Here's my review as someone who a year ago used to praise and actively mention them in conversations: Alpha’s marketing seems to be a bit dishonest.
All widely-spoken-about issues, for example the "no teachers", or "2 hours a day", or "It's all AI", or "10x (!) student learning", or not factoring in payments to kids (which of course is not viable at scale), or outside-class study time (which would not apply to the public schools they compare themselves to), or seemingly (?) not comparing to other elite private 'schools' etc? Collectively it all seems to point to the same thing.
One only needs to see how their founders, staff or students post online to see hints of something not quite right: ~"Here at AS, our 15yo students are writing super duper complex codebases in a week that could topple industries and revolutionise y". All replies are then from AS-involved parties with fire emojis and shouts of "Alpha revolution!". In any other industry, be it crypto, gambling, supplements etc, only the very naive would not see some potential red flags here.
It’s a similar story with Math Academy (who they're now partnering up with, I believe). When you can make incredible claims with minimal or even zero third-party data, the end result is inevitable. This is why many industries are regulated re claims. It seems EdTech is not (?).
Of course this is not to say that the students are learning nothing or aren't intelligent etc - it's still a ($50k per year) 'school' and they are still learning for probably 2-6 hours a day.
As a question to anyone who knows more: Given they are not an official school, my understanding is that they don't have to conform to the strict and honest reporting standards of the schools they compare against. Given this (?), what's stopping them from simply releasing 'the good' and misconstruing or hiding 'the bad'?
--
PS: If anyone wants to correct or push back on anything, I’m perfectly comfortable changing my mind. I’m all for students becoming smarter; a rising tide raises all boats. Similar story with Math Academy. I'm all for testing and trying new things in the pursuit of progress - especially for something as important as education. But if the testing and reporting is not honest, what's the point of even debating it?
Thanks @Shaeda, for the detailed comment. I generally agree that Alpha School claims are misleading. 1) the original article (which my article was about) itself mentioned some ways in which the claims are misleading, 2) and even then, that article was by a parent, so not a disinterested third party, so all your points related to that are valid, and 3) even if all their claims are valid, does not mean that this is the right way for everyone; schools do a bunch of things other than academics, as discussed in my follow-up post ( https://futureiq.substack.com/p/schools-are-good-actually-we-cant )
But, irrespective of whether Alpha School's claims are true or not, some of the techniques used were interesting to me: 1. No AI (even though their marketing claims AI)... Just data-driven practice, customized to the student, with spaced repetition: I believe each of these individually has enough evidence supporting them, but most schools don't do that, and probably wont; so question for parents is whether they could try to create that for their kids somehow, 2. The incentives; not the fake money, but the progression of who the kids are trying to impress: initially it is the parents, later it is their peers, and only later is it intrinsic. I think most people don't understand this, or at least, don't use this in designing their systems.
the "waste of time" stuff was awesome. Admittedly, in my time (2000-4), IIT Madras computer science was rather rigorous - classes were ~8-12 but every single course had a massive programming term project (to be written in Java, with applets and stuff, and that put me off programming for half a decade after graduation).
However, I spent a LOT of time "wasting" at Sri Gurunath Patisserie. And a lot of the "network" I made came from these sessions.
on the topic of this post, i've been watching this keenly. Daughter (now 8) goes to a Montessori school, which is largely 1-1 (or 1-2 or 1-3 ) teaching and lots of group work to "practice". She is learning at a very fast rate (she goes 830-3, which is good) but our worry is the small class size. So trying to figure out what might be a sustainable model for high school for her.
It's always connecting when alums mention about Sri Gurunath. As a current student, I didn't see it but have definitely heard dozens talking about it. hehe.
I visited IITM in 2023 and 2024 and was really sad to see that Gurunath Patisserie was no more. is there one such "focal point" for people to randomly hang out on campus now?
Navin, what about B? Was there a focal point for hanging out in your time? and now?
1. Unfortunately, I learnt the value of hanging out like this long after I graduated. So I did instinctively hang out in my hostel, but never really even looked for hang out spots or activities in the rest of the institute, so I don't know the answer.
2. This is not "hijacking the post". And in any case, what is a blog but a tool to attract discussions from people who have vaguely similar interests!
sadly no. maybe gurunath was successful because it was at a time when there fewer students. these days, there are multiple hotspots, for example techies roam around and work in this new building called CFI, culturals peeps work/meet in a space called quark. there are a couple of more places like CCD, HFC but none are lively focal points.
Here's my review as someone who a year ago used to praise and actively mention them in conversations: Alpha’s marketing seems to be a bit dishonest.
All widely-spoken-about issues, for example the "no teachers", or "2 hours a day", or "It's all AI", or "10x (!) student learning", or not factoring in payments to kids (which of course is not viable at scale), or outside-class study time (which would not apply to the public schools they compare themselves to), or seemingly (?) not comparing to other elite private 'schools' etc? Collectively it all seems to point to the same thing.
One only needs to see how their founders, staff or students post online to see hints of something not quite right: ~"Here at AS, our 15yo students are writing super duper complex codebases in a week that could topple industries and revolutionise y". All replies are then from AS-involved parties with fire emojis and shouts of "Alpha revolution!". In any other industry, be it crypto, gambling, supplements etc, only the very naive would not see some potential red flags here.
It’s a similar story with Math Academy (who they're now partnering up with, I believe). When you can make incredible claims with minimal or even zero third-party data, the end result is inevitable. This is why many industries are regulated re claims. It seems EdTech is not (?).
Of course this is not to say that the students are learning nothing or aren't intelligent etc - it's still a ($50k per year) 'school' and they are still learning for probably 2-6 hours a day.
As a question to anyone who knows more: Given they are not an official school, my understanding is that they don't have to conform to the strict and honest reporting standards of the schools they compare against. Given this (?), what's stopping them from simply releasing 'the good' and misconstruing or hiding 'the bad'?
--
PS: If anyone wants to correct or push back on anything, I’m perfectly comfortable changing my mind. I’m all for students becoming smarter; a rising tide raises all boats. Similar story with Math Academy. I'm all for testing and trying new things in the pursuit of progress - especially for something as important as education. But if the testing and reporting is not honest, what's the point of even debating it?
Thanks @Shaeda, for the detailed comment. I generally agree that Alpha School claims are misleading. 1) the original article (which my article was about) itself mentioned some ways in which the claims are misleading, 2) and even then, that article was by a parent, so not a disinterested third party, so all your points related to that are valid, and 3) even if all their claims are valid, does not mean that this is the right way for everyone; schools do a bunch of things other than academics, as discussed in my follow-up post ( https://futureiq.substack.com/p/schools-are-good-actually-we-cant )
But, irrespective of whether Alpha School's claims are true or not, some of the techniques used were interesting to me: 1. No AI (even though their marketing claims AI)... Just data-driven practice, customized to the student, with spaced repetition: I believe each of these individually has enough evidence supporting them, but most schools don't do that, and probably wont; so question for parents is whether they could try to create that for their kids somehow, 2. The incentives; not the fake money, but the progression of who the kids are trying to impress: initially it is the parents, later it is their peers, and only later is it intrinsic. I think most people don't understand this, or at least, don't use this in designing their systems.
the "waste of time" stuff was awesome. Admittedly, in my time (2000-4), IIT Madras computer science was rather rigorous - classes were ~8-12 but every single course had a massive programming term project (to be written in Java, with applets and stuff, and that put me off programming for half a decade after graduation).
However, I spent a LOT of time "wasting" at Sri Gurunath Patisserie. And a lot of the "network" I made came from these sessions.
on the topic of this post, i've been watching this keenly. Daughter (now 8) goes to a Montessori school, which is largely 1-1 (or 1-2 or 1-3 ) teaching and lots of group work to "practice". She is learning at a very fast rate (she goes 830-3, which is good) but our worry is the small class size. So trying to figure out what might be a sustainable model for high school for her.
It's always connecting when alums mention about Sri Gurunath. As a current student, I didn't see it but have definitely heard dozens talking about it. hehe.
(apologies, Navin, for hijacking your post)
I visited IITM in 2023 and 2024 and was really sad to see that Gurunath Patisserie was no more. is there one such "focal point" for people to randomly hang out on campus now?
Navin, what about B? Was there a focal point for hanging out in your time? and now?
1. Unfortunately, I learnt the value of hanging out like this long after I graduated. So I did instinctively hang out in my hostel, but never really even looked for hang out spots or activities in the rest of the institute, so I don't know the answer.
2. This is not "hijacking the post". And in any case, what is a blog but a tool to attract discussions from people who have vaguely similar interests!
sadly no. maybe gurunath was successful because it was at a time when there fewer students. these days, there are multiple hotspots, for example techies roam around and work in this new building called CFI, culturals peeps work/meet in a space called quark. there are a couple of more places like CCD, HFC but none are lively focal points.
Great post. Well articulated. You may enjoy this Education Next piece debunking the Benjamin Bloom claim.
https://www.educationnext.org/two-sigma-tutoring-separating-science-fiction-from-science-fact/
Thank you for the thorough analysis, very helpful!