The school replacing teachers with AI is coming to Boston. Tuition is $55,000.

Alpha School is pitching a kindergarten through eighth grade school in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood for this fall. The model: give every student a laptop loaded with an AI tutor, let them work at their own pace, and replace traditional teachers with "guides" who monitor progress instead of delivering lectures. The company claims children can "crush academics" in just two hours a day, freeing up the rest for sports, arts, and science projects. Annual tuition is $55,000.

The for-profit network already operates in a dozen locations across the country, with 500 students. The proposed Boston school would start with 25 students and plans to double the following year. The Boston School Committee expressed reservations — about the AI-driven curriculum, the $55,000 price tag, and the timing, coming after the recent collapse of another for-profit school, Croft. Superintendent Mary Skipper asked the obvious question at a recent hearing: "It's a question of, 'Who are you really serving?'"

Alpha has powerful backers. First Lady Melania Trump featured an 11-year-old Alpha student from Austin as her guest at January's State of the Union address. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called Alpha "the most exciting thing" in education last fall. Co-founder MacKenzie Price says the traditional classroom is simply outdated: "We think, 'In order to learn something, you have to learn via teacher.'" Her school would like to change that assumption.

Some education researchers aren't sold. "When AI becomes the teacher, it is very customized," said Jennifer Steele, a professor in American University's School of Education. "But it's not providing the big picture: 'Why?'"