Alpha

Our students love school, learn 2X fast, and learn life skills.
Campuses in: AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, IL, MA, NC, NY, OK, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA & Puerto Rico

[Alpha @Alphaschool]

Private school families across the country are actively seeking a more personalized and engaging approach to education that focuses on rigorous academics alongside life skills. That demand is driving one of our biggest expansions to date.

This fall we will open with 50 Alpha campuses including new campuses in Kirkland, Park City, Denver, Dorado, East Bay, Palo Alto, Malibu, Santa Monica, South Bay LA, La Jolla, Chicago, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Highland Park, Southlake, The Woodlands, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Greenwich, Jamaica Plain (Boston), Lexington (Boston), Atlanta, Boca Raton and Miami Beach.

We are excited to welcome all the new families aboard!

[Kristen Anderson @FintechKristen]

We’ve also had an amazing experience at the new @Alphaschool East Bay campus this year.

So grateful to be there with families like @jasonfreedman’s. Not a surprise there are at least 4 @ycombinator founder parents in the inaugural cohort.

[Alpha @Alphaschool]

@jasonfreedman Thanks for sharing your experience!

[Jason Freedman @jasonfreedman]

What surprised me about Alpha School once we sent our 3rd grader... https://t.co/qizApPEAMa

[Rushil Chopra @mnt_rushmore]

I just made $10k as a teen!

I'll tell ya about it.

I go to a school called Founders School in NYC. For the past 2 months I've been learning cold calling, in-person sales, negotiation, how to build and tell a story, and everything else it takes to make $10k.

So how'd I actually make it? Website redesigns. I walked into VC firms, restaurants, and all kinds of places around NYC and pitched them on a better site. Some said no. Some said yes.

And not everything was websites. I window washed a restaurant too, and I failed the first time. I went back, did it again, and got it right. That taught me more than any yes did.

Now I'm building an agentic neobank to change the industry. It's going to be hard, but with my supporters behind me I know I can do it.

Thank you Nat Eliason, Cam, Sam, Zack, and Mable for the amazing experience at Founders School. I hope to launch soon and build the skills to hit $100k!

@nateliason @alpha_founders @CameronSorsby @founderguideNYC

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

At @Alphaschool New York with @tombennett71 and @rpondiscio

[Aviv Sheriff @Avivsh]

"The Book of Elon" author @EricJorgenson showed up at @alpha_founders to talk to the students.

Some people claim Alpha students don't read books.

In fact, Founders School students read 30 minutes a day after lunch, finish a book every ~2 weeks, and prepare for a group discussion.

Then they get to meet the authors!

[Alpha @Alphaschool]

Our learning science team is constantly looking at data and making improvements.

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

Here is a look at what our Learning Science team are building at @Alphaschool where @MrZachG and @DaveVanStory are doing some amazing work on error correction: https://t.co/pItWTfbo94

[Phil Leininger @Phil_Leininger]

My 10yo son is in L2 (4th/5th grade) at Scottsdale Alpha! Welcome to the area and the school. It is fantastic! He is thriving in his studies (and loving it) and is working now to master a magic show in front of an audience (public speaking), learn to snowboard with a final exam on the slopes (mastery of something hard), and learning to golf (feedback).

[Srihan👦11 yo in AI @agentsrihan]

Your boy just won Build Week at Founders School by Alpha 🏆

I built Bounty. Kids do chores and tasks, earn coins, then spend them in a family store their parents set up. Screen time, ice cream, a yes day, whatever your family picks.

Chores get done. Kids learn how money works. No more screen time fights.

Thank you @Alphaschool @mackenzieprice @jliemandt @nateliason

Here's the moment 👇

[Justin Cross @crossjj18]

I am moving the family to Scottsdale so our daughter can attend Alpha

[Alpha @Alphaschool]

We always tell Alpha families: hold us to a high standard. Austin took that literally. He saw room for improvement, and after encouragement from his guide, built a better product.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

The most valuable thing @Alphaschool taught me is acting with high agency and high urgency.

Sophomore year, I got into a long email war with one of Alpha's academic leads.

Advanced Placement courses, the college-level classes you can take in high school, took us 80 to 120 hours each. I was sure we could do it in 40.

Weeks of back and forth ended with: "You're a kid. I have a Harvard degree."

My guide (@em_findley)'s response: "If you really believe you're right, stop arguing and go prove it."

Two weeks later, a small team and I launched our own AP courses. In about four weeks, students went from the 35th percentile to the 85th, with under 40 hours of work.

Today, I do that academic lead's job, without the Harvard degree (yet). With high agency and high urgency, I didn't need it.

[liemandt @jliemandt]

The last time a new machine threatened a third of American jobs, we reinvented how we educated our kids.

That bet sparked an epic 100-year run.

It is time to make it again.

[a16z @a16z]

What should school look like if AI can help students learn dramatically faster?

Alpha School principal Joe Liemandt joins a16z's Erik Torenberg and Gagan Biyani of Horowitz Andreessen Academy (HAA) to discuss Alpha's model, where an AI learning engine compresses core academics into two hours a day and students spend the rest on teamwork, entrepreneurship, and other real-world skills.

They explore why high standards make kids happier, how HAA is using motivation and real-world building to redesign college, what parents need to believe before choosing a new kind of school, why Joe expects AI to drive an explosion in entrepreneurship, and why Gagan thinks students should pick what they care about over whichever field seems safest from AI.

0:40 How Alpha reinvented the school day
4:47 Making Alpha believable at scale
6:13 Why kids want to do hard things
8:30 Fifth graders vs. the Wharton MBA test
10:48 Keeping kids in the 80 to 85% zone
13:08 Gagan on redesigning college
15:00 Why Stanford and MIT kids are terrified
19:30 Why college lectures are dying
22:45 Why Ivy League parents want a new path
25:00 The 1910 tractor moment for education
27:02 Why families should take the risk
34:35 Joe's dad on his Stanford dropout
42:10 What to study when AI is everywhere
48:33 Founders School's $1M guarantee
51:53 A 14-year-old cold calls Jensen

YouTube: https://t.co/XW2uRy9hWR

@jliemandt @gaganbiyani @eriktorenberg

[Rachel @rachelgoodlad]

Everyone wants to talk about the AI @Alphaschool, and it’s understandable, because the software is impressive and continuously improving…but my daughter went from hitting her learning goal 0 days a week to all 5 a week in a month, and the difference came from her guide. 🧵

[Nat Eliason @nateliason]

The idea that @Alphaschool students don't read books is just anti-AI propoganda.

I lead @alpha_founders, one of the Alpha high schools.

We have a dedicated 30 minute block after lunch each day to read books, and students finish one every ~2 weeks for a group discussion or workshop.

Last one was Meditations, current one is Never Split the Difference. There's plenty of reading.

What some people get confused is that we do use apps which deliberately push a student's reading level through carefully structured passages, since those allow us to be highly tactical in advancing their reading level in a way normal reading cannot do.

But then we ALSO have normal reading. It's not either or.

[Jason Scharf @Jason_A_Scharf]

My two oldest go to Alpha. My middle schooler read Tempest & Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde last year as part of his work and is an avid reader. This idea that they don’t read is just wrong.

The teachers (called guides) are core to the school, they just don’t stand in front and lecture academics.

[David Ganzhorn @ganz]

@abatalion @Alphaschool My kid is so happy with every guide and workshop lead he spends time with at GT Anywhere (a virtual version of Alpha School).

His guide is genuinely invested in his success and well-being.

[Corey Hackworth @CorwinTheGrey]

@rachelgoodlad @Alphaschool This is so great! My kids do GT Anywhere, and it really is the guides and staff that make it amazing for them. The ed tech frees them up to focus on the kids and what makes them tick.

[Andrew Rettek @oscredwin]

My two oldest started Alpha in September. It's too early to know if they're learning at 2x speed, but they definitely love school. They complain if we take them out for a dentist appointment or a wedding.

[Jillian Murrish @JillianMurrish]

Last night, I found my 5 yo daughter at the kitchen sink using our meat thermometer to measure the difference in temperatures between two bowls of water. She'd pour them together, then measure after.

She told me she "wanted to test a hypothesis she had about hot and cold water". Her words, not mine.

She then wanted to see if her hypothesis held true with fluids other than water. And on the experiment went...

She explained how she's working on a new science module at @Alphaschool about setting and testing hypotheses.

Her natural curiosity is on fire! She's thriving and loving school more than I thought possible.