an hour, right? The design goal of that whole team is just length of time engagement, um, which is different than when we talk about Alpha Read, which teaches kids to read. Um, so that's the difference when you think about where is AI and dynamic content or or static content. Today, it's all static. Hopefully next year, we'll be getting dynamic content personalized for the kid. And that is back to engaging, right? Dynamic content. When I can give you a math lesson based that you're trying to teach stats and you love baseball. If I can make it dynamic to that about baseball, or if you're trying to learn fractions and you're a fashionista and I can do it in a dress pattern, right? And keep you engaged by having dynamic content for each person. That's going to be one of those unlocks, right? Because engagement with kids is everything, rather than just, "Here's the static." And so that's the hope for next year. And that's why the big investment here, because this can be the, the platform for everybody. Uh, the biggest thing you're going to see this year for returning people versus last is we have a new concept called XP. Um, XP is a video game term that all the kids know. And you should think, one XP point is one minute of learning. And so a student should get about 120 XP a day, right? And that they, when they go in, here's a 15 XP lesson, that should be about 15 minutes. We measure, right? Back to, we measure all this data, right? Uh, we are measuring, yes, the Alpha students are finishing this in 15 minutes. That doesn't mean every student on every lesson is always that. It's an average. Um, but when you look in aggregate, your students should be at one XP per minute, 100 XP per day. That doesn't mean, and I promise you, your student will come home one day and say, "It was only 15 XP and I spent an hour on it." Those things happen, right? If you get stuck and things like that, but in a, you have to look at the aggregate, um, and it should be there. Uh, we also use the reason for XP is, uh, it's one minute as the thing. So it makes it very easy for students to know how many hours they have to finish the entire grade level, right? Per subject. So when they log into seventh grade science, they're like, "Wow, this is only 18 hours for all of seventh grade science, right?" or 28 hours for fifth grade math. Uh, fourth grade math, as an example here, I can read them off. I have them here. Here's our new math program. Diving in, all XP based. This was actually, uh, an app we use. We did not build. It's called Math Academy. It's by far the best math app out there. It's, if you actually care about learning science, there is a Math Academy way book written by one of the founders. It is 500 super exciting pages about the learning science of how kids can learn this quickly and all the different things. And you'll learn about zone of proximal development and spaced repetition, right? And, um, uh, uh, testing effects and just a whole host of knowledge. But, uh, our kids love it much better than every else we do. All the way up, just as a data point, my daughter is a math major at Stanford, and she uses Math Academy at Stanford rather than go to lectures, um, because it's so much better. And back to just one more data point. If you haven't heard this, Harvard published a a paper. Well, Harvard researchers and teachers published a p paper. The administration did not like it so much, but it, the title of the paper is "Harvard Says AI Tutors Are Better Than Harvard Teachers." And the Physics 101 class at Harvard, who are considered the best Harvard teachers, actually ran an A/B test with all their incoming freshmen. And the kids using the AI tutor built by the Harvard professors learned twice as much as the students who, uh, went to class. Um, and so this concept, learning science, you know, and, uh, I go into a little bit on the podcast if you want to get into it. For 40 years, we've known kids can learn two, four, five, 10 times faster. There's been papers written about it since I was in high school. The issue is, it every paper starts with, "This doesn't work with a teacher in front of a classroom model." Right? Because you need to give individualized lesson. You have to be able to create specialized, um, uh, focus content for every kid. And obviously, no teacher in front of, you know, 30 students can do that. So, reading off the math, just XP, that, uh, fourth grade math is 28 hours, fifth grade math is 25 hours, pre-algebra, which is sixth and seventh grade combined, is 44 hours. So, 22 per year. Um, uh, integrated math, which is going to be beyond, uh, algebra. So it gets, uh, algebra, little bit of algebra 2, um, is 52 hours. And so your ability to move through all this content, right, no matter what happens, where you are in math, right, we're able to go back. Math Academy starts in fourth grade, and so you can move through this content very quickly, no matter where you are. You know, we have students who transfer in from schools who have A's in algebra 2 and when given a test know about 20% of algebra 1, right? And so it's easy to take those students and then get them through the rest, catch up in algebra 1 and get through algebra 2. Uh, then the other part that's, you'll see on Timeback. So Timeback as is the platform. It contains actually your students' knowledge base. So when you go into the learning plan, what does my student know? What do they not know? It will show you the age grade. It'll show the knowledge grade. It will show you how many hours they need to get to grade level or to finish the grade level they're in. And so that's all contained there. Then on top of it, that sits on it is, you'll see a combination of third-party apps like Math Academy that we use, and then a set of new Alpha apps that we'll roll out, and Alpha Read, Alpha Learn, Alpha Write, Alpha Math Fluency, and we'll go, we'll go into those. Uh, the Alpha apps, you should think are after years of using all the third-party apps, us saying, "What are all the reasons kids aren't learning and how do we fix it?" You know, if any of you, and getting them ready for dynamic content, right? So that we can move next year to dynamic content. Uh, you know, if you are trying to teach reading apps, kids scroll the reading app, go to the bottom on the questions, look and search for the word, right? It's the most common anti-pattern that kids have. And when you're trying to give them a reading app, in Alpha Read, we just are like, "Okay, you can't get beyond the paragraph without being asked a question." So we know you read the paragraph, right? So there's just, we look, you know, there's a set of anti-patterns of what kids do that we're constantly looking for so we can coach the kid into better learning. The, the second part of our apps are really like Math Academy, super based in learning science. So they just can learn faster. All right. So let's jump into subjects. Um, so we'll start with math. So, math K to 3. Uh, we have new apps this year. We're using Synthesis. Um, how many have you actually heard of Synthesis sort of before Alpha, right? Okay. Synthesis is one of the most popular apps out. Um, it's what everybody thinks EdTech should be. Um, we're actually the largest investor in it as well. Um, and it, if you, if you like math, you're like, "Oh, I wish this is how I learned math." You want to learn fractions, they give you a hammer and you break blocks and, right? It is, it is very visual, very interactive. Um, and so it's only about 20 hours of content or so. Um, it doesn't have, it has some weaknesses. Um, it's not based on as much learning science as we'd like, and it allows kids to, um, freely move through the material. Uh, and our Timeback system is trying to rein them in. You will find one of the issues with Synthesis, for all its, uh, goodness, kids get in over their heads because it allows you to just keep going. Um, and so our guides know this. Our Timeback is watching and will throw up warnings to the guides. "Here's our first grader, and they're trying to get through the third grade content, you know." Um, and if they're, if they're not struggling, great. It'll let them go. If they start to struggle, it's, "Let's get you back right into the right level." That's one problem with Synthesis. The second is it actually doesn't cover the whole curriculum. Uh, it's a subset of the curriculum. Uh, it's 20 hours across all the grade levels. Um, and so we have to supplement it. And so there'll be some supplementary work where you can't just put a kid in Synthesis. Your test scores won't go up. Um, and so, uh, we will, we add the supplement ourselves. The biggest supplement we'll we add is an app called Alpha Math Fluency. And so let's dive into this because this is a controversial topic in math education. Um, there's a view in math education that you do not need to memorize your multiplication tables and division tables anymore. Just that is, uh, we could tell because all the kids transferring into the school can't. I have lots of high school kids who are in third grade material because they are learning their multiplication and division tables because they did not learn them. Uh, there's a view you don't need to. There are calculators, etc. Um, if you are going to do higher-level math, you need to, you will struggle to get through algebra well if you can't do it. Um, it also causes you to overload your working memory if you get into learning science and cognitive load theory. It causes you to make careless errors and make mistakes. I will give you the most extreme example, uh, that we have of the benefits of it because it's not hard, right? It's not hard to learn your multiplication tables. It is the easiest unlock for great math performance for most kids. Even the best students who haven't done this need this. So we have a student who had a 740 math SAT. So pretty good. And for whatever reason, she never learned her multiplication and division tables, and she could never get above the 740. She just kept making careless error after careless error. You know, she was like, "I know this material, but in the test, couldn't do it." The way your brain works, right? You have a limited number of working memory slots to compute. If you don't have things to fluency, you have to use those slots to calculate seven times eight. If you know something to fluency, it doesn't use one of those slots. Right? The easiest way to think about fluency is when you're reading. If you're reading a sentence and you're having to decode the word and get context clues, right? You are using your working memory slots, right? But if you read the words enough, you can just coast by them, and you're not having to calculate. This is when you think about reading. Once you hit fluency on enough vocabulary words, reading becomes fun. Before that, it's the struggle of of getting there because it's using up your computation. When you get into higher-level math, right, you're overloading your working memory slots. You just have too many because you're using it for seven times eight, and you actually need to be doing it to integrate the curve, right? And so, uh, we went back, we sent her back to third grade. I have to admit, that was one of the hardest motivational problems we've ever had to take a really good math student and convince them this is the problem. After she went through it and did really well, she's now a 790 SAT, um, in math. So literally, it doesn't matter where you are in the curve, it unlocks your ability to do higher-level math. So everybody at Alpha has to go through this. We have math fluency. Um, math fluency, you'll see right now is, um, uh, we use external, right? We have, we, it sits in the normal XP motivation model. You'll be seeing some apps come out, uh, going forward where we've gamified it, where literally you're just multiplication, division tables. This is the easiest thing in the world to gamify and get kids to be able to do this and engage. So we have a Candy Crush game and a Subway Surfer. I'm not a gamer, um, and, uh, you think of Flappy Bird. I'm throwing names I don't really know as well, but there's a set of video games that are built that kids say they like, that are going to, uh, make sure they have math fluency, um, around that. So, that's your K through three. So, what you'll be in session one is kids will be going through the Synthesis. They'll be doing math fluency depending on where they are. At the end of session one, we'll have to do an evaluation since Synthesis doesn't teach the full curriculum. We'll create, we'll know, um, based on quizzes where they are, and we'll generate some supplemental lessons for the students to make sure that they can master the grade level. Uh, the second, once you're past K through three, uh, fourth through 12th is Math Academy, and that is, that is the ma, that's the single best math application over. It's the best, um, uh, implementation of everything we could ever ask, um, uh, for. And students, we believe in, and Math Academy will learn in 20% less time. They'll learn more content. If you look at our high school math SAT scores, they're off the charts. We can get, you know, we, we don't have this year's yet, but, you know, our freshman year average from kids coming in, right? Uh, transferring from other schools, etc. Our both our average and our median for last year is 1410, um, for freshmen, right? That's higher than most high school juniors and seniors. Um, our senior average was 1535. It's a small sample set, so it's not, but we expect no matter how big the sample size, it's going to be the same. Um, so our ability to get kids, and, you know, one of the things that we really believe is there's, there's also another view, um, that there's, uh, certain people who can't do math science. Most frequently, "I'm not a math science girl." We don't believe in that at all. Um, you know, if you go through our current juniors and seniors, you know, we have a girl who is building a Broadway musical, so we'll call her an, you know, arts girl, 790 math. We have a girl who is, you know, trying out for Miss Teen USA, 790 math, right? We have another student who took the the SAT. Um, uh, it's near and dear to my heart, uh, because it's my daughter. She is a TikTok girl, is how I would describe her. Um, she has an online dating app for all those dumb high school boys. Um, and she took the, she took her SAT last week, and I was like, "How'd you do?" And she's like, "I think I got a perfect 800." And if you had told me five, six years ago, because I've known these these students, that all of them were like, "Yes, I can do math and get 790s and 800s on on the SAT." I would have said, "Wow, that is, I would not be want to be the one to sign up for it." Um, I now have. It's amazing. So, we can crush the math. These apps are great, you know. Um, it's one of the strongest parts of our program. Now, let's move into reading. Sorry, math. Any questions on math? So, the controversial things you'll see in in our system is relative to most schools, we we demand fact fluency in, uh, which is a third grade lesson, uh, across everybody. And you'll find if you're transferring in, most of the students do have to go back and and fill those holes. Uh, okay, reading. Reading, reading is going to be the best one for Gen AI. You know, if you look forward a year from now, what's going to change more? Uh, reading is a problem in this country. Um, you know, all the universities are reporting that the professors can't assign full-length books. Kids can't, they, they just can't hang in there. They can't read a book anymore. Um, all, and there's a thousand excuses why, and short-form content and TikTok and pick, pick your reason. Um, back to putting and filling a brain with awesome stuff. Uh, reading's critical. Can't, can't get around it. It's pretty important to read. So, uh, our reading program, just philosophically, um, we believe we, we sort of have this, uh, three-step progression. The first is Alpha Read. And Alpha Read is the app that's built to teach kids to read as quickly as possible. And we'll go into that. Um, the second, and our results are, our kids learn to read five times faster than giving them a book. Um, all the readers of the world hate when I say that, but it's a fact-based statement. The second app that we're moving kids into is Teach Tales, which is Alpha Read is short-form content. It teaches you to read really quickly, but it does not inspire a love of reading. Teach Tales is our app to make sure that kids read what they love until they love to read. Um, we need to, and it's long-form, right? Read long-form and get there. And then the third is, once you can read long-form, you're going to read physical books, and on your charts are physical books. Um, and so people are going to have books. Um, sure. Great. So, are they going to read the classics? Um, uh, some of our students will, but it is not going to be a requirement for, if you think of a big, there's sort of at the high school level, or maybe in the college level, if you think of, um, sorry, I'm answering a maybe a little different. We are trying to create for our high school curriculum. There's, you know, if, if you look at a classic at the university level, there's sort of a 50-book canon or 150-book canon that everybody reads. We actually believe we can take the ideas in those 50 books and teach them to high school kids. Right. That back to, you can pull this down, and we can teach them there. Uh, that is going to be optional at our high school on whether you want to do that or not. Um, there are back on physical books, what are the books to read? This is a big debate. Um, uh, we are going to have a standard and a list from the, what kids can pick, but yes, they will be reading some of the ones that you consider a classic. Um, but we believe we think we could get the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers and actually even at a high school level teach kids this. But, but, and here's the part that I would, I'd hesitate on, is, you know, the, the great, the St. John's and the great books people, you know, I just read an article a couple weeks ago where they're like, "We need everybody to spend three months on the Iliad, and everybody should read it in the original Greek." That's sort of my view of like the classic part, you know. Uh, no, no, you lose almost every high school student when you assign them one of these famous classic books. They don't read it. They don't, you can say they, you hope they do. They ChatGPT it and say, "Give me a summary," and SparkNotes it, and, you know, my generation was CliffNotes, and they don't read it. Um, and so, uh, what we are doing is saying, you know, the, and here's why books, you know, why you have to sort of, we think our three-step sequence is the way. When you give books to kids and say, "This is how you're going to learn how to read." Look, there's 10% of kids who are readers, right? And they love it, and they read a lot of books. And I have a daughter who read 100 books, you know, a summer, and she loves it. You know, she's 50,000 pages into her summer reading already, right? That's 10% of the market, right? 90% of the kids are not going to do that. And a book bundles three things, right? A book bundles multiple things as one. And if any go wrong, you lose the kid. So the first thing that a book bundles is its Lexile level, its difficulty level, right? And the zone of proximal development is you need to be within 10% of a kid's Lexile level for them to be able to read it, right? And if they're way behind it, they just start struggling through it, and it's too hard. When I say in the original Greek, okay, that Lexile level is above probably most of the people in the room. Um, it's so you, you, you have a bundle of, when you give the book out, it, most of the kids in your class are not at the Lexile level of the book. The second thing that you're bundling in with the book is the interest graph. Do I care about this topic? Right? Do I really care about what it is? And then the third part is you are giving, it's passive learning until you've read 100, 200, or 300 pages, depending if you give quizzes.

Like you know, partway through it. And big gaps between when you actually ask reading comprehension questions is a huge, uh, determinant of whether they're actually learning. Right?

So Alpha Read short form is much better. You have a page, two pages, three pages, and we're asking you reading comprehension questions. We know you're learning it. You know, I'm 300 pages into this book and I ask five questions. Do I really know? And that's why most students actually don't read the books because you can gain that five-question question at the end. Five test questions at the end. And so that's the struggle of if you give kids books and why learning is bad by just handing them out. 10% do great, the other 90% don't read it and they don't get a love of reading or anything.

Our system is the opposite. Alpha Read is the fastest way to get them to read. It will raise their Lexile level right where they are. It's asking the reading comprehension questions, right? And making sure that you can learn, learn to read quickly. But unfortunately, it doesn't do the other two. And that's why we have the phases two and three to get the love of reading and long form. Uh, the highest level today will get you an 800 on the SAT and a five on AP Lit. And so if you know what those curriculums are, you are learning some right there. It's Shakespeare, it's going to be poetry, it is going to have that content as part of it. Um, it does not have all the great book content that we talked about, the 50-book canon that would be at a university level.

>> Yes. Yeah. No, it's the highest Lexile level of, you know, um, I'm trying to remember exactly what the number is, but I, I, I don't know off the top of my mind, but it's enough to to max out your SAT and AP. And if, let's just go off on that one. If you're wondering, we really do, if you're saying, you know, one of the things, uh, that I want to address, teaching to the test, right? We, we use standardized test scores a lot, right? And there's a view of you're teaching the test. And I guess I'd answer, yeah, I guess we are, which is we do believe that if you get a five on Calculus BC, you know more than if you get a one on Calculus BC. And we think most parents actually think that, right? We think people who get 1590s and 1600 SATs, right? Know more than people who get 1300s. Now, that's not sufficient. And that's why our whole afternoon is life skills and all these other things. But if you're trying to measure an academic score, the tests actually do a pretty good job and are absolutely directionally correct.

Now, the tests are getting easier. And we're going to talk about how, you know, we just re-formed against 2025 data for the NWA MAPs. And, you know, basically America got a lot dumber in the last five years. And so it's easier to do better. Um, we're not lowering our standards, but sort of the com, the rest of America is just going down. But we believe that yes, a standardized test score where you do well is indicative of what you know about that subject. Um, I'd go even a little further, which is even parents who don't like standardized testing for whatever reason like it when they come to Alpha. Because as much as I'd like to believe you trust me, you actually don't. When I say your kid's learning in two hours, you're like, "Show me the scores because that doesn't seem truthful." Right?

If you're new in school, right? The hardest part for you is going to be in December because your kid just took their MAP test. They're going to come home and they're going to love school. They're going to spend their two hours. Everything's going to be great. You're like, "Wow, is this really? Is this a fraud? Is this working?" Because when you go home for Christmas, your family members are going to be like, "I, does this really work?" And you won't have gotten third-party validation that it does, right? And I get all my questions basically in the first two about academics in the first week of January when everybody comes back for holiday. And our MAPs test is usually the 20th, you know, some, some week of the 20th of January. And I'm like, just wait for the MAP test, right? And you'll be able to see your kids learning 2x in two hours and you know, um, so standardized tests are your proof that what we're saying is true, right? Hold us accountable to that. And that's why it's third-party. I'm not self-grading. Everything from August to December is self-grading because it's our system telling you your kids learning, but it's the standardized external test that gives you the confidence, right? It is the SAT test. This is why schools like Vanderbilt and Stanford and everybody's going to let our kids in because it doesn't matter what grade I put on that transcript. What matters is they get fives on their APs and 1550 plus on their SATs and then the university is like, "Oh, okay. These kids know stuff."

>> Yes. Um, what's the best way for parents to support their kid? Um, there's, there's two parts. One is if your student is struggling, right, is escalate it to the dean of parents, right? Don't try to go in and help, you know, and I, parents hate when I say that. Um, but and obviously you can if you want to, but it's this is our job, right? It is our job to educate your students. And parents who transfer in have this view often that educating the kid is not the school's responsibility. That that's why they hire external tutors and they have to help and all of these things. And I'm like, I, I don't know. That's why you're sending them to the school so they learn. And I see it as mine, right? We were just up in New York, right? And you know, we had the Horseman's and the Daltons, the best private schools of the country, you know, uh, they have $75,000 tuition. And one of the parents got up and said, "How many of you in this room spend more than $75,000 on after-school tutors, right?" And almost everybody raised their hand. And I'm just like, what, what is going on here? We're not charging enough tuition in New York, I guess. I mean, but no. So, our job is to do it. Now, if they're struggling, let us know, right? If they're spending more than two hours, let us know. Um, and let's, let's go down this path where you, you'll see this. You know, kids can learn 2x in two hours, right? And that is our, our standard and we deliver it. And you know, this year, I'll go through the, the update at the end. Our kids learn, kids who've been here a year fall to fall was 2.2x, right? And our average kid works less than two hours a day. Right? So, we measure how long all the kids spend in apps and all of that. That does not mean individual kids don't spend more.

Now, there's lots of different reasons on why they spend more. For example, on my younger daughter, she chitchats at school. She socializes. She's like, "Dad, I'm using that time for that." And at home, she actually just does the apps at home. At night, she's like, "My friends are a lot more fun to talk to than you, Dad." And you know, and so now if you want them to do it as a parent, tell the dean of parents and we'll make sure they do it. I'm fine to to let her switch that. Second, when kids are catching up, right, they'll do more. Okay? If you do want to catch up, an hour homework, half an hour homework, you can do that. Um, third, guides run. You know, there are motivations for kids to do well. And I want to be a rocket ship. I want, you know, some kids want to be top of the leaderboard. They're competitive, right? They do it voluntarily. It is not a requirement. And so there are some kids who do that. It shouldn't be sustained, you know, until they catch up. Uh, you know, if we measure, you know, there is no student last year who worked more than three hours a day in the apps on average. There are spikes where they would, but in aggregate as you look across it. Um, and our average is like 1.9 hours a day across all the students. Uh, but if they are struggling, right, and they're new into the system and here it's going, let us know, right? Because that will help us if they're going home and and struggling. Our guides should catch it in the, you know, during the two hours, but at a parent, that's the, the number one.

>> Yes. Um, okay. Uh, we're talking Alpha Read on your app. So, uh, so here's the question. Uh, one was Alice in Wonderland like, then it was a bunch of facts. Um, you know, how do you decide what they're going to read about? So this is actually, um, one of the benefits, uh, and I'll, I got to give a preface before I answer your question of the generative AI. So there is, if you look up and you can look online, there's a thing called E.D. Hirsch created a thing, a curriculum called Core Knowledge. And Core, Core Knowledge is sort of something that when we grew up, all was the, it's 5,000 facts, concepts, and ideas that used to signify whether you're an educated person, right? And it, and it starts from kindergarten through 12th grade. And it's like, here's the content that people should know. Uh, and with Alpha Read this year, we, we, we piloted a little bit last year, but for full now for the first time, we can generate articles that take all those 5,000 facts, ideas, and concepts and put them into the reading lessons so the kids get them. You'll actually find that a lot of our science and history curriculum, right, doesn't actually need to be during science and history time. You can actually get it while you're trying to teach the kids to read. Um, so you will see now this year where articles will be, will have, uh, what, what we're doing is we're basically pulling from those 5,000 ideas and we're tracking for a kid what do they know of that whole corpus of knowledge. And so, um, I'd have to ask somebody else out exactly what the algorithm is of what we're doing, um, for each kid and how we're deciding which one. Um, but what you should be thinking about is the articles this year versus if you know, prior years will have more ideas, concepts, and facts, um, rather than just pure reading, right? Filling the kid's head with knowledge, right, is one of the things that Gen AI allows you to do, where you can generate it. This is where it's all still static. Where we really believe it's going to unlock is when it's dynamic, where you can generate the content, right? And here's the facts and ideas and how do we do it? Our high school kids do this a lot. Um, you know, last year for our AP World History, sorry, US History, you know, all the students went and said, unit by unit, there's like nine or 10 units. They literally created a song per unit. So, they had a nine or 10 songs just like the, the play Hamilton that had all the facts, ideas, and concepts of US History. And they used AI to generate it. They then put it into Sumo for those who know, which is a music generator. And if you walked around, you know, our, our students doing US AP History, they literally would be singing songs. Um, they all got fives on their APs. Uh, there are some downsides. One of the students after the test said, "Oh, I was caught on the chorus was so catchy. I was caught on it." And I knew the fact I needed was in the next line and I kept getting stuck. Um, but the, that concept of where you can generate all these facts and ideas and concepts and put them in a way that's digestible for the kids, right at their Lexile level, in their interest level, is one of the things that we think by the end of this year you'll see in Alpha Read and Alpha Read articles. But the, so the part of Alpha Read that is different than almost every reading program in America is we are putting all those ideas into kids' heads. Um, it's really hard to do if you don't have a Gen AI-based system like ours to do that. Um, it becomes this endless drill and kill, which is why most schools don't teach those anymore. Um, we talked a little bit about teach tales, but it's read what you love until you love to read. Let's talk about writing. Oh, sorry.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yes, the high school kids will go through nth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade will do Alpha Read. That is if you're right back to AP content, you're going to be, you know, AP Lit, AP Lang, AP Lit. Um, you'll be doing it. There's a chance there's this other app that I'm not bringing up called Athena that actually has AP content. Uh, some of the Alpha Read stuff may migrate to an app called Athena. But the point of Alpha Read can get people to 800 language SAT and have all that curriculum you need, including the lit content, right? Um, poetry, lit, um, great book, uh, literature. Test it finally precise.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. So the, the biggest part that you're going to see differently, uh, is that loop happens. I have to learn it till I know it. Um, what you'll get when we're, because we're dynamically generating, or think of Math Academy, the bite-sizes that you're learning are smaller, right? That we're able to scope the mouthful, right? Uh, so that when things are too big, is when you get into a doom loop, right? And so what we measure is what percent of the kids are taking 45 minutes to learn this instead of 15. And if, it's right, if we're, if kids are struggling with it, we will break that lesson up, right? And make it two, two lessons. And the whole balance that you're basically trying to do is you don't want too many lessons. Um, but you need enough that everybody can get through it, right? With 90% odds on the first chance. And we debate internally if should be 90 or 95% as the first time, right? Um, through it, but, and so you'll see finer grain. So it should be, once again, if your student is in 15 XP and consistently doing 45, let us know because we can now generate smaller chunk lessons so that happens so that they don't get caught in that the doom loop. There's two points of doom loops. You know, back to, we measure everything. There's two points of doom loops for most students. One is at the individual lesson level. The second is at the end of test level, right? I'm taking the Texas Star. Oh my gosh, how many do I not know? And then I have to go back there and I'm caught in that to getting up above 90. So, uh, one on time back, you'll get smaller loops in the lesson level. Uh, we have back to, uh, learning science. We have seven of the 10 best learning scientists in the world helping us do our lessons. Now, um, that was not true when it's a third-party app. This is for ours. And so our ability to really look at a lesson and have the world's experts say, here's how you can create it to make it so that everybody can get through it faster and better, um, is our feedback loop. The second one at the, at the larger level, you'll see is, uh, we're doing this. This is actually Athena is the first, first one, but it'll, it'll come on the other ones. We do unit-level cumulative testing. So APs have nine or 10 units. So, at the end of unit one, you actually have to take the unit test and get a five on it. At the end of unit two, you take a test that has unit one and unit two. Have to get a five to progress. And so, by the time you finish the nine, right, you get all the great spaced repetition you want. You get the mastery so that when you take the AP, you get a five. We're bringing that down. We used that last year at the high school level. We're bringing that down to K through eight this year. And so those are the two big doom loops where you have for the manufacturing people in here, you have rework, right? And you don't want to, you want to get kids through at 80 to 85% accuracy, right? That's the zone of proximal development. If it's higher than that, they're not learning. 99%, you're just regurgitating what you know. If you get down to 60 or 50%, you get disengagement, right? It's back to XP is a video game term, disengagement. Every video game, there's no video game you would your kid plays where 50 to 60% of the time they're disengaging, right? You need to make it challenging but not too hard.

>> So, there's an accuracy measure that's embedded, um, with it, which is you need to have 80% accuracy in order to get credit for the XP. If it's below 80% accuracy, you're guessing often or you're not understanding what the concept is. Uh, and so there are, um, like Math Academy gives you negative XP. We generally try not to do negative XP because it's demotivating. We're not in control of their XP, but they do. Um, because they register that as the kids gaming it, and they want to sort of say, "Hey, stop." Um, but the, the, the real path you want to be on is giving them XP as they're demonstrating accuracy. In Math Academy specifically, the, the key learning science app for Math Academy besides their knowledge graph is they use worked examples, which is one of the best, most fastest, uh, most efficient ways to learn for, uh, most kids. It depends on the app. It depends on the app whether you give partial credit for kids in general. You're try The design goal is give kids XP, you know, if you can, not if they don't deserve it, give them partial if they've made partial work. Um, don't give X negative XV if you, if you don't need to to hit them. Um, just don't give them credit, right? There's a big difference between negative and zero and and being able to retry. And for things that are partial, so one of the things you'll see, last year you couldn't get credit for taking tests. This year you get XP when you take tests. So we're always anytime we don't give XP to a kid, right? We build a model where like get XP or get completed lessons. Last year, anytime you have a kid and you want them to do something and you built a motivational model and you don't have it counted, they're going to be like, well, why am I doing this? Right? And so the XP allows us to align across tests and lessons, right? Even retakes when we're in rework and give students credit for it.

>> Yeah. Um, this is a great question. So this is, um, uh, the, the question is drill and kill regurgitation versus higher-level thought, right? Critical thinking. The framework, uh, that we use, uh, is, uh, a learning science framework, Depth of Knowledge. So, uh, there's four levels of Depth of Knowledge. DOK 1 is fact-based regurgitation. I know facts. DOK 2 is I can read something and summarize it. DOK 3 is I can read things and have insight. And DOK 4 is sort of the, the highest level where I have original ideas myself or I can take this concept and apply it elsewhere because I've shown mastery of it. And, uh, our system, uh, we think better than any system out there, uh, there, uh, gets kids through all four levels. The reason, the only reason you can score fives on AP tests is if you're doing DOK 3 and 4 questions, right? That's the difference. As you get above 1350 on the SAT and into the, you know, fives on APs, DOK 3 and 4 is the difference. Um, when you're in, you know, third grade and fourth grade, you're not doing DOK 4. You're doing DOK 1 and 2, but then as you move up, we move you into the, the three and four. Um, there is a theory that we strongly disagree with that you don't need DOK 1 and 2 and you can just skip to three and four. We believe the exact opposite. We believe that to do critical thinking, you have to do it based on a fact base. We teach critical thinking and your kids will do both sides where they learn to argue both sides of the debate. In town halls, you'll see your student who, new students come in, they are like, "Wait, the kids are in charge of the rules, you know, and they, and they can propose anything. How about we propose no academics, right?" That's the first one every new student, you know, comes in and says, uh, you also when you do proposals, um, uh, L2 and above, you actually have to propose the steelman of the opposing side, right? What's the other side of this debate? And if your opposing debate isn't good, your idea is shelved, right? So we teach kids that yes, you have to look right across it. But the key to good critical thinking is having a fact base. And without a fact base, you're just basically making things up. I have ideas. It's not based on fact, right? There's no, you know, uh, PhD that's going to be based on I, I just made stuff up. Here's my evidence I'm anchoring it on. That's your DOK 1 and 2. In the AI world, you know, when AIs think and critically think without a fact base, it's called hallucination, right? And that's basically what critical thinking without DOK 1. If we're not putting these 5,000 facts of E.D. Hirsch and Core Knowledge in kids, think all these ideas that just, they're not based in reality. They have to be anchored in fact. And so we fill it with facts and then you teach DOK 3 and 4 on top of it. And our whole high school curriculum, if you look at when we talk about, we have these concepts of brain lifts and that gets into a whole thing that, um, is it's our view of in a world of AI, what do humans know and what do AIs know and we teach all our high school kids this, um, but that's a separate, a separate talk. It's all based on our kids explicitly are like, this is DOK 1, 2, 3, and 4 knowledge, um, around anti-patterns.

>> Yeah. Um, what do we do with anti-patterns? Anti-patterns, you know, there's, um, uh, what kids are doing that are getting in the way of them learning. Um, and our goal with kids is to coach them. Um, they actually, uh, coaching tips, you'll see in the, in, in a Rev that's coming out to the students, they're not called anti-patterns. They're called coaching tips. And here's, if you had to look at our motivational model, that everything resides on is, you know, the, the reason, uh, our system works and all the other EdTech doesn't is because the problem, the solution is not the EdTech. The problem and our solution is the motivational model. You know, if you actually take our solution and you put it in a normal school where the kids have to sit there for six hours, our stuff doesn't work because the kids are like, "I don't get it. Why would I do it?" Right? The core of our motivational model is time back. Right? That's the trade we make with the kids. Right? And the story, if you listen to the podcast that I just did, this literally was my first week. So in my first week, I, you know, I'm principal and McKenzie is like, you have to deliver love of school and they want to have to go to school instead of vacation. Okay. I hated school. I, right? I'm like, but my kids have been here. We're here. I was like, okay, I got to do this. I literally sat down with the fifth graders and I was like, do you guys love? They just had started. I was like, do you guys love school? And they're like, no. And I'm like, what would make you love school? And they're like, less school. And I'm like, how much less? And they're like, "None." And I was like, "Okay, that seems a little light. Uh, how about this? If literally what I need you to do, if I would you really engage for two hours in these apps?" Like, no screwing around, no spinning your chair, right? Really trying. Would you engage for two hours if I gave you four hours to do the most awesome things you love to do, right? And that fundamentally is the core of what we do, which is you give kids their time back. And our physical schools are all based on that. Our sports academy is, do you want to play sports in the afternoon? For kids who love that, that's a motivator. If you're not a sports kid, you don't like it. Our GT school is basically kids who love academics for academic sake, right? It's actually not based on capability. I mean, they, they, you have to be tested for that school, but fundamentally, it's like my oldest daughter, like she read calculus books for fun. When we ask the GT kids, hey, what do you want to do in the afternoon for fun? And they're like, a third power hour and math olympiad, right? And academics, right? I don't, they don't wake up and say, I want to do an entrepreneurial workshop, right? And so the core of our school is how to make the afternoon so the kids love it, which then says, okay, engage for the two hours, right? And then we have all the other motivational models and it depends on age and, um, you know, I want a sticker, you know, in kindergarten, you know, or I want a stack rank versus other kids, or I want, you know, a Chick-fil-A, or I want the petting zoo at the end. You know, all those things that you'll hear about and experience. And our anti-pattern and our coaching is all about, you know, we have a waste meter, right? Where we calculate all the anti-patterns. We calculate all the inefficiencies the student has in their learning and we tell them what percent of the time they're wasting. And we're just like, you want to get out of here in two hours? If you're spending three, it's taking you longer. Stop doing these things, right? Just stop doing these things, which is when you miss a question, watch the explanatory video that explains it. And if you don't and you just keep skipping it, you're not going to get out of here, right? You're not going to finish in time, right? And so all our coaching is assuming the kid wants to get out of here, how do we coach them up to be able to do that? Um, and so that's, you know, and it depends on the app, right? It's always app-specific on why, you know, they're, you're scrolling the, the Alpha Read article without reading. You're guessing, right? You're just literally just churning the question bank and guessing, right? Um, and so we have this whole category. We can do a, um, when the waste meter, uh, is public, we have a four, four category, um, of, um, of anti-patterns. One of them is, you know, and this is when you get into are you looking at the screen or are you using the webcam and the microphone? You know, the screen literally is how they're using the apps. The webcam and microphone are the environment, right? That's why we allow you to turn it off at your house but not at the school because I need to know if the kid's in front of the computer like when the kid's not learning. Okay, literally anti-pattern zero level zero is they're not in front of the computer, right? Um, surprisingly happens a lot, um, in our environment. Uh, I put in my two hours, really? You were never in front of your computer during that two hours. Um, that is frequent at the high school level if you guys are wondering, um, until they get, you know, until they understand I got to get the XP. Second, the second level is are you engaged in the apps? Like that's level one. Are you engaged in the apps? So, you're in front of the computer, sure, but you're literally on your phone scrolling TikTok. You're talking to your friends, right? You're not actually engaged in the app. Then at level three, okay, you're engaged in the app, but you are engaging in dysfunctional behavior, right? And so those are level three. And then level four are, um, optimization levels based on an app, right? How do you really, um, uh, help the kid get that last little bit of learning? And so

>> Okay, levels.

>> Absolutely. So, if you, um, if you consistently are in a doom loop where you're not getting credit, uh, it does flag a review, uh, where we're trying to decide, you know, this is back to the anti-patterns. Are they really engaging, struggling? The hardest part to figure out is, is the kid screwing around or are they really struggling? Are the struggle detector is like the hardest thing to write? Um, uh, because it's, it's a fine line. Um, uh, which is why you, you need to give the AI as much data to figure that out. We have our internal ones. If you just physically see them and you know your kids and they're in this, give it a couple days to see if they get through. But if it goes on for an extended period, raise that flag, right? And then we can just go in and roster into the right, um, level. You will see there is, and just Alpha Read specifically, we increased the DOK 3 and 4 rigor this year over the summer. So kids who were doing it before where it was more 102, right? We, we took all the feedback, right? We take all the feedback from our testing, right? And out of all our June MAPs testing and our, our SAT scores, we increased the DOK 3 and 4. So kids are having to learn some of that more critical thinking. Um, but if they're struggling with it, we need to scaffold them into it more. And so if, if she isn't, and she doesn't get out of it, you know, give it a few days. Um, and if that's not happening, then we'll put her in a different one. And that's in general, if your kid's really struggling, escalate it and we can look at it and and figure it out, right? We know if a kid's not learning, you know, the hardest thing for us to know is, you know, do they really try, right? And we, we have the data from the apps, we have our guides, you know, we have as much as we, we can try to determine it, or, uh, were they screwing around or are they struggling? And if you have data to help us on that, that changes our answer.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Make sure to clearly articulate the question for those online trouble understanding.

>> Sorry. So the question is, uh, with the new system, is there going to be a new dash? Um, there will be a new dash that's XP-based, but it will look very, very, very similar to the existing dash. Um, but it's based on the new XP data structure, but it's still going to show you minutes and how long, you know, how many hours or how many weeks you are from finishing the curriculum. Uh, it'll give you a little bit more data on, uh, how many hours to finish a grade level since we can calculate that now with XP. Um, you can actually access the learning report to get this same data via your student's login. The parent login is coming any day now. Um, there was a team working last night because I was like, you can't get, let me go up in front of the parents without the parent login. Um, but we, they did, we, we didn't get it done. Uh, so it's soon, but the data itself is available where you can pull up the learning report, which is really the learning report is the critical report to know what your kid knows and doesn't know, and you can pull that up today, uh, with your student login. Okay. Uh, then let's go, we have 20 minutes left. Let's do, um, writing. Right. We, we're on, we're on track. Um, writing. Okay. It's been one of the biggest criticisms of Alpha writing AI, etc. Uh, we rolled out Alpha. Uh, we believe writing is critical. Our theory behind writing, writing is thinking, actually, in the learning science, right? What you're trying to do is literally change this, the kids' schema, right? Of their brain. And writing is one of the most effective ways to do that. And so Alpha Write, we are hitting hard in session one, right? We literally are delaying some of our science and history curriculum to make sure everybody can crush writing. So Alpha Write's rolling out. It's the best writing app. You know, writing is the one that ChatGPT is destroying, right? Kids aren't writing, they are prompting and turning in the paper, right? That is, if you go to any normal school, that is what writing is now. And we, in our world, can't have that. You can't get mastery if that's what you're doing. And so Alpha Write is AI-driven, but it actually shows, and if, as you look at it, it shows proof of work. You actually have to show the kid doing the work. And that's what Alpha Write does. And it does a mastery-based standard where you start with sentences and you master sentences. You do not assign. The other way to do it is assign an essay and go top-down. We go the opposite. Everything we always do is bottom-up mastery. So you do sentences first. Once you've mastered sentence, you know how to write a sentence. We'll let you write a paragraph. Then you're going to write paragraphs. Once you can crush and write really, really good paragraphs, we'll then let you write an essay. But it's a bottom-up function. And so, uh, it starts in third grade. And so students are going through learning how to write sentences. Um, and this is both, uh, uh, it allows you a little bit to do it based on your interest. Um, it will do more as you go, which is the same thing when you're writing about stuff you like, you're more interested in it. Um, but it's sentences, paragraphs, and then essays. And we're finding, you know, and we're only a week or so in, uh, you know, that we have a set of high school students who do not know how to write a third-grade sentence. They can't pass a third-grade one. They were just never taught, here is a grammatically correct sentence. Um, and so we're going to be whole filling, once again, the whole curriculum content for Alpha, right? Um, 30 some hours, right? So you can just get through this. It's only 30 hours. Um, and you know, back to this, once you write and you get through the whole thing and be able to write essays, this is also as you look at high school FRQs and all those things that you're going to be doing in APs, right? Our students, the reason they get fives is we really do have a writing program. We now have it in an in an app that we never had before. Yeah. So, as part of essays, when, when your kid unlocks essays, you can see it. They will write an outline first and they have to get the outline approved by the AI before they're allowed to write it. Um, right now we give a little bit of leeway on the outline where if the kid keeps failing, we're going to let them start writing the essay and then just get them later, uh, to improve the, to improve the outline. But yes, exactly. Um, if you want to know our writing curriculum, there's, um, there's a book, The Writing Revolution, that it's based on. And so, uh, that, that's the, the core value, um, or the core set of ideas, uh, behind it. There's Writing Revolution 2.0. There's, there's versions of it. Um, we actually think this writing app will be one of the best examples for people to understand why AI can teach really well. And in a world of AI, you can't give kids ChatGPT. You know, just, and just, I, I don't think I've said it yet, but you know, I say it on my podcast, I got a call from OpenAI, uh, today. Um, if you deploy ChatGPT to kids in all the schools, they will not learn. 90% of ChatGPT use in schools is cheating. There are 10% of the kids, those right, self-motivated kids who need a Socratic tutor and go deep, and that five, 10% it's great for them. 90% of kids use it for cheating. Um, and we, you just, that, that model of giving people a chat interface, right? We do not enable chat interface with our AI because that is just a license to cheat. Um, but we believe the writing app and the reading app are going to be great examples where you say AI can be good. Just don't give them a chatbot. Um, and the other point of AI, since I'm on it, if you're, we tell our kids, if you're using AI like a chatbot in the mornings in your two-hour learning, you are probably cheating. If you are not using AI in the afternoon on your cool life skills workshop, you're probably failing, right? And it's, it's they got to keep both thoughts in their head, which is right for academics, don't use AI to cheat, but AI gives kids superpowers around the life skills and the workshops. And you know, Maddie could not launch her Broadway musical if she didn't have AI to coach her up. She doesn't know any, right? She's a high school kid. There's no guided Alpha who's an expert in this, right? But she actually, all our, you know, high school kids have to use it to do their huge masterpieces. We had a hackathon last weekend where every single, you know, the whole guide group came in, you know, voluntarily 6 PM on Friday to midnight on Sunday, right? To learn how to code video games, right? And they're like, we need these skills. And now they're using them broadly. I know there is a Love Island video game, uh, that the high school kids are now sharing with all their friends and all these other things. But just that skill, it's don't use it to cheat, use it in your afternoons.

>> Yeah, the LLMs got upgraded. So fundamentally, we're right at the limit of what LLMs can do with all this generative one and Alpha Write is a generative one. Kids are just typing anything in and we are figuring it out. It's not static. Uh, and it was right at the limit. Uh, and what happened is the LLMs got better, right? 5041, Cloud 41, GPT 50, um, are good enough now that they can do that. That doesn't mean there won't be a couple issues, but fundamentally, we look every student in Alpha Write can say I disagree and submit it, and we review manually every time a student disagrees. We're running about 99% of the time that the Alpha Write is correct. Um, students disagree a lot and it's like, well, you don't know this and we have to teach you this. But that's the.

Okay, we got 10 minutes left. Uh, let's talk about, um, benchmark testing and just results. So, uh, I, I hit on this a little earlier. Here's what you need as a, as a parent in academics. You have to use a third-party test to trust. Don't trust us, right? We're not going to give you grades. We're not going to make up our own things. Use third-party tests to understand how your student is doing. Um, we use NWA MAP. You know, millions of kids every year take it. It's normed across everything. Um, for K through 8, this is what you should use. Um, it'll give you a percentile. When you see Alpha's in the top 1 percentile, right? Those are MAP scores. Uh, you will get some differences between, you know, the spring test and the fall test because we updated our nor, our table. MAP every five years creates a new benchmark. So we put down 2020 and put on 2025. It was released in August, so it's brand new. We don't have all the depth of insight yet, but we'll have some more thoughts on it, but the aggregate top-down view is all grades went down in America across all subjects. So last year, you know, in 2020, which was what we're using. So any that, you know, if you, uh, got a 220 to be at a certain percentile to hit that same percentile, you need to be at 215, right? And it just depends. It's just, you know, COVID learning loss, we're, there's no rebound, right? Because there's no hole filling done at normal school, so these kids aren't rebounding and learning is just going like this. Um, we're not changing our standards, right? Our standards at the mastery test at 90 plus percent to 100. So, what that generally will mean is kids' percentiles will just go up versus the norm. So, I'd love to take credit for it, but it's really just because everybody else is learning less. Um, and K through 8, NWA is a good benchmark. Um, then as you get into middle and high school, we add some different ones. So high school NWA MAP is not a good benchmark. Um, back to the median person doesn't learn anything. So if you actually look at how fast kids learn at the high school level, I mean, we have kids learning 20 times faster because the denominator is a one, right? The other kids aren't learning anything or a half, right? And so it makes it look like our kids, they're not learning any more than our middle schoolers, but because all their high school peers aren't learning, it looks like they're learning 10 times faster. So we basically don't pay attention to MAP, um, in high school because we switch to SAT and AP because that's what colleges care about, right? And so we just, we switch our norm and you'll see us talk about MAP up through eighth grade and then we talk about, um, uh, SAT and APs, uh, around that.

>> Yeah. Um, so this is a good question. So even APs are being watered down. So it used to be, uh, in our program for our honors high school program, you could get a four or five on an AP. Oh, sorry. Let me repeat the question. Uh, AP tests and SAT tests are being watered down. How do you deal with that? And I'm like, well, it's the same problem I have with MAP. We just raise our standards, right? So, um, we're 1550 plus on SAT now, right? Um, and APs, we used to be fours and fives and now we're fives, right? That students have to get a five. It is not acceptable to get a four because a four means basically, um, for Cal BC, most fours and fives, if you look across all the tests, and Chris, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but it's basically half the kids get a four and a five across almost every test. And so if you're going to get a five, you're going to be in that top 25%. Um, our kids measure things in how many questions they miss off perfect, right, on the, on the five standard. Um, but that's, that's the best we can do on the, on the norm testing. Um, but it is, every, everything's getting easier now. All that's happening at the college level is they're like, "Okay, we used to think 1500 was good. Now you got to get to 1550." Right? You can look at all the, what is being now that test optional is gone, you can just look at the college and see what their median is, right? They're 25th, they all publish 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile median. And so most of our kids who are trying to get into the Ivy Leagues and such target the 75th percentile and whatever it is for their schools, which will be 1550 plus, which used to not be the case.

>> Yeah. How do you? Yeah.

>> Yeah. So, uh, on both of those, we, the question is, how are you going to measure grit and resilience? And how are you going to measure divergent thinking, creative thinking? Uh, for us, the solution on that is not academics, right? I mean, you do have to have grit to get through all the stuff and for a certain set of kids, but we're, we're trying to make it, we don't believe in struggling, right? And productive struggle. We believe in teaching the kids, right? And that's our bottom-up direct instruction type approach, just teach them as fast as you right? Versus struggle because our life skill workshops are where we're going to teach both of those. Right? So, you know, when you look at our life skill curriculum, right? The of the five, and that's a different talk when we talk about life skills, we can go on for that one, which is, right, we teach leadership and teamwork, storytelling, public speaking, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, relationship, socialization, and grit, hard work. Right? And so your grit, hard work is all going to be done at the workshop level where we are teaching and we'll have tests to pass. We have the, you know, it's not as perfectly objective as.

A 1500 SAT, but you know our grit workshops, uh, are have tests to pass to, um, develop and demonstrate those skills. Creativity and divergent thinking. You know, you will get our creativity workshops is where you're going to get that, uh, most often. And on the academic side, you're going to get it with DK 3 and four around both sides, critical thinking.

>> One thing I want to jump in that you probably haven't seen, we added this feature about a week and a half ago and we're really excited about it. Alpha website. If you go into the program under life skills workshop, you will actually see, shockingly enough, a web page that says, "Here are the life skills Alpha teaches. Here is what they're doing." And at each grade level, what does that look like? It'll be a workshop. For all of you who have said, you have friends who ask, "What in the hell, sorry, what the heck do you do in the afternoon skills?" Uh, the answer is here's examples. At kindergarten, what does grit look like and how is it measured? At 8th grade, what does grit look like and how it's measured? It's super cool and it's got videos in most of them that you can give examples. It's been a feature that a lot of parents have asked for and we finally used AI to create it. It was awesome.

>> Yes. Thanks, Tar, for I don't know how many times he asked me. He's like, "Can't you just have a website I send to my friends so when they say what is the life skills that you explain it?" Um, and so we have that now. And I know, um, we're running out of time on on academics. Uh, once again, uh, a couple points here. I'm we're going to send out a lot of data for you and as deep as you want to go and I'm happy to go with any of you who want to spend a lot of time on it. We have the world's best learning science team, right? Whether it's me or anybody else around, you know, our academic model and why we do it and how it works. And so feel free reach out to your your dean of parents and they can set time up. Um, you know, I'm I'm an evangelist of this, uh, and I'm happy you will you might regret actually asked me about it. Um, but I'm I'm absolutely happy to do that.

On the second parts and we just sort of touched on it. There's all these other parts of the model. Our motivational model, our workshop model, right? Our high school, uh, Alpha X model, um, how we create and determine life skills. We are going to be spending, and you're seeing with all the content we're creating, why I, you know, we're out doing a lot more podcasts and education, why there's substacks. You know, our view, uh, really is, you know, to on on education is our schools educate kids, right? Our job, and I put our deans of parents, parents, you know, organization is part of this. Our job is to educate parents, right? Schools educate kids, but we have to educate parents because this is so different, right? It's so radical. Um, we're doing a completely different model and it's just it's foreign to what we grew up with. Um, and so I recommend if you want to get the best taste of it from me, the the, um, Patrick Oana's podcast I did a couple couple days ago. It's two and a half hours and it hits, you know, it has a little bit of the academic, but it hits a lot of all the other stuff. Everything from life skills to our motivational models, why we're building the schools the way we are. And then back to anything you want to know, ask your dean of parents and we will do sessions on this on any topic, right? We will have parent nights and spend as much time as you guys want. Um, uh, because the the to to grow schools when it's radical and weird and I say this in the podcast, you know, 10 years ago when Mackenzie tried to convince me, parents want to be educ want their kids to be educated the way they were, right? I went to Catholic school. My kids were in Catholic school. McKenzie came to me and he's like, "You got to come to this new school." And I'm like, "I'm not going to your weird janky school. It's so weird, right? And this can't work and it's not there, right?" And it took her two years to convince me to send my kids. Now my kids thrived for a decade, you know, and then three years ago I became principal on it. But that is what every parent in the world thinks is I we should educate the way we have for the last 200 years. And when you do something different, everybody asks you why you're doing it. It's really hard to answer. That's why at Christmas, the grandparents and the relatives, right? And so our job is to educate you why this is so much better and you can see in your kids, but there's actually a ton of science and psychology behind it, right? Our motivational model, we'll get, you know, um, Dr. Joerger, right, one of the best child development experts in the world to come do a session. We had Dean Schwarz from Stanford, learning science expert, come down and talk, right? We all the experts that we're using to, you know, build the school. We want to make sure you guys have access to all that, right? So that you as deep as you want, right? We're we're happy to spend the time.

That was amazing. Um, is my mic on?

>> Yes. Uh, thank you so much for being here tonight. I hope that you uh got a lot out of this. Uh, we're going to be sending a recording out. We'll send more information out as well. The other thing, next month, September 25th, we are having the authors of the self-driven child, uh, here in Austin for an event. Uh, it will be on parents square, your dean of parents, Heather McMahon. Let's give a round to Heather and those of you who online, you've also gotten to connect with your deans of parents. Uh, this event will be a live in-person event in Austin and it will be a virtual, uh, community party event in the other cities, uh, where people are getting together. Uh, the books that we love, motiv, uh, 10 to 25, the science of motivating young people, the self-driven child, those are two phenomenal books that really explain our philosophy of what we're doing at Alpha. And I'm so excited to have Bill and Ned, uh, in Austin to do this. Uh, invite your friends, uh, to these events. This is a great way for them to learn some incredible, uh, knowledge that they can incorporate with their families and to introduce them to Alpha. Um, I know you guys want sports teams. The more kids, the better the sports team is going to come. And Eddie Margane will make sure that we get a really good soccer coach, right? Uh, when it comes up. So, uh, that is the next, uh, big event that we have, September 25th. Uh, and excited for you to to come and bring your friends. Uh, stay, enjoy some dessert, enjoy some, uh, drinks, and get to know each other. And we're so happy to have you. It's going to be a great year. Thanks.