Here’s another take: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
At the very least it’s an interesting experiment—still unclear if or how well this sort of thing will succeed.
At the very least it’s an interesting experiment—still unclear if or how well this sort of thing will succeed.
https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1933354196792979590?t=bMl...
My main problem is that they claim:
- it can work with any cohort
- that the gains come primarily from the 2 hour learning platform
But actually:
- the gains come from the high quality and large quantity of adults
- only 10% of the benefit comes from the platform (according to Matt Bateman, an education thinker who now works there)
- there are definitely large selection effects, too
I like the idea of it. But AFAICT there's nothing special about the execution. It's just that public schools (both government-run, and charters):
(i) can't choose their students, and
(ii) aren't trying to maximize learning, and
(iii) have parents who want something 'normal'.
So it's easy to do something better, if you can get a few folks to pay you a lot of money, and you have investors willing to burn additional money.
(BTW at their new school in San Francisco, opening this fall, they're planning to charge $75k/year, so probably no need for VC subsidy)
They might iterate to something that can scale. But right now they're making claims that I don't think would stand up to scrutiny.
Regarding their charter school application in Pennsylvania: the fact that they're trying to get taxpayers to pay so much for their software (which Matt acknowledges only accounts for 10% of the gains) seems like a trick to extract money from a taxpayer-funded 'not for profit'.
Separately: if I were paying $75k/year for a school for my child, I'd be disappointed if they were using IXL and ALEKS for math, instead of Math Academy.
0: $59,320 for the 25-26 year according to their website.
You could employ a private tutor full time for that sort of money.
But actually I don't think you could hire a full time tutor for that amount in San Francisco. Many public school teachers in SF cost double that https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-...
You could hire one full time tutor per two children, though...
more expensive than Harvard