Goodbye AltSchool, Hello Altitude Learning
Begun by wealthy high-tech entrepreneur (and ex-Google executive) Max Ventilla in 2013, AltSchool made a splash with its string of private “micro-schools” in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area (tuition was $26,000)–see here, here, and here. Ventilla saw AltSchool as a string of lab schools where progressive ideas could be put into practice and the individualized software that staff designed and used in the “micro-schools” could be bought and used in public schools.
AltSchool “micro-schools’ were ungraded, used project-based learning complete with individually designed “playlists,” small classes, and experienced young teachers. Were John and Evelyn Dewey alive, they would have enrolled their six children in AltSchool.
But, there is always a “but,” running these “micro-schools” was expensive. The business plan (Ventilla raised venture capital of $176 million) was anchored in a dream drawn from the film Field of Dreams: “build it and [they] will come.” The plan depended upon tuition and licensed software bought by public schools. Didn’t work out as Ventilla had dreamed. Spending $40 million a year and taking in $7 million in revenue is a recipe for financial disaster. Ventilla closed some of the “micro-schools in 2017.
And on June 28, 2019, in a press release, came the news:
AltSchool to become Altitude Learning, an educator-run startup powering the growing learner-centered movement
Expanding support for districts nationwide with new approaches to professional development and the products schools need to shift to learner-centered models
- Altitude Learning to formally launch later this fall
- As R&D focus ends, tech co-founders pass torch to education industry CONTINUE READING: Goodbye AltSchool, Hello Altitude Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
