Does AI scare you, or are you excited about teacherless Alpha Schools where, for $55K, children get a 2-hour academic AI program and learn some life skills?
Who runs the Alpha Schools? Not traditional teachers with education degrees and experience working with children in public schools.
MacKenzie Price is a Stanford psychology graduate and education entrepreneur. Co-founder Brian Holtz has a Bachelor of Business degree and calls himself a “curriculum architect and a school builder who designs Human-Centered Learning Systems.”
Joe Liemandt, whose net worth is $7.6 billion, is on the Forbes 2026 World Billionaires List and is another Alpha School business co-founder. He founded Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, an investment company that buys software companies.
The school’s expense, the lack of socialization with children whose families can’t afford the price tag, the somewhat canned learning, and the reliance on machines rather than teachers are concerns.
Public schools and teachers could protect us from AI and schools like this, but it’s unclear how focused Americans really are on AI’s troubling effects in schools (see below).
If they do care, America’s public schools could reprogram us back into a democracy with a grassroots effort, where we learn, grow, and care about one another.
It would take cooperation from Democrats and Republicans. It could happen. We see the bipartisan fight against data centers. They could unite for the public schools in their communities. What’s more American than that?
Why worry so much about Alpha Schools? They’re the school prototype technology titans and corporate school reformers have pushed for.
Teacherless Profit-Making
As I said, Alpha Schools promise to teach children academics with AI in 2 hours without teachers…no teacher unions fighting for better school conditions or paying teachers for their professionalism.
They use guides with no education credentials, who earn six figures. I’m betting that makes real teachers who have studied education and who work in public schools lacking resources and sometimes heat and air conditioning feel defeated.
Then there’s the cost at $55K. Think of all the poor cyber schools that might be free, but where parents, without that kind of money to spend on schooling, will put their children. Remember the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), a tax-funded Ohio online charter school that operated from 2000 to 2018. It shut down after a major funding and fraud scandal.
Consider that RevenueBase identified 521 virtual charter schools headquartered in the United States as of September 2026 and tracks 30,603 professional contacts across them, including 11,954 with verified work emails. Phoenix is the largest hub.
Do you think most students will learn well with this kind of learning and accomplish careers in science, medicine, exploration, teaching, nursing, technical careers, etc.? How will that improve America?
The Media
The media worries about AI. But they promote Alpha Schools. See the media endorsements at the bottom of their webpage.
Newsweek recently reported on the expansion of these schools, lauding them as teacher-free.
The mainstream media has always been anti-public schools promoting crisis. New fads like Alpha Schools get broad attention whether they work or not.
Learn Academics Fast!
Alpha Schools promoting that children can learn what they need academically in 2 hours reflects years of America’s pushing children to learn fast. Learning has become a race, how children develop ignored.
The Obama administration, backing the Bush administration’s NCLB, called their policy Race to the Top.
I recently examined a workbook for kindergartners. It presented words to learn that would have been for third graders years ago. Remember learning that kindergarten was the new first grade? Some think the bar is now higher.
Kindergarteners are supposed to read, third graders fail if they don’t pass a test, and middle school students are supposed to declare a career major. High schoolers should be ready for work.
Fast, faster, and fastest! This pressure has become normalized so much, that some parents believe a 2 hour a day stint with AI is all children need to learn.
Academic Grind?
The Alpha School’s 2 hours of academics, math, reading, language, and science appear to ignore history, geography, and civics.
In a New York Times tape, A.I. School Is in Session: Two Takes on the Future of Education, MacKensie Price brags about getting children through this (academics) grind, to get to the good stuff, learning life skills and projects including entrepreneurship, financial literacy, leadership, teamwork, communication, and socialization.
But academics provide students with subject foundation. Subjects should not be a grind. Great teachers bring students together and make those classes exciting. AI in the Alpha School supports independent learning academically, but it lacks socialization in those areas and a sense of order and continuity.
In recent years learning about academics has been replaced with project based learning, where students work more independently not relying on teachers but gathering information through AI. But the foundation of learning seems ignored.
Those projects would be more meaningful connected to academics and with direction by real teachers and class feedback, learning and growing together.
AI and the Trump Administration
In general, it’s difficult to expect AI restrictions or closer examination of Alpha schools and how AI is used in schools with a President who doesn’t appear to care about how America’s students learn, who calls it superintelligence instead of AI.
Don’t look at Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who once called AI A1. She has been crisscrossing the country, making sure children say the Pledge of Allegiance and promoting school choice.
CK Smith of Salon reported, ” Are kids’ guinea pigs for chatbots”? McMahon backs classroom AI use. She thinks teachers are necessary, but she also likes teacherless Alpha Schools! Like so many public school naysayers, this is someone with no education degree or teaching experience.
We see glimmers of hope in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared a one-year moratorium on AI in grades K-8. High schoolers will study AI, which makes good sense. Los Angeles followed. Students will not be able to access generative AI on school-issued devices.
Taking Control of the Future
Public schools could put a check on AI usage. Using it judicially in school could help slow the repercussions of AI down the road.
Teachers and public schools could receive more support, better salaries for qualified teachers, and control over their classrooms, AI, and how it’s used. ChatGPT can be a useful tool, but without teachers, it’s easy to see where it will be misused and where students may not learn what they need.
At the local level, Americans could get involved with public schools as the hub of the community.
They could attend and cheer for the school sports teams and events. Attend student art exhibits and plays and go to school board meetings to better understand public school issues, including AI. Debate respectfully.
Offer to volunteer to humanely tutor a child or help the school with skill or talent. Ask how to help teachers.
School leaders should also reach out to the community. Any way to further human connectiveness should be welcome.
Hold political candidates accountable for supporting public ed. and the issues that concern the welfare of children.
Make sure you understand how AI and technology is used in schools now and in the future. Help put it in check.
Gather and work within your community. Collectively care about all the students in your town, state, and country. This is democracy. And it’s Americans participating in public-school ownership. It’s what really makes America great.
Let’s hope this isn’t the end, that it’s not too late. Let’s start interacting more and better as humans. And it can start with America’s democratic public schools.
Reference
Roose, K., Newton, C. and others. A.I. School Is in Session. Two Takes on the Future of Education. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/podcasts/hardfork-education-alpha-school.html
This reminds me of Harry Harlow’s experiment with a baby monkey choosing a soft mother over the wire one with a milk bottle. The problem with this AI mania is that it ignores what humans want and need: A meaningful life with other humans. The belief that students can get as much from a screen for two hours versus a substantive relationship with a teacher is quite stunning. AI is a great way to get information fast, but that isn’t learning.
Absolutely! I heard an Alpha School parent- well-meaning, I’m sure- say that their child did so much better online, away from other students. I have worked with some pretty distractible and even hyperactive students, so I thought about this for a while. I can see a child who is absolutely unable to attend well in a class situation focusing online, but the ultimate goal would still be to communicate appropriately with others.
In the case of the parent I mentioned, the child seemed able to attend with few problems, unless I was missing something. There’s great social significance in a class directed by a teacher who understands the subject matter well and can engage students and have them interact not just with them but with each other.
Always appreciate you, Paul. Thanks.
I wrote this blog post 10 years ago: “Story-Telling Species”
“The Hidden Dangers of Blended and Online Learning aka Competency Based Education/Personalized Learning”
Here is the conclusion:
This agenda of privatizing, profiteering, and artificializing education has been in the works for years with organizations such as the International Association for k-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), global corporations such as Microsoft and Pearson, philanthrocapitalists such as Bill and Melinda Gates, the Walton family, and Eli and Edyth Broad, as well as political/lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). It is a joint neoliberal/neoconservative attack on rational regulation, preservation of public institutions for the public good, and maintenance of the social safety net. If left unchecked, it will destroy not only our democracy, but the fundamental basis for a humane and vibrant civil society. We do give a s**t about what people think and what they feel. We will not allow the technocrats to marginalize and suppress the people’s voice and the people’s stories. The general public needs to wake up to this impending catastrophe before it is too late to derail it.
https://resseger.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/story-telling-species/
So now, in 2026, Is it too late?
Very good. Thanks for sharing, Sheila. We saw it coming. And people like you wrote about it as a warning.