2 Hour Learning

The founder page of the 2 Hour Learning website says that MacKenzie PriceMacKenzie PriceMacKenzie Price is an education entrepreneur and co-founder of Alpha School and 2 Hour Learning who promotes a school model in which students complete core academics in about two hours a day with AI software and spend the rest of the day on life skills; she also hosts the Future of Education podcast.Open the full entry’s daughters said school was boring, which led her to create the 2 Hour Learning model, in which students complete core academics in about two hours a day and leave the rest of the day for their passions and life skills; the page describes her as co-founder of 2 Hour Learning and of Alpha School.⁠[1]

An article on the company’s website about starting a school says that MacKenzie Price and Brian Holtz founded the first Alpha School in Austin, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, in 2014, and that the school grew from 16 children in a house to more than 250 students across three campuses.⁠[2]

Chalkbeat wrote in January 2025 that Alpha School is “a group of affiliated private schools which are built around 2 Hour Learning.”⁠[3]

The founder page of the 2 Hour Learning website says that students at Alpha Austin have been learning with 2 Hour Learning since 2016. Government Technology wrote in January 2025 that Alpha Austin opened in 2016, serves K-12 students on two campuses in Austin and charges tuition of $40,000 a year, and that the company’s white paper puts its MAP scores almost across the board in the 99th percentile.⁠[1][4]

The schools page of the 2 Hour Learning website lists the learn + earn program under the heading “2 Hour Learning for a Better Future,” describing it as giving Ukrainian students access to free education and learning experiences.⁠[5]

The learn + earn website says the program aims to give Ukrainian children affected by war free access to AI-driven educational apps; school-age students with a Ukrainian passport (or, without one, a passport of a parent or guardian in the same household) can earn up to $2.50 a day, half for spending 25 or more minutes on math in the IXL app and half for English practice on Duolingo. The site lists a past Budapest jumpstart event and a Poland jumpstart event in January 2024, and shows that in the previous month students spent 185,000 minutes in the apps and earned 3,800 learning badges, with the best student logging 3,814 minutes in October; its copyright line is dated 2023.⁠[6]

Chalkbeat wrote that the platform is also used at schools serving refugees; MacKenzie Price said the results of Ukrainian refugees learning virtually were promising but had not been made public.⁠[3]

The new charter school application for Unbound Academy submitted in UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry by Unbound Academic Institute (UT), Inc. says that the school “is proud to partner with 2hr Learning, Inc.” and would operate as a statewide virtual school for grades 4–8, expecting 250 students in its first year and a maximum authorized enrollment of 2,000 from year five; the application says that students at schools using 2hr Learning experience on average 2.4 times the academic growth of traditional education.⁠[7]

The application says that three of its directors, Stefanie Baduria, Andrew Price and MacKenzie Price, are affiliated with 2hr Learning, Inc., and that by the end of 2024 a majority of the board’s voting members would be Utah residents. Minutes of the applicant’s board show that it met on June 27, 2024, unanimously approved the bylaws and the articles of incorporation and unanimously approved submitting the application; the articles are dated June 14, 2024.⁠[7]

An agenda for October 16, 2024 published by the Arkansas Department of Education under the heading “State Board of Education” lists, under its action agenda, the item “Consideration of Unbound Academy’s Open Enrollment Charter School Application Request.”⁠[8]

In December 2024 the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools approved the application of Unbound Academy, an online-only school for grades 4–8. The application proposed “AI-driven adaptive learning technology” that “condenses academic instruction into a two-hour window,” relying on edtech platforms such as IXL and Khan Academy, with “skilled guides” who monitor progress and provide targeted interventions, and with the rest of the time given to life-skills workshops on critical thinking, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting and entrepreneurship.⁠[9][10]

Education Week wrote in January 2025 that enrollment would begin that month and that the school aimed to enroll about 200 students in grades 4 to 8 in its first year, with leaders telling the board in December that they hoped eventually to add kindergarten through 3rd grade; the application said its AI analyzes response accuracy, engagement duration and “emotional feedback via webcam,” that curriculum would come from third-party providers such as IXL or Math Academy and the school’s own apps, including an AI tutor, and that it projected one guide for every 33 students. MacKenzie Price said the teachers would be certified under Arizona’s requirements. The magazine wrote that at the group’s private schools in Texas guides need no previous teaching experience, and that this would be the founders’ first foray into public schools.⁠[10]

Government Technology wrote that Unbound Academy planned to open in fall 2025 with up to 200 students initially and potential growth to 800. Fox News wrote in February 2025 that Arizona had approved the academy for the 2025–26 school year, and that MacKenzie Price said Arizona appealed to her because it welcomes school choice.⁠[4][11]

Government Technology wrote on January 21, 2025 that 2 Hour Learning was then used at three brick-and-mortar Alpha private schools, with six more set to launch in fall 2025; Alpha Brownsville opened in 2022, and the Alpha school in Miami, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, opened that school year and had not yet posted MAP results. MacKenzie Price said she was expanding into the public charter sector, starting in Arizona and gradually moving to other states, with applications under review for in-person charters in PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry and Texas and virtual charters in Pennsylvania and South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry. “I think it’s critically important that we provide an opportunity for families to access this,” she said.⁠[4]

Chalkbeat wrote on January 24, 2025 that ArkansasArkansasArkansas is a U.S. state bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital and largest city is Little Rock. Arkansas was admitted to the Union on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 3,011,524.Open the full entry, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry and Utah had rejected Unbound Academy’s application; MacKenzie Price said an application in South Carolina was still pending. Concerns raised by North Carolina board officials included the $40,000 annual tuition at one Alpha school, the unclear division of roles between teachers, AI and parents, the academic calendar, accessibility, and “massive” online learning for young students.⁠[3]

The 74 wrote on January 31, 2025 that the company said its program was already being used in schools in Texas and Florida, with more set to open in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry and Arizona that fall.⁠[12]

Chalkbeat wrote that MacKenzie Price had sought to open two charter schools in Pennsylvania and that “Both Unbound and Valenta would run on the 2 Hour Learning model”: Unbound Academy, a cyber charter on which the state Department of Education was expected to decide by the end of January 2025, and Valenta Academy, a brick-and-mortar charter in Lancaster, whose application the Lancaster district administration had advised its school board to reject, with a board vote to come later. Valenta Academy also operates as a private microschool in Bastrop, Texas.⁠[3]

Under its application, Unbound Academy planned to open in fall 2025 with 500 students in grades 4–8 and four teachers, growing by year five to 2,500 students and 76 teachers, with a projected annual retention rate of 90% and a ranking in the top half of Pennsylvania schools by year two.⁠[3]

Spotlight PA wrote that Unbound Academy’s pitch centered on the Texas-based contractor 2 Hour Learning and its “AI tutor,” and that a quote provided with the application said Unbound would pay the company $2.75 million over the first year. Andrew Price, one of Unbound’s founders, is married to MacKenzie Price, the head of 2 Hour Learning, and is chief financial officer of Trilogy Enterprises, which would handle the school’s financial services and receive up to $350,000. The application also budgeted $1,000 in marketing per student acquisition, up to $350,000 a year, required guides to hold Pennsylvania teaching credentials, and said Unbound was seeking trustees without conflicts of interest with vendors.⁠[13]

On January 29, 2025 the Pennsylvania Department of Education, in a determination by Interim Acting Secretary Angela Fitterer, rejected Unbound Academy’s application. The denial said the application “provided no evidence of sustainable support,” that the school “lacks the capability, in terms of both support and planning, to provide comprehensive learning experiences to students,” that there was no compelling evidence its programs would enable students to meet academic standards, that it did not even provide a list of courses, that it lacked adequate plans for students with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, and that it had no petitions or letters of support from parents, students or educators.⁠[14]

The denial said the proposed AI instructional model was “untested and fails to demonstrate how the tools, methods and providers would ensure alignment” with state academic standards, and listed “multiple, significant deficiencies,” including unrealistic enrollment growth projections, whether the school could obtain insurance, and its ability to support special education under the proposed budget and tuition rates. The school had 30 days to appeal.⁠[12][13]

Pennsylvania State Education Association President Aaron Chapin said: “AI can help teachers, but it can never replace a teacher guiding a student’s learning in a classroom.” State Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat and minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, planned to introduce a bill for a moratorium on new cyber charter approvals, pointing to Unbound Academy in a co-sponsorship memo that said such operators “perceive our state as ripe for profiteering off of Pennsylvania’s children and taxpayers.”⁠[12]

FOX 10 Phoenix wrote on March 17, 2025 that Unbound Academy was open for enrollment and would be capped at “a couple of hundred kids” in grades 4 to 8 for the next school year, Ivy Xu, speaking for the school, said core academics take 2 to 2.5 hours a day followed by a life skills program, that the method had been tested on hundreds of students in Texas, that the school was hiring teachers certified in Arizona or with equivalent certification, and that teachers still do a lot of the teaching role but AI handles the teaching of academic concepts. A school official said it meets federal mandates on FERPA and privacy.⁠[15]

On June 25, 2025, considering Generation 30 open-enrollment charter proposals, the Texas State Board of Education’s Committee of the Full Board took roll-call votes on Valenta Academy of Bastrop, Texas: a motion to take no action, as the commissioner had recommended, failed 3–11, and a motion to veto the proposal then passed 10–3, with one member absent.⁠[16]

ProPublicaProPublicaProPublica is an independent, nonprofit investigative newsroom based in New York, announced in October 2007 and operating from 2008, whose stated mission is to expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust; it had won nine Pulitzer Prizes by 2026.Open the full entry and The Texas Tribune wrote in September 2026 that the Texas State Board of Education rejected Alpha’s charter pitch in summer 2025 despite a recommendation from Commissioner Mike Morath, with board member Keven Ellis saying he was “just a little skeptical of those types of gains.”⁠[17]

The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry wrote on July 27, 2025 that Alpha was trying to establish a public charter network called Unbound Academy; state boards in Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Arkansas and North Carolina had rejected the program, some on the grounds that there was no evidence it works, and Arizona would open a virtual AI charter school in partnership with Alpha that fall, Alpha’s first foothold in public education.⁠[18]

On November 25, 2025, MacKenzie Price published “Introducing TimeBack: The Next Evolution of Alpha’s Model” in her Future of Education newsletter, subtitled “Why we’re rebranding 2 Hour Learning into TimeBack.” She wrote that Alpha had for years called this system 2 Hour Learning and that it was now getting a major upgrade and being rebranded as Timeback; she said parents often asked whether their children would attend school for only two hours, whereas “2 Hour Learning simply refers to the 2 hours your kid will spend learning academics.”⁠[19]

She wrote that Timeback is “a $100 million project to build an AI platform that helps students learn 10x faster than traditional classrooms,” that its team is made up of learning scientists, AI and LLM experts and SaaS and cloud app developers, that this was the first year Alpha had fully transitioned to Timeback’s app stack, and that the platform was “technically still in beta.”⁠[19]

The guest biography on a Masters of Scale interview page says that Joe LiemandtJoe LiemandtJoe Liemandt is a software entrepreneur and investor who founded the enterprise software company Trilogy Software and the software acquirer ESW Capital, and is principal of the AI-driven private school Alpha School.Open the full entry is building Timeback, “an AI education OS aimed at scaling to 1B kids”; in the interview he explained that the product’s name means to “give kids their time back.”⁠[20]

KOLD News 13 wrote on August 6, 2026 that Unbound Academy operates online in Arizona after receiving state approval, with a day that starts at 8 a.m. with a human-led icebreaker, followed by about two hours of AI-powered coursework, an hour-long off-screen lunch and two hours of life skills electives, ending at 2 p.m. The article said at least four other states had rejected the school’s application, asking it to better define teachers’ roles and raising concerns that its AI model had not been proven effective; Head of School Michael Goto said students learn at twice the national rate and that the approach is worth trying.⁠[21]

An investigation published by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune on September 2, 2026 says that Alpha’s “2 Hour Learning” tagline claims “School is broken, and we’re here to fix it”; that Alpha sought charters in at least 10 states, as MacKenzie Price wrote in a March Instagram post, and was rejected in at least nine, with the newsrooms verifying applications in Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Utah, Arizona being the only state to approve; and that Joe Liemandt put $1 billion into the school and its AI platform with the aim of reaching 1 billion students.⁠[17]

The article says Alpha projected that 65% of students at its Arizona charter would test proficient in English and 60% in math in the first year, and that the preliminary results were 28% and 10%; the scores were preliminary, with official release expected that fall, and the Arizona Department of Education did not provide the underlying scores.⁠[17]

The article says that MacKenzie Price and Andrew Price sat on the Arizona charter’s oversight board while the school paid their companies for services such as the learning platform, which some state boards objected to; the two acknowledged the conflict and promised to fix it, Andrew Price pledging in 2024 a majority-independent board by year’s end, but board minutes show both were still serving as of June 2026. Alpha’s leaders and press office declined interviews and mostly did not answer questions, including about test scores.⁠[17]

As of November 2026 the 2 Hour Learning website remains online with the copyright line “© 2 Hour Learning, 2025”; its schools page lists, in person, Alpha School, Alpha High School, Texas Sports Academy, GT School, Next Gen Academy and Nova Academy, and, virtually, Alpha Anywhere, Prequel, Unbound Academy and The Novatio School, in addition to the learn + earn program, with calls to action such as “Get 2 Hour Learning For Your Private School.”⁠[22][5]

As of November 2026 Unbound Academy’s website describes it as Arizona’s tuition-free virtual charter school for grades 4–8, open to Arizona residents only; in the mornings students learn “using 2 Hour Learning, an AI-powered system that personalizes learning to their level,” with certified teachers on screen all morning whom students go to first, not the software. The site says its students learn 2.8 times faster than the national average, measured by NWEA MAP Growth.⁠[23]

The 2 Hour Learning website presents itself as an AI tutor program for K-12 students: students spend about two hours a day on AI-powered academics and the rest of the day on sports, arts, entrepreneurship and life skills, while adults act as “Guides” who offer motivational and emotional support instead of grading and writing lesson plans. The site quotes MacKenzie Price: “My mission is to show parents that their kids only need to spend 2 hours per day on academics.”⁠[22]

Government Technology wrote that under the model students spend four 25-minute sessions each school day on an adaptive AI system covering math, science, language and reading, drawing on apps such as Khan Academy and IXL plus proprietary adaptive software, with teacher oversight; under Unbound Academy’s charter application, students must earn a full score on IXL or Khan Academy modules before advancing, and the system tracks time spent on each lesson and signs of inactivity, such as looking away from the screen, to help teachers spot struggling students. MacKenzie Price said her team built AI apps for reading, writing and math to “fill the holes” in existing platforms. Chalkbeat wrote that the model combines proprietary AI tutoring software with third-party apps such as Khan Academy, IXL and Amplify.⁠[4][3]

Chalkbeat wrote that a 2 Hour Learning booklet says “We have removed the teacher from the front of the classroom. No one has ever dared to do this before” and “Imagine starting a school and declaring, ‘We won’t have any academic teachers.’ We did exactly that!”; MacKenzie Price later said: “We have teachers. Teachers are critical to any education system.”⁠[3]

The 2 Hour Learning website says, based on data from its flagship Alpha School, that students learn at least twice as fast as peers in traditional school, that the top 20% of students show 6.5 times the growth, and that classes score in the top 1–2% nationally across subjects; these are the company’s own figures.⁠[22]

A footnote on the website’s results page says the chart data are “Based on the MAP Spring ’23 and Fall ’24 results at Alpha School.” The page says almost all kindergartners were in the top 1% of MAP scores by year-end, that every Alpha middle school student ranks in the top 5%, and that graduates have an overall average SAT score of 1470+ and acceptances at schools including Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry, Vanderbilt, USCUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry, UCL, NYUNew York UniversityNew York University is a private university in New York City, founded in 1831, and one of the largest private universities in the United States.Open the full entry Shanghai, Texas (Honors), Austin, Howard, Northeastern, Parsons and FIT; the page gives no sample sizes or method of calculation.⁠[24]

Chalkbeat wrote that MacKenzie Price cites NWEA MAP scores showing “2.4 times the academic growth” of peers and that Alpha says its students rank in the 99th percentile. Government Technology wrote that she said a second-grade cohort at Alpha Brownsville moved from the 31st to the 84th percentile in math and from the 31st to the 71st in reading in one year.⁠[3][4]

Chalkbeat wrote that critics say MacKenzie Price’s claims rest on selective data from expensive private schools. Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, said Unbound “does not have a track record”; Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters PA, questioned how the model would serve students with disabilities and, after Pennsylvania’s decision, called the application “egregiously deficient”; Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and of AFT Pennsylvania, said: “we will not accept districts using AI to supplant the critical role of teachers.”⁠[3][12]

The New York Times wrote that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said “Students and our country need to be in relationship with other human beings” and that a strictly AI school violates that core precept of education, and that Justin Reich, director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT, said there are many places where one is not trying to get children to race as fast as they can.⁠[18]

Government Technology wrote that some teachers and education writers questioned whether these results would carry over to free virtual charter schools or reflected affluence and strict admissions, while MacKenzie Price said Alpha schools have no academic entry threshold and many students receive financial aid. The 74 wrote in September 2026 that the math educator Dan Meyer’s critique noted that Alpha’s Arizona application budgeted $1,000 per student for marketing, half the estimated $2,000 for academics; a Utah official said its instructors seemed more “life coach” than teacher, and a North Carolina board member worried that the two-hour window was “not nearly enough.”⁠[4][25]

The 2 Hour Learning website for private schools describes an AI-based, mastery-based learning platform for K-12 private schools, in which students spend about two hours a day on learning personalized to their level and schools receive real-time progress data; its “Motivation Model” includes student badges that convert to monetary incentives and scholarships, performance-based rewards for teachers and school grants tied to student success. The site lists a November 5, 2025 webinar, “Proof in Practice: How Private Schools Use 2 Hour Learning for Big Gains,” and does not publish prices.⁠[26]

The company’s article on starting a school lists steps for prospective founders: define a purpose and mission, recruit students, plan financing, define the school culture and set a daily schedule; it advises keeping costs low to attract families, adding revenue through after-school programs, extended school years or holiday programs, setting tuition to cover costs, and notes that Education Savings Accounts may help in some states.⁠[2]

The 2 Hour Learning website describes The Novatio School as “The first virtual, bilingual immersion school in AZ.” The school’s own website describes it as a private, virtual, AI-driven, teacher-guided school for grades 2–8, based in Arizona and Texas and founded in 2025, with tuition of $7,500 a year for Arizona students, fully covered by the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, and $10,000 a year outside Arizona.⁠[5][27]

The terms and conditions of the 2 Hour Learning website state that the site is made available by 2HR LEARNING, INC. (“2HR Learning”), effective February 27, 2024. The footer of its private-schools website gives the company’s address in Austin, Texas.⁠[28][26]

Justia’s trademark database lists 12 trademark filings under 2HR LEARNING, INC., including “2 HOUR LEARNING,” “2-HOUR LEARNING” and “TWOHOUR,” filed on June 13, 2023; “2HR LEARNING,” filed on March 22, 2024; “PREQUEL,” filed on June 20, 2022; “LEARNEDWEALTH,” “STUDYREEL,” “STUDYFILM,” “TAUGHT WITH AI,” “LEARN WITH AI” and “TEACHTECH,” filed in 2023; and “MONTESSORIUM,” filed on March 24, 2015.⁠[29]

The Careers link in the footer of the 2 Hour Learning website points to the jobs page of Crossover (remote hiring platform)Crossover (remote hiring platform)Crossover (remote hiring platform) is a recruiting platform started by Joe Liemandt that hires remote workers worldwide for ESW Capital companies, Trilogy Software and other businesses.Open the full entry.⁠[22]

2 Hour Learning: Official website: https://2hourlearning.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/2hourlearning (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Unbound Academy: Official website: https://www.unbound.school/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

The Novatio School: Official website: https://www.novatio.school/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]