In the fall of 2025, senior leaders from Alpha School organized a series of meetings in Lower Manhattan, inviting affluent New York City parents to learn about the company’s upcoming campus. Some of these sessions were led by Alpha co-founder MacKenzie Price and its billionaire principal, Joe Liemandt. The aim was to showcase how Alpha was “reinventing education” using AI-driven learning systems. The ultimate objective: convince families to leave the city’s conventional schools and join what Alpha originally described as “the most innovative private school in New York.”
The strategy appears to have paid off. This academic year, more than a dozen families have enrolled their children on the sixth and seventh floors of the high-rise at 180 Maiden Lane. According to Alpha New York’s current website, the “school day” runs from 8:15 am to 4:00 pm, with an annual “tuition” listed at $65,000. (Early enrollees received a reduced rate.) As Price explained to the Free Press in May, “Alpha is a school product designed for a specific audience,” and “it is a high-end, costly private institution.”
However, the Maiden Lane location isn’t actually a school. Last summer—well before many of the information sessions took place—the New York State Education Department rejected Alpha’s application to operate as an independent school, according to a previously undisclosed copy of the decision reviewed by WIRED. “The proposed instruction is mostly online, relying on an AI platform called 2 Hour Learning™ to teach core academic subjects with minimal or no oversight from qualified educators,” the department’s counsel wrote. “Generally, [the NYSED] does not approve online-only schools as proposed.”
Roughly a week later, Alpha posted on X inviting parents to an info session for the Maiden Lane site, which it referred to as the “Alpha Anywhere Center.” Alpha Anywhere is the company’s homeschooling product line, marketed at approximately $10,000 per year. While the company’s promotional materials didn’t clearly state it, parents who signed up their children at the Maiden Lane campus were required to officially register as homeschoolers.
ILLUSTRATION: ELENA LACEY/GETTY IMAGES
After WIRED began contacting Alpha employees for this report in April, the company resubmitted its application to be recognized as a school. That application is still under review, according to the NYSED. Even if state authorities eventually grant approval, Alpha will still need to prove to New York City public school officials that its core academic instruction is at least “substantially equivalent” to that of the city’s public schools. This comes at a time when New York City’s top education official has labeled AI an “invasive technology,” and parents and teachers are pushing for stricter limits on how students use AI in their studies.
As WIRED has reported before, Alpha employs “guides” to supervise classrooms. These adults do not deliver academic instruction; instead, they encourage students to complete lessons through personalized learning software. (“We refer to them as guides, coaches, teachers,” Price has said. “We use those terms somewhat interchangeably.”) The company combines this app-led teaching method with a competitive incentive system. At certain campuses, students can earn hundreds of dollars over time for high test scores or completing a full day’s worth of lessons. At the Brownsville, Texas campus, sources previously told WIRED that children who didn’t meet their learning targets were reportedly excluded from certain rooms and denied perks like field trips, toys, or off-campus lunches. Alpha claims its model allows students to absorb twice as much academic content in just two hours as peers do in a full day at traditional schools. This leaves afternoons open for workshops on life skills such as resilience, entrepreneurship, and leadership.
WIRED spoke with several individuals involved in launching, setting up, and staffing new Alpha campuses nationwide. Those familiar with the New York location expressed concerns about how transparent the company was with prospective parents regarding the fact that their children wouldn’t actually be attending a formal school. “Many of these parents are just buying into the hype,” one source said. “Their kid comes home with a new Nintendo Switch, an AI robot, an iPad—so the kid’s happy, and they’re happy too.”
After WIRED reached out to parents enrolled at Alpha, a group responded with a joint statement acknowledging that the New York City campus is not a school but a “homeschooling support center.” They added that they “are thankful for the positive difference the Alpha Anywhere Center has made for our children and enthusiastically recommend it to families looking for an innovative, supportive, and inspiring educational community for their homeschooling journey.” The statement included 13 named supporters and 22 others who “wished to show their backing while keeping their child’s educational path private.” Other families contacted by WIRED did not respond.
