Alpha Schools, Beta Grifters

Photo made with AI, ironically

From 805 SpeakEasy and research contributors Angela Givant and Tess Hartwell

Alpha Schools were launched around 2016 with glossy marketing, sleek technology, and a promise to truncate traditional educational learning in just two hours a day. Parents were sold that this is the future: A hybrid of independence, AI‑driven learning, and life‑skills coaching that would outperform traditional schools by leaps and bounds. On the surface, it looks like a tech forward Montessori. And who doesn't love a Montessori school with cute giraffes and the promise of great childhood?

But beneath the marketing spin is a far more complex and sinister story. “Alpha children complete only two hours of learning a day.” and claim to out‑perform their counterparts in ‘regular’ schools. This is a claim you’ll find in their pitch. The reality however as journalism investigations and data show, is that Alpha Schools are not simply an experimental private school model with a hefty price tag, $50-$75K a year. They are the early scaffolding of a massive, billionaire‑funded effort to build a new, for‑profit education ecosystem, one driven by artificial intelligence, student surveillance, and political maneuvering designed to unlock public dollars with minimal accountability.

Alpha Schools are backed by software billionaire Joe Liemandt, who has poured more than $1 billion into the effort with a stated goal of reaching one billion students worldwide. Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, a political influencer known for high‑profile controversies, has become one of Alpha’s most vocal boosters. Apparently monetizing kids through YouTube influencers, Roblox and in-app purchases wasn't enough. Now the grifters have discovered an even bigger market: The classroom

What could go wrong? These wealthy men’s involvement is troubling. When the ultra‑wealthy promote a revolutionary new teacher-less education model , the public deserves to know who is behind it, what they stand to gain, and whether the model works when it comes to educating America’s children.

Alpha’s main pitch is a simple one that students learn academics for two hours each morning using an adaptive AI platform called TimeBack, guided not by teachers but by coaches. The remainder of their learning day is spent on entrepreneurship, public speaking, financial literacy, teamwork, and other life skills. We’ve seen these education subject priorities by a few Republican backed political oddities across the Conejo Valley, including one who is currently sitting on the Thousand Oaks city council and is up for re-election in November.

Everybody wants to raise the next startup billionaire.

Alpha claims students achieve in two hours what traditional schools accomplish in days. It claims its students rank academically in the top 12% nationally. However independent data does not support those claims. When Alpha partnered with Texas Preparatory School, an academically struggling online tuition free school, Alpha leaders claimed their model had transformed outcomes from mostly failing to 50–60% passing. The truth was starkly different: before Alpha: 19% and after Alpha: 21%. Texas Preparatory ended up received its third consecutive F rating, based largely on testing occurring during the Alpha partnership, and the state ultimately closed the charter.

There are similar discrepancies that appeared in Alpha’s claims about campuses in Brownsville, Texas, and across Arizona. In Arizona, Alpha predicted 65% proficiency in English; preliminary results showed 28%. They projected 60% proficiency in math; only 10% of students met the mark. Thus, their marketing pattern is consistent with lofty promises, weak results, and data that does not substantiate their claims.

Beyond academics that do not produce results better than traditional schools, the company’s privacy policy outlines an astonishing range of information collected through its technology such as geolocation, browsing history, pages visited, productivity and idleness, assessments, screen activity, student messages, posts, videos, third‑party app data, purchase history linked to debit cards, and phone usage. These are not schools; they are a data harvesting ecosystem built around minor children. The children don’t get to choose their appetite for risk, and parents are just handing all that data over to the unknown.

As AI systems evolve and vendor relationships expand, the scope of data collection could grow. Biometrics, learning pattern tracking, and behavioral analytics are all plausible next steps. With no independent oversight, parents will have little assurance about how their children’s data will be used, shared, and monetized.

But there is more. Beyond bashing traditional education systems, or promoting technology that is harmful to children and their families, there is the political grift behind these and other for profit education companies.

A September 2026 Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigation found that Alpha co‑founders MacKenzie and Andy Price personally contributed more than $2 million to Texas politicians to advance the state’s school voucher program. After the state of Texas rightly rejected their charter school application, they went welfare shopping on your tax dollars. Their donations targeted the very lawmakers pushing policies that would allow Alpha to access public funds. What in the former-Thousand-Oaks-City-Councilman-grifter-turned-no-longer-licensed-chiropractor Kevin McNamee is going on here?

The Prices funded pro‑voucher Texas candidates, donated to political committees, and even backed voucher friendly efforts in Virginia. Their LLC, Future of Education, contributed $1 million to a committee affiliated with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a supporter of school voucher programs Once vouchers passed, Alpha bypassed the Texas education board entirely and went straight to the comptroller’s office for accreditation, a loophole that allowed them to avoid demonstrating compliance with state academic standards.

And here we are. This is the blueprint to use political influence to unlock public money while sidestepping public accountability. Its clear that Alpha is not just a school. It is a prototype for a privatized, AI‑driven psuodo-education marketplace funded by billionaires, powered by student data, and shielded from traditional oversight.

Public schools must meet rigorous standards for curriculum, testing, financial transparency, special education, and governance. Voucher‑funded private schools with high price tags like Alpha do not. Texas has now provided a real‑world example of what happens when “school choice” becomes a vehicle for private interests rather than public good.

And Alpha is already expanding across Southern California—Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, South Bay LA, Malibu, Orange County, La Jolla. The marketing is polished, the promises are obese, and the oversight is thin. Alpha Schools present themselves as a bold reinvention of education. However, the evidence suggests a different narrative of unproven academic claims, aggressive political engineering, extensive student surveillance, and a business model designed to scale rapidly without independent evaluation.

When examined closely, Alpha schools loose their innovative sheen and instead reveal themselves as a fallacy wrapped in futurism and sold by billionaires who stand to profit from reshaping American education in their own image. Before Alpha becomes the dominant narrative in our region, parents and policymakers should be made aware of the truth about Alpha. Consider calling your state representatives today.

Legislator	Main Office	Local Office
State Senate
Monique Limón 21st District	(916) 651-4021	(805) 988-1940
Henry Stern 27th District	(916) 651-4027	(818) 876-3352
State Assembly
Steve Bennett 38th District	(916) 319-2038	(805) 485-4745
Jacqui Irwin 44th District	(916) 319-2042	(805) 370-0542
Jesse Gabriel 46th District	(916) 319-2046	(818) 380-2460