This was a much needed writeup and counterpoint to the Alpha School essay. Not because Alpha School is bad or anything, but because the obvious question after reading something like the Alpha School Essay is “well, why don’t change public school to be more like that?”
It is a really interesting idea. You should see if you can get an ACX grant or some other type of private funding to run experiments around this idea. Even just “here are 10 motivation approaches that theoretically could scale, which work best when tried on a small sample size of randomly-chosen students?”
Thanks! If teaching wasn't so busy I'd be interested in pursuing a grant like that. I think one issue right now is that lots of people do stuff like that, but with skin in the game. Alpha School wants to spread their model, other teachers become consultants, realize that consulting is way more profitably that teaching, and also realize that they need a "brand" or idea and can't go around saying "hmm let's try this and see if it works." The randomly-chosen students part is hard too -- where do we find a truly random sample?
I don't think those problems are impossible to solve, but they do lead to a lot of people selling solutions that aren't proven.
A comment on the 5% problem to help support the overall point about motivation. I don't think saying "These programs do seem to help a subset of students, but don’t do much for the rest" is entirely accurate to what's going on. You make it sound like the edtech is shown to be ineffective for 95% of students but it's really something a little different and far trickier.
The problem isn't that the software didn't help 95% the kids. The problem is that 95% of the kids didn't use the software enough to generate meaningful data (fidelity for these systems is primarily that they used it for a long enough session and had enough total sessions) and thus were not included in the efficacy studies that iXL and i-Ready use to demonstrate their potential impacts when selling their products to school districts. School districts making purchasing decision see the headline data of the proprietary studies saying that there are these big effect sizes and think that's across a representative sample of students so their schools will see similar benefits. In reality it's a huge selection bias problem because what they're really saying is that among the 5% of students who actually used the product there were gains. That 5% of students is not random but, instead, more engaged, higher achieving, and wealthier than the student population as a whole. We can't say whether the product is effective or ineffective for the other 95% because they just didn't use it enough for us to tell.
And that's closer to the problem you're getting at with the overall post. You can put all the whizz-bang edtech in the world into classrooms but if only 5% of kids ever use it, it's not going to do your system any good. They're not motivated to use the edtech or participate in their own learning or whatever. Maybe these things would be great for those kids, but *they have to choose to participate.*
Yea that's a good clarification, though it varies a bit program to program. For example, I've seen teachers mandate a certain number of minutes on iXL but not care which skills students work on, so they are practicing kindergarten skills over and over again. But I agree. It's easy as a teacher to say "ok go on X program for the next 20 minutes" and a lot of teachers stop there, and leave it up to the students whether they're going to put effort in.
When the names of the writers were announced, I thought, "Oh, I totally should have seen Dylan's voice in that review!" Hindsight is 20/20.
Much of the criticism of schools is rooted in Chesterton's fences. "School" is the primary way we make use of "the classroom" - an incredibly powerful technology for developing social motivation. Classrooms normalize effort, learning, and pro-social behavior. Contrast these scenarios:
1) A student looks up from their work, sees others working, and gets back to work.
2) A student looks up from their work, sees something else interesting, and does not return to work.
It matters relatively little in these scenarios what "the work" is: reading, writing, small group discussion, drawing, etc. The classroom as a structure guides us to get more of that work from students with varying levels of motivation. (The best "work" for students is a whole separate matter for debate.)
The classroom is absolutely not perfect, and it's not even necessary for some nontrivial segment of the population. The fact that it's not necessary for some doesn't mean it's not worth doing at all. (See systematic phonics instruction as an example.) No one has yet figured out a better way to scale that technology: other models are some combination of too expensive, too narrow in who they effectively serve, or both.
Haha thanks! Your example of a student looking up from work is a good one. Attention and effort are contagious, in lots of small ways that are easy not to notice.
I would frame it differently -- maybe I'm a bit defensive as a public school teacher. But I definitely see some of those top students bored and in need of something different. The two empirical questions I'd be interested in -- what percent does Alpha School work for? I'd guess it's higher than 5% but I don't know how high. And second, what percent of those students/families would prefer an option like Alpha School if they had the option?
I'll say GT.School works for less than 2% of the population who is motivated by more academics.
We'll see about Alpha; maybe it works only the 5% Laurence Holt identified? If the reward is "time back", only those who have special interests to fill up that time will benefit, so perhaps we are talking about that 5%.
I bet Texas Sports Academy would be the one with the broadest appeal (getting time back to do sports).
Fwiw the official and oft repeated mantra inside the Alphaverse is “tech is 10% of the solution and motivation is 90%”.
We constantly tell parents and educators to try IXL at smartscore 100 and do it themselves if they can solve the motivation problem. (NB: we have moved off of IXL, but the point still stands.)
I can understand the allergy to hype, and the questions about cost and scale, but I don’t really understand the comments about honesty.
It's obvious from the review that a ton of thought has gone into the motivation side so it makes sense that's the motto.
In terms of dishonesty -- maybe I'm wrong but I've seen a lot of articles along the lines of the quote I reference in the post, "they’re pioneering education’s new frontier. Every click and every keystroke is guided by artificial intelligence."
Maybe it's journalists choosing that framing because they know it will get them clicks, but it seems to me like Alpha School is selling a narrative that sounds compelling but doesn't capture what makes the program distinctive. I realize the stories won't read as well if they say, "we use a lot of software that's already available in schools, with little to no generative AI. What makes us distinct is a culture and tech package that are optimized to motivate kids to work way harder than they would elsewhere."
There's someone in my town trying to start up an Alpha School program and I heard through the grapevine the same "learning from AI" spiel. From your perspective, is Alpha School communicating the key elements of their program honestly? Or is this an issue of the truth getting lost along the way, or being less compelling than the nice narrative about AI?
Also out of curiosity, what is Alpha School using now for math?
Interesting. Not surprised about Math Academy, seems right up their alley. I think they start at 4th grade -- seems like there's a lack of good products below 4th.
I teach 7th grade so I'm not an expert at early elementary, I'm inferring based on the post you shared not feeling too happy about their early elementary product. I'm not a fan of IXL, it can be used well but is easy to use badly. I just looked through your substack post - lots of interesting stuff, but no single product that seems like it does many things well?
I use DeltaMath for some practice but that's really all, I'm mostly a paper-and-pencil teacher. I feel pretty happy with that right now.
I visited Alpha School over the summer and I think that your assessment of it is very accurate. There's a whole package of things going on there that work to enhance motivation. I appreciate your insights that there are different motivation styles and that motivation is often based on human factors like conformity and learned behaviors. Scaling motivation is truly a hard problem and public schools, imperfect as they are, do try to address that problem head on.
Assuming Alpha School has figured out how to solve the motivation problem (at least for their students), their tech-driven, personalized learning seems like a powerful tool. It provides those students with an efficient way to turn that motivation into knowledge transfer. Like you, I'm really interested to see what aspects of their model can successfully scale.
Interesting to hear that this lines up with your visit. A visit isn't possible for me, and I was wondering as I wrote it if I'm indexing too much on that one review. Did you have any other insights from the visit? I'm very curious.
My impression is that Edward's review is a pretty accurate representation of the school (though I visited Spyglass and not GT school). I didn't get a chance to observe the school in session though my kids spent a half day there.
One takeaway is that cultural aspects of the school (guides, students, afternoon sessions) seem at least as important if not more so than the 2 hour learning academic curriculum. The entire day is structured around motivation- there are pep talks and lots of opportunities for support, and workshops and lots of focus on student progress and goals. There's more than I can fully cover here- I plan to write a post about it soon.
I don't have many hidden insights about the academic side, but I hope I'll get a chance to talk more with some of the people who worked on the curriculum to learn more.
Yea one thing I didn't include in this essay but that's part of my hypothesis is that the afternoon sessions can be really helpful for motivation. If you're learning, i.e. chess, it's easy to see the progress you're making, and that progress becomes its own form of motivation. Traditional schools teach a lot of electives/specials where, in part because they meet less often, kids make really slow progress. A typical middle schooler doesn't see themselves making much progress in art or developing specialized art skills. But Alpha School's model is laser-focused on giving kids skills in the afternoon. We can debate whether quiz bowl, chess, debate, programming etc are the right things for kids to be spending their time on, but I think they are probably good examples of skills we can help kids develop to see their own progress and become addicted to learning. My guess is that all of these things tie together in a way that is very different from a typical school.
I share that interest in what parts will scale. I have no doubt that some parts will scale, but which ones and to what degree are going to be fascinating questions to dig into.
Related, but not specific to Alpha School, I wonder how many families actually want a radically different model of school? People say they want something different, but do enough families actually enroll their students to make new models work?
In my region, nontraditional models have had enrollment dry up at speeds roughly similar to how much of a departure from the perceived norm they are. That could certainly be regional or just an indicator that those specific alternatives missed the mark.
It's one thing to be disappointed in the status quo and another thing to invest your children in an unknown. We often see distress from families over small changes: how many will resist a new model, even if it works "better"?
Generalizing very broadly, I think there is a lot of dissatisfaction with schools, and a lot of families that try something different and realize it has a lot of the same problems. There are also plenty of families I've seen make a change and stick with it, but most of those seem more driven by dissatisfaction with traditional school rather than the draw of whatever the other option is. There are exceptions of course, but what I see is more being driven away from traditional school than attracted to nontraditional options.
In your context, does "traditional" mean local public school or something more broad? I ask because in my area, the "nontraditional" models are primarily from local public school districts rather than charter or private.
Locally, we've seen private school enrollment increase at a couple of sites and really decrease at another. (I'm concerned about their ability to stay afloat.)
I live in a small town in the mountains so there are very few options. I probably shouldn't generalize based on my current context. They are: local public district, alternative school within the district (very small, high school only), travel to an adjacent county (35 minutes away, if you can provide transportation they will take you), private school in adjacent county (only one I've heard of, very small and struggling to stay afloat), online charter school, or homeschool. My district has a pretty poor reputation so a lot of kids take those options. I've known kids to move through 3+ options through their schooling. A lot of shuffling from one pretty traditional option to another.
The alternative school is proficiency-based and genuinely different but in practice it ends up mostly being a last ditch effort to get kids to graduate who clearly are not on track in the traditional high school.
Just from my limited interaction with the Alpha School parents (a parent information session and a few conversations), there is a fair amount willingness to go outside the typical school experience if it provides better results.
This was a much needed writeup and counterpoint to the Alpha School essay. Not because Alpha School is bad or anything, but because the obvious question after reading something like the Alpha School Essay is “well, why don’t change public school to be more like that?”
It is a really interesting idea. You should see if you can get an ACX grant or some other type of private funding to run experiments around this idea. Even just “here are 10 motivation approaches that theoretically could scale, which work best when tried on a small sample size of randomly-chosen students?”
Thanks! If teaching wasn't so busy I'd be interested in pursuing a grant like that. I think one issue right now is that lots of people do stuff like that, but with skin in the game. Alpha School wants to spread their model, other teachers become consultants, realize that consulting is way more profitably that teaching, and also realize that they need a "brand" or idea and can't go around saying "hmm let's try this and see if it works." The randomly-chosen students part is hard too -- where do we find a truly random sample?
I don't think those problems are impossible to solve, but they do lead to a lot of people selling solutions that aren't proven.
A comment on the 5% problem to help support the overall point about motivation. I don't think saying "These programs do seem to help a subset of students, but don’t do much for the rest" is entirely accurate to what's going on. You make it sound like the edtech is shown to be ineffective for 95% of students but it's really something a little different and far trickier.
The problem isn't that the software didn't help 95% the kids. The problem is that 95% of the kids didn't use the software enough to generate meaningful data (fidelity for these systems is primarily that they used it for a long enough session and had enough total sessions) and thus were not included in the efficacy studies that iXL and i-Ready use to demonstrate their potential impacts when selling their products to school districts. School districts making purchasing decision see the headline data of the proprietary studies saying that there are these big effect sizes and think that's across a representative sample of students so their schools will see similar benefits. In reality it's a huge selection bias problem because what they're really saying is that among the 5% of students who actually used the product there were gains. That 5% of students is not random but, instead, more engaged, higher achieving, and wealthier than the student population as a whole. We can't say whether the product is effective or ineffective for the other 95% because they just didn't use it enough for us to tell.
And that's closer to the problem you're getting at with the overall post. You can put all the whizz-bang edtech in the world into classrooms but if only 5% of kids ever use it, it's not going to do your system any good. They're not motivated to use the edtech or participate in their own learning or whatever. Maybe these things would be great for those kids, but *they have to choose to participate.*
Yea that's a good clarification, though it varies a bit program to program. For example, I've seen teachers mandate a certain number of minutes on iXL but not care which skills students work on, so they are practicing kindergarten skills over and over again. But I agree. It's easy as a teacher to say "ok go on X program for the next 20 minutes" and a lot of teachers stop there, and leave it up to the students whether they're going to put effort in.
When the names of the writers were announced, I thought, "Oh, I totally should have seen Dylan's voice in that review!" Hindsight is 20/20.
Much of the criticism of schools is rooted in Chesterton's fences. "School" is the primary way we make use of "the classroom" - an incredibly powerful technology for developing social motivation. Classrooms normalize effort, learning, and pro-social behavior. Contrast these scenarios:
1) A student looks up from their work, sees others working, and gets back to work.
2) A student looks up from their work, sees something else interesting, and does not return to work.
It matters relatively little in these scenarios what "the work" is: reading, writing, small group discussion, drawing, etc. The classroom as a structure guides us to get more of that work from students with varying levels of motivation. (The best "work" for students is a whole separate matter for debate.)
The classroom is absolutely not perfect, and it's not even necessary for some nontrivial segment of the population. The fact that it's not necessary for some doesn't mean it's not worth doing at all. (See systematic phonics instruction as an example.) No one has yet figured out a better way to scale that technology: other models are some combination of too expensive, too narrow in who they effectively serve, or both.
Haha thanks! Your example of a student looking up from work is a good one. Attention and effort are contagious, in lots of small ways that are easy not to notice.
Not sure if Alpha can scale, but if they can save the top 5% from traditional schooling, that's a huge win.
I would frame it differently -- maybe I'm a bit defensive as a public school teacher. But I definitely see some of those top students bored and in need of something different. The two empirical questions I'd be interested in -- what percent does Alpha School work for? I'd guess it's higher than 5% but I don't know how high. And second, what percent of those students/families would prefer an option like Alpha School if they had the option?
I'll say GT.School works for less than 2% of the population who is motivated by more academics.
We'll see about Alpha; maybe it works only the 5% Laurence Holt identified? If the reward is "time back", only those who have special interests to fill up that time will benefit, so perhaps we are talking about that 5%.
I bet Texas Sports Academy would be the one with the broadest appeal (getting time back to do sports).
Fwiw the official and oft repeated mantra inside the Alphaverse is “tech is 10% of the solution and motivation is 90%”.
We constantly tell parents and educators to try IXL at smartscore 100 and do it themselves if they can solve the motivation problem. (NB: we have moved off of IXL, but the point still stands.)
I can understand the allergy to hype, and the questions about cost and scale, but I don’t really understand the comments about honesty.
It's obvious from the review that a ton of thought has gone into the motivation side so it makes sense that's the motto.
In terms of dishonesty -- maybe I'm wrong but I've seen a lot of articles along the lines of the quote I reference in the post, "they’re pioneering education’s new frontier. Every click and every keystroke is guided by artificial intelligence."
Maybe it's journalists choosing that framing because they know it will get them clicks, but it seems to me like Alpha School is selling a narrative that sounds compelling but doesn't capture what makes the program distinctive. I realize the stories won't read as well if they say, "we use a lot of software that's already available in schools, with little to no generative AI. What makes us distinct is a culture and tech package that are optimized to motivate kids to work way harder than they would elsewhere."
There's someone in my town trying to start up an Alpha School program and I heard through the grapevine the same "learning from AI" spiel. From your perspective, is Alpha School communicating the key elements of their program honestly? Or is this an issue of the truth getting lost along the way, or being less compelling than the nice narrative about AI?
Also out of curiosity, what is Alpha School using now for math?
for math, they seem to be using Synthesis, AlphaMath Fluency, and Math Academy (in August 2025)
https://austinscholar.substack.com/p/austin-scholar-177-the-alpha-app
Interesting. Not surprised about Math Academy, seems right up their alley. I think they start at 4th grade -- seems like there's a lack of good products below 4th.
Is there a lack of good products?. I mentioned the ones I used in the past in my substack. I can recommend some new ones. Which ones do you use?
I teach 7th grade so I'm not an expert at early elementary, I'm inferring based on the post you shared not feeling too happy about their early elementary product. I'm not a fan of IXL, it can be used well but is easy to use badly. I just looked through your substack post - lots of interesting stuff, but no single product that seems like it does many things well?
I use DeltaMath for some practice but that's really all, I'm mostly a paper-and-pencil teacher. I feel pretty happy with that right now.
I visited Alpha School over the summer and I think that your assessment of it is very accurate. There's a whole package of things going on there that work to enhance motivation. I appreciate your insights that there are different motivation styles and that motivation is often based on human factors like conformity and learned behaviors. Scaling motivation is truly a hard problem and public schools, imperfect as they are, do try to address that problem head on.
Assuming Alpha School has figured out how to solve the motivation problem (at least for their students), their tech-driven, personalized learning seems like a powerful tool. It provides those students with an efficient way to turn that motivation into knowledge transfer. Like you, I'm really interested to see what aspects of their model can successfully scale.
Interesting to hear that this lines up with your visit. A visit isn't possible for me, and I was wondering as I wrote it if I'm indexing too much on that one review. Did you have any other insights from the visit? I'm very curious.
My impression is that Edward's review is a pretty accurate representation of the school (though I visited Spyglass and not GT school). I didn't get a chance to observe the school in session though my kids spent a half day there.
One takeaway is that cultural aspects of the school (guides, students, afternoon sessions) seem at least as important if not more so than the 2 hour learning academic curriculum. The entire day is structured around motivation- there are pep talks and lots of opportunities for support, and workshops and lots of focus on student progress and goals. There's more than I can fully cover here- I plan to write a post about it soon.
I don't have many hidden insights about the academic side, but I hope I'll get a chance to talk more with some of the people who worked on the curriculum to learn more.
Yea one thing I didn't include in this essay but that's part of my hypothesis is that the afternoon sessions can be really helpful for motivation. If you're learning, i.e. chess, it's easy to see the progress you're making, and that progress becomes its own form of motivation. Traditional schools teach a lot of electives/specials where, in part because they meet less often, kids make really slow progress. A typical middle schooler doesn't see themselves making much progress in art or developing specialized art skills. But Alpha School's model is laser-focused on giving kids skills in the afternoon. We can debate whether quiz bowl, chess, debate, programming etc are the right things for kids to be spending their time on, but I think they are probably good examples of skills we can help kids develop to see their own progress and become addicted to learning. My guess is that all of these things tie together in a way that is very different from a typical school.
I share that interest in what parts will scale. I have no doubt that some parts will scale, but which ones and to what degree are going to be fascinating questions to dig into.
Related, but not specific to Alpha School, I wonder how many families actually want a radically different model of school? People say they want something different, but do enough families actually enroll their students to make new models work?
In my region, nontraditional models have had enrollment dry up at speeds roughly similar to how much of a departure from the perceived norm they are. That could certainly be regional or just an indicator that those specific alternatives missed the mark.
It's one thing to be disappointed in the status quo and another thing to invest your children in an unknown. We often see distress from families over small changes: how many will resist a new model, even if it works "better"?
Generalizing very broadly, I think there is a lot of dissatisfaction with schools, and a lot of families that try something different and realize it has a lot of the same problems. There are also plenty of families I've seen make a change and stick with it, but most of those seem more driven by dissatisfaction with traditional school rather than the draw of whatever the other option is. There are exceptions of course, but what I see is more being driven away from traditional school than attracted to nontraditional options.
In your context, does "traditional" mean local public school or something more broad? I ask because in my area, the "nontraditional" models are primarily from local public school districts rather than charter or private.
Locally, we've seen private school enrollment increase at a couple of sites and really decrease at another. (I'm concerned about their ability to stay afloat.)
I live in a small town in the mountains so there are very few options. I probably shouldn't generalize based on my current context. They are: local public district, alternative school within the district (very small, high school only), travel to an adjacent county (35 minutes away, if you can provide transportation they will take you), private school in adjacent county (only one I've heard of, very small and struggling to stay afloat), online charter school, or homeschool. My district has a pretty poor reputation so a lot of kids take those options. I've known kids to move through 3+ options through their schooling. A lot of shuffling from one pretty traditional option to another.
The alternative school is proficiency-based and genuinely different but in practice it ends up mostly being a last ditch effort to get kids to graduate who clearly are not on track in the traditional high school.
Just from my limited interaction with the Alpha School parents (a parent information session and a few conversations), there is a fair amount willingness to go outside the typical school experience if it provides better results.