Liemandt was on the Peter Attia "The Drive" podcast a couple of days ago discussing this. The episode is 1 hr 37 minutes before you start applying multipliers.
Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
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Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#12Also 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…
Amusingly, $40k is cheap for private school in SF so if they can bring the model here at the same cost...
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#13Also 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…
As noted in the article, for people who won't RTA, the original 2sigma observation of 1 on 1 is due to Bloom more than 40 years ago.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#14Also 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…
But you can draw comparisons with other expensive private schools, which is what the ACX article does.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#15Earlier 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…
But you can draw comparisons with other expensive private schools, which is what the ACX article does.
No, it spends ~2000 words comparing Alpha School to all other schools that give MAP tests, and then says "How does the 2.6x improvement that Alpha is delivering compare to those elite institutions? I have no idea."
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
I don't know anything about private schools beyond reading a few articles, but I think that might be overstated. Even with the same kids and parents, it seems likely that some schools are better than others?
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#17Liemandt was on the Peter Attia "The Drive" podcast a couple of days ago discussing this. The episode is 1 hr 37 minutes before you start applying multipliers.
I came to say this. Free episode to listen to.
If you are interested in this it is Nx more cost-effective to listen to Liemandt than to read the adjective laden article.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Amusingly, $40k is cheap for private school in SF so if they can bring the model here at the same cost...
Their new SF campus charges $75k/yr!
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can draw comparisons with other expensive private schools, which is what the ACX article does.
No, it spends ~2000 words comparing Alpha School to all other schools that give MAP tests, and then says "How does the 2.6x improvement that Alpha is delivering compare to those elite institutions? I have no idea."
The author's children were going to an elite private school immediately before going to Alpha School.
Re: Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
#20Also 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…
The parent-essayist also mentioned tuition is $10K at the Brownsville TX school, and tuition-free at Alpha’s Arizona charter school.