CURMUDGUCATION: What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

CURMUDGUCATION: What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

Max Ventilla launched AltSchool quietly enough in 2013, but within two years it was a hot Silicon Valley startup. In 2015, $100 million of investment dollars from major education reform players like Mark Zuckerberg and the Emerson Collective spurred an impressive wave of press. In just 24 hours the Silicon Valley Wunderschool had been covered by Kevin Carey in the Pacific Standard, Natasha Singer in the New York Times, and Issie Lapowski at WIRED.com. And USA Today and techcrunch andForbes.

AltSchool would be a proof of concept for the most ideal version of personalized learning, centered on teachers who would be backed up by tech and tech engineers, and backed by, ultimately, about $174 million. Ventilla envisioned a chain of profitable private schools setting a new standard for high-tech personalization. But click over to the AltSchool website today and all you will find is a push for something called Altitude Learning. Ventilla has sold off the schools themselves and created a new venture that will focus on selling the tech software that AltSchool developed. The headlines are not nearly as glowing as they were four years ago. "AltSchool Gives Up On Schools" and "AltSchool's Out...Calls It Quits" and, most brutally, "How An Education Startup Wasted Almost $200 Million."

So what lessons are there in this startup's trajectory?

Education Is Harder Than You Think

Ventilla came from Google, and had a Silicon Valley attitude about innovating other fields. In 2016, CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?