Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha School's academic performance is top of any US school
“So our academic performance is the top of any school in the country, and we do it in dramatically less time.”
Insight
Liemandt: Traditional classroom lecturing is the worst instructional method for children
“The teacher in front of the classroom is like the worst way to teach kids. And there's all these ways where kids can learn two, five, 10 times faster. But it doesn't work in the teacher in front of the classroom.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: A student can learn a grade-level subject in 20 to 30 hours
“That you can teach an entire grade level Of material for one subject in about 20 to 30 hours.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: MAP Tests Show Alpha Students Learn 2x in Two-Hour Days
“And then the January maps test come back and it shows they're learning twice as much in two hours a day. So our standard is. In two hours a day, you'll learn twice as much as sitting in class for six.”
Opinion
Liemandt: Generative AI makes traditional textbooks, lesson plans, and tests obsolete
“AI, and this is the generative part of AI that really matters, is all educational content is obsolete. Every textbook, every lesson plan, every test. All of it is obsolete because gen AI is going to be able to deliver, generate a personalized lesson just for y…”
Opinion
Liemandt: 90% of student ChatGPT usage is for cheating, not learning
“90% of the use of chat GPT is to cheat kids. Take it. Now there are 10% use case of people who are like, I need a Socratic tutor where I'm super excited about it, and I need to dive in deeper, right? And that five to 10%, those kids are going to crush it with …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha's K-6 gets more perfect STAAR scores than a 100,000-student district
“One of our building, our K through six building down in Austin gets more hundreds on the Texas star than a school district of a 100,000 kids.”
Insight
Liemandt: Reforming public education is impossible because parents disagree on its purpose
“The biggest issue, education is hard because you have to define the product, and your customer bases have very different needs, right? This is why when I talk about public school being impossible, you, parents do not agree on what the purpose of an education i…”
Insight
Liemandt: Surprisingly few parents actually care about their children's academic performance
“You know, one of the things that I did not realize going in is how few parents actually care about academics.”
Opinion
Liemandt: Capitalism and entrepreneurs are needed to revolutionize schooling
“I believe we need to bring entrepreneurs in. We need to bring capitalism in here and we need to create all the different parts of school choice so that parents can pick what they love.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Two-hour tablet learning will render six-hour traditional classrooms obsolete
“Once there's this tablet and it's two hours a day, what is your education system? Cause it's coming. How do we want our kids to spend their day? Right. And what does society want to say? This is where kids should spend their day because there's no point in hav…”
Assertion Contradicted
Liemandt: Trilogy was the first AI product to sell $1 billion
“Our claim to fame in the nineties was we were the first AI product to sell a billion dollars.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Generative AI will scale high-speed personalized learning to 1B kids
“Three years ago with Gen AI, I was like, ah, this is finally the technology that is going to allow education to scale, and we can take all this awesomeness where kids can learn two, five, 10 times better, faster, and get it out to a billion kids.”
Opinion
Liemandt: Mainstream learning apps have mastery standards that are far too low
“If you use existing apps and use them at the mastery standard they have, You'll struggle to get the results we get at alpha. Because the mastery standard that's embedded in all the apps and used is just too low.”
Insight
Liemandt: Students will learn 10x faster if given their free time back
“You can teach kids to be these self-driven learners where they learn these concepts and actually are excited to learn two, five, 10 times faster, right? They, Kids want to learn as quickly as they can. Assuming you give them their time back.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha students scored 5s on AP World History in under 75 hours
“Our AP kids, like, they'll do AP, you know, world history, where our kids all got fives, because the test came back a couple weeks ago. They all get fives and they spend 75 hours max to do AP.”
Insight
Liemandt: AI unlocks learning science by eliminating noisy classroom variables
“AI allows you to do precise instruction to the student. So, and then second, measure the results. And if you take the AI out, Right? Your effect is dominated by the classroom.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha School is alone in running a closed-loop learning engine
“We're basically the only place that has that closed loop, which is why we're able to get these crazy awesome outcomes”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Alpha raised a 740 math SAT by drilling third-grade multiplication
“We have one student who was, you know, and this is sort of a unique, an extreme example, and I hesitate to say it, but, you know, we had a student who was 7:40 on the math SAT. And in looking, right they were making careless errors, right? They were basically,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: A sub-$1,000 tablet will replace K-12 education within five years
“Sometime in the next five years, I don't know exactly when, but there's going to be a tablet that's less than a thousand dollars that is going to teach every kid on this planet, everything they need to know in two hours a day, right? That's coming, right? It's…”
Insight
Liemandt: Motivation is 90% of education while ed tech is 10%
“So motivation is 90% of the solution. Okay. The ed tech is 10%. And so this is actually just hitting the ed tech and the software and all that stuff. Even though I come from the software ground, the prob ed tech has failed, right? We keep putting ed tech into …”
Assertion Contradicted
Liemandt: The median US high schooler's standardized test score flatlines over four years
“The median person in high school in America actually doesn't learn anything. Like scary that in a maps test, which is a 300 point scale, the median American, right. Goes up one point in four years, one point on a three point scale, not learning anything.”
Prediction Held up
Liemandt: Alpha will launch a homeschool product delivering 2x learning next year
“And so I believe next year we will have a homeschool version that somebody will be able to buy. The kids can be able to sit down and deliver two X in two hours for sure.”
Insight
Liemandt: Non-profit structures prevent successful school systems from scaling sustainably
“Part of the problem on, on schooling today is everything has to be nonprofit, right? The organization is nonprofit. And so then you just, you're caught up scaling, right? There are good school system, you know, charter schools out there, you know where their g…”
