The Cost Curve Will Win

2026-03-31

Jewish day school costs $14,000 to $32,000 a year — and that’s before you add fees, fundraising obligations, and the guilt trip. A family with three kids is spending more than a mortgage. And what do they get for it? A system that, by its own community’s admission, can’t teach kids to speak Hebrew after twelve years of trying.

This is not a quality problem that money can solve. It’s a structural problem that money is propping up.

Technology bends cost curves. It always has. Mainframes cost millions — now the phone in your pocket is more powerful. Encyclopedias cost thousands — Wikipedia is free. A taxi medallion in New York cost $1.3 million in 2013 — Uber made it worthless. The pattern is always the same: a regulated industry with artificially high costs gets disrupted by technology that delivers better outcomes at a fraction of the price.

Education is the last major holdout. Joe Liemandt sees this clearly, which is why he’s committed a billion dollars to Alpha School. Alpha’s private school model costs $40,000 a year — comparable to elite day schools. But their micro-school model is already at $15,000 — and with school vouchers, families pay $300 to $400 a month. The charter school model runs on $10,000 per student from state subsidies. Liemandt’s long-term vision: world-class education delivered on a sub-$1,000 tablet within twenty years (hear him explain why).

Think about what that means for Jewish education. Today, Jewish day school is a luxury that most Jewish families can’t afford. The ones who can are paying for a model that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades. The ones who can’t send their kids to public school and supplement with afternoon Hebrew school — which everyone knows doesn’t work.

What if every Jewish family could afford a world-class Jewish education? What if mastery-based Hebrew, Torah, and Gemara instruction cost less than a family’s monthly phone bill? What if the barrier to Jewish literacy wasn’t money but simply the decision to start?

The technology exists. The method exists. The curricula exist. The cost curve is already bending.

The only question is who builds it. That’s what we’re doing.

If you’ve read this far, you probably care about this as much as I do. I’d love to hear what you think — whether you agree, disagree, or want to help. Email me.

Next in this series: the four mechanics that made Direct Instruction work — and why an AI tutor lets us do it better.