The education system is broken. Costs are rising. Outcomes are falling. Kids are bored, parents are frustrated, teachers are over-worked and under-appreciated. The Wall Street Journal just profiled the most promising solution I've seen. Their results are so good that you're not going to believe me when I share them with you. But by the end of this, you'll understand what they're doing differently. The results: • Alpha students are top 1% in the USA in every class and every subject (except for one: 5th grade math, where they're “only” in the 93rd percentile). • Alpha kids are learning 2.5x faster than the average American student. • They crush standardized testing too. Only 2% of Texas students score above 90% on the Texas STAAR test. Every Alpha student scores above 90% and the majority of their students are over a grade level ahead. • Alpha has more kids who score 100% on the Texas STAAR test than one entire school district of 100,000 people (Alpha has ~250 students). And here's the kicker: Alpha School students only spend two hours on academics per day — just two hours from K-8 and three hours in high school. The time they save gives kids back the rest of their day to learn life skills like socialization and public speaking instead of twiddling their thumbs during soul-crushing lectures or waiting for the bell to finally ring. Sounds too good to be true, I know. So let me break down what they're doing differently. For starters, the founders simply took learning science seriously. They reimagined how a school could function instead of following the standard school playbook. The research showed them that maximizing learning outcomes means building something that looks nothing like our existing school system—which has basically stayed the same for 200 years. Here are three things they do differently: 1) Mastery Learning Knowledge is like a Jenga tower. The higher blocks depend on the stability of the lower ones. If you pull a crucial block at the bottom, like knowing your multiplication tables, the whole structure can collapse. For example, good luck doing algebra if you don't know your multiplication tables by heart. The problem with traditional schools is that because every student in a grade has to move at the same pace, whether they know the material or not, kids end up with holes in their knowledge. This conveyor belt approach sets them back forever. Not knowing multiplication won't just stop you from crushing algebra. It'll stop you from crushing statistics and calculus, and entire career paths once you’re an adult. Mastery learning simply means that you don't move onto the next level until you know the material from the previous one. It's the opposite of how schools work right now. In traditional learning, time is fixed (everyone gets exactly one school year for algebra) while learning is variable (some kids get A's, others get C's). In mastery learning, it's flipped: learning is fixed (everyone masters the material) while time is variable (some finish in three weeks, others in three months). 2) Personalized learning plans If you want to learn fast, you need challenges that are tailored to your skill level. If the material is too easy, you’ll be bored; if it’s too difficult, you’ll get frustrated and quit. What you need is the sweet spot of content that’s challenging but doable. It’s the Goldilocks Principle for school: not too hot, not too cold. Learning researchers call this the Zone of Proximal Development. It’s why 1-on-1 tutoring works so well. The problem with traditional lectures is that teachers need to teach to the average, which means that most students don’t get what they need. Visit a struggling charter school and you'll see this in action. Ask a 6th grade teacher what they're teaching and they'll say: "Sixth grade material. That's my job." Meanwhile, half the class can barely read at a 2nd grade level. Teachers know this, but because going back to the basics could cost them their job, they plow ahead, which leaves students behind. The cost of these perverse incentives is showing up in the declining test scores we’re seeing across America. 3) Change what teachers do Picture the typical classroom: one teacher at the front, 25 kids of wildly different abilities, and 45 minutes to get through the material before the bell rings. Meanwhile, teachers are stressed during the day and overworked at night from all the papers they have to grade and lesson plans they have to write. And for what? For 40 years, research has shown that passive lectures are just about the worst way to learn anything. It’s an established fact. But our education system is so fossilized that it’s incapable of adapting to new knowledge and the better way of doing things that we’ve already discovered. So what does Alpha do? They’ve transformed teachers into coaches and motivators. The apps and AI handle the information delivery and customize it for each student, leaving teachers to do what they do best (and signed up for in the first place): connect, inspire, mentor, and motivate students. The bottleneck isn’t information anymore. It’s student motivation. You can have the world’s greatest curriculum, but if the student doesn’t give a damn, they ain’t gonna learn squat. Everybody talks about EdTech, but it’s only part of the solution. Motivation plays a far more important role, which is why the people I know at Alpha are always asking: “How can we get kids to love school?” — — The Science Behind Alpha's Approach These strategies are inspired by Bloom’s Two-Sigma Model, which is arguably the most important education finding of the past century. When researchers combined mastery learning with 1-on-1 tutoring, 98% of the tutored students outperformed the average student from a traditional classroom. Here’s the key point: Mastery learning, paired with 1-on-1 tutoring, is better for the very best students and the very worst ones. 1-on-1 tutoring isn’t some futuristic approach. Descartes, Feynman, and John Stuart Mill all learned through tutoring. The problem with tutoring, of course, is that it’s always been reserved for the elite. It’s too expensive and there simply aren’t enough master tutors to go around. Enter modern technology: AI and learning apps have changed what’s possible. Every student can have a personalized learning plan now. Digital tutors never get tired or cranky, and they’ll certainly never roll their eyes and say: “Come on, kid… we’ve gone over these fractions twelve times already!” They’ll work all night with a kid who wants to memorize their fractions or learn the capitals of every country in the world. With each question, the software develops a laser-precise understanding of what concepts each kid knows / doesn’t know. Once again, that leaves the teachers to focus on the human side of learning: motivating students and helping them when they get stuck. — — Science fiction author William Gibson once said: “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” And that’s exactly what Alpha School represents: a future of education that already exists, and not some pipe dream vision of a distant tomorrow. I know because I’ve witnessed it first-hand. While running my own adult writing program, one of our paid editors raved about a participant’s killer writing skills. “Peyton has serious talent,” she wrote. That talented writer, Peyton, was a 15 year-old Alpha student at the time who was out-writing many of the adults in the program. I’m obviously fired up about what Alpha is doing, but if the idea of kids learning through apps and AI makes you uncomfortable, I get it. But unlike our current one-size-fits-all system that’s failing millions of kids, Alpha isn’t trying to be the universal solution to education. Their message goes something like this: “We’ve built something that works very well but looks nothing like the school you went to. We’re not trying to be conventional. We’re trying to be effective, and that means doing unconventional things. If that resonates with you, great. If not, that's okay too.” There’s something here. The data speaks for itself. The most untapped resource on the planet is human potential, and transforming the education system is just about the best way to unleash it.

It’s live! WritingExamples.com

Announcing: Writing Examples Today is launch day! We built this website to celebrate great writing. It’s 100% free. Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can improve at your craft). Every example has an analysis of why the writing works. Analytical often means dry. But instead of going technical, we’ve gone technicolor. There are text-explainers, summary graphics, and videos that come together to make the writing instruction lively and multi-dimensional. It’s a place where you can discover how great writing comes together. Where we lift up the hood and see the mechanics in action. It isn’t about giving you a set of rules to follow. It’s about showing the diversity of ways writers approach their craft, so you can develop your own style. What are some of the articles about? You’ll learn how to describe a party like F. Scott Fitzgerald, how to tell a story like George Orwell, how to write a speech like John F. Kennedy. There are other articles inspired by the likes of John Steinbeck, James Clear, Winston Churchill, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Steven Pressfield, and Jerry Seinfeld. Writing Examples is a crusade against the sterility of contemporary writing. So much of the advice you read says the same thing: “Be direct. Cut the fluff. Get to the point. Stick to short sentences.” And yeah, sure, this advice has merit. It’s useful in certain cases, but the problem is writers take these rules to be universal, which has homogenized writing styles. Even in my own writing, there’ve been so many times where I’ve stripped away my own voice in the name of “correctness.” I regret that. The truth is, there is no one way to write well, just as there is no one way to speak well. The way you speak in a boardroom is different from the way you speak on a first date, which is different from the way you speak with your childhood best friends. Writing is similar. Writing Examples is the opposite of Grammarly. It celebrates the wild, wacky, and the weird because it’s the bedrock of personality. The site’s explicit purpose is to inject some High Noon Chutzpah back into the world of writing. To teach you how to write with distinctly human fingerprints in a world that’s about to be flooded with AI-generated content. Forget playing it safe. That’s the most dangerous thing you can do in a world of instant writing. I want you to write with personality. I want you to play with punctuation. I want you to ditch the corporatized hogwash. I want to expand your sense of what great writing can be. And I want you to have fun doing it. But there’s more to the mission. Writing Examples is a protest against today’s Internet, where people spend the majority of their time reading ad-polluted articles and doom-scrolling the same few social media sites. Remember when we used to surf the Internet? When every site was its own wave to ride? Now, we’re like phone-addicted zombies, we mindlessly scroll Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram until we feel bad about ourselves — only to repeat the cycle a few hours later. Writing Examples is different. Heartfelt writing deserves a heartfelt presentation, so every element of the site has been designed from scratch. Energetically, we wanted to honor the gravitas of classic writing without the sleepiness of a drab old library shelf.  We said no to ads. We said no to pop-ups. No hijacking your attention. None of the flat white backgrounds that make the Internet feel so homogenous. And we said no to anything that feels like your 5th-grade English class. Writing Examples isn’t about what’s trending. It’s about learning from the great writers of times past, most of whom you know, many of whom you probably haven’t taken the time to read. The ultimate goal is to make Writing Examples a one-stop shop to learn about any kind of writing you can think of. Now, I dare you to dive into the site and get to work.

Robert Greene has developed a method for writing best-selling books like The 48 Laws of Power. This interview is a tell-all about his process. How does he write books? What makes for a great story? Some lessons: 1) The rewards of writing will come, but they're never immediate. 2) Don't talk down to your readers. 3) When you're writing about famous and powerful people, look for the things that make them human. The things that everybody can relate to, such as how they brushed their teeth or spoke to their mother. 4) Stories are the most elemental form of seduction. You can take the angriest child, tell them a story, and calm them down immediately. 5) When you're looking for stories to include in your book, look for stories that have drama to them. 6) Research, research, research. Robert basically has the entire book organized by the time he starts writing it. 7) Robert's been taking notes for so long that he now has thousands of notecards saved with information from all the books he's written. 8) Intensity of desire can take us to levels of performance we never thought possible. Get clear on what you intensely desire, and pursue it. 9) Robert spent years as a failed writer. He said: “I was a nobody, I had no money, I had no success, I was very frustrated, I was depressed, even bordering on suicidal.” 10) Don't try to change people's morals with a book. They have to come to the idea on their own. You can give them the information or lead them in a certain direction, but preaching to people doesn't change their thinking. 11) If you're consistently struggling with writer's block, you might be suppressing your anger. But anger is an intoxicating emotion. It manufactures words for you. Learn to listen to it. 12) The anger should be controlled, though. Robert says: "Controlled anger is ten times more powerful than just venting." 13) Writing prompt: What's something that's making you angry and pissed off? 14) Don't write about what you think you should write about. Write about what actually excites you because genuine excitement is the only fuel that can sustain you over multiple years while you're working on a book. 15) What's the mission of Robert's work? He says: "My secret ambition is to make things such as reading, studying the classics, and philosophy something hip, so that young people were inspired to step away from the TV and the Internet and challenge their minds." I've shared the full conversation with @RobertGreene below. If you'd rather listen or watch in a more convenient place, I've linked to Apple, Spotify, and YouTube in the links below.