Alpha School, the network of AI-driven private schools charging parents up to $75,000 a year, has won backers from Silicon Valley to the Trump administration. Its own data show most of its students aren’t reaching the model’s central promise.
Only 42% of Alpha students met the network’s goal of learning twice as fast in both math and reading, according to internal data first reported by The New York Times. The findings land as Alpha pushes into public schools, where districts are adopting its software in hopes of fitting more learning into less time.
Alpha has no traditional teachers. It employs what it calls “guides,” whose job, according to the company’s marketing materials, is to “make every student feel valued and motivated.” Guides don’t plan lessons or grade homework, Fortune reported in September.
The core of the pitch is that students will “learn twice as much as their peers in two hours of academics a day” using TimeBack, an app Alpha markets as an AI tutor. Cofounder MacKenzie Price says the app personalizes and accelerates learning for each student, freeing the rest of the school day for workshops on skills such as public speaking and relationship building.
The network has grown fast. A spokesperson told Fortune in September that Alpha had more than 1,200 students. The Times put the figure at about 1,500 across roughly 50 campuses, in line with the expansion plans Alpha announced in August.
That pitch has drawn AI optimists. “I...
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