Sometimes I follow up old post subjects, but this time was special. I went to follow up on a wealthy Koch-related private school in Wichita, Kansas, and what I found was a guy running for governor of Iowa.
Back in 2018, the Wonder school was launched by Charles Koch's daughter-in-law, a recognizable iteration of the Rich Person Has Big Insights About Education model of edu-preneurship.
“I’m mostly just a mom that’s passionate about education for her kids,” said Annie Koch, 33, a mother of three children, ages 5, 3 and 3 months. You start to realize, ‘Actually, my kids spend more time at school than they spend with me.’The really wealthy Koch daughter-in-law teamed up with Zach Lahn, whose star began to rise when he was just a college student, bouncing from campaign to campaign to earn his stripes as a seasoned GOP operative. He ended up working for the Koch-backed astro-turf advocacy group Americans for Prosperity as Montana state director, where he drew press for the bone-headed move of declaring that "millions of Montanans" opposed Medicaid expansion, which is quite a claim for a state that only has a million residents.
Lahn then moved to the Koch's Youth Entrepreneurs program. How did he end up qualified to run a school? He and his then-wife had kids (ages 4 and 3). Anyway, he said, "We're not inventors. We're just parent catalysts." Lahn's "aw shucks, I'm just a regular guy" shtick compared with a certain not-from-around-here quality would turn out to be very on brand.
The Wonder school will seem familiar to anyone who has A) looked at these rich school launchers for a while or B) recently followed the deep dive into Alpha schools.
Wonder touts itself as an alternative to a strawman version of public ed, claiming that such schools are regimented and focus on memorization and "testing of rules and facts" through "worksheets just like our grandparents used." Like a factory.
But at Wonder, students will "work collaboratively like at Google or Facebook," a claim that would be a real hoot for people working under shitty conditions for those companies. But hey-- at Wonder everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. In fact, there are not actual teachers-- just "guides" (like MIT students). They are organized into four studios for different age groups (Wonder started as 3-11 but now handles ages 3-18). Enrollment, according to Niche, is 90, with 33% of graduates going on to college. But they are a bargain, with highest tuition at $10,000.
The day at Wonder starts with a morning Socratic Discussion, the morning focuses on Core Skills, and then after lunch, the afternoon is devoted to Quest-- "hands-on work, team-building challenges, sciences, coding, entrepreneurship, art & music, history."
Financially, it appears that Wonder is a disaster. It has run a deficit for five of six years, and the Lahns have plugged the gap with their own previously-Koch money to the tune of $4.5 million, as reported by Tim Carpenter at Iowa Starting Line.
Prenda, Alpha School, Altschool -- over and over we get the same tale of a wealthy education amateur who has a sudden epiphany and realizes they know how to do school so much better than the "professionals," and then proceed to re-invent the wheel with the added insight that all those wheel professionals screwed up by not making the wheel flat on one side.
But while other edu-preneurs settle for starting a business (or getting guinea pig children to start one for them) Lahn has higher aspirations.
First, let's get the tea out of the way. Many, many, many, many people on the interwebs would like to tell you a story about the working relationship between Annie Koch and Zach Lahn. What we know for certain is that around late 2019, they divorced their respective spouses and married each other. Now, it's a fool's game to pretend to know what happens between people in their personal relationships, but the divorce draws attention because Lahn didn't bring a lot of money into the new marriage, but Annie brought some Koch money with her.
In 2024, Annie Lahn bought a home near Wichita as her primary resident, then sold it to an LLC for $1. Why does anyone care?
Because Zach Lahn is now running for governor of Iowa.
Wichita, as you may recall, is not actually in Iowa. But Lahn has been running hard, with a $3 million war chest, $2.5 million of which he loaned to his own campaign. Lahn's campaign was endorsed by former U.S. representative Steve King actor Rob Schneider and Turning Point Action, but not Donlad Trump, whose endorsed candidate Lahn beat in the GOP primary.
Lahn is running as the "Iowa First" candidate despite the many questions about where he actually lives, including journalists finding that he still lives in Wichita and flies into Iowa for campaign events (Lahn is a pilot). He bought his great-grandmother's farm in Belle Plaine, where he lived as a child. And he is, amazingly enough, running as a political outsider. From his website:
Zach Lahn is not a politician but another Iowan like you. He is a father, farmer, and a businessman. He is 6th generation Iowan, his own biggest donor, and does not answer to large corporations or special interest — only to God, his family, and the people of Iowa.
"Seasoned political operative" doesn't make his list of occupations. He has secured support from Trump and connected himself to MAHA--the MAHA Action PAC gave the campaign a million bucks.. He has interviewed with Jordan Peterson, and the school's website used to call the founders "fans of Elon Musk" and "fans of Jordan Peterson." Those references have since been removed.
His education platform opposes "indoctrination" and says the governor "must be the #1 advocate for public school kids." Make public schools "good so they are competing with private schools."
Poll averages put Lahn around 4 points behind Democrat Rob Sand, so who knows how this will play out. But it would be the first time that somebody goosed a major political career by using Koch-flavored money to start a half-baked private school.
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