AI in education: what Forge Prep and Alpha School are selling

Artificial intelligence in education: Forge Prep and Alpha School charge tens of thousands of dollars a year, offering AI tutors for individualized instruction in place of traditional classroom lessons.

What Alpha School and Forge Prep offer

Alpha School and Forge Prep are private education companies that build the entire learning process around AI mentors and adaptive programs. Instead of traditional lessons, they run "interactive project workshops": each child works at an individual pace, and an algorithm adjusts difficulty and content to the child's level. The founders' argument is simple: an ordinary teacher leads a class of twenty-five students at a single pace, so some get bored and others fall behind. An AI tutor tracks each child's progress and recalibrates instantly.

The entry price is tens of thousands of dollars a year, which puts these schools on a par with expensive elite private schools in the US. In effect, parents are buying not just an education but a place in an experiment. The companies sell the future, and the children become its first testers.

• Alpha School and Forge Prep build their programs around AI tutors rather than staff teachers
• The format is "interactive project workshops" with a personalized learning pace
• Cost is tens of thousands of dollars a year per child
• The main audience is affluent families from the tech sector
• Early adopters include venture capitalists from the Bay Area

Why Silicon Valley got in line first

The early adopters of the new model are venture capitalists in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Sean Johnson, a San Francisco VC, told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to move his children to one of these schools. For an investor used to betting on early-stage startups, the logic is clear: if the technology works, the kids will be years ahead. It is symbolic that the investors who often fund such companies are the first to enroll their own children in them.

This is a typical Silicon Valley pattern: tech insiders test on their own families what they put money into. The same crowd was first to switch to electric cars, first to try smart home devices and first to sign up for waitlists for new AI services.

The contrast is telling: polls show that most Americans do not trust AI. They are not ready to listen to AI music and do not trust AI recommendations even on trivial matters such as choosing pizza toppings. But wealthy tech insiders have a fundamentally different risk threshold, and a different idea of what "being ahead" means.

What is wrong with this experiment

AI tutors have no proven long-term educational effect so far. Randomized studies of the effectiveness of such programs hardly exist. These schools run on investor enthusiasm and marketing case studies, not on reproducible data.

The question of socialization also remains open. A classroom is not only about knowledge but also about working in a group, handling conflict and getting along with peers. If a child's main interlocutor is an algorithm, how will that affect their development ten years from now?

What this means

Education is becoming one more field where the gap between the rich and everyone else widens through access to technology. If Alpha School and Forge Prep show measurable results, pressure on the traditional school model will rise sharply, and the elite will once again be in the winning position of pioneer. Meanwhile, it is the children who bear the risks of the experiment.

How does AI-based learning work at

Forge Prep and Alpha School? Each child works at an individual pace, and the algorithm adapts to them. Instead of traditional lessons, the schools use interactive project workshops with AI mentors and adaptive programs.

How much do Alpha School and Forge Prep cost?

The companies charge tens of thousands of dollars a year.