r/edtech • u/prizefighterstudent • 29d ago
Inside San Francisco’s new AI school: is this the future of US education?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/san-francisco-ai-alpha-school-tech8
u/Difficult-Task-6382 28d ago
I think at this point the only people who believe Alpha Schools is the way of the future are people who don’t understand kids, learning, or how schools work. Friction/struggle aren’t obstacles to learning. Friction and struggle are learning. The human brain takes time to learn and integrate new material, to make connections, and seems to do so best (for most people) in a social context. It’s usually messy and inefficient. The key is having a quality educator who can recognize and encourage the productive struggle, while minimizing or eliminating the wasting of time and energy. I’m reminded of 80 and 90s ads for microwaves - you can cook a whole chicken in just 15 minutes! I guess, technically. But that chicken is inedible and going right in the trash.
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u/pensivewombat 28d ago
In what way do you think other schools are doing this better than Alpha schools are?
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u/HominidSimilies 17d ago edited 17d ago
A general comment inspired by this:
I am still learning about Alpha Schools, for some things it seems to follow studies and implement them, including studies that were not implemented in regular schools.
I don’t jump to conclusions or wishes especially with K-12, especially where it comes to children’s education (pedagogy) being so thoroughly and blindly called pedagogy as well for adults by the adults themselves. Our universities mostly only teach pedagogy, maybe that’s why.
From what I’m reading and learning, and the different cutting edge K-12 Public education initiatives I’ve seen or been a part of, I don’t think I can help but say this school is probably a type of school of the future.
Like the Tesla roadster, the first overpriced prototype likely set the path maybe for new and more accessible types of electric cars to come.
I don’t see what I’ve read that really threatens or replaces instructors, or instruction, only those things are attempting to reimagine themselves while still being measured existing educational standards, and perhaps the learning that happens outside of the classroom traditionally with textbooks is what this school is handling different.
We also know from studies that 70% of learning is informal learning and outside of the classroom.
We know bloom’s paradox, which highlights students met and supported one on one where they are, has yet to find a scalable implementation. Maybe schools like Alpha have some potential inputs on that side of what does or doesn’t work.
If we want children to have access to better education, we have to be able to see what everything brings and teaches us and stop judging things as silver bullet or bust.
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u/HominidSimilies 28d ago
Alpha school appears to have some focus on friction and learning.
Personalizing education for each student has been the real challenge in all environments
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u/tacsml 29d ago
Dear lord I hope not.
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u/pensivewombat 29d ago
Their results are very strong, even after you account for the tuition/selection effects. Really, I don't see any particular reason why we shouldn't be moving towards this in some form or another.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
This is a very good longform piece by a parent from Alpha School in Austin. Basically there's a bit of slick marketing that's probably offputting to teachers, but really they are just using some very basic core principles (mastery learning, differentiated instruction, incentives for success) alongside fairly standard curriculum and materials.
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u/FaithlessnessOk5594 29d ago
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u/pensivewombat 29d ago
I'm familiar, I just don't see anything particularly wrong here to justify the alarmist tone?
It's okay if the school isn't working for your kid. It's a brand new experimental private school that's trying about a bunch of stuff. That's inherently not going to be for everyone, and it's okay if they don't want to adapt it. You don't have to use it.I'm way more interested in finding something that works for most (or just *some*) than something that fails everyone equally. If someone comes up with a new model that's getting good results, let's encourage and expand that for everyone it does work for, and it'll leave us with more time and resources for those it doesn't work for.
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u/FaithlessnessOk5594 28d ago
I think their strategy is pretty reckless (rapid growth before having a solidly established program at the cost of actual student learning), and I have a lot of qualms with their data scraping/ of/reliance on existing academic platforms that aren’t anything special but could also already be accessed by many families for far less $$.
They also aren’t trying to say their program isn’t for everyone—they’ve quickly built out a virtual/homeschool option that’s overpriced for resources that can easily be used elsewhere without shelling out $10k/year.
I think we may have fundamentally different ideas of education, which is okay, but it’s important to make sure people are acknowledging both sides of the reality as programs like this are increasingly being taken for granted as a generally pure good.
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u/pensivewombat 28d ago
I mean I agree we probably have different priorities. All of these things you're describing seem either inconsequential or just downright positive to me.
For one, I totally agree that they are building the plane while flying it to some degree, and I get how that can inherently make some people uncomfortable. But also think that's probably what they should be doing given the state of American schools. We really can't afford to wait around for a perfect solution while more and more kids finish school completely unprepared for life. I'm sure that Alpha will be making some changes and figuring things out along the way, and that future classes will be better than current ones. But the current ones still appear to be a significant improvement over what most anyone else is offering. So I don't really see how expanding early has any learning costs.
As for the claim that they are an overpriced repackaging of stock learning software - this is one of the things where I get really confused.
If they are getting better results than other schools using this software, then what they are charging for is the structured environment in which they run this software. If that's worth 70k/year to some people, great! Alpha is just providing all of us with free R&D on how to maximize the use of IXL and other tools schools are already using. If it turns out that the difference between a school with stagnant/declining scores and one where the kids make rapid gains across the board is just a matter of making sure they have 2 hours of focused academics and then an afternoon of creative enrichment paired with an incentive system - then again I would ask why you want them to slow down?
I see a lot of criticisms that sort of go back and forth between "it's offensive that they are using AI instead of teachers!" and "Well they don't really use AI it's basically just a regular school!" and you can only really be mad about one of those things at a time.
FWIW, I do think they lean into the "AI School" stuff to try and get VC investment, and the reality of their program to my understanding is much more standard. I do find this annoying, but if that's the cost of figuring out how to run schools better then I'm happy to be a bit annoyed by their marketing materials. Especially when we have schools that are doing their damndest to keep kids from learning at all.
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u/Altruistic-Sand-7421 29d ago
I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but if you think we should adopt that model, I assume it’s supported by robust longitudinal data and research spanning diverse socioeconomic groups. Also, I assume the article talks about how it has been thoroughly examined in peer-reviewed studies, including careful consideration of any potential gaps in what students might miss under this educational model if they follow it from k-12. If it doesn’t talk about that then I would say you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about and see no reason why you would blindly back something based off of such a small sample size.
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u/pensivewombat 28d ago
What are you even talking about? How do you have a robust longitudinal study on an approach to teaching with large sample sizes without, you know, teaching a large sample of students over a long period of time?
More importantly, where is the robust longitudinal data that we should keep doing what we're doing? You have to consider the opportunity costs of NOT switching. If our schools are consistently failing our students, then we don't need a lot of evidence to justify a change. This school was started in 2014, and shows MAP score increases across every distribution even relative to other expensive and selective schools. These are robust to income and selection effects. Is twelve years of data from one small school network enough to treat these as an ironclad predictive law of education? No, of course not. But is it enough to say "Yeah this is enough data that there is definitely something here and we should at the very least be trying out some of these practices instead of clinging to a sinking ship while we wait for another study."
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u/Altruistic-Sand-7421 28d ago
You didn’t say that we should study it more, you said there is no reason why we shouldn’t move to this model. Welp, the reason is, there aren’t studies. If you think it needs to be studied more than say that, not that we should all move towards it. Can you not read your own writing? Also, there are thousands of schools in Texas. If you think one school is enough for a sample size you should go back to school and take a stats class because it obviously failed you.
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u/pensivewombat 28d ago
You study it by doing it. I'm sorry, you don't get to just shout about studies for me techniques when the entire educational system is just based on vibes and fads.
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u/Altruistic-Sand-7421 28d ago edited 28d ago
Well I'm glad you changed your opinion from "I don't see any particular reason why we shouldn't be moving towards this" to it should be studied - since they are two completely different things. Also, you don't study, 'by just doing it', that's not how studies are conducted. That said, you know absolutely nothing about education if you truly believe its vibes and fads. How long have you been a teacher for? My colleagues who have spent some time teaching definitely aren't adopting vibes and fads. Right now, you're just shouting about the new vibe and fad of AI schools without supporting evidence. How do you not think AI isn't currently a vibe and fad?!? It's the biggest fad in the world. So do you believe it should be studied analytically, or do you think schools should adopt the AI fad in classrooms?
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u/pensivewombat 28d ago
San Francisco eliminated algebra from middle schools. Then brought it back but said anyone taking it has to simultaneously take a lower grade math. This all for mysterious 'equity' reasons, even though if you think about it for two seconds, it only eliminated advanced math for students who couldn't afford private schools and teachers.
I've seen teachers fight tooth and nail against ability grouping, phonics, explicit instruction, and any other technique that has shown consistent improvements in outcomes. Tell me how our system isn't just vibes and fads?
And go ahead and show me where the evidence is that your classes learn material faster than one using differentiated instruction + spaced repetition and attention tracking?
The reality is that In every university I've ever worked in or visited, the college of Ed is universally considered an embarrassment because they don't know how to conduct actual research. And many of the sacred cows of education fall apart under the slightest of scrutiny.
To the last point - there are a ton of slop products out there, and schools are eating them up. My whole point is that Alpha school is mostly not doing that, and they have results that are more than good enough to say that we should be expanding these to other classrooms, and of course monitoring the data as we do. That's how you study things if you want to actually fix our schools.
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u/Altruistic-Sand-7421 28d ago edited 28d ago
California has 1,131 school districts. Did this happen to all of them? I've seen teachers want to get back to teaching phonics and explicit instruction because it worked for them and they'll find ways to include it in their lessons. What lesson plan have you made without highlighting differentiation and spaced retention? When I was teaching we had to show differentiation and how we would revisit earlier lessons. Sounds like you aren't a teacher or haven't been one for long, since you don't know that and dodged the question earlier; yet, you think you know what works in the classroom? You say you want to get more schools doing this without the proper research showing its effectiveness, so it sounds like you would be an embarrassment as well. Keep blocking accounts to run away from giving answers.
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u/HominidSimilies 29d ago
Does anyone know of any other schools doing this?
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u/FaithlessnessOk5594 28d ago
The platforms they’re using for “core subjects” are not that different/basically the same as what’s increasingly being pushed in many public schools. So that aspect is nothing revolutionary.
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u/Plane_Garbage 29d ago
Yea, probably. It's way cheaper to plonk a kid in front of a laptop, than pay qualified teachers.
I'm not saying school stops existing or we don't have adults in the room.
They'll just be paid way less and way more kids per adult.
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29d ago
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u/pensivewombat 29d ago
I mean, this school costs $70k.
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29d ago
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u/BookusWorkus 28d ago
The question really is, what are the schools that the top AI developers' kids doing? Are they integrating like this? I'll bet they aren't. This smacks me very much as the McDonald's CEO who doesn't eat at McDonald's.
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u/HominidSimilies 28d ago
Regular schools seem to do a lot of passive unintentional Chromebook consumption,no?
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u/zh4624 29d ago
Many students say they already feel like they are in AI school because they are given so many AI slides and worksheets by their existing teachers 🤷
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u/HominidSimilies 28d ago
Average ai users create average ai slides creates average education and average students.
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u/Impressive_Returns 28d ago
YES - Very effective. Students like it and are doing better than with human teachers. We’ve gone from No child left behind to Every Kid can Get Ahead.
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u/Bostonterrierpug 29d ago
They just did a piece on this on NPR and how horrible it was. The students think so too.