To be clear: I’m very much in favour of technology in education. I’m using it extensively in my own teaching. However, it needs to be used for the benefit of the students. Bearing this in mind, apparently, I wasn’t done ranting. Paul Kirschner sent me this one as a reaction to my previous post, and it’s… wow. We need to discuss Alpha School. The pitch is as sensational as it is absurd: for $65,000 a year, your child gets two hours of “adaptive” learning on an iPad. Then the rest of the day is then spent on “life skills” such as riding a bike or managing an Airbnb. No teachers — just “guides.” No classrooms — just hotel conference rooms and Montessori buildings bought up by a for-profit company backed by billionaires.

If this sounds like Silicon Valley cosplay for the ultra-rich, that’s because it is. It’s the same tired script: traditional schools are broken, kids don’t need teachers, AI can personalise everything, and oh, by the way, please wire us tens of thousands of dollars. The graveyard of broken projects like this is almost full. It has a special remembrance stone for the Carpe Diem Schools, once hailed as revolutionary, now long gone.

Two hours of academic content on adaptive apps is not a substitute for education. It’s screen time with better marketing. Sure, highly motivated kids from wealthy, educated families will click through faster and score higher on standardised tests. They already have every advantage in the world. However, try to scale that to the messy, real classrooms where motivation, context, and relationships matter. Here, the whole model falls apart. What happens when a kid isn’t “coachable”? When they’re tired, distracted, bored, or just don’t want to spend their childhood with headphones on, clicking “which picture is red?”

And let’s talk about those “guides.” No teaching license required, no professional training needed. Just someone chipper enough to hit play on a YouTube brain break. They remind kids to refocus when the AI tutor catches them zoning out. This isn’t teacher empowerment. It’s teacher erasure dressed up as innovation.

Then there’s the politics. The school’s founder is not just an “education entrepreneur,” she’s also a prolific donor to Republican governors and school choice PACs. Millions of dollars flow from tuition and tech billionaires into political campaigns aimed at dismantling public education. In return, vouchers are passed to subsidise schools like Alpha. It’s not about children. It’s about creating a parallel system for the wealthy while gutting the one institution that still serves everyone.

Of course, the billionaire fan club is thrilled. Bill Ackman calls it “the first true innovation in K-12 since KIPP.” Sure, if you ignore the inconvenient fact that there’s no independent evidence that the model actually works. Moreover, every attempt to roll it out beyond the ultra-privileged has failed state approvals. But why let data get in the way when you can pose as the saviour of education on Instagram?

What’s most depressing is that the Alpha model will probably “work” for the handful of families that buy in. Their kids will be OK — not because of the AI, but because they’re already swimming in opportunity. Meanwhile, this kind of hype crowds out serious conversations about what all children need: qualified teachers, strong curricula, safe schools, and equitable resources.

So here’s my final thought: also, Alpha isn’t the future of education. It’s the future of marketing education as a luxury lifestyle brand for the 1 per cent, while politicians and billionaires cheer from the sidelines. The rest of us? We get the bill. Or even worse: they’ll try to scale it, and the children who don’t have every advantage will be the ones who pay the price.