21–30 of 251 posts
Tl;dr - Romania, like other Eastern European states, uses "tracking" or separate educational streams, so students from "National Colleges" (the top tier of Romanian high schools) tend to be overrepresented. > The design of Romania’s educational system makes it perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world > One of the cruel parts of the Romanian system is that, though sorting is nationally available, st…
> Neighboring Poland they aren't neighbors. What's HDI ?
Well, you set up a system that fosters competition, you get excellence as a result. DUH. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus also have similar systems, and they punch way above their weight in math and CS: https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=RUS https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=UKR https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=BLR Ironically, the US schools do have tracking. Fo…
"When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is known as Goodhart's Law
Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with "gifted only schools" is they end up eating the bulk of funds and legitimately don't have a strong predictive capacity on student success that couldn't already be explained the parental background and early childhood care. In my case, I never placed in gifted academic programs in elementary and middle, but by HS was able to take 14 AP classes (and auto shop - always liked tinkering since elementary sch…
>The issue with "gifted only schools" is they end up eating the bulk of funds The article points out that the opposite is the case in Romania: the highest-ability schools receive a decrement in funding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is known as Goodhart's Law
This is a BS saying because it's so easy to find counterexamples. Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?
The education system is stratified, keeping high-achieving students together, promoting them to schools with good teachers, etc. OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there? It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and fos…
I guess there's another layer tho in 2025 where, assuming they are rational, you wouldn't necessarily expect their efforts to benefit Romania.
It is just entertainment. It doesn't have any meaningful, deep or relevant impact on culture and quality of life of a country. At best it boost narcissistic jingoism and nationalism.
Life in a country won't get any better because someone that carries their flag appeared on television winning a medal. This is just a globalized version of the Roman "panis et circensis", but without the panis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is known as Goodhart's Law
This is a BS saying because it's so easy to find counterexamples. Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?
Well, you set up a system that fosters competition, you get excellence as a result. DUH. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus also have similar systems, and they punch way above their weight in math and CS: https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=RUS https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=UKR https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=BLR Ironically, the US schools do have tracking. Fo…
You get excellence in a tiny number of individuals who don't budge the statistics. The national averages are poor, and the excelling individuals are not even numerous enough to create a "fat right tail".
The education system is stratified, keeping high-achieving students together, promoting them to schools with good teachers, etc. OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there? It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and fos…
I wonder if national averages actually matter very much beyond being a vanity statistic? While it's good to have a generally more mathematically capable population, you would expect most actual "progress" (papers, discoveries, things built) to be made by the outliers. I guess there's another layer tho in 2025 where, assuming they are rational, you wouldn't necessarily expect their efforts to benefit Romania.
I do not write this to contradict particular claims in the article above, but @cremieux should be read cautiously.