Austin Way

17y/o @AlphaSchoolATX Building the next generation of Ed-tech that will reach 1 billion kids.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@egblonder Hopefully this comming year.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

At 17, I pitched my school's founder to let me build the AP social science edtech. (AP = Advanced Placement.)

That was 2 months ago. Today the practice test results are in.

AP Human Geography (13 students): avg 5.00
AP US History (9 students): avg 5.00
AP World History (9 students): avg 5.00

A 5 is a perfect score. The national average on these exams is a 2.91. Only 14% of students ever score a 5.

In just 6 weeks of using the program, students' practice test scores jumped:

Student 1: 1 → 5
Student 2: 2 → 5
Student 3: 2 → 5

Every student got there through advanced, personalized edtech. ( @AlphaSchoolATX is the future of education )

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@think___y It follows the @CollegeBoard CED for each specific subject

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@Hamultonne Possibly next year 👀

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@pgillian____ A good comparison are BASIS Charter Schools who’s average is 4.18.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@RachelVT42 💯 Next year the hope is to expand to a total of 10 courses.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@jliemandt @mikesully97 @BarryGarelick @rastokke @RCsEvilTwin @AltB56073878 @JonMHenderson1 +12x faster than traditional school students

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@RahimNathwani @HylhRhmym52518 We paused to work on AP FRQ prep. This is still in the pipeline though.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

Our history students spend 45 minutes a day voluntarily learning geography.

Every break, Every lunch... Same thing... GeoGuesser.

So we asked the obvious question:

Why doesn't this exist for history?

We built it.

You watch AI footage from a time and place in history.

Then you guess where and when it happened.

They love it.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@Balanced2024 @rebelEducator You should look into Alpha school summer programs.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@rebelEducator 💯

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@AlanMorte Alpha doesn’t rely on open‑ended, generalized chatbots like ChatGPT.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

A student with a textbook will outperform a student with ChatGPT.

Hear me out.

A team at UPenn took about 1,000 high school students and split them into two groups.

One group got ChatGPT to help them with their math practice. The other group got nothing but their textbook and notes.

The ChatGPT group scored 48% higher on homework than the textbook group. By every metric, it looked like the question was already answered.

Then the researchers took ChatGPT away and gave everyone the same exam.

The ChatGPT group scored 17% worse than the students who never had it.

That is insane.

None of this means AI can't work in education. It means a raw chatbot is not a learning tool.

(Peer-reviewed, published in PNAS, 2025.)

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@ReeceHarding @grok @grok Did Bastani find that GPT Base students perceived any reduction in their learning?

Did the students think they knew more, but score less?

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@kutluokan This wasn’t due to cheating. It was because they didn’t struggle through the coursework, and the resulting learning was significantly less.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@unsadkit We don show videos to students at the moment. They sometimes include factually wrong content and we don’t want to reinforce incorrect information.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

A week ago our students came to us and said they wanted a way to turn their history lessons into songs.

So we built it.

After you finish a lesson, you can generate a song about everything you just learned in any style you want. Pop, rap, country, whatever.

Now students are doing their history just to get to the song.

More of their songs in the reply.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@peter_ackerson (Another one of our students songs)...

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

We don't show the students the videos, as AI is too unreliable. That said, here is another song one of our students generated.

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

@zorzini @nicoloboschi Sure

[Austin Way @Austin_Way]

AI tutors are edtech garbage.

No learning happens from just reading. When you read something, it gets sorted into short-term memory.

Within an hour, your ability to recall it drops by 90%.

Things you recall from memory are retained 4x better.

AI tutors create the illusion of fluency, and without recall they are useless.

Apply learning science and it's just adaptive-personalized edtech.