AI Schools, the Future of Education?
Has Alpha School successfully replaced teachers with AI? Joe Liemandt, an elusive billionaire wants you to think so.
Alpha School is “powered by AI”, with “adults in the classroom” just to “support motivated students foster a growth mindset and independent learning.”
A school without teachers. Sounds like a disaster right?
But Alpha School is actually a successful and fast growing chain of eight private schools in the US. How is that possible?!
In the trillion dollar US education market, is replacing teachers the killer app for AI?
One of the most influential, yet elusive billionaires in the tech industry seems to be betting on it. You’ve probably never heard of him, but every teacher in America should know what they're up against.
AI for the American People
Chat AI really doesn’t know… what it doesn’t know.
It can proclaim utter nonsense with the utmost positivity and confidence.
Prove it wrong, and it’s often too stubborn to admit it. What an arrogant jerk!
Hallucinations
AI hallucinations were a big joke over the past few years, but now that AI is being pushed into every K-12 classroom in the US, should we still be laughing?
In a 60 Minutes segment on Khanmigo, a ChatGPT based AI tutor from Khan Academy, it misidentified the hypotenuse of a triangle as the height.
How can this AI replace teachers?
…the hallucinations may always exist. But even more to the point, when we automate the most connective human tasks, like teaching, and relegate that to systems that can get basic facts wrong, it can lead to rot all the way down.
That’s a quote from “AI Will Destroy Critical Thinking in K-12”. The article also explores the risk of teachers using AI to write lessons and grade student work, which students can perceive as a “lesser form of care and attention.”
…A.I. has the potential to chip away at [children’s] trust in the educational process, from the moment they start kindergarten.
Yet, with the “AI for the American People” executive order, the Trump Admin is pushing to “integrate the fundamentals of A.I. into all subject areas”. It’s a big gift to Big Tech.
Mr. AI
Consider the following:
Trump made it a 2024 campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, and he did.
In April 2025, the Trump Admin fired 16,000 government workers, with the approval of the Supreme Court.
Public (taxpayer funded) school employees make up half of some state government’s laborers.
AI has garnered a quasi-religious following, especially in the US. People are eager to look past current limitations, and misapplications of the tech are rampant.
Normalizing AI in schools as an assistant is the extent of current plans. Yet, if AI replaces costly teachers, think of all the new tax cuts that could be given to billionaires!
So will it happen sooner than we think?
VP of User Growth at Amplify, Dan Meyer puts it this way:
Economic elites dream of leveling the playing field through technology contracts that would benefit other economic elites.
Other countries level the playing field for their kids through redistributive policies like child welfare, public housing, nationalized health care, etc, all of which would require increasing the tax burden on economic elites.
It should not surprise us to see which of those dreams receive fawning coverage during primetime corporate media.
No Child Left Behind
In my previous article, I shared my experience at traditional public (taxpayer funded) schools in California and how it shaped my views on education.
Since public schools serve the general public, teachers often teach to the middle. The track system (remedial, standard, or honors), only coarsely solves the issue of lesson pacing for groups of 30 or more individuals.
But imagine being one of the AI faithful. Rejoice! Deliverance is neigh! At every school, kids will be able to go at their own pace, with their own private teacher, all thanks to AI!
AI School?
What if the scene of a school on Vulcan from Star Trek (2009), with AI teaching students 1 on 1, is becoming a reality?
Did teachers on Vulcan become glorified babysitters? Or rather, were they able to shift focus from content delivery, to coaching and mentorship?
Alpha School
Back on earth in 2025, employees at Alpha School are called “Guides”.
It’s been shallowly reported on by *cough* “journalists” at local FOX stations, NewsWeek, MSNBC nightly news, and the Today show.
They claim kids at these schools spend a mere two hours a day being taught academic subjects by AI. The rest of their time is spent learning life skills. Students score in the top 2% on standardized testing. Their 8th graders are scoring +1,500 on the SATs.
Uh, suspicious right?!
Fans
Yet, top comments on these videos are very positive.
rip teachers but damn this is a good idea
Sounds amazing for remote locations or communities that don't have access to teachers
AI explains things 10000% better than my teachers
And the AI will actually answer questions, not ignore, or shame the kid
Critics
Others were skeptical of AI’s impact on the success of these schools.
It’s $50k per student with no financial aid. In case you were wondering.
Sounds like a black mirror episode
yeah its good in America because the school system is terrible but it wont work in other countries where school actually works
It’s similar to Finland’s education system, in which students actually excel.
Hear me out, I don't think this has to do as much with AI, more so kids not having to wake up at 7am and better mental health with less stressful school hours, and having control over their learning
Let me guess who is teaching real world skills.....TEACHERS!
For Real?
Based on my research, here's how these schools are actually run.
For two hours a day, students engage in independent study, but in a communal, study hall setting. The “AI teacher” app, 2 Hour Learning, directs students to existing online curriculum, *cough* made by humans. I spotted students using IXL, Class Dojo, Khan Academy, and Amplify curriculum. So AI isn’t doing content delivery all by itself, but rather manages student’s progress and helps them study.
So essentially you're paying for your child to use free apps, then ride a bike and do relay races for the rest of the day?
The rest of the school schedule, is filled with outdoor events, entrepreneurship, hands-on activities, public speaking, etc.
Alpha School’s success may have more to do with the inspiration it takes from schools in Finland, than its use of AI.
Finnish schools have a proven track record of success that spans decades, thanks in part to their “no homework” approach.
The “no teachers” angle, is marketing hype to differentiate Alpha School from the plethora of other alternative private schools in Austin.
[…] students are asked every six weeks if they love school – 96% wholeheartedly do, with 60% preferring school to vacation.
I think I would've had fun at an Alpha School as a kid. Hence, would I enjoy working at one as an adult?
2 Hour Learning Schools
After looking at their job ads on CrossOver, I instantly put my skeptic hat back on.
CrossOver claims their services are used by “over 70 companies”. Yet, as of June 2025, their client list contains a mere handful of companies, all owned by Trilogy, which is owned by private equity firm, ESW Capital, founded by multi-billionaire Joseph Liemandt.
Andrew Price is the CFO of Trilogy, Crossover, Ignite Technologies, and ESW Capital. 2 Hour Learning and all the schools that use it were founded by him and his wife, MacKenzie Price.
Liemandt actually owns CrossOver and the 2 Hour Learning (2HL) software. He’s also the principal of Alpha School and none of the mainstream corporate media reporting on Alpha School mentions that connection.
He has the good sense to not make himself the public face of Alpha School, but don't be fooled by MacKenzie Price’s origin story. These schools did not originate from a mother’s desire to give her children a better education; they were created to provide a market for the 2 Hour Learning software, which Liemandt owns.
On the “Meet the Founder*” page of the 2HL website, MacKenzie is featured prominently as co-founder, but where are the others? There’s no mention of Andrew Price or Joe Liemandt anywhere on the 2HL and Alpha School sites.
Now we’re starting to see the bigger picture.
These AI schools are like car models, different ways to sell the same 2 Hour Learning engine.
GT School (2HL is for gifted and talented students that’d be bored by traditional school)
Valenta Academy (2HL frees up time for kids to volunteer in their community and become good people)
Novatio School (2HL helps kids from Spanish-speaking families become bilingual faster)
NextGen Academy (2HL frees up time for nerds to focus on e-sports and making video games)
Texas Sports Academy (2HL frees up time for young athletes that are too cool for school to focus on training)
Alpha School (2HL frees up time for kids to unleash their inner Alpha and start their own business. Also, 2HL is powered by <insert current tech industry buzzwords>.)
It’s a sad reflection on our societal values that NextGen, whoops I meant Valenta Academy, didn’t become the most popular of the bunch.
So the AI schools, CrossOver, and the 2 Hour Learning software are all lead or owned by multi-billionaire, Joe Liemandt?!
A lot of these schools started out “tuition-free” too, profiting off taxpayer funded voucher programs, siphoning money away from public schools. Novatio School still boasts that it’s tuition free thanks to $10k in ESA funding from Arizona.
Platform Decay
The article "Texas Businesswoman Wants to Open AI-Driven, Teacherless Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania" describes four attempts in different states to establish new 2HL virtual charter schools. In Pennsylvania they wanted to hire just 17 people to run a school with 500 students, but their proposal was scathingly denied.
Yet in Arizona they’ve succeeded, as reported on by Vice, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Popular Science, and others.
Unbound Academy for 4-8th graders has no physical location costs, seems to employ a grand total of two teachers, and uses free online curriculum, yet it costs thousands per student.
They’ve also been allocated $1k per student for marketing. Peak snake oil salesmanship!
And yet even this barebones 2HL vehicle, stripped of all value added to the brick and mortar variants, has still garnered fans.
As a parent looking at innovative methods to fill the knowledge gaps my son as acquired attending public school I find the 2 hour model method very appealing. More so for the use of new technologies than the just the 2 hour workload. I don't know if this will or will not help my son yet, but his public school education is only digging him a deeper hole.
I appreciate you taking the time and sharing this information, but you sound really bitter and for reasons I don't understand extremely pro a system that is failing millions of students. I'm sure you are like the millions of other teachers that do excellent work, but the system has to be completely uprooted and reinvented using modern tools.
The Value of Public Education
I understand why 17% of K-12 kids in the US are sent to private schools. But I also believe in the ideal of providing high quality education to every child.
In Norway, less than 5% of students attend private schools. In Finland, it’s under 2%.
These countries have invested heavily in equitable public systems where nearly every student, rich or poor, attends the same high-quality schools, and where teaching is a prestigious, well-paid profession. They prove that excellence and equity in education are not mutually exclusive.
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation”
– Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia
CrossOver
Let’s shift focus back to CrossOver, the site Trilogy and Alpha School posts job ads on.
Why would a tech conglomerate and AI schools need their own jobs site?
A Forbes article, “How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop” by Nathan Vardi, provides a comprehensive overview of CrossOver’s operations in 2018.
Crossover, which is actually the recruiting wing of ESW, has amassed an army of 5,000 workers in 131 countries from Ukraine to Pakistan to Egypt. In the past 12 years, ESW has quietly acquired some 75 software companies, mostly in the U.S., and it exports as many as 150 high-tech jobs every week.
In a 2021 followup article, “The Billionaire Who Pioneered Remote Work Has A New Plan To Turn His Workers Into Algorithms”, Vardi describes the inner workings of CrossOver in vile detail via leaked internal documents.
His preference for anonymity is no surprise. Liemandt’s metamorphosis has transformed him from every dorm-room coder’s hero to an ominous force in tech as his expanding global cloud-force pushes down wages and turns computer programming into factory work.
To train workers to fix software bugs or handle customer help requests, new Crossover workers complete four weeks of “remote university” after they are hired.
If the workers do not perform adequately at remote university, their contracts are terminated, even if they just left a job to become Crossover workers.
Unlike Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon, who compete fiercely for promising programmers from top universities, Liemandt’s hourly workforce was largely expendable, with his operation casting off and replacing workers on a routine basis.
To supplement this piece, I wrote my own article, “CrossOver, a Remote Jobs Site, Axed By AI?”.
Liemandt was also a patent troll. ESW Capital purchased Versata in 2006, since then it’s been wielded in lawsuits against 20 companies: ranging from SAP (won $345 million), Sears (settled for $175 million), and Ford (won $104 million).
I also covered Gauntlet AI.
Gauntlet AI is a thousand hour long job application. No joke.
Applicants are “challenged” to spend 80 to 100 hours per week, for 5 weeks in training/preparation and 5 weeks (up to 500 hours) working on real projects provided (so graciously) by hiring partners, which are… you guessed it… all owned by Trilogy!
It’s a clever scheme: rebranding an unpaid internship as hands-on learning.
Surely Joe Liemandt would say his real passion in life isn’t soul sucking private equity or patent trolling: it’s teaching entrepreneurship. Decades ago he was encouraging undergrads to drop out of college and start their own business. But hell, with the right guidance, maybe kids could start their own business while they’re still in high school.
2 Hour Learning
Hence the impetus to create 2 Hour Learning, which may have been built by a global software sweatshop and unpaid job applicants.
It’s also used at private schools that can cherry-pick students. Perhaps they only accept strong self-learners to skew test results? Yet, even those “results” have not been independently verified!
These revelations make the corporate media reporters look like spokespeople for Alpha School.
In “How to Waste a Teacher”, Dan Meyer writes:
Many EdTech operators would like to replace teachers, I have no doubt. Some think they have when in fact they have just replaced one kind of student with another—the kids who really need teachers with the kids who need them less.
One Size Doesn't Fit All
I went there from 2019–2021 and learned absolutely nothing, I am still catching up lol
I reached out to this former Alpha School student on TikTok but they declined to make a comment in time for publication. They are willing to talk about their experience in a follow-up article, so subscribe if you’d like to read it.
Surely independent study with online curriculum isn’t for everyone though.
Recently there’s been major public backlash against the CEO of Duolingo for his comments and plans to replace contract workers with AI.
“By the way, that doesn’t mean the teachers are going to go away, you still need people to take care of the students,” he added. “I also don’t think schools are going to go away, because you still need childcare.”
Host Sarah Guo jumped in to clarify. “In your view, schools could be childcare but everybody’s Duolingo-ing?” she said.
“I think it’s going to be something like that,” von Ahn replied.
Redefining Success
The regular school system is completely outdated and unnecessary in its current format.
When I was a kid, getting into a good college was the only intrinsic goal of K-12 school. But college is becoming increasingly out of reach and undesirable for students not willing to be burdened by debt.
Bloomberg’s editorial board asks “Does College Still Have a Purpose in the Age of ChatGPT?”.
It’s an untenable situation: computers grading papers written by computers, students and professors idly observing, and parents paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege.
Insanity!
In today’s job market, skipping college to start a business seems like a more sensible risk than ever before.
So is the desire to judge alternative schools, by the same metrics we judge traditional schools, actually rooted in what's best for students, or is it a coping mechanism to confirm our biases?
Here’s another quote from Alpha School’s marketing.
…kids get prepared for life, and one of the key measures of success is that “students love school.”
In news reports it’s funny to hear little 10 years olds be so smug about “learning 2x more than kids at regular schools”. Alpha School presents it to kids as a choice: do two hours of academics at Alpha School or six at a normal school. That’s a great way to motivate them to work harder during those two hours.
Learning centers around honing the skills that lead to academic success, but also life success. Gone are the days of simply learning the ‘3 Rs’ – reading, writing and arithmetic. Alpha School focuses on the “4 Cs” – creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking.
How many high schools in the world can boast about a student starting a $3 million business doing something they’re passionate about?
But then again, how many high schools are the pet project of a billionaire?
I don’t want to imply that these students didn’t work hard or aren’t deserving but…
How easy would it be for Liemandt, a multi-billionaire, to manufacture a few success stories?
Corruption
As reported by the Texas Observer, allegedly Liemandt, via a shell company, gifted $1 million to Glenn Youngkin’s campaign for Governor of Virginia.
The address for Future of Education LLC listed on the Virginia public record of the donation is a home that, according to Travis County records, is owned by Andrew Price and his wife MacKenzie Price.
Hiding a seven figure political donation, which for those not familiar with US campaign finance law, is essentially legalized bribery.
Guess what Youngkin did after becoming Governor?
Governor Glenn Youngkin issued Executive Order 30 on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which directed the Virginia Department of Education to develop and issue tools, instructional resources, and support to guide the considerations, implementation, and use of AI at all levels of education.
Naturally. But why Virginia?
Perhaps due to Virginia’s proximity to Washington DC, it was a ploy to get federal law maker’s attention. If that’s true, it certainly worked.
Youngkin also recently vetoed a law that would’ve regulated “high risk” AI use, such as by kids in schools.
“I would like to see legislation requiring more disclosures from donors, particularly when it comes to LLCs,” Democratic House Minority Leader Don Scott Jr. told the Observer. “One of the ways very, very wealthy people influence our elections here in Virginia is by forming an LLC to shield who actually gave the money. […] they clearly have a vested interest in undermining our public schools.”
This isn’t an solely an issue with Republicans. If you think it’s good when an oligarch “donates” to one “side” and bad when they “donate” to the “other side”, you’re missing the point.
In a close race between Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke for Governor of Texas in 2022, it appears that Liemandt backed both sides. In fact, he was the top donor to ActBlue (Democrats) in all of Texas that year. The house always wins.
Is AI replacing teachers the future of education? Our two cents on the subject may be worth just that if Liemandt gets his way.
That’s why every teacher in America needs to know what they're up against.
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Subscribe! Don’t miss the next article in this series on the AI reckoning in education.
I’ll be analyzing the only public interview Liemandt has given in the past 20 years.