In Brownsville, Texas, some families found a buzzy new school's methods--surveillance of kids, software in lieu of teachers--to be an education in and of itself. At Alpha School's campus in Brownsville, Texas, a student works on exercises in a learning app. 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. The adult guides in Alpha's classrooms "don't do any teaching," says the current head of the Brownsville school.

The annual America's safest drivable cities list has been published, let's start thinking about what the list will be like once driverless cars emerge. The annual ranking of the top cities in the United States for having the "safest" drivers has been recently published by Allstate Insurance, the chronicler of the America's Best Driver's Report. I'm sure that you want to know which cities have the best drivers and which ones have the worst. Of the 200 cities listed, the "best" or topmost five in terms of being at the top of the list were: Of the 200 cities listed, the "worst" in terms of ending at the final pole positions of 196 through 200 were: Some people glance at the list to see where their particular city has landed. Some use the list to be extra cautious when driving in the cities that are toward the latter portion of the list.