Artificial intelligence is at the foreground of an Arizona online charter school slated to open in the fall, with teachers taking on the role of guides and mentors rather than content experts.
Unbound Academy was approved by the state school board last month, with enrollments beginning in January. The school’s model, which will prioritize AI in its delivery of core academics, is part of a continuing evolution of using AI technology in classrooms.
But as the technology becomes more prevalent, so too does the conflict of determining how schools can use it to enhance offerings and downsize workloads, without risking replacing teachers. The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions have already begun to grapple with AI’s growing involvement in the nation’s classrooms, issuing guidance and guardrails around its use.
In this case, humans are still an important part of the equation, according to the founders of the school. Still, it marks a movement toward embracing AI as a collaborator—something schools are more readily doing now, said Marcelo Worsley, an associate professor of computer science and learning sciences at Northwestern University’s school of education and social policy.
“I think COVID kind of pushed us more into that space as more students were getting connected to one-to-one technology experiences, and people were looking for the resources and tools that students could use—especially when they don’t have continuous access to an instructor, or when they’re not always certain that they’re going to be in person in a classroom setting,” Worsley said.
‘You cannot get rid of the human in the classroom’
Unbound Academy aims to enroll roughly 200 students in its first year, and will serve students in grades 4 to 8 initially. School leadership told the school board in December they hoped to expand to kindergarten through 3rd grade eventually.
The program is affiliated with private schools in Texas and Florida, but this will be the founders’ first foray into public schools.
The school will prioritize AI in its content delivery model, with students working at their own pace through math, reading, and science for the first two hours of their day.
AI, the founders say, will adapt to address what students are excelling in—ratcheting up the instruction to match the student’s knowledge and skills to keep things challenging—while tempering other lessons if a student isn’t grasping material. The goal is for fine-tuned personalization: One 5th grade student could be reading at an 8th grade level, while starting math at a 3rd grade level.
The school’s charter school application to the state school board says the “AI rigorously analyzes comprehensive student data—response accuracy, engagement duration, and emotional feedback via webcam—to ensure lessons are appropriately challenging.”
The curriculum will utilize third party providers—such as online curriculums like IXL or Math Academy, among others—along with their own apps, including the AI tutor, which monitors how students are learning, and how they’re struggling.
Meanwhile, teachers—known as “guides”—will monitor the students’ progress. Mostly, the guides will serve as motivators and emotional support, said MacKenzie Price, a cofounder of Unbound Academy. She also founded 2 Hour Learning, which focuses on having two hours of academics a day followed by four hours of personal projects, the model Unbound Academy will employ.
“You cannot get rid of the human in the classroom. That is the whole connection,” Price said. “But what we can do is provide a better model. Instead of a teacher having to try to meet 20-plus different students who are all at totally varied levels of understanding where they’re at academically—that is such an impossible hill, in traditional models, to climb—we’re allowing them to really do what they’re able to do really well: connecting with students.”
The guides, who will be “well-compensated” according to the school’s application, will be charged with connecting with students throughout the day, including in a group session in the morning before students begin their coursework.
Price said the teachers will be certified according to Arizona’s requirements, though at the private brick-and-mortar schools employing the same model in Texas, previous teaching experience is not required for the guides, according to NBC’s reporting. The application projects a ratio of one guide to 33 students.
Guides will hold one-on-one meetings with students throughout each week. They will be able to see how students are progressing and learning, will assist if there are challenges with the material, and contact families if students aren’t doing coursework.
“Our teachers are looking at the motivation, how kids are learning, if they’re learning effectively and efficiently through the system—but they’re not teaching math,” Price said.
Guides will lead “life skills” workshops in the afternoon, where students learn “practical, real-world experiences,” such as financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and more, according to the application. If students work together on a specific project such as a simulation of defusing a bomb, Price said, the guides will help teach communication, teamwork, and leadership.
Schools are more readily embracing AI
There has been a decades-long movement toward intelligent tutoring systems, said Worsley, the professor from Northwestern—identifying what students know, don’t know, and if they’ve demonstrated mastery of a topic. The original models relied more on human input, but now technology is more advanced, he said.
Public schools now often incorporate AI-powered resources like IXL or Khan Academy into their instruction, Worsley said.
And for years now, some schools have used online learning programs to fill hard-to-staff vacancies—students learn from the software with oversight from an in-person facilitator. AI could make those models more effective.
Still, teachers and their associations remain wary of AI taking over classroom duties. In the National Education Association’s July 2024 guidance, the teachers’ union emphasized that AI should never replace human interaction. The American Federation of Teachers also highlighted the importance of humans in a June report.
Unbound Academy’s model, of having AI take over instruction with a human touch, is an outlier for now—but it might show up more frequently, Worsley said.
“The reality is that aspects of AI are being built into many of the tools that school districts were using beforehand, or recently adopted, as a result of the pandemic, or just the general explosion and excitement around AI that’s happening right now,” he said.
