Making Time for Passion: The 2hr Learning Model
Mackenzie Price, the founder of Alpha, an innovative private school network in Texas, and 2hr Learning, an educational technology that has sprung from the curricular model at her schools, joined me for this latest conversation. In it, she explains how Alpha leveraged technology and redesigned traditional school structures to more effectively and efficiently teach core competencies. 2hr Learning is now packaging that model so its benefits can be realized by educators everywhere. We talked about how schools can use the time freed up to better support students in pursuing their passions and building life skills—something that homeschoolers, Summit Public Schools, and Acton Academy (just to name a few) have long known. But Alpha and 2hr Learning come at this question from a different angle—not just with its branding, but also with its acceptance of traditional measures like test scores. I learned a lot from the conversation, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well. Michael Horn: Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne, and you are at the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us think about that today, I'm tremendously excited because I've been hearing, I think everywhere, reading everywhere about the school and then school network and now app and a whole bunch of things called alpha schools. And we have the co founder herself, Mackenzie Price, and we're going to get to hear all about it and get a picture of it firsthand. So, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me. I can't wait for this conversation. Mackenzie Price: Well, Michael, I'm so thrilled to be here. I was really excited when I got this invitation. Mackenzie’s Journey to Founding Alpha Schools Michael Horn: So I can't wait for us to have a great conversation about where the future of education is headed, because I think you're helping shape it. And so I want to hear more about that. So let's dive into it. What is Alpha schools? What's the story behind it? Mackenzie Price: Yeah, well, I will start at a little bit of the beginning, which is in 2014. I had some background in working on some education initiatives, but I don't think there's anything like being a mom to really bring those bear claws out and say, we need something better. So I have two daughters that are now 18 and 16 years old. But when it was time for them to go to school, we sent them down the street to our local public school. My husband and I are both products of public school education. So for us, that was kind of what we were going to do. But very quickly, I found myself getting frustrated with the lack of ability for much personalization or adaptation to happen for where my kids were. And I would say, after about two and a half years, my oldest daughter and I were having a conversation one day, and she said, mom, I don't want to go to school tomorrow. And I looked at her and I was like, what do you mean? You love school. And she looked at me and she goes, school is so boring. And I just had this light bulb moment of like, this is a kid who was one of those tailor made, goody two shoe good little girls who was, like, meant to go to school and love school. And in two and a half years, the system had kind of taken this kid and just wiped away that passion. And I'd been really involved in the school district that my kids were at. And I talked to administration. And they said, mackenzie, I understand your issues and your frustrations, but this is like trying to steer the Titanic, and it's just too hard. And that was my cue that we got to do something else. For me, it wasn't about going to private school over public. It was about, we need a new model of education. And I looked around and I didn't really see anything that was going to address the concerns I had. So I kind of said, I guess we need to start this ourselves. I found a couple other par
