Alpha School, the K–12 microschool chain replacing teachers with AI, wants to be the future of education. The self-proclaimed “for-profit” school runs $40K to $75K per year, and was funded by Joe Liemandt (billionaire software investor turned school principal). Students learn in a classroom two hours daily with the help of an AI tutor to ensure “mastery” of subject matter, and spend the rest of the day on projects and life skills.
On the surface, the results look impressive. Alpha School’s published test results rank in the top 1% of students across grade levels and subjects, and have been compared to prestigious private schools like Exeter and Dalton. But despite impressive results, some question the method.
For example, school employees have reported that AI-generated content presents illogical, unanswerable questions to students, accused the company of illegally scraping online learning materials, and criticized the system, saying “Students are being treated like guinea pigs.” Beyond curriculum, staff reportedly denied snacks to a student until she met learning metrics, used monetary rewards to incentivize progress, and maintained a default policy of webcam-recording students working at home and storing recordings (referred to by the school as “game-tape”).
Is this the future of education? Or another shortcut to optimizing for test scores in lieu of what education ought to be focused on?
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