Texas private school replaces teachers with AI technology

“We don’t have teachers,” MacKenzie Price, the school’s co-founder, told the Austin news station. “Now, what we do have is a lot of adults who are in the room engaging with these kids, working as coaches.” The guides instead help students to clarify academic goals they’re working on, Price added.”So it’s the educational information that regular schools are also teaching with, but AI apps are feeding them to students at the appropriate level and pace that they need,” Price told KVUE. 

For the first two hours of the school day, students of every grade level at Alpha work with the AI app-based tutoring system to learn core subjects. The remaining six hours of the day are used for learning life skills, like public speaking and robotics, through their coaches. Price told KVUE that the system condenses six hours of learning core material to only two hours. However, Price emphasized that if a student is struggling with a lesson, the system will review said material. “In a normal classroom, you know, kids move on after a certain amount of time, no matter if they’ve mastered or not,” Price told the station. 

So far, some Alpha students appear to be enjoying the new method of learning. A 5th grader named Byron told KVUE that the new system gives him faster, more thoughtful feedback.”It explains a detailed explanation of why the correct answer is correct, not just saying, ‘Oh, here’s your correct answer,'” Byron told the station. “It’ll say, ‘You can answer the question this way next time.'”