| My thoughts about Alpha School and '2 hour learning': 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.