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Class Disrupted is an education podcast featuring author Michael Horn and Futre鈥檚 Diane Tavenner in conversation with educators, school leaders, students and other members of school communities as they investigate the challenges facing the education system in the aftermath of the pandemic 鈥� and where we should go from here. Find every episode by bookmarking our Class Disrupted page or subscribing on , or .

In this episode of Class Disrupted, hosts Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner turn from schools powered by artificial intelligence to the tools themselves.

Matt Pasternak, founder and CEO of , shares the company鈥檚 journey from its low-tech beginnings to an AI-powered platform for early reading instruction. Pasternak shares how Once now delivers effective, personalized one-on-one tutoring through software, while emphasizing the importance of human connection in the learning process.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. Good to see you after a few episodes, diving deep into school models and thinking all about AI and what it enables today.

Diane Tavenner: Indeed, we are going to shift gears a bit today, not away from AI because based on all the emails, the calls, the feedback we鈥檙e getting, this is the thing folks are thinking about and talking about. And so we鈥檙e sticking with AI. Rather, we鈥檙e going to shift away from AI school models, full school models, and infrastructure to how AI is being used directly by and with teachers and students and in classrooms. And so I think this is going to be a really interesting other dimension of what鈥檚 happening.

Michael Horn: Yeah, I think that鈥檚 right. I mean, we thought this was the next logical place to go. Everyone says if you鈥檙e not changing the classroom at some point, you鈥檙e not changing much. And so we wanted to go into that classroom and explore how a small number of folks, entrepreneurs, are thinking about really how do we use AI in classrooms without the entire school itself or the system around it being changed. And so this is it. I鈥檓 really excited for this conversation. Someone we鈥檝e both known for a long time and get to go deeper on it Diane.

Diane Tavenner: A very long time. I鈥檓 really excited today to welcome Matt Pasternak to the conversation. I was trying to think about when we met Matt, but it feels like so long ago. I can鈥檛 even remember at this point, because you, you actually were early at School of One, which is now Teach to One as a director of assessment. And then you went and you were on the founding team of Clever, which many people will know as a tool that effectively connected edtech products to student information systems. So this really critical infrastructure piece that enabled so much of what we now sort of take for granted in terms of technology. And then most recently, you鈥檙e the founder and CEO of Once, which is a company that leverages, well, I鈥檓 going to say what I think it is, and then we鈥檙e going to get into it. You鈥檙e going to really describe it for us.

A company that leverages the research around tutoring by using reading-based software and human people to teach 3 to 7-year-olds to read. And so we鈥檙e just grateful to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Matt Pasternak: I鈥檓 thrilled to be here. I鈥檝e known you both for quite some time, and it鈥檚 really an honor to be on the show.

Michael Horn: Well, we鈥檙e thrilled you鈥檙e making the time for us. So let鈥檚 dig into it. As Diane mentioned, you are working on solving a problem that we鈥檝e talked about on this podcast historically, which is teaching reading, something that there鈥檚 a lot of evidence around how to do. But as Diane said, before tackling this reading challenge, you helped build Clever. And it does feel like a big shift from, if you will, school infrastructure to teaching, learning, curriculum. Maybe it鈥檚 back to your roots in some sense from School of One. But tell us about the origin story of Once and your own personal why for building it.

Rethinking Early Reading Education

Matt Pasternak: Sure, sure. Well, I鈥檒l share two things. You know, one is that, you know, very early in my edtech career, before Clever, I worked on some projects that were very, very expansive in what they tried to accomplish, and both on the data infrastructure side as well as on the curriculum side. And it was sort of the heady days of the late aughts or early 2000s, and then the early 2010s, excuse me. And sort of this belief, if you just sprinkled a little bit of technology or software magic on things, education, everything would just work. And there were these really exciting analogies to Netflix鈥檚 personalization. I鈥檓 sure you remember those days. And so I spent some time trying to boil the ocean.

And then after that, I just kind of made an abrupt turn and never looked back. And I said, look, I want to work on specific problems in education. And the first one was what Clever tackled. It was an area I had a lot of insight into from some of those earlier explorations on, you know, the specific problems that rostering and single sign-on presented to schools, and particularly schools trying to adopt software in varying ways. After Clever, I kind of went in a little bit of a different direction for a while, focused on voting. And then in the sort of early to mid-pandemic, I was catching up with an old friend of mine who had been a teacher in the same school where I taught after college, and we were talking about how during the early pandemic, both of our kids who are kindergarten age were out of school because schools shut down. And yet both of them learned to read in that year out of school.

Now, my wife is a former kindergarten teacher, and so I was like, oh, I had an unfair advantage, you know? I mean, she had sort of one-on-one tutoring from a kindergarten teacher. Missing kindergarten, but, you know, my close friend was a former middle school teacher, and, you know, it鈥檚 not like he had been working on that expertise forever, but he said, yeah, you know, structured 15-minute lessons every day, you know, his child learned to read, and we just sort of stepped back from it and said, wait, you know, for as long as anyone can remember, we鈥檝e been teaching kids to read, attempting to teach kids to read, in these sort of 30-person classrooms, and, you know the numbers, and in sort of any education environment, about half of kids, if given some of the right foundation, will learn to read to some extent. And so any teacher can look at their progress and say, well, some of my kids are learning to read, it鈥檚 working. But if you want all of your kids to learn to read, you know, you can鈥檛 say that what鈥檚 happening today is working, because we鈥檝e had flat NAEP scores for decades. And so we just started to kind of think really big picture and say, you know, what would happen if every kindergartner got the education that our two kids had gotten in the early pandemic, which is just 15 minutes a day of one-on-one reading instruction. And initially, we actually wanted to avoid schools, avoid K-12. We said, look, the sales process in the K-12 is so complicated. Let鈥檚 do something different.

Let鈥檚 actually focus on, because preschool, you know, research was just coming out about how early the brain starts developing. For where children begin, you know, learning, you know, are able to learn to interpret written language. And then as we start to explore the preschool route, we realized that that was probably even harder than K-12. And so we kind of returned to our roots and started in a charter school, actually was our first implementation, and basically just said, hey, can we put a couple people in the back of this TK classroom and teach, you know, have them provide daily one-on-one tutoring to the students to help them learn how to read. And we had some amazing success stories, and, you know, it was just a couple-month pilot. There was a child who, a child who came to school every day, you know, lots of home context, crying and kind of hiding under his desk and did not want to be in school, And it still makes me kind of emotional to tell the story, but, you know, even a month or two in, he was sort of opening up to school and responding to school, and people asked him, you know, what had changed, and he said it was the one-on-one tutoring he was getting every single day. You know, and that鈥檚 a 5-year-old who, you know, that鈥檚 going to determine the next, you know, the rest of his life, essentially. And so, you know, we kind of took that and said, and the folks who were providing the tutoring, had not had background as reading tutors.

That was really important to us, because we said there just aren鈥檛 enough kinds of trained reading specialists in the country to do this at a scale of 4 million kids a year. So you need a method that allows any adult to access material and provide this instruction. And then we had this really interesting call with Portland Public Schools, and this is kind of right after that first, right as that pilot was winding down. And we were talking to them, and they said, well, you know, we can鈥檛, you know, we can鈥檛 afford to, you know, sort of put all these other people, you know, pay you to bring all these other people into schools and teach kids how to read. We don鈥檛 even know where you鈥檇 source them. But they said, look, we have tons of instructional assistants. That was a position that they had at the time who were supposed to be working on reading in the early grades. You know, could we use this type of program with them? And that was kind of our lightbulb moment because we said, look, you know, we are, we鈥檙e not an HR company, right? We have no expertise in how do you hire, you know, tens of thousands of tutors all over the country to provide this instruction.

We, you know, attempted it in some pilots and literally were unable to source even like a couple tutors in some metropolitan areas. And so we said, We want to work with the staff the school already has. And that really, that, you know, that conversation launched everything. We did not win that deal. We did not end up serving Portland Public Schools. It was okay. That learning that they gave us in that phone call was, you know, worth its weight in gold. And I鈥檒l always be grateful to them for that experience and taking the time with us at that early stage in our journey.

Diane Tavenner: Matt, I love that we鈥檙e going to get sprinkled into this conversation, this bonus of just what it鈥檚 like to try to build something and sell the schools and whatnot. So that鈥檚 really fun to hear that piece. Listening to your origin story, people might be saying, wait a minute, you鈥檙e spending this season talking about AI and education, but it doesn鈥檛 seem like Once is related to technology even, or AI. And in fact, you began in that pandemic period. So before the sort of famous release of ChatGPT in November 2022. And so, you know, as a guy who at face value seems to have been tech-forward, what was your sort of original hypothesis and approach to making sure, you know, to just sort of going what it seems like a full human approach to reading? And is there technology in here anywhere?

Matt Pasternak: Yeah, so it鈥檚 a great question. I think it has, there鈥檚 a two-part answer. There. The first is that one thing we were certain of from day one was that young children learn best from adults, like actual in-person human-to-human instruction. You know, for millions of years, you know, our species and the predecessors of our species have been, you know, teaching children to identify different berries and, you know, what animal is going to hurt them and which ones are safe and, you know, how to survive. And that was all done, millions of years of evolution. For, you know, in-person communication between an adult and a child, where the child was highly motivated to learn because the stakes were life and death. And sort of the idea that you would deviate away from that just sort of seems somewhat crazy on its face to us.

Matt Pasternak: So that was the motivation for, you know, you need to build trusting relationships with adults, and, you know, technology is scalable in a way that people sometimes aren鈥檛. So how can we apply technology? But let鈥檚 do it in a way that deepens that connection and doesn鈥檛 attempt to replace the connection or build a kind of robot teacher. You know, the other piece of this was that I鈥檝e had the privilege in my career, I鈥檓 not a software engineer, but I鈥檝e had the privilege to work with, you know, some very, very, very incredible software engineers. And what I鈥檝e often noticed is that when you start working with some of these folks, the first thing they鈥檒l say is, hey, let鈥檚 build a version of this product in Google Slides or Google Docs or Google Sheets. Let鈥檚 build something that鈥檚 throwaway, but that we can learn from because we鈥檙e going to waste too much time. This is a little bit before the days of live coding, but we鈥檒l waste too much time coding something up. Let鈥檚 be really, really lean in terms of how we want to model what we want to accomplish. And so our perspective at the beginning was, That鈥檚 what we want to do.

We literally started in, you know, Google Slides and Google Sheets were essentially our technology. And, you know, funders who were interested in tech staff basically ignored us because we weren鈥檛 very technical. But the one thing we said we were going to do from day one is we wanted to record every single instructional session that was given. So even though we鈥檙e talking about recordings on Google Meet, we sort of knew where things were going. I mean, yes, you hadn鈥檛 had these massive releases of OpenAI and various things, but AI was in the air, the late teens, it was in the air. Folks knew where this was going. Technology was going to fundamentally change. And we just had this belief that if you had hundreds of thousands, millions of hours of recordings of adults teaching kids to read, even if you had no other technology, that you could then, one day run software over that archive and begin to do things that others would say, oh my gosh, I wish I had this sort of database, but I don鈥檛.

So that was, I think those were kind of the two key decisions and motivations for that early, less technical beginning.

Michael Horn: Well, so let me actually jump in there then, Matt. Let鈥檚 fast forward us to where you are now. So you鈥檙e not going to be an HR solution. You say we鈥檙e not in that business. You have all these recordings. What does Once look like today? What does it do? How鈥檚 it maybe similar, different from, you know, those initial, put aside the very early pilots, but, you know, once you sort of got on the ground and running, tell us how it鈥檚 evolved from that?

Matt Pasternak: Yeah. So what we do today is we serve sort of two different audiences. We serve school districts and we actually serve parents at home. And so I can kind of talk about those a little bit in turn. But what we do, I鈥檒l start with school districts. In school districts, we solve two interlinked problems. One problem that we solve is that there are too many kids in school districts who have not effectively learned how to read. And sometimes I think the best evidence of that is when you have, you know, middle schools or high schools saying, hey, we figured out what we have to do differently.

Phonics and Staff Upskilling Initiative

Matt Pasternak: We have to start really emphasizing phonics in 7th and 8th grade or high school. It鈥檚 like, on the one hand, great. Kids who haven鈥檛 learned that do need to learn it, but that鈥檚 the evidence of an enormous problem, because there鈥檚 really kind of 1 to 2 years of phonics to learn, and if you鈥檝e had 9 years of schooling and that鈥檚 like, that鈥檚 the set of activities, that indicates just a huge, a huge, you know, a huge mess basically in the early grades. So one problem is reading, and the other problem is a lack of career ladder for entry-level staff in schools, which is also a really important problem because schools are having tremendous challenges finding a large enough teaching staff to teach the children in school. And so we said, let鈥檚 solve both those problems at once. By providing coaching and curriculum to elementary school support staff, you know, paraprofessionals, teaching assistants, instructional assistants, you know, there鈥檚 a number of different roles, as long as they鈥檙e not lead classroom teacher, because then they have to oversee 20 or 30 kids. By providing curriculum and coaching to those folks, we can upskill them to the point where anyone can provide one-on-one tutoring daily for 15 minutes to, you know, kindergartners is where we focus. We do some TK and first grade, but kindergarten鈥檚 really our focus, provide 15 minutes of daily instruction to those children.

And what this looks like, you know, kind of from a technology perspective, 鈥榗ause again, we started very low-tech, we鈥檙e now, we are a software solution today. And what this looks like is the child and the paraprofessional sit down side by side in front of an open laptop computer, We call it, we teach the parents how to build a one-desk classroom. So they have their desk, it鈥檚 all set up with the physical materials they need and their laptop computer, they sit right there. A ton of work has gone into that organization. And on the screen is, on one part of the screen is what the child鈥檚 looking at, on the other part of the screen is the script for the adult. And the adult is basically going through the script and the child is responding to the script and looking at their part of the screen. And going through a number of different science of reading-based exercises and tasks that teach the child how to read. And the adult is using a fair amount of judgment in there as well, you know, identifying when are children saying things the wrong way, when are they saying things the right way, how do you keep children motivated through this process, but the kind of focus is what鈥檚 happening on the screen.

And then we record those sessions and we provide coaching. We have a national team of coaches who then watch those recordings, and provide feedback to the paraprofessionals about how to improve, you know, essentially how to improve their instruction. Like you鈥檙e basically watching game tape of yourself and using that to improve your instructional techniques. So that鈥檚 sort of a big piece of what we do.

Diane Tavenner: Super interesting, Matt. Can you, so you鈥檙e starting in this very low-tech way with these Google spreadsheets and slides and, you know, basically prototyping what you鈥檙e gonna do. And If I remember correctly, you were videoing and then literally like doing training calls with those folks, you know, like, oh, we watch your video and let鈥檚 coach you up on this essentially. And now that鈥檚, that鈥檚 a much more seamless software experience as you just described. Take us to that moment where AI becomes the reality and you鈥檝e made this really smart bet and you have all these recordings. How does AI figure in here? And we鈥檙e trying to be really thoughtful. We鈥檝e recognized that people use the word AI or whatever that is, acronym AI, to describe almost everything, like this massive range. So the specificity is super helpful of like how you actually use it here and what role it is playing.

Matt Pasternak: So we use it in a couple of ways. All of our AI is behind the scenes. there鈥檚, So you know, this is not a chatbot. This is not, you know, either the paraprofessional asking a quick question, wait, how do I do this? Or obviously the student doing that because, you know, they couldn鈥檛 use a chatbot, they don鈥檛 know how to type yet. It鈥檚 all behind the scenes. One key way that it鈥檚 used is we are able to administer oral reading fluency tests very, very frequently on the students because we鈥檙e capturing the full session. And so then we you know, we have, have all the data, the speech data, the transcript data from that session, And so we can go and we can evaluate oral reading fluency. You know, in a typical classroom, elementary school classroom, if they use some, you know, assessment like DIBELS, the teacher might do 3 oral reading fluency assessments during the year, once the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Each one takes roughly a month because the teacher has to pull each kid aside one-on-one and administer this test. And so it鈥檚 like 3 months, you know, of instruction to some extent are spent not providing instruction, but performing these tests. And that鈥檚 just, you know, that鈥檚 not the best use of teachers鈥� time. And so simply by just having all the kids individually learning on camera, we鈥檙e able to run these tests in the background, and we have you know, results, every 2 weeks. So that鈥檚 a really important piece of AI. Again, the parents may have no idea that AI is even involved in that, and that鈥檚 great. Like, this is not you know, sort of that Gemini sparkle in the corner. This is just like, no, it鈥檚 actually just making the experience seamless.

Connected Phonation and AI Learning

Matt Pasternak: The next thing that we do is we鈥檙e huge fans of what鈥檚 called connected phonation. Again, if I鈥檓 going too deep into Tales of Literacy, let me know. But you basically, know, a lot in, in some systems, even sort of science of reading evidence-based systems, there鈥檚 a lot of focus on kind of tapping out individual sounds. So if I want to say the word bat, it would be the /b/ sound, the /忙/ sound, the /t/ sound. And when you teach a child like, oh, you just sort of say /b/, /忙/, /t/. And it鈥檚 like, well, that鈥檚 bat. Like, that doesn鈥檛 sound like bat. That sounds like /忙/t/.

You know, it sounds like these sort of disconnected sounds. And you can, you know, that is again one way that people teach it. But I think the more modern approach that, you know, University of Florida and others have really emphasized is connected phonation. So you鈥檙e not, if a B and an A come sequentially, you鈥檙e gonna teach a child to go, ba, like that B is kind of a quick sound and then they鈥檙e gonna go right into that long A sound and they鈥檙e always gonna do that when they see those sounds in sequence. They connect those sounds. Well, not only do we have audio of what鈥檚 happening in the lesson, but we also have little sliders underneath the words, and so a child can move the slider while they鈥檙e saying the word, And we can use AI to really notice things about, you know, is the child鈥檚 finger actually tracking what they鈥檙e saying? How much are they connecting? Are they pausing in the right places? Because some kids, you know, maybe they know the word 鈥渂at,鈥� so they just want to jump in and say it really fast. Well, that鈥檚 great for that word, but you don鈥檛 then learn the fundamental skills that will help you read much more complex words. So, you know, evaluating something like how quickly does a child鈥檚 finger move on the screen is another beautiful application of AI?

Then really for us, the last one, it seems obvious, but it鈥檚 just using AI to write code. It鈥檚 just we are able to move 10 times as fast on 10x fewer resources as we would be able to otherwise before this moment in time. We wouldn鈥檛 be able to do what we do without AI assisting in development. But I鈥檒l say, sort of one level deeper is, you know, where does it go from here? Is it just these sort of fluency tests and, you know, kind of tracking fingers on the screen? You know, as we progress, you know, you can really use AI to evaluate, you know, student fluency in real time, right? How did they just pronounce that word that was just said? This is a much harder technical problem than it sounds like because while the tech world has made huge advances in interpreting adult speech, where you basically try and eliminate the errors to turn some garbled thing an adult says into something intelligible. With kids, you want the opposite. You actually want to figure out which of those sounds when they pronounce that word was incorrect. Rather than automated speech recognition, you want automated phoneme recognition. And if you ask, you know, folks who are really deep in that world, everyone will admit we don鈥檛 have good automated phoneme recognition today.

It鈥檚 just not there yet. But we have, again, the video archives that will let us build towards that. So we鈥檙e very, very excited about that. You can also begin to use AI to you connect, know, reading, many folks regard as multiple strands. So there鈥檚 comprehension, there鈥檚, you know, there鈥檚 phonics, there鈥檚 phonemic awareness, there鈥檚 these different elements of it. And so how is a child progressing on these different strands, and how does progress on one strand kind of influence what you would want to teach them next? So really, that sort of learning engineering And then the final piece, just to kind of fill out the story, is, you know, a lot of folks will tell you, I鈥檝e heard on your episodes before, that, you know, 90% of learning is motivation, you know, 10% of the technology, the curriculum, but most of it is really the motivation. You know, we have, if you want to learn, between YouTube and all the different educational apps out there, like, there鈥檚 never been a better time in history to learn, and yet we see, you know, essentially flat performance over the decades. Well, one way to motivate both learners, but even more importantly, their teachers, is to show them a highlight reel of like what鈥檚 gone really well.

Well, it is prohibitively expensive for us to, you know, manually curate a highlight reel of every session of instruction. But if a pair has taught 10 kids and at the end of that day, or 20 kids, know, you they get to see, hey, here鈥檚 a 30-second recap of like your best aha moments during the day, I am coming in tomorrow. I鈥檓 not gonna call out sick. I鈥檓 not gonna do anything else. I鈥檓 going to do it, and I鈥檓 going to kind of push those kids as far as I can take them. And so that might be the most magical application of AI at all, not even kind of automated phoneme recognition, but just literally highlight reels of the incredible instruction we鈥檙e seeing.

Diane Tavenner: That鈥檚 fascinating because we鈥檝e had several conversations about motivation here, and I personally have felt kind of unsatisfied about those conversations. So this actually seems like a really amazing use of the technology related to motivation. Let me ask you about something that comes up, I think, a lot in the reading conversations, dare I say the reading wars, which is this idea that kids need to be reading things that they鈥檙e interested in and that they care about and that they鈥檙e motivated by, you know, those sorts of things. When you鈥檙e in this early stage of teaching reading, are you personalizing what the kids are reading at all? Does that matter? You know, is technology supporting that? What鈥檚 going on there?

Matt Pasternak: Yeah, it鈥檚 a great question. We are definitely keeping an eye on the ability of AI to generate what we would call, or what many people in this sort of industry would call, decodables, which are texts that students are able to decode. A lot of times things are called decodables, that actually aren鈥檛 decodable to the student. So one thing that鈥檚 really interesting about reading is that, you know, you might think, well, if a kid, you know, if they can read 75% of the words, like, that鈥檚 probably good enough. Like, that鈥檚 better than not, you know, being able to read 10% of the words or something. But actually, comprehension often requires, like, being able to read 90 to 95% of the words. So if you want to build decodable texts, like, there is not really a margin for error. You need to make sure that kids are reading text with words that they are able to decode.

Doesn鈥檛 mean they鈥檝e memorized those words. I鈥檓 not talking about sight words, but they鈥檙e able to decode those words. And the challenge of reading English, not true of all languages, but English, is that, you know, a single letter can have many different sounds depending on what other letters are around it and kind of how it鈥檚 positioned. And so if you just tell a computer, build stories using this letter or you know, using this sequence of letters, it will often inadvertently pull in the wrong, pull in the words that the kid isn鈥檛 able to decode. Well, if it pulls in one of those, maybe that鈥檚 OK, they can figure it out from context. But if you鈥檝e got, you know, a page with 15 words and 5 of them aren鈥檛 decodable, like, this decodable is not decodable. And that鈥檚 where kids can lose motivation. So it鈥檚 deeply interlaced with this concept of motivation.

So we鈥檙e keeping an eye on it. We don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 quite there yet. At the age that we鈥檙e working at. You know, I know some people working in higher grade levels, and I don鈥檛 have the expertise there, but in the kind of 3 to 6-year-old grade level, we are very, very carefully still hand-curating stories at this point.

Michael Horn: It鈥檚 fascinating, Matt, because as you alluded to, there鈥檚 this huge conversation around can you level reading? And, you know, some of that is directed at particular publishers that tried to do it in a way that was not related to Decodables, and some of it is just a broader conversation. I鈥檓 taking some new information away from this conversation, so I appreciate that. Let me shift though, rather than go too deep in that, because one of the other things that you鈥檙e doing, I think, is pushing on how AI can start to redefine the role of the educator themselves, right? In some ways, you have AI, it seems, making sure that they stick to what鈥檚 the evidence around how to teach reading the best, right? So that we鈥檙e not getting too far ahead of ourselves or freelancing in ways that may be detrimental. Then you鈥檙e also deferring to judgment, it seems, for the educator around that motivation piece and what they鈥檙e seeing on the ground with the kid in ways that you just can鈥檛 pick up with technology today. Help us understand that shift over the time around what you think that Reading Coach ultimately is and that split between technology, the human judgment, and how that gets redefined. Maybe we make it easier, frankly, or more people can be great reading coaches in the future?

Empowering Adults to Teach Reading

Matt Pasternak: Yeah, yeah, it鈥檚 a great question. It鈥檚 a great question. You know, our vision is that any adult, and by adult, actually broadened to older teenagers, are able to teach children how to read. And I think if, you know, if you look, you know, we sometimes cite a stat that, you know, 95% of kids are taught, you know, the ABCs by their parents or guardians, right? It鈥檚 like parents and guardians, they鈥檙e trying to do the right thing, They just don鈥檛 know what to do. Like teaching a child the ABCs, for a couple kids will teach them to read, for almost all other kids, it will not teach them to read. And so, and so they have, they鈥檙e motivated, they know how important this is, they don鈥檛 know what to do. So we want any adult, doesn鈥檛 matter if English is your second language, it doesn鈥檛 matter, you know, if you鈥檝e struggled to read yourself, like we want to empower any adult to be able to teach any child. Now, you know, you do sometimes, there are conflicts where, do I want to give the adult who鈥檚 delivering the instruction more autonomy so they can kind of grow more in their career, or I want to remove a little judgment and make it a little more scripted? And I think over time you鈥檒l see dials in our system where you can kind of dial it up and down either way.

Because once you get to the point where it鈥檚 just the computer speaking, well, now you鈥檙e back to just computer education with an adult patiently sitting there. That鈥檚 not how kids learn to distinguish berries, right? Like, we鈥檙e actually, we鈥檝e gone too far. So the adult needs to be really, really involved in that teaching, but, you know, understanding their capacity and what they feel like, you know, sort of, you know, because it鈥檚 not just reading a script. It鈥檚, you know, the hardest thing in teaching reading is what do you do when a kid makes a mistake, right? Like, we have a whole sort of flowchart, a whole approach we take when a child makes a mistake decoding. And being able to implement something like that is hard. And so software can help. Our biggest innovation kind of in this regard, which is something that we鈥檝e just started to roll out recently, is no longer restricting this actual teaching to paraprofessionals or instructional assistants or existing support staff at the school, but actually broadening that circle to older high school students. That鈥檚 where I sort of hinted at teenagers.

And it is, we鈥檝e just gotten started here, so we, you know, we are learning as much as they are. But I鈥檝e seen some pictures and I鈥檝e seen some videos of a high school student sitting down next to a kindergartner, teaching them to read, with the, you know, the little kindergartner just eyes full of adoration. You know, this is not a teacher, this is someone who they deeply look up to, this, an older kid who actually cares about them. And it is so inspiring. And if we had a world where our high school students could knock out reading specialization for a large number of our kindergartners, I mean, I think it would change it.

Michael Horn: Generational impact would be huge.

Diane Tavenner: I mean, yeah, when you called me with this idea, Matt, I haven鈥檛 stopped thinking about it since because I think that this is the type of thinking that we need in education right now because this checks so many boxes. I mean, not only are we putting multi-age groups together and learning, right, but we are giving, let鈥檚 talk about the impact on the high school student here who feels a sense of worth and purpose and is actually doing an early job, gaining real experience coaching and developing person. Who knows where that could possibly lead? And then you have this brilliant idea of enabling them to be entrepreneurial. Like, imagine a neighborhood where teenagers in the summer sort of have the Once tool and they can open their own little neighborhood business teaching kids to read in the summer. Like, I love this so much for so many reasons. It鈥檚 really brilliant.

Matt Pasternak: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, we are, you know, again, we鈥檙e learning so much right now. But the response, you know, I mentioned I kind of joked earlier about, you know, selling to school districts and how hard that was. And I mean, it really is every entrepreneur鈥檚 challenge. And in K-12, you know, there are these magic moments when school districts don鈥檛 become hard to sell to. It鈥檚 really hard to find those products. Like, it is extremely hard. Clever was one of them.

Student-Led Reading Program Growth

Matt Pasternak: I mean, Clever just blossomed across the country, and it was so exciting to see, you know, sort of help it spread and kind of watch the spread, and it was something very special. You know, we are not operating at Clever velocity right now in terms of distribution, but we have gotten such an outpouring of response, superintendents who write in saying, you know, I get a million cold emails a day, you know, I don鈥檛 read any of them, but when I saw high school CTE students teaching kindergartners how to read, I was like, oh, that鈥檚 it. You know, that鈥檚, that鈥檚 so obviously it. And we鈥檙e hearing that response. One thing that鈥檚 so exciting, to date we鈥檝e primarily focused on kind of top 500 districts, it鈥檚 very large districts. A lot of them are urban, but you know these very big school districts. And we are getting this response from tiny districts, you know, also from some large ones, but from tiny ones, from districts that can鈥檛 really afford to have paraprofessionals, but they鈥檝e got high school CTE students and they鈥檙e looking for a great thing for them to do. And they鈥檝e got kindergartners who aren鈥檛 learning how to read. And it鈥檚 like, let鈥檚 go, you know? And that is just amazing.

And so we are flying to, you know, towns across the US right now that, you know, we鈥檝e never heard their names before. And just being embraced by the folks who are there and just going right in. It鈥檚, it鈥檚 just, it鈥檚 wonderful.

Michael Horn: That鈥檚 so cool. I mean, I think about the leadership opportunities, responsibility, judgment, just like it鈥檚 checked so many boxes. And then again, the generational impact, if you do that at scale, could be humongous. Let鈥檚 wrap up with this last question, which is before we go to our what you鈥檝e been reading and watching outside of work thing. But, you know, look, Once, as you just talked about, is designed to be facilitated by, could be an instructional aide, parapro, high school student, whatever, it鈥檚 not a whole class curriculum, right? And so you talked about those magic moments where districts actually start to absorb it and so forth, but take us into the classroom itself. How are schools putting Once into their schedules and days? How are they integrating it? What鈥檚 the impact it鈥檚 having about how they think about, you know, the whole class activities that they perhaps have been doing? Are there trade-offs that they鈥檙e having to make? Help us understand where does it lock into the current schedule?

Matt Pasternak: It鈥檚 a great question. It鈥檚 like the fundamental question to making tutoring work. I mean, a lot of the leading tutoring researchers have said tutoring is fundamentally a question of logistics. You know, anyone, you know, so many providers have great training and many have great coaching and various things, like can you get the logistics right or can you not, know?

And so we go very, very deep with our school district partners. We have, you know, a world-class, we call them our program team, and they go in and they work because it is not like, they鈥檙e not district-wide answers to how you solve that question. You cannot go to, you know, XYZ Public Schools with 100 schools and say, OK, we鈥檙e going to do once during these blocks in this space in the school, because every school has slightly different requirements, different spaces, you know, different people. It鈥檚 all different. And so we go school by school. We help them map out a schedule. Will this instruction happen in the back of the classroom? Will it happen in a little annex room that鈥檚 right near the classroom? Does it happen in the hallway if the hallways are quiet? Often in elementary schools they are, it just sort of, again, depends very much on that school. Oh, you know, here was this space that was used for teachers to congregate, but teachers aren鈥檛 actually congregating there, or, you know, the lunchroom is actually empty from 8 to 10 AM every day, that鈥檚 unused space, like, let鈥檚 take advantage of that.

Customized Solutions for Every School

Matt Pasternak: We have worked with so many schools by this point, we just have thought through all these different permutations. And so we sit down with the schools, school by school, come up with a customized solution for each one. And, you know, the challenging part, if you鈥檙e listening to this, is that it sounds hard and expensive and, you know, and it is, I don鈥檛 want to minimize like that is, that slows down scale a little bit when you have to kind of do hard things. On the flip side, we have never come across a school that can鈥檛 do this. So sometimes you have a solution that says, oh, well, when we rewrite the language of schooling, when we completely change what schools look like and how they鈥檙e structured and what the day is, then that will unlock AI and unlock everything, and then kids can finally learn. And if you鈥檝e been around schools for a long time, I think many of us would be pessimistic that you鈥檙e going to see rapid changes in those dimensions anytime soon at scale. And so we鈥檙e really proud of the fact that we can go into any school district, any school building, and we will find a way to, you know, to build up the schedules. And the neat thing again about the application of technology, in our earlier days, we, you know, back in the kind of Google Meet and Google Sheets days, it took so much training and coaching on how to make those very lightweight technical tools work that realistically someone giving instruction could only give it to, you know, would have to give it to at least 10 or 15 or 20 kids because the investment you put in and teaching them the ropes made it, it just wasn鈥檛 worthwhile to teach a single kid.

But as we鈥檝e amped up our software and amped up this use of AI, you know, we can realize this vision. You have high school kids coming in and doing it. The school secretary, does she have a free 15 minutes or 30 minutes? That鈥檚 2 kids right there. In many schools, the principals say, hey, I don鈥檛 want to just administer this. I want to work with the you very hard, not hardest, like most difficult kindergartner, the most challenged kindergartner, the one who maybe has, you know, home circumstances that are you know, the most or, challenging, you know, who has you know, a, a learning difference, or for some reason is really struggling in the classroom. I want to take that kid under my wing as a school principal, and I you know, I want to teach that kid to read, and I want the school to see that I鈥檓 teaching that kid to read. And it goes a little bit back to, you sort of think of Steve Jobs, he鈥檇 go into Apple devices and he鈥檇 look at the wiring configurations in the background, like the things customers could never see. And he鈥檇 say, if the wires are messy in the back, then it shows that we don鈥檛 actually care about what we鈥檙e building and we鈥檙e never going to build good stuff, even though customers would never see that.

And I think it鈥檚 that attention to detail. And historically, principals maybe are really strict about kids lining up, are really strict about like certain small details that then create that school culture. Well, here鈥檚 another detail that shows, you know, my focus is on the kid, and it鈥檚 really beautiful to watch.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, well, and thank you for that. In early elementary school, I mean, Michael and I have talked about this often, like we are hard-pressed to think of something more important than what happens in early elementary school than literally every child learns to read. And so I鈥檓 glad to hear that people are doing what鈥檚 necessary and that they understand that it鈥檚 totally possible to organize school in a way that every child will learn to read. That feels so critical. So thanks for the inspiring story of what you鈥檙e doing and the connection between the humans and the AI. Really, really fun.

Diane Tavenner: And so now, of course, Michael and I are very curious to hear what you are personally reading or listening to or watching outside of your work. We try to stay outside of our work.

We break our rule often, but if there鈥檚 something that you have to share, we鈥檇 love to hear it.

Matt Pasternak: Oh, well, no, I鈥檓 happy to. Actually, yeah, I feel like for many years between raising kids and having intense jobs, I really didn鈥檛 find much time to read other than, you know, sort of the newspaper and things like that. But I have recently joined some book clubs and gotten back into reading, which feels great, and I cherish it. I鈥檓 currently in the middle of Demon Copperhead. I don鈥檛 know if you鈥檝e read that, but the first part was so depressing. It just, you know, it鈥檚, you know, lightly based on Dickens, and it just felt like, oh my God, like just kind of going down that, going down that hole. And it was a little challenging to get through. And now things have turned around a little bit.

So I haven鈥檛 finished it. I鈥檓 excited to see what happens. But I鈥檝e been having a lot of fun with it. And then for watching, I just got to watch, I watched Alex Honnold鈥檚 ascent of the Taipei Building on Netflix.

Michael Horn: Very cool.

Matt Pasternak: Which was very fun. I watched it after it was over, so I knew at the beginning he was going to stay safe. But I got to watch it while running on a treadmill, which is a really fun experience. I鈥檓 not sure I鈥檝e ever been able to push myself that hard. It鈥檚 like, well, this guy鈥檚 doing something much harder, so I can at least run fast. So that was enjoyable.

Diane Tavenner: That鈥檚 awesome. Well, Michael and folks who鈥檝e listened for a long time will know that when I tell you we鈥檙e preparing for a trip to Morocco and southern Spain, that means that I鈥檝e got a combo fiction and nonfiction reading list that I鈥檓 working through because that is sort of how we do vacationing. And on this one, I鈥檓 digging into sort of religion, culture, history that is not very familiar to me. So it鈥檚 been a fun learning journey. I鈥檓 grateful to Gemini, who is my study buddy for this one and is actually such an incredibly useful tool for these purposes. At the moment I鈥檝e got 3 books going. So, one is called Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Marisi. Sorry, butchered that one.

And it鈥檚 not what you think. I鈥檓 learning a ton. It鈥檚 actually quite an interesting feminist, story,, and then 2 others. So Islam by Karen Armstrong and No God But God by Reza Asad. And those are really interesting different perspectives on the religion that I鈥檓 sort of reading side by side with each other. So super fun.

Michael Horn: Very cool. Very exciting. I always love when you share these, Diane, because as listeners also know, you鈥檝e changed my own practice around travel, uh, to start to do this habit as well, and Matt, I liked your Dickens, reference because it connects in an odd way for the one that I鈥檓 going to do, which is Diane knows I don鈥檛 read a ton of fiction, but I actually finished a fiction book here, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier by Emily Matchar. I鈥檓 probably also bungling her last name, but I picked it up, honestly, I was at synagogue. I saw it in the temple library, and Greenbrier was a place that we used to vacation with my grandparents and my cousins a few times growing up over Christmas. And so I was sort of curious, and it鈥檚 like this intergenerational Jewish sort of mystery story, if you will, trying to piece together different puzzle pieces. And the Greenbrier is sort of the central part of it.

But the only reason I say that, Matt, is I remember one of the years that we vacationed at the Greenbrier, they had like the foremost Charles Dickens expert or something like that in residence, and he gave lectures, which we as 12 or 13-year-olds dutifully attended and I think did not cut up too much during, which, which was impressive for us. But, so I, I feel like I鈥檓 connecting on a bunch of these things at the moment, but, uh, it was a fun read, and Diane, one of the reasons I don鈥檛 read a lot of fiction, I forgot, is because when I read it, I don鈥檛 put it down and I become a bit of a zombie around the house for a couple days.

Diane Tavenner: So yeah, there is such a thing as binge reading, just like binge watching, right?

Michael Horn: Exactly. And nonfiction, while I love it and I read it a lot, turns out it doesn鈥檛 do that for me, whereas fiction I鈥檓 a lost cause around the house.

Matt Pasternak: The secret is just simultaneously reading it on the Kindle and Audible, and then you can, you know, you can volunteer, hey, I鈥檒l go do the dishes, you just put in

Michael Horn: Exactly, plug it in and power through.

Matt Pasternak: You keep going, right, you know, right where you were.

Michael Horn: So good, good tip, good power tip. All right, huge thank you, Matt, for joining us. And again, to all of the listeners, who keep coming in with all sorts of feedback, both positive notes, questions, we like those and then some of the hate mail too, we love it all because we learn tons, and just, keep it coming off this conversation. We look forward to more, and we look forward to seeing you next time on Class Disrupted.

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