2 ms·
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 eff
by Animats 1y ago
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.
- renewiltord 1y agoAmusingly, $40k is cheap for private school in SF so if they can bring the model here at the same cost...
- kippinitreal 1y agoTheir new SF campus charges $75k/yr!
- renewiltord 1y agoLmao typical. The other schools that charge that are pretty good too.
- 11101010001100 1y agoAs 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.
- alwa 1y agoThe parent-essayist also mentioned tuition is $10K at the Brownsville TX school, and tuition-free at Alpha’s Arizona charter school.
- bsder 1y ago> - Staff/student ratio about 1:5. No teachers from bottom quartile of teacher population. This is the known formula to accelerate teaching and learning. Even the Gates Foundation (whom I loathe) documented this. Every single one of the successful programs that the Gates Foundation analyzed were declared as too expensive and shut down.