Is Alpha's AI-powered model the future of learning?

Kids love school at Alpha's new San Francisco campus, writes Maya Sulkin for The Free Press. They devote two hours a day to reading, math, science and history, using the AI-powered TimeBack platform. "An algorithm assesses what each student knows, identifies the gaps, and builds a lesson plan to fill them," she writes. The afternoons are for “life skills,” such as workshops on entrepreneurship, product design and public speaking, and personal projects.

The Alpha network started in Austin more than a decade ago, operates 22 schools nationwide and will open 35 more in the fall. The goal is 1 million students.

San Francisco enrolls 30 students aged six to 14. "Every morning, students grab their computers from a storage bin, put on headphones, and settle into their desks, bean bags, and 'zen booths' for focused work," Sulkin writes. "A 6-year-old in a soccer jersey with blue hair began reading aloud about how elections work, material two grade levels above his age. An 8-year-old was reading African folktales."

Every 25 minutes, they take a break. Some do push-ups. Others keep working to earn more "engagement" points that turn into money they can spend at the school store. Earning 100 percent on a test is worth $100.

After lunch, the middle schoolers practiced pitching business ideas. For example: Sell me a fridge that judges your food choices. Why should bath bombs turn into soup? Pitch socks that never match.

"Guides" act as coaches and run afternoon programs, but aren't supposed to be teachers.

Alpha is big on entrepreneurship. Sulkin met Alex Mathew, a senior at Alpha Austin, was in San Francisco to raise "pre-seed funding" for an AI therapist teddy bear start-up called Barry. For their senior projects, "his classmates are writing books, building bike parts, and writing plays in hopes of a Broadway debut."

Alpha will launch Founders High in New York this fall. It will charge $150,000 a year -- and guarantee a full refund if the student doesn't earn $1 million in profit by graduation from a start-up.

The network claims students' standardized test scores are much higher than the national median, and that high school students average 1,545 on the SAT. That compares to the average private school SAT score of 1,233.

The Brownsville, Texas campus is the only one that's serves families who aren't wealthy, writes Sulkin. It's set in a predominantly Hispanic, low-income community and families pay $10,000 in tuition, or less with scholarships. A mother whose children attended for two years wrote on Substack that her children couldn't finish their work in two hours and didn't do well. “Alpha might work as a private school for the elite,” she wrote, but it didn't work for children like hers.

Brownsville parents signed an open letter saying "they don’t recognize their school in that single person’s account,” an Alpha spokesperson told The Free Press. The spokesperson added that dissatisfied parent's children "dramatically improved in their MAP scores for both math and reading," Sulkin writes.

I wonder if Alpha's success will hold up. Most Alpha students have highly educated parents who are willing to pay very high tuition to see their children learn. (The San Francisco school is the most expensive private school in the city.) It's no wonder these kids do very well on tests. The question is whether the model works for a wider range of students.

Motivating students is the key to Alpha's success, Principal Joe Liemandt tells Michael Horn and Rags Gupta. New students are told that if they focus on TimeBack academics for two hours -- "no screwing around" -- he'll make sure the other four hours of the day are devoted to "totally awesome" workshops and projects. In a recent survey, 43 percent of Alpha students said they'd rather go to school than go on vacation, he says.

Most educational software lets students offload cognitive work, says Liemandt. TimeBack is designed to make students do the thinking. (The founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, Liemandt is a billionaire.)

However, schools won't succeed with TimeBack if they don't redesign the school day, he says. "Using AI to reinforce your existing school system is not going to work. It’s going to have the same failure rate of ed tech over the last 25 years, which is 95% failure."

Alpha's model works for less-advantaged students, if they're motivated, he argues. For example, Texas Sports Academy campuses use the TimeBack model with academics in the morning, sports in the afternoon. Most students come from lower-income families and scored in the lowest quartile before enrolling. The Dallas middle school is run by NBA all-star Jermaine O’Neal. Students who used to cut school or get stoned in the bathroom show up every day to do their two hours so they don't miss practice with Jermaine, says Liemandt. "Those kids are learning as fast as anybody in the $50,000 high-end private school." They're motivated.