This is my fourth report on the reality of life at Alpha School, and it features the voices of former Alpha School students.
Over the past week, I’ve spoken to several student sources on background (for quotation without direct attribution), spanning from fourth grade up to high school, and across several Alpha School “campuses.” Every student source spent at least one full academic year attending Alpha School, and several spent multiple years. All interviews were conducted pursuant to my standing policy on interviewing minor sources.
Importantly, every student source quoted in this report attended Alpha School from the academic year commencing in Fall 2022 or thereafter. That matters because I have reason to believe that Alpha School was engulfed in crisis in the spring of 2022, and it was in the wake of this turmoil that Joe Liemandt took control of Alpha School’s operations. (My investigation into this is ongoing.)
Just as importantly, readers should know that multiple adult and student sources have described a culture of constant change at Alpha School. One adult source described Alpha School valuing what they called “spikey-ness,” reflecting a culture of rapid iteration and continued experimentation to determine what “spikes.” Further, because Alpha School is spread out across many “campuses,” practices at one location may not be employed to the same degree (if at all) at another. And the terminology employed may vary as well.
In short, it is not easy to build a mental model of Alpha School. Yet there are clear throughlines running across what student sources experienced and what they described to me, as you will see.
There is again a great deal of ground to cover, and for busy readers, I’ve again highlighted and bolded the quotes I found most notable. This report is organized as follows:
General experience of attending Alpha School
Offshore monitoring of students for “anti-patterns”
Rocket Ship
Pirate Ship (and Omega)
“You’ve been nuked”
Do students at Alpha School read books?
Student views of Joe Liemandt and MacKenzie Price
What former students would say to a prospective Alpha School family
What does it mean to be human?
Continued official silence from Alpha School
My brief commentary
(There’s also bonus materal that follows this reporting and commentary, including my newly activated Ko-fi account.)
Let’s turn now to what former students shared with me about their experiences attending Alpha School.
General experience of attending Alpha School
In my prior reporting, adult sources described Alpha School’s culture in stark and concerning terms. My student sources echoed these descriptions of Alpha’s culture, and provided greater context on their respective experiences.
Going to Alpha was not good. It was rough, very rough. There was two months where I cried every single day.
It was very harmful to my mental health at the time. I was so distressed by it that my mental health was going downhill real fast.
After the first week [of high school], which was fun, everything changed. It was like lockdown. It all started to change, like the science experiment [had] really started.
The best way to describe the vibe was dystopian. Computers, technology, very futuristic, but also very distant and cold.
It is notable that multiple adult and student sources have used the word “dystopian” to describe Alpha School.
Offshore monitoring of students for “anti-patterns”
In March 2026, MacKenzie Price appeared on a podcast called Class Disrupted, hosted by Diane Tavenner and Michael Horn (I have also appeared on this podcast). In the interview, Price stated, “We have an anti-pattern, which is basically an improper use of engaging with the apps.”
My student sources confirmed this is true, while providing important context on how Alpha School detects “anti-patterns.”
They hired this data team of people that didn’t live in the U.S. and they would watch us through our computers and it felt really sketchy and scary. It felt like it was more of a science experiment, and I was more of a lab rat rather than [having] someone that actually cared about my learning.
I was getting really frustrated about that throughout the year. Every time they would change something, I would be like, why are we changing this?
We couldn’t tape over the computer or anything like that. They would get really frustrated if we taped over it. We had to keep the camera on.
[The software] would also track your facial expressions, and be like, “This is the emotion that you’re evoking while you’re talking about this.” And every single time, it would tell me that I look really sad, which is fair because I was really sad, because I was crying every single day.
They would make me and a few other kids take standardized math tests pretty much every day, and then any question that we got wrong, we would have to get on a Zoom call with some random guy from normally India and explain to him every single thing that we got wrong and why. And I hated that.
I was a guinea pig, and I knew that I was a guinea pig. They were not subtle about it.
Anti-patterns were like this AI system that decided whether or not you were doing good enough. It saw that your eyes were moving away from the screen, you’ll get flagged for those.
You did not want to get an anti-pattern. It was creepy.
Also on anti-patterns, you could just jiggle the mouse repeatedly, and it would read that as you “thinking,” and so I could just…wiggle the mouse with my hand.
Whether students at Alpha School should be considered part of the company’s software product development team is an open question, and so too is whether this raises issues of child labor law violations or other forms of civil liability. I am referring potential claimants against Alpha School to the EdTech Law Center, a firm that pursues tech-accountability litigation against Big Tech and other bad actors.
As flagged in my initial special report, Alpha School has engaged Carl Hendrick as consultant to its software development, and Hendrick has stated publicly that “in the future, this will mean cameras on, and an AI monitoring student behavior, their latency, what websites they are looking at, their ability to focus and then producing a report for a human tutor.” He further predicted, “you’ll see articles about ‘Orwellian spyware.’”
Based on what my student sources told me, it appears the future Hendrick describes is already present at Alpha School, at least to some degree. As for his prediction Alpha School’s activities would be described as “Orwellian spyware,” given that 1984 features a world wherein The Party uses omnipresent screens to monitor the activities and emotions of inhabitants of Oceania, the analogy appears apt.
I also reached out to the Class Disrupted co-hosts Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner, who I’ve both known for years, to comment on how student sources described the offshore monitoring of their behavior and the detection of so-called “anti-patterns.” I have not heard back from them as of September 23, 2026 when this story was first published.
I will update this report if they choose to respond.
Rocket Ship
In October 2025, MacKenzie Price authored a blog post on the official Alpha School website titled “4 (Controversial) Motivation Systems That Actually Work.” In her post, Price identifies something at Alpha School called “Rocket Ship,” which she describes as an “internal program that offers the highest level of autonomy to kids.” She further states, “I’ll be honest: in Alpha High’s Rocket Ship program, you barely have to come to school.”
My student sources confirmed this is true, while providing important additional context on student life in the “Rocket Ship.”
I was in the what they called the Rocket Ship, which was basically their smart kids club. If you were really good in school, if you got great accuracies, completed everything you were supposed to do consistently, you would get put into the Rocket Ship.
Really all it was was a group of students they thought were elite, and better than the rest of the students. They had more privileges. They had really no rules. They could do whatever they wanted. They didn’t really have to come to school during the school day. They could choose to do work when they wanted. They were given like snacks for free. All these other privileges that were completely separate from the [non-Rocket Ship] students.
They had certain rooms they could go in without asking. We could not go in them. The regular students could not go in them. So they pretty much segregated these higher students, and they had more privileges.
They picked a couple of the best students, separated them from everybody else, and we got to work in a special room, listen to music, eat snacks, go to parties. It was really fun for me because I was in [the] Rocket Ship… but looking at it from outside in, [it was] horrible for everybody else, having to watch as everybody else threw parties and ate snacks and went on field trips.
They [had] kindergartners in it, and it feels so weird. It seems so sad watching these kids trying super hard, and then they don’t get their XP [Alpha’s 2-Hour Learning metric], and they don’t get in the Rocket Ship.
I saw this kid trying to read [in the app], and then he just stormed off crying. They have them moved to another room. I felt bad for the kid, and it seemed dystopian. It felt like weird.
I agree with MacKenzie Price that this motivational system is indeed controversial.
Pirate Ship (and Omega)
Multiple student sources described another internal motivation program at Alpha School, referred to in the lower grade levels as the “Pirate Ship.” Unlike the Rocket Ship, I could not find any reference to the Pirate Ship on Alpha School’s website or anywhere else publicly.
Here is how my student sources described the Pirate Ship.
I was in the Pirate Ship. We got kicked down grade levels, and we had to work all the way back up. We were completely shut off from the rest of the students. We had completely different privileges. We weren’t able to do any of the workshops or anything that they were doing in eighth grade. It’s a morbid term but…[it was] pretty much a concentration camp of students. Until they were up to the standards of what Alpha wanted us to be.
Some people could never even finish the list [of Pirate Ship requirements] because some of it was unbelievably difficult. We had to type at 120 words per minute or something like that. Some people can’t type that fast.
The Pirate Ship, it felt like you were bad. It’s like you were being labeled as someone’s idiot.
Some students never left the Pirate Ship.
The moment that they stop caring about you, life becomes shit because they’re gonna put you in the pirate thing, and then you’re just stuck there all day.
Basically, all of the students that didn’t complete boot camp within the allocated time period would get put into the Pirate Ship. They would have to do extra work all the time, and they wouldn’t get to have the clubs that [were part of the rocket ship]. And those kids would just dedicate all of that time to getting back out of the pirate ship.
They would be confined to one room during club times, and not get to participate in any of it.
In addition to the Pirate Ship, one student source described a similar internal program within Alpha School’s high school as something they called “Omega.” As with Pirate Ship, I found no reference on Alpha School’s website or anywhere else that publicly acknowledges this program.
Here is how “Omega” was described to me by this student source.
We [were] just completely separated, and it felt like a hierarchical system. If you’re liked by the school, you’re in the Rocket Ship. If you’re not, you’re in Omega.
They kicked me down to sixth grade math when I was in ninth grade. They screwed my credits up. They’re doing it deliberately so people cannot leave. If your credits are messed up and you try to go somewhere else, you might not be able to graduate.
There was a handful of us that they just kind of shoved in a corner. Like that’s why we were in the Omegas because they didn’t like how we figured out that we weren’t actually learning anything. We were just kind of robots.
It’s not marketed as “you’re bad.” But it was just like, “you’re leaving.”
Whether credits are being manipulated by Alpha School leadership to prevent students from leaving is one of many things I’ll be investigating further. Also, based on conversations with both adult and student sources, I believe there may be significant hidden student attrition at Alpha School and/or segregation of academically underperforming students from their top-line metrics — my investigation into this issue is ongoing.
I also find it noteworthy that one student source described students being stuck in the Pirate Ship following boot camp. This hints at a possible consequence that Alpha School’s freshmen class may soon face if they fail to complete their “life skills” in the eight-week boot camp they are currently participating in.
“You’ve been nuked”
In my prior reporting, multiple adult sources expressed frustration regarding the glitchy performance of the TimeBack/2 Hour Learning software. My student sources echoed this complaint, and several mentioned something they called “getting nuked.”
Here is how they described this phenomena.
The tracking software would mess up regularly, and there was not really a way to fix it. They would block my computer. When you didn’t have the right like hours or accuracy in your previous day’s work, they would do something called nuking.
Basically it would shut down your entire computer [other than the 2-Hour Learning app], and just show a jokey screen of a mushroom cloud. “You’ve been nuked.” You’re doing something you’re not supposed to on the computer right now because you didn’t get yesterday’s accuracy high enough.
[Adults at Alpha School] would have to communicate with the people who ran the software side of things, who were not in the building. A lot of them were in India, outsourced to other countries, and it would take forever for them to get back to us, and it would make it really hard to actually complete my work.
I remember getting nuked, and I remember all my friends getting nuked.
You were stuck in the apps and [telling guides] “no, I finished it,” and they would be like, “nope, now you got to go redo it again.” And the guides could not actually override [being nuked], they had to contact someone else, and sometimes that would take a whole day. It was a very convoluted process.
And they would change something [in the app], and it would take them a week to get anything right. So everything was screwed up. I didn’t feel like I was actually having measurable learning.
Whenever somebody messed up on something or flagged, this big screen [would] pop up [stating] “you can’t access this anymore.”
[Q: Did it show a mushroom cloud?] Yeah, and a raccoon.
I found no public reference by Alpha School leadership, or anyone else affiliated with Alpha School, related to students “getting nuked” when using Alpha School’s software.
Do students at Alpha School read books?
In my prior reporting, adult sources suggested Alpha School places little emphasis on literature. So I asked former students if they read books when they attended Alpha School.
Here is what they told me.
Not a single one. I had one English class where we were told to read a book. No one did. I just read the Spark Notes.
Not full books. We read some poems, because I asked to.
We never had a curriculum of books to read. Never a full book, only passages [on the software app].
I plan to investigate further whether or how Alpha School covers other core academic subjects beyond math and English, such as history, social studies, or the humanities more broadly.
I would encourage students at Alpha School, or any student for that matter, to read 1984. I independently read this novel as part of my AP English class in high school, and will never forget my relief seeing the first essay question posed (paraphrasing from memory): “Describe a character who bears great influence throughout a novel but never appears.”
I wrote about Big Brother.
Student views of Joe Liemandt and MacKenzie Price
Every adult source I’ve spoken to has expressed a strong opinion about Joe Liemandt and/or MacKenzie Price, Alpha School’s leaders, and that same is true for my student sources. Here, I share student commentary on Liemandt first before turning to comments on Price.
Joe Liemandt describes himself as the “Principal at Alpha School.” Typically, a school principal is someone onsite at a school campus with ultimate responsibility for overseeing the school’s day-to-day operations, at least principals of “normal schools.”
Students described Joe Liemandt’s role at Alpha School very differently.
He didn’t care about the education. He cared about…creating businesses that he could be part of.
It seemed like he was more after the ideas of the students, profit-wise, than the actual learning the students had.
[The guides] had very little power. Their entire job was to enforce what Joe Liemandt wanted them to do. Alpha sort of markets itself as being student run, where you have control over your own learning. It is not student run. It is exclusively run by Joe Liemandt.
There was an illusion of freedom, but you only had freedom within what he wanted you to do. He wanted us to become entrepreneurs. His money is his power, and he’s not afraid to use it.
Nobody could tell him what he couldn’t do, because there’s no repercussions for him. He just fires everybody that doesn’t like him. If a student is going against his wishes, he can just get rid of them. What he is doing is hurting people, [but] if they speak out, he can just kind of get rid of them.
He’s not disclosing to students that when they enter into Alpha, that it is an experiment. He’s saying this is a school and it’s going to work. It’s not a school and it’s not guaranteed to work. What it is…is a science experiment that’s been framed as a school.
If Joe Liemandt is not functioning as the actual school principal of Alpha School as that role is conventionally understood, I was curious whether MacKenzie Price might be.
My student sources did not think so. They instead described her role differently.
The only reason she visits the campus is social media. She’s always doing the social media, and convincing parents…There’s a sense that she has hierarchy over you.
She was just kind of Joe’s minion. She’s sort of framed to be at the same level as him, also in charge. But I never heard about anything that she actually did. Nobody knew if she was doing anything.
I do not like Mackenzie Price…She’s just talking about using AI for learning. They don’t use AI. We used Excel and apps. That’s not AI.
I’d see her sometimes, but it was all filming and speaking with the Rocket Ship students and putting them on camera. I never had a conversation with her. She would focus on the students that were elites, because that’s what they wanted to portray.
She came to the school to film a video or something. We never got to meet her. She was always kind of distant…I don’t want to put words in her mouth and say she saw us as “less,” but she never gave us the time of day.
[Q: Did she ever say hello to you when visiting?]
No.
What former students would say to a prospective Alpha School family
I asked several of my student sources what they wanted to say to prospective parents or students who might be considering enrolling in Alpha School. This is what they told me.
It is reasonable to want to know things, and it is reasonable to want to prove things. However, it is not reasonable to treat students and schooling like an experiment without any regards for how students actually feel about it [or] without regards to the ethics of the situation.
You’ll regret it for the rest of your high school career, maybe your college career, because your credits will be ruined. You will feel like you’re lost.
While I was there, I was not happy.
It’s gonna be cool the first few months and then it just becomes shit.
Just don’t. Do better.
What does it mean to be human?
Earlier this year, Teddy Rosenbluth of The New York Times reported on my father’s passing last year and the role of AI played in hastening his death. She wrote, kindly and accurately, that “the rise of generative AI changed his [my] view of the technology, though. It offered a window into many of the questions [Ben] had devoted much of his career to: What makes us human?”
Unexpectedly, several student sources shared with me that they too are grappling with this very question. And so I asked them to share their still-emerging perspectives on what it means to be human.
Being human is about learning and growing and expanding who you are. Being a functional human being is not about your SAT score.
To have love. To see a world that can be connected if we put enough passion into it. Passion fuels everything.
To be human, you have to have connections, and you have to be honest. And to be human, you have to love.
In being more human, my biggest one is contribution. Being able to contribute to the world, a huge way of doing that is through contributing to the next generations of people.
The last student quoted above told me they are considering becoming a teacher. A human teacher.
Continued official silence from Alpha School
On Friday September 18, I emailed the following to Anna Davlantes, Alpha School’s Chief Communications Officer, to alert her to my forthcoming reporting and to invite Alpha School to respond:
I received no reply.
My brief commentary
Nothing I could possibly say could speak more powerfully to the dystopian horrors of Alpha School than the student voices shared here. So I’ll simply say this:
Alpha School’s public narrative has been shattered irreparably. And I will not rest until the full magnitude of its pedagogical and psychological malpractice against children is revealed.
Passion fuels everything.
My ongoing investigation
I am pursuing multiple avenues of investigation but a high priority right now is connecting with educators who have experiences with former Alpha School students. If that’s you, please contact me at info@cognitiveresonance.net or via Signal at 737-291-0540.
I remain very interested in talking to current Alpha School students about their experiences, in accordance with my standing policy regarding my communications with minors.
As noted, I am also investigating what I believe to be a major crisis that engulfed Alpha School in Spring 2022. I am interested in talking to any source with information related to what happened, whether on the record, on background, or completely off the record.
Supporting Cognitive Resonance: donations now accepted
In the wake of my reporting, I’ve received a large number of new followers (welcome!) and a non-trivial number of pledged subscriptions to this newsletter — always deeply appreciated, thank you. I have not activated this feature on Substack for many reasons, but it does feel very validating.
That said, and as I mentioned in my third report, no one is paying me to do investigative citizen journalism, and I’m starting to incur some non-trivial expenses related to it, such as improved IT security and home security measures, expanded professional insurance, dedicated phone line for reporting, etc. It’s also crowding out my time for undertaking other revenue-generating projects, no small thing for those of us who run our own “micro think tanks.”
As such, I’ve established an account with Ko-fi to accept financial contributions to support Cognitive Resonance. Any support you choose to provide will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate by clicking here: Support Cognitive Resonance
Bonus coverage
What’s that, you say you want even more Alpha-related content? Well then I have good news!
First, I appeared on the Kill the Computer podcast last week to discuss my reporting on Alpha School. The hosts June and Caleb did their homework and asked great questions, and our discussion covered a wide range of Alpha School’s activities. The first 30 minutes are freely available, and the entire episode is accessible via Patreon.
Second, a few weeks ago my friend and veteran educator Larry Ferlazzo asked me to write a high-level overview of Alpha School for his standing “Classroom Q&A” column with Education Week. Believe it or not, the majority of this essay was drafted prior to my investigative reporting of Alpha School.
And for those wondering, there is a non-Alpha-related essay coming later this week. I promise.
What strikes me is just how coherent these accounts are. The model is fully behaviorist. Measure, monitor, punish, reward, repeat. This is schooling through CONTROL. How do ensure your students crush their academics? FORCE them.
The dystopian label is so very fitting because this is all so recognizable.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I had given them the benefit of the doubt for a while, but at this point I feel compelled to issue a formal statement that I was dead wrong. What happened in the spring of 2022? is it even worse??