A $40,000-a-Year AI School Is Opening in Oklahoma. No Teachers Required.
Alpha School opens its Edmond and Tulsa campuses on August 12, bringing a model that has generated both glowing national press coverage and pointed criticism from educators, researchers and privacy advocates. Students spend two hours each morning on an AI learning platform — half an hour per core subject — and afternoons in project-based workshops led by guides who are not required to have teaching credentials and don’t participate in instruction.
Tuition starts at $40,000 a year, nearly three times the cost of the next-most-expensive private school in each market. Founding families receive a $10,000 annual discount for five years. There is no financial aid and, at least for the first year, no Parental Choice Tax Credit — the school was listed on the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s approved list before Oklahoma Watch asked about it, at which point the state removed it.
Gov. Kevin Stitt hosted Alpha’s Texas conference in December, uploaded video praising AI schools and arranged for Alpha graduates to visit prospective Oklahoma families. That enthusiasm drew notice given that Stitt signed a law this year limiting virtual instruction in public school districts to 12 hours annually — a restriction that does not apply to private schools like Alpha.
Concerns about the platform include reports of AI hallucination in curriculum materials, seemingly unsolvable quiz questions, privacy issues including screen monitoring and photographs of students, and accusations that Alpha scraped online learning platforms to develop its proprietary AI program. Alpha disputes those accounts and says it may pursue legal action against the outlets that published them.
The first campuses had 26 students enrolled in Edmond and 32 in Tulsa as of July 20. Alpha has not yet secured a Tulsa location.
Maya Henry’s story has all the details.
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Oklahoma Capitol architect Solomon Layton was born on this day in 1864.
Ciao for now,
Ted Streuli
Executive Director, Oklahoma Watch
tstreuli@oklahomawatch.org
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