alexsouthmayd

This is a very thoughtful response! Thank you. I'd love to chat with you further, if you'd like to reach out directly to me (just use the demo form on the site). We are launching Bloomy this fall with Prenda and Apogee microschools (and in discussions with 1 other large microschool network). Your perspective would be valuable.

Quickly, on meaning: academics are a necessary but insufficient condition for a meaningful school experience. Thus Bloomy is not aiming to solve the meaning question. At the same time, meaning and purpose should (hopefully) create richer outcomes on academics, whether those are pursued using Bloomy or something else.

Meaning is also subjective. You could ask each of our schools using Bloomy what their meaning is -- I'm sure they'd all have an answer, and each answer would be at least a little different.

But I'm sure they'd all say they infuse meaning into their school days.

I'll check out your blog as well.

Great points! Agreed on the distinctions. With enough data we should be able to identify lots of cool things about mastery.

These are really thoughtful points. Thanks for sharing them. I'd love to check out your code.

The percentage mastery threshold on Summit may indeed be quite high, but the Summit also comes after the student has proven they are ready for the it by satisfying the BKT threshold on Climb. Still, though, it is worth testing out mastery percentage thresholds to see if lowering it makes any positive difference (e.g., maybe we are not letting students progress fast enough because the bar for quasi-perfection is so high).

On students asking AI outside of Bloomy: that is always likely to be a challenge. One way we mitigate this is by protecting the clipboard so students cannot copy/paste in or out of the platform. This is especially helpful in our Writing Studio tool, where students write long form essays (although clipboard protection is optional and can be disabled by the teacher/parent if they wish -- e.g., if the student typically drafts in Google Docs or Word and wants to easily paste).

Thanks for engaging! Let me clear up some inaccuracies lest others misunderstand.

First, those are all verbatim quotes from the educators. They were taken directly from letters of reference (which I recently had to compile for a quite intense Technical Due Diligence for a district). They're real school leaders. They're listed plainly on the website. You can look them up online. Whether they used AI in the creation or editing of their letters, I do not know.

The platform has been designed to minimize PII required. We have a very standard third-party vendor stack. Basically just OpenAI and Anthropic as frontier labs for the models, but neither is permitted to train on our data (we have Zero Data Retention agreements with those organizations). The other vendors are standard for operating the app (e.g., Supabase, Vercel). Nothing crazy here.

Not only can users request deletion of their data -- it's standard for any user who cancels their relationship, within 30 days. You can read it right in our privacy policy.

Thanks, that's very helpful feedback! We'll improve this.

Thanks for engaging! Our passages are a mix of public domain passages and in-house authored material which are specced to a long list of requirements. This allows us to create passages spanning a rich variety of characteristics, including genres, contexts, settings, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, household family set-ups (e.g., single-parent households, grandparent-led households), etc. We also rigorously vet our content using AI evaluators from Learning Commons, which were created using a golden set of inputs from a panel of experienced educators.

I also have several years' experience writing standardized test preparatory materials. Ultimately the reading comprehension modules serve the end goal of teaching students discrete skills, which roll up into standards. Those standards are (as you point out) the main focus of standardized, summative tests.

We encourage students to read real books! We have an AI writing tool that integrates with schools' novel studies curricula to generate a wide variety of prompts so that students can engage in long form writing about the books they are reading.

Thank you! It's an interesting time for sure. In the face of all the headwinds, there are also some interesting tailwinds and opportunities:

-Shrinking budgets forcing reevaluation of longstanding contracts, especially those that provide single-subject or limited grade band solutions -A general awareness that, despite the uncertainty around AI, schools need to "figure out this AI thing" -School choice driving demand for mastery-based curricula among alternative educational options

I love a good regional conference.

That would be great. Please fill out your information on the below contact form, & I will follow up with you!

https://www.bloomylearning.com/#demo

I'll check them out, thank you for your suggestions!

I agree that how we approach the market will be the difference between being successful and failing. At this stage, we’re focused on finding early adopters who have the autonomy to try a different curriculum and already believe mastery learning and AI tutoring are where education is headed. Based on that point, we are validating several B2B & B2C hypotheses over the next few months to truly understand where we should position ourselves in the industry.

As you stated, our primary focus is charter schools, but we’re also working with microschools, homeschool co-ops, and families directly. To make this as accessible as possible for families, we are an approved vendor in over 15 states, which allows homeschool families to use their ESA funds for Bloomy.

Our goal is to work with people who are excited to build this future with us and prove the model from there!

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. We’ve actually had a few school districts ask about paper workbooks, so this is already on our radar. Right now, students can move at their own pace and use a notebook alongside Bloomy, but we haven’t figured out how much paper or e-ink should be part of the product itself.

The VLM idea is especially interesting. It could let Bloomy see how a student worked through a problem, not just whether the final answer was right. We’ll definitely take a closer look at this, so I appreciate your recommendation!

We ran a pilot with roughly 150 students in grades 6–8. Students who used Bloomy for one hour per week averaged 1.8x their expected winter-to-spring growth on NWEA MAP.

Our team was understandably energized by these results, and we plan to run several more pilots this fall to see whether we can produce similar gains across other student populations and assessments, including the PSAT.

Thanks! I’ll have a read. Appreciate your taking the time to source and share these.

There are many problems to solve within education! To say there’s only 1 aspect would be a massive disservice to the ~2 decades the average person spends going through a school system. Some studies estimate the average American is at a middle school reading level. That’s one problem (of many) we can aim to solve with something like Bloomy.

This is interesting, can you say more?

Funny you say that. We actually just released a voice mode that allows students to engage, interrupt, and even switch languages.

I'd love to design this to a greater extent throughout the experience so Bloomy becomes voice-first (where applicable).

Thanks for the support!

On motivation: we have something called Bloomy Bucks. Kids earn these for getting questions right, mastering skills, and being consistent. They can then redeem them for privileges that the teacher/school/parent sets (e.g., homework pass, game time, whatever). This is part of the effortful dopamine that I, personally, think is the right approach to motivation. A lot of people will disagree with me on this, but I think that some amount of extrinsic motivation (something we've already been doing for quite a long time with letter grades) can cultivate intrinsic motivation. One specific application of this is that students can earn up to 1 Bloomy Buck for a meaningful interaction with BloomyBot on a given question.

On assessments: imagine if we could get rid of assessments and just have live diagnosis happen all the time? With enough data from practice and mastery, that should be possible.

We have an offering for homeschoolers, indeed. Bloomy is reimbursable in ~15 states right now through ESA-type scholarships. Great ideas!

Yes—and the whole hypothesis here is that teaching could be more efficient than it currently is!

I've been extremely inconsistent in my dashes today as I flip between different devices :)

Good questions. I like that you're digging into the mechanics.

First principle: BloomyBot does not proactively engage the student unless they make 3 mistakes in a row in "Climb" (the practice portion). Then it engages them.

Otherwise, students can engage BloomyBot when they feel they need assistance.

If the student is confidently wrong and attempts to answer a question, they'll see the feedback that they're wrong, with an explanation. They can then clarify with BloomyBot. The goal here is (as you reference) to cultivate productive struggle. So we DO want the student to try their approach.

On getting rerouted to easier skills: students get 1 chance to attempt and fail a Climb. Enough questions wrong in a row (assuming they're trying) = signal that they either aren't ready to learn the skill or that they didn't pay attention to the instructional portion in Base Camp. We give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. If they fail Climb a second time, they get routed to a prerequisite skill.

The Climb gates Summit through Bayesian Knowledge Tracing. Wilson et al. (2019) derived an “85% rule” from formal models of learning: training is most efficient when learners succeed at about 85% of attempts. So Bloomy uses BKT (Corbett & Anderson, 1995) to update each student’s estimated per-skill mastery after every response, and routes students to skills within their Zone of Proximal Development.

I misread this -- yep I agree with the original statement!

I just posted something pretty relevant to this in a different comment. Totally agree with the dangers. 2 important points:

1. Not all AI is the same. I see 2 MECE categories in education: AI that does all the thinking/execution for you (the outsourced brain), and AI that is designed to fulfill specific coaching/tutoring roles. If we design AI to ask great questions and find the Socratic thread with students, we can actually make students think harder and learn faster.

2. Social media is full of cheap dopamine. See my comment about 'effortful dopamine' for my perspective on this.

I empathize with the screen time concerns - the reality is most kids in classrooms are already on screens, which are doing very little to move educational outcomes (from what I can tell based on the NAEP evidence).

And then you also have kids at home who are on TikTok or Instagram reels - combining screen time with easy dopamine.

Some kids using Bloomy decide to use it at home in lieu of social media time. I'd take that as a win. Cheap dopamine erodes focus and mental resilience. Bloomy focuses on ‘effortful dopamine.' We structure the experience so that students generate reward by conquering academic challenges, training the brain to find satisfaction in effort, patience, and mastery rather than passive consumption.

I'd be curious to see data that can isolate the relationship between educational outcomes and small bursts of high-quality instruction delivered via tech. That's one longer-term outcome we're trying to demonstrate. So far our efficacy results (still early pilots, but correlative) appear to be incrementally positive.

I've personally both had and seen great success with the Anki approach for specific terms (e.g., vocab flash cards). Spaced repetition is built into Bloomy based on similar principles. A little harder to get right as you're now spacing out skills/concepts rather than just word/definition/context. Something we hope to fine tune over time.

I have a slightly different perspective based on how I've observed schools use Bloomy. Focused use of Bloomy has allowed teachers to deliver higher-touch support to students who need it most (it also helps that our system identifies common learning patterns so teachers can conduct small-group instruction).

Human empathy is not optional, but rather required. Furthermore humans need to make the connection between the academic skill that's being taught and the real world application or relevance of that skill.

So LLM-assisted education has the potential to help humans be MORE empathetic and deliver the higher-leverage aspects of education only humans can do, while freeing them up from some of the inefficient many-to-one skill instruction for discrete concepts.

I love self-learning. I read a lot of books as a kid (at one point my dad even got mad at me because I was ignoring him while reading yet another book).

At the same time, I believe -- and have seen firsthand as a teacher -- that many students need instruction to learn certain concepts. Even if they don't need instruction, they need a framework or structure to learn within. (One of the big challenges I had to solve early on during my TFA time was classroom behavioral management -- it doesn't matter how good your pedagogy is if your kids won't listen to you).

Great teaching involves modeling a new skill or concept, providing some amount of training wheels, and then seeing it through to independent mastery. Is there a lot that a student can learn on their own simply by reading? Absolutely. Kids should read more books.

I like that you're touching on a bit of Horizon 3 education here! I agree that the model is antiquated and is long overdue for an upgrade.

Great point. The responsibility and consequences of the tech (both bad and good) rest upon the humans who designed it.

AI is certainly not a monolith. Many aspects and use cases of AI are dangerous -- fully agreed.

As others have commented, it would be better if we could give every student their own personal tutor. Until that's possible, I believe AI can be helpful in education, as long as it's responsibly designed and monitored.

Thanks! I think people are rightfully skeptical about EdTech and AI -- esp. with kids. But we also need to try to innovate in this space, and I believe (from my experience as a teacher as well as my experience seeing students learn on Bloomy) that there is great potential here.