491: MacKenzie Price—The Most Talked About School in the World
6/23/20261 hr 56 min
What if school could be reimagined from the ground up? This week, Mike sits down with entrepreneur and education innovator MacKenzie Price, the founder of Alpha School, a model that's attracting global attention for helping students learn twice as much in half the time.
Using artificial intelligence, personalized learning, and an unconventional approach to education, MacKenzie is challenging nearly every assumption about how kids should be taught.
She also makes the case that meaningful change in education won't come from top-down mandates, but from bottom-up solutions created by parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs willing to rethink the status quo. From test scores to life skills, she explains why some believe the future of education has already arrived—and why the world's most talked-about school may be just getting started.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMike Rowe· Host0:00
[bass music] Hey guys, this is The Way I Heard It. I'm Mike Rowe, and the title of this episode is not Let's Get Edumacated, even though- It should be. I know.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:11
Yeah.
Mike Rowe· Host0:12
I mean, there's still time to change it, but- I don't think so. I don't think so either. Uh, we're gonna call it The Most Talked About School in the World. My guest is, uh, McKenzie Price, who I know through an organization called Stand Together, and, uh, what McKenzie has done is, uh, built a series of schools over the last decade or so. They're called Alpha Schools.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:35
Hmm.
Mike Rowe· Host0:35
And, you know, I don't know if we actually said this in the conversation, but what I was left with, and this is an amazing talk, by the way. If you've got kids or if you were one- [laughs] Yeah ... once upon a time.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:47
Or if you know any.
Mike Rowe· Host0:48
Yeah, or if you've ever been to a school or driven by one, the time has come to at least consider the possibility that everything you know about education is, I won't say wrong, but subject to review.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host1:02
I would've gone with entirely wrong, but- Yeah.
Mike Rowe· Host1:05
Well, see, that's the problem, Chuck. As broken as our public schools are- Mm-hmm ... you and I are still products of them, and we're sentient. We're functioning.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host1:16
I think they're different. I think they changed because I re- when we were kids, I remember, like, giant kids who were in a grade that you thought- [laughs] "You should have a job by now, dude, and you're, you know, you're in the ninth grade? What