If you spent any part of your holiday scrolling the tech press on your phone, you doubtlessly saw headlines announcing that the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools approved a virtual charter school application for Unbound Academy. You could find this news in Vice, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Popular Science, and other outlets.
Why the Tech Press Covered Unbound Academy So Extensively
There are two reasons why Unbound Academy’s charter application received so much more attention than the many other charters granted across the US in 2024.
One, because Unbound Academy implements what MacKenzie Price, its board president, calls “2 Hour Learning.” 2 Hour Learning is a program that promises for learning what “The 4 Hour Workweek” promised for your day job and “The 7 Minute Workout” promised for your fitness—more for less.
From its application:
By leveraging AI technology and personalized learning, 2hr Learning enables students to master core academic subjects in two hours daily, allocating the remainder of the school day for life skills development and pursuing personal interests. These life skill workshops mimic the collaborative, creative, interdisciplinary tasks that will be required of them in most post-secondary environments.
Two, because 2 Hour Learning claims it has replaced teachers with AI. From its whitepaper:
Classrooms that have no teachers; instead, students learn academics through an AI tutor on apps, providing each student with a 1:1, mastery-based academic journey and guaranteeing success. [..] There are no academic teachers; Guides motivate and support students as they become self-driven learners.
If true, Unbound Academy is a huge story, one that describes a massive disruption of a US education market worth $1T, most of which is currently spent on teachers. If Unbound Academy has replaced teachers with AI, it has done something the tech industry has tried and failed to do for the last two years: find a “killer app” for AI in an industry large enough to justify their billions of dollars of investment.
What the Tech Press Missed
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