Assertion Partly supported
Liemandt: Alpha School yields top 1% academic performance in two hours daily
“And so we built a learning engine that teaches kids 10 times faster. It's all based on the principles of learning science. And so then now we can commit to kids. You just need to do two hours a day and you're going to crush your academics. So top one percent p…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Private school A-students test up to three grades behind
“Your student academically
On our standard, on standardized tests that we use are somewhere between one grade level ahead.
If they had a straight A transcript transferring in to us, one level, one grade level ahead to three grade levels behind.
And if they're a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Mastering a grade-level subject takes 20 to 30 hours
“The average grade level subject combo, so fourth grade math, takes between 20 and 30 hours
To master.
That's it.”
Disclosure
Alpha School Pays Middle Schoolers $1,000 for Reaching Top 1%
“We have a system where if you're not top one percent, Coming into our middle school, we will pay you a thousand dollars when you hit top one percent in your subject.”
Insight
Liemandt: Skipping Multiplication Table Memorization Dooms Students in Advanced Math
“If you're an advanced math problem, and you're doing seven times eight, and seven times eight to you is still a calculation. Right? You're doomed, right? There's just, there's no way around it. You'll start making careless errors.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: 90% of Students Given ChatGPT in School Will Use It to Cheat
“If you give kids ChatGPT in school and academics, 90% will use it for cheating.”
Insight
Liemandt: Critical Thinking Impossible Without First Imparting a Factual Base
“If you don't give them a fact base, then their opinions are just making stuff up. You have to reason over a fact base.”
Opinion
Liemandt: EdTech fails because school systems ignore academic outcomes and products are poor
“The problem with EdTech today and why it's failed and nobody wants to invest in it is you're trying to sell to a school system who actually doesn't care about academic outcomes back to the bundle. And you can't change the metrics that matter. And so you can't …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: A $500 student incentive program can fix US test scores
“For 400 dollars, maybe 500 dollars of incentive. Remember average education, right? We spend lots of, we spend up to 20 grand a kid. 500 bucks. We can totally fix and change the trajectory and all these bad test scores and all of that by making sure we're moti…”
Insight
Liemandt: Reclaiming afternoon time is students' biggest motivator
“Time back by far is the biggest motivator of kids where if you took our Westlake high school, our, you know, in Austin, where they do six hours a day in class, four hours a day homework, if you're on API track, Right. You can't pay those kids enough money to b…”
Assertion Partly supported
Liemandt: Median US High School Student Gains One Point in Four Years
“The median high school student in America goes up one point on a 300 point scale in four years.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Liemandt expects hundreds of Texas sports academy schools next year
“We expect we will have hundreds of schools in Texas, this Texas sports academy next year, a billion dollars of vouchers are coming.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Bringing AI Education Models to Public Schools Will Take a Decade
“I think it is going to be a decade to get it to public school, and part of what we are doing is we have to show, we got to get the data, right?”
Insight
Liemandt: Learning science enables 2x–10x speedups, but fails in traditional classrooms
“The good news was there have been learning science papers written for 40 years back, you know, even before I went to high school that Talked about how kids could learn two, five, or 10 times faster. They just don't work in a teacher in front of a classroom mod…”
Disclosure
Alpha School pays all guides a minimum of $100,000
“So our, so we pay minimum of a 100,000 dollars at our schools for the guides.”
Insight
Liemandt: Paper Trading Accounts Teach Kids Reckless Investing Habits
“And if it's not real money, right. And if it's just like a, oh, a shadow account, right. Or fake account, it actually teaches dysfunctional behavior. Cause it actually teaches you to Lolo Yolo. Cause there's no downside.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Traditional School Success Requires High IQ and Conscientiousness
“If you're good in normal school, you are both IQ coded and big five conscientious coded, right? Just all the data says that.”
Disclosure
Joe Liemandt invested a $1 billion personal seed fund into Alpha School
“I put in the first billion, and just said, okay, this is my seed fund, big seed fund, to be able to go figure this out,”
Disclosure
Alpha School Eliminates Chat Functionality From Academic Hours After Student Jailbreaks
“Like in our academic two hours, there is no chat functionality. We've tried, and the kids all jailbreak it and get around it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Liemandt: Parents will spend 10% of their income on kids' education
“It doesn't matter what your income is. Parents will pay 10% of AGI. Right, of their income on their kids' education.”
Assertion Partly supported
Liemandt: Trilogy was first 1990s product to sell $1B in AI
“It was the first product in the nineties to sell a billion dollars of AI.”
Insight
Liemandt: Optimal learning occurs at 80% to 85% student accuracy
“What you actually want to keep kids at is between 80 and 85% right. So you can't have 99% because, you know, I mean, they already know it, and they're just, you're giving them content they know. But if you drop down, when you say hard work, and it drops down t…”
