Do Alpha School students spend all day on screens?

Hi, I'm Kate and I write the Austin Scholar newsletter. I'm an Alpha Graduate of 2024, now a Stanford Sophomore, and I'm interning at Alpha NYC. These are some of the biggest misconceptions that I hear about Alpha, and I thought I'd take a minute to set the record straight. I'm worried about the screen time. The most common question that I get from parents who have never visited an Alpha campus is some version of "oh, so my kid would just sit on a computer all day?" No. Alpha students spend two hours a day on their computer. Two and then the screen closes. The students then spend the rest of their day and life skills workshops learning how to run a Spartan race, solving a Rubik's Cube, giving TED-style talks, and running a food truck that generates real revenue, so Alpha students actually get less screen time than students in a traditional school who spend eight hours in lectures, doing assignments on their laptops, and then going home and spending 2 to 3 hours doing more homework on their laptops. The founder of Alpha, Mackenzie Price, just wrote an article for Forbes talking about the differences between good screen time and bad screen time, and how edtech and learning software and education that can all be good screen time. A meta-analysis of 41 different case studies showed that gamification in educational technology can improve students' learning outcomes and help them with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Proving that, in Mackenzie's words, purposeful technology can yield lasting benefits."Is it just AI chatbots teaching my kid?" This misconception drives me crazy because Alpha agrees with the concern behind it. AI chatbots are terrible for education, so Alpha doesn't use them. Not a single part of the academic program involves any sort of ChatGPT or generative AI chatbot. What Alpha does use is TimeBack. An adaptive mastery program that uses AI to identify exactly where a student is academically and meets them there. It requires 90% mastery to allow a student to continue to move on. There is no cheating. There are no gaps. Your student will master their academics. But here's what actually matters. Your child has a guide, a real human being who is responsible for five students, not 25, and whose entire job is to get to know your kid, to motivate them, and to build a relationship with them. They don't lecture, they mentor, they guide. A student's guide will ensure that they are known not just by their name, but as who they are as a person. So when critics say there's no real teacher. What they mean is there is no adult standing in front of a classroom talking at your kid for six hours a day. That's correct. Instead, there is someone who earns double a traditional teacher's salary and has five times the bandwidth to actually care about and get to know your kid. I understand the fear. You picture your child without enough friends, without homecoming, and without bustling hallways. But that's not exactly the reality. Yes, there might be 50 kids in the entire K-8 school building, but there's so much connection both within the school and across the entire country,there are eighth graders mentoring and playing chess with fourth graders. You have middle schoolers providing feedback to classmates, and across campus, Town Hall and all of the middle schoolers across all campuses decided to come together to plan their own homecoming in Austin, Texas, and they flew there to make it happen. Austin students visit the New York City campus and San Francisco families connect with Miami families. Alpha isn't waiting until your kid is in college to build their network. They're connecting with peers across the country before they're 13. And in my experience, the friendships are so deep and supportive because we're navigating this unique experience together. In fact, I picked the New York City campus for my internship because I wanted to spend time with my friends in my graduating class who went to university on the East Coast. But what about sports? Alpha students actually receive professional coaching as part of their school day. Second graders train for 5K races. Kids learn how to run a Spartan Race and learn that no one is left behind. There can be sailing, FBI fitness benchmarks, and tennis woven throughout the week. And because Alpha has no homework, your child has more time for competitive club sports than they would at a traditional school. The athlete who wants to play travel, soccer, swim competitively, or even train independently has their entire evening free. There are no essays or worksheets to fill up their time. But are they actually learning? Alpha uses the NWEA MAP Test, which is a standardized, third party, independent assessment that Alpha doesn't design or control. The students take it three times a year and the results? 90th percentile across all subjects and all grade levels. We have kindergartners performing at the third and fourth grade levels, and fifth graders already exceeding the national average in 11th grade math. And our graduating seniors have an SAT average of 1530, which is on par with other top private schools in the US. But honestly, I don't think the important number is the score. It's the growth. Alpha's MAP growth data shows that our students are not only scoring high, but also improving faster than their already high performing peers. So what's a parent's role? This is where it gets personal for families and where I believe Alpha's philosophy is most important, yet also misunderstood. Alpha teaches grit. Real grit at Alpha. This could look like a pre-K student failing at a Lego set that is rated 16 plus until they finally complete it. Or students building up their endurance so that they can bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. They're then assessed through Test2Pass in a live real stakes evaluation, where they must demonstrate mastery in front of an audience, and if they don't pass, their guide will build a plan to help them get there. So when your child comes home frustrated and trust me, they will, I did. Your instinct will be to fix it, to smooth it over and call the school. But don't. These workshops are designed to teach your kid life skills that they need to succeed in the real world. And if you solve their problems for them, how will they learn to do it on their own? David Yeager's research in his book 10 to 25 shows that what young people need isn't rescue. It's high expectations paired with genuine support and the message that you believe they can get there. That combination. I believe this is hard, and I believe I can figure it out, is the difference between learned helplessness and real confidence. This Alpha approach changed my life, how I feel about myself and what I'm capable of, and I want every kid to feel like I do.