AI school offers challenge to public education: ‘They need to be accountable to their customer’

A for-profit school in Austin is doing things differently. Alpha School has received a lot of national attention for its innovative use of AI in the classroom. But the school also places a strong emphasis on parental choice.

At 1 p.m. on the second day of class at Alpha School’s K-8 campus in South Austin, students had been finished with their academics for hours. The school is housed in a converted office building just south of Zilker Park, where students work on computer puzzles and exercise on the blacktop outside. 

Each grade has a checklist of so-called “life skills” that they need to complete to move to the next grade or “level.”  That afternoon, most of the students were focused on the life skill “grit.” They were learning to juggle, training for a 5K, and in one room, folding paper to build a Rube Goldberg machine.

Texas Standard spoke with two current Alpha High seniors and several Alpha elementary students for this story, but their voices are missing.

The school’s communications officer, Anna Davlantes, or Director of Growth Gaby Guajardo, listened in on all of the interviews without objection. But later, Alpha threatened to revoke parental permission for Texas Standard to use these interviews.

Davlantes and PR Representative Daphne Ortiz said parents and students were uncomfortable with questions asked about the merits of Alpha’s model, and Texas Standard was told we asked too many “DEI questions.”

Many students transfer to Alpha from traditional schools. One told Texas Standard he switched to Alpha’s high school after facing burnout and what he called wasted time at his public magnet school. He said his workload dropped dramatically when he transferred to Alpha.

Each day, Alpha students do all of their academic work in two hours using an AI program that personalizes content to their strengths and weaknesses. Then, students spend the afternoon trying to check life skills off their grade’s checklist and learning in group workshops about entrepreneurship, AI use, or at the high school in downtown Austin, working on what are called their “masterpiece” projects.

Students do not have homework or regular teachers. Instead, well-compensated “guides” from all walks of life are there each day to help motivate students and demonstrate life skills.

This unusual model, begun in 2014, is born out of dissatisfaction with public schools. Co-founder MacKenzie Price wants schools to be results-driven and product-based.

“We’re very transparent about our academic results and the types of things that students are learning within our schools because I think that’s one of the things that the education industry is in need of,” Price said. “We need to be showing good results for students and, unfortunately, traditional school is not doing a great job of that.”

Price does not have a background in education. She says she started Alpha Schools to provide parents with choice.

But with a price tag of $40,000 a year, it’s a choice not every family is in a position to make. Price insists a large portion of the school is on financial aid – but did not provide exact numbers, saying only that it was “north of 50 percent.”

“The Alpha School is a private school. And we are for-profit. We are tuition-based,” Price told Texas Standard. “I certainly understand that anyone who has chosen to go to a private school has obviously raised their hand to say, ‘Hey I wanna do something, you know, more than just put my kid on whatever bus drives by.’”

Alpha’s director of growth told me Austin has around 150 of the 230 Alpha students nationwide. The high school graduated its first class of seniors last year.

Meanwhile, the Austin Independent School District is facing a nearly $20 million deficit and plans to close schools in the next year. Every student who leaves AISD for a private school like Alpha costs the district upwards of $6,000 dollars in state funding.

Public school leaders fear Texas’ new voucher program will lead to an exodus that will only exacerbate the underenrollment and a funding crisis. 

Alpha’s MacKenzie Price is not concerned.

“They need to be accountable to their customer, and I think it’s one of the problems that public education has had – is that they haven’t had a lot of accountability for delivering excellent academics for their students,” she said.

UT College of Education Professor Joshua Childs sees a lot of promise in intentional AI use in the classroom, but worries about some of the learning students might be missing out on.

“Now it’s important for educators and those in charge of education to be really intentional about how we integrate it into [the] overall learning environment,” Childs said.

Childs is also concerned that AI-driven education will leave some students behind and collect intrusive student data.

Price says Alpha only shares student data with parents.

“My hope and desire is that eventually the public system will want to see… This innovation come into their systems but, until they do, I’m just doing the best I can to provide as many students as possible with access,” Price said. “I absolutely believe that all schools need to be accountable to the families that they serve to provide a great experience academically.”

That appears to be the central aim of Alpha. The AI tech may grab the headlines — the school was recently featured in the New York Times —  but Alpha is about choice, parental choice. 

Parents like MacKenzie Price want to be able to choose what their students learn and how. And parents like her are ecstatic about the possibilities of an AI education. Price claims families are relocating to Austin from as far away as Germany to send their kids to Alpha.

But with the state’s voucher program giving just around $10,000 per student each year, Texas parents wanting to send their kids to Alpha may need to make a choice of whether to pay out of pocket for the rest of the $40,000 per year Alpha education – or save for college tuition.

The Alpha students are making choices, too. Texas Standard spoke with one set to graduate next year. She still is not sure whether she will pursue a degree or continue the online teen musical she is creating for her capstone project. 

That is one decision, at least, that AI cannot make.

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