Chapter 4, Part 2 — The Alpha School: a Case Study in How AI in Education can Change Learning, Teaching, and Assessment

Chapter 4, Part 2 — Applying AI to Education

The Alpha School: a Case Study in How AI in Education can Change Learning, Teaching, and Assessment

The Alpha School in Austin and Brownsville, TX, has worked to challenge existing educational boundaries and reimagine how the educational system could change, in part by leveraging the existing potential of AI and preparing students for the future. Co-founded in 2014 by a Stanford-educated mother of two, MacKenzie Price, Alpha School is gradually becoming a beacon to which other schools look as an example for change (Newberry, n.d.). Price states, “School district leaders from across the country have been coming to Austin, touring Alpha to figure out how they can integrate this type of learning in their schools. We want to help everyone do that” (Newberry, n.d.).

To gain a deeper understanding of Alpha School, I interviewed a high school senior named Kate Liemandt, who has been enrolled at the school since fourth grade. Kate publishes a newsletter called the Austin Scholar and has consistently sent it out weekly for 112 weeks as of this interview (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). Her insights offer a valuable perspective on the inner workings of the school from a student’s viewpoint. Her weekly newsletter, which covers topics such as education and college preparation, has allowed her to reflect deeply on her experiences at the school and on education more broadly, leading to insightful responses during our interview.

While Alpha School redefines what education can look like, the core principles of education — Learning, Instruction, and Assessment — remain unchanged and will be used to structure the Alpha School case study in what the future of education with AI may look like (Khan Lab School, n.d.).

At the crux of how Alpha School has chosen to fully embrace AI and highly personalized learning through computers to reshape the boundaries of its educational system. Aided by technology, the school focuses on individual student needs, recognizing that students learn different topics at varying paces. For example, Alpha School utilizes assisted learning technologies, including AI and online apps, and other instructional resources delivered online to tailor the educational experience to each individual, helping them learn more efficiently. This approach is grounded in the “mastery-based learning philosophy,” a concept also central to the Khan Lab School, which requires students to master a concept before advancing to the next (Khan Lab School, n.d.; Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

The revolutionary aspect of education at Alpha School lies in the efficiency with which material is learned; students spend only two hours on direct learning daily, extending to three hours for those enrolled in AP courses during high school. The founder articulates the challenge as making coursework adapt to each student’s unique pace and meet them exactly where they are in their learning journey (Newberry, n.d.). To address this, the school has turned to AI as a key tool in customizing and optimizing educational experiences. The benefit? These highly focused two hours of intensive learning free up students for the rest of their day to pursue independent projects and do other things.

Learning at Alpha School: Self-Directed and Peer-Assisted Learning

On a typical school day, students start their morning in what Kate describes as a “WeWork-like office space,” where students focus on closing out their rings (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). Each ring represents 25 minutes of self-directed, focused learning on a specific subject, and students are required to close out all four rings daily. While the guides are there to monitor the process of the students, the learning itself is done by the students themselves. As Kate, who has been in the program for eight years, puts it, “I haven't learned anything from a guide in my life ever” (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Instead, if any student is struggling, they are encouraged to reach out to their peers for help. For example, Kate learned math at a faster pace than her friends, jumping multiple grade levels of math in one year, learning at her own pace, and was able to master calculus before most of her friends did. Because of this, whenever her friends were stuck and needed help understanding a certain concept, they would ask Kate for help, which would also encourage Kate to revisit the subject and cement her knowledge as she would have to explain it to her friend. In addition, if neither of them knew the answer, they would further develop their independent thinking as they would have to search for answers to the questions themselves, and in the process also learn how to teach themselves and find information. To this end, Kate eloquently says, “This [way of learning] fosters a community-focused, peer-help culture which I find fulfilling. It allows me to reinforce my knowledge in subjects like math and reading comprehension while also relying on peers for subjects they've recently mastered, like physics” (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Use of Technology and AI at Alpha School
The Alpha School has fully adopted the concept of self-directed learning and AI facilitated by computers, which allows students to learn almost anything through the Internet. The school has developed its own apps as well as using external apps, all assembled on a learning platform designed for students. These apps incorporate AI to help students learn faster, better, and more deeply (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

For example, the school uses Khan Academy, an app with which Alpha students frequently interact. In this app, AI manifests itself as an education-specific chatbot where students can ask questions to enhance their learning of the subjects. These AI chatbots are built on large language models and designed not to give the correct answer, but instead are designed to guide the students in the right direction (Khan, 2023). Just like an excellent tutor would do, when a student makes a mistake the Khan Academy chatbot, Khanmigo, asks the student to explain their reasoning for getting to the answer and then can pinpoint what the misconception is in the student's mind and guide the student in the right direction (Khan, 2023).

According to Kate, AI is also used as an assessment tool to keep track of student progress and offer targeted questions, and recommend specific lessons to enhance students’ learning. However, the AI that is incorporated into the two-hour learning period is all education-specific and has guardrails that do not allow the AI to directly give the answers to students. For example, during their morning online learning sessions, students are not allowed to have access to large generative AI models such as ChatGPT or Gemini, which the school would consider cheating (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

While some of the apps the students use, such as IXL, are pretty much “drill and kill,” they also use other external educational sources that are already online, such as Khan Academy, Albert, or Outlier. There are also two internally developed applications that the students use to learn called Alpha Reads, for reading comprehension, and Alpha Flashcards, which are like a Quizlet but instead ask questions about what you have learned (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

After going through the whole process, Kate’s view on how the technology has affected her learning is, “that apps have the ability to teach any student, but they have to be willing to lock in for two hours and believe in the system” (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Development of Personal Interests and Masterpieces — Facilitated by AI
According to Alpha School’s model, by concentrating on the heavy lifting of learning new material in the morning, and helped by the efficiency of AI, elementary and middle school students are able to spend the rest of their afternoon learning life skills and engage their own interests in a medley of activities as diverse as cooking to expand their understanding of chemistry to running a mile or learning how to juggle or even solve a Rubik’s cube (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). When the students get to high school, the afternoon becomes time to figure out and execute their masterpiece, a 4-year project on an undertaking of the student’s choice. Examples of different masterpiece projects given by Kate included: creating a documentary about sugar and ultra-processed foods, creating a musical, and even appearing on Fox to talk about her findings, as that's where her interests took her.

In the first year, students enter the “explore” phase, where they try out a multitude of things, engaging in activities such as hackathons and exploring other rabbit holes where they are immersed in various subjects and learn a lot about them. It is from that point where the students' paths diverge as they get the opportunity to explore their own interests. At the end of their first year, you pick your “masterpiece project” and tackle whichever undertaking the student chooses (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Through each day’s afternoon learning activities, students have unfettered access to generative AI models such as ChatGPT and Gemini and are encouraged to use them to expedite their workflow. When it comes to the use of AI at the Alpha school, the motto is “If you use AI in the morning, you’re probably cheating. And if you don’t use AI in the afternoon, then you’re probably failing” (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Teaching and AI at Alpha School: “Guides” are the New Teachers

In this type of education system, guides, an adult who is not a teacher, but someone who helps to steward the student’s learning, play a crucial role in the development of the student. Ultimately, the role of the guides is to motivate and support the students (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). They are instrumental in making the students eager to engage with the program, helping them set goals, facilitating discussions, and inspiring them to perform to the best of their abilities.

For example, in the morning, guides are responsible for helping students remain focused for two hours to complete their online and often AI-supported schoolwork (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). However, as Kate points out, guides are spared from creating lesson plans or teaching course content (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). Instead, their primary focus is on getting to know the individual students through conversations, finding varied ways to motivate them, and ensuring they stay on track by helping them close out their rings (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). The guides also have the responsibility of keeping the students on track by making sure they are closing out their rings (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Guides as Motivators
The biggest challenge that comes with an independent learning model such as Alpha School where the onus is placed on the students to learn, is finding ways to motivate the students to reach their full potential. The old cliché, “You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink,” is particularly apt. Even with high-tech educational apps that integrate AI in the most advanced ways, if a student lacks motivation, they won't absorb any information from their time spent ‘learning’ from these tools.

Alpha School addresses this by providing an important motivational tool for guides: a weekly excursion (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). It is the guide's job to figure out an excursion that would interest and motivate the most students to finish their work so they could go (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). If a student misses a day and fails to make it up, or somehow fails to finish their requirements, they are not considered an “Alpha Student'' for that week and can't participate in the weekly excursion (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

Assessment and AI at Alpha School: Progress Tracking and Testing

AI is intertwined throughout many of the apps used in the Alpha educational system, to assess the progress of the student. The AI pinpoints where the student is in their learning journey and assess what lessons the student needs to enhance their learning (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). This allows the student to stay in their zone of proximal development, where it’s easier for students to stay engaged because the content is either too hard or too easy (Murray, Blessing, Bittner, & Hughes, 2020).

When Kate was in middle school, at the Alpha School, grades were not given out, and the students just needed to complete the requisite number of “rings” by spending enough time on their lessons, and then they would be able to pass (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). When it comes to high school, 50% of the grades were given by the apps, and various final assessments are taken on those apps. To fill out the next 25% of the grade, there are weeks when there are progress checks that the students must prepare for (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). Finally, to ensure that this new educational system is working and students' learning is up to the state standard, students also take an official Texas credit state exam, which accounts for 25% of the final grade (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024).

When I asked Kate if she believed this novel learning system was effective, she smiled and responded, “It’s worked for me, that's for sure” (Liemandt, personal communication, April 21, 2024). The test scores seem to support her assessment as in 2023, 94% of AP scores from Alpha students were a three or higher, compared to only 20.7% of other Texas students who scored over three (College Board, 2023).

Alpha School and the Promise of AI in Education

This examination of Alpha School demonstrates how integrating AI into educational environments can significantly transform teaching, assessment, and the student learning experience itself. Alpha School stands as a model of forward-thinking, showcasing ways in which technology can facilitate a shift toward more personalized, efficient learning strategies that cater to the pace and style of each student. The test scores make it evident that this way of learning is effective, and conversations with students like Katie suggest that the extra time can be used productively to create amazing things and allow students to grow their interests.

A critical component underlying the success of such AI-integrated systems is the human element — specifically, the role of the guide. In Alpha’s model, while AI handles the bulk of instructional duties, it is the “Guides” who inspire and motivate students to engage deeply with their learning. This balance between technological instruction and human motivation highlights an essential part of this dynamic that could make this system work: AI can provide tailored educational content, but it is the human touch that turns potential into performance.

While promising, it still remains to be seen whether this model can universally apply, as this is just a small group of students, and it might not be the best learning environment for all students. Ultimately, I believe educational innovations like those at Alpha School merit thorough attention from policymakers as they might hold the essential blueprints for the future of AI’s beneficial integration into education.

References

College Board. (2023). AP program results: Class of 2023. https://apstudents.collegeboard.org

Khan, S. (2023). How AI could save (not destroy) education [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_how_ai_could_save_not_destroy_education

Khan Lab School. (n.d.). Mastery-based learning. https://www.khanlabschool.org

Liemandt, K. (2024, April 21). Personal communication.

Murray, T., Blessing, A., Bittner, M., & Hughes, S. (2020). Toward measuring and maintaining the zone of proximal development in adaptive instructional systems. In K. G. Shoop (Ed.), Advances in human factors in training, education, and learning sciences (pp. 275–285). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50788-6_28

Newberry, L. (n.d.). Redefining education with 2-hour learning at Alpha School. Getting Smart. https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/11/29/redefining-education-with-2-hour-learning-at-alpha-school