Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out
One day last fall, Kristine Barrios' 9-year-old daughter got stuck on a lesson in IXL, the personal learning software that served as her math tutor. She had to multiply three three-digit numbers without using a calculator. Then she had to do it again, says her mother, more than 20 times, without making any mistakes.
At Alpha School, the private micro-school the girl and her younger brother attended in Brownsville, Texas, she was performing a grade level ahead of her age in math, Barrios says. She could do three-digit multiplication most correctly. But if she made a mistake in IXL, the software would determine that she needed more practice and assign her more questions. She told her mother that she had asked her “guide,” the adult who supervises her classroom instead of a teacher, to make an exception and let her continue. She said the guide's response was that she had to get it done, that it was expected of her.
The following weekend, Barrios says, she and her husband sat with their daughter for hours every day until she finished the multiplication lesson, even as she broke down and sobbed that she would rather die than go on. Finally, Barrios says she double-checked all the answers on a calculator before the 9-year-old entered them. But when the girl returned to school with the lesson completed, her mother says, she returned and reported crushing news: During the time she had spent fasting, she had fallen even further behind her goals.
Within a few weeks, Barrios says, the school reported to her and her husband that their daughter was not eating lunch. According to Barrios, Alpha said it was “because she would rather stay in and work.” The girl later explained to her parents that she spent the afternoon catching up on IXL. (In a statement to WIRED, IXL representatives wrote that Alpha School's account was deactivated this past July, claiming it is “no longer an IXL customer due to violating our terms of service,” adding that IXL “is not intended—and we do not recommend its use—as a substitute” for “trained, caring teachers.”)
When Barrios' husband brought their daughter shortly after a previously scheduled checkup, her doctor noted with concern that she had lost a significant amount of weight in a short period of time. Her father then brought her to school with a note from the pediatrician, says Barrios, who instructed her to eat snacks between regular meals and watched her walk to school with it in hand. She told her parents that she delivered it to staff. Although Alpha had asked parents in its handbook to “refrain” from sending in “afternoon snacks,” Barrios and her husband wanted to follow the pediatrician's recommendation, she says.
For the first few days, Barrios says, her daughter ate her snacks. Then one afternoon she came back with them still in her backpack, uneaten. Barrios, alarmed, asked if Alpha provided other food instead. No, answered the 9-year-old. She told her mother that staff at the school said she didn't deserve her snacks and wouldn't get them until she met her learning metrics.
