alt Hacker NewsA friend of mine put his kid into a school called Alpha [1]. It has no teachers, only guides (?), who are well paid grads but not formally teachers. Kids go in in the morning, do two hours of computer study with an AI program, and the guide only steps in if the kid has a question or doubt the system cannot answer.
Then there's recess and afternoon is all taken up with "Life Skills" classes such as entrepreneurship and the likes.
Kids are tested weekly and progress through grades at will. For example, his kid would officially be in 3rd grade, but she's doing 3rd reading, 5th grade math, and 4th grade writing. She can easily test 3rd grade topics now.
I am ambiguous about this model. Love the "learn as much as you want" even if it means learning 2, 3 grades ahead, but the no-teacher rule and so much computer use seems a little strange. Also if the kid is not extremely self-motivated, they will be left by the side of the road by the school.
[1] - https://alpha.school/
Edit: It's 40k a year.
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I got the benefits of letting kids go at their own pace etc. at a fraction of the cost but with a bit of (mostly fun) effort by home educating my kids. Tutors for two subjects (three in exam terms as English language and literature are separate GCSEs), both Oxford graduates in those subjects. No AI but lots of books and other resources.
Most kids are motivated given the right environment. Enjoying learning is natural.
The AI element of what you describe does not appeal to me. The weekly testing and assignment to grades sounds a bit rigid too.
Considering how much one to one human tutoring 40k an year could buy that does not sound like good value.
Alpha shows the results they do because they charge exorbitant rates (up to $75,000 / year depending on region) to staff the school with multiple individualized tutors per student.
It is a for-profit product which is sold to parents and state-level customers more than it is a school.
In terms of 3rd level accession and standardised testing I'd imagine they boast great statistics, and that the students are self-evident in communicating a degree of confidence and holistic education beyond their traditionally educated peers.
However, I would fear that the issue with home-schooling would manifest: that the rarified atmosphere would render them incapable of engaging or coping with the brutal reality of binary-minded Authority figures and hierarchical social constructs in their work and life in the 'real world'.
To writ, some of the most important lessons I learnt in school were to do with the concept of 'fairness', my own ability for emotional regulation, navigation of social hierarchies, and the symbols and signifiers of popular culture. The curriculum as a whole came a distant second.
N.B. Public (read:Private) schools in the UK are about £30k a year. Boarding schools hit about 50k in the UK/Ireland. 'New Age' or International schools for the children of diplomats and HNW ex-pats like Nord Anglia or similar go from about €/£20k upwards. 40k a year isn't outrageous in context, even outside of America.
A good friend of mine works for them. It’s a weird combination of (1) probably the long-range future and (2) absolutely not going to use my kid as a test subject.
If you believe, as I do, that half of students only achieve half of their academic potential, then experiments like this are some of the most valuable work we could do in society.
But again, let me know how it goes in 25 years and my children can enroll my grandkids.
I’m very conceptually interested in AI assisted individual learning; I’ve managed to get into a lot of topics that I would have had a hard time approaching without an LLM helping. I really like having AI rephrase concepts usually visualizations and analogies that resonate with me personally. That said, I think there is a lot of sketchiness around Alpha Schools in particular: https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/special-repor...
AI could either help or ruin American education. But the Department of Education is being shutdown. Many parents are relatively absent. And functionally all tech companies, and especially startups, are rapacious in pursuit of education funding.
I think the most likely outcome is AI makes American education worse, not because if the technology, but because of the “leaders” building and implementimg it.
Slightly creepy, seems harmless now but future without supervision you don't know what they're teaching or what is going on. I would agree it's a double egged sword.
this is a classic confounder problem. I'm assuming the vast majority of parents who can afford 40k annual for their kids are relatively well off, have a lot of other disposable income, and the kid is never really lacking for any needs. put them in a public school and it's likely they'll turn out equally ahead for their grade
socioeconomic status (SES) is very often a huge confounder when it comes to anything from health issues, educational outcomes, and many other things. rich kids do better - the SES of the parents of Nobel Prize winners [0], young athletes [1], etc are all indicators of this
[0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/nobel-prize-winners-far-...
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14668...