In case you were wondering when AI would start replacing teachers in the classroom, the answer is… it’s already here. A new company has started opening private schools all over the United States with a hefty price tag, and a futuristic hook: human teachers replaced with AI programming that takes just two hours a day. While the concept might sound a little far-fetched there are some pretty major caveats to that claim, and also a slew of questions regarding whether or not this new model is any better than traditional teacher-led classrooms.

2 Hours of Learning Per Day… Sort of

Alpha Schools opened in 2014 with one campus in Austin, TX and plans to operate as many as 50 schools by the end of this year. The most unique aspect of their tech-driven model is that students only spend two hours a day learning core academics. How do they get through reading, writing, math, science, history and social studies lessons in such a short period of time? Easy, they sit on computers and let Alpha’s AI bots create lessons for them, differentiated to each student’s needs. The mastery-based system allows kids to move at their own pace to accomplish whatever learning goals the school has set. It sounds great, but does it work? 

Mackenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School, told KFOR-TV the early results are extremely positive. “We’ve had our graduates do everything from get into Stanford, UCLA, Northwestern, University of Chicago, USC,” said Price. “In fact, our senior SAT average this past year was 1540.” But not everyone thinks this is the future of education. Oklahoma state rep Cindi Munson, who’s currently running for governor, told KFOR-TV that she’s skeptical for now. “I have a lot of questions. We know that students do better when they are in a classroom setting, when they are face to face with a highly qualified, trained teacher.” 

Teachers? Who needs teachers?

The claim that Alpha schools operate without teachers is, of course, not entirely true. As much as tech-bros would love to claim that we can just replace everyone and everything with AI, you still do need adults to monitor what’s going on, and those adults do occasionally have to help students who are struggling with various concepts, or get stuck on a problem. If you’re thinking to yourself “Wow, that sounds a lot like a teacher!” Then you’d be correct, except at Alpha they’re referred to as “guides”. According to Alpha’s own website: “Guides are dedicated mentors who work closely with students each day. They don’t stand at the front of a classroom delivering lectures. Instead, they spend their time coaching, motivating, and truly getting to know each child.” Again, if that sounds an awful lot like what teachers are currently doing in regular classrooms, then you would be correct. But that’s not as exciting as saying that AI is doing all of the heavy lifting and the adults in the room are just a “Break in case of emergency” last resort.

So what do kids and “guides” do for the rest of the day?

If all of a student’s essential learning can be boiled down to just two hours a day, the question becomes: What the heck do these kids do all day? And according to Alpha, that’s where the guides really shine. Once the AI training is over, guides plan group activities to work on other skills such as physical activity, leadership training and creative exploration. Again, you’d be forgiven if you mistook those activities for recess, project-based learning and cooperative activities that already exist in schools all over the world, but once again Alpha says they do it better. 

Alpha’s website says that the guides are selected partially for their ability to “plan engaging life skills workshops” and that they come from “top universities across the country with competitive backgrounds in fields like tech and start-ups.” One thing noticeably absent from those requirements is any sort of experience working with children, or any educational certification. But who needs certifications when you’re just a guide? Right?

There is, big surprise, a lot of money involved here

If you were wondering how schools like this came to be, the answer, as always, is to follow the money. One of the co-founders of Alpha is private equity billionaire Joe Liemandt, and if there’s one thing billionaires are good at, it’s increasing their profit margins. So it should come as no surprise that these schools are not cheap. In fact they’re some of the most expensive private schools in the country with tuition ranging from $40,000 to $75,000 a year. That’s no doubt a hefty price tag, but at least some of those profits do seem to end up in the hands of the people working to make Alpha a reality. If you look at their jobs board you’ll see that guides start off at $100,000 a year and as you climb up the ladder the numbers climb too. (Also check out these teacher salaries and requirements in all 50 States!)

Of course for a system like this to be successful there needs to be some tangible results, and so far that data seems to be lacking. A recent CNN article found that more than a few families who put their kids in Alpha schools, ended up pulling them due to them being “so stressed out” by the school’s culture. The article went on to say that Alpha, much like other private and charter schools, operate under a cloak of secrecy. Data on student achievement, and whether or not this model is any better than what a traditional school offers is essentially non-existent, or at least not something Alpha is willing to share with anybody.

So does this model work? Can students learn from an AI system in a fraction of the time they’d spend with an actual, certified teacher? Or is this just another example of AI being implemented without due diligence? Is this just an overpriced private school promising something they can’t deliver on? For now those are answers that no one, not even AI, can answer completely.