Let’s have a quick look at Alpha School. Here’s the pitch on their web site:

Our AI tutor gives students 1:1 personalized education, providing coursework at their individual pace and the appropriate level. Students progress with concept-based mastery and without any knowledge gaps.

We motivate kids by giving them the gift of time to pursue the things they want to do and develop life skills. Adults in the room support motivated students to foster a growth mindset and independent learning.

Kids supposedly work one on one with an AI tutor for two hours a day, and the rest of the day consists of learning skills and “life lessons” that basically sound like summer camp. In fact, the human employees sound exactly like camp counselors to me.

I first heard about it on the Moonshots podcast, which I find informative and entertaining but also blurs the line between news and advertising.

The company claims to have hard data (standardized test scores) showing that their approach is vastly superior to more traditional education. It’s a nice story and I kind of want it to be true, but when journalists dig in they are finding the numbers may be cherry-picked at best. This source is ProPublica and something called the Texas Tribune – the former I admit is not an impartial journalistic organization while the latter describes itself as a “nonpartisan local newsroom”. (The company advertising pitch is obviously not an impartial source.) So the facts and figures below could also be cherry-picked on the negative side, but nonetheless here are a few:

Test results published by the Texas Education Agency don’t back up that claim. The scores indicate that students may have performed worse on state tests than before Alpha’s involvement, according to several education experts who reviewed them. The portion of students who achieved “approaches grade level,” the lowest category that counts as passing the test, slightly rose, from 19% to 21%. The share of students that the test showed were at their grade level dropped from 10% to zero after the Alpha partnership…

ProPublica and the Tribune specifically looked at the Brownsville student outcome data that Alpha self-published, which does not include detailed test scores to prove academic growth for all students, according to several education experts who reviewed it. There was also inconsistency in how Alpha presented the data. An Alpha leader told Texas education officials that  students across grade levels in the Brownsville campus had scores that jumped from 30% to 80% mastery. But Jennifer Steele, an education professor at American University, said that Alpha’s published report shows those improvements for only its second graders, who may not be representative of the entire school…

In their application to form a charter school in Arizona, Alpha leaders had predicted 65% of their students would test proficient in English at the end of the first year, but just 28% did, the state test scores showed. They projected 60% could reach that level in math. Only 10% achieved it. 

It makes sense that we will see some move toward one-on-one AI teaching in schools. Hopefully this will be data driven, but clearly there are also powerful financial incentives and political lobbies at work. The AIs are getting better, and school administration (both public and private) will have an incentive to reduce payroll where they can. Teachers are a powerful interest group in their own right, particularly in public schools, some U.S. states more than others. We will see where all this lands. I for one would not be comfortable sending my children to Alpha School now. Maybe as a summer camp, not as a substitute for traditional education.