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Fascinating article. It is interesting to see how much room there (still) is for applying basic, obvious, common-sense approaches. And of course the best part i

Fascinating article. It is interesting to see how much room there (still) is for applying basic, obvious, common-sense approaches. And of course the best part is seeing the incredible impact he's had on literally thousands of lives as a result. I did find the final bit sadly ironic. The entire point of Frazer's approach is that he looked at what the best teams were doing, came up with hypotheses about weaknesses in the approach, and experimented/iterated from there. Fittingly, now that the politicians are paying attention, their immediate instinct is to just blindly ape the structure that he's built -- rather than looking to instill the same mindset in other teachers. I suppose it's the circle of life in large, bureaucratic organizations. A decade (or a century) from now, another Frazer will come along and apply the same mindset to this structure -- and all the bureaucrats will be suitably impressed again.

corrral 4y ago
> Fittingly, now that the politicians are paying attention, their immediate instinct is to just blindly ape the structure that he's built Entirely typical of school reform efforts. Study or (more often) a book built around a study or two comes out, hype builds, consultants latch on, dumb-shit school admins get ahold of it (and use it as an excuse for a free trip or two to some BS conferences, for them and maybe a favored teacher or two), and then try to implement it without understanding it. They usually make two major mistakes: 1) Assuming the study's results will generalize to any school, disregarding even caveats or limitations called out in the very reference work that's the foundation of the reform. 2) Ditching parts they're uncomfortable with, failing to appreciate that implementing 80% of something may not even achieve 20% of the desired effect. They do this even when it's super fucking obvious to anyone with a bit of common sense that the parts they're ignoring are key. They're especially bad about this with discipline systems, but it also frequently happens with other kinds of programs. Then they do this again every 2-4 years. For a given kind of system (English instruction, math instruction, discipline, all kinds of things). Result: schools are constantly flailing around, with shit changing for no good reason almost every single year.
tzs 4y ago
I don't think that is some large bureaucratic organization thing or political thing. It's just the normal difference between R&D and production.
mlyle 4y ago
> I suppose it's the circle of life in large, bureaucratic organizations. A decade (or a century) from now, another Frazer will come along and apply the same mindset to this structure -- and all the bureaucrats will be suitably impressed again. Honestly, you don't want everyone to be constantly iterating and trying to drastically upend things to find a new global optimum. Beyond the fact that many people are not cut out to do it (most people aren't above average ;), there's a survivorship bias in these stories. You don't hear all the times that radical new approaches had terrible outcomes. If you want to build an extraordinary competitive program doing A, you should absolutely be doing lots different from what everyone else does. But the typical program that eschews hard-gained wisdom will do worse. Basically, you're buying volatility in outcomes for a lower expected value.
megablast 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- karamanolev 4y ago
  By showing them the approach, teaching them the benefits and showing them the results? By giving them more information, so they can want to adopt the same mindset themselves? Because not all teaching, showing and informing is "brainwashing"?
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    But this guy is not a teacher; he's a coach. This is math-sport. Teachers can't just abandon the part of the class that doesn't already show demonstrated aptitude and/or commitment. The football team is to the gym class as the math-sport team is to the math class.
    - karamanolev 4y ago
      All the more argument why adopting the mindset is better than adopting the specific approach or program. The approach might be good for competitive-level math, but bad for the classroom. The mindset will allow teachers to adapt those ideas so they can be appropriate for the classroom.
bongoman37 4y ago
SiempreViernes 4y ago
I mean, this all sounds like an red herring anyway if what you want is to improve maths education broadly: you need a willingness to abandon most of the students (they have the best maths team and yet the school doesn't rank well on maths) in favour of concentrating all the most promising students into one small(ish) group. Over half (51%) of the student at this school have below satisfactory maths proficiency, and most of those (70%) are actually rated as Inadequate. If you are interested in raising the mathematical achievement of the roughly[1] 90% of students at Buchholz that don't get to take part in these ivory tower math classes, there is not much of use here. [1] Only 140 students out of 2200 went to the Church thing. Alternatively, only 10% of the students attain a rating of maths Mastery in US News ranking: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/districts/alachua-county-public-schools/f-w-buchholz-high-school-4666 https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/d...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Also -- I'm willing to believe that the regular "boring honors stuff," as they put it, which they've apparently de-prioritized is not the best possible curriculum. But there's no reason to believe that the skills needed to solve math puzzles really quickly are either. Competitions are always artificial. This school is apparently pulling some really bright students now. Are they teaching them skills that will allow them to excel academically later in life, or are they teaching them how to execute the competitive meta strategy quickly?
  - TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
    Math is not debate or a spelling B. Math problem solving is absolutely applicable, in that form, in a number of fields like engineering, finance, video games, etc. etc.
  - M3L0NM4N 4y ago
    As someone who was on the team, the skills that allow you to excel academically in life are the competitive math skills. And to be honest, not only is the "honors stuff" and "common core" material deprioritized, it's not even taught explicitly. You just get to such a high level understanding of the subjects Frazer teaches that it becomes trivial.

corrral 4y ago

> Fittingly, now that the politicians are paying attention, their immediate instinct is to just blindly ape the structure that he's built Entirely typical of school reform efforts. Study or (more often) a book built around a study or two comes out, hype builds, consultants latch on, dumb-shit school admins get ahold of it (and use it as an excuse for a free trip or two to some BS conferences, for them and maybe a favored teacher or two), and then try to implement it without understanding it. They usually make two major mistakes: 1) Assuming the study's results will generalize to any school, disregarding even caveats or limitations called out in the very reference work that's the foundation of the reform. 2) Ditching parts they're uncomfortable with, failing to appreciate that implementing 80% of something may not even achieve 20% of the desired effect. They do this even when it's super fucking obvious to anyone with a bit of common sense that the parts they're ignoring are key. They're especially bad about this with discipline systems, but it also frequently happens with other kinds of programs. Then they do this again every 2-4 years. For a given kind of system (English instruction, math instruction, discipline, all kinds of things). Result: schools are constantly flailing around, with shit changing for no good reason almost every single year.

tzs 4y ago

I don't think that is some large bureaucratic organization thing or political thing. It's just the normal difference between R&D and production.

mlyle 4y ago

> I suppose it's the circle of life in large, bureaucratic organizations. A decade (or a century) from now, another Frazer will come along and apply the same mindset to this structure -- and all the bureaucrats will be suitably impressed again. Honestly, you don't want everyone to be constantly iterating and trying to drastically upend things to find a new global optimum. Beyond the fact that many people are not cut out to do it (most people aren't above average ;), there's a survivorship bias in these stories. You don't hear all the times that radical new approaches had terrible outcomes. If you want to build an extraordinary competitive program doing A, you should absolutely be doing lots different from what everyone else does. But the typical program that eschews hard-gained wisdom will do worse. Basically, you're buying volatility in outcomes for a lower expected value.

megablast 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Please don't post flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
karamanolev 4y ago
By showing them the approach, teaching them the benefits and showing them the results? By giving them more information, so they can want to adopt the same mindset themselves? Because not all teaching, showing and informing is "brainwashing"?
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  But this guy is not a teacher; he's a coach. This is math-sport. Teachers can't just abandon the part of the class that doesn't already show demonstrated aptitude and/or commitment. The football team is to the gym class as the math-sport team is to the math class.
  - karamanolev 4y ago
    All the more argument why adopting the mindset is better than adopting the specific approach or program. The approach might be good for competitive-level math, but bad for the classroom. The mindset will allow teachers to adapt those ideas so they can be appropriate for the classroom.

bongoman37 4y ago

SiempreViernes 4y ago

I mean, this all sounds like an red herring anyway if what you want is to improve maths education broadly: you need a willingness to abandon most of the students (they have the best maths team and yet the school doesn't rank well on maths) in favour of concentrating all the most promising students into one small(ish) group. Over half (51%) of the student at this school have below satisfactory maths proficiency, and most of those (70%) are actually rated as Inadequate. If you are interested in raising the mathematical achievement of the roughly[1] 90% of students at Buchholz that don't get to take part in these ivory tower math classes, there is not much of use here. [1] Only 140 students out of 2200 went to the Church thing. Alternatively, only 10% of the students attain a rating of maths Mastery in US News ranking: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/districts/alachua-county-public-schools/f-w-buchholz-high-school-4666 https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/d...

bee_rider 4y ago
Also -- I'm willing to believe that the regular "boring honors stuff," as they put it, which they've apparently de-prioritized is not the best possible curriculum. But there's no reason to believe that the skills needed to solve math puzzles really quickly are either. Competitions are always artificial. This school is apparently pulling some really bright students now. Are they teaching them skills that will allow them to excel academically later in life, or are they teaching them how to execute the competitive meta strategy quickly?
- TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
  Math is not debate or a spelling B. Math problem solving is absolutely applicable, in that form, in a number of fields like engineering, finance, video games, etc. etc.
- M3L0NM4N 4y ago
  As someone who was on the team, the skills that allow you to excel academically in life are the competitive math skills. And to be honest, not only is the "honors stuff" and "common core" material deprioritized, it's not even taught explicitly. You just get to such a high level understanding of the subjects Frazer teaches that it becomes trivial.