8 ms·

Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs: Inside an AI-Powered Private School

89 points by trinsic2 8mo ago

gruez 8mo ago
Besides the coverage from fox news/new york times that the article mentions, there's also a much more extensive review from a parent who had his kids in alpha school: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  Holy crap that is a long article. In my view, the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. If students had more free time to think and contemplate one wonders what kind of world we would live in. Too bad it takes a dubious idea for an AI school to surface that wisdom.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    >the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. College felt like the last time I truly had "time freed up". 16 units of classes per quarter came down to ~8-10 hours of class time per week and the recommendation was 2 hour of study per class unit a week (e.g. a 4 unit class recommends 8 hours of study a week). So, typical full time work. But mostly on campus (aka a walkable community), close to peers, with no worries of future responsibilities. now of course, the CS curriculum easily required double or triple that recommendation, but that speaks more towards the subject than the concept of college.
  - ambicapter 8mo ago
    Well people who are evangelically praising AI for writing code seem to be converging on established, well-known software practices for "making the AI work better" so seems like AI is great at making people rediscover the practices they didn't feel like putting effort into before AI.
- recursive 8mo ago
  The scrollbar is completely absent in Firefox. I think this is the first time I've seen long-form content with zero visual indication where I currently am in the document. Crazy. Edit: Actually the scroll-bar is there, but it's nearly impossible to see because of the low contrast with the background. I guess I can blame my user agent for this one.
  - jcranmer 8mo ago
    I really, really hate the modern trend of scrollbar design. I guess it makes some amount of sense if you're aiming for a mobile phone factor, where real estate is somewhat limited, but changing the scrollbar from a widget that lives functionally outside of the content it is scrolling to a translucent show-only-on-hover widget that overlays the content (and can thus become functionally invisible if the content is just the wrong color) is a real step backwards in UI design.
    - Dusseldorf 8mo ago
      I finally got frustrated enough to go in and manually increase the default scrollbar size in Firefox. Slim scrollbars are awful both to look at and to use. I'm working with an ultrawide monitor here, please give me more than 0-3 pixels of scrollbar!
      - recursive 8mo ago
        I didn't know this was possible. This is amazing! I found it under the inconspicuous config item called "widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style". I changed it from 0 to 4. There seems to be no UI for this. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060
  - siddbudd 8mo ago
    dark reader (add-on) fixes both the scrollbar and the general color scheme
- vondur 8mo ago
  So not really AI, but a well run private school with high achieving students. Looks like they do optimize the learning strategies.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  This section reveals a lot about the difference between the hype and the practice: > It isn’t genuine two‑hour learning: most kids start school at 8:30am, start working on the “two-hour platform” sometime between 9am-930am and are occupied with academics until noon-1230pm. They also blend in “surges” from time to time to squeeze in more hours on the platform. > It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm” > It definitely isn’t teacher‑free: Teachers have been rebranded “guides”, and while their workload is different than a traditional school, they are very important – and both the quantity and quality are much higher than traditional schools. > The bundle matters: it’s not just the learning platform on its own. A big part of the product’s success is how the school has set up student incentives and the culture they have built to make everything work together So in other words, they're trying to set up a generally high quality education system, but they have a marketer on board who knows how to capture headlines with controversial claims?
  - toomuchtodo 8mo ago
    They're copying one of Khan Academy's implementation models [1] and rebranding it as AI. It's certainly not new besides the "help yourself to AI" part (which, full disclosure, Khan Academy is working on as well with their "Khanmigo" assistant [2]). Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, did a TED talk [3] on this. [1] https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ [2] https://www.khanmigo.ai/ https://www.khanmigo.ai/ [3] How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education | Sal Khan | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo - May 1st, 2023
  - Onavo 8mo ago
    It sounds like they are trying to replicate Asian style rote learning and cram school in a way that's more palatable to western audiences. Rebranding rote learning and force feeding as spaced repetition and surges. Typical SV bull.
    - 8mo ago
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  keep in mind this piece was 8 months ago (and probably starting to be written much earlier). I can see Alpha school being this genuine effort to offer an alternative education plan as well as slowly falling into the AI hype later on and pushing more generative content as it tries to phase out teachers. Or, if it's being praised by this administration, it's doing so to gain political points.
- rbhtjk 8mo ago
  So this Astral Codex external submission is what? Did Scott Alexander verify that these parents are real? Usual rambling from a site that disables scrolling and nearly crashes Firefox.
- rahimnathwani 8mo ago
  Here's another Alpha parent responding to that review: https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ Summary: the '2× learning' claims are overblown.
pfdietz 8mo ago
We should only accept life damaging educational malpractice from public schools.
- Aarostotle 8mo ago
  The headline reads as though it was written by the head of public school teachers' union.
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  Such as?
  - pfdietz 8mo ago
    Whole Language vs. Phonics, for example.
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      Okay. That affects efficiency, but I wouldn't call it malpractice
ashton314 8mo ago
> “All educational content is obsolete. Every textbook, every lesson plan, every test, all of it is obsolete because gen AI is going to be able to deliver a personalized lesson just for you,” Joe Liemandt, Alpha School’s “principal” and the founder of Trilogy, the company that owns many of the apps used by Alpha School, said in a podcast interview published last year. I wonder if this fellow has ever read a serious book. I'm skeptical.
- glitchc 8mo ago
  Maybe the school system failed him.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- yoyohello13 8mo ago
  Hell, why learn History? The AI can just make a personalized History for you!
  - bronco21016 8mo ago
    Ugh, don't give the AI or wanna-be authoritarians ideas.
- kanbankaren 8mo ago
  I have. Around 20 non-fiction and technical books in about 15 years and I agree with this Joe guy. AI is going to disrupt the whole academia and it is infinitely better than a book or a teacher. The student could move at his/her own pace and can ask questions if stuck which no book or teacher could deliver.
  - shimman 8mo ago
    I'm highly skeptical of someone bragging about barely reading a book year to then say AI is going to disrupt education as an authoritative voice. Do you honestly know any teachers or have children in public education? These takes are truly baffling. It's right up there with believing InfoWars as sound politics. edit: to try and sound "nicer," would anyone seriously take any advice about software engineering from someone who uses a WYSIWYG editor? That's how the above comment reads.
rglany 8mo ago
So they are trained to follow instructions from a computer, trained to be unable to function without a computer. Let me guess that they are also exposed to hundreds of trolley problems so that they can make "difficult decisions" later. Probably not exposed to humanities or arts so as not to weaken their utility as tech goons. A new cadre school for Technocracy Inc.
- gruez 8mo ago
  Holy crap, quite bit of extrapolations in your comment. >trained to be unable to function without a computer. Where is this from? The article mentions a lot of issues with alpha school, but the implication that kids are glued to screens and are "unable to function without a computer" isn't one of them. There's the issue that finishing random ed-tech games don't prepare you for the real world, but I don't really see how that's different than the perennial complaint that the US education fails to prepare kids for the real world (eg. "school taught me that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell but not how to do my taxes") >Let me guess that they are also exposed to hundreds of trolley problems so that they can make "difficult decisions" later. ??? >Probably not exposed to humanities or arts so as not to weaken their utility as tech goons. See the review linked in my other comment. It might not be an unbiased account, but I'm reasonably confident that the average student there gets more exposure to "humanities or arts" and other extracurriculars, than the average public school student, who maybe gets a field trip to the science center once a year.
  - alistairSH 8mo ago
    To use your example... Taxes are easy for the vast majority of people (claim the correct number of dependents, take the standard deduction, and you're done). For the rest of us, there are CPAs willing to do them for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. I say this as somebody who had to navigate the AMT rules for years in my 30s and hasn't used the standard deduction since college. In no way would I expect a high school to teach me personal tax law at the expense of a basic understanding of biology or literature.
- some_random 8mo ago
  As opposed to before where they were trained to follow instructions from a book or from a teacher? Also the dogma around "the humanities" is so bullshit it's barely funny anymore. Go train more dictators or whatever.
bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
The dream is clearly asking a student what they’re interested in, getting them to self direct on a project with guidance and deliver something you can evaluate. I would hazard that AI helps rather than hinders this.
- worik 8mo ago
  AI might one day be useful for this Not this AI, today
  - tyre 8mo ago
    hot take: if all models stopped improving today, we could get there with today's technology. No, you couldn't whip out a foundational model out of the box to do this, but we could likely engineer our way to guardrails to support this without substantial hallucinations (i.e. fewer than the 95th percentile of human teachers.) Also in no way would this replace everything teachers do. I'm talking purely academic curiosity.
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      >I'm talking purely academic curiosity. Sure. In that lens, anything is possible. We put people on the moon with tech less powerful than a modern graphing calculator. Reality, however, is disappointing and not actually incentivized by bettering humanity.
MengerSponge 8mo ago
These founders are careless and weirdly cruel. It's wildly unethical, immoral, wrong to do this to children. "My investigation into Alpha School also reveals that the massive amounts of data the company collects on students, including videos of them, is stored in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link—even if they’ve left the company, or if it was sent to them—could access." Prison. People need to go to prison for this.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >These founders are careless and weirdly cruel. It's wildly unethical, immoral, wrong to do this to children. For lax security, or monitoring students at all? I don't think you'll find anyone opposing the former, but what's the alternative to the latter? At the end of the day, they're kids, and they need supervision to keep them on task. I think remote schooling during covid showed that kids can't really be left to their own devices. The alternatives I can think of aren't great: 1. individual human tutors: insanely expensive, out of reach for even well paid programmers, or you have to home school 2. ed tech, without the monitoring: won't work because kids get distracted, and you can't expect the parents to do that when they have jobs 3. traditional schooling, with maybe small class sizes: see the review in my other posts. Seems like even with well funded private schools, the lesson plan isn't really individualized so you're catering to the lowest common denominator
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    >I don't think you'll find anyone opposing the former, but what's the alternative to the latter? If parents want to pay 65k per year to have some corporate entity track their child's every keystroke, I guess that's not my place to pry. I will call them stupid, though. This isn't 2007 anymore; we know what they can, have, and will do with such data. > individual human tutors: insanely expensive, out of reach for even well paid programmers, or you have to home school again, they're paying 65k for this curriculum. I'd wager public school and 600 hours of private tutoring @100/hr (as a high ball) would work out much better
    - 8mo ago
rahimnathwani 8mo ago
The typical 5th grader at Alpha School has math achievement at the 85th percentile of 5th graders. This is not bad, but it's not remarkable. I love the approach Alpha School is taking. And I believe that they're really trying to iterate to something that works really well. But I think many people are misled by the way Alpha School words claims about their achievement. Alpha School's web site has this bullet point: "99th Percentile: The majority of students consistently outperform national averages." If you just glance at this, you may assume it means the majority of students perform at the 99th percentile. But that's not what it's saying. Alpha School's mean achivement score (across all students in a particular grade) puts the 'district' (collection of schools) at the 99th percentile of districts. But that's not an amazing feat, because there are 10,000+ school districts in the USA. Most of those don't have the positive selection bias Alpha School has (due to the price and ideology). Moreover, most districts have adverse selection, as many academically-inclined parents will choose to send their children to private schools. You can judge the results for yourself. Here is the school score report from Spring 2025: https://go.alpha.school/hubfs/MAP%20Results%20-%2024%2025/2025%20NWEA%20MAP%20results.pdf https://go.alpha.school/hubfs/MAP%20Results%20-%2024%2025/20... Here is some of the data from the Winter 2026 school score report: https://x.com/jliemandt/status/2023011075029922131?s=20 https://x.com/jliemandt/status/2023011075029922131?s=20 This leads to the takeaway at the start of this comment: the typical 5th grader at Alpha School has math achievement at the 85th percentile of 5th graders. I can't add images here, so I'll link to the evidence here: https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/2023111922636476899 https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/2023111922636476899
- tyre 8mo ago
  I went to a private school costing 1/3rd of this that had higher test scores. The majority of students were two grade levels ahead in math and reading by middle school iirc. These seem like middling results, especially considering the socioeconomic situation of these students. $65k/yr is awful ROI.
  - rahimnathwani 8mo ago
    I wish NWEA (which administers MAP Growth) would publish all district-level and school-level score reports. But that would probably drive away most of their customers :(
ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
https://archive.ph/8kzwr https://archive.ph/8kzwr
ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
Related previously: Unbound Academy hasn’t replaced teachers with AI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45443004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45443004
briandw 8mo ago
AI is held to a much higher standard than the existing education techniques. Even without AI teachers are implementing new techniques without any evidence of their effectiveness. In some cases, there is mountains of evidence that their techniques are not effective. From the prohibition on phonics in reading, learning styles, building thinking classrooms, or just the entire idea of constructivism. These are all worse than the techniques that they replace. AI systems at the very least are measured and have some kind of tracking of what works. I'm not advocating for AI necessarily, but education is in the pre-scientific phase and it needs to start by implementing evidence based techniques, AI or no.
- iugtmkbdfil834 8mo ago
  I am both pro and against this at the same time. I love the idea of tracking it as an aggregate, but I hate the idea that the kid may end up being stuck on some vibe coded idiocy and unable to move on, because of it ( I still shudder at some of the ridiculous math tests in college that could not account for the right answer, but not in the exactly right format that was not disclosed as expected ). I am not even suggesting in person teaching is the only solution either. I am currently dealing with, apparently, my kids teacher, who, well, kinda checked out, but as much I am happy for her being able to retire soon, I am not sure why my kid has to suffer academically. What I am saying is, there is room for AI. What I worry about is, people are idiots and anything half-useful will be neutered and kids will have all the drawbacks of heavy surveillance and zero to show for it.
- _aavaa_ 8mo ago
  What is the mountain of evidence against "the entire idea of constructivism"?
  - briandw 8mo ago
    First let's stick to the lower grades (under 5th). The evidence isn't as clean for upper grades. Constructivist teaching favors things like student-centered discovery, inquiry-based, minimal-guidance, "child-led" or "whole-language" approaches. This is just a plain bad way to teach the basics, like reading, writing and arithmetic. People didn't just magically invent these ideas. Most of human history is pre-literacy. Why are we expecting a 5yo to spontaneously learn to read? This has been studied extensively. Have a look at Project Follow Through (1968–1977). It's the largest study of its kind. This U.S. government-funded study involved ~120,000 disadvantaged K–3 students across 20+ instructional models in multiple sites. It directly compared Direct Instruction (Engelmann’s scripted, explicit basic-skills model, e.g., DISTAR) against constructivist-oriented models (e.g., Bank Street child-directed, Open Education/EDC exploratory-discovery, cognitive-conceptual discovery approaches). Abt Associates did an independent evaluation in (1977). Their findings DI produced the highest gains in reading, math, language, and spelling—raising performance to near national averages. It was the only model with consistent positive effects across basic skills, cognitive-conceptual skills, and self-esteem/affective outcomes. See page 311 fig1 for the plot of outcomes. https://andymatuschak.org/files/1988-Engelmann.pdf https://andymatuschak.org/files/1988-Engelmann.pdf For more recent evidence, have a look at the reforms in Mississippi and the UK. Mississippi has striking gains for under privileged students. Mississippi Columbus Municipal School District used the "Reading Mastery Signature Edition" DI program. Demographics: 92% African American, 100% free/reduced-price lunch, 12% special education. Results as measured by NWEA MAP and Renaissance STAR assessments: MAP RIT gains: +15.96 points overall 43–45% of students met or exceeded expected growth; top performers gained ~20–28 points. Similar results in: Baltimore City Public Schools (1996–2008) Arthur Academies (Portland, Oregon metro, 2007–2013) Rimes Elementary, Florida (2011) Gering Public Schools, Nebraska (2004+)
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bronco21016 8mo ago
Is anyone shocked that the founder of Trilogy Software, Joe Liemandt, would take the lessons learned in creating a "bossware" enterprise software stack (Crossover) and apply them to his latest venture? I think there is enormous opportunity in combining Ed Tech and Generative AI, especially if you can create a highly tailored tutor available 24/7 for every student, especially for those in low-income situations that have historically been locked out from gaining such guidance. It's just unfortunate that this so rapidly morphed to spying on students for data harvesting. The follow on effects if this becomes pervasive could be so incredibly damaging for students. Anxiety from performance metrics are already a very real thing because of standardized testing and scoring to get into the best schools. Also, imagine all of this data "follows" a student as they transition into the work force. We're headed towards a future where entry-level employees will have to disclose their "course work engagement" KPIs on their resume.

89 points by trinsic2 8mo ago

gruez 8mo ago

Besides the coverage from fox news/new york times that the article mentions, there's also a much more extensive review from a parent who had his kids in alpha school: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school

trinsic2 8mo ago
Holy crap that is a long article. In my view, the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. If students had more free time to think and contemplate one wonders what kind of world we would live in. Too bad it takes a dubious idea for an AI school to surface that wisdom.
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  >the only important point is time freed up which should be a part of normal education. College felt like the last time I truly had "time freed up". 16 units of classes per quarter came down to ~8-10 hours of class time per week and the recommendation was 2 hour of study per class unit a week (e.g. a 4 unit class recommends 8 hours of study a week). So, typical full time work. But mostly on campus (aka a walkable community), close to peers, with no worries of future responsibilities. now of course, the CS curriculum easily required double or triple that recommendation, but that speaks more towards the subject than the concept of college.
- ambicapter 8mo ago
  Well people who are evangelically praising AI for writing code seem to be converging on established, well-known software practices for "making the AI work better" so seems like AI is great at making people rediscover the practices they didn't feel like putting effort into before AI.
recursive 8mo ago
The scrollbar is completely absent in Firefox. I think this is the first time I've seen long-form content with zero visual indication where I currently am in the document. Crazy. Edit: Actually the scroll-bar is there, but it's nearly impossible to see because of the low contrast with the background. I guess I can blame my user agent for this one.
- jcranmer 8mo ago
  I really, really hate the modern trend of scrollbar design. I guess it makes some amount of sense if you're aiming for a mobile phone factor, where real estate is somewhat limited, but changing the scrollbar from a widget that lives functionally outside of the content it is scrolling to a translucent show-only-on-hover widget that overlays the content (and can thus become functionally invisible if the content is just the wrong color) is a real step backwards in UI design.
  - Dusseldorf 8mo ago
    I finally got frustrated enough to go in and manually increase the default scrollbar size in Firefox. Slim scrollbars are awful both to look at and to use. I'm working with an ultrawide monitor here, please give me more than 0-3 pixels of scrollbar!
    - recursive 8mo ago
      I didn't know this was possible. This is amazing! I found it under the inconspicuous config item called "widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style". I changed it from 0 to 4. There seems to be no UI for this. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443060
- siddbudd 8mo ago
  dark reader (add-on) fixes both the scrollbar and the general color scheme
vondur 8mo ago
So not really AI, but a well run private school with high achieving students. Looks like they do optimize the learning strategies.
Aurornis 8mo ago
This section reveals a lot about the difference between the hype and the practice: > It isn’t genuine two‑hour learning: most kids start school at 8:30am, start working on the “two-hour platform” sometime between 9am-930am and are occupied with academics until noon-1230pm. They also blend in “surges” from time to time to squeeze in more hours on the platform. > It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm” > It definitely isn’t teacher‑free: Teachers have been rebranded “guides”, and while their workload is different than a traditional school, they are very important – and both the quantity and quality are much higher than traditional schools. > The bundle matters: it’s not just the learning platform on its own. A big part of the product’s success is how the school has set up student incentives and the culture they have built to make everything work together So in other words, they're trying to set up a generally high quality education system, but they have a marketer on board who knows how to capture headlines with controversial claims?
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  They're copying one of Khan Academy's implementation models [1] and rebranding it as AI. It's certainly not new besides the "help yourself to AI" part (which, full disclosure, Khan Academy is working on as well with their "Khanmigo" assistant [2]). Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, did a TED talk [3] on this. [1] https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ https://en.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/ [2] https://www.khanmigo.ai/ https://www.khanmigo.ai/ [3] How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education | Sal Khan | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo - May 1st, 2023
- Onavo 8mo ago
  It sounds like they are trying to replicate Asian style rote learning and cram school in a way that's more palatable to western audiences. Rebranding rote learning and force feeding as spaced repetition and surges. Typical SV bull.
  - 8mo ago
johnnyanmac 8mo ago
keep in mind this piece was 8 months ago (and probably starting to be written much earlier). I can see Alpha school being this genuine effort to offer an alternative education plan as well as slowly falling into the AI hype later on and pushing more generative content as it tries to phase out teachers. Or, if it's being praised by this administration, it's doing so to gain political points.
rbhtjk 8mo ago
So this Astral Codex external submission is what? Did Scott Alexander verify that these parents are real? Usual rambling from a site that disables scrolling and nearly crashes Firefox.
rahimnathwani 8mo ago
Here's another Alpha parent responding to that review: https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ https://naimoli.com/peter/posts/2xlearning/ Summary: the '2× learning' claims are overblown.

pfdietz 8mo ago

We should only accept life damaging educational malpractice from public schools.

Aarostotle 8mo ago
The headline reads as though it was written by the head of public school teachers' union.
johnnyanmac 8mo ago
Such as?
- pfdietz 8mo ago
  Whole Language vs. Phonics, for example.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    Okay. That affects efficiency, but I wouldn't call it malpractice

ashton314 8mo ago

> “All educational content is obsolete. Every textbook, every lesson plan, every test, all of it is obsolete because gen AI is going to be able to deliver a personalized lesson just for you,” Joe Liemandt, Alpha School’s “principal” and the founder of Trilogy, the company that owns many of the apps used by Alpha School, said in a podcast interview published last year. I wonder if this fellow has ever read a serious book. I'm skeptical.

glitchc 8mo ago
Maybe the school system failed him.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
yoyohello13 8mo ago
Hell, why learn History? The AI can just make a personalized History for you!
- bronco21016 8mo ago
  Ugh, don't give the AI or wanna-be authoritarians ideas.
kanbankaren 8mo ago
I have. Around 20 non-fiction and technical books in about 15 years and I agree with this Joe guy. AI is going to disrupt the whole academia and it is infinitely better than a book or a teacher. The student could move at his/her own pace and can ask questions if stuck which no book or teacher could deliver.
- shimman 8mo ago
  I'm highly skeptical of someone bragging about barely reading a book year to then say AI is going to disrupt education as an authoritative voice. Do you honestly know any teachers or have children in public education? These takes are truly baffling. It's right up there with believing InfoWars as sound politics. edit: to try and sound "nicer," would anyone seriously take any advice about software engineering from someone who uses a WYSIWYG editor? That's how the above comment reads.

rglany 8mo ago

So they are trained to follow instructions from a computer, trained to be unable to function without a computer. Let me guess that they are also exposed to hundreds of trolley problems so that they can make "difficult decisions" later. Probably not exposed to humanities or arts so as not to weaken their utility as tech goons. A new cadre school for Technocracy Inc.

gruez 8mo ago
Holy crap, quite bit of extrapolations in your comment. >trained to be unable to function without a computer. Where is this from? The article mentions a lot of issues with alpha school, but the implication that kids are glued to screens and are "unable to function without a computer" isn't one of them. There's the issue that finishing random ed-tech games don't prepare you for the real world, but I don't really see how that's different than the perennial complaint that the US education fails to prepare kids for the real world (eg. "school taught me that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell but not how to do my taxes") >Let me guess that they are also exposed to hundreds of trolley problems so that they can make "difficult decisions" later. ??? >Probably not exposed to humanities or arts so as not to weaken their utility as tech goons. See the review linked in my other comment. It might not be an unbiased account, but I'm reasonably confident that the average student there gets more exposure to "humanities or arts" and other extracurriculars, than the average public school student, who maybe gets a field trip to the science center once a year.
- alistairSH 8mo ago
  To use your example... Taxes are easy for the vast majority of people (claim the correct number of dependents, take the standard deduction, and you're done). For the rest of us, there are CPAs willing to do them for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. I say this as somebody who had to navigate the AMT rules for years in my 30s and hasn't used the standard deduction since college. In no way would I expect a high school to teach me personal tax law at the expense of a basic understanding of biology or literature.
some_random 8mo ago
As opposed to before where they were trained to follow instructions from a book or from a teacher? Also the dogma around "the humanities" is so bullshit it's barely funny anymore. Go train more dictators or whatever.

bethekidyouwant 8mo ago

The dream is clearly asking a student what they’re interested in, getting them to self direct on a project with guidance and deliver something you can evaluate. I would hazard that AI helps rather than hinders this.

worik 8mo ago
AI might one day be useful for this Not this AI, today
- tyre 8mo ago
  hot take: if all models stopped improving today, we could get there with today's technology. No, you couldn't whip out a foundational model out of the box to do this, but we could likely engineer our way to guardrails to support this without substantial hallucinations (i.e. fewer than the 95th percentile of human teachers.) Also in no way would this replace everything teachers do. I'm talking purely academic curiosity.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    >I'm talking purely academic curiosity. Sure. In that lens, anything is possible. We put people on the moon with tech less powerful than a modern graphing calculator. Reality, however, is disappointing and not actually incentivized by bettering humanity.

MengerSponge 8mo ago

These founders are careless and weirdly cruel. It's wildly unethical, immoral, wrong to do this to children. "My investigation into Alpha School also reveals that the massive amounts of data the company collects on students, including videos of them, is stored in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link—even if they’ve left the company, or if it was sent to them—could access." Prison. People need to go to prison for this.

gruez 8mo ago
>These founders are careless and weirdly cruel. It's wildly unethical, immoral, wrong to do this to children. For lax security, or monitoring students at all? I don't think you'll find anyone opposing the former, but what's the alternative to the latter? At the end of the day, they're kids, and they need supervision to keep them on task. I think remote schooling during covid showed that kids can't really be left to their own devices. The alternatives I can think of aren't great: 1. individual human tutors: insanely expensive, out of reach for even well paid programmers, or you have to home school 2. ed tech, without the monitoring: won't work because kids get distracted, and you can't expect the parents to do that when they have jobs 3. traditional schooling, with maybe small class sizes: see the review in my other posts. Seems like even with well funded private schools, the lesson plan isn't really individualized so you're catering to the lowest common denominator
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  >I don't think you'll find anyone opposing the former, but what's the alternative to the latter? If parents want to pay 65k per year to have some corporate entity track their child's every keystroke, I guess that's not my place to pry. I will call them stupid, though. This isn't 2007 anymore; we know what they can, have, and will do with such data. > individual human tutors: insanely expensive, out of reach for even well paid programmers, or you have to home school again, they're paying 65k for this curriculum. I'd wager public school and 600 hours of private tutoring @100/hr (as a high ball) would work out much better
  - 8mo ago

rahimnathwani 8mo ago

The typical 5th grader at Alpha School has math achievement at the 85th percentile of 5th graders. This is not bad, but it's not remarkable. I love the approach Alpha School is taking. And I believe that they're really trying to iterate to something that works really well. But I think many people are misled by the way Alpha School words claims about their achievement. Alpha School's web site has this bullet point: "99th Percentile: The majority of students consistently outperform national averages." If you just glance at this, you may assume it means the majority of students perform at the 99th percentile. But that's not what it's saying. Alpha School's mean achivement score (across all students in a particular grade) puts the 'district' (collection of schools) at the 99th percentile of districts. But that's not an amazing feat, because there are 10,000+ school districts in the USA. Most of those don't have the positive selection bias Alpha School has (due to the price and ideology). Moreover, most districts have adverse selection, as many academically-inclined parents will choose to send their children to private schools. You can judge the results for yourself. Here is the school score report from Spring 2025: https://go.alpha.school/hubfs/MAP%20Results%20-%2024%2025/2025%20NWEA%20MAP%20results.pdf https://go.alpha.school/hubfs/MAP%20Results%20-%2024%2025/20... Here is some of the data from the Winter 2026 school score report: https://x.com/jliemandt/status/2023011075029922131?s=20 https://x.com/jliemandt/status/2023011075029922131?s=20 This leads to the takeaway at the start of this comment: the typical 5th grader at Alpha School has math achievement at the 85th percentile of 5th graders. I can't add images here, so I'll link to the evidence here: https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/2023111922636476899 https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/2023111922636476899

tyre 8mo ago
I went to a private school costing 1/3rd of this that had higher test scores. The majority of students were two grade levels ahead in math and reading by middle school iirc. These seem like middling results, especially considering the socioeconomic situation of these students. $65k/yr is awful ROI.
- rahimnathwani 8mo ago
  I wish NWEA (which administers MAP Growth) would publish all district-level and school-level score reports. But that would probably drive away most of their customers :(

ChrisArchitect 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/8kzwr https://archive.ph/8kzwr

ChrisArchitect 8mo ago

Related previously: Unbound Academy hasn’t replaced teachers with AI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45443004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45443004

briandw 8mo ago

AI is held to a much higher standard than the existing education techniques. Even without AI teachers are implementing new techniques without any evidence of their effectiveness. In some cases, there is mountains of evidence that their techniques are not effective. From the prohibition on phonics in reading, learning styles, building thinking classrooms, or just the entire idea of constructivism. These are all worse than the techniques that they replace. AI systems at the very least are measured and have some kind of tracking of what works. I'm not advocating for AI necessarily, but education is in the pre-scientific phase and it needs to start by implementing evidence based techniques, AI or no.

iugtmkbdfil834 8mo ago
I am both pro and against this at the same time. I love the idea of tracking it as an aggregate, but I hate the idea that the kid may end up being stuck on some vibe coded idiocy and unable to move on, because of it ( I still shudder at some of the ridiculous math tests in college that could not account for the right answer, but not in the exactly right format that was not disclosed as expected ). I am not even suggesting in person teaching is the only solution either. I am currently dealing with, apparently, my kids teacher, who, well, kinda checked out, but as much I am happy for her being able to retire soon, I am not sure why my kid has to suffer academically. What I am saying is, there is room for AI. What I worry about is, people are idiots and anything half-useful will be neutered and kids will have all the drawbacks of heavy surveillance and zero to show for it.
_aavaa_ 8mo ago
What is the mountain of evidence against "the entire idea of constructivism"?
- briandw 8mo ago
  First let's stick to the lower grades (under 5th). The evidence isn't as clean for upper grades. Constructivist teaching favors things like student-centered discovery, inquiry-based, minimal-guidance, "child-led" or "whole-language" approaches. This is just a plain bad way to teach the basics, like reading, writing and arithmetic. People didn't just magically invent these ideas. Most of human history is pre-literacy. Why are we expecting a 5yo to spontaneously learn to read? This has been studied extensively. Have a look at Project Follow Through (1968–1977). It's the largest study of its kind. This U.S. government-funded study involved ~120,000 disadvantaged K–3 students across 20+ instructional models in multiple sites. It directly compared Direct Instruction (Engelmann’s scripted, explicit basic-skills model, e.g., DISTAR) against constructivist-oriented models (e.g., Bank Street child-directed, Open Education/EDC exploratory-discovery, cognitive-conceptual discovery approaches). Abt Associates did an independent evaluation in (1977). Their findings DI produced the highest gains in reading, math, language, and spelling—raising performance to near national averages. It was the only model with consistent positive effects across basic skills, cognitive-conceptual skills, and self-esteem/affective outcomes. See page 311 fig1 for the plot of outcomes. https://andymatuschak.org/files/1988-Engelmann.pdf https://andymatuschak.org/files/1988-Engelmann.pdf For more recent evidence, have a look at the reforms in Mississippi and the UK. Mississippi has striking gains for under privileged students. Mississippi Columbus Municipal School District used the "Reading Mastery Signature Edition" DI program. Demographics: 92% African American, 100% free/reduced-price lunch, 12% special education. Results as measured by NWEA MAP and Renaissance STAR assessments: MAP RIT gains: +15.96 points overall 43–45% of students met or exceeded expected growth; top performers gained ~20–28 points. Similar results in: Baltimore City Public Schools (1996–2008) Arthur Academies (Portland, Oregon metro, 2007–2013) Rimes Elementary, Florida (2011) Gering Public Schools, Nebraska (2004+)

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bronco21016 8mo ago

Is anyone shocked that the founder of Trilogy Software, Joe Liemandt, would take the lessons learned in creating a "bossware" enterprise software stack (Crossover) and apply them to his latest venture? I think there is enormous opportunity in combining Ed Tech and Generative AI, especially if you can create a highly tailored tutor available 24/7 for every student, especially for those in low-income situations that have historically been locked out from gaining such guidance. It's just unfortunate that this so rapidly morphed to spying on students for data harvesting. The follow on effects if this becomes pervasive could be so incredibly damaging for students. Anxiety from performance metrics are already a very real thing because of standardized testing and scoring to get into the best schools. Also, imagine all of this data "follows" a student as they transition into the work force. We're headed towards a future where entry-level employees will have to disclose their "course work engagement" KPIs on their resume.