simonebrunozziUnbound Academy hasn’t replaced teachers with AI
https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-2-hour-learning-and
This is a good article. Dan Meyer, like his PhD supervisor Jo Boaler, is very much in the camp that traditional classroom education is good, and that improvements come by working through school districts, administrators and classroom teachers.
I'm not saying this to cast doubt on any of the facts in the article. Just pointing out that Dan, in general, has a less optimistic view of AI in education, than I'd expect of the median HN commenter.
That said, I'll share my thoughts on Alpha School, based on everything I've read (both things published by the school, and things I've read from parents online and in private forums):
- the '2x growth' in their marketing is way oversold; their typical 4th grader isn't doing math at the level of a typical 8th grader.[0]
- the '2 hours/day' in their marketing is oversold; students often work longer than that.
- only 25% of their students use Math Academy. The rest use IXL or ALEKS.
- in their charter school application, the amount they proposed charging for their software platform was unreasonable, given the minor role it plays in outcomes (10% according to Matt Bateman, who works there)
[1]
- the core idea of their 'timeback' platform (that monitors student activity in realtime via video camera and screen recording) is good, but I have not seen it and have no idea whether it's real or how good it is
More of my thoughts from back in April: https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1912571014107787730
[0] https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1971804784475996469
Rahim Nathwani (@RahimNathwani) on X
@NielsHoven @mbateman @gtschool I love the *idea* of GT School and schedule. I'm skeptical about the current implementation. They use widespread tools like IXL. Their enthusiastic employees are unable to explain how their platform ensures students are working on the right things. https://t.co/H6y3nYkjUy
The intellectual pedigree actually explains everything. Jo Boaler is the one responsible for charging $5k/hr to advise schools to end middle school algebra. In an amusing confluence of concepts, Garry Tan (CEO of YC - whose site we're on) describes her as "infamous and disgraced"[0].
I don't know about that, but when I discovered that San Francisco schools weren't teaching algebra I was at first impressed that American children were doing Group Theory in 8th grade (something we only learn in the 12th standard in Tamil Nadu in India where I'm from) and figured moving that to 9th isn't a big deal only to find that they meant the basic stuff (linear equations and the like, what we learn in the 7th grade).
Honestly, I can't take anyone seriously who would try so hard to set back children from learning what is fairly basic Mathematics at that age. Children are capable of learning this. Or at least a sufficiently large amount are that we should be teaching them to a high standard.
For Alpha School, I think the Slate Star Codex review is likely more informative than this clearly polemic article.
0: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1953654484997169443
tl;dr This is from the people who want to delay Mathematics education to later in a child's life (algebra to 9th grade onwards)
Garry Tan (@garrytan) on X
The key study used by infamous and disgraced Stanford ed professor Jo Boaler to justify removing Algebra from public middle schools has been exposed as invalid There’s nothing honest about academics who promote false studies to take away educations from public school kids.
Ironically, by taking the author of this article seriously, the preceding comment makes a more much persuasive critique.
I suspect most people will land on this where their predilections already lead them. To me, the effort to delay Mathematics education is sufficiently bad that I can dismiss the rest of that school of education without much concern. If they are right, they are right by accident and there's not much to learn there. I know there are others like me out there, and for them a quick reminder of who this person is will probably be sufficient for them to escape reading (what they will believe to be) a low-quality post. Time isn't infinite after all.
If you feel less convinced by this, it's simply that you're not in my audience. But I think it's probably worth sticking a tl;dr on the original. Let me do that.
I usually regret reading Dan Meyer's articles, but this one I really enjoyed. It pointed at a couple of sources that led me down a rabbit hole back when I encountered it.
I don't know whether Dan Meyer is in favour of delaying math education. I do know he favours delivering education in a school setting with in-person human teachers, but the latter doesn't imply the former.
And he works on making really nice tools for exploring math: https://www.desmos.com/