Khan Lab School

Hi everyone, Sal Khan here. I just wanted to tell y'all that we've reached kind of several really cool milestones at Khan Lab School, which you can learn more about at khanlabschool.org or kls.org.

A lot of folks are surprised to hear that I started a physical school back in 2014 when I'm so associated with online learning. But I've never viewed online as somehow a replacement for an in-person experience. The dream has always been that online can unlock the physical experience. It can allow students to learn at a pace that is appropriate for them.

It could allow for mastery-based learning where if you get an eighty percent on something, you don't just get a C on your forehead and your permanent transcript and then you're expected to learn the next concept that builds on that 20% gap. Instead, you're expected to master the concept so you always have a strong foundation.

We can unlock a situation where when human beings get to a classroom together, both the students and the teachers, they're able to interact with each other. They're able to collaborate with each other. They're able to have Socratic dialogues, have games, and do projects together.

We wanted to create a reality where students aren't just accountable for their own gains or their own progress but also for each other. That they're invested in each other, that they are unusually collaborative.

We wanted to explore blurring the lines between high school and college. If kids are able to learn more, be truly curious, be truly engaged, why can't they learn faster than you would normally expect? The middle schoolers can learn high school concepts, and high school students can learn college concepts and get credit for it.

So that by the time they graduate, they're already operating at a junior or senior level in college and actually getting credit for it. The milestone that we're at is that we're actually now at a full K-12 school with over 200 students. We have our first graduates this year.

You can imagine in the early days a lot of people weren't sold. “Well, these are all interesting ideas, Sal, but will this work?” It’s a lab school. There's all sorts of stuff that we're constantly trying. But you know, when I look at this year's graduating cohort, I'm incredibly proud of them, mainly for who they have become as human beings.

But some of the traditional metrics by which we measure students, they're also crushing it. I guess this is the best way to say it. Which is really powerful to show that you can create a learning experience where kids are intrinsically curious, they're intrinsically wanting to collaborate with each other, and just want to learn more.

But as a byproduct of it, not as a goal of it, they're able to do incredibly well on standardized tests. Our students are scoring on average better on standardized tests than some of the very top universities in the country or in the world. They are getting into some of the top universities in the world, even though they don't have traditional letter grades.

Because the universities are seeing that the grades of mastery-based learning are even more powerful. Because it's a higher standard, it's expecting that all students really mastered the concepts. We're deepening our partnership with Foothill College, which is a local college in the area, to get the best of both worlds: the high school experience and the college experience.

So we have some exciting things that I can't announce just yet, also on the capacity side. That's why I'm out here telling folks normally we can only admit a few folks every year. But this year there might be an opportunity for more.

So if you're interested, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area in particular, within driving distance to Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, I encourage you to take a look at it. I'm happy to answer any questions in the message board below that you might have about Khan Lab School.

My kids go there, I teach there, I work very closely with the faculty and the administration there. What's exciting about it for me is that we're not just creating a really unique learning experience for the students who attend, but as a lab school, we're creating a model that can be replicated throughout the world.

So once again, I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone might have.