At Alpha School, students complete all their academic work in just two hours. They spend 30 minutes a day on each of four core subjects — math, reading, language, and science.
Oh, and there are no teachers, either.
Instead, artificial intelligence leads the way.
The learning at Alpha School looks like something you’d see on “The Jetsons.” With the help of AI, kids learn math from Albert Einstein and civil rights from Martin Luther King. They learn at their own pace, with one-on-one instruction from AI tutors.
And the students are thriving — outperforming their peers in traditional schools by leaps and bounds.
It’s a groundbreaking approach to personalized learning that could redefine education, giving children extra hours each day to pursue their true passions.
Operation education disruption
MacKenzie Price, founder of Alpha School, realized the traditional education model was broken when her daughter came home from second grade and declared she no longer wanted to go to school because it was boring. Price knew her daughter wasn’t alone.
For more than a century, traditional public schools have followed the same formula: One teacher standing in front of a classroom of kids — for hours on end. And it’s not working.
“Teachers have been given an impossible job, the primary of which is trying to transfer knowledge to kids that are at widely variable levels of understanding,” Price said.
What does work? Learning science confirms one-on-one learning is most effective.
But how can one teacher provide personalized instruction for 20-plus students?
They can’t. But AI tutors can.
Price found parents who were willing to experiment with a new approach. She founded Alpha School, where AI tutors deliver a fully personalized, one-on-one curriculum in just two hours a day.
“Education is ready to be disrupted,” Price said. “The problem that we have in our traditional school environment is that most kids are bored, struggling, or checked out. We wanted to see if we could do school in a better way. The traditional classroom experience is so inefficient. We don’t need the whole day.”
The result: Students are learning twice as fast as kids in traditional classrooms and excelling. Alpha School students regularly place in the top 2% on standardized tests.
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What about the rest of the day? Here’s where the real magic happens.
If kids only spend two hours a day on academic work, what do they do during the rest of their time at Alpha School?
Amazing things — things they’re passionate about, things that make them great learners. They learn life skills through workshops, where they can code self-driving cars, make pasta, and even manage an Airbnb.
“We focus a lot on skills that our young people need to go out and be successful in the world, and then they’re able to do these really big things,” Price said.
Big things the students choose. Big things they’re passionate about — like building an AI safe teenage dating coach, creating the first Broadway musical that’s entirely written and performed by teenagers, and building a self-improvement community that fosters ingenuity and creation.
While there are no teachers in the traditional sense, there are adults available to redirect students if they get stuck. As former teachers, their roles have evolved to embrace what drew them to education in the first place: connecting with young people, motivating them, and helping them discover the intersection of their passions and their talents.
“More and more of the world is moving to a place where you have to be an autodidact,” said Andras, a guide at Alpha School. “These kids are learning how to train themselves.”
An environment that unlocks potential
What’s next? To address demand, Alpha School is opening new sites across the country. The school currently has campuses in Austin and Brownsville, Texas, as well as Miami, Florida, with seven new locations opening soon. Price’s team is also working to make the model financially accessible to as many students as possible across all learning environments.
Alpha School is just one example of the groundbreaking innovation transforming education today, setting a brighter course for the future of learning. Across the country, visionary leaders like Price are redefining the possibilities and taking bold steps to provide education that empowers each child to discover, embrace, and fully leverage their unique skills and talents.
“We’ve created kids who genuinely love to learn, and the results are there,” Price said “We’re showing that every student has the ability to be a confident, capable learner. Every student is capable of rising to a really high standard. Kids are limitless, and it’s our job to provide them with an environment that helps unlock that potential.”
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