Over the last decade the for-profit company Alpha School has established private elementary, middle and high schools around the country with tuition costs starting at $40,000 a year, including several in Massachusetts.
In the private school model and at least one public school district in Brownsville, Texas, (where according to AIFunLab tuition is subsidized), two out of seven hours in the full school day are taught using the AI curriculum which Alpha School states on its webpage is a learning model that "harnesses the power of AI technology to provide each student with personalized 1:1 learning, accelerating mastery and giving them the gift of time."
A pilot program that adapts the Alpha School teaching model is expected to begin in a single public school classroom in Springfield, Mass., at the end of September.
It's possibly the first AI curriculum to be used in a public Massachusetts classroom, and one of just a few public schools opened by Alpha.
The district's teachers union, the Springfield Educator Association, is pushing back against the pilot, which will be tried out in a 6th grade classroom at the Kiley Prep middle school starting at the end of September.
Riley Hernandez, president of the Springfield Education Association, said the union first heard about the AI model at the beginning of August.
"So just a couple of weeks ago," Hernandez said. "We only heard about it because we submitted a pretty detailed information request to the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership after we received a tip that Alpha School was now working in Kylie Prep," Hernandez said.
Kiley Prep is among eight public schools under the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP), a collective of schools with a novel management structure, established more than a decade ago with the state to improve learning and graduation rates.
The process is very rushed Hernandez said, and because of that "we sent in a Cease and Desist [letter] with the goal of stopping this process and ... until we fully understand what this partnership will look like," Hernandez said.
At the same time the Massachusetts Teachers Association said the implementation of an AI curriculum should be part of larger conversation among more educators.
The MTA's Kristin Campbell said overall, Alpha School undermines the critical role of educators in their students' academic, social and emotional life.
"At a time when a lot of conversation is coming out and evidence being shown that screen time is detrimental to student outcomes in learning and development we now have this set of private corporations that are looking to make a profit in the public sector through adaptive AI to replace educators," Campbell said.
At SEZP, opportunity, evaluation ahead
But Matthew Brunelle, co-executive director of SEZP said their AI pilot is "being layered into a much bigger conversation that unfortunately is removed from the facts of what is actually happening at Kylie Prep."
"When we look at the student needs that exist at Kylie Prep, 90% of our incoming students, our sixth grade students are not proficient in reading," Brunelle said. "In fact, they have a reading score level of grade three... 88% of our students walking in the doors are not proficient in mathematics."
Brunelle said he understands deeply that matters involving the use of AI are ripe for conversation, "and we should be having those conversations," Brunelle said. "My hope is that this small pilot leads to some of [that]."
But Brunelle also said to not proceed with the the innovative pilot this fall would be doing students and families an injustice.
"When we have a potentially promising educational approach that emerges, should students from affluent families be the only ones to get access to it while we wait years before we're willing to try it in public schools?," Brunelle said, adding that their responsibility as educators is to navigate those risks.
Brunelle said he also understands that piloting this in a Springfield public school could look suspect, "given the history of low income communities, in particular communities of color, being subjected to experiments that other communities wouldn't tolerate."
He said SEZP takes that history very seriously, and that's why they're trying this model in a 25 student classroom with a teacher at the center — and with families, able to opt in or to opt out.
After two "open houses" at Kylie Prep for families to learn from educators about the pilot, Brunelle said one family opted out.
An evaluation of whether or not the Alpha School model actually benefits students will take place, Brunelle said, and if the evidence comes back it doesn't work, "we stop."
The pilot will only expand to other classrooms and potentially another school in the 2027-28 school year, if three criteria are met Brunelle said.
"First criteria is that we should have seen very promising outcomes on our midyear interim assessment," Brunelle said. "We want to see that students are at higher levels of engagement — so looking at chronic absenteeism, looking at [late arrivals], looking at the ways in which students are actually showing their desire to be part of this pilot by whether or not they are showing up at school."
The second criteria Brunelle said will come from the Massachusetts certified classroom educator who will evaluate the experience of using the AI curriculum.
The third criteria is the level of support received from Alpha School, which will be critical to its success Brunelle said.
"We could not consider expanding this to other educators because we don't want to set educators up for failure if they don't feel as though they're adequately prepared," Brunelle said.
There is no cost to Springfield during the pilot phase. Alpha will provide technical assistance and is not in the pilot establishing a school, like at its other locations.
Alpha School's success rate
The measure of Alpha School's success over the last decade comes from the company itself. Their data finds improved learning among students.
"The truth is clear," Alpha School states on their webpage, "[y]our kids can accomplish twice as much if they’re not sitting in a one-size-fits-all classroom for 6 hours. Alpha students are limitless, and we’ve built a limitless environment that unlocks their potential."
At a full-on Alpha School, the remainder of the day is used to "explore "tons of workshops that allow [students] to pursue their passions and learn real-world skills at school."
A private Alpha School uses "guides" in their classrooms, who are not licensed teachers. They are considered mentors or coaches.
The pilot at Kiley Prep will be run by a licensed veteran Springfield teacher, Brunelle said, who is able to work with students individually, and at times have whole classroom conversations, even in the designated two hours.
Even so, the SEA's Hernandez said they are very uncomfortable with Alpha School's stated goal of replacing teachers with guides.
"We believe that degrades the profession," Hernandez said. "We believe that really disrupts the very important human relationship between teacher and student, and we think that there's so much more to teaching than a student just receiving content from an AI tutor."
Involving Mass. education officials
The MTA's Campbell said the statewide association will likely call on state education officials to put a moratorium in place on this kind of curriculum for now.
"I think we need guardrails on how adaptive AI enters into our public school classrooms," Campbell said, adding it's a much larger process than any one school district can do on its own.
In documents shared with NEPM, obtained though a public records request by the Springfield Education Association, Brunelle told SEZP colleagues in a June 10, 2026 email that Massachusetts Secretary of Education [Stephen Zrike] "recommended that we seriously explore bringing Alpha to SEZP."
Asked to comment on use of an AI curriculum in Massachusetts classrooms, Secretary Zrike said in a statement that the state Executive Office of Education regularly connects districts to partners and programs that might be helpful for teachers and students.
"Schools and districts decide for themselves whether these partners fit their local priorities. These connections are meant to support innovation and strengthen public education," Zrike said.
Generative AI in schools
Student advocacy groups like FairPlay are calling for five-year pause on all products using GenAI in preK-12 schools.
That "would allow time for school communities, including students, educators, administrators, and parents, to learn about the implications and uses of GenAI in education, to ask questions, and to provide feedback," FairPlay states on its website.
As WNYC reported, the New York City public school system will ban student-facing AI tools for teaching students below grade 9. The Mamdani administration is rolling out a plan just over a week before the first day of school. Chalkbeat New York reported this last week based on interviews with people briefed on the plans and New York City education department documents obtained by Chalkbeat.
Some NEPM employees are in union affiliated with the Massachusetts Teachers Association. That affiliation does not affect how we cover NEPM covers news.
