Would $100K salaries lure MCPS teachers to an AI-based school?

A new Bethesda private school is expected to open its doors to 25 students in January 2027, offering six figures for positions mentoring students that at least one Montgomery County Public School teacher says he would not consider.

Alpha School, which is planning the Bethesda location, is a fully AI-driven private kindergarten-through-eighth-grade institution with more than 50 locations across the country.

Classes of about 12 students are led by guides who act as behavioral and life skills coaches and lead collaborative afternoon workshops, all earning $100,000 per year, exceeding the current MCPS teacher starting salary of $66,000.

Alpha Bethesda is currently hiring associate deans and guides as a part of the early planning and recruitment phase of “Year Zero” development. While the school is not actively recruiting MCPS public school teachers, one educator says he would not be interested in working at the AI-powered school despite the salary.

“As a teacher, I would not want to work there,” said Steven Katz, a math content specialist at Westland Middle School in Bethesda. He and other teachers he knows “like physically teaching something and have a love of student learning that a different educational system cannot replace.”

Katz, who has taught math for 23 years in the MCPS system, said AI could miss the deeper nuances of a traditional classroom. He worries that students could miss fundamental aspects of school outside of the content.

“Teachers are master motivators, and it would be hard for me to believe that a system without them would be successful for students in the real world,” Katz said.

Alpha School, co-founded in 2014 by three entrepreneurs, begins its school day at 8 a.m. with two hours of AI-led core subject instruction, followed by afternoon activities focused on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and collaborative workshops led by guides.

According to the school’s website, its adaptive AI software tracks students’ real-time learning progress, plans lessons, and grades assignments. It explicitly prohibits guides, which it also calls “human educators,” from lecturing or teaching traditional curriculum so they can “do the part of the job only humans can do,” the website said.

Outside of customary teaching responsibilities and salary, Alpha guide positions also differ from MCPS teaching positions in their benefits, job security, and qualifications.

According to MCPS records, teachers receive guaranteed pension benefits, union representation, and tenure protections, and must meet state certification requirements. Alpha’s website says that guides, on the other hand, do not need state teaching certification and are subject to the school’s performance and employment policies.

Still, one former public-school teacher who transitioned to Alpha School said her experience was positive despite having fewer benefits and denied the social media premise that being a guide is an easy role.

Wendy Robinson, a program director at Alpha School and former public school teacher of 10 years, said the lack of tenure as a “human educator” does not make her nervous and contributes to the high expectations for guides.

“Am I regretting leaving my cushy tenured teaching job? Not for a second,” said Robinson. “Being a guide is incredibly rewarding.”

Robinson also described the relationship between guides and students, sharing the example that if a student rushes through material and cannot advance without a passing grade, the guide will pull them aside for a student-led conversation that doubles as a coaching opportunity.

But Katz worries that AI-led instruction skips over the thought process of how a student arrives at an answer and where their thinking goes wrong, focusing instead on the result.

He said he has sometimes assumed he understood why a student made a mistake, only to discover through conversation that the student had a different reason.

“I worry that an AI system will completely miss out on the nuances of a student’s thinking,” Katz said.

Some education researchers have studied AI’s effectiveness on student learning in an environment absent of teachers and conventional education. They say that AI is best used when a teacher is there, but teachers are essential for catching things software cannot.

“It depends on the student and circumstance, but the evidence shows that AI is best used when you have the teacher and the tool working together,” said Victor Lee, Khosla Family professor in learning sciences at Stanford University.

“More differentiation is possible with an AI tool, but teachers are better at monitoring and adjusting to influences and situations that are not presumed in technology,” Lee said.

Learn more about the Alpha School coming to Bethesda here.