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During a Fox Business interview on Tuesday morning, Education Secretary Linda McMahon promoted the use of artificial intelligence in schools, citing a controversial online charter school that has been criticized for utilizing inaccurate and confusing AI-generated lessons.
When asked whether she viewed AI as a “tool” or a “threat,” the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO chose the former.
“I certainly believe AI is definitely a tool used correctly, and I’ve seen it in action,” McMahon said in the interview. “I have visited the Alpha School in Austin, Texas, where they use AI for the first two hours every single morning.”
AI is an “additional tutor” that can provide “one-on-one instruction” to students, McMahon said. “It is incredibly effective.”
Alpha School is used by online-only K-12 students as an alternative for in-person learning across the country, and McMahon frequently touts the Austin-Texas-based company as a success story. Yet some families have reported concerns about its effectiveness, with parents warning that its lessons can lead to high stress levels among students.
Evidence of the online school’s problems was obtained and published by 404 Media earlier this year. The outlet reported that internal documents from the company suggested that AI lessons generated at the school were doing “more harm than good.”
For example, lessons and tests with questions often featured multiple-choice answers that didn’t make sense.
“These questions not only fail to meet SAT standards but also fall short of the quality we promise to deliver,” one employee’s assessment of the AI-modeled lessons read. “From a student’s perspective, when answer options don’t logically fit the question, it feels like a betrayal of their effort to learn and succeed. How can we expect students to trust our assessments when the very questions meant to test their knowledge are flawed?”
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“Accuracy of the content provided by the [AI] tutor is a concern,” another internal assessment stated. “There are instances where it not only delivers incorrect answers but also provides convincing yet flawed justifications. Despite raising multiple queries about a particular answer, the chatbot erroneously confirmed an incorrect option as correct.”
Former employees of the company also expressed their concerns.
“Students are being treated like guinea pigs,” one former Alpha School employee said.
“Students incoming into AP Biology the previous year were seriously lacking in their foundational skills,” another employee noted.
Disturbingly, Alpha School also collects data on the students themselves, including video recordings, and publishes it to a Google Drive online. That folder, 404 Media reported in February, was made accessible to anyone who had the link.
“We are not computers or algorithms. We are simply people who need breaks. We are people that don’t like being watched through their computers,” one student said in a company feedback form.
The company also lacks transparency, making it difficult to conduct a real analysis of its successes or failures, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
Alpha Schools “refus[es] to allow for any independent research to evaluate the claims or to really scrutinize what’s going on from disinterested parties,” said Lee, speaking to CNN about the school in January. “That sort of behavior sort of implies there’s something to hide.”
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