A $65,000-a-year private school is expanding with an opening in Santa Monica next month, betting AI — not teachers — can exceed the area’s elite campuses.
“We’re outperforming top private schools like Harvard-Westlake,” Anna Davalantes, a representative for Alpha School, told the Santa Monica Sun. Davalantes claimed that Alpha achieves these superior results without cherry-picking its students.
The school is asking parents to cough up a staggering $65,000 for a year for students to learn academic subjects twice as fast as their peers in traditional school in just two hours of morning lessons with an AI tutor, their website boasts.
Davalantes said while most top-performing exclusive schools only accept academically-gifted applicants, Alpha is “still way outperforming what Harvard-Westlake has on their SATs, their ACTs, their CAASPP scores,” reports the Sun.
Since academics are covered during the first half of the day, the school will conduct hands-on workshops in the afternoon, focusing on life skills such as financial literacy, team work and public speaking. The high-end school will launch its bold experiment in SoCal with a select group of just 30 families.
Alpha substitutes conventional teachers by “guides,” who are not required to have professional teaching experience and often transition from previous careers as tech founders or sports coaches. The company pays them a hefty annual salary of roughly $150,000 for spending at least 30 minutes with individual kids to help them set goals –– both personal and academic.
Alpha said its personalized AI platform cranks out custom lesson plans and a unique series of questions appears on students’ screens. They have to get all the answers correct before moving on to the next grade.
While students learn through a device, the guides help them “stay in that ‘Goldilocks zone’ — not too hard, not too easy,” said Derek Bergmann, one of the guides at the school, reports the Sun.
Tech in the classroom usually raises eyebrows and doctors have warned that this digital binge could leave kids struggling with crippling social anxiety, crushed self-esteem, and deep depression. But, Bergmann believes “technology is a tool — it comes down to the intention with which the tool is used.”
The radical model has already caught the eye of the feds. Education Secretary Linda McMahon toured the school’s Austin campus in September, claiming that “harnessing AI thoughtfully will be critical to expanding opportunity and preparing students for tomorrow’s workforce.”
Founded by education entrepreneur MacKenzie Price and software billionaire Joe Liemandt, Alpha School already has three locations in California –– Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Orange County –– and one in New York City.
