The Arizona charter school that runs on AI

Phoebe and Phillip never leave the classroom. They’re available around-the-clock to answer student questions by text or phone. But these aren’t teachers, they’re chatbots—cartoon-style faces of the artificial intelligence system that underpins Unbound Academy’s curriculum.

Unbound Academy opened last fall in Arizona as an AI-powered, online charter school, serving students from fourth to eighth grade. Its promise: These kids may never set foot in a classroom, but they will earn top marks on standardized tests.

“It’s 100% about [the kid] and their needs,” said Michael Goto, head of school at Unbound. “Our strategy is: Let’s find out where you are. Let’s build you up from there, and we’ll keep going.”

Unbound’s grand opening is an indicator of broader AI usage trends in K-12 and higher education that have left education experts divided. Some schools, like Northeastern University, provide AI software to students as part of a standard IT package. Others use programs like Turnitin to scan student assignments, flagging AI-generated content as plagiarism and heavily restricting its use. Few schools have embraced AI both as a study tool outside the classroom and as a teacher’s aide inside it. Unbound isn’t the only one—but it is the first to offer the curriculum free of charge.

A day at Unbound Academy

The virtual bell rings at 8:00 a.m. Students open their laptops and spend two hours on academics, including reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. No two students will see the same lessons, Unbound says, and nobody gets an A—or an F. AI systems assess student mastery of each subject and assign new lessons once proficiency hits 90%.

“Every kid gets to feel like they’re part of the same exact experience without any discrimination or without any unintended social consequence,” Goto said. “There is no segregation of students by abilities that happens sometimes at the elementary level.”

After lunch, students gather virtually in life-skills clubs. About 50 students use Canva—an AI-powered graphic design program—to practice media creation and online marketing strategies. They learn to give and receive feedback on their projects, with responses “assessed by an AI trained on feedback best practices,” according to the lesson plan.

Club assignments are where Phoebe and Phillip come in, providing personalized assistance. Kaitlin Sanderson, one of two human teachers who oversee the virtual club, directs students to chat with the bots before coming to her for help. She explained this aligns with the school’s rule to “Ask Three, Then Me”—consult three other sources before coming to the teacher for help. Younger students tend to be more comfortable interacting with the chatbots, she said, and more likely to treat them as if they’re human.

The school uses an AI curriculum called 2 Hour Learning. One of Unbound’s founders, MacKenzie Price, also founded 2 Hour Learning and Alpha School, a private, in-person AI school that uses the same curriculum. Tuition at some of Alpha School’s 22 current and planned locations around the country runs up to $75,000. As a charter school, Unbound does not charge tuition.

According to Unbound, humans write the curriculum, while AI determines which modules a student sees. Goto said the AI is largely a background process, and that once parents realize students can’t use a chatbot to solve their class assignments, they’re usually comfortable with the idea.

“Very rarely do I get a parent reach out with questions,” Goto said. “Even though we are very AI-rich and AI-heavy … it is all about the personal experience, too. Take AI out of it, and we could probably still function as a school. But you can’t take away the people that are making it run.”

Rochelle Ruen’s son Zaiden is an Unbound fourth grader. He never considered himself much of a reader, his mother said—until he got his progress scores back after just one semester in his new school.

“He’s now in the top 1% to 3% nationally for reading,” Ruen said. “He’s really proud of himself and feels like he can really do anything.”

Zaiden likes doing his schoolwork from the nearby Mexican restaurant rather than in a classroom. He does miss recess, he admitted, and seeing his friends in person at school.

Even so, if he had to choose where he’d rather be: “Probably still at Unbound.”

Concerns about AI

Even when generative AI isn’t built into the curriculum, nearly half of teens report using it for homework help, according to a 2024 Common Sense Media survey. About 20% of white and Latino teens said their teachers had used generative AI in class to brainstorm ideas for a lesson or project, while 30% of black teens said so.

Though the technology offers personalization and quick access to information, it also comes with significant risks, according to a 2025 Center for Democracy and Technology report. More than 40% of teen students surveyed said they or a friend had sought mental health support from a chatbot, had troubling conversations with one, or treated one as a friend.

Jason Thacker is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. He said Unbound’s digital-first approach—and the growing use of AI in the classroom—risks sacrificing components of student success that exams can’t measure.

“[Education] is not simply about transferring information and filling our head full of knowledge and facts, but becoming a certain type of person in relationship with other people,” Thacker said. “That’s vital to the pursuit of wisdom and virtue and this holistic development that we need—and really the purpose of education in the first place.”

Adding AI to the virtual classroom, Thacker said, only compounds the social problem. He said many parents see AI technology as just another gizmo of the modern world, no different than the printing press, typewriters, laptop computers, and other useful inventions that were initially criticized but brought lasting positive change.

“I think that fails to capture that technology does something to us—that it forms us and shapes us as people,” Thacker said. “That’s the question we need to ask in terms of any type of technology in our lives: What is gained, what is lost, and also what is being changed in terms of the purpose and nature of education?”

Waiting for results

Although Goto reported facing few objections from Arizona charter school officials, Pennsylvania, Utah, Arkansas, and North Carolina rejected Unbound’s charter application.

“While the Applicant proposes a unique educational model through the use of artificial intelligence, Unbound Academic has not set measurable goals for academic performance with regards to the state assessments and plans to use an instructional model that has not been thoroughly researched and has no demonstrated record of success,” the Pennsylvania rejection letter stated last year. “These findings … demonstrate that Unbound Academic is not a model for other public schools, including cyber charter schools.”

Remote learning surged when COVID-19 shut down schools around the country. Standardized test scores plunged during the pandemic and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels—a drop that’s often blamed on online school.

Prior to COVID-19, Pennsylvania had the highest number of students enrolled in fully virtual education in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The state’s 14 cyber charter schools served nearly 60,000 students in the 2023-2024 school year. Following Unbound’s denial, state Sen. Lindsey M. Williams, a Democrat, called for a moratorium on new cyber charter schools.

“Every one of Pennsylvania’s existing cyber charter schools has been identified as needing some level of support and improvement under the state’s accountability system,” Williams wrote. “Pennsylvanians already spend roughly $1 billion every year on tuition for our current cyber charter schools, making this one of the leading drivers of property tax increases.”

Williams also criticized Unbound’s early marketing efforts, which emphasized AI usage and the use of “guides”—certified, human teachers—to supervise and support students while they interacted with the AI-powered curriculum. Unbound has since reversed that language, now referring to the AI chatbots Phoebe and Phillip as the “guides” of the classroom.

It’s too early to say if Unbound will improve students’ standardized test scores. But Goto said Unbound is accountable to the charter approval process, which in Arizona reassesses school performance in its first and second years and again every five years. If a school falls short of its academic expectations as outlined in its charter, the authorizer can force it to shut down. Since Unbound is new, it will also undergo first- and second-year reviews, as well as a surprise pop-in visit.

If parents don’t like how their kids are learning, Goto said, they’ll vote with their feet. Especially in Arizona, a top school choice state, parents dissatisfied with their child’s experience can simply enroll him in a better school elsewhere.

“The beauty of school choice is that there’s probably a school that does offer what you’re looking for,” Goto said. “It has created more of a competitive culture, where a lot of districts are responding very positively to what they need to do to keep enrollment.”

For Unbound, that competition has brought week-over-week growth and a new milestone: 180 students enrolled.