Palantir's Meritocracy Fellowship offers full-time roles to high school graduates, directly competing with elite universities like Brown. This radical talent acquisition strategy bets that on-the-job training and a customized curriculum can create better employees than traditional higher education.

A study of graduates from Sudbury Valley School, where students direct their own learning without grades, found they succeed in college. Lacking a traditional academic background was less important than the self-reliance, problem-solving skills, and personal responsibility they had developed.

Runaway costs in education, housing, and healthcare stem from government intervention. When the government promises to provide a service (e.g., student loans), it becomes a massive "buy-only" force with no price sensitivity, eliminating natural market forces and causing costs to balloon.

For EdTech startups, pivoting from D2C to B2B school sales is challenging, with long sales cycles. However, it creates a stickier business not subject to seasonal dips and, more importantly, provides equitable access to students in underserved communities, not just affluent families.

Despite the rapid shift to a decentralized, market-based education system, Florida lacks basic accountability measures. The state has no subject requirements for homeschoolers, and while students take standardized tests, the results are not published. This means policymakers and parents have no reliable data to determine if this experimental approach is helping or harming children's education.

Unlike modern age-segregated classrooms, historical mixed-age play groups create a natural learning environment. Older children develop leadership, teaching, and nurturing skills by guiding younger ones, who in turn are challenged and learn more quickly from their skilled peers.

A successful startup curriculum can't be one-size-fits-all globally. It requires real-time adaptation to address specific local ecosystem gaps, such as a need for better design skills in the Middle East or a push for global-facing products in an otherwise mature, domestic-focused market like Japan.

While the educational gap between poor and middle-class students is significant, the chasm between middle-class and wealthy students is more than twice as large, as measured by SAT scores. This disparity is driven by massive private school spending and endowments, creating an extreme advantage for the affluent.

Khan Academy developed a mission-aligned revenue model by partnering with The College Board, which pays them to create best-in-class SAT prep for free. This helps the Board fulfill its original mission of leveling the playing field while providing sustainable funding for the nonprofit, effectively funding its own disruption.