Principal at Alpha School. Follow me to help transform education for 1 billion kids.
Austin, TX
Joined August 2012
- Tweets 252
- Following 730
- Followers 7,514
- Likes 308
Pinned Tweet
SAT scores were released today.
Three girls in my Alpha High group were described by their parents as “not math/science girls.”
They’ve been focused on other pursuits—launching a Broadway musical, competing for Miss Teen USA, building millions of TikTok followers, and becoming a nationally recognized teen dating expert.
Their SAT Math scores:
- Girl 1: 790
- Girl 2: 790
- Girl 3: 790
Place kids in the right environment, and they’ll shatter every ceiling you thought existed.
liemandt retweeted
Great visiting @AlphaSchoolATX and @mackenzieprice with @mattwridley
After talking to Alpha kids you can’t help walk away optimistic about the future
Algorithm showed me @Alxmthew’s (17 yr old, junior at @AlphaSchoolATX) post about the value of college for kids right now. I commented on it. He said he’s happy to chat more about it.
So we hopped on a call today. Talked about alpha school, life, motivation, politics, and startups. Went almost 2 hrs but could have easily been way longer.
Wish I could do an angel check into his life.
Very bullish on the next generation of education & the next generation of humans it will produce.
BTW he took the call from school (on saturday afternoon).
More @alxmthew
We banned the phrase “good for your age” at Alpha High.
Our students aren’t held to age-based standards—they’re held to absolute ones.
Last week, my student Alex and I co-presented to 1,000 people at the Masters of Scale conference. The moderator said Alex “captivated the audience.”
I got mixed reviews.
Watch Alex at 9:40 and see what happens when you stop grading on a curve. (Oh, and he scored 790 Math SAT.)
Kids can do awesome things if we give them the right support.
Alpha School's claims only seem outrageous until you meet our students.
Random gratitude post dedicated to @alxmthew. I got introduced to Alex by my friend/hero, @TaraViswanathan, and finally sat down to meet this 18-year-old phenom today. WOW.
It's rare for me to be blown away by a 30 min meeting, but this kid is so eloquent, introspective, and ambitious. I don't think I've met someone so young who has defined their personal values so clearly, and has already gone so far in pursuing their mission as a builder.
Alex gives me a lot of optimism for the future. He's going to be a staggeringly successful leader in whatever he does, and I hope that I can contribute to his journey in some way.
Alex, thanks for letting me be in your orbit. You got this!
When parents hear “AI tutors,” they see Frankenstein.
They should.
But Shelley’s warning wasn’t about creating intelligence - it was about abandoning it. The creature became a monster because Victor refused to parent him.
Uncontrolled chatbots in schools ARE terrible for kids. 90% of chatbots are used as “cheatbots.”
At Alpha School, we thoughtfully design AI with parents like @mbrendan1.
His latest piece on why Frankenstein matters for AI education:
liemandt retweeted
My daughter's kindergarten class at Alpha did a workshop recently called "AI Imagineers"
Each student chose a different hobby and had SchoolGPT teach it to them.
That's my daughter with the animal trading cards 😍piped.video/watch?v=foGBJHdj…
liemandt retweeted
Some friends in SF feel better about raising families in city because of Alpha School setting up shop. Keep on going!
liemandt retweeted
Lots of stories like this
Spoke to more than a few parents who moved their kids from top private to Alpha School which doesn’t use age based curriculum
liemandt retweeted
Parent perspective: Alpha Anywhere that my son is enrolled in is the real deal. My son now does mental math nonstop - percentages, ratios, you name it. and the AI noticed his love of Roman history, then built GenAI lessons around it. Incredible coaches + curriculum. This IS the future of education.
Alpha School has hundreds of parents showing up at our info sessions in NY/SF because this is true.
You know your high-end private school is holding your kid back. You don’t realize how much.
A hedge fund manager, sending his kids to one of the most elite private schools in Manhattan, told me how their school straight up refused to allow his kids to accelerate in math
The school’s attitude was “if you don’t like how we teach, there are plenty of other families who would love to take your place”
They homeschool now, because apparently not even infinite money can buy you a school willing to let kids learn as fast as they can
Kids thrive in environments built on optimism, not defeatism.
At Alpha School, we teach growth mindset starting in Kindergarten—a parent favorite. By middle and high school, students read Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist as a counterweight to the pessimism that can pervade teen culture.
Today, author @mattwridley visited Alpha High to discuss AI doomerism in education.
I couldn’t have been prouder: our students used frameworks from his own book to make the optimistic case—that, used well, AI gives kids superpowers—and they backed it up with concrete examples from their work.
I don’t know about the adults—but the kids are going to be all right.
liemandt retweeted
Many “adaptive” learning apps aren't really adaptive at all. They start everyone at the same level and then react to mistakes. That’s reactive, not adaptive. A real adaptive system begins with inference about the learner’s state.
Typical pattern I've noticed with vocab apps for example:
1. Every learner starts with the same set of words or grade band.
2. The app monitors right/wrong responses.
3. If a student gets several wrong, it repeats those words or drops to easier ones.
3. If they get several right, it unlocks harder lists.
This is just reactive difficulty adjustment, a form of after-the-fact remediation: the system waits for error signals before making changes. It infers nothing about what the learner knows beforehand.
With the emergence of LLMs, we can do a hell of a lot better than this.
Alpha School uses standardized tests to report student progress. That way parents know exactly where their child stands.
Here is a link to a podcast I did with Peter Attia discussing what we see at the K-12 level.
piped.video/shorts/_c3xuLckb…
More proof that your $50,000 private school is lying to you—Harvard edition.
Alpha School doesn’t give grades because of the exact problems Harvard laid out in its report.
Grades have become worse than meaningless—they now misrepresent what a student does and doesn’t know.
Are you excited to have the Harvard doctor who got a “B-” operate on your child?
For some crazy reason, society has decided it's okay for kids to hate their time in school.
I talk to executives who spend immense time and energy making their organizations great places to work, where employees can thrive.
They then turn around and say, “Yeah, I know my kid hates school. That’s just how it’s supposed to be. I hated it too.”
There is a pervasive view that parents won't pay for educational products.
Not true.
What is true: Parents won't pay for crappy educational products.
Products like Alpha School, @_MathAcademy_, and @MentavaInc demonstrate that parents will pay for awesome products that deliver exceptional outcomes.
The hard truth is that if you want to build a serious educational product, you can't be afraid to charge money for it. You can't back yourself into a corner where you depend on a massive userbase.
Why? Because most people are not serious about learning, and if you depend on a massive base of unserious learners, then you have to employ ineffective learning strategies that do not repel unserious students. Which makes your product suck.
