Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
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Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
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Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#2Also see this anonymous entry into an essay-writing contest by one of the parents:
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#3[dead]
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#4Also see this anonymous entry into an essay-writing contest by one of the parents: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
Read both. This is fascinating. Notes:
- 1 on 1 tutoring yields about 2 standard deviations of improvement, but costs too much.
- The Alpha system is very effective but costs about $40,000/student.
- It's not that complicated. 2-3 hours a day of intense computer-monitored study, about half using off the shelf tools, and the rest of the day is developed to less structured projects. This is a useful insight. Push kids hard for about 2-3 hours a day and then get to the fun stuff.
- Works on ordinary kids. Strong claims in this area. Needs outside validation.
- Lots of carrot, including cash payments for achievement. Not much stick.
- Staff/student ratio about 1:5. No teachers from bottom quartile of teacher population.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#5Also see this anonymous entry into an essay-writing contest by one of the parents: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
That article mentions family income as possible confounder only once, while in an article of this extent I would expect it to appear dozens of times and be the central point. You simply cannot draw conclusions from comparing general populations and kids in schools that cost $500k for a 13-grade education, or that cost any amount. Students from low income households have so many headwinds. They don't come to school because their transportation is unreliable, because their teeth hurt, because they can't afford sanitary pads, they can't sleep because their neighborhoods are too loud, and so on. When this school opened in Brownsville and preferentially enrolled only the children of employed aeronautical engineers, that precluded any possible comparison of outcomes.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#6Also see this anonymous entry into an essay-writing contest by one of the parents: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
That article mentions family income as possible confounder only once, while in an article of this extent I would expect it to appear dozens of times and be the central point. You simply cannot draw conclusions from comparing general populations and kids in schools that cost $500k for a 13-grade education, or that cost any amount. Students from low income households have so many headwinds. They don't come to school be…
Yes, they are tiny and it has to be considered experimental and unproven as far as scalability goes. They are a long way from trying to educate millions of kids.
But it will be interesting to see how far it scales up and into what demographics before it stops working and they reach their limits.
So far, it seems they've had success with in-person schools and it didn't work (yet) remotely. Motivation seems like the key factor.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#7Warning: The article is ~18K words. Longer than a long-form journalism article; more like novella length. I started skimming faster when it diverted into an extended YA drama, and eventually gave up.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#8I'd be curious to have adults use their learning program as well, and assess their aptitude at learning with it.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#9Quick anecdote before I dive in:
>learning things like how to run an Airbnb or food truck, manage a brokerage account or Broadway production, or build a business or drone.
I remember touring my high school alma mater, a local magnet with a decent record of getting kids into top schools (that it was fed by the bedroom communities of NASA and USDA sites clearly notwithstanding). As we passed the shop, we spent a good 15 minutes learning about the small plane students were building. A good 10-foot wingspan. I matriculated and that was the last I heard of it.
I've noticed that, in marketing for educational institutions, it's common for the uncommon and exceptional achievements of That One Student to get pushed as indicative of what most students can expect to (and will never actually) do. I'd think most would do well to be wary of an article that starts out with such a claim. Regression to the mean probably factors in, even for outlier schools.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
That article mentions family income as possible confounder only once, while in an article of this extent I would expect it to appear dozens of times and be the central point. You simply cannot draw conclusions from comparing general populations and kids in schools that cost $500k for a 13-grade education, or that cost any amount. Students from low income households have so many headwinds. They don't come to school be…
Yes, they are tiny and it has to be considered experimental and unproven as far as scalability goes. They are a long way from trying to educate millions of kids. But it will be interesting to see how far it scales up and into what demographics before it stops working and they reach their limits. So far, it seems they've had success with in-person schools and it didn't work (yet) remotely. Motivation seems like the ke…
Scalability is the issue, though, isn't it? Any number of esoteric pedagogical approaches have been tested, to great success, with the children of people wealthy enough to fulfill all of their scions' material needs and subsequently move onto purchasing immaterial things like "attention".
You have to figure out something you can apply kids in spite of who their parents are. If not, you have to admit that there's no such thing as a meritocracy divorced from what the parents are willing or able to provide (which opens up questions of how much children deserve to have that deficit filled, it if happens to exist in any individual case).