Silicon Valley venture capitalist Shaun Johnson is spending $75,000 a year to send his son to Alpha School, a private school that replaces traditional teachers with AI tutors. His reasoning: the current education system is "probably broken," and he'd rather bet on AI to teach his child adaptability and world mastery instead of rote memorization.
Alpha School and its competitor Forge Prep are the most visible names in the wave of "AI private schools." Alpha's core offering is "2 Hour Learning": students spend only two hours per day on AI-driven core subjects, devoting the rest to interactive projects, life skills training, and group workshops. There are no teachers; they are rebranded as "guides" with a starting salary of at least $100,000.
Tuition from $40,000 to $75,000 per Year Buys an AI Tutor Ticket
Tuition ranges from $40,000 to $75,000 annually depending on location. In 2025, Alpha School added eight new locations, including San Francisco and New York, and plans to open nearly 24 more by fall 2026, expanding into Palo Alto and Malibu.
The business logic is simple: trust AI over a "probably broken" system. Alpha claims its students consistently score in the top 1% to 2% on standardized tests like MAP and NWEA, and learn at 2.3 times the rate predicted by traditional models. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has publicly endorsed the school, calling it "the first truly breakthrough innovation in K-12 education since KIPP Academy."
However, all these numbers come from the school's own internal analysis �� none has been verified by third parties or peer review. Moreover, families able to pay $40,000–$75,000 a year in tuition and willing to let their children be guinea pigs are already a highly educated, high-resource sample. Using kids who start ahead to prove "AI teaches better" is a shaky argument.
AI's Sycophancy Problem Contradicts Educational Goals
Scientists have warned that mainstream AI chatbots exhibit a sycophancy bias — they tend to flatter users and give pleasing but inaccurate answers rather than truthful ones. Using such tools to train children to be adaptable and world-savvy seems self-contradictory.
Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price told the Wall Street Journal that the curriculum deliberately avoids "sensitive social issues." In today's political climate, that could cover women's rights, racial discrimination, and immigration history. That might be acceptable in kindergarten, but some Alpha locations now extend through high school. Can an AI tutor that dodges controversy really produce teenagers who understand the world's complexity?