Submission Statement: This has deep implications for the future of education globally and the idea of teacher free schools has not been recently been discussed
I think this is going to fail horrendously but let’s see ig
krappa1 on
According to some people here
If you don’t support this you’re a luddite
Vol_in_tears on
It’s the GOP dream. Destroy teachers and groom kids to be thoughtless drones without any critical thinking skills.
Time_Transition4817 on
>A line of broken contracts and licenses with the companies follows Alpha, 404 Media reported, as do concerns about the AI program’s efficiency and privacy: 404’s investigation found examples of AI hallucination and seemingly unsolvable quiz questions in the curriculum.
There are privacy concerns, too. Alpha’s AI programming employs screen monitoring and takes photos of students when the program notices a lack of progress or unusual screen patterns. The system once captured a video of a student working on schoolwork in her pajamas in bed, the Wired investigation revealed.
Anna Davlantes, chief communications officer for Alpha, said the 404 Media and Wired stories relied on cherry-picked examples and sources who’d been fired from Alpha. Alpha may pursue legal action against the news outlets, she said.
But Alpha’s fans are loud. Alpha earned the backing of top [Trump administration officials](https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/politics/alpha-school-trump-ai-teaching), sent an [11-year-old student to the State of the Union](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/02/first-lady-melania-trumps-state-of-the-union-guests-reflect-her-impact-on-education-tech-and-the-foster-community/) address on the arm of Melania Trump, and hosted and wooed Gov. [Kevin Stitt at an Austin Alpha school site](https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AsY3M6aRz/) in December.
this is definitely a grift
the question is if the AI is gonna teach partisan propaganda (answer: probably)
feels like it would be easier, cheaper and probably safer to just homeschool your kid with a claude pro max subscription
FourthLife on
Those poor kids
FallenMeringue on
!ping ai&ed-policy
zieger on
Paying $40k a year to destroy your child’s education. Although I guess if you have that kind of money to light on fire you can get them a vp position at your golf buddy’s insurance company
Also
>At one Alpha workshop in San Francisco, the school sent middle school students to a Starbucks with preloaded cards, Wendy Vassiliou, whose son will start at the Tulsa location come August, said. Unbeknownst to the students, their guide had zeroed the account balance for at least one student, meaning their card was rejected at the checkout. The lesson aimed to teach students how to handle disappointment.
fakefakefakef on
The parents who would pay for this certainly deserve whatever happens but their children don’t
Approximation_Doctor on
This is how future generations of Oklahomans are made
Grundlage on
This is topic ripe for headline-only emotional reactions
But from my perspective (ed school PhD who hates most of what goes on in ed schools) Alpha School is doing a lot of very interesting things. There are very legit concerns (particularly around student privacy and surveillance), but they are definitively not just a grift.
unicornbomb on
Tech bros experimenting on children during their most formative educational years, what could go wrong?
-Emilinko1985- on
I’m somewhat pro-AI but I think this might be too far. Teachers can be crucial to the learning process of a student.
vikinick on
Surely there’s gotta be a cheaper way for parents to “homeschool” kids.
Gooners_For_Ukraine on
This is gonna 100 percent be a new bot talking point by every one of your conservative family’s members/coworkers are gonna bring up constantly now “we don’t need teachers anymore, ai can teach kids instead”
Zaidswith on
Sounds like child abuse
KaesekopfNW on
>Guides are the closest stand-in Alpha has for teachers. There’s one key difference, though: guides don’t touch any curriculum. Guides monitor students’ progress and productivity with the AI tutor, but aren’t in the room when students are learning, according to job postings. In the afternoons, guides run one-hour skill workshops for students as young as 5. Past workshops have focused on sailing, programming toy cars and completing Navy SEAL challenges.
At one Alpha workshop in San Francisco, the school sent middle school students to a Starbucks with preloaded cards, Wendy Vassiliou, whose son will start at the Tulsa location come August, said. Unbeknownst to the students, their guide had zeroed the account balance for at least one student, meaning their card was rejected at the checkout. The lesson aimed to teach students how to handle disappointment.
Guides earn $100,000 to $150,000 per year, according to Alpha’s Oklahoma job postings, two to three times the salary of a first-year public school teacher.
Alpha doesn’t require guides to have teacher certification, and intentionally recruits people with unconventional education backgrounds. The San Francisco guide had a career as a sports psychologist.
Guides can hold a bachelor’s degree in any subject. Alpha says it vets candidates with a cognitive test, an intensive background check and a months-long training camp in Austin. From there, guides are sent across the country to Alpha sites.
So guides can literally be anyone, with no real qualifications or certification, earn two to three times a public school teacher who likely has a Master’s, and do damn near nothing all day long.
And the cost:
>Alpha’s tuition in Oklahoma will be $40,000 per year, toppling the prices of the next-closest private schools in both areas: Edmond’s Oklahoma Christian School is $14,640 per year and Tulsa’s Holland Hall charges $21,625 annually. Bordering Edmond closely, Oklahoma City’s most expensive, Casady School, is $27,950 for high school students. In some states, Alpha families pay $75,000 per year.
What the absolute fuck are these parents doing? This is definitely not the future I dreamed of. I want nothing to do with it.
Magikarp-Army on
This school already has several locations. I saw a blogpost from one of the parents. They definitely still have teachers, they just zoom in from a different country and only get rung when the student needs help.
I feel bad for our country, but this is tremendous (research) content.
WuhanWTF on
Actually worse than homeschooling lol
disuberence on
TFW Claude gains sentience and forms a teacher union
bartbug on
I had a job offer here a few years back
These people are slimy as fuck, and somehow they’re dumber than they are slimy
D34th4nge7 on
I’m not saying generative AI is literally never useful.
But there is definitely a tendency to mindlessly shove the technology into everything imaginable. It’s impossible to deny that there is significant genAI hype at the moment. And I miss the times when new technological innovations didn’t have to rely on hype.
27 Comments
Submission Statement: This has deep implications for the future of education globally and the idea of teacher free schools has not been recently been discussed
Every day we stray further from the light.
https://preview.redd.it/vbeg8yujimeh1.jpeg?width=2436&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ecd0e12cc7227298f7f094729b71ab6932acfa7
I think this is going to fail horrendously but let’s see ig
According to some people here
If you don’t support this you’re a luddite
It’s the GOP dream. Destroy teachers and groom kids to be thoughtless drones without any critical thinking skills.
>A line of broken contracts and licenses with the companies follows Alpha, 404 Media reported, as do concerns about the AI program’s efficiency and privacy: 404’s investigation found examples of AI hallucination and seemingly unsolvable quiz questions in the curriculum.
There are privacy concerns, too. Alpha’s AI programming employs screen monitoring and takes photos of students when the program notices a lack of progress or unusual screen patterns. The system once captured a video of a student working on schoolwork in her pajamas in bed, the Wired investigation revealed.
Anna Davlantes, chief communications officer for Alpha, said the 404 Media and Wired stories relied on cherry-picked examples and sources who’d been fired from Alpha. Alpha may pursue legal action against the news outlets, she said.
But Alpha’s fans are loud. Alpha earned the backing of top [Trump administration officials](https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/politics/alpha-school-trump-ai-teaching), sent an [11-year-old student to the State of the Union](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/02/first-lady-melania-trumps-state-of-the-union-guests-reflect-her-impact-on-education-tech-and-the-foster-community/) address on the arm of Melania Trump, and hosted and wooed Gov. [Kevin Stitt at an Austin Alpha school site](https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AsY3M6aRz/) in December.
this is definitely a grift
the question is if the AI is gonna teach partisan propaganda (answer: probably)
feels like it would be easier, cheaper and probably safer to just homeschool your kid with a claude pro max subscription
Those poor kids
!ping ai&ed-policy
Paying $40k a year to destroy your child’s education. Although I guess if you have that kind of money to light on fire you can get them a vp position at your golf buddy’s insurance company
Also
>At one Alpha workshop in San Francisco, the school sent middle school students to a Starbucks with preloaded cards, Wendy Vassiliou, whose son will start at the Tulsa location come August, said. Unbeknownst to the students, their guide had zeroed the account balance for at least one student, meaning their card was rejected at the checkout. The lesson aimed to teach students how to handle disappointment.
The parents who would pay for this certainly deserve whatever happens but their children don’t
This is how future generations of Oklahomans are made
This is topic ripe for headline-only emotional reactions
But from my perspective (ed school PhD who hates most of what goes on in ed schools) Alpha School is doing a lot of very interesting things. There are very legit concerns (particularly around student privacy and surveillance), but they are definitively not just a grift.
Tech bros experimenting on children during their most formative educational years, what could go wrong?
I’m somewhat pro-AI but I think this might be too far. Teachers can be crucial to the learning process of a student.
Surely there’s gotta be a cheaper way for parents to “homeschool” kids.
This is gonna 100 percent be a new bot talking point by every one of your conservative family’s members/coworkers are gonna bring up constantly now “we don’t need teachers anymore, ai can teach kids instead”
Sounds like child abuse
>Guides are the closest stand-in Alpha has for teachers. There’s one key difference, though: guides don’t touch any curriculum. Guides monitor students’ progress and productivity with the AI tutor, but aren’t in the room when students are learning, according to job postings. In the afternoons, guides run one-hour skill workshops for students as young as 5. Past workshops have focused on sailing, programming toy cars and completing Navy SEAL challenges.
At one Alpha workshop in San Francisco, the school sent middle school students to a Starbucks with preloaded cards, Wendy Vassiliou, whose son will start at the Tulsa location come August, said. Unbeknownst to the students, their guide had zeroed the account balance for at least one student, meaning their card was rejected at the checkout. The lesson aimed to teach students how to handle disappointment.
Guides earn $100,000 to $150,000 per year, according to Alpha’s Oklahoma job postings, two to three times the salary of a first-year public school teacher.
Alpha doesn’t require guides to have teacher certification, and intentionally recruits people with unconventional education backgrounds. The San Francisco guide had a career as a sports psychologist.
Guides can hold a bachelor’s degree in any subject. Alpha says it vets candidates with a cognitive test, an intensive background check and a months-long training camp in Austin. From there, guides are sent across the country to Alpha sites.
So guides can literally be anyone, with no real qualifications or certification, earn two to three times a public school teacher who likely has a Master’s, and do damn near nothing all day long.
And the cost:
>Alpha’s tuition in Oklahoma will be $40,000 per year, toppling the prices of the next-closest private schools in both areas: Edmond’s Oklahoma Christian School is $14,640 per year and Tulsa’s Holland Hall charges $21,625 annually. Bordering Edmond closely, Oklahoma City’s most expensive, Casady School, is $27,950 for high school students. In some states, Alpha families pay $75,000 per year.
What the absolute fuck are these parents doing? This is definitely not the future I dreamed of. I want nothing to do with it.
This school already has several locations. I saw a blogpost from one of the parents. They definitely still have teachers, they just zoom in from a different country and only get rung when the student needs help.
https://preview.redd.it/3azja8o4lmeh1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1cbfc20878b297c76054a194e5a538e30643f738
Snake oil
I feel bad for our country, but this is tremendous (research) content.
Actually worse than homeschooling lol
TFW Claude gains sentience and forms a teacher union
I had a job offer here a few years back
These people are slimy as fuck, and somehow they’re dumber than they are slimy
I’m not saying generative AI is literally never useful.
But there is definitely a tendency to mindlessly shove the technology into everything imaginable. It’s impossible to deny that there is significant genAI hype at the moment. And I miss the times when new technological innovations didn’t have to rely on hype.