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Students at an A.I. School Were Supposed to Learn Faster. Many Aren’t.
Alpha School, a private network, is spreading into public education. While its students’ test scores are high, some parents and educators say it doesn’t live up to the hype.
Alpha School, a fast-growing network of expensive private schools, promises to use A.I. to teach kids twice as much as they would learn in a traditional classroom in half the time. Academics take just two to three morning hours on a computer, freeing up the afternoons for workshops on vibe-coding, public speaking and sports.
The Trump administration has promoted Alpha as a model for “harnessing A.I.” to prepare tomorrow’s work force. Business leaders are talking it up on social media and podcasts, and some have signed up their own children.
For now, Alpha is a small, for-profit network, with lots of buzz and powerful backers, including the software billionaire Joe Liemandt. Its private schools serve about 1,500 students across 50 campuses.
But Alpha has huge ambitions to reach one billion students worldwide through its proprietary “A.I. tutor.”
The plan depends partly on extending its reach into public schools. Already, the Alpha software platform has been quietly adopted by several school districts in Texas and South Carolina, according to a company document reviewed by The New York Times. About 2,600 public school students are now using the software.
To reach more, Alpha needs to prove that its technology works for a broader range of children, beyond its core customer base of affluent, tech-enthusiast families. But as Alpha markets itself to districts and states, a growing number of educators, and former Alpha parents and employees, are questioning the effectiveness of the network’s high-tech, low-book model.
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