In his second term, President Donald Trump has made some profound changes to the U.S. education system. In an executive order issued in March, he indicated his intention to dismantle parts of the Department of Education. Another executive order from January expanded school choice initiatives, which would impact how public schools are able to serve their communities.
Wherever you stand on the education debate, one thing's for certain: the future of the country's schools is up in the air.
Enter the billionaires.
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A number of high-profile tech innovators, celebrities, and athletes have thrown their hats into the education ring, opening schools and education-focused non-profits of their own. Some are explicit about wanting to serve the underfunded areas that may be most affected by Trump's policies, while others are focused on providing education that keeps up with the changes in fields like technology and AI.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is of the latter camp. In 2014, he founded Ad Astra, a small, innovative school on the SpaceX campus that had only a handful of students. The school eventually shut down its in-person campus and rebranded as Astra Nova, an online program that serves kids ages 10-14.
Both programs eschewed traditional classes like foreign language and music in favor of math, science, and "conundrums." Their goal, according to their websites, is to educate the next generation of innovators and builders.
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Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs, has taken a similar approach with her non-profit, the XQ Institute. The organization, which is based on the premise that our current educational system is out of date in this rapidly changing, technology-driven world, aims to "reimagine the high school experience," according to its website.
XQ, it says, "has been working with communities to reimagine what high school can be– relevant, engaging, interdisciplinary, unconstrained by the walls of a school building."
On the other hand, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos' preschools are more focused on serving under-resourced communities than they are on building the next tech luminaries. The Bezos Academies, which are located in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Texas, and Washington, are tuition-free and Montessori-inspired, according to the school's website.
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NBA star Lebron James' I Promise School, in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, also works to help underprivileged and underserved children get a quality education.
The school is "dedicated to those students who are already falling behind and in danger of falling through the cracks," its website says. It does this by providing specialized programming, like longer school days and STEM-focused curriculum, and by providing support for the entire family through an on-campus Family Resource Center.
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