> When Solis and Garcia had enrolled their kids at Alpha, they say they told the school that their youngest needed help with reading. Alpha staff had told them not to get a tutor and to trust the process, they say. (An information packet from a parent orientation night that year says: “We are creating self-driven, 2x learners and having a tutor spoon feed you help is the opposite of that.”)
Of course when it's a (much cheaper) "AI tutor" it's a totally different matter. The whole framing of a 2h day feels inherently bizarre to me. A "life coach" supervisor hovers around while you click through a lesson packet for 2h. Then you spend the rest of the day in "life skills" workshops learning entrepreneurship or something. The notion that learning math or reading might be more than perfunctory regulatory obligations or that you could learn academic topics in the workshops is totally absent from the model.
Of course they have the same responses as Lambda School or other such grifters. If you want a real human being to teach your child about multiplication so they stop self-harming you just don't have what it takes, you "don't believe in high standards or high support".
recursivecaveat•3mo ago
Of course when it's a (much cheaper) "AI tutor" it's a totally different matter. The whole framing of a 2h day feels inherently bizarre to me. A "life coach" supervisor hovers around while you click through a lesson packet for 2h. Then you spend the rest of the day in "life skills" workshops learning entrepreneurship or something. The notion that learning math or reading might be more than perfunctory regulatory obligations or that you could learn academic topics in the workshops is totally absent from the model.
Of course they have the same responses as Lambda School or other such grifters. If you want a real human being to teach your child about multiplication so they stop self-harming you just don't have what it takes, you "don't believe in high standards or high support".