May 3, 2026
California Students in a combined fourth- and fifth-grade class were in tears when they learned several classmates were leaving to form a homeschool.
The moment captured the unraveling of Tessellations, a high-end school in Cupertino, California, founded by wealthy tech parents for their "quirky, genius" children. Some of the parents involved include Meta's Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox.
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What began as an ambitious experiment in rethinking education has since spiraled into lawsuits, leadership clashes, layoffs and even a breakaway school formed by some of its own insiders. (1)
For families paying upward of $44,500 a year in tuition (2), the expectation might be stability and opportunity.
Instead, the saga highlights a broader reality: When extreme wealth and influence shape education, the results can be just as volatile as the industries that created that wealth.
When money shapes the classroom
Tessellations isn't an isolated case. It's an exaggerated version of a broader trend in American education. High-income families already spend significantly more on schooling and enrichment than others. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows top-earning households devote far more to education, from private school tuition to tutoring and extracurriculars (3).
While the average private school tuition in the U.S. is just over $12,000 annually, according to the Education Data Initiative (4), elite institutions in places like Silicon Valley can charge several times that. That financial power doesn't just buy access. It can also influence how schools operate.
At Tessellations, former staff alleged that donor families sometimes had sway over decisions, including student placement. More broadly, research from the Brookings Institution has found that access to advanced educational opportunities is heavily shaped by income and parental involvement (5).
There's also evidence that intense parental pressure can complicate school environments. The American Psychological Association has linked high levels of parental involvement, sometimes described as "helicopter parenting," to increased stress for students (6). At Tessellations, that led to disputes over curriculum, complaints from neighbors and even families left scrambling after last-minute admissions reversals.
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Why a startup mindset doesn't translate to schools
Part of the tension came from trying to run a school like a tech company. Tessellations' founder scaled enrollment rapidly, growing from a few dozen students to nearly 300 in just a few years, while experimenting with unconventional fundraising and flexible curricula.
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But education systems tend to rely on consistency, not disruption. Research backs that up. The National Center for Education Statistics has consistently found that stable school environments are key to student success. Meanwhile, the Learning Policy Institute reports that high teacher turnover, like the midyear layoffs seen at Tessellations, can negatively affect student achievement and school culture.
That helps explain why critics of the school's approach summed it up bluntly: "Schools aren't tech startups." (7)
In Silicon Valley, the mantra of "move fast and break things" has built trillion-dollar companies. In education, breaking things, whether staffing, leadership or curriculum, can come at the expense of students who depend on stability.
In the end, even some of the school's most influential backers opted out, forming their own homeschool collective in search of a more controlled environment. It's a striking reversal. The same group that set out to reinvent education ultimately walked away from their own creation.
It's a reminder that more money doesn't automatically produce better systems, especially in areas like education, where trust, continuity and community matter as much as innovation.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
The Wall Street Journal (1),(2),(7); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (3); Education Data Initiative (4); Brookings Institution (5); American Psychological Association (6)
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Clay Halton is an associate editor at Money.ca, covering a wide range of consumer-focused financial stories. He has over seven years of experience in digital publishing and has written and edited for outlets including PCMag and Investopedia.
