[HN Gopher] A public school in Florida built America's greatest ...
___________________________________________________________________
A public school in Florida built America's greatest math team
Author : jbredeche
Score : 205 points
Date : 2022-07-18 03:47 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| dmix wrote:
| Apparently Frazer doesn't have a teaching degree, he only has a
| bachelors in accounting. I'm curious if that played a role in his
| thinking.
| kevmo wrote:
| I believe his father and father-in-law were math professors (I
| did a little digging, because I live in the area and did Mu
| Alpha Theta to little success in high school).
| mplewis9z wrote:
| I went to Eastside High School (also in Gainesville, FL, and
| bitter rivals) and was on the MAO team there. It was always so
| satisfying when you managed to beat the Buchholz team at
| competitions (even if it was their underclassmen), just because
| they were so dominant even a decade ago.
|
| Weird to see Frazer still kicking, all the Eastside math teachers
| seem to move on pretty quickly.
| wwarner wrote:
| Great article, and raises the bar for what can be achieved at a
| young age. But it's about building a winning team and not so much
| about broadly improving math education.
| visarga wrote:
| Reminds me of the math education system in my country when I was
| a kid, but it was all about the Math Olympiad. They found the
| most promising kids and invited them to form a club where they
| got instructed above and beyond the curriculum. Kids got to know
| each other and form friendships, got motivated by cooperation and
| competition. This is all besides regular school.
| frozencell wrote:
| Good, me too. But the rest is sadly unpriviliged.
| bdastous wrote:
| "It turned out there was value in putting a bunch of smart kids
| in the same room: They feel empowered to make each other
| smarter."
|
| It's too bad this is no longer in fashion with the educational
| establishment.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| This is also an important step not to skip:
|
| >the pipeline for the high school's math team must begin long
| before students reach high school, so Mr. Frazer searches for
| prospects in elementary school and steers them to accelerated
| math classes in middle school.
|
| >"You wouldn't grab a kid in ninth grade who's never played
| football and expect him to be a great high-school football
| player," he said. "For most of these kids, this is their
| football."
| [deleted]
| nopinsight wrote:
| I used to teach competitive math problems. An observation: These
| math challenges resemble real-world problems much more than
| routine textbook stuff.
|
| You need to apply knowledge from disparate areas, combine them
| creatively, prod it and often fail several times before you get
| it right.
|
| It's a good way to prepare one's kids (or oneself) to solve hard
| problems in real life.
|
| I'd also argue such problems ought to be part of the curriculum
| for "normal" kids too. They might just more time and hints along
| the way than gifted kids. Once they get the taste of solving
| interesting problems from a young age, they might enjoy math more
| as well.
|
| Note how many kids are attracted to games---some of which are
| objectively more challenging than routine school math problems.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Have you got resources to recommend? That's exactly the kind of
| thing I want for my kids, but apart from a blob of questions
| from my old math teacher, I don't have any.
| nopinsight wrote:
| Art of Problem Solving is a great site for that:
| https://artofproblemsolving.com/online
|
| Some contest problems for older kids: https://artofproblemsol
| ving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_...
|
| There are also online gifted programs, incl at John Hopkins'
| Center for Talented Youth. The center is quite well-known in
| the gifted education community, with many famous alumni.
|
| https://cty.jhu.edu/
|
| https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/10/24/center-for-talented-
| youth-40t...
| AlanYx wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that the John Hopkins' program takes
| students worldwide; it's not US-only.
| a99wang wrote:
| Aside from the Art of Problem Solving books mentioned by
| others, you may find https://web.evanchen.cc/faq-contest.html
| worth reading. I learnt a lot about math (contests (strategy,
| experience), undergraduate material, etc.) and more by deep-
| diving into Evan's site.
| qsort wrote:
| (not parent, but I used to do that thing as well and you
| might find this helpful)
|
| It depends on their age and skill level. It goes without
| saying that younger kids need more guidance if they aren't
| extremely motivated.
|
| This is worth looking into: https://artofproblemsolving.com,
| it's kind of the go-to website for the competitive math
| community. There are a lot of free high-quality resources on
| the wiki, and they sell courses and books.
|
| A couple classic books: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Craft-
| Problem-Solving-3E/dp/11194...
| https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Solving-Strategies-Problem-
| Bo...
|
| And obviously, competition problems! For example, this is the
| AMC: https://amc-reg.maa.org/default.aspx; competition
| websites usually have an archive of past editions freely
| available. Studying past problems is the meat and potatoes of
| actual competition training. Make sure they are age
| appropriate, because the difficulty level ramps up VERY fast.
| qsort wrote:
| I used to do that too. First as a competitor, then for my
| national organization, and now I'm back at my former high
| school as a coach.
|
| There's a very large variety of difficulty levels in math
| competitions. You go from almost trivial to olympiad level (=
| almost impossible even for most professional mathematicians).
|
| That level also steadily increases as time goes on. Problems
| from the same competitions are already vastly more difficult
| than ten years ago, when I used to compete. Might be that I'm
| growing white hair, but it's almost unbelievable what the very
| top kids can do. They're very, very, very good.
|
| > I'd also argue such problems ought to be part of the
| curriculum for "normal" kids too.
|
| I wish there was a way to do it. I agree that the educational
| value is simply off the charts, but even low-level competitions
| are way too hard if you won't train, and most kids
| understandably won't.
| nopinsight wrote:
| > I wish there was a way to do it. I agree that the
| educational value is simply off the charts, but even low-
| level competitions are way too hard if you won't train, and
| most kids understandably won't.
|
| It does require a different approach for most kids. An
| effective approach would involve some or all of the following
| components: - interactivity - visual
| imagery - gamification - social problem solving
| - customized problem set
|
| Technology will probably need to play a major role since
| teachers cannot do all of these for a large group of
| students.
| fspeech wrote:
| While congratulations are in order for the team I don't know by
| what standards the writer judges them to be the "greatest". I
| have not heard of "Mu Alpha Theta" until reading this article.
| The standard (as in "most participated") math competition
| sequence is AMC 10/12, AIME, USA(J)MO, IMO. For teams Math Count
| (for middle schoolers) and ARML are also popular. The winners at
| these events are so exceptional it is hard to see a formula to
| their success other than extraordinary talents and efforts. That
| being said I did observe that in my son's public high school the
| math team members very much teach and inspire each other.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| (M)(A)(TH)
|
| i guess it's a for-fun name?
| teacherscrub18 wrote:
| Sure the WINNERS are exceptional. They would be in any
| competition. The great part is that just preparing (practicing)
| makes people stronger problem solvers. Which is not the case in
| typical maths schoolwork.
|
| To echo the parent, though: the school is NOT bragging about
| success on AMC contests. Probably because they do not have it.
|
| Similar prep with a strong group of incoming students does work
| to produce successful AMC and AIME results, I can attest.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| > Which is not the case in typical maths schoolwork.
|
| Because their 'preparations' usually suck. As someone has
| gone down the path many years ago (think pre 00), the problem
| is that many teachers didn't teach the right way to tackle
| the hard problem consistently. I quit the math olympic class
| half way in high school because I couldn't keep up with it
| anymore, as I was only brute forcing. I only learnt how to
| consistently tackle hard problems and being self
| introspective to maintain the high performance relatively
| easily many years later when I joined the workforce and being
| much better at learning.
|
| I feel like this kind knowledge is lost in the current
| schools especially under circumstances, where let the
| students to explore their best potentials are no longer the
| goal.
|
| And many ppl like me only rediscovered how to learn and work
| hard correctly and joyfully after adulthood through various
| online articles and videos.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Because their 'preparations' usually suck.
|
| I think we're much better off now, thanks to Art of Problem
| Solving's Alcumus, Richard Rusczyk, all the top-tier video
| lessons out there, etc-- along with just things like being
| able to hand out Khan practice for general math topics.
| We're getting much better at teaching top students how to
| solve hard problems (and, as a result, the AMC8/10/12,
| AIME, Olympiads, MathCounts, et al... are getting much
| harder-- these days if you want to prepare for the AMC8 you
| should be studying old AMC10 problems).
|
| The same can't be said about overall societal performance
| in teaching the entire population.
| awsrocks wrote:
| ramesh31 wrote:
| There's definitely nothing telling about public education in a
| city with 20% black and 50% hispanic population being completely
| unrepresented on a team of dozens of kids. I'm sure that the
| "identifying talent" that's happening here is completely
| equitable and inclusive. I'm sure all the brown kids sitting in
| overcrowded classes are having a great time watching the white
| and asian kids go off to their special treatment with dedicated
| tutoring. This is _exactly_ how our system of class based
| privilege perpetuates itself.
| frozencell wrote:
| Reminds me the American math team which finally beaten the
| Chinese in a national competition.
|
| [0]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/HolUp/comments/nkhgcs/american_math...
| ryan93 wrote:
| You are gonna have to provide some evidence. very unlikely this
| teacher wouldnt enthusiastically accept black or hispanic
| students
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Its rare thats its any specific individual
|
| The ancestor commenter is cynically pointing out that support
| systems are major factors in why the other students are more
| disproportionately not signaling potential to begin with
|
| It is great that individuals picked are applying themselves
| and doing the work, it is noticeable this has some selective
| evolution towards some ethnicities pretty reliably, it is not
| recognizing how a deeper holistic solution can address the
| disparity in how other students can be motivated and
| presented with opportunities or how their home circumstance
| and support systems can be addressed
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The team member above states there were black and Native
| members so you are incorrect
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I have two kids. One of them was an "honor" student from 6th
| grade on.
|
| The difference was one teacher. My younger one was tapped by
| their teacher for a special program in 5th grade that put her
| in a class with other "smart" kids for a day each week in 6th
| grade. From there, those kids blossomed to honors classes
| later.
|
| For my other kid, the distractions in classrooms full of kids
| who didn't care about learning proved to be too much at times.
| The honor student had to occasionally take classes with
| "normal" students, and found the environment very distracting.
| It matters how much the kids in the class want to learn, as
| opposed to make fun of each other and the teacher, or be
| disruptive in other ways. The older one still did fine, has a
| degree and a job, but it was a struggle.
|
| So, I get your point. I have strongly felt for a long time now
| that even average students should have received the experience
| my honor student did in 6th grade. It was a great break from
| the average day of going from class to class, broke up the
| monotony of standard curriculum, and provided those kids with a
| good foundation for thinking out of the box and learning to
| learn in a focused environment. It provided a clear pathway
| through honors curriculum in classrooms full of students and
| teachers who cared.
|
| I want that for every kid, but with Republicans doing their
| damnedest destroy public education and the impact it's having
| on teachers' mental well-being (for those who can even be
| bothered to become teachers anymore, given the low pay and
| guaranteed bullshit from not just students but parents and the
| government itself), it's hard to imagine it becoming a reality
| in the short term.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > The honor student had to occasionally take classes with
| "normal" students, and found the environment very
| distracting.
|
| I was consistently the teacher's pet in my English classes
| because I chose those to be my "normal" classes in high
| school because I thought they were boring. Even without
| putting in much effort, being quiet and actually able to
| answer the questions endeared me to my teachers.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| 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.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| 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/d...
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| 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.
| mlyle wrote:
| > But there's no reason to believe that the skills needed
| to solve math puzzles really quickly are either.
|
| I disagree. I think that having a strong sense of
| mathematical properties and numbers is more useful than any
| specific rote drilled into students.
|
| I see a lot of students up in precalc doing rote and not
| understanding at all why things work and that have no
| chance when you throw a curveball. On the other hand, the
| competitive math students are asking questions like:
|
| * What's the graph of this function look like?
|
| * What's it for the trivial case n=4 before I think about
| n=100?
|
| * Does symmetry or any other pattern collapse this down?
|
| * What properties do I expect the answer to have? Why does
| this direction "feel right"?
|
| The kids who excel in math competition _and_ on the normal
| math academic track get there by playing with it and
| understanding it.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| Plus I suspect that there are at least some kids with a math
| talent who were explicitly _sent_ to this specific school -
| so if you had programs like this in every school, you would
| probably have significantly fewer eligible candidates.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yeah, the article mentions that professors at the nearby
| university explicitly court the teacher to get their kids
| into these classes.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| That's a contributor to how the math team _continues_ to be
| successful today, but the more interesting question is how
| they initially became world-class ~15 years ago. Frazer is
| clearly responsible for the latter.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| It's outlined in the following paragraph:
|
| """ Mr. Frazer's insight was to connect four levels of
| education: The kids he scouts in elementary school
| develop in middle school, compete in high school and take
| specialized classes from college professors that he
| brings to Buchholz's campus. As soon as the system was in
| place, the team started winning and never stopped. """
|
| Notice how the first step is collecting kids that are
| _already_ good. The recipe is then broadly: collect the
| best kids you can get your hands on, train and coach them
| for years, watch them win. There might be some details of
| wider interest, but essentially this is a good old
| elitist project.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I mean, this all sounds like an red herring anyway if what
| you want is to improve maths education broadly
|
| That's the tricky bit here, right? Math competition gamifies
| math, and encourages a level of play and understanding that
| normal math classes don't deliver.
|
| But if you don't feel like you have some basic level of
| competence, being measured in this way is demotivating.
|
| We need to figure out ways to make it interesting and involve
| exploration and that game-like feel for a broad slice of
| students.
|
| I would rather a given student end their HS math journey in
| algebra I and have finished it with A) wonder, and B) a broad
| and solid understanding of the material that they can take
| into their adult lives... than to have ended it being able to
| do a big slice of AP Calc BC problems well, but without any
| kind of underlying fluency in math.
|
| _True_ mastery is one thing missing from all these
| discussions of math levels, tracks, etc.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > encourages a level of play and understanding that normal
| math classes don't deliver
|
| Yes, but this is largely by convention for much of it. With
| some effort you can incorporate more playful and open
| exercises in a normal class. However few teachers have the
| spare time to spend this effort. It is also risky because
| you're likely to have some students that cannot cope with
| the challenge and if they do poorly the new thing you tried
| is likely to attract blame.
|
| As an aside, a fundamental problem in any discussion about
| education is that it tends to happen with the various
| parties speaking about interventions aimed as only a
| section of the student population, but without this
| segmentation being explicitly acknowledged.
|
| It is always important to remember there is a huge range of
| abilities and home circumstances in the student population
| the schools have to educate, so in a very real sense there
| is not just one, but rather a _whole society_ of underlying
| problems that lead the the educational outcomes that then
| get summarised as a unitary PISA ranking or similar.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Yes, but this is largely by convention for much of it.
| With some effort you can incorporate more playful and
| open exercises in a normal class. However few teachers
| have the spare time to spend this effort. It is also
| risky because you're likely to have some students that
| cannot cope with the challenge and if they do poorly the
| new thing you tried is likely to attract blame.
|
| That's the big thing that has to be figured out. It needs
| to be fun. You need some randomness and handicapping.
| Effort and ability needs to affect outcome in gamified
| lessons but you need to feel like you have a fighting
| chance even if you're at the bottom.
|
| I feel like good PE teachers know better how to do this
| than most in education. Their curriculum is intrinsically
| gamified and they need to manage to get effort and
| development from those with obviously different levels of
| ability.
|
| > As an aside, a fundamental problem in any discussion
| about education is that it tends to happen with the
| various parties speaking about interventions aimed as
| only a section of the student population, but without
| this segmentation being explicitly acknowledged.
|
| A bigger fundamental problem is that we don't get
| rigorous data on anything. We flit from trend to trend to
| trend, without measuring any of them well.
|
| I'm data driven, and I read all the educational research,
| and I have very little rigorous guidance that I can
| believe. It falls to personal judgment, then, which is
| notoriously easy to fool.
|
| > It is always important to remember there is a huge
| range of abilities and home circumstances in the student
| population the schools have to educate, so in a very real
| sense there is not just one, but rather a whole society
| of underlying problems that lead the the educational
| outcomes that then get summarised as a unitary PISA
| ranking or similar.
|
| Yes, but it's similarly a mistake to think we're at some
| kind of global optimum and that there's not a set of
| different practices and curriculum that would result in a
| drastically better distribution of outcomes. In
| particular, I feel like we really, really screw up how
| math is taught.
|
| I did recovery with a couple of students up in precalc
| levels that were struggling. They were missing some
| fundamental things. When they fell behind, it's
| everyone's (parents, teachers, tutors, etc) immediate
| intervention to help them with the problems they're
| struggling with, and drill them with rote. But if the
| _real problem_ is that you don 't have a good
| understanding of the associative property of
| multiplication, you end up memorizing a million special
| cases and getting yourself confused.
|
| So when can you rearrange terms, and when can you not?
| It's time to play with it and find out...
| nine_k wrote:
| I think what it shows that mathematical aptitude is somehow
| unevenly distributed, but most of all, the _motivation_ to
| develop it is highly unevenly distributed among students.
|
| Because of that, you can pick a school where most students
| (70%) can't be bothered to learn the basics, and pick a few
| who are motivated to climb to the top.
|
| This is completely unsurprising: in every sport, the
| proportion of those who do not care enough to those highly
| motivated is even more stark.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > This is completely unsurprising: in every sport, the
| proportion of those who do not care enough to those highly
| motivated is even more stark.
|
| I would say it is even more general: there are an
| overwhelming amount of things to be passionate about, but
| being passionate about something means you put it before
| (almost) all else. So for any one specific topic you can
| expect most kids will actually be more passionate about
| something else, simply because there is just _so much_ else
| to go around.
|
| In any case, I think the harsh reality for teachers is that
| most kids are mainly passionate about being friends with
| other kids. I suspect this is especially true for kids with
| less beneficial backgrounds that can't count on as much
| support from their home.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| A talented teacher can inspire and motivate almost any
| student.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| That doesn't really help, because it simply shifts the
| problem to creating "talented teachers" out of the
| average teachers that are _actually on hand_.
| corrral wrote:
| Reality is you'd need to at least double teacher pay to
| get a pool of teachers for whom the approach from one of
| these "amazing teacher does amazing thing" stories
| might-- _might_ --generalize well enough to be useful.
| mlyle wrote:
| Reality is, compensation isn't a panacea for drawing
| talent with enthusiasm.
|
| Indeed, it may even have adverse effects: you draw people
| who want the money, instead of people drawn to the
| profession intrinsically.
|
| We do need to build environments (schools,
| administrations, patterns of educating teachers, social
| supports for teachers and students, etc) that cultivate
| enthusiasm and encourage high levels of effort, rather
| than crushing it.
| corrral wrote:
| > Indeed, it may even have adverse effects: you draw
| people who want the money, instead of people drawn to the
| profession intrinsically.
|
| This sentiment is a big part of suppressing teacher
| wages, and needs to stop. No, raising teacher pay will
| not result in getting worse teachers. We shouldn't be
| relying on charity and self-sacrifice on the part of
| teachers.
|
| [EDIT] The general problem here is that we default to
| "pay more to get better workers" _unless_ the job
| produces clear social good, then it 's suddenly like
| "well if you don't want to badly under-earn compared to
| what you could make doing almost anything else, then you
| must not have your _heart in the right place_ so will be
| bad at this anyway ". It's some weird kind of sour-grapes
| thinking that we use to avoid paying people doing
| _actually clearly important and socially beneficial_ jobs
| what they 're worth, while the real money goes to people
| doing jobs that... aren't so clearly beneficial.
| mlyle wrote:
| > We shouldn't be relying on charity and self-sacrifice
| on the part of teachers.
|
| I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates
| that raising comp often has perverse effects.
|
| A] There's a whole lot wrong with education resulting in
| bad outcomes. B] And the way we compensate teachers is
| terrible and unjust. I am not convinced that addressing B
| will have a huge effect on A.
| corrral wrote:
| > I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates
| that raising comp often has perverse effects.
|
| Better tell _waves hands at the entire private sector_.
| They don 't seem to have gotten that message. Seems like
| an opportunity to start a company paying 30% under your
| competition, so you can out-compete them by getting
| better workers.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| I know this'll sound daft... Can you share some of this
| data?
|
| I know there's _related_ studies, like the famous "pick
| up your kids from daycare on time" study -- and of course
| plenty of examples about incentive structures gone wrong.
| However, I think those are different in subtle but
| important ways.
|
| The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more
| would increase the available pool of candidates. All the
| people who are _currently_ interested in teaching would
| surely stick around -- and a lot more people would be
| interested, too. Given the current issues with hiring and
| retention, it 's difficult to see how that would be a bad
| thing.
| mlyle wrote:
| edit: many edits below for clarity since original comment
| 11mins ago.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10589297/
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-
| worker...
|
| http://www.timothy-
| judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20Podsakoff,%...
|
| etc.
|
| Extrinsic incentives are correlated only very slightly
| with performance, job satisfaction and self-reported
| measures of motivation. The correlations that exist are
| confounded because causation is likely reversed (people
| with higher satisfaction, performance, and motivation are
| paid more). When we study, in isolation, extrinsic
| incentives on tasks that are intrinsically rewarding,
| they appear demotivating.
|
| Anecdotally, I see the effect in the classroom itself:
| rewarding students for things that they otherwise would
| do _for the challenge and their own reward_ sucks the fun
| out of it really fast. The absolute last thing in the
| world you want to do is pivot someone from evaluating a
| task based on its intrinsic rewards to thinking about it
| in terms of extrinsic factors.
|
| I'm actually taking over a competitive math program next
| year that has had a pretty big "candy bribe" component of
| it that I need to figure out how to unwind. It's one
| thing to unexpectedly give out stickers, candy, etc, and
| let students know you're celebrating awesome
| performance... it's another still to condition students
| to think that doing math is only worthwhile because Jolly
| Ranchers will be dispensed.
|
| > The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more
| would increase the available pool of candidates.
|
| I think in the _very long run_ that 's true: there are
| people who would like to teach that are steered away from
| it during college because they figure out they just can't
| make the numbers work.
|
| But given that a teaching credential is a pretty
| substantial structural bar, I don't think it changes
| things much in the medium run.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The general problem here is that we default to "pay
| more to get better workers"
|
| The data on whether this works in general is very, very
| muddy.
|
| > unless the job produces clear social good,
|
| Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the
| love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects
| the supply curve too much.
|
| I love teaching and do it for 1/10th or less of what I
| could make for equivalent effort elsewhere.
|
| And yah, this has terrible outcomes and is unfair.
| corrral wrote:
| > The data on whether this works in general is very, very
| muddy.
|
| My spouse, with about a decade of teaching experience at
| the time, once had a former student drop out of high
| school and start working at as a gas station clerk at a
| major chain.
|
| The student was making almost as much as my spouse, and
| if she stuck with it she'd be out-earning my spouse in a
| year or two. Total comp, benefits included, not talking
| just wages (school worker benefits are not and have not
| for some time been _that_ good, really, and at least in
| my area are now pretty poor compared to offerings in the
| private sector). Clerking at a gas station. As a high-
| school dropout.
|
| I'm pretty confident teacher pay is _so_ bad that this
| "raising pay will draw worse candidates" (where the fuck
| is that hand-wringing when CEO pay comes up at board
| meetings? Any pro sports teams worrying they might pay
| too much to attract good players?) thing is not a real
| effect worth worrying about, if we're talking pay
| increases for teachers that are anywhere in a remotely
| plausible range.
|
| > Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the
| love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects
| the supply curve too much.
|
| Sure, and as is typical you get some good people who are
| semi-retired from a better-earning career or have a much
| higher-earning spouse, who don't really need the salary
| at all. You don't get the trust-fund kids as much, as in
| other careers that are similarly pro-social or artistic,
| since teacher social status is somewhere under the floor,
| but otherwise it's similar.
|
| But that's not enough, and I don't think paying teachers
| 50-75% of what any decent teacher could make doing
| something else _with a teaching degree_ --not even
| assuming some entirely different life-path--is a great
| way to get a good candidate pool. Enough bodies, based
| solely on some idealistic drive (check in again in 5
| years, let alone 10, on how well that's doing sustaining
| them, and for the ones who _do_ need the money, which is
| most of them, on how their financial situation is adding
| to the stress that 's driving them out of teaching) sure,
| but not enough _good_ candidates. And it 's not enough to
| keep the good ones around.
| mlyle wrote:
| > My spouse, with about a decade of teaching experience
| at the time, once had a former student drop out of high
| school and start working at as a gas station clerk at a
| major chain.
|
| OK, I've already said I think this is unjust. Please read
| my comments and understand context. _I just do not think
| this is a path to increase educational performance,
| particularly in the short to intermediate run_.
|
| > where the fuck is that hand-wringing when CEO pay comes
| up at board meetings? Any pro sports teams worrying they
| might pay too much to attract good players?
|
| I feel like you're not understanding the distinction
| between:
|
| A) paying a premium within a profession to get the top
| candidate
|
| and
|
| B) increasing pay broadly to get a higher level of
| performance from existing practitioners
|
| and
|
| C) to get more able candidates into a profession or
| retain them.
|
| > you get some good people who are semi-retired from a
| better-earning career
|
| [raises hand]
|
| > since teacher social status is somewhere under the
| floor
|
| IMO this is the biggest problem. And, indeed, teachers
| will take _even lower pay_ to be in a private school
| situation with a parent community and student community
| that values education.
| corrral wrote:
| > IMO this is the biggest problem. And, indeed, teachers
| will take even lower pay to be in a private school
| situation with a parent community and student community
| that values education.
|
| _Lots_ of private schools pay worse than public schools,
| true, and do indeed draw teachers who are decent-to-good
| but sick of putting up with public school admin and
| parent bullshit--for reasons that are obvious if you
| think about it, but perhaps not _intuitively_ obvious,
| private schools are _less_ beholden to any one parent
| than public schools are, and are much better positioned
| to firmly tell them "no"--but once you start to get into
| actually-good private school territory[0] pay and
| appreciation (and to a _some_ extent social status, at
| least within a certain circle) match or beat area public
| schools, typically.
|
| [0] A very high percentage of private schools are _not
| good_ , though--"how can that be? How do they keep
| getting enough students to stay open, in a competitive
| market that includes 'free' as an option?"--politics and
| religion, is the answer, and they can under-perform on
| academics year after year as long as they're delivering
| the message the parents want on those fronts.
| Incidentally, the teachers these schools draw with their
| lower pay aren't always leaving public education over
| _legitimate_ bullshit, but often over perceived bullshit
| like "they wouldn't let me talk about Jesus as much as
| I'd like", and these are _usually not_ good ones that the
| public schools are losing to private schools, but ones
| who we 'd _want_ to leave public education.
| mlyle wrote:
| > but once you start to get into actually-good private
| school territory
|
| This just isn't true of the SF Bay Area. When you look at
| the very top, like Harker, Nueva, etc-- salary may
| slightly edge above public school pay for some portions
| of the scale, but is still behind when you consider total
| comp.
|
| > appreciation (and to a some extent social status, at
| least within a certain circle)
|
| I feel appreciated and valued by our parent community,
| and I do not feel like there are many that look down
| their nose at me. (And, given my background, I'm just
| kinda amused by the group that do).
|
| I also have total "easy mode" when it comes to behavior
| management. Students that don't even know me come into
| the room predisposed to think I have important things to
| say and to work hard.
|
| > A very high percentage of private schools are not good,
| though
|
| Oh, believe me, I know about the crummy sectarian
| schools, and the crummy for-profit "highly academic"
| academies. I am not talking about that. (I don't think
| many of these are very good teaching environments,
| either...)
|
| > private schools are less beholden to any one parent
| than public schools are
|
| This is very complicated and probably out of scope for
| this discussion.
|
| > and are much better positioned to firmly tell them "no"
|
| Once you have a wait list, this is true.
| corrral wrote:
| Sorry, by the way, if I've misunderstood or misread some
| of your posts. I'm truly not trying to be argumentative
| for the sake of it, and expect we agree much more than we
| disagree, overall. Also: yes, I'm sure you're right about
| your local market, and part of the problem discussing
| these things is that the situation in schools varies
| greatly state-by-state and region-by-region, so it's easy
| to get wrong ideas about things--teachers unions _might_
| be so powerful they 're part of the problem, in some
| places, but in others they barely have any power at all
| so those very-common "teacher's unions are out of control
| and _that 's_ the main problem with education!" takes
| come off as something from another universe, or teacher
| comp _might_ be borderline-OK in some places, but really,
| really isn 't in others. Some places, there are five
| private schools in a 30-minute drive that charge $40+k/yr
| and are all pretty good or even excellent--others, there
| are five private schools in a 30-minute drive and they
| all charge $12k/yr or less and are all _terrible_ (but do
| cater to religious and /or political preferences). It's a
| highly heterogenous field.
| mlyle wrote:
| Likewise --- I understand you're passionate about the
| issue and feel your spouse has been ripped off. I think
| we should pay teachers much more. I just don't think it
| is likely to improve education much, and most of the
| benefit will be in the far future. [I do think improving
| working conditions will have an immediate benefit,
| though].
|
| > Some places, there are five private schools in a
| 30-minute drive that charge $40+k/yr and are all pretty
| good or even excellent
|
| Far, far in excess of that here.
|
| > there are five private schools in a 30-minute drive and
| they all charge $12k/yr or less and are all terrible (but
| do cater to religious and/or political preferences)
|
| And we have a bunch of those, too.
|
| There's a huge selection effect: when you choose the
| students A) who can earn a scholarship, or B) whose
| parents will sacrifice to pay tuition at a non-sectarian
| school, you're basically selecting for the families who
| value education.
|
| I'm reminded of research that shows that students at
| lottery charter schools outperform students at
| neighboring public schools... but then the students who
| _enter but lose the lottery_ also outperform the general
| student population at those schools.
|
| I believe we have very good educators and we have a whole
| lot of things we're doing right. But we also have a whole
| lot of things that are just fundamentally easier or
| better in our environment. Almost entirely, the behavior
| problems I confront are students getting a little
| excessively exuberant or otherwise out of hand, not
| _wanting to misbehave_.
| corrral wrote:
| > I understand you're passionate about the issue and feel
| your spouse has been ripped off.
|
| It's not just that we're personally harmed by the current
| system--we're in the "has a high-earning spouse" group so
| we don't _need_ to both be adequately paid, though of
| course it 'd be nice--but I've watched one good,
| experienced teacher after another bail on the profession
| over the years, because they _do not_ get paid enough to
| put up with the shit they 're subjected to, and at some
| point they see an opportunity outside education, realize
| just _how badly_ they 're under paid, and decide they're
| done with it. It seems to be getting worse, too, even
| before recent inflation started screwing with everything
| (I suspect the rest of this decade is going to be a slow-
| motion disaster for education hiring and retention, in
| excess of how bad it already was). I have kids, too, and
| they're in school, and I hate knowing that a bunch of the
| best teachers they might have _will_ leave before they
| get them, because the work-conditions /comp ratio is so
| badly messed up that it's not only asking some sacrifice
| of teachers, but is practically abusive.
|
| > There's a huge selection effect: when you choose the
| students A) who can earn a scholarship, or B) whose
| parents will sacrifice to pay tuition at a non-sectarian
| school, you're basically selecting for the families who
| value education.
|
| Yeah, agree that the factors that make a "good school"
| versus a "bad school" are complex and that you can't just
| look at student outcomes to decide whether the quality of
| a school's instruction is actually above-average--
| especially with private schools, but also with public
| schools. Solutions to those problems that aren't actually
| related to school quality _per se_ are hard to come by,
| without deliberately leaving some kids behind and /or
| increasing staffing levels dramatically (so, also
| significantly increasing district spending/budget). Lots
| of the problems, effective solutions start to look like
| "solve poverty", so... good luck. :-(
|
| Didn't mean to be flippant with the good vs. bad school
| distinction--looking at various measures of student
| outcomes definitely doesn't give a full picture of how
| good a job a school, or a teacher, is doing, and
| selection bias is a major confounder in attempts to do
| that.
| mlyle wrote:
| > because they do not get paid enough to put up with the
| shit they're subjected to
|
| Yah. And the crap is a primary concern, too. We need to
| figure out how to make things better. _Especially_ on the
| things that teachers complain about that are demoralizing
| because they can be expected to negatively affect student
| outcomes.
|
| I think improving comp has a distant and uncertain
| effect, but fixing a lot of the crap could be more
| impactful. Right now we incent administrators not to hold
| students accountable; how can we do the opposite?
|
| Also, how can we systemically study interventions in a
| way that we can draw meaningful conclusions-- instead of
| leaping from educational trend to educational trend
| because they seem like they sound like they'll do
| something.
|
| > and selection bias is a major confounder in attempts to
| do that.
|
| It's got a huge indirect impact that is difficult to
| control for, too. If I have a student who wants to be
| disruptive, _other students will call him or her out_ ,
| and they won't find much social validation from it. So,
| it's not just the attitudes of individual students
| affecting their own outcomes, but everyone else around
| them.
|
| And even second order things. I would probably be a
| _below average educator_ in a difficult public school
| classroom. And instead, I 'm an extraordinary one in the
| environment I'm in. Horses for courses.
| teacherscrub18 wrote:
| To be fair, I don't think your posts are making the
| distinction between A B and C.
|
| I would say A and C are both reasonable. To get higher
| performance out of existing candidates, you would need a
| metric for performance... I am unfortunately not aware of
| one that is robust enough to be used.
| mlyle wrote:
| To do A you need a good metric, which as you point out we
| don't have. Of course, it's also zero-sum.
|
| You _might_ be able to do B with pay for performance if
| you had a good metric.
|
| C might make things significantly better 10 years from
| now-- increasing the size of the candidate pool. Of
| course, this requires you be able to adequately measure
| candidates, too.
|
| I think we should increase teacher pay. I don't think it
| changes much soon in the quality of education. I do think
| improving teacher working conditions--- especially the
| ones that infuriate teachers because they have well
| articulated justifications of worsening student
| outcomes--- can improve all of the above.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It's not just about pay. It's also about workload,
| safety, respect, and a curriculum that doesn't try to
| force them to only teach to pass tests.
|
| Teachers also need collaboration from parents who all too
| often see school as a free babysitting service or just a
| road to a job.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Very true. I know teachers who left public school for
| lower paying jobs at private schools
|
| We have spent the last 40 years reducing teacher
| autonomy, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's harder
| to get teachers who care.
| corrral wrote:
| > We have spent the last 40 years reducing teacher
| autonomy, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's harder
| to get teachers who care.
|
| I think schools are in a death-spiral where they can't
| get enough decent teachers with good judgement who can
| work autonomously, so they keep clamping down with more
| control over teachers' day-to-day activities, which just
| drives away more of the good teachers because working
| like that _sucks_.
|
| Current high inflation (wage-inflation plus just the
| regular kind) is going to drive this to a crisis point
| before long, I think--when fast food joints have signs up
| begging people to apply at $17/hr with basically no
| education requirements, a starting salary in the low-$30k
| range requiring a bachelor's degree starts to look like
| something only a crazy person would opt to do.
|
| [EDIT] Relatedly, school admin is also totally fucked up.
| The people doing those jobs are generally terrible for a
| bunch of reasons, including that they're _also_ under-
| paid for the kind of person you 'd really _want_ doing
| those jobs, while also being very high-paid relative to
| teachers. Teachers who may or may not be good at
| teaching, but who _are not_ good at admin, go into it
| because it 's the only way to make real money in
| education until you're nearly at retirement age and
| holding a PhD, on a classroom teacher pay-scale, and
| people who can't hack it in private sector management go
| into it because it pays pretty well and you can coast
| while getting an ego-boost from being the Big (Wo)Man In
| Charge and bossing people around. The entire field is a
| cess-pit of incompetence, neglect, and outright idiocy,
| and it's a huge problem that doesn't get enough attention
| compared with teacher quality.
| corrral wrote:
| Right, absolutely. The conditions are also damn
| stressful, unless you're lucky enough to be at a school
| with _amazing_ admin and co-workers _and_ parents. That
| almost never happens.
|
| Then the ones who are good but getting stressed out
| eventually start looking around and realize they could
| match their current comp assistant-managing a gas
| station, and that some of the extra things they've taken
| on give them experience that lets them gun for non-
| education jobs with _way_ higher pay... and it 's only a
| matter of time before they leave.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The conditions are also damn stressful, unless you're
| lucky enough to be at a school with amazing admin and co-
| workers and parents.
|
| As a teacher at a school with pretty amazing admin and
| co-workers and parents.. they're pretty dang stressful
| even with those things. And I come from a background of
| founding startups, so I'm not some complete lightweight.
|
| The thing is, you can endure stress and suck if it feels
| worthwhile. If you're missing those things, it stops
| feeling worthwhile.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Teachers also benefit from mentoring, time to visit other
| classrooms, time to meet with other teachers and talk,
| paid time outside the classroom to reflect and develop
| lessons, sufficient provision of classroom materials
| (that they don't have to buy themselves), occasional
| sabbaticals, ....
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Why shouldn't we be doing precisely this?
| [deleted]
| corrral wrote:
| > 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.
| mlyle wrote:
| > 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.
| tzs wrote:
| 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.
| megablast wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamebait.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| karamanolev wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I do an occasional pilgrimage to my old high school math teacher.
| He's in his 80s now, but in his last year before retiring, we won
| a math contest for European International schools. He was very
| happy about that.
|
| The guy still gets visits from people in their 60s that he taught
| decades before me. He really made the subject come to life, had a
| sense of humor, and was generally a good guy.
|
| He also ran the school math teams. Several kids in the years
| above me did quite well on those, all down to him giving us
| accelerated content and questions that were "actually
| interesting" rather than dozens of the same thing over and over.
| Of course it varies what that means depending on where you are in
| your journey, but at each step there tends to be an aha! moment
| where things come together.
|
| I caught up with him a few weeks ago, and he told me he actually
| didn't enjoy the university level of mathematics. Somehow things
| got very dry and boring, and that's part of why he ended up
| teaching high school.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| This story reminds me of the man behind the movie "Stand and
| Deliver" (1988), Jaime Escalante, who in the 80's made his school
| famous for generating students that passed the Advanced Placement
| Calculus exams.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
|
| 1982 - 18 students passed, but by 1991 "the number of Garfield
| students taking advanced placement examinations in math and other
| subjects jumped to 570".
|
| I like it when teachers teach far and beyond the boring old
| curriculum and inspire kids far beyond what they thought capable
| of themselves.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| The union and administrators must have really hated his guts.
| The union is easily explained; he made other teachers and
| schools look bad. I wonder why the administrators didn't want
| the students succeeding though.
|
| > In his final years at Garfield, Escalante received threats
| and hate mail.[14] By 1990, he had lost the math department
| chairmanship. Escalante's math enrichment program had grown to
| more than 400 students. His class sizes had increased to over
| 50 students in some cases. That was far beyond the 35 student
| limit set by the teachers' union, which increased its criticism
| of Escalante's work.[14] In 1991, the number of Garfield
| students taking advanced placement examinations in math and
| other subjects jumped to 570. The same year, citing faculty
| politics and petty jealousies, Escalante and Jimenez left
| Garfield.[14] Escalante found new employment at Hiram W.
| Johnson High School in Sacramento, California. At the height of
| Escalante's success, Garfield graduates were entering the
| University of Southern California in such great numbers that
| they outnumbered all the other high schools in the working-
| class East Los Angeles region combined.[15] Even students who
| failed the AP exam often went on to study at California State
| University, Los Angeles.[14]
|
| > Angelo Villavicencio, one of Escalante's handpicked
| instructors, took over the program after Escalante's departure,
| teaching the remaining 107 AP students in two classes over the
| following year. Sixty-seven of Villavicencio's students went on
| to take the AP exam and forty-seven passed. The math program's
| decline at Garfield became apparent following the departure of
| Escalante, Villavicencio, and other teachers associated with
| its inception and development. In just a few years, the number
| of AP calculus students at Garfield who passed their exams
| dropped by more than 80%. In 1996, Villavicencio contacted
| Garfield's new principal, Tony Garcia, and offered to come back
| to help revive the dying calculus program. His offer was
| rejected.[14]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| Impressive considering the demographics of Gainsville. They used
| standardized test scores to identify talented grade school kids
| and put them all in the same room. Can we still do that in
| diverse school districts in CA and MA? I think we'd have a major
| uproar.
| dilap wrote:
| correct -- see e.g. what just happened to lowell in san
| francisco
|
| edit: but reversed! so maybe you could...
| raunak wrote:
| You're right, but they also reversed it just recently
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Source?
| dilap wrote:
| ah my SF news is out of date (moved out about a year ago,
| tho i've still got family there) -- that's great to hear!
| Ligma123 wrote:
| >Can we still do that in diverse school districts in CA and MA?
| You would be able to do that for one year, and then people
| would start noticing a pattern in the teams' composition, and
| yes you'd get your uproar and the whole thing would be
| canceled.
| 9991 wrote:
| Yea, that's essentially what happened to Virginia's Thomas
| Jefferson High School.
| rayiner wrote:
| TJ was humming along fine for decades under republicans and
| conservatives democrats. Liberal democrats won the
| governorship just in 2018 and within two years folks are
| declaring standardized tests to be "racist."
|
| I blame my parents. They immigrated to a red/purple state
| for the low taxes and good schools and turned it into a
| solid blue state by voting straight ticket democrat. And
| then they're all surprised at how this could happen.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Your first paragraph: OK.
|
| Your second paragraph: what is the alternative to voting
| a straight Dem ticket if you support science and want to
| see women, Jews and brown people get a fair shake in
| life?
| forgingahead wrote:
| You might be surprised at the skin colour of the poster
| you are replying to. Your question is also utterly flawed
| - there is no "heroic political party fighting for the
| rights of the X", and even if such a unicorn existed,
| it's definitely not the modern Democrat party.
|
| Politicians are like strippers, you fall in love with
| them at your own risk.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Your second paragraph: what is the alternative to
| voting a straight Dem ticket if you support science and
| want to see women, Jews and brown people get a fair shake
| in life?
|
| I'm a "brown" immigrant and grew up in Virginia when it
| was a red state. I got way more than a "fair shake,"
| including the opportunity to attend TJ. Indeed, Democrats
| are the ones who are advocating to legalize
| discrimination against people like me
| (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/12/9/biden-
| admin-bac...) and eliminate objective standards that
| enable immigrants to break into elite jobs in favor of
| subjective standards that require social connections and
| cultural capital to navigate.
| prottog wrote:
| raunak wrote:
| TJ didn't change because of the blue 2018 Virginia.
|
| it was a concerted effort by a small group of
| administrators at FCPS, and an even smaller group of
| 'anti-racist' students at TJ themselves.
| rayiner wrote:
| TJ is literally a "Governor's school." Liberal democrats
| put themselves in a position where they are forced to go
| along with whatever activists decide is "racist"
| regardless of the merits. They're the ones who weaponized
| accusations of "isms" and handed a club for the activists
| to beat them with.
| consp wrote:
| Isn't that what lots of European education systems do in
| middle/high school education anyways?
| rscho wrote:
| Did. Officially, some still do. But it's now become a very
| much fake elitism, with a major push for inclusion and the
| mixing of ages and backgrounds in the same classrooms. The
| average level is in freefall too.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I was on the team. Ama
| koolba wrote:
| Is the curriculum listed online?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| It's a bit of a closely guarded secret, but it's basically
| everything that shows up on Mu Alpha Theta tests, which you
| can find online.
| lordnacho wrote:
| How do I get some interesting problems for my kid to look at?
| Starting at the bottom
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| Mu Alpha Theta old tests, you can start at regional level for
| a given subject, then to increase difficulty go to state,
| then nationals.
|
| Art of Problem Solving is also something Frazer swears by and
| is a good resource.
| gfd wrote:
| I don't recognize the contest name although I did math contests
| a long time (over ten years) ago.
|
| Why aren't AMC/AIME/USAMO/IMO mentioned?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| We did take those, but the main focus of the math team is Mu
| Alpha Theta. I'm guessing it's a bit of a positive feedback
| loop of "we have the best material for MAO tests, and we
| place the highest in MAO competitions". Also, Frazer even
| writes tests for some regional MAO competitions that Buchholz
| competes in.
| hoseja wrote:
| Is the composition so ethnically skewed as the photos suggest?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| When I was on the team it was 2/3 Asian, 1/3 white, one black
| member, and one Native American member.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >one black member
|
| ADOS, or recent African immigrant?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| Parents were African immigrants
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| were most the students parents from "professional"
| backgrounds?
| qxfys wrote:
| 1. How old were you when Frazer spotted your talent? 2.
| Agewise, when did you know you are good at math?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I was in middle school, I did a math summer camp run by the
| team where they scout talent, then took a placement test at
| the end of the summer and scored pretty well on it. Was on
| the team starting 8th grade, would take classes at the high
| school.
|
| Honestly, as early as I can remember learning math. I always
| did "math club" in school. My parents always stressed it and
| it always interested me. I would say I started _loving_ math
| once I joined the Buchholz team though.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Surely the students identified for the team have other talents
| as well, and being on the team makes pursuing them more
| difficult. How did being on the team shape who you became,
| where you went to college, what you studied, etc.? Any regrets?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| This question asks exactly what I wanted to talk about
| regarding the team, and what people may not realize reading
| this article.
|
| This may sound like a stretch, but the Buchholz math team and
| Mr Frazer are probably the single biggest life-changing
| factor in my life so far, and in a lot of my teammates' as
| well. The effect that Frazer's culture puts on his students
| over their (potentially) 7-year career with him through
| middle and high school just dominos throughout college and
| your career. The team shaped who I am, where I went to
| school, and what I studied greatly, which I am so
| unbelievably thankful for (which I will get into at the end).
|
| Most of the smartest people I know are friends I made on the
| team. To put it simply, these kids are so driven that being
| able to pursue a talent outside of the math team is certainly
| feasible. Now, almost everyone on the math team is taking the
| hardest classes they can at the school, a lot of which doing
| so with almost perfect GPAs. But the math team _is_ very time
| consuming, and I think a lot of the team members share the
| ideology that there isn 't a more valuable talent to expand
| upon in high school than math.
|
| I was unfortunately only on the team for 2 short years,
| because I moved to a different state (and the year we lost
| both state and nationals is the year I went to both
| competitions, unfortunate correlation). As smart as the kids
| are on the team, Frazer's game plan is so well made at this
| point, it teaches you how to win. This means success is more
| correlated to hard work than intelligence in most cases.
|
| My biggest regret about being the team is not working harder.
| I really feel like I was lazy and didn't take it as seriously
| as I should have, but looking back I don't think it affected
| my trajectory much. Fortunately, after I moved I tried to
| keep the Frazer culture with me, made friends with the
| smartest people at my new school, and I matured and worked
| harder. Absolutely none of which would have happened without
| the math team.
|
| I am now doing computer science at a top 10 school and
| interning at a large tech company this summer. I am extremely
| thankful for where I am, much of which I attribute to Mr.
| Frazer. Plenty other students have far more inspiring stories
| than I have, come from lower socioeconomic statuses than I
| come from, or ended up in a better school than where I ended
| up. Thanks for letting me write that.
| rpois wrote:
| What do you think the article omits/gets wrong about the story,
| if anything?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I would say it understates the impact it has on the kids'
| lives. See my reply to gnicholas.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Did you ever spend organised time helping students outside of
| the team?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| Not sure if there is really an "outside of the team" lol, but
| for a month over the summer, we learned about 4 hours a day
| from the class above us / Frazer, then for another 4 hours
| taught the class below us.
| chasd00 wrote:
| newswasboring wrote:
| Do you think this system has other advantages than preparing
| teams? Like can this be used as a mode of teaching for advanced
| math?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| The content that Frazer teaches should be standard, flat out.
| The competition style of math has so many more practical
| applications than the shit they call common core in the state
| of Florida.
|
| Now, we did all of Geometry and Algebra II (Frazer's
| competition courses, not just regular courses) in a year.
| When students are excited about learning, and you make it
| fun, you can really throw a lot of material at them.
|
| But any part of Frazer's "system" outside of the content I
| think pretty irrelevant for regular teaching, like him using
| class time to teach competition material. That's just how
| math class is for every other kid. 8 hours a day for a month
| over the summer learning and teaching math? Hard to organize
| that without having a team, among other things.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| How refreshing was it to be surrounded by people that care
| about learning?
| dopeboy wrote:
| Can you talk about your teammates / peers? What were their
| interests? Personality types?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| First of all gratz on the success!
|
| My question to you is what are some typical criticisms your
| team gets from competitors or other sources?
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| For some, it's because Buchholz uses actual class time as
| team prep time, I think some schools can't get past the
| bureaucracy to allow that. For a month over the summer, we
| learned about 4 hours a day from the class above us / Frazer,
| then for another 4 hours taught the class below us.
|
| I think the state/national runner ups, American Heritage has
| copied this in class teaching method, among other Frazer
| tactics.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| A teacher at a public school in Florida built the team.
|
| I was really lucky to have a high school math teacher that made
| calculus interesting enough for me to want to learn it. I'm not
| sure I would have made it through the Comp Sci program at college
| without it, as we were required to take an advanced math class
| every semester, and having an understanding of calculus was
| critical to both getting through those math classes, as well as
| the physics classes that were also required for the degree.
|
| Related (content around teaching is part way through the
| article): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/12/15/most-
| likely-to...
| gnicholas wrote:
| Their ability to succeed is given a boost by newfangled math
| frameworks like the one CA is trying to ram through (public
| comment be damned).
| Proven wrote:
| selwynii wrote:
| This is what happens when you encourage high achievement and
| select for it. It's not a model that's going to work everywhere.
|
| It certainly helps that he develops an accelerated program but
| the effect of that program versus the selection process is the
| most important question of all.
| schemester wrote:
| They had a decent showing at the ARML. 9th place if you include
| the off-site teams.
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RvdE4RcA99uXvlaRl4J_...
| 78124781 wrote:
| If I'm reading the standings correctly, they are competing as a
| team from a single HS while most of the others are all-star
| teams composed of students from multiple different HSes in a
| state or area? And they finished higher than noted supermagnet
| TJHSST?
|
| That is impressive, even if it looks like Lexington HS (MA)
| finished ahead of them. Are there any other similar school-
| based team math competitions (I know there are lots of
| individual ones)?
| dmix wrote:
| If you read the article he recruits kids when they are still
| in middle school, basically poaching the best students from
| various other schools to join his high school.
|
| So it's essentially the same as an all-star team, but putting
| them all together in the same class and recruiting some
| university-level talent to help teach them.
|
| The article tries to present it as an 'average school', but
| it's not an average class of kids. That said, it could
| definitely still help kids who wouldn't have that opportunity
| at their own schools.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I mean, these are still kids in Gainesville, and about
| 80-90% of them come from one middle school called Lincoln,
| the best magnet program in Gainesville. He doesn't really
| "poach" kids as much as develop the willing ones with his
| teaching methods while in middle school so they hit the
| ground running when they hit high school. But the regular
| Lincoln kids and many other middle schools in Gainesville
| would feed into Buchholz high school regardless.
| dmix wrote:
| The recruiting part actually starts in elementary
| (there's about 7 different schools in the area):
|
| > Mr. Frazer searches for prospects in elementary school
| and steers them to accelerated math classes in middle
| school.
|
| > Mr. Frazer's insight was to connect four levels of
| education: The kids he scouts in elementary school
| develop in middle school, compete in high school and take
| specialized classes from college professors that he
| brings to Buchholz's campus.
|
| Sounds about right that he'd push them to the same magnet
| school if it's the only good one in the area.
| schemester wrote:
| And Gainesville is the location of University of Florida,
| not some random 133000 person city.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > basically poaching the best students from various other
| schools to join his high school.
|
| I wonder what carrots he dangled in front of the parents to
| get them to switch schools. Doing this for football is a
| big no-no and has resulted in a few scandals over the years
| in Texas.
| sct202 wrote:
| Probably just the college placements are enough. The
| other 2 high schools in Gainesville sent 2 kids each to
| Harvard, Princeton, or MIT during 2018-2020, while
| Buchholz has sent 8 according to Polaris List. The math
| team has posted where their students have gone to college
| and there are a lot of Ivy League and other elite schools
| represented every year (MIT, Stanford, U Chicago).
| https://www.buchholzmathteam.com/college-placement
| schemester wrote:
| The Harvard/MIT or "HMMT" contest has teams and team
| rankings, much like the ARML.
| tbihl wrote:
| The article cites '66th in FL and outside top 1000' (from which I
| infer they are near 1000) as a demonstration of how ordinary they
| are.
|
| There are about 27k high schools in the US, and 774 FL high
| schools. Bucholz high school has 2254 student and is the largest
| in Gainesville, per Wikipedia. All that to say that the article
| understates the starting point for this impressive endeavor.
| [deleted]
| imgabe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/DZ65Z
| dzdt wrote:
| There was a similar example in Nebraska with Leona Penner. [1]
| Her classes were absolutely dominant at every state level
| competition. One key seems to be an intensely motivated teacher
| devoting their own life to this and motivating their students.
| Another key is school district administration willing to arrange
| things to let greatness happen. [1]
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/journalstar.com/news/local/educ...
| jethkl wrote:
| I was in Penner's class. Hard work, but I think it was worth
| it.
| kickout wrote:
| Unexpected Lincoln East encounter in HN...
| mod wrote:
| Seems like we should be studying people like this teacher.
|
| They've cracked a code but we act like it's individual excellence
| that can't be transferred.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I mean, the article explicitly talks about how they _start_ by
| collecting pre-exiting individual excellence, there is never
| any pretence of this program creating excellence from average
| students.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| cs702 wrote:
| Inspiring story, but the absence of statistical rigor bothers me.
| This little fact, in particular, begs more questions:
|
| > Many of the gifted kids in his program have parents who work at
| the nearby University of Florida and push to get on Mr. Frazer's
| radar.
|
| Is there any data comparing how these kids perform compared to
| other kids whose parents also work for a top-100-ranked
| university? (US News ranks University of Florida as #38
| nationwide.) Do these kids do better or worse than their
| comparable peers nationwide?
| rscho wrote:
| Funnily, on the other side of the pond we would find the same
| title about a private school more surprising.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Interesting - someone laser focused on education. When school
| went virtual he quit as a teacher, rented a space, and told 145
| students he'd be teaching there. 140 showed up and they crushed
| competitors.
|
| So he immediately felt virtual learning would not be as good as
| in person, school wouldn't let him teach in person (he is in his
| 60s) so he quits.
|
| I'd trust this guy more then the Ed unions saying virtual is just
| as good as in person
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| I don't think virtual is anywhere as good as in person. I
| didn't believe Ed unions when they said that. Anyone who has
| done virtual classes or conferences knows this (which is a LOT
| of folks at this point should know if you've ever done any
| learning online). Given that it may have been a reasonable
| option until covid was better manageable. I think some
| districts went too far. My school district thankfully was one
| where they did a hybrid in-person/remote. Parents could choose
| for the 2020-2021 school year. It was all in-person (no remote)
| 2021-2022.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| well, laser focused on educating the kids with the best pre-
| existing education at least.
| scarmig wrote:
| Isn't it important that kids who are prepared for more
| advanced material get the opportunity to learn more advanced
| material?
| tbihl wrote:
| It's good that someone is.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| There's really not any shortage of people willing to teach
| the most well educated students though, especially as their
| parents can usually pay a lot.
| tbihl wrote:
| As someone who grew up in public schools that were able
| to put students in accelerated cohorts, I appreciate that
| people are finding ways to do that against the current of
| news suggesting that such systems are being phased out.
|
| To say that wealthy people can achieve systems is less
| exciting; if they couldn't, that would be a terrible
| leading indicator of bigger problems. I'm interested in
| stories of people making good use of scarce public
| resources, because that's what all local governments
| should be attempting, and I read too much about districts
| making pushes orthogonal or downright antithetical to
| goals of effective education.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The key resource here seems to be a bored rich guy, not
| sure if that's really a "public resource".
| tbihl wrote:
| This comment is recklessly dismissive of subsidiarity.
| Public libraries would have been set back decades, at
| least, without 'bored rich guys' making huge strides to
| spread the concept and build many libraries. Hospitals
| and universities are likewise benefeciaries of 'bored
| rich guys'.
|
| There is a large public resource in question, the public
| school. All US Americans should be more or less familiar
| with public schools that make very poor use of those
| resources as suggested by our top-in-class spending per
| pupil and middling achievement levels. In this case a
| school had a great resource, a 'bored rich guy' with the
| requisite background and focus, and they recognized and
| took advantage of this fact.
|
| In plenty of other circumstances in life, power struggles
| or many other flavors of bureaucracy would have prevented
| this outcome. In the linked story, this effort was
| allowed to flourish and supported, which is to the great
| credit of the school and probably the wider community.
| Consequently, a significant group of students are
| receiving phenomenal educations that extend far beyond
| the narrow scope of high school math curricula, and they
| are doing it seemingly all under the tutelage of a single
| teacher.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I think virtual learning _could_ be at least as good as in-
| person for a lot of subjects but the world, and the US
| especially, didn 't prepare anyone for it and didn't provide
| any resources to do it during the pandemic so I'm not surprised
| that the outcomes were terrible. They basically needed teachers
| who had never even done remote learning before to pivot on a
| dime, with no additional money, training, or resources, and
| then teach kids who had also never done the same and with no
| resources or training.
|
| We, in the US, did nothing to try and prepare people for a
| situation like that. On top of that, you have a whole segment
| of parents who don't care about whether or not kids were
| actually learning but just whether or not schools were open.
| The number of stats that I've seen that compare days that
| schools were opened (especially in red states compared to blue
| states) is horrifying. If the metric we're using to determine
| whether education was successful is whether the doors were
| open, then we're focusing on the wrong things. On top of that,
| they act like the schools open in person had better outcomes
| simply because they were in-person while ignoring the lack of
| preparation and any other factors.
|
| The whole state of education in the US is sad.
| google234123 wrote:
| > with no additional money
|
| What happened to the $190 billion schools got in COVID aid?
| Are both the paragraphs you wrote completely unsubstantiated
| and just based on your own gut feelings?
| [deleted]
| ken47 wrote:
| This sounds fun. I wish I had access to teachers/mentors like
| this in high school instead of teachers who simply wanted to
| maximize the average score on AP Calc exams; for those in Europe,
| it's quite easy to get maximum marks on AP Calc 1 and 2 if you
| are competent at math. You certainly don't need to be gifted.
|
| I can understand why many teachers try to give disproportionate
| assistance to students who are disinterested in or untalented at
| math, but a lot of these kinds of students are just taking the
| harder math class to pad their university applications. If a
| student is on the border, a committed teacher can get them into
| maximum-mark territory. But the odds of such students building on
| these learnings throughout their lives is probably very low. In
| other words, it seems like a poor investment of time.
|
| And university rankings are obnoxious enough, but my goodness -
| this article invokes _high school_ ranking? We live in a world
| where people want to rank everything and live with the false
| certainty of a nonsensical hierarchy. Well, I suppose that
| describes humankind for at least the past few millennia, so never
| mind. Back to work I go...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > In other words, it seems like a bad investment of time.
|
| It's only a bad investment of time because of ineffective
| teaching methods. What these students need is rigorous yet
| effective instruction that doesn't simply expect them to "learn
| all the math by themselves" and actively helps them master the
| subject, in a step by step fashion. Unfortunately, this is very
| unpopular with current teachers because it's seen as
| "demeaning" the profession.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-18 23:02 UTC)