I come from a small town, less than 2000 people. My high school class was 20 people, and we had one section for each class. There were no AP classes or gifted programs, just teachers from the same home town, who graduated from a nearby community college, doling out worksheets and having the class read aloud from text books to fill up class time.

We skipped evolution in biology because the teacher "didn't believe in it." Our home-economics teacher parroted lies about the effectiveness of birth control and suggested it was sinful. Most of the people in my class did not attend college.

I graduated high school with an 8th grade education. When I told my high school guidance counselor I was going to school for Computer Science, he suggested that maybe I should do something like nursing at the local community college, because "CS is for smart people."

When I got to college, it was absolutely brutal. I consistently barely passed "easy" classes with a C / D average. I felt dumb and demoralized.

The one place I did excel in college was my CS classes. Most of my free time pre-college was spent making mods for various video games. I was not happy with any of the modern consoles I had until I rooted them and had SNES emulators playing on them. I worked my way through a C++ book with a wizard on the front of it, and dabbled with python. I talked wistfully with my older brother about growing up and making video games together in our own little studio. I learned programming by doing things I loved, and today I have a very successful programming / IT career.

I graduated with a CS degree, and I keep current by pursing opportunities that are challenging and push my skills forward. My dream since I was a kid was to be a video game programmer, but dreams have a funny way of falling to the wayside when you grow up poor and struggling and you have the option between a $30,000 paycheck and a $60,000 paycheck.

But I am STILL BEHIND MY PEERS. I still feel unqualified to work at a major IT company ( Google, Microsoft, Apple ) because my math skills are so poor, and honestly, I didn't really learn much in college since I had to support myself with a 40 hour a week job, which left basically no time to do anything besides rush to get an assignment done, cram for tests, and occasionally cheat to get a passing grade.

My point?

Education is profoundly broken. I have a term I use: "Child jail." Most schools exist to keep the little hellions from running riot in the streets.

I believe education like the OP posted is absolutely vital, and where education needs to go in the future. This school sounds amazing. It empowers students, and shows them that they can solve real problems if they put their head down and work at it. It allows them to explore what they enjoy doing on a day to day basis. It teaches them practical skills.

But, this is still a private school that is probably absurdly expensive ( IMO, totally worth it ). Quality of education is absurdly uneven.

My bad experiences with education have lead me to work at a little education startup, and our motto is "learn by doing". I like to think that there is a kid like me out there enjoying the software I've written.