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 personalized learning software that served as her math teacher. She had to multiply three three-digit numbers without using a calculator. Then she had to do it again, her mom says, more than 20 times, without making mistakes.

At Alpha School, the private microschool the girl and her younger brother attended in Brownsville, Texas, she had been working a grade level ahead of her age in math, Barrios says. She could do three-digit multiplication correctly most of the time. But whenever she made an error in IXL, the software would determine she needed more practice and assign her more questions. She told her mom that she had asked her “guide,” the adult who supervised her classroom in lieu of a teacher, to make an exception and let her move on. She said the guide’s reply was that she needed to get it done, that it was expected of her.

Over the next weekend, Barrios says, she and her husband sat with their daughter for hours each day until she finished the multiplication lesson, even as she broke down and sobbed that she’d rather die than keep going. Ultimately, 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 mom says, she came back reporting crushing news: In the time she had spent stuck, she had fallen even farther behind her targeted goals.

Within a couple weeks, Barrios says, the school reported to her and her husband that their daughter wasn’t eating lunches. According to Barrios, Alpha said it was “because she would rather stay in and work.” The girl later explained to her parents that she was spending lunchtimes catching up on IXL. (In a statement to WIRED, IXL representatives wrote that Alpha School’s account was deactivated this past July and claims that 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 replacement” for “trained, caring teachers.”)

When Barrios’ husband brought their daughter to a previously scheduled checkup soon after, her doctor noted with concern that she had lost a significant amount of weight in a short time. Her dad then brought her to school with a note from the pediatrician, Barrios says, instructing her to eat snacks in between regular meals and saw her walk into school with it in her hand. She told her parents she delivered it to staff. Even though Alpha had asked parents in its handbook to “refrain” from sending in “midday 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 returned with them still in her backpack, uneaten. Barrios, alarmed, asked if Alpha was providing different food instead. No, the 9-year-old answered. She told her mom that staff at the school said she didn’t earn her snacks and wouldn’t get them until she met her learning metrics.