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1:08

A

1:08

year ago, back in episode 82, I talked

1:10

to Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy,

1:12

one of the most visited online education sites.

1:15

We were talking back then about his big new idea,

1:17

the Khan World School. It's a fully

1:19

online high school with a self-paced curriculum,

1:22

content delivered largely through videos and

1:24

a weekly deep dive into one big,

1:27

important issue. But the last time we

1:29

talked a year ago, the motto was unproven. Here's

1:32

Sal at that time, talking about his hopes for

1:34

what the school could be. And so we said, let's

1:36

do the world's best high

1:38

school that happens to be online.

1:43

Welcome to People I Mostly

1:45

Admire with Steve Levitt. Today

1:49

in this special bonus episode, I

1:51

sit down with Sal to hear how the first year

1:53

turned out and I chat with

1:55

Chloe Peterson, one of the students attending

1:57

the school. Can

2:03

you just explain the key concept

2:06

behind the Kahn World School? What makes

2:08

it different? What makes it better? In 2012,

2:12

I wrote a book of One World Schoolhouse, and in

2:14

that was,

2:15

how did the education system that most of

2:17

us have lived in and still exists, how

2:19

did that come to be? Mass public

2:21

education, it was a hugely positive thing for

2:24

society, but it had to make some compromises. It

2:26

borrowed tools of the Industrial Revolution.

2:28

It batched students together, put

2:30

them essentially on kind of a standards-based assembly

2:33

line where the teacher might give some lectures,

2:35

and at some point, there's a check

2:37

to see if the students got things, and if they didn't,

2:40

too bad. The assembly line keeps moving on.

2:42

A lot of students start accumulating gaps, and

2:45

you get to the world that we get to today where the

2:47

average American student learns about 0.7 grade

2:50

levels per year. Now you have tools like

2:52

Khan Academy, at least in certain domains, you can

2:54

start learning at your own time and pace. The

2:56

last third of the book was, what could a school

2:58

of the future look like if you have tools like this?

3:01

Can we use technology tools for more personalized learning,

3:03

which is just learning at your own time and pace? If

3:06

you haven't learned something yet, you can keep working

3:08

on it. That's mastery learning. But

3:11

also this notion of, if you're able to do some of this core

3:13

knowledge and skills more efficiently, can you

3:15

free up more time for more project-based

3:18

learning, Socratic dialogue, just

3:20

getting kids out there into the real world? It's one

3:22

thing to write all of these ideas. Obviously a whole

3:24

other thing to implement it. That's

3:26

for sure. In 2014, based

3:29

on that, we started a lab school out here

3:31

in Northern California. I was somewhat

3:33

selfishly

3:33

motivated. My oldest child at the time

3:36

was

3:36

entering kindergarten. I also wanted

3:38

to test these ideas, and I wanted to show

3:40

the world that it's not just theory, that

3:43

it actually could be done at a reasonably cost-effective

3:46

way. Khan Lab School now

3:47

is K through 12. It's

3:49

had some really promising results. It's

3:52

been going on. And then in parallel, the

3:54

pandemic happened.

3:55

And in the pandemic, as we know, the whole

3:57

world had to transition to the world.

4:00

just some form of online learning.

4:02

I think most people had a bad experience when

4:04

the traditional academic model that was

4:07

essentially developed in the industrial revolution was

4:09

just transplanted to Zoom. And now kids

4:11

were just on Zoom for hours a day, eyes

4:13

glazed over. So it left a bad taste

4:16

in folks' mouth. But at the same time, based

4:18

on our experience at Khan Lab School, we said, no, there's another

4:20

way of doing this, where you

4:23

could actually make an online

4:25

school that can lean into best practices

4:28

of connecting humans, having them discuss

4:30

things, having them do things, but also leverage

4:32

tools like Khan Academy and others to

4:35

give students more autonomy where you can. And

4:37

this could also be an opportunity to scale because obviously one

4:39

lab school out here in Northern California, it has 300 kids.

4:42

It's not gonna scale to

4:44

hundreds of thousands. And so that's

4:46

where we said, well, maybe we should start an online

4:48

school to show how this could be done well.

4:51

We got connected with ASU, Arizona State

4:53

University is pretty consistently

4:55

on the cutting edge of like just trying new things out

4:57

in the education world. They

5:00

already had ASU Prep, which is one of the largest

5:02

online high schools that people respect. There's

5:04

some other online high schools that a lot of people don't respect.

5:07

And I just called them up just for advice. And

5:10

Amy McGrath, who leads that

5:12

effort said, you wanna do this together?

5:15

Cause this is what they always believed as well.

5:17

And I'm like, that would be amazing. So we launched

5:19

Khan World School, as you mentioned, almost

5:22

a year ago, we had 50 students

5:24

from around the world. The school is actually

5:26

free to anyone in Arizona.

5:28

Khan Academy's mission is free world-class education for

5:31

anyone, anywhere. And it's obviously, it's an aspiration, but

5:33

now actually Khan World School literally is a

5:35

free world-class education for anyone in

5:38

Arizona. But outside of Arizona,

5:40

we've tried to make it as approachable and as cost-effective

5:43

as possible. On top of that, some very generous

5:45

folks, especially yourself, Steve, have

5:48

made donations to support scholarship

5:51

students.

5:51

If you don't live in Arizona, you don't have scholarship, it's $10,000 a year. Not

5:55

much really compared to the typical private school.

5:57

That's right, Khan World School, one of the-

5:59

One of the things I'm most proud of, and this is something we've worked

6:02

on with you and your team, is yes,

6:04

we use Khan Academy and other tools for students

6:07

to be able to learn at their own time and pace, but they

6:09

get supported Oxford style with tutorial

6:11

instructors and they have a lot of community,

6:13

so it isn't that you're just working in isolation, but

6:16

most days for these students are anchored by

6:18

a Socratic seminar. And these seminar

6:20

topics are ones that we've developed with your group,

6:23

and they're topics that are multidisciplinary that you

6:25

actually care about. Is AI going to benefit

6:27

or hurt humanity? Should we be

6:30

allowed to use CRISPR to modify the human

6:32

genome,

6:33

plus all of the traditional philosophical debates or

6:35

hypotheticals from history? What if Caesar never

6:37

crossed the Rubicon? Really interesting

6:39

things

6:40

that take ideas from philosophy,

6:42

from history, from civics, from science,

6:45

and put it all together. And so

6:47

the students are able to connect with each other, learn

6:49

to communicate and collaborate, and we

6:51

really haven't seen that in the online school world

6:53

before. And one other thing I want

6:55

to add, Ciel, to the seminar concept

6:58

you're talking about is that my team made

7:00

sure to embed data science in it, because I'm

7:02

incredibly passionate about the idea that kids should know

7:04

how to deal with data. And I think

7:06

the best way to learn about data is not to be given

7:09

a data science course, it's to have it integrated into

7:11

everything you do. And I think

7:13

these 50 kids really got

7:15

a quadruple dose of data

7:18

as they went through their first year. So

7:21

I know neither you nor I thinks of

7:23

standardized test scores as the

7:25

be all and end all of education, but

7:28

they are a form of feedback on

7:30

whether a school is working. And test

7:33

score results for Khan World School, they

7:35

are so good that when the Khan

7:38

World School people sent me the test

7:40

results, I actually thought that they must have

7:42

made some kind of mistake. I've literally

7:44

never seen results like this from

7:47

a school

7:47

in 25 years of research I've been doing in education.

7:50

And I actually insisted that they send me the raw data

7:53

and let me look at it myself before I would believe it. And

7:55

I'm happy to say everything checked

7:57

out. Were you as surprised as I was?

7:59

by the test scores? The symbol answers

8:02

yes. And to your point, we

8:04

know no test, especially in those standardized

8:06

tests is going to be perfect. But when I saw those results,

8:09

I was both excited and I myself

8:11

was skeptical. I actually haven't been telling a lot

8:13

of people about it because they almost seem

8:15

too good to be true. The Khan World

8:17

School students, they took a test called Exact

8:20

Path, which is used by about 8,000 school

8:23

districts nationwide. So this is a pretty widely

8:26

known and respected test. Okay, so they took

8:28

the test, the kids at the start of the school year

8:31

and at the

8:31

end of the school year. And the key question is how

8:33

much does an individual student's score

8:35

grow relative to their starting value?

8:37

It's what education researchers call the value

8:40

added.

8:40

So let's start with math scores. The

8:42

typical American ninth grader on

8:45

this test sees his

8:47

or her math scores go up by 19

8:49

points on average over

8:52

the course of ninth grade. In this context, 19

8:55

is a benchmark against which to compare

8:58

the Khan World School students.

8:59

So at Khan World School, the

9:02

average increase in scores, it wasn't 19 points,

9:05

it wasn't 29 points, it wasn't 49 points,

9:07

it was 83 points. That's

9:10

more than four times the gains of

9:12

a typical student. I mean, my God, that's

9:15

absolutely incredible. And honestly,

9:17

it would have been even higher

9:18

except about a fourth of

9:21

all the Khan World School students, they hit the

9:23

maximum. They got perfect scores on

9:25

the math test at the end of the year. They couldn't

9:27

increase anymore because the test wasn't hard enough

9:30

for them.

9:30

It's weird because the

9:32

broader education establishment would cut

9:34

off their left arm for 4%. We're

9:36

talking about a 400% improvement. We're

9:40

right, I actually think we're facing this ceiling effect

9:42

of the test itself because a lot of these students, you

9:44

can imagine if you learned at Forex the pace in

9:47

ninth grade, you're actually already doing like 11th

9:49

or 12th grade math which these tests don't test. I

9:51

might've expected that the Khan World School

9:53

model with a lot of independence

9:55

for the students and the need for self-motivation,

9:58

it'd be great for some students.

9:59

and lousy for others. But by

10:02

my calculations, about 90% of

10:04

the students at Khan World School had above

10:07

average test score gains in math. So the

10:09

KWS approach to math, it seemed to

10:11

work for almost everybody, at least this first class.

10:14

Yeah, and one thing to be clear, a lot of folks might say,

10:16

oh, well, you know, this is a school that maybe

10:18

there's some self selection for kids who are motivated,

10:21

who want to do this. But to your point, these are growth

10:23

measures. This is wherever your starting point

10:25

was. Usually it's a case where students who are

10:27

more ahead actually have trouble growing

10:29

faster, because they're already to some

10:32

degree starting to hit like a ceiling effect. And

10:34

on top of that, Khan World School, it's not that every student

10:37

that joined was a superstar in math.

10:39

We're definitely looking for students who we think could thrive

10:42

in this environment. So there was some selection

10:44

involved for sure, but it was not that every

10:46

student is some type of a math prodigy.

10:49

That's far from what's happening. Now, people

10:51

might reasonably say, I'm not

10:53

surprised that kids do well in math. Kind

10:55

of having math is widely known to be excellent. But

10:58

I don't think anyone, even you,

10:59

definitely not me, expected

11:02

the kind of games the students experienced

11:04

in reading. Okay, so the typical American

11:06

ninth grader gained 17 points

11:09

in reading over the course of the school year

11:11

on the same brand of tests that you used.

11:14

And the KWS kids,

11:16

they gained on reading 58 points. It's

11:19

more than three times bigger than what's expected.

11:22

In the research studies that I've been part of, reading

11:24

scores tend to be much tougher to

11:26

affect the math course. This is just, again,

11:30

mind-boggling.

11:31

I agree. And if I had to guess why

11:33

we're seeing that, I think a large part of it has

11:36

to do with the seminar,

11:37

where

11:38

students know that they're going to have a rich

11:40

discussion about interesting things, and

11:43

we give them a good amount of readings. And when

11:45

you're motivated to read and dig into some

11:48

sometimes difficult texts, that's gonna improve

11:50

your reading. Then on top of that, they

11:53

have some choice about when they do it and how they do

11:55

it. I think we all remember being in school, sometimes

11:57

reading a book, that you don't necessarily get into it.

12:00

But when you get into it, when you enjoy it, when you have agency

12:02

and you have choice, and you have

12:05

either the seminar where you can

12:07

show what you know and argue and really dig

12:09

into these ideas, or the students

12:11

have to make videos of themselves

12:13

talking about different aspects of the book. I

12:16

also think that helps you process things when

12:18

you have to talk about it orally. But I was surprised

12:20

as well that we saw

12:23

results that good. I

12:25

also suspect that the

12:27

school has created a culture around

12:30

kids being expected to be

12:32

self-motivated and to learn. And I

12:34

think it was

12:35

just contagious. I think you just hit

12:37

the nail on the head on probably the most

12:39

important thing, which is the

12:41

environment in which something is happening.

12:43

If you can get the culture going where

12:46

the dominant culture is one of learning,

12:48

where it's safe to explore ideas,

12:50

share ideas, not be judged, one

12:53

of creativity and positivity,

12:55

you almost at that point just have to get out of the way.

13:01

After the break, I'll talk with one of the

13:03

students at Khan World School.

13:15

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15:16

My name is Chloe Chung Peterson. I'm 15

15:19

years old. I grew up in

15:21

Shanghai, and right now I'm

15:23

in the process of moving to Hong

15:25

Kong. So tell me, how did you

15:28

first hear about

15:30

Khan World School? Through this podcast,

15:33

actually. My mom is a big

15:35

fan, and so she was listening

15:38

to it, and she was like, Chloe, oh my God,

15:40

I found out about this school, and

15:43

it seems really interesting you should apply.

15:45

And so were you a willing participant, or

15:47

did you get dragged along kicking and screaming? I

15:49

mean, at first, I was a little bit

15:52

unsure because it's such a new

15:54

concept, and I didn't really know

15:57

what I was getting into.

15:59

Were you apprehensive? because it was the first

16:01

year of the school, it must have been

16:03

hard to even have an idea of what it

16:05

would be like. I'm not sure anyone knew what it would

16:07

be like. It was being made up as people

16:09

went along.

16:10

Yeah, the main thing

16:13

for me was the idea

16:15

of it being an online

16:18

school because I had some

16:20

bad experiences with online

16:22

school and my old school with COVID and everything.

16:25

And so I didn't really want

16:28

to go through that again and

16:30

sit through hours and hours of

16:32

just lectures on a computer,

16:34

but

16:35

after figuring out how my

16:37

school day would be structured and

16:39

how they teach and do

16:42

their lessons and their approach to

16:44

that, I started liking the idea

16:46

more and became more open to

16:48

the school.

16:49

So let's talk about math. What is math

16:51

at Conwords both? So math,

16:54

we use the Khan Academy

16:56

courses. In each unit, you have

16:58

videos, you have practices,

17:01

and then you have quizzes, and then you have the

17:03

unit test. I usually

17:06

prefer to watch some

17:08

of the videos to get a general concept

17:10

of what the math is. And if I understand

17:13

it, then I might do a quiz

17:15

and see if I know it, but if I don't, then

17:18

I'll go back, watch the videos, take some

17:20

notes. Once you finish that in

17:22

Khan Academy, you record yourself

17:24

taking the test, and then the teacher

17:27

double checks it, and you pass.

17:29

Who decides what you should study? Because

17:32

all the kids aren't studying the same math because

17:34

it's based on what you already know, right?

17:36

At the beginning of the school

17:38

year, we had an exact path

17:40

test for math, which shows

17:42

the teacher where your level is

17:44

at, and then she would assign you

17:47

courses. So last year,

17:49

I took Algebra I in Geometry, and

17:52

next year, I'm gonna do Algebra II in Precalculus,

17:55

but some people whose math was

17:57

already pretty good, they did Algebra II

17:59

in Precalculus.

17:59

and pre-calculus this year

18:02

and next year they're going to do calculus

18:05

as a unique course.

18:06

So let me just stop you because you just

18:09

said without skipping a beat that

18:11

you did Algebra

18:13

I and Geometry, you

18:15

covered two years of math in

18:18

one year in what would typically happen

18:20

in a US classroom. It's exactly

18:22

the point that CalCon has made which

18:25

is that if you let kids who

18:27

have a little bit of grit and

18:29

self-motivation learn

18:32

math in their own way it's

18:34

just so much more efficient than

18:37

sitting a bunch of kids in a classroom and having a teacher

18:40

lecture them all on the same subject.

18:42

It's what economists call a different production

18:44

function for knowledge and

18:47

I think what we saw

18:49

this year in the test scores at Khan

18:52

World School really reinforces the idea

18:54

and it sounds like for you

18:57

it was pretty painless. Is that your experience?

18:59

I guess so. I was never

19:01

really bad at math but I wasn't

19:04

good at it but I think when I was at

19:06

Khan World School it was a nice

19:09

subject just because of the

19:11

way the lesson was structured and

19:14

just made me like math. Would

19:16

you call yourself a math person now? I

19:19

wouldn't say I'm a math person that's a

19:21

little bit too far but I

19:24

don't dislike it.

19:26

Did you get a sense of the culture? What

19:28

was the vibe that the school gave up? Well

19:31

for my interactions with the students

19:33

they were all really nice and

19:35

supportive. I think that

19:37

people here really do value

19:40

hard work because if you're

19:43

signing up for a school that's completely

19:45

self-paced you're not going

19:47

to look down upon people who are

19:49

trying to do their

19:52

best and stay motivated.

19:55

Before this I would procrastinate

19:57

quite a bit so I would sometimes

19:59

I sometimes be doing homework late at night

20:02

because I got distracted. But

20:05

here, since there's no real

20:07

structure or deadlines, you have

20:10

to learn to plan out your day

20:12

and stick to that plan.

20:14

So I definitely learned

20:18

how I do work best, and

20:20

I figured out a way to

20:22

manage my time in getting all

20:24

of my schoolwork done. In

20:26

the US, we have a huge mental

20:29

health crisis with teenagers. COVID

20:32

obviously contributed to it, but it's deeper

20:34

than that.

20:35

There's just a sense that

20:38

things are going wrong. There's too much stress,

20:41

too much competition. What do you see

20:43

as the pros and cons of

20:46

con world school when it comes

20:48

to your own mental health? As

20:51

I'm getting older, I'm getting a lot more

20:53

stressed about college

20:55

and my grades

20:57

and my extracurriculars.

21:00

And there's this pressure to

21:02

do well and do as much as you can.

21:04

Especially in Asian culture, there's

21:07

such a pressure to be the

21:09

best that you can and get

21:12

extra training. I know some

21:15

people who have extracurriculars

21:18

that go until 9 PM at my

21:20

old school, I would also get home at like 8

21:23

PM because I was doing piano

21:25

classes or dance classes and my

21:27

school would end at five with

21:30

con world school. I don't have

21:32

homework, so that's less

21:34

pressure because I do everything

21:36

in my schoolwork independently.

21:39

So I don't have to have

21:42

this sort of rigid

21:44

structure that gets in the way

21:47

of me wanting to do everything

21:49

that I want to do. It does take

21:51

away from that competition

21:53

between your peers and trying to impress

21:56

them or the stress of failing

21:59

in front of them.

21:59

because it's self-paced,

22:03

it's a lot more relaxed. A lot

22:05

of it is depending on how

22:07

you feel in your mindset. So

22:09

if you're not feeling well, there's no pressure

22:11

to always be on and

22:14

always try your best

22:16

because people get burnt out

22:18

and sometimes they need to take

22:21

a slower week. And so Khan

22:23

World School lets you do this.

22:26

Yeah, it sounds like the way you're describing it, your

22:29

competition in some sense is yourself

22:32

at the beginning of the year. That's what you're benchmarked against

22:35

is what do I know and how

22:37

do I learn more? At least from

22:39

my vantage point, it seems like they've done

22:41

a really good job of not pitting

22:44

you against the other students, of

22:46

making it about your own journey. In

22:48

my own experience in school, it was always about the other

22:51

kids. Am I better than the other kids? Am

22:53

I losing the other kids? Which in retrospect

22:55

doesn't seem that healthy because

22:57

when you leave school and you go to

22:59

a workplace, it's very cooperative.

23:02

The whole norm of a job is

23:05

everybody's working together as part of a team.

23:07

And when I was growing up, I really had

23:09

the idea that cutthroat was

23:12

the right way to do it. And I had to unlearn

23:14

that. So it's not like Khan World School is

23:16

doing a good job

23:17

in that regard. Would you agree? Yeah,

23:19

definitely. At the end of the day, the school

23:22

isn't about the test score. It's about whether

23:25

you know the knowledge. So you

23:27

can retake a quiz

23:29

if you didn't do well on it. And you can

23:32

fix your essay if you didn't get

23:35

the score that you wanted or you messed

23:37

up a little. And I think that's pretty

23:40

good because in a real

23:43

life environment, it's not like you

23:45

submit a paper or

23:48

you submit a business

23:51

idea and it's not good. And they

23:53

just fail you and they hire you.

23:56

They'll give you feedback and they'll

23:58

help you improve it or you go...

23:59

back and improve it yourself. But in

24:02

a real school, that's not something

24:04

that you necessarily learn because a

24:06

bad score is just a bad score and

24:09

it's not an opportunity to do better.

24:12

So if you stop for

24:15

a minute and you just pause and

24:25

you reflect on how much you've

24:27

accomplished in just a year on

24:30

the Khan World School,

24:31

it must feel pretty good, no?

24:33

It does, but this is probably a personality

24:36

issue that as far as any of my

24:38

projects go, I'm always thinking

24:40

about, well, this is nice, but wouldn't

24:42

it be more amazing if we could get this to

24:45

more students and make it even better? I think to

24:47

your point, the model has already surprisingly

24:49

gone better than I expected. My

24:52

mission at Khan Academy is I wanna move the dial for

24:54

everyone, but I also know there's some kids who just,

24:56

their potential's there, but just because of the context

24:59

that they're in, they're not able to tap into that incredible

25:01

potential. And I hope that Khan

25:03

World School can be a life preserver,

25:06

give that chance to hopefully overtime

25:08

many more students. And those kids are gonna be

25:10

the ones that cure cancer and address

25:12

global warming and be leaders

25:15

who actually have our common interest at heart.

25:21

When CEL Khan first told me about Khan World School,

25:23

I was so inspired that I offered to help

25:26

create parts of the curriculum free of charge, and

25:28

I provided scholarship money to pay the tuition for

25:30

five students.

25:31

Having watched how things played out in the first year, my

25:34

enthusiasm has only grown. If

25:37

you know a self-motivated rising ninth or

25:39

10th grader who's bored or frustrated at

25:41

his or her current school, tell them

25:43

about Khan World School. There's still time

25:45

to apply for this fall, but you have to move

25:47

quickly. If you Google Khan World

25:49

School, that's K-H-A-N World School, you

25:52

can find all the relevant information. And

25:54

if you're an adult who is as inspired as I

25:56

am by this new vision of what high school could

25:58

and should look like,

25:59

tax-deductible scholarship donations are

26:02

greatly appreciated. I'm providing five scholarships

26:04

again this year. And if you're interested

26:06

in providing financial support, reach out to me directly

26:09

at pmedfreakonomics.com, and I can put

26:11

you in touch with the right people.

26:15

Next week, we'll be back with a brand new episode

26:18

featuring artist Wendy McNaughton. I'm

26:21

definitely stepping out of my comfort zone on this one.

26:24

Wendy will be the very first artist I've had

26:26

on the show. But I bet you don't talk

26:28

to a lot of iconers either though, right? When's the last time

26:30

you talked to an iconer?

26:31

That's a really good point. No,

26:34

I don't. We can be each other's exceptional friends.

26:36

How about that?

26:38

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.

26:45

People I Mostly Admire

26:47

is part of the Freakonomics Radio

26:49

Network, which also includes Freakonomics

26:52

Radio, No Stupid Questions,

26:54

and The Economics of Everyday

26:56

Things. All our shows are produced

26:59

by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This

27:01

episode was produced by Morgan Levy

27:04

with help from Lyric Bowditch and mixed

27:06

by Jasmine Klinger. Our theme

27:08

music was composed by Luis Guerra.

27:11

We can be reached at pima at freakonomics.com.

27:15

That's P-I-M-A

27:17

at freakonomics.com. Thanks

27:20

for listening.

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