Alpha School, a pricey private school with campuses nationwide, uses artificial intelligence to instruct students. AI schools have been praised by the Trump administration, but researchers say there's limited evidence the model works.
“AI should serve as a scaffold for cognitive construction rather than a substitute.”
“…the teacher’s role is shifting from knowledge transmission to instructional design and behavioral facilitation… Teachers must develop digital literacy and data fluency while acting as safeguards against over‑automation, ensuring that human judgment and educational values mediate AI adoption.”
“…while AI offers efficiency and feedback advantages, traditional teaching remains essential for tasks requiring cultural interpretation, discourse depth, and emotional connection. A blended model—AI for repetitive or procedural tasks and teachers for critical discourse—appears most effective.”
This study explicitly does not advocate for replacing teachers with AI, and repeatedly cautions against doing so
And the school that is opening will still have human “guides” so I’m curious how it will work out. I agree it should be a mix of AI and human, and not fully AI.
This study explicitly does not advocate for replacing teachers with AI, and repeatedly cautions against doing so
You have to excuse them, they used AI to summarize it.
Ironically… so did I 🙃 But I hand-verified everything it said, and adjusted the quotes.
And the school that is opening will still have human “guides” so I’m curious how it will work out. I agree it should be a mix of AI and human, and not fully AI.