It's Here. Replacing Teachers With AI

The interwebs have been bussing about the new Arizona charter that will have AI in place of human teachers. But whatever you're imagining, the reality is probably different-- and worse.

The first thing to know is that the proposed Arizona charter is not new. The new school is Unbound Academy, but that's just the Arizona version of a group of AI teacher schools already up and running in Texas. They're the Alpha Schools, and they are the brainchild of one more rich person with a burning desire to revolutionize K-12 education.

The public face of the for-profit Alpha schools is MacKenzie Price, a Stanford graduate now living in Auston, Texas. In this glowing profile from Austin Woman, Price tells the origin story of Alpha Schools, starting with her own child in school:

“Very early on, I started noticing frustration around the lack of ability for the traditional model to be able to personalize anything,” she recalls. “About halfway through my daughter’s second grade year, she came home and said, ‘I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.’ She looked at me and she said, ‘School is so boring,’ and I just had this lightbulb moment. They’ve taken this kid who’s tailor-made to wanna be a good student, and they’ve wiped away that passion.”

She launched Alpha, according to her LinkedIn profile, in 2016, and there started creating the model that would later be spun off into its own company, 2 Hour Learning. And that's the model that she now wants to move to other states.

It sure sounds like snake oil. The headline pitch on the website is this--

School is broken, and we're here to fix it. 2 Hour Learning gives students an AI tutor that allows them to: Learn 2X in 2 Hours

As at least one profile notes off-handedly, we're not talking about LLM ChatGPT AI. No, Price is still peddling one of the older models of computer-aided education.

Price has found a way to use technology as a tool that helps create a personalized learning experience for each student. “The thing that’s really interesting about what technology has enabled is that it does a good job of giving every student the exact level of information they need at exactly the pace they need. We’ve [created]an AI tutor who is basically able to put guide rails along these kids’ educational experience in order to make sure they’re learning efficiently, they’re learning to mastery and they’re not getting frustrated. If they’re frustrated, learning turns off.”

Price is relentlessly media-ready. She has a Youtube channel, a podcast, and appears for interviews and in advertorials-- marketing masquerading as news copy. She touches all the usual talking points--the school model is 100 years old, NAEP scores show dreadful learning loss. She's careful to express admiration for the fabulous job teachers do in an impossible task!

Salon posted a Price piece that claimed that back when Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education, the US was "ranked first in the world for academic proficiency," which is absolutely untrue. The ostensible point of the piece is to argue in favor of not ending the department of education, but mostly to argue more money should be going to AI tutoring (Salon identifies her as a podcast host, not the owner of an AI tutoring business). She also says that "attracting and retaining top teachers is the first step to any successful education reform."

Well, not at her company.

The model is simple. Students sit on the computer with their AI tutor for two hours of core subjects in the morning. After that, they move into what seems like the old open school model--they pursue their interests and passions. As Price tells an "interviewer" in one paid advertorial:

Yes, it’s absolutely possible! Not only can they learn in two hours what they would learn all day in a traditional classroom, the payoffs are unbelievable! My students master their core curriculum through personalized learning in two hours. That opens up the rest of their day to focus on life skills and finding where their passions meet purpose. Students love it because it takes them away from the all-day lecture-based classroom model. Instead, my students are following their passions.

Price believes that one secret of success is motivated students, and she further believes that it's very motivational to tell a student "Just put in two hours on the computer and you can have the rst of the day to follow your muse."

Shiny

The school hires some adult "guides" to provide "motivation and emotional support." As the website promises "From 'Limitless Launches' to personalized motivational models, our guides make every student feel valued and motivated." The site also throws around scores on MAP testing as proof for how well the model works.

There are some points that don't come up in the marketing.

One is that the Alpha Schools don't appear to be accredited, a point that comes up in some complaints about the school.

And if you were worried that this sounds like a cheapo model that is going to be foisted on poor kids, worry no more. Tuition at an Alpha School is $40,000 a year. Remember, Alpha is a for-profit company.

Also really item studiously not mentioned in all of the appearing that Price does is her husband and co-founder of the business.

Andrew Price is the CFO for ESW Capital and also for Trilogy. ESW is an private equity firm for one guy-- Joe Liemandt, who made a huge bundle in the tech world. In 2021, Price's boss was expressing some interesting thoughts about white collar jobs, as quoted in Forbes:

Most jobs are poorly thought out and poorly designed—a mishmash of skills and activities . . . poor job designs are also quickly exposed with a move to remote work

Huh.

Andrew Price has maintained a low public profile with Alpha Schools. Maybe he's just letting his wife have her own fun hobby business, or maybe the couple has determined that the whole Mom saving schools for her kids origin story plays better than private equity guy decides to try making a buck in the education biz.

It's also unclear why they've changed the brand name to Unbounded in Georgia. Alphe Schools, powered by 2 Hour Learning, have branched out to states outside Texas and is trying to break into others as well. It's quite possible that they have to build different sorts of shells around the core business to avoid rules about operating for profit schools.

These are folks who have combined one old failed education model (algorithm directed worksheet generation as tutoring) with another (open free classroom) with somewhat more successful old business models (deprofessionalize your staff to reduce costs, charge out the wazoo) with education snake oil shtick (schools are failing, but because I love my child, I know how to revolutionize education) with a proven method of cooking the books (enroll wealthy, well-supported kids and you too can gave miraculous results). Here's hoping that Georgia and other states are smart enough not to fall for this.