Alpha School charges $75,000 a year to replace human teachers with AI. What parents don't see in the marketing: faulty lesson plans with multiple-choice questions where none of the answers make sense, a curriculum built by scraping Khan Academy using personal employee email addresses to avoid getting caught, and webcams monitoring students at home — flagging kids for wearing pajamas or pausing to talk to a sibling.

The billionaire behind it is Joe Liemandt, who built his fortune on bossware: software that tracks employee keystrokes, mouse movement, and camera feeds to squeeze productivity. He's applied the same logic to children. MacKenzie Price is the face of the school, selling the claim that students learn 10 times faster than average in two hours a day. Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary, visited the Texas campus, called it "exemplar," and has held it up as a national model.

Documents leaked to 404 Media show the AI lesson generator was flagged as unreliable by Alpha School's own employees. Rather than bring in human reviewers, the school added a second AI to check the first one. Student records — names, grade levels, classes taken, and links to recorded Zoom tutoring sessions — were left in publicly accessible Google Drive folders anyone could find. Students reported anxiety and burnout from being constantly watched.

So who benefits from a $75,000-a-year AI school backed by a bossware billionaire, promoted by a former wrestling executive turned education secretary, running on a stolen curriculum it couldn't be bothered to build itself?

ABOUT SLOP WORLDAI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday.

DISCLAIMERAll content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Alpha School Charges $75K to Replace Teachers With AI

00:55 The Woman Selling the Dream

01:33 Joe Liemandt: The Billionaire Behind Alpha School

02:17 Why Linda McMahon Is Promoting This as America's Future

04:27 What $75,000 a Year Actually Buys

05:08 AI Teaching Kids Wrong Answers

07:14 They Scraped Khan Academy for the Curriculum

08:30 Surveillance Cameras Watching Kids at Home

12:09 The Student Data Anyone Could Find Online

13:27 This Is What AI in Education Gets Wrong