Press

Rebecca Winthrop – "The Coolest Education Innovation I Found in Silicon Valley."
February 18, 2026

Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, PhD from Columbia University, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and leading global authority on education, visited Red Bridge Education in February 2026 and published her observations in a widely read LinkedIn article.

NBC Nightly News: Kids Edition "Empowering Students to Take Charge of Their Learning."
March 20, 2025
Sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation to support reporting on education across the nation.

NBC Nightly News: Kids Edition featured Red Bridge Education in a national segment exploring how the school puts students in charge of their own learning. The segment covers Red Bridge Education's Autonomy Level framework, learning credit system, deep dive projects, and student-initiated promotion process — and features interviews with founder Orly Friedman, learning guides, and students.

The Education Crisis: “Why do we need a paradigm change in education?”
October 2, 2025

Nikita Khetan, Kristin Goodell, and Orly Friedman appear across Episodes 1–8 of this series hosted by Thembi Duncan, featuring education researcher Dr. Charles Reigeluth. Red Bridge Education staff discuss how personalized, student-centered learning works in practice alongside researchers examining paradigm change in American education.

The What School Could Be Podcast: "Deeper Learning and Mastery at Red Bridge” with Orly Friedman
September 1, 2025

Orly Friedman joins Getting Smart's podcast to discuss deeper learning and mastery at Red Bridge Education. "Schools like Red Bridge are signals from the future, showing us not only what school could be, but what school can be."

Hooray for Monday — Center for Inspired Teaching: "Agency and Autonomy"
August 8, 2025

Orly Friedman shares how Red Bridge Education centers student agency — including student-initiated advancement — and how teachers anywhere can incorporate more opportunities for autonomy into their classrooms.

The New View EDU — “Innovating for the Youngest Learners” with Orly Friedman
March 28, 2023

In this conversation with host Tim Fish, Orly Friedman shares her lifelong passion for education and the vision that led to the creation of Red Bridge. Inspired by the research of Albert Bandura, Red Bridge separates academic level from student autonomy, fostering growth in goal-setting, accountability, self-reflection, and learning—not just test performance or grade advancement.

Getting Smart Podcast — "Orly Friedman on Red Bridge School and Educating for Agency"
May 17, 2023

Orly Friedman joins Getting Smart's podcast at ASU+GSV to discuss how Red Bridge Education structures learning around autonomy levels rather than grade levels, with students driving their own advancement, and why developing agency, rather than compliance, is the essential preparation for young people's futures.