Alpha School

In 2014, MacKenzie Price and Brian Holtz, then a parent at Acton Academy, an experimental microschool in Austin, opened a school in Austin, starting in Holtz’s house. Initially called Emergent Academy and later renamed Alpha School, it began with 16 students. Students learned at their own pace with educational software such as Khan Academy, ALEKS, and Math Academy, with Holtz serving as a motivating coach and guide; after finishing their academic work, students took part in activities such as lemonade stand competitions.⁠[1][2][1][1][1][1]

Price has no background in education; she said she started the school to give parents choice and believes schools should be results-driven. Joe Liemandt is also listed as a co-founder of Alpha.⁠[3][3][3][4]

Liemandt founded the enterprise software company Trilogy in 1989, and its investment arm, ESW, has acquired hundreds of software companies since 2000. After generative AI took off in 2022, he took $1 billion out of Trilogy/ESW to fund and incubate proprietary AI software at Alpha School, where he has also served as product lead, dean of parents, and principal. He calls the software Timeback, with the goal of bringing Alpha’s “learn 2x in 2 hours” model to a billion children.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

That same year, Alpha opened its second school, in Brownsville, Texas, where about half the students come from poor families and the other half have parents who work at SpaceX’s Starbase. In the 2023–2024 school year, about half a dozen families voiced concerns about the efficacy of the school’s teaching model and the anxiety its culture and AI-set learning targets placed on their children, and one parent withdrew her two daughters in 2024. Alpha denied any link between its schools and student anxiety and said the Brownsville campus had completely changed from an early homeschool-hybrid model that was “confusing and ineffective.”⁠[4][1][4][4][4]

Alpha has also tried to enter public education through Unbound Academy, a public charter school network offering a fully online version of the Alpha model. The backbone of Price’s schools is the 2 Hour Learning model she co-founded, which combines proprietary AI tutoring software with third-party apps such as Khan Academy, IXL, and Amplify. In 2024, Arizona became the first state to approve Unbound, marking the Alpha system’s first entry into public schools; Arkansas, North Carolina, Utah, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states rejected its charter applications. In explaining its rejection, the Pennsylvania Department of Education said the school’s proposed AI instructional model was “untested” and failed to show how it would align with the state’s academic standards.⁠[4][5][4][4][4]

In its Pennsylvania application, Unbound Academy planned to open in the fall of 2025 with 500 students in grades 4–8 and four teachers, growing to 2,500 students by its fifth year. A 2 Hour Learning promotional booklet once stated, “We won’t have any academic teachers”; Price later acknowledged that this was not the case, saying the schools do have teachers whose role has been changed, and Unbound’s Pennsylvania application also required applicants for “guide” positions to hold a bachelor’s degree and a Pennsylvania teaching certificate.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

In 2025, Alpha opened a New York campus at 180 Maiden Lane in Manhattan’s Financial District, which had about 130 students as of September 2026, with annual tuition of $65,000. Alpha’s New York campus is not recognized by the New York State Education Department and is legally a “learning center”; parents must register their children with the state as homeschoolers.⁠[2][6][2][2]

In the summer of 2025, Alpha announced new campuses in many places across the United States, including one near Fort Mason in San Francisco (annual tuition $75,000) and campuses in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina (tuition $45,000 in Charlotte). At the time, Alpha already had campuses in Austin, Brownsville, and Miami.⁠[7][7][7][8][8][8]

In August 2025, Alpha’s director of growth said that about 150 of the roughly 230 Alpha students nationwide were in Austin; the Austin K-8 campus is housed in a converted office building just south of Zilker Park, with tuition of $40,000, and its high school had graduated its first class the previous year. Price said Alpha is a for-profit, tuition-based private school and that the share of students on financial aid was “north of 50%,” without giving exact numbers.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

On September 9, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon visited Alpha’s Austin campus as part of a 50-state tour, holding a roundtable with students and Price, and has held up Alpha as an example of where education should be headed.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In January 2026, many Texas private schools accredited only by the nonprofit accreditor Cognia, including Alpha School in Austin, were unable to apply to join the state’s new school voucher program; the state comptroller, who oversees the program, had sought an opinion from the state attorney general on the matter in mid-December 2025.⁠[9][9][9][9]

In September 2026, Founders SchoolFounders SchoolFounders School is an entrepreneurship high school program opened by the Alpha School network in Manhattan, New York, covering grades 9 through 12, which welcomed its first students in September 2026. Students complete their academics in the morning with AI learning software and spend the rest of the day running their own companies under the guidance of entrepreneurs; the school has drawn attention for its promise to refund tuition if a student’s business does not reach $1 million in profit and for its $150,000 annual tuition.Open the full entry, an offshoot of Alpha’s New York campus, opened as an entrepreneurship-focused high school program sharing the space at 180 Maiden Lane with Alpha’s New York campus, with entrepreneur Nat Eliason as co-head. As of October 2026, Alpha’s website listed one “Founders” location for grades 9–12 in New York and one in Austin.⁠[2][2][2][2][10][10]

Alpha students spend about two hours each morning learning core academic subjects one-on-one through AI tutoring software, advancing by mastery, with four 30-minute sessions in math, science, social studies, and language; in the afternoon they attend “life skills” workshops such as financial literacy, communication, problem solving, and entrepreneurship. The school assigns no homework and uses no textbooks; adults act as “guides” who motivate students and provide emotional support, and do not assign homework, give lectures, or prepare lesson plans. The full school day runs from 8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.⁠[11][4][4][8][4][11][8][8]

Price believes that 10% of a learner’s success depends on academic content at the right level and pace and 90% on motivation. She has also said that the AI Alpha uses is not a chatbot like ChatGPT.⁠[8][8]

Alpha claims that its students learn twice as fast as their peers and that its classes rank in the top 1% nationwide, based on NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test; Price says students achieve on average 2.4 times the academic growth of peers in traditional schools. Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, questioned whether it was appropriate to compare students at a $40,000-a-year private school using a MAP test aimed at public schools; Victor Lee, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, criticized Alpha for refusing independent research to evaluate its claims. Alpha responded that the outside experts questioning its transparency and outcomes were “unfamiliar with Alpha’s approach,” and said the school had hired learning scientists, academic experts, and researchers.⁠[11][4][5][4][4][4][4]

Its supporters include hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who has called Alpha a “breakthrough innovation in K-12 education.”⁠[4][4]

As of October 2026, the locations page of Alpha’s website listed dozens of locations in states including Texas, California, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, as well as Puerto Rico; the Lexington, Massachusetts, campus was still under review and not yet open. Annual tuition ranged from $10,000 in Brownsville to $75,000 in San Francisco and Palo Alto; the Austin pre-K through 8th grade campus and the downtown Alpha High school both charged $40,000.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10]

Alpha School: Official website: https://alpha.school/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/AlphaSchoolATX (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alphaschools/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thealphaschool (opens in a new window)⁠[11]