The Silicon Valley startup AltSchool spent the just-completed school year test-driving its personalized learning software in a handful of elite private schools — including two in Florida.

When the company first announced its plans to expand beyond a handful of pricey private schools it operated itself, it pledged to gradually extend its reach into a more diverse cross-section of institutions, including public school districts. This week, it announced plans to do just that, starting with a handful of additional schools and districts around the country.

AltSchool also announced its existing partner schools, including Temple Beth Sholom Day School in Miami Beach and the Greene School in West Palm Beach, have signed on for another year. Another Florida institution, Jacksonville Beach's Discovery School, is joining its roster. (more…)

A Silicon Valley startup that wants to power the future of personalized learning plans to introduce its system in three independent private schools next school year.

Two of those schools are in South Florida.

Over the past two years, AltSchool has picked up national buzz, raised more than $100 million in venture capital funding and opened a network of private microschools in Chicago, New York and the San Francisco Bay area.

Its first round of "partner schools" are an early step toward the company's ultimate ambition, which founder Max Ventilla has described as a "new model for what education should be in the 21st century" — one that could eventually serve all kinds of students, in all kinds of schools, all over the world.

For now, though, the company's schools cater to a narrower niche. They charge more than $20,000 in annual tuition, and while financial assistance is available, it's safe to say their demographics don't match those of the national public-school population.

The two South Florida schools set to join the network definitely seem to jibe with the AltSchool approach, which Ventilla has dubbed "Montessori 2.0, a hundred years later, enabled by technology." They're also both relatively new, and relatively small. (Neither plans to grow to more than a few dozen students).

Company spokeswoman Maggie Quale said the similarities are no accident. With its first round of partners, she said, AltSchool wants to change as few variables as possible. Next school year will be the first in which its network will include schools the company doesn't run itself. In the years that follow, it hopes to change more variables, and eventually move into schools that serve more disadvantaged students, including traditional and charter public schools.

The Greene School, which opened in September in West Palm Beach, was among the three schools chosen by AltSchool from a pool of more than 200 applicants. It features a "maker space" at the center of its facility. It equips its students with iPads and Chromebooks. It incorporates robotics and engineering into its core curriculum.

"We really encourage our students to tinker, and to use their own curiosity," Dorothy Hutcheson, the head of school, said in interview. (more…)