[HN Gopher] Unbound Academy hasn't replaced teachers with AI
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Unbound Academy hasn't replaced teachers with AI
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-10-01 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danmeyer.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danmeyer.substack.com)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is a good article. Dan Meyer, like his PhD supervisor Jo
| Boaler, is very much in the camp that traditional classroom
| education is good, and that improvements come by working through
| school districts, administrators and classroom teachers.
|
| I'm not saying this to cast doubt on any of the facts in the
| article. Just pointing out that Dan, in general, has a less
| optimistic view of AI in education, than I'd expect of the median
| HN commenter.
|
| That said, I'll share my thoughts on Alpha School, based on
| everything I've read (both things published by the school, and
| things I've read from parents online and in private forums):
|
| - the '2x growth' in their marketing is way oversold; their
| typical 4th grader isn't doing math at the level of a typical 8th
| grader.[0]
|
| - the '2 hours/day' in their marketing is oversold; students
| often work longer than that.
|
| - only 25% of their students use Math Academy. The rest use IXL
| or ALEKS.
|
| - in their charter school application, the amount they proposed
| charging for their software platform was unreasonable, given the
| minor role it plays in outcomes (10% according to Matt Bateman,
| who works there) [1]
|
| - the core idea of their 'timeback' platform (that monitors
| student activity in realtime via video camera and screen
| recording) is good, but I have not seen it and have no idea
| whether it's real or how good it is
|
| More of my thoughts from back in April:
| https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1912571014107787730
|
| [0] https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1971804784475996469
|
| https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1971817857286803873
|
| [1] https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1912586493086036148
| arjie wrote:
| The intellectual pedigree actually explains everything. Jo
| Boaler is the one responsible for charging $5k/hr to advise
| schools to end middle school algebra. In an amusing confluence
| of concepts, Garry Tan (CEO of YC - whose site we're on)
| describes her as "infamous and disgraced"[0].
|
| I don't know about that, but when I discovered that San
| Francisco schools weren't teaching algebra I was at first
| impressed that American children were doing Group Theory in 8th
| grade (something we only learn in the 12th standard in Tamil
| Nadu in India where I'm from) and figured moving that to 9th
| isn't a big deal only to find that they meant the basic stuff
| (linear equations and the like, what we learn in the 7th
| grade).
|
| Honestly, I can't take anyone seriously who would try so hard
| to set back children from learning what is fairly basic
| Mathematics at that age. Children are capable of learning this.
| Or at least a sufficiently large amount are that we should be
| teaching them to a high standard.
|
| For Alpha School, I think the Slate Star Codex review is likely
| more informative than this clearly polemic article.
|
| 0: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1953654484997169443
|
| tl;dr This is from the people who want to delay Mathematics
| education to later in a child's life (algebra to 9th grade
| onwards)
| tptacek wrote:
| Ironically, by taking the author of this article seriously,
| the preceding comment makes a more much persuasive critique.
| arjie wrote:
| I suspect most people will land on this where their
| predilections already lead them. To me, the effort to delay
| Mathematics education is sufficiently bad that I can
| dismiss the rest of that school of education without much
| concern. If they are right, they are right by accident and
| there's not much to learn there. I know there are others
| like me out there, and for them a quick reminder of who
| this person is will probably be sufficient for them to
| escape reading (what they will believe to be) a low-quality
| post. Time isn't infinite after all.
|
| If you feel less convinced by this, it's simply that you're
| not in my audience. But I think it's probably worth
| sticking a tl;dr on the original. Let me do that.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I usually regret reading Dan Meyer's articles, but this
| one I really enjoyed. It pointed at a couple of sources
| that led me down a rabbit hole back when I encountered
| it.
|
| I don't know whether Dan Meyer is in favour of delaying
| math education. I do know he favours delivering education
| in a school setting with in-person human teachers, but
| the latter doesn't imply the former.
|
| And he works on making really nice tools for exploring
| math: https://www.desmos.com/
| tptacek wrote:
| Desmos is really neat.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >Jo Boaler
|
| The anti-math moron??
| ge96 wrote:
| Being a teacher nowadays must be tough, low pay, students that
| don't respect their teachers, low-attention span of kids due to
| tech.
| wagwang wrote:
| Depending on the area you teach, you might just be a daycare
| worker.
| bboygravity wrote:
| This could be a quote from some Roman around the year 100 :p
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Regarding the 'low pay' part of your comment.
|
| Pay varies _significantly_ between different states and cities.
|
| There are elementary school teachers in San Francisco whose
| total pay and benefits in 2023 were $150k or more:
|
| https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Eld%20C...
|
| And to compare those salaries to other jobs, you have to
| consider:
|
| - the typical academic achievement of those teachers and the
| alternative roles available to them, and
|
| - the fact that in another role they would have to work 25%
| more (50 weeks per year instead of 40 weeks per year)
| Swizec wrote:
| > There are elementary school teachers in San Francisco whose
| total pay and benefits in 2023 were $150k or more:
|
| In 2025 San Francisco we have ads on buses advertising low
| income housing to people making less than $185k/year.
|
| https://x.com/Swizec/status/1972053995050119631
| Waterluvian wrote:
| America really does sometimes looks like a first world and
| third world country in a trench coat.
| arjie wrote:
| Because we provide social housing for people? That seems
| hardly a sin. The limits published here seem reasonable
| https://www.sf.gov/reports--may-2024--income-and-rent-
| limits...
|
| So a primary school teacher who is the sole breadwinner
| of a 4-person household will be eligible for housing
| support. That doesn't seem that outlandish. If anything
| it seems very much like a developed nation property. I
| grew up in the Third World: America is nothing like it.
| Even the ways it fails are not like the Third World.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oh no no, just a superficial observation of how you can
| see a streetcar ad that reads like budget homes... for
| those under $185k.
|
| My region's version of that ad is just as ridiculous to
| 95% of the world.
|
| However I do think the U.S. does have a lot of range,
| which does look really weird at times. You can cross a
| county line and suddenly the roads turn into an amusement
| park ride. I think that's the main "whaaat?" That comes
| to mind when I've travelled there. Well, that and
| abandoned cars on the side of the road.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| That $185k is 110% of AMI (Area Median Income) for a
| household of 5 people.[0] If you're a single-income
| household with 4 dependents then, yes, you may find it
| difficult to live in San Francisco.
|
| But, again, CoL isn't relevant when we're discussing
| whether a particular job has 'low pay'. My point was (and
| is) that teachers in San Francisco are well paid compared
| with people with similar academic achievement and similar
| capabilities in the same city. Even when you don't adjust
| for the number of weeks they work.
|
| [0] Here are the 2025 110% AMI caps by household size from
| the City's chart (gross income, before taxes):
|
| 1 person: $120,000
|
| 2 people: $137,150
|
| 3 people: $154,300
|
| 4 people: $171,450
|
| 5 people: $185,150 - this is the "$185k*" you saw
|
| 6 people: $198,900
|
| https://media.api.sf.gov/documents/2025_AMI-IncomeLimits-
| HMF...
| Swizec wrote:
| > But, again, CoL isn't relevant when we're discussing
| whether a particular job has 'low pay'
|
| Well it's a little relevant when talking specific
| numbers. It's hard to know if $number is high or low
| without some reference.
|
| Thanks for clarifying the AMI stuff
| magicalist wrote:
| Also kind of important to have teachers that can live within
| commuting distance of where they are teaching, so CoL ends up
| pretty important. Even more so if you want teachers that are
| older than, say, 22 and might have a partner and/or kids so
| won't want to live in a studio or have multiple roommates.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The median individual income in San Francisco in 2023 was
| 69,260 USD. The median _household_ income (which may
| include income from more than one earner) was 141,446 USD.
|
| Many people commute to San Francisco from other places in
| the Bay Area.
|
| CoL isn't a concern that is unique to teachers. When
| discussing 'low pay' of a particular job, it's relevant to
| compare it with other jobs in the same location, which
| those same people might be able to get.
|
| (Also - there is research (which I don't have time to dig
| up now) that shows public school teachers who leave
| teaching tend to earn the same or less in their new
| career.)
| magicalist wrote:
| > _CoL isn 't a concern that is unique to teachers_
|
| Of course it's not, which is exactly the point. In many
| places, low teacher pay is predicated on the fact that
| there are plenty of people willing to accept the low pay
| because there are plenty of people willing to accept the
| low pay. That's not true everywhere.
|
| If you want to have teachers at your school, you have to
| pay them enough to live within commuting distance,
| subject not just to tolerance of the commute, but you're
| also in competition with all the communities also within
| commuting distance. In my experience, aside from usual
| teacher attrition, Bay Area teachers don't leave for a
| different career, they leave for a different location,
| and usually those places need teachers too.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Are you saying that teachers working for SFUSD have 'low
| pay'?
| jltsiren wrote:
| $150k is not that much for San Francisco, especially when it
| includes benefits. Two people earning that salary would not
| affort the median home in the area. In that sense, it's lower
| than the salary people generally expect from a middle class
| job.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| $150k is over 2x the median individual income for San
| Francisco.
| alphazard wrote:
| The social structure of a typical American public school is
| prisoners and prison guards. Why would any of the prisoners
| have respect for the prison guards? Most of the prisoners
| aspire to be something higher paid and less degrading than a
| prison guard. They aren't role models, they are just captors.
| ge96 wrote:
| I suppose I was one of the lucky ones where my science
| teacher supported me in my interests/made learning fun
| bitwize wrote:
| Is the fundamental model of a school from one of the post-
| historical paradises of education, like Japan, Singapore, or
| Finland much different? If anything, schools from those
| countries are stricter and instill more discipline than do
| schools in the USA. I know people who work in education; if
| they fail to be more than a prison guard, it's not through
| lack of trying. They're just hamstrung by administration
| every time they try to actually teach.
|
| Perhaps a better analogy would be lab techs and lab rats. The
| students are the rats. They have a battery of experiments
| performed on them by lab techs (teachers) overseen by
| scientists (administration) who also determine which
| experiments to run. The problem is, what's being practiced is
| not really a science but a form of alchemy: how to determine
| a repeatable process to refine the lead of incoming children
| into the gold of model citizens who make all the right
| decisions according to the latest knowledge of what "right"
| is? (This was called "Outcome Based Education" in the 90s and
| "Social Emotional Learning" today.) The missing bit is that
| learning is an active process which requires involvement of
| the child.
|
| But anyway, woe betide the lab tech who arrogates to perform
| the experiment in a manner not prescribed by their betters
| with Ph.D.s (say, in a way that's been shown to get results)!
| bluGill wrote:
| > students that don't respect their teachers
|
| Depends on where you teach. Some communities are much better
| than others.
|
| I believe the majority of those reading this message have kids
| who respect their teachers (or if you had kids they would). You
| also live in an area where other kids respect their teachers if
| you have a choice (some of you don't, but if you have the
| choice and you will make that choice).
|
| Near where I live there is an "inner city" school where the
| average teacher has been teaching for about 9 months - despite
| many teachers who have been there are 30 years. The typically
| teacher works just long enough to get some experience and then
| gets a job at a "suburban" school that pays less(!) but the
| students respect the teachers more.
|
| > low-attention span of kids due to tech.
|
| Kids have always been low attention span. Things are probably
| better than before because we have ADHD treatments that work
| that we just ignored in the past. Blaming tech is just the
| latest thing, but you can always find parents blaming low
| attention span on whatever the latest fad to blame it on is.
| Truth is kids are not really "designed" to sit in a classroom
| for hours every day - but it is still the best way we have to
| set them up for a modern life so we force it anyway.
| ge96 wrote:
| I think it's a thing with regard to tik tok videos for
| example where they use split-screening (main content plays on
| top, and some car doing flips plays on the bottom)
|
| Also when I was in school we didn't have smart phones, at
| least a slide phone with a full qwerty keyboard was the
| latest thing, can do a lot less than a full computer in your
| pocket/social media
| ryandrake wrote:
| Most of my kid's friends can't even get through a feature-
| length movie--even one _made for kids_. Every time there 's
| a lull in the action for 10 seconds or more, the phones
| come out (or they start talking with each other, if no
| phones are present). If that happens more than 3-5 times,
| they're pretty much checked out and usually just leave the
| room. It's got to be constant stimulation and/or constant
| dialog to keep them interested. A slow, panning shot across
| some scenery? Forget it.
| ge96 wrote:
| Yeah and a lot of the popular videos on YouTube it's a
| new scene/jump cut like every second or two
|
| Tangent hard work is not appreciated too because a
| project that took months to work on is condensed to a 3
| min video as if it happened overnight, not worth
| attempting when seeing how hard something is to
| do/discouarging
| HALtheWise wrote:
| There's a lengthy, and quite good, deep-dive into Alpha School by
| a current parent here, for anyone interested. Spoiler, "AI" isn't
| that big a portion of what they're doing, but some of their
| insights and systems around student motivation are actually
| interesting and very effective.
|
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
| jetrink wrote:
| I heard one of the founders interviewed on the Hard Fork
| podcast[1] (which confusingly is primarily concerned with AI,
| rather than crypto.) I went in with very negative expectations,
| but came away with a positive impression and optimism that they
| might be onto something. As you say, AI is not core to the
| project. Instead, the focus is on using technology to
| facilitate individualized learning. It is true that teachers
| are 'replaced', but by humans whose job it is to keep the
| students focused and motivated, rather than to convey
| information.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/podcasts/hardfork-
| educati...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I had the same reaction to this podcast:
|
| https://joincolossus.com/episode/building-alpha-school-
| and-t...
|
| I like the vision and believe in the good intentions. I don't
| know whether they've achieved much so far.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If your child took the MAP Growth test in Fall 2024 or Spring
| 2025, you can compare their RIT scores to the mean score of an
| Alpha School student in the same grade:
|
| https://go.alpha.school/hubfs/MAP%20Results%20-%2024%2025/20...
|
| Assuming a normal distribution, this will indicate whether your
| child is above or below the median Alpha School student. This
| may be impact your view about how well Alpha School is doing vs
| whatever school your kid goes to.
| coliveira wrote:
| The tech industry has played a big role in scamming society into
| changing education to conform to them, instead of the opposite.
| Nowadays, schools are trying to "educate" children to use
| technology and in the process they're making the other more
| important goals become secondary. Critical thinking, reading,
| writing, math skills, etc., are all going down because schools
| think it is more important to use the latest gadget and software.
| twothreeone wrote:
| Not to go against the OP, but that headline has to be one of the
| dumbest framings I've seen in a while.. why would you want to
| replace human teachers with machines? There are an estimated 250
| million kids going without any kind of schooling in the world
| [1], if AI could provide even the most basic kind of education to
| them it would be a net benefit.
|
| [1] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1156366
| barbazoo wrote:
| Realistically though, how would it ever come to that? This
| sounds like the least profitable thing anyone could do.
| twothreeone wrote:
| Crazy, right? Doing a good thing that's a net positive for
| humankind is being punished by the market.. it's almost like
| markets don't foster beneficial long-term outcomes and we
| need other entities to enforce those.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is OLPC levels of naivety, chat bots aren't going to solve
| the socioeconomic and political problems that cause illiteracy.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If you want to reach more kids with the same teachers, you need
| fewer teachers per student. Unbound has more teachers per
| student, so it's in the opposite direction from that.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I feel like it'd be perfect if all these school replacements
| (home-school, charter school, online only schools) went after
| replacing the dearth of quality after school options.
|
| Really the only options for after school activities after
| graduating from elementary school are competitive sports,
| competitive math, competitive music, competitive chess, etc.
| which are pretty much all zero sum in nature.
|
| I'd love options for kids that let them gradually explore their
| interests to help them discover future vocational interests in a
| way that was beneficial to society such that they don't have an
| existential crisis when they hit senior year in high school and
| have to pick a college major.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| pretty much all zero sum in nature.
|
| Doesn't every participant gain something from the practice and
| the competition, even if they wind up in last place?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Article from January-March.... how's progress been since?
|
| Didn't go so well in Pennsylvaniaa
|
| _State rejects application for cyber charter school with AI
| teacher and two hours of daily class_
|
| https://penncapital-star.com/education/state-rejects-applica...
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