The epic 18k word writeup on Austin’s flagship Alpha School is excellent. It is long, but given the blog you’re reading now, if you have interest in such topics I’d strongly consider reading the whole thing.
I'm really interested in this so I'm going to go through those links in more detail later.
Context is: elder daughter, 11 years old, very good at maths. And in the previous school she was in she was highly motivated because she was part of a gifted maths group and they pushed her and she competed with friends.
However, we moved house about a year ago and she moved into a school that's not nearly as good. Certainly no gifted maths group. (The reason for this move was to set her up for a very good secondary school here - in previous location none of them were very good.)
Since the stimulus from school and the peer pressure has now gone, she's still doing fine in maths but isn't pushing herself or moving ahead. We tried Math Academy, which she was into for a while, but she's not very motivated.
So I would like to figure out some way to make .... DadBuck's work, say by just paying out bucks on MathAcademy lesson/test completion... but I want to do it in a way that keeps that possibility of intrinsic motivation.
While there are some kids who are happy to dive deeper into math as an end in itself, the more common case is for math to be a means to an end.
It’s easier said than done, but I would look for project areas that line up with your daughter’s interests and where better fluency with math at/just beyond your daughter’s current level allows her to visibly accomplish more.
>1-on-1 attention upon request, 5-to-1 overall student-teacher ratio.
In the interests of scaling Alpha school to larger populations, could some fraction of this attention be handled by asking more advanced students in a subject to help out the ones who are struggling with it? That _used_ to be part of the practice of schooling, two centuries ago. I'm not suggesting that this could substitute for _all_ of the teachers' work, but might it cut costs enough to allow easier scaling to larger populations? ( level 0 support - AI in the lessons, level 1 support - more advanced fellow student, level 2 support - teacher ? )
Although I did have one question - you say that "Rewarding fundamental behaviors works better than rewarding test performance" but it looks like the link has it the other way around - that rewarding test performance is better than rewarding behaviors. I did a quick ChatGPT check to confirm - https://chatgpt.com/share/686fc7d7-f950-8012-8813-e3f59436135a
Please let me know if I am mistaken.
As an aside, my company is developing an AI powered tutoring app for SAT math based on these principles - https://aaris.ai. Would love feedback from anyone interested.
In the I've Got A Theory section, aren't 1 and 4 contradictory?
EDIT: looks like maybe the link for number one is wrong by the way. It's the same as the link for number three.
I'm really interested in this so I'm going to go through those links in more detail later.
Context is: elder daughter, 11 years old, very good at maths. And in the previous school she was in she was highly motivated because she was part of a gifted maths group and they pushed her and she competed with friends.
However, we moved house about a year ago and she moved into a school that's not nearly as good. Certainly no gifted maths group. (The reason for this move was to set her up for a very good secondary school here - in previous location none of them were very good.)
Since the stimulus from school and the peer pressure has now gone, she's still doing fine in maths but isn't pushing herself or moving ahead. We tried Math Academy, which she was into for a while, but she's not very motivated.
So I would like to figure out some way to make .... DadBuck's work, say by just paying out bucks on MathAcademy lesson/test completion... but I want to do it in a way that keeps that possibility of intrinsic motivation.
While there are some kids who are happy to dive deeper into math as an end in itself, the more common case is for math to be a means to an end.
It’s easier said than done, but I would look for project areas that line up with your daughter’s interests and where better fluency with math at/just beyond your daughter’s current level allows her to visibly accomplish more.
>1-on-1 attention upon request, 5-to-1 overall student-teacher ratio.
In the interests of scaling Alpha school to larger populations, could some fraction of this attention be handled by asking more advanced students in a subject to help out the ones who are struggling with it? That _used_ to be part of the practice of schooling, two centuries ago. I'm not suggesting that this could substitute for _all_ of the teachers' work, but might it cut costs enough to allow easier scaling to larger populations? ( level 0 support - AI in the lessons, level 1 support - more advanced fellow student, level 2 support - teacher ? )
Fascinating insights.
Although I did have one question - you say that "Rewarding fundamental behaviors works better than rewarding test performance" but it looks like the link has it the other way around - that rewarding test performance is better than rewarding behaviors. I did a quick ChatGPT check to confirm - https://chatgpt.com/share/686fc7d7-f950-8012-8813-e3f59436135a
Please let me know if I am mistaken.
As an aside, my company is developing an AI powered tutoring app for SAT math based on these principles - https://aaris.ai. Would love feedback from anyone interested.