Mastery means knowing material cold like a point guard
“What is mastery mean? Mastery means do you know the material cold? Like, think of whenever I talk about mastery, think about sports. If you're a point guard and you're going down the court, what percent of the time is the coach gonna let you lose the ball? And whatever that number is is mastery. Versus in academics, kid gets an 80%. You're like, oh, he seems to know. If a point guard was losing the ball 20% of the time going down the court, the coach would be like, master the basics.”
Kids prefer AI monitoring because it doesn't judge them
“Let's talk about the monitoring. Kids like the monitoring and the coaching because I wanna get better. So do parents. Parents don't like AI monitoring. They're terrified of it. There's this boogeyman of AI monitoring. Kids, they're like, I want a human to do that, not an AI. The kids are like, I don't want a human to look at me ever because I'm judged by adults. Kids don't wanna be judged by adults. They're like, let me talk to the AI.”
“On my first week as principal, I have to make the kids love school. And so I went up to the fifth graders and I was like, do you love school? They're like, no. And I was like, what would make you love school? And they're like, less school. I'm like, how much less? And they're like, none. And we basically negotiated two hours. I was like, look. Would you engage for two hours if I gave you the four hours back to go do awesome stuff?”
Liemandt was a lazy student who minimized effort to 89.5%
“I was the world's worst student. I literally would do the minimum work to get an 89.5, like, not an 89.6. I remember one time I didn't answer all the questions on a test because I knew I didn't need to finish the test to get the 89.5. My teachers just like, what? I drop out. And then I started working hundred plus hours sleeping under the desk. My dad was not happy that I dropped out. But eighteen months later, he's like, god, I'm so glad you dropped out. I was so worried that you were a lazy little shit.”
“We have a 40 foot rock wall for kindergarteners. And parents are like, oh, my kid is not doing that. That seems scary. Kindergarten. They're all harnessed in. And we teach the kids growth mindset. And then you mic them up, they're climbing up and they're like halfway out and they start to struggle. But our guides will see the kid get to the top. And when that kid gets down, they're beaming because they accomplished something hard.”
Pay kids $100 for a 100% score to unlock confidence
“We run this program called a 100 for a 100 to teach these kids. So we'll have middle schoolers coming into our sports academy. And they'll go into the system and we'll be like, well, we'll pay a $100 if you get a 100% on the test. And they're a seventh or eighth grader. They're like, I I can't get a 100 on the test. And we're like, no. No. No. Pick your grade level. They're like, you're gonna let me do a third grade test and get a 100? And we're like, absolutely.”
“If we're gonna put our kids in for, right, a decade, twelve years of this stuff, we as parents, right, should just say they should love it. We added a second question, which was, do you love school more than vacation? Right? And we get about 40 to 60% of our kids who say they'd rather go to school than vacation, which is that's the metric now that we wake up every day is we're like, we have to build a school where the kids wanna go and set a vacation.”
“The key to your child's happiness is high standards. And that is one that, you know, it's a hard one because I struggle with it as a parent too. I have two daughters. And, you know, you wanna hold high standards. But when they're struggling, it's hard. But that high standards is why our kids love school so much.”
Jack Welch reset Liemandt with a brutal ROI lesson
“In '97, we won e commerce product of the year. GE Medical had used it. And literally, I met with Jack and he's like, yeah, I hear Med doesn't like your product. I'm like, dude, it freaking won ecommerce product of the year. And he literally was like, Joe, I don't care if it comes from heaven above. If GE doesn't get an ROI, your product, you, and your company suck. And it was like an eye opener to me where I was just a product guy where I was like, I delivered a good product. And he's like, if your customers don't get value, nothing matters.”
Private schools inflate grades to hide huge learning gaps
“We pulled in hundreds of kids coming from $40, 50, $75,000 private schools. And we give them our assessment test. And if you had an A, if your transcript was an A coming into alpha, there's some students who are one grade level ahead, all the way and many more of them were three years behind. If you got Bs, you are from three years behind to seven years behind. So these are high schoolers who are like, okay, I need to have you in third grade. So parents are being lied to.”
