The Ledger, every show

Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.

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AMERICAN OPTIMIST Assertion Supported
Liemandt: Alpha 3rd and 4th Graders Outscore 50% of US High School Grads
“We have third and fourth graders who outscore 50% of the high school graduates in this country.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 20:15 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
MY FIRST MILLION Assertion Partly supported
Liemandt: Trilogy cohorts were told to bet a month's salary on roulette
“At the end of our trilogy university, a hundred days, you know, if enough of the teams that hit their goals, we would take everybody to Vegas and then we would get everybody around a roulette wheel. And we'd say, you have to bet one month's salary. On the numb…”
Joe Liemandt May 27, 2026 ▶ 14:14 The 50 richest families in America are betting on this trend
Liemandt: Nonprofits in education cannot scale with better product quality
“Historically, everything in education has been nonprofit. And the problem with nonprofits is nonprofits are non-scalable, which is the better your product, the faster your donations go away, right?”
Joe Liemandt May 27, 2026 ▶ 41:49 The 50 richest families in America are betting on this trend
Liemandt: Education Is a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Market with No Competitors
“I'm going to show this is the single best market. If you're an entrepreneur to enter, it's a multi-trillion dollar market with no competitors.”
Joe Liemandt May 27, 2026 ▶ 1:01:14 The 50 richest families in America are betting on this trend
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: 200-Student School Achieves More Perfect Scores Than 100K-Student District
“And so we get more hundreds on state standardized tests in a building of 200 people than a school district of a 100,000.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 22:23 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Assertion Contradicted
Liemandt: Paper shows 50% of UCSD freshmen cannot answer fifth-grade questions
“I think UC San Diego, one of the top schools, universities in our country, right? Just published a paper that, like, 50% of their freshmen can't answer fifth grade questions.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 28:34 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
Liemandt: Traditional classroom lecturing wastes 90% of students' time
“We waste 90% of their time. Like, we know that teacher in front of the classroom is the least effective way to teach. You know, you can argue whether it's five percent retention, but literally we're wasting 90% of the kids' time because we're teaching them in …”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 35:00 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
Liemandt: Teen disengagement and mental health issues stem from low school standards
“These kids are disengaged. They are addicted to TikTok and Fortnite, and they have mental health problems, and all these issues that are occurring, and they're the outcome of low standards, not high standards.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:11:33 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Elite private school students with A's test years behind
“The high and private schools are all lying to their parents by giving kids A's when they don't deserve them. So like we pulled in, you know, so we had hundreds of kids join, you know, whatever, couple months ago across the country. Right. And these are people …”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:17:52 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: University 100-series lecture classes will disappear due to AI tutors
“A hundred series classes in university are going to go away. Like as soon as everybody figures out this AI tutor stuff, they're just going to go away.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:30:07 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
Liemandt: If a Student Fails to Learn, It Is the System's Fault
“When we designed our educational system, I think we're the only school in the world who, if a kid's not learning, it's our fault. It's the system's fault. It's not the kid's.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:46:52 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha School loses about 50% of educators over learning accountability
“We lose about 50% of our educators when we tell them they're accountable for the kid learning.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:51:00 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha Fifth Graders Beat Wharton MBAs on Teamwork and Leadership Assessments
“We have quantified all the metrics on the life skills, right? So I know it's not just, oh yeah, our kids have grit, or oh, they're good public speakers. I'm like, no, everybody in our class scored 95% on RI, and every fifth grader beat a Wharton MBA in teamwor…”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 1:55:37 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
Liemandt: Alpha Pays Middle Schoolers $1,000 for Top 1% Academic Performance
“So in our middle school, we'll pay any kid a thousand dollars to become top one percent.”
Joe Liemandt Mar 31, 2026 ▶ 2:06:20 Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: AI tutoring propels students to top 1% in two hours daily
“So in two hours a day, they sit down for two hours. They learn more than twice as much as if they sat in class. And so they're learning so fast. It doesn't matter where they come in. They can come in, you know, top 25%, bottom 25%. They are going to get to top…”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 17:19 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Disclosure
Liemandt: Alpha School pays middle schoolers $1,000 for top 1% test scores
“We will take any middle schooler, girls or boys, and we will pay them a thousand dollars if they get to top one percent.”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 21:15 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Insight
Liemandt: AI tutoring makes reaching the top 1% about effort, not IQ
“Because of how these AI tutor works. It's not about IQ. It's literally about effort. Wow. And we show them if you, if with this tutor put in the right way in the system, they all can do it. And it literally will calculate for them. It's this many hours of time…”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 21:41 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Insight
Liemandt: Mastery learning could put 95% of US students in top 1%
“For sure in, you know, K through eight, the K through eight curriculum, you know, if you take 95% of America, they could all be top one percent, that there's just nothing intellectually challenging enough. If done with a mastery-based education, with an indivi…”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 47:03 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Insight
Liemandt: Nonprofits cannot scale because better products deplete donations faster
“The reason is nonprofit means non-scalable. Like if I have a set of donations, right. And I build the world's best product, the better the product, the faster my money goes away. And now I'm done, right?”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 1:08:13 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
BIGDEAL Opinion
Liemandt: Chatbots are 'cheat bots' and should be banned from schools
“It's why I say chat bots or cheat bots and they're terrible. Like if we could ban Like those chatbots being in school, that would be great.”
Joe Liemandt Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 1:12:29 Billionaire’s Advice to Young People | Joe Liemandt
AMERICAN OPTIMIST Assertion Contradicted
Liemandt: Paying students directly is the most effective educational incentive
“Yeah. No, paying the kids is by far the most effective way to do it. And you can get, you know, big effect size on, on doing this. It really works.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 10:54 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
Liemandt: Two decades of VC-backed EdTech have completely failed
“Lots of VCs has funded lots of ed tech. None of it works. Right? There's our ed tech investment goes like this, test scores keep going down.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 13:28 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
Liemandt: Core academics are the easiest part of schooling to fix
“Academically, it's actually funny, because school's a bundle, and actually the easiest and cheapest things to fix is actually the academics, right? Because that's tech-driven. Versus the rest of the day is all very human driven.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 16:37 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
AMERICAN OPTIMIST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha students learn twice as much in just two hours
“In our model, right, we have built a learning engine that teaches kids 10 times faster. And so how that reacts or how you see it in our school is our kids come in, our students come in two hours a day. They're at an AI tutor. It's not Teacher in front of the c…”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 19:14 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
AMERICAN OPTIMIST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha School Ranks in Top 1% Nationally Across All Classes
“And so our academic performance, we're the best performing academic school in the country. We're, you know, all our classes now are, you know, are top one percent.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 19:36 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
Liemandt: 90% of Students Use ChatGPT to Cheat
“If you deploy ChatGPT to students, 90% of them use it to cheat.”
Joe Liemandt Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 43:20 Secret Tech Billionaire Is Betting $1B on This · Joe Lonsdale
NO PRIORS Assertion Partly supported
Liemandt: Alpha School yields top 1% academic performance in two hours daily
“And so we built a learning engine that teaches kids 10 times faster. It's all based on the principles of learning science. And so then now we can commit to kids. You just need to do two hours a day and you're going to crush your academics. So top one percent p…”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 8:01 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Private school A-students test up to three grades behind
“Your student academically On our standard, on standardized tests that we use are somewhere between one grade level ahead. If they had a straight A transcript transferring in to us, one level, one grade level ahead to three grade levels behind. And if they're a…”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 10:25 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Mastering a grade-level subject takes 20 to 30 hours
“The average grade level subject combo, so fourth grade math, takes between 20 and 30 hours To master. That's it.”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 11:09 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Disclosure
Alpha School Pays Middle Schoolers $1,000 for Reaching Top 1%
“We have a system where if you're not top one percent, Coming into our middle school, we will pay you a thousand dollars when you hit top one percent in your subject.”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 27:57 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Insight
Liemandt: Skipping Multiplication Table Memorization Dooms Students in Advanced Math
“If you're an advanced math problem, and you're doing seven times eight, and seven times eight to you is still a calculation. Right? You're doomed, right? There's just, there's no way around it. You'll start making careless errors.”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 50:44 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: 90% of Students Given ChatGPT in School Will Use It to Cheat
“If you give kids ChatGPT in school and academics, 90% will use it for cheating.”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 51:21 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Insight
Liemandt: Critical Thinking Impossible Without First Imparting a Factual Base
“If you don't give them a fact base, then their opinions are just making stuff up. You have to reason over a fact base.”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 52:33 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Opinion
Liemandt: EdTech fails because school systems ignore academic outcomes and products are poor
“The problem with EdTech today and why it's failed and nobody wants to invest in it is you're trying to sell to a school system who actually doesn't care about academic outcomes back to the bundle. And you can't change the metrics that matter. And so you can't …”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 56:39 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
NO PRIORS Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: A $500 student incentive program can fix US test scores
“For 400 dollars, maybe 500 dollars of incentive. Remember average education, right? We spend lots of, we spend up to 20 grand a kid. 500 bucks. We can totally fix and change the trajectory and all these bad test scores and all of that by making sure we're moti…”
Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025 ▶ 59:24 No Priors Ep. 133 | With Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
INVEST LIKE THE BEST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha School's academic performance is top of any US school
“So our academic performance is the top of any school in the country, and we do it in dramatically less time.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 2:26 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: Traditional classroom lecturing is the worst instructional method for children
“The teacher in front of the classroom is like the worst way to teach kids. And there's all these ways where kids can learn two, five, 10 times faster. But it doesn't work in the teacher in front of the classroom.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 5:36 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
INVEST LIKE THE BEST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: A student can learn a grade-level subject in 20 to 30 hours
“That you can teach an entire grade level Of material for one subject in about 20 to 30 hours.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 17:20 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
INVEST LIKE THE BEST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: MAP Tests Show Alpha Students Learn 2x in Two-Hour Days
“And then the January maps test come back and it shows they're learning twice as much in two hours a day. So our standard is. In two hours a day, you'll learn twice as much as sitting in class for six.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 19:14 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: Generative AI makes traditional textbooks, lesson plans, and tests obsolete
“AI, and this is the generative part of AI that really matters, is all educational content is obsolete. Every textbook, every lesson plan, every test. All of it is obsolete because gen AI is going to be able to deliver, generate a personalized lesson just for y…”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 25:32 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: 90% of student ChatGPT usage is for cheating, not learning
“90% of the use of chat GPT is to cheat kids. Take it. Now there are 10% use case of people who are like, I need a Socratic tutor where I'm super excited about it, and I need to dive in deeper, right? And that five to 10%, those kids are going to crush it with …”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:04:21 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
INVEST LIKE THE BEST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha's K-6 gets more perfect STAAR scores than a 100,000-student district
“One of our building, our K through six building down in Austin gets more hundreds on the Texas star than a school district of a 100,000 kids.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:25:06 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: Reforming public education is impossible because parents disagree on its purpose
“The biggest issue, education is hard because you have to define the product, and your customer bases have very different needs, right? This is why when I talk about public school being impossible, you, parents do not agree on what the purpose of an education i…”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:40:51 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: Surprisingly few parents actually care about their children's academic performance
“You know, one of the things that I did not realize going in is how few parents actually care about academics.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:41:59 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
Liemandt: Capitalism and entrepreneurs are needed to revolutionize schooling
“I believe we need to bring entrepreneurs in. We need to bring capitalism in here and we need to create all the different parts of school choice so that parents can pick what they love.”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:44:09 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
INVEST LIKE THE BEST Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Two-hour tablet learning will render six-hour traditional classrooms obsolete
“Once there's this tablet and it's two hours a day, what is your education system? Cause it's coming. How do we want our kids to spend their day? Right. And what does society want to say? This is where kids should spend their day because there's no point in hav…”
Joe Liemandt Aug 26, 2025 ▶ 1:45:10 Alpha School's Disruptive Vision for the Future of Education · Invest Like The Best
MY FIRST MILLION Assertion Supported
Liemandt: Alpha School requires second graders to run a 5K
“Our second graders gotta run a five K. Our eighth graders have to do a tough mudder, or they also all have to cross the finish line at the same time.”
Joe Liemandt May 27, 2026 ▶ 17:56 The 50 richest families in America are betting on this trend
MY FIRST MILLION Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Alpha School outpaces 100k-student district in perfect STAAR scores
“And, you know, we have a building with a few hundred people in Austin, Who get more hundreds on the Texas car than a school district of a 100,000.”
Joe Liemandt May 27, 2026 ▶ 22:51 The 50 richest families in America are betting on this trend
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