Discover a transformative education at Alpha School, where AI-driven technology revolutionizes learning. Complete a full day’s academics in just two hours, freeing time for life skills. This model enhances engagement and offers personalized AI tutors, allowing students to excel in core subjects. Join us in redefining education and unlocking every student’s potential!
An innovative new school opens in Miami set out to redefine education for families looking beyond the traditional school model. It’s a school where 8-year-olds launch startups, 10-year-olds give TED-style talks and 12-year-olds tackle Harvard Business School challenges. Alpha School boasts a 10-year track record of excellence in Texas, where classes consistently rank in the top 2% in core curriculum, kids get prepared for life, and one of the key measures of success is that “students love school.”
Alpha School is opening its doors near Tropical Park at 8000 SW 56th St., bringing its proven model to our vibrant city. Imagine a school where there are no lecture-based classrooms. They’re replaced with personalized learning plans and project-based workshops focused on life skills. The entire school experience is shaped around individual student needs, aptitudes and passions. The innovative approach is attracting national attention and was the focus of recent special reports on The Today Show and NBC News, singling it out as a model for ‘The Future of Education.’
AUSTIN, Texas – One Austin woman believes traditional schooling is outdated and filled with busy work.
That’s why she created a new learning method where there are no teachers, and students learn academics through an AI tutor on a series of apps, for just two hours a day.
“Our students are learning twice as fast as students in a traditional classroom, but they are doing it in only 2 hours a day,” said MacKenzie Price, co-founder of the Alpha School in downtown Austin.
Hailed as heroes but paid like afterthoughts, teachers are leaving classrooms in droves as AI technology knocks on the door.
Sixty percent of U.S. adults say they wouldn’t want their child to become a public school teacher according to a 2024 poll, many citing concerns about “inadequate pay and benefits (33%) or a lack of student discipline (27%).” This marks a significant shift from 50 years ago, when the poll first came out and 75% of Americans supported this career path for their child. A 2022 paper from researchers at Brown University and the University at Albany found that “perceptions of teacher prestige have fallen between 20% and 47% in the last decade and now rest at or near the lowest levels on record.”
Unsurprising then, we’re now experiencing a nationwide teacher shortage, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic. According to 2023 data, there were 55,000 teacher vacancies in the 2022-2023 school year, up 60% from the previous year, with an estimated 300,000 positions now being filled by underqualified teachers.
Few things are more important than education. Unfortunately, the U.S. education system has been under siege for years, with understaffed schools, overcrowded classrooms and overworked, underpaid teachers. The government’s own NAEP issued a Nation’s Report Card revealing less than a third of U.S. eighth graders can do grade-level math. I believe we can no longer accept a system that’s failing so many of our students.
The greatest problem stems from the fact we’re still applying a rigid, century-old education model to the challenges of our modern world. Today’s teachers hold the impossible job of educating 20, 30 or even 40 students in a classroom, kids from vastly different backgrounds and aptitudes—with no time to focus on personalized learning.
As you read this, new kinds of schools are being designed, launched and expanded. Many are utilizing the power of Artificial Intelligence. Take for example, Synthesis School and their AI-powered math tutor or Alpha School in Miami that uses AI to teach their children. Some of these schools have already evolved into competition for mainstream schooling. In the coming years, they may even render some traditional methods of education obsolete.
In our current U.S. education system, we tend to “track” students from a very young age—and once on this path, it’s hard for any student who falls behind to change course.
A student who scores a C on a test will likely never go back to review the material they missed because traditional classrooms move on to the next lesson. With this method of learning, students may be doomed to follow an underperforming path as the subject matter builds and they fall further and further behind.
Donald Trump appears poised to make good on his campaign pledge to dismantle the Department of Education. The president-elect’s frustration with the wayward direction of federal education is understandable — and shared by millions of Americans. But shuttering the Department of Education won’t change that direction. So let’s make a promise to America’s kids first.
The new administration ought to create a “Kids First” education plan that empowers students, parents, and teachers — rather than administrators and bureaucrats — and prioritizes real-world academic achievement over the failed pedagogies of the past.
When Jimmy Carter established the Education Department in 1979, U.S. schoolchildren were ranked first in the world for academic proficiency. Since then, we’ve fallen to 24th place.
The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools has greenlit a virtual charter school where computer programs will teach students “core instruction” for just two hours per day.
In those two hours, students will use artificial intelligence-powered platforms to “engage in short, focused bursts of learning across different subjects,” according to the charter application.
The school, Unbound Academy, will serve fourth through eighth graders.
The school’s founders in their application said the two-hour, AI-powered model can condense the time students spend learning by personalizing instruction and removing “inefficiencies” that exist in traditional classrooms. An AI tutor gives each student individualized learning plans and ensures they master each concept before moving on, they said.
“When you’re getting one-to-one personalized learning, it doesn’t take all day,” said co-founder MacKenzie Price. “Having a personal tutor is absolutely the best way for a student to learn. Unfortunately, that has not been possible in our traditional educational system.”
The Texas founders of an unconventional AI-based learning model want to expand into Pennsylvania, pitching a plan for a cyber charter school that would replace teachers with software and squeeze traditional academics into 2 hours of daily instruction.
Representatives of Unbound Academic Institute Charter School, which has a pending application before state officials, say their artificial intelligence technology tailors lessons to each child and helps them master material more quickly. Compressing the typical school day into 2 hours keeps students from burning out on academics and frees up time for developing a range of other life skills, they say.
And instead of traditional teachers, the school uses educators called guides to coach students and monitor their progress.
